Lailah (The Styclar Saga)

by Nikki Kelly

  “And what about you?” I said. “Did these Arch Angels of yours send you to kill me too?”

  I had no reason at all to trust Azrael; I hadn’t even known of him until today.

  “I returned here to find your mother, my Angel Pair. I have been searching for her for nearly two hundred of this dimension’s years, but her light has drifted from my reach.”

  I don’t know why, but I found myself reaching for my necklace and I tugged it above my blouse. Azrael’s eyes immediately focused on my gem and, as he reached for it, it began to glow a luminous white.

  “That crystal belongs to Aingeal. She left it for you?” he asked, unbelieving.

  “I—I don’t know. For as long as I can remember, I have always had it,” I answered.

  “Then I may never find her.” Azrael’s body seemed to lose its elasticity as he slumped beside me. “All I have left now is you,” he said, his voice broken.

  We sat together, the icy breeze skimming our cheeks. I looked back to the house. Gabriel was still trying to restrain Hanora, but his face kept searching the garden. Maybe Azrael was right; if Gabriel loved me, why wasn’t he with me now? Why was he with her?

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  Azrael pulled himself upright and turned my body in toward him. His eyes widened as he said, “Jonah sees your features heavily influenced and altered by the venom that Zherneboh spread. But believe me, it is just the tip of your darkness. You are harboring the most deadly of evils inside you.” Rocking himself on the bench, he continued. “You’ve proven you cannot truly be killed in this form and Zherneboh changed you for a reason. A terrible purpose has been bestowed upon you. It is only when you lose yourself to the void that the evil can be truly ended, and Lailah…” He paused. “You will, and you must, be ended along with it.”

  I watched him and considered his severe declaration.

  “And even if I knew how, even if I could find this evil you speak of, what if I don’t want that? What if I want to live?”

  “Light and dark can never coexist; they are two separate forces. One will always overcome the other. If the day ever came that you could finally realize what you are, and if you were somehow able to accept both sides … well, if that day were to come, all the dimensions would eventually fall and it would be the end of all things.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Even if Azrael was right, even if I was half light and half dark, and even if there were some extreme evil buried beneath my skin, how could I bring about the end of all things?

  “You are the only being that can exist in your form across all three dimensions. With or without the evil, in the wrong hands you are the ultimate weapon in a war Zherneboh has been waiting for you to wage.”

  I closed my eyes and blew out a long breath, as I tried to comprehend everything he was telling me. I didn’t believe him. Or maybe I didn’t want to believe him. A sudden sense of rebellion hit me as I cleared my mind and I shook off Azrael’s grip, propelling myself to my feet.

  Facing him, I shouted, “No, no! You’re lying! Gabriel did not come here to end my existence! He loves me, I know he does.… Everything you are saying is a lie!”

  “Then why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  Azrael inclined his head to the right and I spun around to find Gabriel a few feet away from me. I took in his citrus scent and smiled; Azrael couldn’t be more wrong about him.

  Gabriel moved to my side, wide eyed, and said, “We have to go. Just us, we need to leave now! I couldn’t stop Hanora; she’s told her Gualtiero, they know where you are and Zherneboh is coming.”

  I looked back to Azrael, who, nodding, encouraged the question from my lips.

  “But I saw you with her, how could she have told them?”

  “Explanations later. Come, we have to move!”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him, but I dug my heels into the grass. He turned back, a puzzled look smacked across his face.

  “Did you come here to kill me? When we first met, was that what you were here to do?” I said it. I almost laughed as I did; it was the most ridiculous, ludicrous … But he froze and bowed his head to the ground.

  “Gabriel?” I asked.

  If I had been made of glass, I would have shattered into a thousand pieces.

  “Yes.” His voice was soft.

  The ground beneath me didn’t seem to exist anymore. I felt unmoored and truly alone. I always had been.

  Lailah, I can explain.…

  I looked to our fingers entwined together, and as I loosened my grip and allowed my hand to break free, his connection to me fell with it.

  I staggered, reeling away from Gabriel and reaching for the metal bench to steady myself.

  If Zherneboh were coming, then all of them would meet their ends. Jonah, Brooke, Ruadhan, Hanora, maybe even Gabriel.

  Regardless of what Azrael said, I had already cost Gabriel too much. Zherneboh sought me out, not them. I had to get far away from here. I had to stand alone.

  I was petrified, but I had to save them.

  Nodding swiftly to Azrael, in acceptance of his words, I fled into the darkening night.

  As I ran, I thought back. I recalled how I had sprinted into the house in Creigiau to recover my crystal; I’d made it past Jonah. I had been stronger than him. And when the Vampires had stormed the house in Hedgerley, I’d saved Jonah by plunging a metal bar through a Vampire’s chest. I hadn’t known where the strength I had exerted had come from, but it had come.

  It was becoming almost impossible to deny it anymore. I was not human. I was what Azrael said.

  Somewhere inside me, I possessed my own supernatural gifts, and I hoped that they would serve me now, when I needed them the most.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE SUN HAD SET AS I ground to a halt at the foot of Monts d’Olmes. Ahead of me was forest; behind me, the road was empty and still. It was so quiet, like the calm before a storm.

  I hoped Gabriel and the others wouldn’t follow; whatever lay ahead was mine alone to face. And though I knew that I was hurtling toward my inevitable end, I felt better knowing that they would continue on. Everyone would.

  I looked up at the tree line. The mountain seemed so tall and I had never been much good at climbing. Whether I was light, dark, or both, I should be able to speed up the side.

  I closed my eyes and thought of jumping high, and launched myself off the ground.

  I didn’t travel far, falling to the loose gravel and grazing my hands.

  This wasn’t going to come easily.

  Instead, I willed my feet to move and broke into a sprint, following the winding roadside.

  The more I ran, the faster I became. Before I knew it, I was hungrily eating up each corner in no time. Eventually the route came to an end.

  A lit-up ski resort nestled in the forest greeted me. Snow was thick on the ground; it surrounded me and I shivered. I had to go on.

  I spotted a trail through the trees. I would have to find my way to the mountaintops far away from here, where no one else could possibly be.

  As I sourced a route, knee-deep in snow, a sudden sense of dizziness struck me and I reached for my temples, closing my eyes, hoping the sensation would subside.

  As I did, a pair of black orbs filled my mind and a dreadful shrill hissing deafened me. I blinked them away, but Zherneboh was close. The taste of a bonfire was on my tongue; he filled my lungs. I had to move faster.

  The sky was a sheet of white, despite the nighttime fast approaching.

  As I found the entrance to the thick woods, I was briefly reminded that it was a few hours till Christmas Day, and it made me sad. Here I was, willingly entering yet another mythical forest, only this time I was unsure of whether I was the sleeping princess or the deadly monster that lurked within.

  It was harder to push through at any speed; the incline was steep, even for whatever supernatural gifts I possessed. I took a moment to shove the sleeves of my cardigan up to my elbows, before
determinedly continuing.

  Jonah came to my mind and I was sorry that I hadn’t had the chance to say my good-byes to him, but it was for the best. I was quite certain that it wasn’t just his connection to me through my blood that made him feel something for me, or he surely would have tried to drink me dry by now. Something else had stopped him.

  I mulled over my barely formulated plan. I would reach an opening soon enough and wait for Zherneboh there. I needed Ethan to make an appearance for things to go the way I wanted them to. Given I was alone, I was confident he would show. If Azrael was right, and there was some evil deep inside me waiting for an opportunity, then it might peak in Zherneboh’s presence and then I could be ended—with Ethan’s help.

  Zherneboh would have nothing left to chase.

  There would be no war.

  Ruadhan could go on without me to burden him; Jonah would lose his connection and his pain would evaporate with me; Brooke would have Jonah back; and Gabriel … well, Gabriel could go home, back to the light, back to the Angel that awaited his return.

  I wouldn’t keep him here any longer.

  I willed my feet to race faster, ignoring the sharp branches that scratched my face as I whipped past them. I skidded to a stop at a ledge, narrowly avoiding a fall. The mountain dipped down into a large slope, finally breaking into level ground.

  At the center of the clearing was a lake, frozen, perhaps fearful of my arrival. But it was beautiful, a deep gray merging into thick white ice at its core. It separated me from the other side and, as I explored the backdrop, I came into full view of St. Barthelemy and Galinat’s peaks, which looked over at me.

  It must be night now, but at this height the clouds swirling and growing caused the sky to wear a thick white cloak. And I realized that here, right in this very spot, it was neither light nor dark. It was somewhere in between.

  This place was me.

  Bitterly cold, I trenched through the thick white carpet of snow to the edge of the lake. A large cluster of rocks provided a perch on which to sit and wait. I teetered precariously on the tip of a boulder and scanned my surroundings. No sign of movement.

  The lake was hibernating and I glanced down and took in my reflection. The same face I had always known stared back. I wished her well in her journey; I had no idea where she would go. If things went the way I had planned, she would be left caught in this moment, nothing more than an echo trapped in the water.

  It was the most fragmented twitch in the air that told me he was standing behind the rocks.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it, that your face is one of the first that I can remember.…” I said. “And at the end, it’s the last I will ever see.”

  Brushing myself off and with one final glance at my reflection, I rose to face him.

  He stood, only marginally taller than me, his hair still tied back in a loose knot at the nape of his neck, his expression blank. I looked to his clenched fist wrapped around the hilt of a sword, which was sheathed in a holster at his hip. The sword looked older than he was, displaying his family crest at the base of the brass hilt.

  “I’ve come to seek retribution. You owe me your life.” Ethan addressed me as though he was reading me a death sentence.

  I nodded. “May I ask why I owe you my life when you already took it once?” My tone falsely oozed confidence; in reality, my insides were somersaulting.

  I needed to buy some time.

  “But I didn’t,” Ethan said. “Here you stand, and here I am, one of the Devil’s brood. Because of you.”

  My eyes flickered down to where his white knuckles clenched around the top of the sword, ready to release it from its cage.

  “What happened to you?” I asked. “I don’t understand. When I knew you, when you knew me, you were human.…”

  I edged backward. I wanted answers and I needed him to be patient.

  He didn’t reply but stepped closer to me.

  I put my hands up defensively and said, “Listen, you can have your revenge, I won’t stop you. But first, please let me understand.” My voice was cracking, giving me away.

  He considered my request before finally answering. “You were going to leave. I watched you meet with him, but you were promised to me. I found you in the barn; you were about to run away with him, I knew it. But, Lailah, I had not meant to harm you.”

  His eyes grew larger as he struggled to recall the emotion that he had once felt, before he was like this—before he had become dark. “I only wanted to stop you from leaving with that stranger. I wanted to be the one to give you everything—”

  I interrupted, “Stranger? You mean Gabriel?”

  “I did not know his name. We never met.” His expression lost its fleeting softness and twitched instead to irritation.

  “What do you mean you never met him? You must have spoken to him the day you found me ready to leave?”

  Azrael had said Gabriel had influenced Ethan, but how could he have if they had never even met?

  “Lailah, I did not make his acquaintance. When you fell, I thought you were dead. I ran, like a coward no less, into the land. I wasn’t expecting to find one of the Devil’s own there.”

  “You mean Eligio?” I asked.

  “Yes, my Gualtiero.”

  Ethan’s brow tightened as he struggled on. “By my own hand, I lost the one—the only one—I had ever…” He stopped, dwindling. “Loved.”

  He seemed to struggle to even recall the emotion. “I wanted death to find me and he did. I did not falter when he changed me. A fitting punishment for taking your life, it seemed, was that Eligio should steal mine.”

  I bowed my head, entirely sorrowful. It was my fault that he had been turned. “I’m so sorry.”

  The snow began to fall lightly at first, but within moments I found it hard to keep the cold flakes from blinding me.

  “You have no comprehension of what it is like, serving a Gualtiero,” Ethan continued. “Locked away until he deems it fit to release you to carry out his violent acts, and then … the terrible darkness. It takes control. It eats away at you, until there’s nothing left.… It becomes you.” He paused, treading ever nearer. “I live now for death, for their blood—the only satisfying thing left on this godforsaken Earth. Well, at least that was the case until I saw you again.”

  His lips trembled as he salivated.

  I sighed deeply before replying. “You can take my life, but not right this very moment. I must ask you to wait,” I interjected swiftly. Now I had to bargain, though I had next to nothing to play with.

  “Why would I do that?”

  Without hesitation, he glided the sword from its sheath and pointed the tip under my chin, scraping my flesh.

  “Because if you kill me now, I will just wake up. You must wait for Zherneboh, the Devil, to come and when he does, then you must strike me here.…”

  I moved the blade down toward my heart, blood seeping from my neck as I did. I had killed a Vampire by plunging a jagged piece of metal through his heart. I hoped that it would work for me too.

  He paused, the cruel steel resting at my chest, and I watched him take in the scent of my blood. “I told Eligio about you the night I first saw you again. He didn’t believe me. But something had thrown him back into Hell as he began to come through the rift. Something immensely powerful. And so he had to consult … with the Devil.”

  I nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on his, which were starting to spark.

  “I heard them talking; they said you were one of theirs. I thought it impossible. But your blood…”

  He moved in a little closer, drawing in an overtly long breath. “I shall have my retribution and I shall take away the Devil’s creation. Payment for two centuries of servitude that I didn’t owe!”

  The pain in my forehead hit me quickly; I reached for my temple, a terrible shadow filling my mind. It took all my will to replace it with an image of the land upon which I stood. My thoughts were released just in time for me to feel Ethan’s blade jabbing under my co
llarbone.

  A gust of wind blew across the clearing. I let the wave of flakes collect on my eyelashes.

  I was out of time.

  “I am truly sorry, Ethan.”

  The blade sliced my skin, making its way as far down as my hip before it left me. It bounced off the rock and fell into the snow. Ethan was falling. My eyes flew open as I stumbled to the lake’s edge. I saw that he had been knocked from his feet and wrestled to the snowy ground by Jonah.

  They both stopped and flashed their amaranthine orbs as the drops of my fresh blood dripped into the white below me. Ethan rushed toward me, but Jonah was fast, throwing him high in the air and pouncing on him ferociously.

  “No, Jonah! Don’t hurt him!”

  The slash running down my skin stung and I toppled into the shallow gray water. It only cooled my body for a second before the fire relit. The damage was hardly life-threatening, but the slice sizzled through my flesh nonetheless.

  “Let me in.” Gabriel’s voice floated, his soft words parted the fierce wind.

  Scrunching my eyes shut and shaking the snow from my lashes, his figure appeared next to me.

  “Y-you shouldn’t b-be here,” I stuttered.

  “Where else would I be, but by your side?” Gabriel said, his expression stern.

  Feeling the land shaking beneath me, I peered around the rock to witness Jonah and Ethan in the distance, still embroiled in a terrible battle.

  “Gabriel, please, help them!” I couldn’t bear to be responsible for more loss.

  I fell to my palms as I struggled to get to my feet. Gabriel shifted my weight from behind and swept me from the shallow beginnings of the lake, propping me up against the rock’s face, my shoes still dipping into the freezing water.

  “Then will you let me help you?” he insisted.

  “Yes.” I didn’t have time to argue.

  Gabriel hesitated, but then in an instant he was gone from my side.

  The wind and snow were brutal now. I scrambled around the rock just in time to see Jonah hit Ethan hard, knocking him into the snow. He was by far the stronger of the two.

  “Ethan!” I screamed.

  Panting for breath, I desperately tried to clamber past the rock across the deepening snow. A hundred feet away, none of them could hear my cries because of the wind ripping its way through the trees.