If she did take her life, Father would not mourn her, for he would shortly join her in the hereafter. And Kiren had assured her their deaths would be linked. She closed her eyes. He too would be granted rest.
She swallowed, resolved. The panic and sorrow settled into a calm. Serenity pulsed through her as she raised the weapon, placing its tip over her heart. A tear course down her cheek, the last she would ever shed. She sucked in a breath and lifted the weapon.
Blinding light . . .
She threw a hand up to protect her eyes. Warm and heavenly, the radiance broke over her, subduing fear and halting dread—the substance of peace. Had she stepped into the afterlife already? The luminance thawed her. She sucked it in and the weapon slipped from her grasp. It clattered to the floor. She raised her head and tilted her face to the welcoming glow. Tranquility permeated where the essence touched her skin.
The brilliance dimmed.
“No!” She reached for it, but it was retreating. The Soulless lay in lifeless heaps across the floor. The servants, Father, Miles all others stood blinking at one another.
The light ebbed, fading into the center of the room, like the sun shrinking into a palm-sized star.
She gasped.
Kiren sat half way up in the bed, eyes closed, fingers clasped over his pendant, its surface fading from white to dull gray.
She pushed off the floor. Blackness dotted her vision. The world tilted. She stumbled forward and plunged into darkness.
Hands caught her.
Swirls of fire sparked through her head, piercing every way, tearing at the fibers that held her together while the earth heaved. She squeezed her eyes shut and begged the pain, the blindness, the shaking to go away. She needed to see him!
Fingers skimmed across her chin, fingers she knew. “Open your eyes, love.”
The floor beneath her bruised knees steadied. She reached up and trapped his hand against her cheek. The churning agony dimmed to pin-pricks. Slowly, she lifted her eyelids.
Kiren sat before her on the edge of the bed, holding her up. Warmth glistened off his skin, hair slicked back, wet from perspiration. His brows lowered in relief, mouth twitching upward as she met his eyes. They glowed, like the moon over lapping waves.
His grin broadened. He pressed his forehead against hers, exhaling a laugh.
“You saved us.” Leaning in, she kissed him freely. She didn’t care that anyone watched. She didn’t care that her brain burned like smoldering coals. She didn’t care what happened next. They were alive!
Kiren pulled away, breathing labored, and smirked. “I think I need a redressing.”
She laughed through her tears and kissed him again, bracing herself on the bed. Thick moisture bled through her sleeves.
Gasping, she pulled back. The corner of the bed sponged darkly beneath her. “You’re still bleeding.”
He leaned backward, grunting as he came to rest on the sodden surface. “So it would seem.”
She dragged herself up next to him, gritting her teeth against the blackness battling for control. Alexia collapsed on her side, taking several moments to fight off the storm.
They had survived! She trembled with happiness. He was going to marry her! Tears of gratitude and joy rolled down her cheeks. People moved past in her periphery, departing from the chamber. She focused on his straight nose, his closed eyes, his parted lips.
“I love you,” she whispered into his ear. She brushed her fingers through his matted hair, and his grin faded to a slight curve of the lips. His breathing steadied.
“Alexia?”
She turned her head. A wave of queasiness trundled through her, blackness clouding the world. It pounded at her consciousness.
Father stood over them, his brows low, a hand offered. She reached for him.
He lifted and braced her against the invading pitch. The blindness dissipated and his strong arms were wrapped around her. Alexia blinked up at him. He hadn’t held her like this since she was a child, suffering from an annual nightmare.
“You are safe now.”
She nodded. Kiren lay so calm, so quiet—like a shining star against the night sky, or a ship amidst a sea of onyx.
Yes, black corpses—monsters, empty things. Her chest constricted. Her knees wobbled, arms weak, cold sweat breaking out.
“Child?”
So much death, so much suffering! She couldn’t be here. Their very presence reeked of anguish, both theirs and the pain they had caused others. Her head hung like an immense anvil that wanted to drag her down, down, down—drown her in a sea of lifelessness!
She leaned on Father, unable to fight as he removed her from the chamber. She shook in his arms, wobbly from the threatening vertigo.
Dead! They were all—and Kiren too appeared—
“Hush now,” Father said.
More bodies littered the hall—including the one she’d severed amidst the fight. She looked away.
Her face was wet—from tears or sweat. She shut her eyes, shut them out, unable to cope with the prostrate forms Father steered her about—focusing instead on the flashes of pain tearing through her body with each movement.
They reached the stairs and Father settled her on a step. The entry door lay below in a thousand pieces across the floor, night yawning beyond. Another unmoving shroud rested on the step just below her.
“Andrew, Daniel,” Father called. The men came immediately. “Help me deposit this out back.”
He lifted the shell at her feet and hastened away with them. She turned dizzily to keep from watching.
Wide gray eyes peered at her from the edge of the stairwell, skin pale, shaking. Miles clung to his metal bar, knuckles white.
She snapped out of her helpless state.
“What is it, Miles?” A twinge of pain fired with each word.
He stared back.
“You can put that down.” She pointed to the poker. “It is over.”
He crawled nearer.
She pushed the exhaustion away. For him she could be strong. For him she would be brave, especially when faced with the terror in his enormous eyes.
She reached over and loosed the rod from his grasp. Black shadows marred his palm. She pressed his fingers open and traced long cindered imprints across the flesh, as frigid as ice. Skin peeled about the ash, ash that wouldn’t rub off!
“What happened?” She gasped. “What is this? Did they touch you?”
He snapped out of his trance, glancing warily at the milling servant below them. “Metal, iron. It burns.”
“But not me.” She shook her head, only to be rewarded with black splotches across her vision. She squinted through them. “Why did it not affect me?”
“You are half-blood.”
She tried not to be insulted by the statement. “It will heal in time?”
He opened his mouth to respond and jumped. His nostrils flared, face white as chalk, mouth open in terror.
“Miles, what is it?”
“No!”
“What?”
He looked at her. “They’re coming.”
She trembled. “No, you are wrong. They already came. We beat . . .”
His hollow gray eyes sent a glacier down her spine.
“How many? When?”
“Hundreds.”
Every nerve froze. Hundreds? Were there even that many in existence? She leaned on the stair, barely able to summon a voice. “What are we going to do?”
“Die.”
“Miles!” she shrieked. He stared back blankly. The help stopped in their tracks and turned. She worked to calm herself. “They are coming for Kiren?”
The confusion in his face nearly swallowed her. “For who?”
He did not know his master’s name? “I—I mean, for your master?”
He pulled himself out of the mental ambush. “They want something else now.”
“What else could they possibly—?”
“Time.”
The world faded in and out. She couldn’t com
prehend what he meant to tell her. It had something to do with Dana, something to do with what happened tonight, something to do with her? They wanted her? “To—to weaken him?”
His head shook.
“. . . I do not . . . why?” The right question wouldn’t come.
Miles’s trembling amplified. He rose, shaking from head to toe. Dark circles under the eyes widened and swallowed half his gaunt face. He took a step forward.
“Miles!”
He stopped, meeting her stare with dispassionate eyes.
“Do not let them take you.” She reached for him. “Think of Nelly, think of him, think of . . . me.”
His fists tightened. He rocked backward.
Where was Father? She needed him. She’d have him restrain Miles until the danger passed.
The ghastly youth jolted up and charged down the steps.
“Miles!” She clambered to her feet and crumpled. She caught the rail and pulled herself forward. Misery bit through every step.
Beyond the open doorway, hung a dark sky. Gray cobbles outlined the empty drive, dust settling from his passage. The thickest cloud hovered around the swinging property gate.
She staggered through the open doorframe, out into the night. Cool air flushed her cheeks, and then nothing. An absence of wind. Arctic stillness.
Her eyes darted around the yard. She limped backward, landed on her bad ankle, and tumbled to the ground. Gravel scraped her face. She pushed off it. Dizziness rushed upon her and she held her breath, halting the flux of her stomach.
She had to return to Kiren, to safety. Miles was beyond the hedges. Gone. She could do nothing for him.
She lifted onto her elbows, twisting toward the house.
Movement.
A tattered shroud stood between her and the lighted doorway. Its head cocked. She fumbled backward, scuffing across loose rocks as they bit into her palms.
Another creature materialized from the shadows of the house, black robes limp in the absence of a breeze. Two sets of crimson pupils burned into her.
The hungry glow pierced her, like a tick nestling its head below the skin, paralyzing her. Her throat constricted. Her pulse thundered in her ears, slowing with each beat.
Scarlet circles. Open circles.
They promised love. They promised joy. They promised peace. They felt as familiar as Father, as dear as Sarah, as kind as Rupert.
Come.
Her chest lifted toward them.
Come.
They grew closer, or she grew closer to them—couldn’t tell. The irises formed a ring, a place she needed to inhabit, a vast emptiness which piqued the curiosity of childhood, the ultimate seduction, answers to the unknown, all she’d ever wanted in this life, an all-consuming need!
She reached for them from where she sat on the ground.
A gnarled black limb stretched toward her fingers. Ashen knuckles slid from beneath a dark sleeve, dirty yellowed nails and visible bone at the center of its palm.
She pulled back.
More raven forms solidified out of the dark, following the first two, brilliantly murderous eyes, a great rolling tide of black.
She scrambled backward, rolling over to her hands and knees. Inky waves washed through her head. She forced herself forward, veering unsteadily to her right, to the left, landing on her elbows. The ripping fabric of her dress drowned out her panicked panting.
Why hadn’t they overtaken her? They could move so much faster! Did they enjoy her flight? Perhaps they mocked her with the hope she might escape?
She lunged between the gateposts marking Father’s property.
Multiple crimson pupils bored into her from the wooded shadows—hungry, piercing, a great wall of black.
Miles stood a couple paces ahead, whimpering in terror.
The wall of shrouded figures curved around them, hateful eyes blaring down.
She pulled herself to Miles and grasped his quaking hand. His eyes found hers, and widened.
She smiled. At least neither of them would be taken alone.
His brows squeezed together. A buzz ran down her arm and she could see a grime-covered girl, sprawled on a dusty night road. Raven locks curled about a tortured pale face, green eyes wide. She was beautiful.
And she had seen this girl dead.
Her nightmare was true. Soon Kiren would discover this stunning girl lying in the road, dead, alone.
She let the dread sink. No more tomorrows. No more stolen moments. No more sunrises.
Miles’s fist tightened. She looked up at him and words filled her mind, words that weren’t hers: Why did you follow me? I could have drawn them away.
She stared, awed. In his grim countenance she recognized for the first time a person of beauty, the one these terrible beings could never touch, the reason Kiren trusted him so totally.
She squeezed his hand in return. “Would you have drawn them off, or would they have infiltrated your will?”
His eyes closed.
The circle about them solidified, a ring of death.
“I am sorry, Miles.”
“No.” He breathed, gripping her tighter. “Run, Alexia!”
The words startled her. Run where—and how could she go anywhere while he kept this crushing hold on her fingers?
Dana’s voice echoed through her mind: . . .the absence of time . . .
Creatures converged.
Torrential agony tore through her head. Her body collapsed as she leapt—not stepped, but leapt out of time.
87
The End of the Dream
Something was wrong.
Kiren roused himself with a grunt. He fought the grogginess, forcing consciousness to straighten. Mend, he commanded, calling on the last energy reserves of his depleted muscles and everything he’d regained in his brief rest. His heart pumped faster. New blood cells bubbled up from the marrow, infusing themselves into his veins. He prayed the tourniquet around his leg would keep the iron from spreading, from poisoning him. He was going to pay for this.
The room about him was quiet, far too quiet.
He turned his hearing outward, stretching beyond the chamber, down the hall, into the entry.
“. . . she is gone?” He cringed at Charles’s gasp. Heavy footfalls echoed across the lower floor. “Search the gardens. Search the yard. Find her. Find her!”
Kiren opened his eyes. Alexia was missing.
Miles! He sent out the mental summons.
He groaned and shoved an elbow beneath himself, rolling up onto his side. Great billows of blackness roiled across his vision. He commanded the oxygen through his system and demanded the blood flow to his brain. The darkness dissipated. He stumbled to his feet, rocking back unsteadily and landing against the bed.
Miles?
Where was the boy?
Kiren stepped carefully through the throng of prostrate corpses, thumping into the doorframe and leaning against it. He panted. He could only will his body so far without proper rest and nourishment.
He forced himself down the hall, one hand bracing him up against the wall. He made his way to the stairs and found them empty, abandoned candles flickering on the ruined entry floor.
He stumbled down the steps.
A whisper of sound touched his ear. He turned his head, focusing.
“Run, Alexia!”
Kiren sprinted for the exit, limping on his wounded leg, forcing adrenaline to pump through his system. Hisses raged across the night wind. He freed the pendant from his neck and clasped it, realizing he didn’t possess the strength to use it again.
The hedges at the end of the lane parted.
He lifted the necklace and braced himself. This was going to hurt. Like Hell.
Black shrouds shrieked and scattered into the trees, fading into the shadows. He lowered his arm, turning his face heavenward and whispering a prayer of thanks.
Starlight glittered down over the dusty road. Miles crouched on the ground. Kiren neared. The boy’s arm arced protectively over a form.
NO.
Miles’s head whirled around. His eyes widened. He fell back on his rear, scuffling away as Kiren approached.
Pastel material bunched around her legs. Her fingers lay across her bodice, raven locks curled like a dark halo about her head. Her skin held the luster of pearls, eyes wide and blank.
Every muscle tensed. Rippling pain shuddered through him. He dropped to her side. “Alexia! Please, Alexia . . .”
She stared blankly past him into the night, as though dead. He touched her chin, warm, but vacant.
“No.” He looked to the black heavens, tears flooding free. “NO!”
88
Disquiet
Helpless. He was helpless.
Kiren knelt in the center of the street, unable to rise.
He vaguely understood someone was talking to him. There were voices, but as he clung to her limp hand he could comprehend none of it.
I want to be where you are, his heart whispered, but she gave no reply. His chest tightened. You cannot leave me, Alexia!
Someone touched him on the shoulder. He shrugged them off.
“. . . take her inside.”
He couldn’t process the words. He had spent everything he had racing to her side, and he was too late. There was no fight left, and yet he lived. Why did he live?
He pressed his forehead to the rough gravel, letting go. His body gave up, reserves exhausted.
***
Blinding pain drilled through his leg. Kiren bolted upright in bed. Hands grabbed his arms, forcing him back down.
“Ah, I thought that would bring you to.” Ethel lifted a set of tongs, a gun ball locked in its jaws.
Kiren dropped back onto the sheets, sweat beading down his brow.
Lester patted his shoulder. “Here’s hopin’ the ball’s poison ain’t deep.”
Miles fingers bit into his other arm, the boy’s mouth a grim line. Edward stepped into view, handing the boy a handkerchief, and Miles dabbed at Kiren’s brow.
“Where is she?” he rasped.
Ethel dropped the ball onto a tray next to her and lifted a glass of liquid to his lips while Lester bound his leg back up. An earthy smell hit his nose: Tea. He drank begrudgingly.
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