Nine Lives (Lifeline Book 1)

by Kit Colter

  * * *

  Erin found herself lying upon a rocky floor in complete darkness. The pain she felt seemed endless, as if it had taken over her body, made a home inside her flesh and bone and blood—like it would hurt forever.

  Beyond the misery, she felt something in the darkness. Some oil-like thing winding its way through the blackness. Moving closer. Then she felt it coiling around her ankle—a strange, static charge. Something pushing and pulling at once. Then up her leg. A ripple of force slipped up her spine, then again, and again. Her skin felt icy, but her bones seemed to burn beneath. Another ripple of force slipped up her spine, so hard it hurt this time. Then again, and again, and again. Sharpness arched across her back, quick slashes and curves of pain. Another ripple of force swept through her spine, and her body convulsed behind it.

  Then she saw it. Him. Sauth Rahn. Standing in the cave. Tendrils of spectral light gracefully draping themselves around a skeletal human figure, its cavernous form illuminated from within, its eyes so dark and depthless there could be no end behind them.

  Then nothingness.

  Erin wasn’t sure if she was awake or not. The blackness seemed to stretch on forever. She felt suspended in emptiness. Without sound. Sight. Feeling.

  Eventually, Erin registered the sound of her own breathing. Then cold stone pressing against her cheek. Sweat sliding across her neck. Before she knew what she was doing, Erin had crawled to her feet. She had to get out. Out of the cave. Away. She couldn’t see, but she didn’t need to. She had done it before. Hadn’t she? She knew where the path was. Crawling through the darkness, Erin made her way to the chamber wall and squeezed through a slanting crack into the tunnel beyond. She felt an escalating sense of urgency as she moved. Walking faster. Faster. Each curve and dip was already imprinted on her memory. As familiar as her own home. She didn’t need light. Didn’t need sound. She just needed to get out of this damn cave.

  It felt like hours scrabbling blindly through the darkness before the hazy glow of starlight came into sight. She moved faster, faster, until she was running full speed through the shadows. Leaping over unseen rocks and dips and ducking under overhangs. The darkness was strange up ahead, and Erin knew why.

  It was water.

  She kept running, crashing into the freezing pool to find herself completely submerged. The intensity of the cold took her breath away, but she didn’t go to the surface. She just swam, as fast as she could, through the razor-sharp coldness. Her lungs burning with lack of oxygen. Exhaustion coursing through every muscle in her body. She felt ground beneath her and stood, pushing through the water. Silver starlight poured into the cave now, illuminating unseen spikes and dips and overhangs. Erin rushed toward it. Toward the light. Toward the way out.

  Finally, Erin felt a sheet of delicate starlight fall over her body. She took the last three steps out of the cave onto a grassy meadow, felt her body sinking with each step—crawling across the ground—then she collapsed onto the crisp, cold grass. Her hair lay across her face in wet, spindling strands.

  Blackness filled her sight, then receded.

  Erin recognized the scene. Shadowed blades of grass wavering before her right eye, the star strewn sky stretching out above her left. But she didn’t care anymore. Not about visions. Mountains. Demons. She couldn’t care anymore.

  So, Erin just lay there, her mind flickering back and forth between the blackness and reality, her damp clothes stiffening against her skin with cold, exhaustion pounding against every inch of her body and mind. She was going to lay here and die, but it didn’t really bother her. She was too tired. At least, then, she wouldn’t hurt anymore.

  An easy breeze lifted the grass around her, brushing it from side to side, strumming against her face and neck. The coldness intensified with each waver, and soon the breeze was not a breeze at all, but a thrashing, merciless wind. The grass whipped across Erin’s skin, and the air swirled and savagely coiled around her like a monstrous, invisible snake.

  Erin felt the creature within the wind, but she didn’t have the energy to care. Calm fell around her as the eye of the furious wind tunnel moved over her. Lying motionless in the grass, Erin saw it. A demon. This one was different—not shadowed. It looked like blurred motion, as if the wind had turned into swirling currents of energy, and then composed itself into a being.

  “Rise,” a voice called, and the word echoed against each current of air.

  When she failed to move, Erin felt herself lifted by the wind to a standing position.

  “I am Nekhiros. I come for Sauth Rahn, and I know what you have done.” As she spoke, Erin realized the demon was female. “Tell me your name, daughter of the maiden.”

  “Erin,” she whispered.

  “Do you wish to die, Erin?” Nekhiros asked, her voice reverberating within each swerving current of air.

  “No.”

  “Then you must see.”

  The funnel of wind around them swirled faster, tearing soil, grass, and stone away from the earth and into its snaking torrents. Nekhiros stepped closer to Erin, so close she could feel the demon’s energy blending with her own skin. The funnel tightened around them, burning against her flesh, with Nekhiros’s whispers curling around Erin as it did. The wind encased her body.

  Then nothingness.

  Chapter 22

  Erin awakened quite suddenly. Her body was warm and sore, and the softness of blankets surrounded her. There was a familiar presence waiting in the room, but she didn’t say anything. She opened her eyes, but saw nothing but darkness. There was something unusually complete about the darkness. It scared her for reasons she didn’t understand.

  Erin listened for a moment. Birds were chirping outside. Hanging on the air was the quiet hum of an electric light fixture. She could feel the almost imperceptible heat of it on her skin. The lights were on. Erin blinked several times, squeezed her eyes shut tight, then opened them once again.

  She couldn’t see.

  Her mind went to Nekhiros. Then you must see. The demon had blinded her.

  Erin felt a sinking sensation in her chest—as though she were collapsing in on herself. Blind. She was blind. She had come through all of that, alive, in one piece, and some wind demon had swirled across her path after it was all over. And blinded her.

  Some part of Erin thought this was a small price to pay. Some part thought it was only her sight—and she had her body and her mind and her life still intact. Some part thought it was a miracle. Just to be alive.

  The rest of her—ninety-nine percent of her—was sick with outrage.

  Erin concealed her feelings from the man in the room with her. He was sitting on the floor several feet away. She could feel every ounce of his focus pinned upon her. He would want to kill her now. Surely. After what she had done to him, there was no other option. Erin turned her blind eyes downward, pretending to look at her hands. “You’ve recovered fast,” she said, still looking down. She didn’t want him to notice. If he realized she was blind, there was no telling what he might do, what might happen next.

  He didn’t reply, and Erin felt him move to his feet. She did the same, balancing herself against the cold concrete wall, her body trembling with weakness. She heard him walking toward her, coming closer.

  “I guess you’re going to finish me off now,” she said in cold, casual anger. “Pull me down off the mountain, let me sleep for a couple days, just so I can be fully awake and kicking when you finally sink your teeth in.”

  She could feel his body standing before her, his shoulders towering over her. She pretended to be staring at the floor, avoiding his gaze.

  Still, he said nothing.

  Then the anger came, boiling up inside her like a beast let off its chain. “Then do it!” she roared. “Do it! Kill me, you bastard!” She shoved him backwards. He slammed her shoulders backwards into the wall and pinned her against the concrete.

  “What’s wrong!? I’m right here! Just do it!” Erin cried.

  He didn’t move. Didn’t s
peak.

  “Do I have to be struggling? Kicking and screaming? FINE!” She tore her arms out of his grasp and started hurling punches in the general direction of his chest. She felt warm moisture creeping across her cheeks. Tears. That was tough. After everything, she was going to die crying. Erin threw another blind punch toward his face. He took the hit, and Erin felt something in his mouth crack. Felt an extra surge of heat and wetness splatter across her knuckles. Then he grabbed Erin’s arm and threw her to the ground. Pinned her down. Droplets of warm liquid spattered on Erin’s neck and face beneath him. His mouth was bleeding—dripping on her.

  “Do it then. Just get it over with.”

  He wiped his blood from her face with one hand. “What happened to your eyes?” he whispered.

  “You’re supposed to kill me now,” she said.

  He moved closer yet, the heat of his body brushing across her skin. She felt his face against her own, smooth and warm, the ridge of his cheekbone resting against hers. He didn’t say anything; he just lingered there with his face against hers, breathing.

  “Sirian,” Erin whispered.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Why don’t you kill me?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  Six hours later, when dark had finally fallen, Sirian guided Erin by the shoulders out to a motorcycle parked in the alley. He straddled the bike in front of her, and she clasped her arms around his waist. Seconds later, they were flying down the road, and the sound of the wind was howling in Erin’s ears. She held on as tightly as possible. Unable to see curves in the road coming, the lean of the bike taking Erin by surprise. Moreover, Sirian seemed to be driving very fast. She’d heard motorcycles and icy roads were a really bad idea. She couldn’t care right now.

  “You cold?” he called back to her.

  “No,” Erin lied, trying to hide behind the width of his back and shoulders. She didn’t know where he was going. Wasn’t sure she really cared. She just wanted to go somewhere. Anywhere. Away from the mountain and the cave and the monks and the demon. Away from all of that.

  She was blind.

  Erin’s mind drifted backwards, past Nekhiros, past the water and the tunnel, back to the cave. She remembered the demon’s true form. Skeletal, brilliant white. It was the same demon she had seen in Las Cruces, the one that drifted through her bedroom ceiling. Erin didn’t want to think about the demon. The cave. The maiden. She wanted to forget, but she found herself thinking of it almost despite herself. About the half of the demon that had gotten lost inside the maiden—about the other half that was left in the cave. About the inky presence that had coiled itself around her, swallowed her whole. Was that the part that had been left behind? And what had happened to it? Had it died like the demon in Vienna? Was Sauth Rahn the thing that had been after her all this time? Trying to get back at the maiden by attacking her descendant? Trying to get the Nine?

  Was this what her grandmother had known before—what she had told Erin’s mother? Was this the thing that was so awful it tore apart her family? Shattered her ties to the Rez?

  It had to be. It was the only thing that made sense in all of this.

  Was it over then?

  * * *

  Sirian nearly made it across Germany before the threat of the sun’s light drove him off the road. He finally stopped in Stuttgart, got a hotel room, and guided Erin inside. He told her what the room looked like, where to find what she needed, then handed her the keycard and a handgun before leaving.

  Erin didn’t ask if he was coming back. She lay down on the bed with the enormous gun in her hands, tracing the cool metal with worn fingertips. She wondered if all this meant things could go back to normal. If she could just go home and learn how to read Braille. Erin wondered what she would find on her return. The twins said someone, other than Sirian and the demons and everyone else, was coming to kill her. Should she even go home?

  She wanted to, desperately.

  Erin closed her useless eyes, willing herself to fall into sleep. She didn’t want to think anymore. Didn’t want to feel anymore. The darkness in her eyes was so complete, she wasn’t sure what sleep would mean—how it could really be that different from being awake.

  But somewhere in that darkness, she heard her grandmother’s voice: “Bik'egu'indáń, na'iłédan'dzį ... Ńguust'ai' ... Dziłgais'ání ... Biyeeji 'in'į' ...” Then Erin’s mind filled in a new word, one her grandmother had not spoken: niishjaa'. The Owl.

  Erin woke up and found herself tracking something. The sound of breathing. Sirian was beside her on the bed. The second she recognized his presence, she knew where he had been. He had gone for blood. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t disgusted. She was just—numb. He had brought human food with him. Erin could smell it across the room, but she wasn’t hungry.

  Sirian was awake, lying on his back with his arms folded behind his head. She could feel it all, somehow, the rhythm of his thoughts, the heat of his body stretched across the bed, the warmth of his breath. Erin remained still, lying on her side with her back to him.

  “Krysis thought you were dead,” Erin said.

  “I thought so, too.”

  “She tried to kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yes.”

  Erin didn’t know how to respond to that, and wished, quite suddenly, that she hadn’t asked. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Wherever you want to go.”

  “I think I want to go home,” she said.

  “Alright.”

  “I think it’s over,” Erin said. “At least it feels like it’s over. Like something’s over.”

  “You think it was Sauth Rahn, then,” he said.

  Erin didn’t even wonder how he knew. He wouldn’t explain if she asked. “It makes more sense than the rest of this. If it wasn’t him, then what the hell just happened?”

  “The Gemini are coming,” Sirian said. “They’ll be in France tomorrow.”

  “How’d you find that out?” she asked.

  “I’ll take you to meet them,” he said, ignoring the question.

  “You’re not turning me into a vampire anymore,” she said.

  “You changed my mind.”

  Erin was quiet for several minutes, just listening to him breathe. He was still awake. Thinking. “Did I hurt you badly—in the museum?” she asked finally.

  “Yes.”

  “You deserved it,” Erin said. She felt him grin. She was quiet for a moment or so. “Something’s happening to me.”

  “I know.”

  They were silent for several minutes. Then Erin felt him reach toward her. She didn’t want to fight him unless she had to, so she remained motionless. He pulled the back of her shirt up above her shoulder blades and pried one edge of the bandages away. Erin had woken up with her back covered in tape and gauze. She had to assume he was responsible. Sirian left the bed, retrieved a bag, and unzipped it. He slowly pushed Erin onto her stomach, then began removing the bandages. It hurt, and she could tell there was something wrong—some kind of injury—but she had no way of knowing what it was. It seemed unimportant considering her whole body hurt. Considering she was blind. Considering she was being attended to by someone who tried to kill her not very long ago.

  Sirian’s hands felt incredibly hot against her skin. Erin felt a haze of heat emanating from his body. She knew what it meant. Every time he had almost bitten her, his skin had become heated. Almost searing.

  “Find anything in the cave?” he said, gently pulling another strip of tape away.

  “I guess. I don’t know,” Erin said, turning her focus on him as he pulled the last of the bandages away.

  Sirian froze. Erin felt him staring, and an image flickered through her mind. It was her back—through Sirian’s sight. The three deepest gashes in her back were healed completely, but replacing them was some kind of mark. Black, curving, triangular—then the image was gone.

 
“What is that?” Erin asked.

  Sirian was silent.

  “What is that?” she pressed.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Sirian’s voice was tense. “Don’t show the Gemini. Don’t show anyone.”

  Erin sat up and turned around to face him, her blind eyes following her other senses to his face. “What is it, Sirian?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “You can’t not tell me,” she said. “It’s on my damn back. What the hell is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, lying down on the bed and refolding his arms behind his head. “We can fight a bit if it’d make you feel better though.”

  Erin frowned. She guessed she would just ask the twins. If Sirian wouldn’t tell her, it wasn’t as if she had much of a choice. Erin lay down once more, feeling awkward with Sirian beside her. Not because he was a vampire, or a man, or anything that would make sense. She felt awkward because something in her wanted him there. Because something in her wished she wasn’t blind just so that she could see him, right there. Because she wanted to touch him just to make sure he was there. And it scared her.

  * * *

  Erin was already sitting up when Sirian decided to wake her. She didn’t need to ask what was happening. Dark had fallen. It was time to travel. Erin stood, slipped on her denim jacket, then pulled a thick parka over that. She stepped around the bed post, walked to the door, and waited. She had most of the room memorized, catching little flashes of images from Sirian’s mind and piecing them together. Sirian pulled on his long black jacket, stepped up behind Erin, and placed his hand against the angle between her neck and shoulder. He led Erin down the hall and the stairs, carefully guiding her around obstacles and other hotel guests, to the parking lot. Erin had memorized the sound of Sirian’s boot hitting the motorcycle’s foot peg, the slight shift of the front tire as he took hold of the handlebars. She climbed on behind him.

  Then Sirian just stood there with one foot on the snowy ground. She couldn’t feel any fear from him. She couldn’t feel anger. Or hunger. His body was slightly warmer than hers, but not hot.