Eternal Echoes, Emblem of Eternity Trilogy Book 2

by Angela Corbett

  I jerked my head up. “Sick?”

  “Yeah. People are in hospitals and no one knows what’s wrong. They thought it was mono or the flu at first, but the usual treatments aren’t working.”

  My mind was racing. I thought back to the line I’d seen at the nurse’s office last month, the people sick at the ice cream shop, and everything Jas had said about people getting sick on campus. “Are their symptoms headaches, fatigue, and fevers?”

  Simon stared before answering slowly, “Yeah.”

  Alex interrupted me. “What’s going on, Evie? How do you know about this?”

  “Because it’s been happening here since January,” I said.

  Alex stared. “What’s the connection?”

  I shrugged. “No idea. As far as I know, I’m the only Tracker here right now, and I’m not activated. I’m not making anyone sick; at least, I don’t think I am.” I looked to Alex and Emil to see if they’d been withholding more information and wanted to add anything. It didn’t seem they did.

  “We don’t know what the hell you are,” Tate interrupted. “So I wouldn’t use you for the baseline measurement.”

  I glared. That wasn’t information I wanted made public, even if it was to someone who seemed to be on our side like Simon.

  “So we know there’s a correlation between the sickness and Trackers,” Emil said, moving the conversation on. “What is it?”

  Everyone stared off in a different direction, contemplating possible connections. Sometimes, it just takes one tiny suggestion for the mind to spark an idea. My mind snapped to something Jas had said earlier today when she was talking to me about how she and Zach couldn’t get rid of the flu they had, and I’d joked they must keep giving it to each other. Like a puzzle suddenly coming together, everything made sense. All of the energy drinks I’d seen on campus—and in our fridge, the record number of sick people who kept missing class, the sickness that got worse after Valentine’s Day. I gasped, my eyes wide as I looked at Simon. “The people who are sick—do their symptoms get worse when their significant other is close?”

  Simon stopped, his mind ticking back to the encounters he’d had with the sick people. “I hadn’t thought of it before, but now that you mention it, the worst cases do seem to be among couples. I could check to make sure.”

  My breath hitched and everyone’s head swiveled in my direction. “Love,” I said.

  “What?” Alex asked.

  “I think the connection is love.” I thought about Jas stumbling in the College Center, and looking like she was going to be sick when Zach came to pick her up from Emil’s house. Her health always seemed worse when she was around Zach. “The people getting sick are all part of a couple.”

  Emil nodded a few times like he was making connections. “There are different levels of love—friendship, romantic, soul mate—but they all have energy. If someone found a way to harness that and draw from the bonds, it could make people sick.” He paused, a worried frown creasing his face. “The person drawing from those bonds would have immense power.”

  Alex leaned forward in his chair. “Who would do that?”

  “The Daevos,” I offered. “Caleb said the Daevos wanted more power. Maybe he wasn’t the only one experimenting?”

  Simon’s face was tight with anger. “Even more reason to take the Daevos out! Not only are they taking Trackers, they’re hurting the souls the Amaranthine Society is supposed to protect!”

  Alex met Simon’s eyes and held them. “We don’t know it’s the Daevos for sure, yet.”

  “How much more proof do you need?” Simon yelled.

  Alex shook his head. “You can’t sentence every Daevos member, Simon. It could be one Clan, or even one person. We can’t execute them all, and it’s not our place to judge them. We need more information.”

  “No—” Simon started.

  Alex put his hand up to interrupt Simon. “If that’s what is really happening, I want a fight as much as you, Simon. But we need to know who to fight first.”

  Simon was breathing fast, his anger pulsing a vein at his neck.

  “Emil,” Alex said, stress evident in his tone, “can you find out if the Daevos have also noticed the sickness and Tracker link? And if disappearing memories has been happening when the Daevos take souls, too?”

  “I’ll go,” Tate said.

  Emil nodded a thank you.

  “In the meantime,” Alex said, “Simon and I will talk to the Amaranthine. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. If this is really happening, we need to put a stop to it now.”

  On that, we were all in agreement.

  By the next afternoon, we still hadn’t heard from Alex or Tate. There was no reason for me to miss out on tubing with Jas, though. I’d invited Emil, and Jas had invited Zach. I was watching them closely, interested to see how the interaction affected them as a couple.

  Jas and Zach shared a tube on the way up the hill. Neither one of them seemed to have as much energy as usual, but other than that, they seemed okay. I turned to Emil, who was in the tube with me. “Why do you think the sickness is only affecting certain couples?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Maybe it’s drawn to specific types of bonds.”

  I thought about that. “Why don’t you think we’ve gotten sick?”

  Emil laughed. “Your situation is a little complicated.”

  I lifted my brow, nodding in agreement.

  “This information is all so new, but I imagine that Alex being an Amaranthine Protector and me being a Daevos member has something to do with it. But even more than that, the fact that our bonds can’t be found probably affects it the most.”

  Oh yeah. I hadn’t thought about that. My bond with Emil couldn’t be Tracked, and the bracelet made my bond with Alex invisible as well. If someone was using Trackers to find bonds and siphon the energy from them, they wouldn’t be able to locate ours.

  A sharp scream hit the air. I jerked my attention in Jas’s direction as her scream ended with a laugh and their tube went racing down the hill. We followed in the next lane over, bouncing over the moguls on the way down. Emil held me close. When we got to the bottom of the hill, we stood, dusting ourselves off. I glanced at Jas and Zach in the next lane over. Jas seemed a little dizzy, and Zach wasn’t too steady on his feet either. Emil frowned as he watched them. “Isn’t there anything we can do to help them?” I asked.

  Emil frowned. “Nothing I can think of, but Alex might have some tricks. He had the bracelet made for you; maybe he can get one for Jas and Zach, too.”

  We got back on the tubes and went down the hill again. The area was crowded with college students, a lot of them couples. After riding the tubes a few more times, Zach nodded toward the concession building. “We’re going to get some hot chocolate.” Considering it felt like the arctic outside, hot chocolate sounded like a great plan. We ordered our drinks, sitting next to a heater by the tables.

  I’d decided to try a new hot chocolate with some fancy spices I’d never heard of before. I took a sip, and immediately, I was falling.

  I stood over a table, long herbs and plants scattered in front of me. A mortar and pestle sat next to a wooden bowl. My long, wavy, golden hair swung about my chest as I dropped ingredients into the bowl and began crunching them into a fine powder. My pale pink dress hit my ankles as I pushed rhythmically on the pestle. I hummed, the melody beautiful and haunting. When I was done, I scattered the fine powder around the doorway and windowsills, creating a barrier, whispering Latin words under my breath.

  I felt his arms go around me. I smiled. “You’re back.”

  “How did you know it was me and not a marauder?”

  I turned toward him, still wrapped in his embrace. His light brown hair was tied at his nape with a leather band. His sculpted cheekbones gave him the appearance of royalty, and his amber eyes stared down at me lovingly.

  I loved him, too—completely.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and licked my lips. “My soulmark is o
n fire. It only does that for you.”

  I pressed my lips to his. He’d been gone far too long.

  “Son of a…” I shook my head as I muttered more curses to myself and bent over, trying to stop the dizzy feeling that seemed more intense than usual…and to keep myself from hyperventilating.

  I had a whole slew of reasons to freak out, but number one on my list was that I’d just had a flashback to a new lifetime, with a man I didn’t recognize. When I’d looked into his eyes and felt my soulmark heat, I knew that this was another incarnation of Alex or Emil. But, I didn’t know which one of them it was. And though I couldn’t identify the time frame, I’d seen the woman before. In the haunted forest with Jas and Zach at Halloween. The scene I’d witnessed had been entirely different than the one they saw. I’d seen a woman burning. She’d felt familiar at the time, like I’d recognized her on some level.

  Which made sense, since the woman had been me.

  My breath was coming too quickly. I closed my eyes and willed it—and my heart—to slow down. I could still smell the sweet scent of lavender and potent pine—the only two smells I could identify from the mixture I’d been making.

  Spells.

  I’d had a flashback of me muttering spells. In Latin. Spells that seemed a lot more complicated than a Tracker should know.

  I’d told Tate that if I were really Callista, I’d remember something like this. Now I remembered, but I wasn’t ready to come to terms with it. I definitely wouldn’t be mentioning this to Tate. I’d like to pretend it didn’t happen at all.

  Jas looked at me strangely. “Are you okay, Evie?” I nodded, trying to shake off everything I’d seen, while at the same time trying to make sure I remembered every detail for my flashback journal at home. “You don’t look so great,” she said.

  I smiled a little. “Maybe I’m coming down with the same thing as everyone else.” What I needed was some time to deal with this new information. Time alone to figure out how I really felt, and what my next step should be. I had to tell Alex and Emil about this. But I worried that as soon as they found out, it would be more evidence in favor of the Evie-is-Callista theory.

  Emil watched me carefully. I was sure he knew I’d had a flashback. Jas’s lips thinned to a worried line. “Do you want to go?” she asked.

  I was about to answer when a commotion started over by the inner-tubes. Like a slow-building wave, the murmur of conversation gradually got louder, escalating into yells. We all turned, trying to figure out what was happening.

  A man was standing next to a couple, his hands raised about them while he chanted. The couple looked like they were in a daze as a cloud of light blue smoke trailed from their chests. And they weren’t the only ones it was happening to. In several places around the tubing area, people were standing like robots, smoke flowing from them into the air.

  I watched as more blue smoke started swirling above them. It wasn’t dissipating though. It hung there, like smog. Pretty smog, but still smog. As if it was being held there some way, ready for collection.

  I’d seen souls taken. It involved a similar looking smoke—in all colors—that flowed from a person’s head. This was too similar not to be supernatural. This had something to do with the missing Trackers and the bond sickness. I knew it. Emil had come to the same conclusion. He grabbed me, yelling at Jasmine and Zach, “Get to the car!”

  I reached over and pressed my left index finger to the middle of the orchid bracelet and held it there. If there was ever a time to use an emergency SOS signal, it was now.

  “What’s going on?” Jas yelled as we ran. It wasn’t easy. The snow was compacted down into ice from thousands of footsteps walking over it all winter.

  Answering Jas’s question wasn’t going to be simple, and now wasn’t the time. “Just get to the car! And watch out for people who look like they have bright red, web shaped scars on their bodies.” Not that you’d be able to see them. It was frickin’ cold out, even the Daevos were smart enough to wear layers.

  “Web shaped scars?” Jas repeated slowly.

  I nodded.

  Jas stopped moving. Just stopped.

  Emil swore. “Jas, we have to keep moving. I need to get you in the car.”

  Jas wasn’t having any of it. She was as stubborn as I was sometimes, and she wasn’t moving until she got some answers. She was also looking paler than usual, and Zach was absently rubbing his head, his eyes unfocused.

  It was at that moment someone came from behind me, grabbing my arm. I looked down. The hand that held me wasn’t wearing a glove. A red angry web shaped scar pushed up from his skin. I shoved my elbow back, trying to hit the guy, but missed.

  Emil didn’t.

  He reached over, grabbing the sides of the Daevos member’s head, and closed his eyes, taking his soul. The black smoke rose in the air, polluting the blue. And just like the blue smoke, the black seemed stuck there, held in a bubble of some sort that seemed to be containing all the emotions or memories that had been taken.

  Emil stared at the smoke, a worried expression settling on his face. He released his grip and the dead Daevos member’s body fell to the ground. Jas’s mouth gaped open. I didn’t think it would be closing anytime soon. Zach wore a similar expression.

  I snapped my fingers to get her attention. “Remember when you thought I was keeping things from you?”

  “Yeah,” she answered slowly.

  “This was one of them.”

  “What the hell are they?” she asked.

  Considering Jas’s lack of belief in the paranormal, I wasn’t sure how she’d respond to the CliffsNotes version of soul protectors / soul stealers, but now I had no choice but to tell her. I took a deep breath, pushing her toward the car, still no time to explain. “Here’s the deal,” I said as we walked. “You’re going to think I’m crazy. I’m not. In fact, if we weren’t so busy trying to stay alive and get out of here, I could even prove all of this to you, but for now, you’re going to have to trust me.” She thinned her eyes, suspicious. “They’re people who take souls. And right now, they want to take ours. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not, but the chaos surrounding us was hard to ignore. Even if she thought I was nuts, I could see in her eyes when she’d made the decision to help me. “What do we do?”

  “We get you out of here,” Emil said.

  We kept moving toward the car, but fighting the panicked crowd was difficult. Being stuck in a large group would only make it easier for the Daevos members to attack. Emil moved us down the tree line, hoping if we got away from the crowd, we’d be safer.

  Jas kept turning back to look behind us, stumbling and looking weaker than ever. Zach didn’t look much better. “It’s like they’re invading Gunnison!” he said.

  Jas’s face was pulled tight with worry. “How do you even tell them apart?”

  We kept moving, Emil in the lead. “The ones who look evil and are taking blue smoke from people are the bad guys. In the summer, you can usually tell who they are because of the mark that looks like a scar on their arms.”

  “Who came up with that dumb means of identification?” Jas yelled. “Good hell! I can’t tell a good guy from a bad guy from a fairy. They’re all covered up!” Even sick, she was as feisty as ever.

  “The ones you need to worry most about are the ones with marks you can see,” I said.

  Jas stopped moving again and looked at me. “Like one with a mark on his bald head?”

  I stared at her. “Yeah. That would be a concern.”

  Her face paled even more than it already was. “Because he’s standing behind you.”

  I turned. Sure enough, another Daevos member was there. He reached for Jasmine and she started to yell. I punched him in the jaw. His eyes went over me, recognition dawning, and he grabbed me instead of Jasmine. Emil tried to reach him to take his soul, but didn’t make it in time. The Daevos member picked me up by the waist like a sack of potatoes and started dragg
ing me into the trees. Jas screamed as Emil bolted after the guy.

  Use your powers.

  The voice! It was right. This was no time to be secretive. I had powers, I needed to use them. I concentrated my thoughts, thinking of the man holding me and thought, stop.

  Immediately, he skidded to a stop. His voice came out low and gravely. “What did you do?”

  I closed my eyes and thought, put me down.

  He dropped me. I landed on my butt. Hard. Note to self: next time I’m commanding people to do things, be more specific.

  Emil reached me as I started to stand. He took the guy’s soul, the smoke floating into the air and hanging there once more before Emil dropped the body to the ground.

  Jas and Zach were soon at my side. “Are you okay?” She asked. I was surprised she had the mental capabilities to ask a question like that right now. She’d just had a supernatural being try to take her soul. She had the right to be out of sorts. I was.

  I held onto her, trying to steady myself. Between the flashback and using my powers, I was feeling a little weak. “I’m okay.”

  “And him?” Jas said, staring warily at Emil. “Shouldn’t we be running away from him? Because he just did the same thing as the bad guys. Twice.”

  Yes, I hadn’t explained that well. “He’s fine,” I said. “He helps protect me.”

  “And we have to get you out of here,” Emil said, taking my hand. “I think they were looking for you.”

  I stared up at him, wondering if he knew something I didn’t. “Why do you think that?”

  “You had two Daevos members target you in a row. They didn’t go after me and Zach, and they left Jas alone when they saw you.”

  He was right; they’d bypassed everyone around me once they’d recognized me. I wondered who was giving them orders. Jas and Zach followed as we moved carefully through the trees, away from the crowd.

  “What about everyone else back there?” I said. “We have to go help them!”

  “I’ll go back once you’re safe.”