by Lizzy Ford
His scream pierced through her. She chased him, trying to figure out why.
You brought him back from the dead. Now his soul is trapped between the forest and the corporeal world.
At the words, Summer slowed.
His pain is unlike any pain you have ever suffered.
Summer stopped, feeling sick to her stomach. She’d never heard such a sound before.
“Tarzan! Come here, Tarzan!” she shouted to the deer.
It crashed into a tree, wobbled to its feet, and began running again. She watched him, horrified.
“What’s wrong with him?” Biji asked, running to her. “He sounds like he’s in awful pain.”
The worst pain in existence, Sam told Summer. You’ve torn his soul in two. You’ve condemned him forever.
Summer dropped to her knees. “I just wanted my friend back!”
At what price? His suffering?
“No … I …” She planted her hands on the ground again. “I’ll fix it. I’ll free him.”
The elements answered more readily this time. Summer closed her eyes as she freed her magick. Soon, they were at a roar.
“Take him,” she whispered to the earth. “Put him at peace.”
Another thunderclap, and the field was silent again. She didn’t see Tarzan anywhere.
“What exactly did you do?” Biji’s voice held a note of fear.
Summer hung her head, empty. She hadn’t even been able to save her only friend.
“Summer?”
Biji walked into her view. Summer was numb and cold. Unable to shake the image of Tarzan bleeding to death or the sounds of his screams, Summer wobbled to her feet.
“I tried to save him,” she said. “I failed.”
“Your magick is black.”
Summer looked down at herself. Shadows clung to her as they did Decker.
You broke the Light Laws. You broke the Dark Laws. Sam’s voice was sad. The Master of Fire and Night will have no choice in what he does to right this.
She no longer cared.
Chapter Seventeen
Decker felt the slap his mother said he’d feel when a soul went bad. He roused himself from his bed and sat, trying to identify the sensations in his head. Dressing, he pulled open the door just as his mother was getting ready to knock.
“This one is bad,” she said. “You feel it?”
“I do. I still can’t quite sort through all this stuff in my head,” he said.
“Focus hard. You’ll be able to identify which laws were broken.”
He closed his eyes. The slap continued, the stinging sensations painting a blurry scene. He saw Light then Dark magick, heard screams.
“Necromancy,” he said, surprised. “Death.”
“Someone tried to raise something from the dead then realized it tears the soul in two,” his mother said. “This happens almost every time someone uses magick with the dead, which is why it’s forbidden even for Dark witchlings.”
“So they panic and kill it using magick,” he guessed.
“One Light Law, one Dark Law broken.”
“The penalty is their soul then death.” His mouth felt dry. “Lucky me. First time out, and I get a double whammy.”
“Better than my first night out,” she reminded him.
He couldn’t forget what she’d done to her twin.
“Let’s go,” she said, stepping aside.
Decker swallowed hard.
“I’ll take us, since you might put us on the moon.” She offered her hand. “I’ll teach you some things about teleportation tomorrow. You’ve got a lot to learn about your new powers.”
“Assuming I survive this.”
“You will. The first time is the hardest.”
When it was over, he’d run straight into the arms of Summer. He’d intended to do that this evening, when an unexpected visit from Alexa interrupted the family dinner. Furious at her, he’d agreed to go for a ride to get her away from his family, where he could interrogate her at will about her involvement in trying to burn his house down.
He’d gotten nowhere, because he couldn’t use the gift his mother had for determining truth yet. After an hour-long argument, he left Alexa at the school and came home.
“Let’s do this,” Decker said, drawing a deep breath. He took his mother’s hand.
After the walk through family history, her ability to transport them elsewhere no longer caused him discomfort. When the black magick cleared, he stood in a field that looked too familiar. The slab in the center marked it as the one he used to rendezvous with Alexa.
Whoever had done these things, he probably knew them. He turned, catching site of Biji first. Sam lingered in the forest. Biji looked panicked, but she glowed with Light, not Dark magick.
“Biji?” he called. “What’s wrong?”
Biji looked at him then past him. Decker turned and froze.
Summer stood a few short feet away, black fog billowing off her. Her face was marred by tears. He was first struck by the power that flowed off her. Sam said she’d be strong, and he was right.
It took a lot of magick to raise something from the dead.
Decker felt as if his body was stabbed with ice. Summer was as frozen as he was, as if waiting to see what he’d do. He couldn’t believe she stood before him let alone imagine what happened in the hours they were apart that led them to this.
“Go ahead, son,” his mother said quietly. “Claim the amulet first.”
Decker stepped towards Summer. He wondered if this was a trial for him as the new Master, if Summer and his mother were working together to test him. Because Summer wasn’t capable of evil.
“I need your … your amulet,” he whispered then added silently, please, please let this be a cruel joke!
Summer paled. A look of soul-deep loss crossed her features. He’d seen the same on the faces of those his mother had claimed, but the look on the face of his Summer made him sick. A look of pain that deep couldn’t be faked. This wasn’t a joke or a trial.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. His words sounded weak to his ears. Her sins were like jackhammers in his head, the voices of all who came before him demanding he take her amulet and kill her.
All the voices, except one. Decker touched his temple, the sensations overwhelming. Bartholomew the Terrible alone was quiet in his mind.
Woodenly, Summer removed her amulet and held it out to him. Decker took it. He searched the memories of his predecessors for some other alternative to claiming her soul. His body broke out in a sweat despite the chilly night as Summer’s haunted eyes gazed up at him. He held up the whiskey-colored crystal holding the soul of the girl who was supposed to spend her life with him.
This couldn’t be happening.
Summer started crying, and his resolution broke. His mother had killed her twin, but Decker couldn’t—wouldn’t—hurt the only creature on the planet who’d ever accepted him for what he was.
Summer whirled and ran. Decker watched her, startled. The trees and wind parted the forest for her then closed behind her, swallowing her.
“Son,” his mother said, drawing near.
The jackhammer in Decker’s mind grew stronger. He felt the hunger his mother described, the need to consume his prey. He lowered Summer’s soul to his side and shoved it in his pocket. His mother said something else, but he could only think of Summer.
Decker ran after her. The forest didn’t part for him as it had for her, and his magick was as scrambled as his emotions. He fought his way through the thicket, adrenaline driving him. He needed to find her, to grab her and silence the voices and magick in his body. They’d figure out something, some way to let her live. There had to be something, because he wasn’t ready to live without her.
His own tears rose as he tore through the forest after her. Branches seemed almost to be blocking him. Finally, he assembled enough control over himself to shove his magick forward. The trees parted for him as they had for her, and he saw her dead ahead of him, standing
with her back to him.
Panting, Decker broke free of the forest and stopped. Summer stood at the edge of Miner’s Drop, where he’d taken her to watch the moon rise. Her shoulders shook with sobs, and a newfound panic filled Decker.
“Summer, don’t! It’ll be okay. I can make it okay!” he said, aware of the wild desperation in his voice.
“You can’t fix this,” Summer said and turned to face him. She drew shaky breaths and wiped her face. “This is easier for us both.”
“I can. I will. I swear it, Summer. If I have to quit, I will. We’ll go somewhere, just you and me, and be happy.”
“You can’t quit.”
“I’ll find a way.”
“I’ve lost everything.” The hollow look crossed her face. “Even you.”
“No, Summer!” he said. His heart slammed into his chest, and hot tears rolled down his face. “You haven’t lost me. I’m here. It’s just you and me right now.”
“I don’t want to die but I can’t live knowing … I can’t!”
“Please, please, just come with me. Trust me. We’ll fix this. We’ll be together,” he begged. “Please, Summer.” He held her gaze, willing her to trust him one more time. Decker raised his hand to her as he had many times before.
“I love you, Decker,” she whispered.
“I love you, too, Summer.” He stepped forward cautiously, one foot at a time.
She took his hand, and he closed the distance between them, hugging her hard. Summer sobbed, and Decker’s mind quieted. Her magick whipped through him. He had no idea what he’d do, but he couldn’t live without Summer. He held her, his tears wetting her soft hair.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re going home. I know someone who might be able to help us.” His senses tingled, indicating magick. When he started to move away from her, Decker tripped and was propelled forward, out of his control.
As if in a dream, he saw the look of horror cross Summer’s face as he careened into her. They toppled over the cliff. The sensation of weightlessness was quickly countered by a yank so sharp, it stole his breath.
Summer was torn out of his grip. He heard her scream even as he was jerked back onto the top of the cliff to safety. He scrambled forward, fighting whatever magick held him in place.
“Summer!” he shouted. Frantic, Decker tried to dive off the ravine wall after her. He clawed at the earth to drag himself forward but the magick crushed him to the ground.
Her screams stopped suddenly. Decker squeezed his eyes closed, knowing she’d hit the rocky slopes of the ravine wall. He roared in pain and fury, his magick going wild within him as he strained to move. He fought until sorrow crashed over him and he lay spent, sobbing on the ground.
The magick released him then. Too weak to move, Decker lay still, panting. The jackhammer sensation was still in his mind, though the voices of his predecessors had fallen silent.
“That was Summer.”
“Get away from me,” he whispered to his mother. “This is all your fault! You made me into this monster.”
For once, she was quiet. Decker shivered as the cold night air robbed his body of heat. He sensed the presence of Sam as well. He hoped they left him there to die in the night, alone. Closing his eyes, he lay listless, the image of Summer falling filling his mind.
The former Mistress of Fire and Night rose from her crouch near her son. He wasn’t moving. His breathing was labored, his face wet with tears. Decker hadn’t cried since he was ten, even when she took his soul.
But Decker wasn’t what disturbed her.
Instead, she turned to the forest. Something had happened here that didn’t make an ounce of sense, even if the results were that the broken soul was dead. She’d placed a spell on Decker to keep him from going over the cliff. By the looks of his crumpled form, he wasn’t about to run off on her.
As if sensing her anger, Sam disappeared. Rania knew where to find the elusive yeti after years of seeking him out for advice and went after him, appearing in his favorite hiding place before he did. When Sam arrived, his shoulders sagged. He refused to look at her but sat in his corner of the cave. Soon after coming into her powers at the age of eighteen, she’d sought refuge from killing her sister with Sam. She addressed him in the yetis’ soft, guttural tongue.
“What’s going on, Sam?” she asked calmly.
“It’s done. It doesn’t matter now,” he replied.
“So you throw my son off a cliff and expect me to accept your answer?”
Sam sighed deeply. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
Rania drew closer. She sat in front of him, waiting with a predator’s patience. Sam shifted under her direct gaze.
“I wasn’t going to let him fall,” he said at last. “But the girl, she had to. He wasn’t going to do it.”
“You couldn’t leave this to me?”
He shook his massive head. A haunted look crossed his face. Rania knew there was too much he was keeping from her. She kept her own anger in check.
“This Summer girl, she was his partner, wasn’t she?” she asked. “Like Michael is mine.”
“Yes.”
“She went Dark and broke Dark Laws. Even if her sentence was death, Decker could’ve postponed it.”
“That was my fear.”
“You’d rather turn him into another Bartholomew?”
“No, Rania. I love you all as I love the children of my forest,” Sam replied. “I wish none of you harm, but … Rania, there was a time before time when evil you cannot imagine ruled this earth.”
“I know this. It’s how my family was chosen to enforce the Laws.”
“That evil and that time were nothing like the evil of long ago.” Sam rose and paced. “The evil my people fought many tens of thousands of years ago wiped out a civilization much like yours. It took a thousand years of war to contain it. I can’t let that happen again.”
“What does that have to do with Summer?”
“Your bloodline is descendent from an older bloodline, one that used to enforce Dark magick before this evil destroyed everything. The evil was unleashed when all five elements were joined in the Dark.”
Rania listened, puzzled.
“Your ancestor, a Dark Master, held the elements of Water, Fire, and Spirit. His partner held the Air and Earth,” Sam explained. “She fell to the Dark soon after they were together. Rather than forsake her, he did as Decker did and swore to let her live. We don’t know what happened exactly, except the evil between them grew until it consumed them and everything around them. Thus, the partners of the Dark Masters and Mistresses have always been Light, since Nataniel took over the duties.”
“Summer was Air and Earth,” Rania guessed. “And so you have condemned my son to madness, like Bartholomew. What if the line ends with him, Sam?”
“It has been my study of mankind that men always fall victim to the weakness of temptation. Like Bartholomew, Decker will father twins someday.”
Rania rose, fury building within her. “You know there is a way out of the Dark.”
“It’s never been done.”
“But it exists. It wouldn’t exist if it weren’t possible!”
“You’re not being logical, Rania. It is safer to condemn Decker than the world.”
“He’s my son, Sam!”
“You killed your sister. You know the price one of your bloodline pays.”
“I do,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I also know we pay it unwillingly, even as it kills everything we are.”
“A small sacrifice for the fate of the world.”
She turned away, aware he’d never fully understand what a sacrifice it was to serve the Dark. When it was her heart, her soul, dying, she could bear it. When it was the heart of her son …
“She had to die, Rania,” Sam repeated sadly. “I liked her very much, more so because what she did was to save one of my children.”
“She broke the laws for a forest creature?”
“She did. There was no m
alice in her actions.”
“Yet you believe she couldn’t be salvaged. You wouldn’t even offer her the chance to recover her soul.”
“It’s never been done. It doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“I ran across something else that should’ve been impossible,” Rania countered. She withdrew a small envelope from her pocket and held it out to Sam. It contained the hair she’d kept from Istvan’s amulet the night she took the twins with her on her rounds. “One of the Dark witchlings was able to evade me.”
Sam pulled the hair free and held it up to the light. “This is your hair?”
“It is. It was wrapped around the amulet of someone who went Dark. I think it kept me from tracking him.”
“Possible,” Sam said, puzzled. “I can research this with the other Sams.”
Rania’s mind worked quickly. Sam hadn’t denied the ability of someone to evade a Dark Mistress, just as he hadn’t denied there was a chance for redemption for Dark witchling. A trickle of hope went through her. Maybe there was much more the yetis knew that they’d never shared, even with her. Maybe there was another way to help her son.
Not that it would make a difference tonight. No one survived a swan dive off the top of Miner’s Drop. Decker would spend the rest of his life unbalanced, alone, hurting. Taking her sister’s life destroyed her. Only Michael saved her from madness. Decker’s path was tragic enough without anyone there to give him hope that tomorrow might be better. What emotions she retained after a lifetime of Dark and death churned at the thought of her son suffering a worse fate than hers. She had to find a way to help him.
Her phone rang, startling her out of her thoughts. Rania started to reject the call when she saw Amber’s name cross the screen. She answered it.
“Mrs. Turner?” Amber’s voice held a note of alarm. “I just got a call from Biji, one of the girls at the school. She says she found Decker unconscious near Miner’s Drop. We’ve called the ambulance but—”
“I’m on my way,” Rania said calmly and hung up. She glanced at Sam again.
The yeti seemed genuinely sad about what he’d done. Rania sat. She didn’t know what to do. There was no way to right what happened. When she felt ready to face Decker and the chaos likely to greet her at the ravine, she drew a deep breath and rose. Sam said nothing as she walked out of his cave and into the night.