by Leyton, Bisi
“Lluc, this is not about love,” Yordi interjected. “It is about being weak enough to allow the Terran to poison him.”
“Ohh,” Wisteria cried as Didan’s pulse turned red and charged through her. It shook her violently while lifting her off the ground for seconds at a time.
Struggling against his two brothers, Bach needed to break free but couldn’t overpower them both.
“Enough.” Yordi pressed his head against the ground.
“The more you fight us, the longer Didan will torture her,” Lluc pointed out.
Bach stopped struggling and watched Wisteria as she buckled under Didan’s assault. Hot tears escaped from his eyes and he looked away. He was not strong enough to watch her die. His eyes drifted toward the side doors where several Thayns gathered, watching the spectacle. Among them, Lluc’s favorite, Nular, stood staring in horror. When their eyes met, the girl moved to hide herself behind the others. “I hope Nular understands what you are doing.” Bach rasped out to Lluc.
Wordlessly, Lluc stared over at Nular standing in the crowd and he let go.
Without Lluc holding him down, Bach pushed past Yordi. “Didan, it is enough.” He sped to Didan, knocking the man away, but not before the empiric stabbed Bach with his danor.
Bach stumbled back as Didan stabbed him again and again.
“Didan!” Yordi raced to the older man to stop him, but was held back by members of the crowd. “A Famila can never shed blood for a Terran. It is wrong! Father how can you let him?”
“This animal is no longer one of us,” Sen Aleix declared.
*****
“No!” Wisteria crawled over as Bach dropped the ground. When she reached him, she found he was already turning cold.
“You want her. You can die with her,” Didan laughed.
“Can you hear me? You just need to regenerate,” she whispered weakly.
“Didan, kill him,” Bach’s father said coldly.
“Why? You’re supposed to kill me,” she begged.
“He was a fool. Just like his mother,” Bach’s father continued. “Didan, end this.”
“Sen, please,” she wept. “I poisoned his mind. I tricked him, so just kill me, but leave him—please?”
“End this,” his father ordered.
“Dispose of the Terran,” Yordi insisted.
“Father.” Lluc moved to the Sen. “You cannot do this!”
“It is already done.” The Sen signaled to the lead empiric.
“Absolutely.” Advancing with the bloody knife in his hand, Didan smirked.
“No! You will not touch him!” Wisteria shouted.
Suddenly, the glass windows in the hall shattered and the building trembled.
“Stop this, please,” Wisteria begged, as the shaking became even more violent. “Do what you want to me, but let him go!”
“Hemlock Zey,” the Famila around the room echoed as the rocking stopped.
“She is not from Hemlock.” For the first time, the Sen seemed unsettled. The man rose and glared at Wisteria with a mixture of rage and fear, as there was an aftershock. “Fine, take him, but I want the boy to tell me he has no bloodline—no father, no brothers, and promises never to return. Then, he can live with the Terran jaga the way his qwaynide mother did.”
“Please, Father,” Bach murmured faintly.
“He’s too weak to speak,” Wisteria explained.
“Shut up, mouse.” Didan gripped and twisted her arm as he pulled her way.
“Ohh,” she screamed, as Didan pushed her down and her head hit the stone floor. Getting herself up, she saw her blood smeared across the ground.
“Say it, jaga!” Didan shouted.
“I have no father or brothers. I have my Mosroc,” Bach whispered, and he winked at Wisteria.
She fought to break free from Didan. “You said your life for his. Remember?”
“Take him out of here. He is never to return. If I see him again, it will be to grovel for my forgiveness,” the Sen yelled. “When you come back here, you will beg me like a Thayn, Bach!”
“Father…” Bach croaked as blood poured from his mouth.
“I need to help him or he’ll die,” Wisteria said, sounding surprisingly calm as she gazed up at Didan. “You owe me your life.”
“This is what I owe you.” Didan slapped her and she fell.
There was a series of quakes, and deep cracks appeared on the walls. The entire room rattled like the very foundation of the structure was being uprooted. The tremors caused Sen Aleix to fall off his throne and the panicked Famila were all escaping the hall.
Wisteria’s blood dripped on the ground and cracks seemed to appear where her blood had fallen. These small cracks seemed to grow, spreading toward Didan.
“Vadda, do not touch the girl,” Sen Aleix ordered Didan.
“Sen, this animal needs to be—” Didan sprang back to avoid the cracks appearing and vanishing beneath his feet. “D’cara.”
With Didan distracted and the other Family members fleeing, Wisteria limped to Bach as quickly as she could. She tried to lift his freezing body.
“Wisteria,” he groused. “I think my father likes you.”
“Don’t speak.” She wanted him to save his strength. “We need to leave.”
“How are you doing this?”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“The quake, it is you. I can feel it.”
“It isn’t me,” Wisteria denied, as chunks of stone fell down even more violently.
“Ahh!” Didan screamed, when one of the central columns dislodged from the ceiling and fell on top of him.
Shards of broken glass appeared from nowhere and assembled around Wisteria. Floating up, they formed a threshold. Before she could process this new weirdness, the threshold flew toward her, enveloping her and Bach.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Still on the ground, Wisteria and Bach appeared on the dirt driveway in front of the farmhouse. They were on the Isle of Smythe. What was going on? Puzzled, she studied the snow-covered landscape.
“Get over here.” Someone pulled her hair painfully. “You don’t know how long I’ve been looking forward to this.” It was Jessica Mackenzie, the cannibalistic leader of the Dungeon Dwellers. The flaxen-haired woman pointed a gun at her. Her eyes were more crazed than Wisteria recalled.
“Mackenzie?” Having somehow escaped the hell of Jarthan, Wisteria wasn’t even prepared to take her nonsense.
“You need to take me the way you appeared,” Mackenzie blurted out quickly. “I need to use your magic.”
“Not magic; power,” Bach rasped. Weakly, he reached out toward Mackenzie. His right hand glowed blue, but nothing happened.
“What the hell are you?” Stunned, Mackenzie looked over at him while loosening her grip.
Wisteria broke out of the woman’s grasp. Picking up a nearby branch, she struck the woman across the head, seemingly knocking her unconscious. Fighting not to pass out from her pain, she dropped the wood and sank on to the ground next to Bach. Her body was still burning from Didan’s red pulse and the beating she’d taken over the last few days. Exhausted, she touched his forehead, unsure what else to do. He was still cold and now unconscious.
The farmhouse door opened and her brother David came out, followed by Coles.
“Wisty.” David raced over and hugged her.
The Major checked to make sure Mackenzie was not a danger to them. “That was the last of the Dungeon freaks. We’ve been looking a few days for her.”
“David, you’re hurting me.” Wisteria wailed in pain as her brother continued to embrace her.
“Sorry.” He let go.
Her mother emerged from the house and ran to Wisteria.
“He needs help,” Wisteria cried.
“Baby!” Ignoring Bach, her mother inspected Wisteria’s injuries before hugging her. “What did they do to you?”
“They stabbed him when he tried to save me.” Wisteria tried to point, but her arms were too he
avy. “He’s completely cold. Mum, help him.”
“David, get Sabine,” Coles ordered, helping Bach up.
Once inside, her family let Bach rest in David’s room.
She intended to wait with him until the doctor arrived, but soon passed out.
*****
“How are you feeling?”
Groggy, Wisteria looked around her bedroom and found Sabine sitting next to her. Her mother stood by the doorway. “I feel like crap.” Wisteria felt like she’d been run over by a truck and trampled by an elephant. Her whole body burned with pain like it was on fire. She barely had enough strength to move her bruised and battered arms.
“I’m not surprised. You’ve had a hell of a beating wherever you went. If they’d tried to pulse you anymore, you could’ve had a heart attack.” Sabine examined Wisteria’s eyes. “But you’re doing better than your friend.”
“How is he?”
Sabine glanced over at Lara as if she needed permission to answer.
Wisteria’s mother nodded.
“Still out cold, and been so for more than a day. I operated on him and he’s stable, but we’re just going to have to wait until he regenerates,” Sabine explained.
“You’ve operated on the Family before?” Wisteria asked.
“Once, but she didn’t make it,” Sabine replied.
“Is he going to be all right?”
“It’s hard to say, Wisteria. And what happened to you was just as severe as what happened to him.”
“But I’m awake. He isn’t.”
Sabine shrugged. “We’re going to have to wait and see.”
“Can I talk to her now?” Lara asked Sabine.
The doctor nodded and gathered her things. “But she needs to stay in bed.”
“Of course.”
“Seriously, Lara,” Sabine warned.
“Don’t waste your time nagging me,” her mother quipped.
Sabine let out a bitter laugh and left.
After the doctor was gone, her mother updated her on what had happened in Smythe. Coles had organized the guards and trackers to repel the Dungeon Dwellers even without the soldiers. Mackenzie had been the only person they were looking for. Most of the remaining comatose patients had recovered, although eight people had died. Garfield had been moved back to Thomas Clarkson’s house.
A few of the residents who’d been renewed were now either completely incoherent or almost catatonic.
When her mother was done, Wisteria relayed each painful detail of everything that had happened from Jason’s lab, the draugs, to Felipe and the throne room in Jarthan.
“We found the dead draugs in Jason’s lab. Sabine’s looking into what exactly they are, now that Tom has lost it,” her mother informed her.
“So, it’s possible for the Family to be infected by Nero.”
“Sabine doesn’t think so. It looks like something else. I suspect the answers are in that Room of Ages you mentioned. Were you able to read anything?”
“Not really, I barely knew what was going on. Why?”
“Nothing.”
“Mother?”
“You need to trust me. Don’t worry about it. It’s not important.”
Even after everything Wisteria had gone through, her mother was still determined to keep secrets. “Mum, if you'd told me what Coles was doing or about the Sleeping Fever, I could've done something. Or if I knew Jason was part Famila and hiding in the courthouse.”
“What would you have done?” Her mother crossed her arms.
“Something.”
“The only thing I have asked of you is to stay away from boys.”
“Boys or Bach?” Wisteria inquired weakly, each word painful.
“All boys, but particularly him.” Her mother rolled her eyes. “Now do you understand why? Those monsters took you because of him. If you’d just kept away—
“Mum, I can’t. I’m bonded to him.” Her head was throbbing and she closed her eyes, hoping to control the pain.
“Relax, we can talk about it later.” Her mother raised the blanket and covered her.
“No, wait. Was that why I got into the Room of Ages, because of the Mosroc?”
“No. Jarthan was built by humans and so there are parts to the castle only humans can control.”
“But Jarthan Castle is packed with Thayns. Felip could’ve used any one of those.”
“Hmm.” Her mother bit at her lip. “Felip is crazy. There’s nothing rational in what he does.”
“I don’t know.” Wisteria played back the events of the last few days; the only thing that had made sense was the way Bach’s people had initially reacted to her. Their hated, although harsh and evil, was expected. But a lot of the other things didn’t add up. Felip needing her to open the Room of Ages, the earthquake Bach was convinced she’d created, and the weird way she and Bach journeyed back to Smythe through thin air. Those things made no sense.
One of the most puzzling parts was about the odd way Sen Aleix reacted to her toward the end, as if he was afraid of her. “Who’s Hemlock Zey?”
Her mother smiled coldly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The Family was muttering that in the hall and Felip showed me a picture of him.”
“Your father? Those people are crazy. You should never listen to a word they say,” her mother maintained.
Wisteria knew she was lying, because she never said her father was mentioned. Could he be Hemlock Zey?
“Well, from what those psychos did to you, I’m sure the whole bloody Family is insane,” her mother continued.
“Bach saved my life.”
“He was stupid to do that,” her mother quipped. “But I thank God that boy was so stupid.”
“Kind of like when Coles came back and fought the pirates?”
“Yeah, he’s another complete idiot.” Her mother chuckled. “There’s something in knowing there’s someone stupid enough to follow you to the ends of the earth.”
“What are you saying? I can be with him?”
Sighing heavily, her mum shook her head. “You get pregnant and I promise I will kill him. I will cut him up bit by bit and use him to feed people in lock up.”
“Mum.”
Her mother scowled. “I’m saying, once he’s well enough to travel, and he moves to Thomas Clarkson’s, he can hang out with you sometimes. But you get pregnant and I will end him.” Then she smiled, kissing Wisteria’s forehead as tears dropped down her cheeks.
Weakly, Wisteria smiled back. “To Loch Peadrus, and he’ll be able to come?”
“We aren’t going to Loch Peadrus. We got word it’s been overrun.”
“Overrun? I thought it was untouched.”
“We were wrong, so we’re here until we find another place.”
“Bach can help us clear the infected.”
“Not until he recovers and we don’t know if he ever will. The knife they used on him seems to have been poisoned.”
Wisteria shook her head. “No, he just needs to regenerate.”
“Sabine says this is different. He could die from this.”
“No.” She exclaimed in disbelief and horror as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Please, tell me you’re lying. So we’ll leave him here when we go?” She wasn’t going to let that happen to him.
“You set up a piron net in the middle of the island; that should be fine to keep most of the Family away.”
“It won’t last forever and the two empirics, Didan and Mina, know where the island is. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Right now, I’m guessing the Famila are more concerned about finding Felip since he killed the Lord of Jarthan. They take that kind of thing seriously.” Her mother muttered something under her breath.
“Like Coia’s murder?” Wisteria asked without thinking.
“You know about that?”
Wisteria wanted to ask if her mother had actually killed Coia, but she didn’t really want to know the answer. She couldn’t deal with that. L
earning her mother might be a murderer and that Bach might die was too much for her to consider right now. Completely drained, she sank back onto her bed. Knowing her mother, the answer would likely be yes and no.
*****
She must have fallen asleep, because now it was dark outside. Lying in bed, she wondered what they were going to do next. Feeling less crappy, she rose, walked past her mother’s room, and found it empty.
Her parents were probably off somewhere making secret plans—like always.
Creeping into the room where Bach was, she found him lying in bed, still out of it. She sat next to him and touched his arm, but only felt icy sweat.
All the shana around his neck and arms had vanished.
Entwining her fingers in his larger hand, she sobbed. Why did he do this? Why did he not just let her go? Then he’d be healthy and alive.
“You’re supposed to be in bed, Wisteria.” Garfield walked in on crutches, his foot still in a splint.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” She wiped away any evidence that she’d been crying.
“Well, actually, David let me in when he snuck out to see Amanda,” he admitted dejectedly. “I can’t believe she’s still with that guy.”
“How’s your leg?” She ignored the comment about her brother.
“You’re asking about me? Wisteria, what the hell happened to you? You look like a ghost.”
Moving to the mirror, she was startled by her reflection. Her skin was almost gray and her eyes were gaunt looking.
“You should rest. You’re no good to him if you’re about to keel over too. Why don’t I sit with him for a bit and you get some sleep? If anything happens, I’ll let you know.”
*****
Wisteria woke up in the early hours of the morning, before the sun had risen. She’d heard something coming from the room where Bach was. It had been almost a week since they’d left Jarthan. She was still amazed they’d made it out alive.