Desolate (Desolation)

by Ali Cross

  DESOLATE

  book two of Desolation

  by

  Ali Cross

  © 2012 Ali Cross

  Smashwords Edition - License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, incidents and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.

  Published by Ninjas Write Publishing, P.O. Box 871, West Jordan, UT 84084

  Cover Art by Fanye L.O.

  Cover Design by Dale Pease

  Author’s Site: www.alicross.com

  Other books by Ali Cross

  BECOME

  (book one of Desolation)

  Read through for a sneak peek into

  ARTEMIS RISING by Cheri Lasota

  chapter one

  I teased the cold in through my fingertips, into my blood stream. Drank it into my soul, letting it fill every crevice of my being. I squeezed my eyes tight, willing myself home to Hell, wishing it were me there and not Michael.

  The thought of him broke my concentration and I felt sunlight warming my eyelids. A gut-wrenching sob tore through my chest. I couldn’t bear the thought of Michael enduring endless torture at the hands of my father. Couldn’t bear the thought that he’d be stripped of his goodness. Stripped of everything that defined him.

  The creatures of Hell would see to it.

  It should have been me.

  Unable to claim the darkness I needed so badly, I let my eyes open. Just Lucy’s balcony. Just Earth. Just a life I never wanted. I rolled up the yoga mat and stashed it in a clay pot in the corner.

  I stepped into the apartment and slid the glass door closed behind me.

  “Mornin’ princess.” James lay sprawled on the white leather sofa, TV remote in one hand, apple in the other. “Isn’t it a little cold for you to be doing that?” He had no idea how his nickname for me cut, how it reminded me—every. single. time.—of the duties Father demanded of me and the choices I’d made. Including the wrong choice.

  I shrugged as I passed James on my way to the kitchen. “It helps.”

  James clicked off The Early Show then rolled off the couch, shuffling into step behind me. “Yeah, you look relaxed as hell.”

  “Ha.” If only he knew just how right he was.

  I pulled out the carafe from the coffee maker and poured myself a cup, breathing in the dark, nutty aroma. Yoga and a hot cup of strong coffee—my armor against the coming day. Without them, I didn’t think I’d survive in the human world. The wanters and needers defined high school, encapsulated it. Just the thought of it, of them, exhausted me.

  James leaned against the opposite counter while I poured, the delicious steam rising into the air like fog.

  “Did Mir tell you?” he asked.

  I could feel him staring, like an invisible string stretched between us. I resisted meeting his gaze. I hated that James and Miri were a part of the craziness of my life. I constantly worried over Miri’s involvement—and now James? I did not want him involved with The Hallowed. How could I protect them? I hadn’t even protected the one I love more than my own soul.

  I set the carafe down and handed James his cup, watching his hands, not his eyes, and said nothing.

  “You can pretend all you want that you’ve got a heart of stone, but not talking about it isn’t going to change anything.” He took a sip of his coffee. He screwed his face up and stuck his tongue out several times, making smacking sounds. “Yuck. How can you drink it like this? It’s practically tar.” He set his cup on the counter and went about adding sugar and cream. I drank long and deep from mine just the way it was.

  “Anyway,” James continued, his suitably sweetened cup held in front of him like a gift. “I’m coming. Like it or not.” He sipped and sighed. “Mmm, good. Besides, I’m not gonna let my girls hang out with a bunch of old dudes all the time—someone needs to keep those fogies in line.”

  “Ha. Those old fogies could kick your skinny white behind any ol’ day of the week.” Longinus, a two-thousand-year-old centurion, was always ready for a fight and Knowles was a demon cast out of Asgard along with my father and everyone else he’d polluted with his mutinous rhetoric. “The only one you could take is Cornelius—and even you wouldn’t hurt a priest.”

  James laughed but when he leaned forward, his ocean blue eyes were dark and serious. Only a couple inches taller than me (he always said good things came in small packages) he speared me with his gaze and I felt trapped.

  “You are loved, Des. Whether you like it or not. And sometimes, when people love you, they want to help you. They want to be there for you. It’s our right, you know. Let us help. It won’t kill you.”

  He kissed me on the cheek and left the kitchen. “See you after school.” A moment later his bedroom door clicked shut.

  The clock on the microwave read 7:30. I stared at it until it flicked to 7:31. It seemed my whole life consisted of things I couldn’t change, that I couldn’t stop—chief among them being people who loved me. I didn’t deserve them and they certainly didn’t deserve the danger loving me put them in.

  Maybe I couldn’t change their feelings, or their misguided need to help me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that one day, they would all regret knowing me.

  chapter two

  Miri didn’t show up for homeroom. Right before English, she dove into her chair with seconds to spare, her heavy messenger bag banging noisily against the desk. Miri rattled off a zillion “I’m sorries” the whole time.

  “Just take your seat, Miri,” Mrs. Park said. I watched as she tried—unsuccessfully—to make her naturally smiling face frown at Miri, but she couldn’t pull it off.

  “You look terrible,” I whispered when Miri leaned over to set her bag on the floor.

  “Gee, thanks,” she said in a very un-Miri-like manner. I narrowed my eyes and noticed the tell-tale signs of a bad night’s sleep. The slightly wrinkled shirt and crumpled plaid skirt told me she’d grabbed them off the floor. The red spots high on her pale cheeks and blood-shot eyes would have once made me think she’d been drinking—but I knew she hadn’t had a drink in two months and there were no Shadows clinging to her today.

  “You okay?”

  She put her elbows on her desk and covered her face with her hands. Then she let them drop and took a long breath in through her nose and out through her mouth—a calming technique she’d learned from me. “Yeah. I’m okay. Just . . .” She glanced up at Mrs. Park who had her back to us while she wrote something on the board. “I had that dream again.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but . . . what could I say? My best friend had dreams no human ever should—she didn’t deserve to have her mind invaded by Hell night after night. And these latest dreams about a demonic horseman riding into San Francisco to wreak some kind of Hellish violence on the world had been plaguing her for the past few nights. That probably meant something, and it certainly wasn’t anything good. Mrs. Park cut off any response I might have given.

  “The first day back from Thanksgiving break—that’s your deadline.” Behind her, she had written Shakespeare Scenes. I stared dumbly at the words while the room erupted w
ith whispered conversations. “You’re going to pick your teams—two people, one play.” Mrs. Park raised her voice to be heard over the noise. “I want you to make a presentation of some sort, based on the play you chose. It can be a critical analysis, a modern resetting of the scene, or you could act it out. Or any combination of these. Or any other representation you can think of—you could choreograph and perform an original dance—”

  Marcus, Lost Soul and nerdy band leader said, “Yessss,” and a few people laughed.

  “—or a sculpture—anything. Just run it by me before you put a lot of work into it so I can make sure it’s appropriate.” Pretty much everyone laughed this time.

  “What’s the big deal?” I whispered, hoping Miri could hear me over the din of voices.

  “In the three years since Mrs. Park’s been giving this assignment, she hasn’t denied any of them—last year, Stan Yehtman posed, practically nude, in the courtyard all day. He sat in that thinking-man pose, ya know? He said he was pondering Hamlet’s question To be or not to be? It was awesome.” Miri grinned wickedly. “Doesn’t hurt that he’s totally hot. Everyone tries to outdo everyone else—even from past years. Whaddya wanna bet Marcus will do something really crazy?”

  I could only imagine.

  During our free period, Miri and I sat at a table tucked behind a tall shelf of books in the library. We told Sister Mary Theresa we’d be working on our Shakespeare scene. Instead, we huddled together, our foreheads nearly touching, discussing something the stern nun would definitely not approve of.

  “So what happened? Was anything different this time?”

  Miri waved her hand, breathless from running from history to meet me. Mr. Sims had kept her afterward to talk about her paper, while I’d hurried on to make sure we got our favorite table.

  “Nope; exactly the same.”

  My shoulders slumped, and I’m sure my disappointment showed because Miri kneaded her forehead as though lost in deep thought.

  When I touched her arm, her eyes met mine and I searched them, trying to discern any details she might have left out. I could embrace my Shadow, force my will on Miri and see her memories, her dreams, but I hated the way it made me feel. Hated the thrill of cold power that rushed through my veins whenever I released the darkness inside of me. Hated the way it left me wanting more.

  Miri’s eyes pretty much told me nothing.

  “The gray horseman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is the third night in a row, right?”

  Miri didn’t respond as she pulled out her notebook and Shakespeare book and put them on the table in front of her. I shifted my papers around, and opened my book to Hamlet. If Sister Mary Theresa caught us without any books, she’d kick us out—and it was raining. I so didn’t want to sit in the cemetery (our only other private place) in the rain. I wished we could go to the Situation Room (as Miri affectionately called the room where The Hallowed met), but Father Cornelius told us not to go there during school hours.

  “I think it means something,” she said. I only nodded. I knew the dream was a warning, but I was afraid of what.

  “Tell me about it—maybe you’ll remember something.” I’d heard it all before, but this dream was too big, too real, to keep it to herself—she needed to share it, to get its stink off of her, to share the responsibility of it with another person.

  Miri closed her eyes. “Huge horse. The guy with the long gray robe. Big sword—except it’s not a sword exactly, it’s one of those curved ones like sultans have.”

  “A scimitar,” I provided.

  “Yeah. And . . . dread. I can taste it, like sulphur and sadness.” Miri talked so fast, if I didn’t already have her words memorized I wouldn’t have a clue what she said.

  “And then what happened?”

  “I don’t know.” She sat back in her chair, her gaze fixed absently on the library stack behind me. The way she stared, unfocused, I knew she saw the dream replaying in her mind. She spun the pencil around and around between her fingers and over her thumb.

  I waved my hand in front of her face. When she looked at me, I smiled.

  “I can tell there’s something else—what is it?”

  She doodled around the edges of her play book. “Even though I’ve seen it before, it’s still terrible. He’s riding on, and I seem to be flying in the air behind him, like I’m trying to catch him, but I can’t.” She hugged herself and rocked forward. “Then he turns his face toward me and it’s like I can’t even breathe, I’m so scared.”

  I waited, hoping something else would surface. “Did you get to see his face this time?”

  “No. He was still wearing that hood, but it’s like there’s nothing in there—no face at all. It’s so creepy—it was awful.” She struggled to pull herself out of the dream, and then she stopped—her breath, her blinking, everything. She was like that for so long—at least ten seconds—that I started to panic.

  “Miri.” I gripped her shoulder.

  She blinked rapidly then shook her head. “I . . . I think I remember something.” Miri dragged her eyes up to mine. “You. I think . . . I think it’s you.”

  A chill skipped up my spine. “Me.” Of course it was me—I was desolation, after all. I slumped back in my seat and folded my arms across my chest. The action closed off the world, gating me in.

  “Wait, don’t do that.” Miri reached out and pulled one of my hands toward her. I used to think it was weird, when she touched me. Before, in Hell, no one ever dared laid a hand on me—unless of course it was Akaros when we trained together. But I was getting used to this touch. This human connection.

  Miri took a breath and closed her eyes in a slow blink. “I think that the person flying behind the horseman, the one trying to reach him and stop him—the one who is always me in the dream—is you.”

  My breath whooshed out of my lungs in a rush. I could be the one to fight. I longed for the chance to knock Father down one bad guy at a time. I could deal with this.

  But the idea of Miri living in my hell night after night? It killed me.

  “I think you need to get ready,” she said. “Something’s coming and I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who can stop it.”

  chapter three

  “Keep looking at me like that princess, and I might not be so pretty anymore.” James made a flicking gesture over his chest. “I think you’re starting to burn holes in my shirt.”

  “Come on,” Miri said, bumping her shoulder against James’.

  I blinked hard, realizing James was right. I had been staring. It drove me crazy that he was here. I didn’t know if I could lose anyone else. Everyone I cared about was now officially wrapped up in this mess. I’d already lost Michael and Lucy. And now Father had some other plan to bring death and destruction? I couldn’t even bring myself to consider what might happen. Instead, I moved my glare to the wall above Cornelius’ head and leaned against the closed door.

  “Do you have a theory?” Knowles asked. He sat in his customary spot where a tall cabinet cast him in shadows. His voice sounded tired and cranky—pretty much like it always did. But I knew something about him now. Something that made me get up, cross the room, and sit beside him. Knowles may be a demon; maybe one time, long ago, he made the wrong choice, but he’d given his immortal life to correct that wrong. Turns out, we are a lot the same.

  Tension skewered my brain and made me do a bad impression of Miri. “Yeah, what’s the plan Corney?”

  Miri swallowed a laugh, making a snorting sound instead—a lovely habit she’d picked up from me.

  Father Cornelius sighed and slipped his glasses from his nose. He pinned me with his pale blue eyes. It took a lot to get on his nerves, but from the tight wrinkles around his eyes, and his mouth turned downward in a tired frown. He looked like he’d lost all his patience for the day.

  I jumped up and moved to the window that sat so high up you couldn’t actually see out of it. Small to begin with, suddenly the room felt suffocating, stran
gling. A constant whisper of you don’t belong here rattled through my brain. I pressed my back to the cold stone wall and crossed my arms. From there I could see everyone—Cornelius sitting at the desk closest to me, Longinus standing (always standing) against the wall on the other side of the window, Knowles in his shadowy corner, and directly across from me James and Miri sat so close together they may as well have been sharing a chair.

  “I think we all know what needs to happen now. Something—some demon—is going to attack the Bay area and I’m the only one who can stop it.” I managed to do a decent job at nonchalance, but I knew they wouldn’t buy it. Everyone in the room—even Knowles—seemed to think they knew me better than I knew myself. And, well, maybe they were right. They’d been right about everything so far.

  “Desolation,” Knowles said quietly. “You won’t be alone. You don’t ever have to be alone again.”

  James chuckled. His eyes were on Miri’s hands which he held between his, slowly tracing circles over her palm with his thumb. “She’ll never believe you, old man. For Desi, it’s action over words, every time.

  “Just go do what you need to do, princess.” How did James suddenly get to be in charge? “And we’ll have your back.”

  “Agreed.” Longinus’ voice was like a deep rumble that swept across the room.

  I ignored him and stared at James. This guy who I’d wanted so badly before. So much that I was willing to crush the spirit of an innocent boy for another kiss from James. So much that I’d tried to push Michael out of my mind for one thoughtless, meaningless encounter with James.

  So much that I’d missed what a good friend he was.

  Thank the stars I’d figured out that last part before I’d lost him forever.

  “When will you go?” Cornelius asked.

  I pushed away from the wall and walked to the door. “Tonight.” Putting my hand on the doorknob, I waited. But no one responded, no one made the effort to detain me or convince me of another course of action. And even if they had, it wouldn’t have made any difference.