by Lan Chan
“Blu –” he croaked as I felt the bond give way.
It turned out there was one thing in this world stronger than a Nephilim bond. As the Angelical traced through his body, stealing all his memories of the way he felt about me, a look of utter betrayal twisted his face. And then, it all gave way to nothing.
Kai’s eyes closed and he did as I commanded.
He forgot all about me.
44
Knowing I had very little time, I made Gabriel’s Key take me back to the Academy dorm. Sophie gave a startled shout, jumping up from her bed. The second my feet touched down, I collapsed on the floor. The bond crumbled into nothing, taking with it the buffer of Kai’s healing power.
I screamed as the aftermath of the Angelical hit me. It shot pain through my body, opening up the wounds Kai had stitched together. Sophie caught me before I smacked my head on the floor. “Lex! What’s happening?”
Speaking was out of the question. Dying was the only thing I could manage at the moment. The convulsions returned with a vengeance, bringing its friends, drooling and migraine. Kicking aside everything on the floor, Sophie made a move like she was going to run for help from the mirror.
“No,” I sputtered. “No.”
“Lex! I don’t know what to do!”
I wanted to tell her there was nothing that could be done but I’d bitten my tongue and the blood was mixing with the spit that was caking my mouth. Tears spilled over her cheeks. She swiped them away hastily.
“Okay,” she whisper-screamed. Catching hold of my hand, she gripped my wrist and snatched Gabriel’s Key from me. I was hardly aware of her slipping it onto her own finger and disappearing because the world had turned into one big earthquake of horror. Without Sophie to hold me still, I kicked out wildly. My foot smashed onto my side table so hard it cracked and tipped over. All of my things spilled onto the floor. The Nephilim Codex fell like an anvil on my thigh, causing me to yelp even harder.
I bit my tongue again. The fits made me roll towards the fallen table. My hand reached out to try and brace against the wall, but instead, I snatched at Hilary’s diary and scrunched the open pages involuntarily. I dragged the diary up against my chest without meaning to. Then I stretched my arm out again, repeating this twice more for no apparent reason whatsoever.
My stomach roiled. I threw up all over the floor. Some of it was still radioactive green. Most of it was bright red. It all mixed together in a puddle of brown that smeared onto the pages of the diary.
I grit my teeth, trying to hold on to something so I could stop jerking all over the floor. I raised my arm with the diary still in my grip. It flapped uselessly in front of my face. It happened again. That strange feeling of being separated from my physical body. My mind was suddenly still even though I could see my body continuing to spasm. The insane ramblings on the page somehow morphed into coherent sentences. My overwrought mind picked up the words inevitable and ultimate sacrifice.
Sophie popped back into the room. Her eyes widened when she saw the mess I made. “Lex?”
Ignoring the puddle of blood and bile, she grabbed my arms and pressed them to my sides. “Lex!” For some reason, she touched her fingers to the pulse point at my throat. “Shit!”
She straddled my chest. I was sure this wasn’t the right way to deal with a person having convulsions. Clamping my bottom jaw with her left hand, Sophie produced a vial of deep red potion. After my last experience, I tried to shy away but she held firm. Not in control of my own reactions, she had no trouble pouring the contents of the vial down my throat. It was followed by three others.
At first, I felt nothing. And then a shocking jolt hammered through my chest. A strange taste bloomed on my tongue. It was at once pleasant and sweet with the scent of confectioners’ sugar but with a weird irony aftertaste.
I had no complaints when the potion slid down my throat and almost immediately began to soothe the convulsions. Sophie shimmied down my front and yanked me into a sitting position. Curling her arm around me, she placed her palm on my chest and shot her magic into me. It reacted with the potion in my gut, increasing the effect until I was no longer shaking. After another minute, the pain in my head subsided. As did the convulsions.
When she saw that I was no longer in danger of banging my head and killing myself, Sophie raced out and brought me back a glass of water. I took small sips, worried that my throat would close up again. She sat down in front of me, right on the spit stain, and made sure I didn’t regress.
I wasn’t sure how long we sat there but I finished the glass of water. Sophie allowed me time to catch my breath. Then she broke down in tears. I drew her into a hug. “Hey,” I said. “I’m okay.”
She covered her face with her hands, sniffed for a bit and then rubbed her eyes. “You’re not okay!” she sobbed. “Did you just…did you just die?”
I cast my eyes to the spot where I had just lain on the floor. A chill ran down my spine as though somebody had just walked over my grave. “Maybe for a second.”
She choked on another sob. There was no amount of back rubbing that would make this better, but I tried anyway. “This isn’t normal. It’s not about the Angelical at all, is it?”
“Well, technically, I did just us –”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“Okay. Okay.”
Her bottom lip quivered but she stared at me with steel in her eyes. “Tell me.”
I told her everything but the real reason why I couldn’t bond with Kai and what I planned to do once I figured out exactly how I would gather enough power in one place. Sophie slumped back on her butt. She looked at me, turned her head to the window and then back at me again.
“I...” she stammered. “What?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It takes some getting used to.”
Suddenly I was so incredibly tired. Slipping off my shoes I crawled into bed and dragged the covers over me.
Sophie came and sat by my side. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish there was something I could do. Kai...”
“Please don’t.”
She nodded. “Okay. Sleep. You’ll feel better once you’ve rested.”
I closed my eyes and dropped out like a light. But I didn’t feel better once I had rested. I felt like somebody had reached inside my chest, ripped my heart out, torn it to pieces, and shoved the jagged, broken pieces back in. Habit had me sinking into the pool of magic, knowing I was searching for something that was no longer there. Every scrap of the bond had been purged from my body. All that was left was an empty chamber, rusting away slowly as my body betrayed me. Hope was the only reassurance that Kai was okay. A biting insistence clawed at my insides like a phantom limb that I could still feel. It made my skin tight, my chest hurt, and my brain fuzzy.
I didn’t need a stupid bond. Just good old-fashioned love was enough to make me want to scream into a pillow and tear it to shreds at the same time. Biting down on the corner of the sheets, I lay there for the longest time with my jaw clenched, trying to desensitise myself to a new reality without him.
Clutching at straws, I counted all the reasons why I had made my choice. Without realising it, I had begun to slip into meditative breathing. Something struck me as odd. It took several minutes to work out that my heart was beating in a strange staccato rhythm. I didn’t need to look inside to know that it was failing. The reality of my situation slammed back with cosmic force. Forever was no longer an option. Kai was no longer an option.
At least I would go out knowing he would survive. Maybe he even had a chance to be happy. Shoving back the wounded whine that tried to escape my throat, I forced my jaw open and removed the sheet. Massaging the side of my face, I inspected the room.
There was another vial of red potion on my bedside table. Sophie had cleaned up the mess and set everything right. The codex and Hilary’s diary were back on my bedside. Looking at the diary caused a sharp kick of apprehension to run through me.
While I was psyching myself to pick it up, Sophie came
in with a tray of food. I set upon it like I hadn’t eaten in a century. With each bite, my memory came back piece by piece.
“Andrei!” I remembered suddenly.
“Shhh,” Sophie held on to the tray so I wouldn’t knock it over. “I put in a call through to Mum while you were asleep. He’s pretty badly hurt but he’s alive. They’ve moved him in with Victoria while he recovers.”
I blew out a breath and took another bite of my calzone, chewing thoughtfully. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I swallowed my pride. “How is Kai?”
She shook her head. “There’s been no news.”
The food turned to sludge in my mouth. Sophie waved her arms in front of my face. “That could just mean he hasn’t woken up. He’s strong. He’ll be fine.”
“It was Angelical.”
“You commanded him to forget. Not die. Or anything else terrible.” I wanted to tell her that it was terrible to me, but she was right. “What are you going to do about the illness?”
“Raphael seems to think that if I stop using magic altogether, it should stall the illness and I could live out my life.”
Sophie didn’t say anything, but the grim set of her lips told me she didn’t buy it. Her eyes shone with determination and an odd expression settled over her face. “I can make you more potion,” she said. “Maybe if you drink some every day, it’ll help you keep it together.”
“What’s in that stuff anyway?”
She was almost as good a liar as me. Living with shifters who could scent deception had taught her how to regulate her reactions so she wouldn’t be caught out. “It’s just a version of that elixir I made for the Halloween Showcase with a few switched ingredients.”
Uh huh. It was these switched ingredients that I was worried about. When I mentioned it to her, she raised a brow. “Do you really want to know?”
I did not. But I also knew she was hiding something from me. It was only fair since I was hiding a few things from her. What choice did I really have? “Okay. Thanks, Soph.”
She brushed imaginary dust off her jeans. “I better get started on a new formula.” With that, she picked up her backpack and set off. Under different circumstances, I might have followed her to see where she was going. But right now it was pointless. What other choice did I have?
Without further interruptions, I grabbed Hilary’s diary and flipped to the page that I had seen while having my fit. Once again, all I saw was incoherent markings. Working on an assumption, I packed up my own backpack, teleported to Ravenhall and broke into Eugenia’s house while she was out. Not really. Her door was always open because more than one person used it as a magical halfway house. If she didn’t know me, the house itself wouldn’t have allowed me in.
Picking up her summoning supplies, I ran to the Great Hall, ignoring everyone’s curious glances. “Summoning room, please,” I asked the hall. A door opened up to my left. The longest part of drawing the summoning circle was psyching myself up to touch the human skull. Cursing myself for not bringing gloves, I gingerly picked it up and placed it inside the middle section of the five-point pentagram.
When I was done drawing some blood, I slapped my hand down on the red circle. Concentrating on the skull, I attempted to call forth its owner. The visitation was almost immediate. My heart lurched as the semi-transparent body of a women in her forties appeared. She wore a faded set of running sweats, though the faded part might have had more to do with her wraith state than her lack of fashion sense. A pair of white earbuds flopped over her shoulders. She’d been out for a run when she died.
“Uh…hi,” I said. That was me. Bone witch to the core.
“Hello, Alessia.” Her eyes were sad. “My name is Holly.” She turned her head to regard me and it was then that I saw the two small puncture wounds on her neck. Vampire bite. Where the heck had Eugenia gotten her bones from? And why the hell were the elite guard allowing things like this to happen? I had always tried to be Switzerland in the ongoing war between the Human League and the supernaturals, but this was starting to piss me off too.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her. “If I had any other choice, I wouldn’t have disturbed you.”
Her focus turned to the skull and the rest of her bones that were scattered in strategic positions around the circle. “When we’re done,” she said, voice throaty, “can you please dispose of my bones?”
It was the least I could do. Once her bones were destroyed, nobody else would be able to summon her. I nodded, a morbid thought worming its way into my brain. What did I want done to me after I died? Swiping at nothing on my cheek, I made myself pay attention. Offering up the rattle, I placed it down next to her skull. “Could you please have a look to see if you can locate the souls of Alan or Sebastian Popescu?”
She shook her head. “It would be pointless,” she said. “I know what you search for but I won’t be able to find them. Nobody can.”
“Why?”
“They were unmade.”
It took a second for it to sink in. “Unmade?”
“Yes,” she said. “Their souls do not reside in the Sea of Souls.”
“But they were –”
“Soulless shells,” she reminded me. My lessons with Professor Suleiman came back with stinging clarity. A supernatural whose soul has been removed becomes an indiscriminate killing machine. She arched her head back to show me her scars. “Just like the one who killed me.”
It was no wonder Alan and Sebastian never showed up. They couldn’t. They would never be laid to rest. How would I be able to tell Andrei? And just as importantly, who had taken their souls and why?
Something occurred to me. Cursing that I didn’t have the information right in front of me, I reached for the pocket mirror. “Just a sec,” I told Holly.
Flipping through the mirror, I brought up information about the supernatural kids who had murdered Rachel’s mother. “Can you please search for the soul of Benjamin Reed?”
She did so and then shook her head mournfully. What the heck? How was it that all these people had just been harvested and nobody knew about it? The simple answer was that there was no time. Once a soul was removed from a supernatural host, they had to be put down.
Compartmentalising the information for now, I produced Hilary’s diary. “One more thing,” I said. Holding the diary out to her, I flipped the pages slowly. “Are you able to read these marking in the margins?”
Taking a step closer within the confines of her smaller circle, she ran her eyes along the blocks of writing. I crossed all my fingers and toes that this would pan out. My soul had almost crossed over when I’d been able to comprehend the words. Being a bone witch, I wouldn’t put it past Hilary to make the notes visible only to spirits.
As she scanned, I felt a pinch behind my left eye. Uh oh. I was overdoing it. As the seconds ticked by, the pain increased exponentially. It looked like I wasn’t out of the woods just yet. I was about to call it off when the Holly spoke:
“It says that somebody has to make the ultimate sacrifice,” she said. “Over and over again.”
And now my heart was pounding just as thunderously as my head. She had known. When Hilary had saved my life, she had known about the prophecies. Maybe she had even seen the prophecies like Emily and had written them down. The knowledge sealed my fate. One way or another, I wasn’t getting out of this one alive. It was time to stop stalling.
45
Sophie returned to the dorm while I was getting ready to leave. Seeming drained by whatever she’d been off doing, she didn’t notice I was packing until she fell sideways onto her bed and really stared.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she said.
“I can’t stay here when I could go off at any time.” To emphasise the point, I coughed blood onto the back off my hand.
At first she just blinked. Then her nostrils flared. “So you thought you’d just run away instead?” she asked. “Given that you’ve almost died twice in the past week, how far do you think you’ll get before it ha
ppens again? Did you think after all this time that we’d let you run off without searching for you?”
I stopped from shoving a pair of socks into the side pocket of my backpack. Dammit! She was right. If I just left, they would try to find me. When Kai returned without the bond, they would know something was deadly wrong. And then they would find a reason to make me stay.
Sophie pushed herself up to a sitting position. “I can’t help you if you’re not here.”
“I can…” The stupidity of it sank in. Fear had robbed me of logic. My dizzy brain was proof enough that I needed Sophie’s potion more than ever. But I couldn’t sit around waiting to lose control of my body either. I would stay until I was strong enough to finish this last mission.
“Okay,” I said. Sweeping the backpack of meagre supplies off my bed, I crawled in feeling like my body was weighted down. “I’m going to sleep for a bit.” Sophie’s disturbed expression was the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes.
There was still no sign of Kai the next day. Sophie promised she’d start spreading the news about our breakup. By the end of Dead Languages, the rumour mill blew up. For two days, I put up with side-eyes and snickering. Kai still hadn’t returned.
To prove to myself that I was serious, and to stop from going insane now that I couldn’t reach him in the bond, I ventured into Seraphina with the codex. I wasn’t surprised to find Patricia waiting for me outside the library building.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” she said, genuine distress in her voice. The hard line of my jaw was evidence enough.
“Oh, darling.” She hugged me to her ample chest. It took all of my willpower not to burst into tears. Christopher was equally puzzled when I slid the codex across the table to him.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I don’t have any need for it anymore. Thank you anyway.”
Before he could regroup, I speed walked out of there. My path away was blocked by a swarm of Nephilim socialites. Most of them were sympathetic until somebody with ruby claws snatched me from their grasp. Chanelle turned me to face her, the death grip she had on my arm cutting off my circulation.