The medic looked up at me, clutching his clipboard tightly. “I’m sorry. Have I given you the impression that I have time to stand around answering your questions? If so, let me relive you of that false notion. I have a wing full of patients, many of whom are still nursing injuries suffered when your comrade in arms unleashed the Armageddon upon us.”
“Listen, I just-”
“I know what you want,” he spit. “You want to soothe your guilt by pretending to care about your brother, all the while purposely forgetting the fact that what’s happened to him is your fault. People might be afraid of you, Mr. Lightfoot, but I’m not too timid to say that you have opened the floodgates. You think you should be applauded for your future role in ‘devouring’ the Bloodmoon? I say it’s the least you can do, seeing as how you’re the one who brought her into fruition.”
“Don’t you dare presume to speak for me!” I said, stunned at his speech. “And certainly not while being so damn hypocritical. You people worship Fate then look to blame someone when it comes to pass. I don’t have to explain myself to you or to anyone else. If you think you can do a better job, then take your shirt off. I’ll be glad to give you the wings.” I stepped closer, so that my face was inches from his. “Now where is my brother?”
The medic blinked hard and stumbled back a little. “He’s in the Meditation Grotto, preparing for the genesis testing.”
“Genesis testing?!” I balked. “He’s not a newborn.”
“His patterns are presenting as one.” He backed away even more. “And seeing as how you’re neither next of kin nor a Councilmember, that’s all I’m obligated to tell you.”
“Why would his-”
“That’s all!” he answered. “And if you approach me like that again, I’ll have you escorted out.” The medic glared at me, straightened his jacket, and started down the hall.
******************
No one is allowed to disturb patients without the express permission of a medic, so I had to sneak out into the Meditation Grotto. And, given that the Hourglass had just been made aware of its first intrusion in over one hundred years, security was a little heavier than it usually was.
Still, this wasn’t exactly a seat of power. It was a courtyard in a hospital filed with running fountains and bronze statues of important Breakers throughout history. So, getting passed the two armed guards who stood at the glass door leading out into it was little more than a game of ‘look over there’.
As I made it out into the Grotto, the first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. This was undoubtedly a concentrated effort, seeing as how one can’t really meditate without a bit of calm. But the complete silence unnerved me. And it made my steps, feet crunching against fallen autumn leaves, all the louder and more evident.
This place looked completely empty, a square of forest in an otherwise urban building. Where was everyone? And where was Sevie?
I thought about yelling his name, but what good would that do? I could see every inch of this place from where I was standing. If he was here, I would have seen him. And besides, there was no guarantee my brother would have even recognized his name at this point.
A cool breeze, shade no doubt, given that we were entrapped by tall walls, made me shiver. Not only that, it let me know they were watching me. Right here. Right now. Everywhere. All the time. So long as I was inside the Hourglass, I’d never be free of the Council’s unblinking eye. And I had never felt more alone.
Something struck me hard on the back and I went down. Spinning as I tumbled, I saw that Sevie had jumped down from his perch in one of the trees and batted me in the neck.
His eyes were large and his mouth was set.
“Sevie, what in Fate’s name are you doing?” I asked, rubbing my head.
He looked at me. “They won’t talk to me,” he said, motioning toward the statues. “Why won’t they talk to me?” Before I could answer, he lifted a boot and brought it down right at my face. I spin quick, barely making it out of the way before his foot collided hard with the ground in front of me.
I jumped up, my hands instinctively pulling in front of me in an offensive position. “Sevie, don’t!” I yelled.
But he did. He most certainly did.
He swung at me. First a right, then two lefts, and a right again. I blocked each other, but he had way more precision that he should have. He swept with his leg, trying to knock my feet out from under me. Anticipating his attack, I hopped out of the way, landing a punch across his face that I immediately regretted.
I had split his lip. He staggered backward and dabbed at the blood with his finger. “Fate above, this one is soft.” He muttered.
“Sevie, don’t make me hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, okay?” I said, my hands still regretfully in front of me.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” he asked, coming at me with a flurry of karate chops. Where did he get these moves? Sevie wasn’t a field Breaker. He shouldn’t have had this training.
“Because it’s your name,” I answered, blocking his attacks,
He was pushing me backward, driving me toward the other end of the Grotto.
“That is not what I was told. They told me my name was Sebastian. And even that is a joke,” he said.
“Don’t do that,” I said, knocking his hand back. “You were named after our great-great grandfather, founder of the Lightfoot bloodline. Your name is not a joke.” I blocked him again and then landed a flat palm against his chest Once again, he stumbled backward. “And I’ve always called you Sevie. I have ever since we were children.”
“You’re one of my brothers?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“I’m your only brother,” I answered. “Don’t you get it Sevie. We’re all we’ve got. I know this is hard for you, and I get that you’re probably afraid, but you have to let me help you.”
“I am not afraid,” he answered, huffing as he let his hands fall. “And I am not the one who should be afraid. But you should know, Sebastian Lightfoot isn’t here.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
“I do not know how to explain myself, because I do not know why this is happening. I should not be here. I should have moved on by now. This is how it works, how it always has. She is the same and I am different. She is aware and I am not.” He shook his head. “This is how it has always worked, ho it must always work. The fact that it isn’t now, that I am still here, it means that everything is wrong somehow.”
He wasn’t making any sense. He was speaking the way he had before, when the moon turned red, when I saw him in the cave in my dreams. Maybe I should have seen the signs then. Maybe they were all clues that were meant to lead me to this moment. Or maybe they were something else altogether.
“Sevie, I get that you’re confused, and you have every right to be. You were drugged. Royce injected you with something a long time ago. I think that’s the reason this is happening to you. But I have to tell Cresta what happened. She might be able to help you, or at least try to convince Royce to.”
“You are without perspective,” he answered, his eyes flickering up to mine for only the briefest of instances. “Not only is the person you search for not here, he never was.”
“Sevie, just take a breath okay?” I asked, moving forward hesitantly, like I was edging my way toward a deer in a pasture. “They want to do genesis testing on you, like you’re some youngling or something. It’ll wipe out every piece of who you are. So just calm down. Let me take you home, and together we’ll find a way to fix this.”
“You want me to find her, yes? You want me to bring you to the Bloodmoon?”
My eyes darted toward the trees. “Not here, Sevie. Anyone could be listening. Let’s get you back home, and then-”
“She would not recognize me, not the me that I am, that I was before. She only saw the weak boy, the one she thought needed saving from the Serpent. As though that was something she would ever be capable of. As though it isn’t her who brings t
he Serpent here, who brings us all here.”
“Sevie, just stop talking, okay?” I said, grabbing him by the sleeve of his medical gown.
“She was sweet though; a good girl set to do a horrible thing. It’s almost too much to comprehend. But most things seem that way these days.”
“Sevie, you’re not making any sense. Just let me take you home.”
He pulled away from me. “You wish to see her. You wish to use the energy that stirs up in this used up vessel. So be it!”
His hand slammed against mine, and suddenly I could feel myself leaving my body.
“No!” I said, or tried to say. He was doing it now. Somehow Sevie was allowing me to dreamwalk while I was awake. And he was doing it right out in the open, not protected by the secrecy of the bond Merrin and I shared. They would be able to track him, to track me. And because of that,they would be able to find Cresta.
Chapter 17
Be Strong
“No Sevie!” I screamed, but I wasn’t sure my words actually came out. Was I still in my body? And, if I was, could I even control it anymore?
Sevie’s powers never worked like this. They were always very passive, and only effected people who were already asleep. This sort of thing, pulling me out of my body and throwing me to Fate knows where was something else altogether. And it just might have proved disastrous.
The world disappeared around me. The air pulled from my lungs. And when I stopped spinning, everything was dark. We had done this before, Sevie and I. When we were kids, he used to sneak into my head and pull me into his dreams. At first, it was because he was afraid of the dark and he didn’t want to be alone, not even while sleeping. But soon, it became the best part of the day. Sevie would throw me into some strange dreaming mindscape, and we’d the off. The brothers Lightfoot having secret adventures and all that. It was a little cliché but, as a kid who thought he was going to die young, it was also a way of escaping, of living a life I figured was going to be taken away from me. And for Sevie, I think it might have been a way to squeeze every last drop of time from the rbother he knew he was going to lose.
This though, this was nothing like that.
I heard footsteps in the distance and pretty pronounced dripping sound at first. My eyes were still blurry, still coming to terms with whatever was around me. I coughed loudly, relieved to be able to breathe again. But through what?
My body wasn’t here. Wherever here was.
No, I had seen people dreamwalk before, and their bodies always stayed put. Which meant that I was, at this moment, lying on my back in the middle of the Meditation Grotto; somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be in the first place, with someone who might not even be my brother anymore staring down at my defenseless body.
And where was the rest of me; my mind, my spirit, my soul? Whatever piece of me this was. Where had I gone?
The footsteps grew louder and, in the distance, I saw a faint blue glow. A pair rounded the corner; two women, one of whom was holding some sort of electric lantern.
I moved forward, my feet splashing against puddles on the floor of what I was now pretty sure was either a sewer or a cave. As the light grew closer, I saw the tunnel I stood in was laden with bricks and the floor was concrete…and covered in disgusting brown water.
Yeah, definitely a sewer.
I didn’t speak. I knew better than that. These people could be anyone, and if I went around shouting for Cresta in a sewer, then who knew what sort of tips I’d be inadvertently giving them. I did rush toward them though. There was no use in hiding in this state. No one could hurt me like this.
As I neared, I saw that the figures were both women. One was hugging herself and sniffling. The other-the one holding the strange blue lantern- was stone face and aware.
Still, even as I closed in, neither of them seemed to notice me. As the stone faced girl swung her lantern, surveying the property, I flinched, ready to be observed. But she still didn’t see me. And what I saw as she brought the light closer to herself stopped me in my tracks.
I should have been prepared to see her. I was here, after all, because Sevie (or who or whatever was now controlling Sevie) decided to bring me to Cresta. But as I took her in, as the fake heart in my dream body leapt as if it was trying to escape from my chest, I realized that no amount of preparation would make me ready for this.
She stood in front of me, the love of my life. Her hair was longer than it had been and her lips were pursed together uncomfortably. But she was still, without question or contest, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Just being in her vicinity took the pain away. A piece of me, the piece I never stopped thinking about being without, suddenly snapped back into place. And for a glorious moment, I was able to forget about Fate’s wicked plan and the life it had subjected us too.
But only for a moment.
As her eyes moved to, and then passed me, I realized two things. She couldn’t see me. If she could have, it would have stopped her cold. And, more disturbingly, she had been crying. Hard.
“Cresta, what’s wrong?” I asked, instinctively forgetting the things I needed to tell her in the face of her pain. “Cresta!” I repeated, but she didn’t hear me.
“We need to keep moving,” the other woman said. “It won’t be long before they track us down here, and if we aren’t through the barrier, then I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Fate above, she was in danger. Had I brought them to her? For all I knew, the Council could have locked onto what was going on the instant Sevie pulled me from my body. They could have held me in some sort of status while they tracked where I was going and found her. And now-now that they had made their move- they could have brought me here just to witness it happen as some sort of weird prophecy fulfillment.
But who was this person she was with? What barrier was she talking about? And where in Fate’s fertile acre was everyone else?
“Cresta, I need you to listen to me,” I said, trying and failing to grab her hand. Why was it like this? I could always touch things in the dreamscape before. But I wasn’t sleeping this time, and neither was Cresta. Something was happening to Sevie’s powers, and it was stopping me from being able to tell her what I needed to.
“What does it matter?!” Cresta shouted. “They’re all dead, Liv. It’s over. They’re dead. It doesn’t matter.”
Dead? The word brought my racing heart to a screeching stop. “Who’s dead?” I asked, realizing what she meant. She didn’t say he or she. She said them. She said all of them.
Of course, that’s the only reason she’d be alone. They would never leave her, and Fate knew it would have taken the cold hands of death to Casper from her side.
“I should never have left you,” I said softly. Of course, she didn’t hear me. “Was it Royce?” I asked. “He did something to them, didn’t he? He did something to Sevie too, Cress.” My mouth tightened. “I know you can’t hear me, but I promise you-a Breaker’s promise- that I will make that sonofabitch pay for everything he’s done.” I dropped my head. “I should have been there. I could have saved them if I was there.”
“Of course it matters,” the other woman-Liv- said. Her eyes glazed over me and paused. Something in them lit up. Could she see me? If so, she made no note of it as she continued. “There are things you don’t know Cresta. And there’s still an entire world that needs your help.”
“I don’t care!” Cresta spit out. “I should have just let them kill me and get it over with! At least then, everyone else wouldn’t have had to die.”
“Don’t say that,” I muttered, batting back tears. “Don’t ever stop fighting. You promised me you would never stop fighting!”
“Sometimes saving the world doesn’t mean saving ourselves,” Liv said, and her eyes moved back to me for the briefest of instances. “But in your case,” she went back to Cresta. “I’m gonna say it’s one and the same. You dying doesn’t help anybody. You giving up, doesn’t help anybody. You wanna crawl into a corner over there and d
ie, well that’s your prerogative. But some would say that letting a bunch of people sacrifice themselves to get you where you need to be just to stop short of the finish line makes you something way worse than the Bloodmoon.”
“You shut the hell up,” I turned to the woman, who probably couldn’t hear me. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “But I will stop it. Just hold on, okay. Just hold on. I’ll do something. I’ll think of something.” I pulled closer to her, and whispered fruitlessly into her ear. “I love you.”
And then I felt the pull again. I scrambled, trying my hardest to stay here, to make her hear me. But I was powerless. Whatever was pulling me back was jerking pretty hard, because I literally lifted off the stone floor of that sewer.
I watched her as I floated away, the strongest person I had ever known in the darkest moment of her life. And I couldn’t even help her. There was nothing I could do.
“I love you! Be strong! You’re so strong!” I screamed, forgetting all about saving Sevie or even the world. I just wanted her to know. More than anything else, I wanted her to hear me and to realize that, even though I couldn’t touch her or talk to her, or even see her in real life, she wasn’t alone. She would never be alone.
***************
I woke in a cold sweat. I wasn’t outside anymore, which was a bad sign. How long had I been out? What was happening?
“You’re awake.” Merrin’s voice was weak. Looking at her through sore eyes, I saw she was even frailer than before. Her skin was sallow and pale and her body nearly slunk out of the chair she sat in.
“Merrin, what’s happening?” I sat up. “How long have I been unconscious?” I shook my head, unable to stop the torrent of question as they bubbled up with emotion and spilled out my mouth. “I saw her Merrin, but something’s wrong. I couldn’t talk to her or touch her. And,” I swallowed hard. “I think I might have sent them to her, because she said they were dead, Merrin. I can’t be one hundred percent sure who she was talking about, but she said they’re all dead. We have to find a way to get to her. We have to help somehow.”
The Breaker's Resolution: (YA Paranormal Romance) (Fixed Points Book 4) Page 13