Lailah (The Styclar Saga)

by Nikki Kelly

Consumed in such evil, I couldn’t feel my body. Gabriel perched next to me.

  “It’s okay, Lai. You will be all right.”

  My head throbbed; images of memories I didn’t know I had invaded my mind. Ripping Frederic apart, limb by limb; torturing the Vampires in Hedgerley; and then Bradley’s face conjured in front of me. The image repeated on a loop, until I finally focused in, unable to stop, and watched as I grabbed Jonah from behind, tossing him into a tree, rendering him unconscious while I set about tearing Bradley to pieces. Flecks of black curls blurred across my sight; images of feasting on his blood and remains, before finally turning to the wall; and then the memory dissolved.

  I felt my body convulse, her evil coursing through every inch of me.

  My eyelids fluttered as I began to remember all the dark acts that I had committed and denied as my own, filling the black spots in my mind.

  She was weak now, though she clung to me, her shrieks echoing insanely around my head. I had to push her out, but she was strong and fighting for survival, despite the blade in my chest.

  I could taste the ash that invaded my lungs, and I clung to the smell. Then the scene around me distorted. Time fractured. I reached behind my shoulder and gripped the hilt of the sword. Using her supernatural strength against her and squeezing my eyes tightly, I wrenched the blade from my chest, flinging it across the snow.

  My blood splattered, forming a red carpet against the white.

  I drifted backward, resting on the ground beneath me, staring up at the white flakes that were descending and cooling my face.

  As I lay in the cold, the blizzard calmed so that it felt as though I was in a glass snow globe. Time tipped the magical lake and forest upside down, leaving the symmetrical shapes to sway delicately across my vision.

  The sword skimmed the surface of the icy lake, and finally the castle with its swans fell into its freezing center.

  The monster of my fairy tale was slain and time resumed once more.

  Gabriel was reaching for me, but he was too late. He couldn’t compete with fractured time; it made me so much quicker.

  When she left, so too did her anesthesia, rendering me paralyzed with pain.

  “No!” Jonah’s urgent voice cut through the now still air.

  I flicked my eyes open to see Gabriel kneeling over me. A brilliant light balanced gently on the tip of his lips.

  “Gabriel, you’ll end her!”

  “I need to dispel the demon! I can’t feel Lailah, I have to save her!” he shot back.

  “The demon is gone, look at her, look!” Jonah was shaking Gabriel away from me.

  “The marks have left her. You’re seeing her the way I do, the part of her that is like me. If you fill her with your light now you might kill her.”

  Jonah’s hand was tugging Gabriel desperately away from me. I watched him fall to his knees. He looked lost.

  My body convulsed, now agonized. I clutched my chest as a volcano of pain erupted inside me. Tugging off his jacket, Jonah pressed the leather down forcefully against my chest and I let out a scream as he applied pressure.

  “If we let her darkness take over, let her stay like me, maybe … if she drinks from me, she might have a chance.…”

  “You’ll eclipse her light.” Gabriel’s reply was short and hollow.

  “Maybe, but she might go on.…” Jonah said.

  “Like this? There must be another way! If she can find her light, if she can somehow accept both sides of what she is, she will survive this!”

  I listened in, unsure of what light he was referring to. With every passing second, the part of me that seemed to know Gabriel only drifted further away.

  Reaching for the smallest pocket of air that sat in my lungs, I whimpered. My body was shutting down and my mind fell over itself, bewildered and confused.

  “I heard Azrael. He said she would never be able to accept. If you love her, let her go. Please let me try.”

  I didn’t hear Gabriel protest any further and his silhouette disappeared from the corner of my vision, clearly unable to bring himself to watch.

  Jonah was staring at me now, bloodied and bruised. Despite my incoherent senses, I tasted his scent as it rode the breeze.

  Jonah pierced the skin around his wrist and laid himself on his side next to me. He didn’t hesitate to raise his bloodied hand to my lips.

  As I stretched my neck toward him, I caught his dark pupils gazing down at me and I was distracted for a moment by them. I paused as they grew bigger, anticipating me. I managed to push my nose toward him, a burning rising in my throat but, as I snatched his wrist and pulled it close, something caused me to stop, going against every fiber in my body.

  How do you see light against light?

  My hand shook, flinching in trepidation.

  It was only as the darkness crept forward that for a few moments in time, the faint crack of a bright, shimmering silver contrasted against the void.

  I remembered those words and I battled to recall when I had heard them. They were spoken with such softness.…

  As my eyes met Jonah’s once more, I gasped as, in the black of his pupils, I caught a glimpse of my reflection shining back at me. Lasting for only the briefest of moments, a miracle of silvers glowed back.

  It was in his darkness that I found my light.

  I remembered the image in the lake. Lailah.

  Suddenly his cinnamon scent was not so appealing. I pushed his hand away from me, remembering who I was. I would not be consumed by the darkness; I would not let half of me become trapped forever.

  “No.” I struggled.

  “Lai?” Gabriel tumbled urgently as he spun back to me, rapidly dropping to my body.

  I looked from Gabriel to Jonah. I recognized who they both were to me, recalling how each made me feel.

  One moment Gabriel’s luminous features took up the space in my mind, but no sooner than it had, Jonah’s shadowed face appeared, replacing it.

  Back and forth the images flipped, so fast that they became nothing more than black and white, until the flashes of light collided with the shadows in my mind and both elements of what I was burst, allowing the black and the white to merge, creating a fantastic gray matter.

  It was surreal; for the first time that I could remember, I felt at ease inside my own skin.

  But as I reached for Gabriel’s hand, he looked back at me, his expression empty. It was then that I conceded that Gabriel wasn’t with me. His connection was gone. He couldn’t see me anymore.

  I was alone.

  Azrael had been wrong; he hadn’t counted on the strength of Gabriel resonating through my being to be able to lead me home. However, as I touched him, it dawned on me that even in my own acceptance, he would never be able to see past the darkness that was part of me. And I couldn’t go on without him.

  It was in that realization that I knew my end was inevitable; on that, Azrael had been right. I wouldn’t continue to torture either of them.

  With my end, I would set them both free.

  Without Gabriel’s connection and now unable to do anything about it, I embraced the pain that was filling me. Drifting away from my consciousness, I allowed my body to succumb.

  “Inevitability,” I whispered.

  But Gabriel refused, unwilling to let me leave quietly.

  Pulling my body up, he hovered desperately over me, glued to my eyes, searching them urgently. I watched his; they seemed to die with me.

  There he stayed until finally, as my eyelids began to flutter to their final sleep, the faintest flicker of my extinguishing light entered his violet-blue sapphires.

  I caused an asterism; I was the creator of the six-rayed points that now reflected back at me. His stars of Ceylon expanded, verging on the precipice of an explosion into a gigantic supernova.

  I knew it then. How had I been so blind?

  “I’m your Pair.…”

  “I know.” He smiled, and a tear as clear as crystal fell down his cheek. “I told you to have f
aith in me.…” He trailed off as my body began to relax and my breathing became shallow and faint.

  Lailah! Lailah!

  There was nothing I could do now. My body was failing me.

  He had found me, but this time, he really was too late.

  As my wide eyes froze, resting on his, Gabriel’s words seeking me in our private place faded. As they drifted away, I heard him one last time.

  Like an echo, growing louder as it hit me, he shouted …

  Command the choice to decide.

  EPILOGUE

  GABRIEL

  THE SUN WAS ON THE CUSP OF RISING. A thin layer of white fog swirled over the land, moving gently with the calm breeze. Strangely, it did not entwine itself where she lay. Instead, it floated underneath her resting place, refusing to pass over her.

  Jonah sat unmoving, like a loyal servant, on the ground beside my sweet Angel. His eyes only removed themselves from her to scour the vast land surrounding where I had chosen to place her down.

  “It’s been seven days, she’s still not breathing.”

  I placed my hand on his shoulder. “And you haven’t fed for the same amount of time. You need to—”

  “No. I won’t leave her.” His reply was swift and still he refused to remove his focus.

  “I’m here. No harm will come to her while I’m with her. You know that. Brooke will be suffering. If not for yourself then for her.”

  I didn’t like how attached he had become. But then, I had realized now that it was not my Angel for whom he longed; it was Cessie. The part of her that was like him.

  Begrudgingly he rose to his feet and looked down at her, checking once more for any sign of life. I reached for Jonah’s arm to steer him away from my sleeping wonder, but he was unwavering.

  “Where’d you think she is?”

  “She’s right here,” I answered firmly.

  “If she wakes up—”

  “When she wakes up,” I cut him off.

  I didn’t like him reaching for her hand, and I fought the urge to stop him from squeezing it. Tolerance was something I had plenty of; I had lived through the meaning of being patient. But the touch of his skin on hers made my insides recoil.

  “Jonah.” I moved his hand away, tucking her delicate fingers back underneath the white blanket, as if the need to keep her warm was the reason for my action.

  “Will she remember us? Do you think she’ll remember the things she couldn’t before?”

  “We’ll see. Right now we need to have faith that she will find her way back. That she will fight and not surrender herself to death.”

  Inside, I clung onto my own hope that she would find a way; there was nothing but emptiness for her otherwise. She would simply fail to exist and then nothing would matter.

  “She feels cold. I don’t think we should be keeping her out here.”

  I moved around him and placed the back of my hand on the porcelain skin of her forehead. “It’s for the best. Out here she has the day and the night. It might help. Could you stay with her for a minute while I get another blanket?”

  “Yes.” He nodded obediently at me.

  I hadn’t left her side since I had carried her from the snowy mountains, bundled in my arms. I would give him a moment alone with her—albeit reluctantly—while I collected some extra warmth. One thing I was certain of was that Jonah would sacrifice himself long before he’d let any harm come to her.

  “Then you’ll go and feed and take care of Brooke. She needs you. You can come back when you’re ready. We’ll be here.” Hesitantly I took a step backward, but as I turned to leave something stopped me. “Jonah.”

  “Yes.”

  “You drank from her, you see her in darkness, but I don’t understand…”

  “What?” Still he didn’t take his gaze from her face.

  “Your blood fused with hers, the part of her that is like you.…” I stuttered as I said the words. “You had every opportunity,” I gulped. “You didn’t let your thirst take over.”

  Now he turned to me. “I love her.”

  I stopped, rooted to the spot. “What? How?”

  “I may have seen her in a way you didn’t and believed she was like me. But I watched her. Her gentleness, the sweetness of her touch … things that her features couldn’t mask. I might desire the darkness within her, but I fell in love with the light that I heard in her laughter.”

  Completely stunned, words escaped me. Although I hadn’t known in the beginning, Lailah was made for me. One light split into two, bound together forever.

  Despite the deceptions that had been crafted and the things they had done, we had found each other again. And here was a Vampire, a stranger she’d happened to discover by chance. He’d managed to see past what was staring straight back at him. I’d only been able to see one half of what she was. Jonah, on the other hand, had been able to see all of her; and yet, in her last minutes, still she fought for me.

  I bowed my head, ashamed of myself.

  Returning speedily to the barn, I raced into what had been her bedroom.

  I hadn’t been in here since I’d held her, and I could taste her citrus scent lingering in the bedsheets where she’d slept. I picked up a pillow and nuzzled my face into its center, breathing her in. She was my home, my everything, the most precious thing I had ever touched, and I had let her down.

  I sat heavily at the foot of the bed and considered the life she must have led while I had searched for her. This world, a world she was never meant to have existed in, scarred by the people in it, whom I had failed to protect her from. And now she lay lifeless.

  And just as I allowed myself to consider that she might never return, her chess set on the wooden table caught my eye. The rising sun had drifted through the glass window, and the shiny crown of the ivory king reflected the light against the wall. The day was waking, the first morning of the new year.

  Standing up cautiously, I drifted over to it.

  Lailah’s king was out of check.

  I scanned the board for any other irregularity; the last time I had been down here I had moved my piece, placing her king in danger. When could she have positioned her piece? Was it before she had fled to the mountains? Had she moved it when she had listened in on my conversation with Azrael? But no, she couldn’t have; she was being deadly quiet, perched on the steps. I would have heard if she had walked across the room to the board.

  As the day began to dawn, so too did her message, hidden in our game. She was telling me that she was out of danger. She was asking me not to give up on her.

  Though it was a fifty-mile distance, I returned to the clearing in the blink of an eye. I found Jonah thrown back, away from the thick stone upon which I had laid her. The air swirled and gathered like a typhoon surrounding her. A black storm, flashing with whites and golds, illuminated the space. The frost that had covered the stone had vanished, as though hiding from the spectacle. A low rumble sounded, and cracks started to form along the ground as the Earth split.

  Yanking Jonah back as it began to open up, I shouted, “Lailah!”

  The earthquake pulsated beneath my feet, unbalancing everything that surrounded her. As the sun rose, strobes of energizing light cascaded through the storm. Somehow, I could faintly hear the sound of the song Lailah and I had once shared, reverberating and bouncing off the trees that were being blown every which way, holding desperately onto their roots in a bid not to topple over.

  I grappled past the tempestuous tornado that was skimming my body, but it flung me back despite my strength, acting as a force field and enveloping the most important being ever to exist.

  The dark storm twisted, encouraging a pattern of white mist that sparkled in waves, merging as it crowded over where she lay.

  The Earth stood still with it, watching silently, waiting.

  And then, in an instant, it was over.

  I don’t know who was faster, Jonah or I, but as we both arrived at her side I ground to a halt. Her face was unchanged, but her lo
ng cascading curls were now a mixture of coal-black with stripes of white-blond searing through. Her lips were no longer an innocent pink but a sharp red, heating her still-white skin. The blanket I had wrapped around her body had swept away and the deep V-neck of the dress Brooke had sacrificed displayed the skin around her heart. No longer was it broken; there simply remained a scar where the blade had pushed through her chest.

  She sparkled in the sun’s presence, as did the crystal gem that still hung from her neck.

  I could hear her. Very gently, I felt her tickle my consciousness. She was returning.

  Neither Jonah nor I could take our eyes off her, and, breath held, I opened my mind up as far as I could imagine, begging her to reach out.

  Her body remained still, and as I waited, I found myself grinding my nails into my palms.

  Her eyelashes fluttered before flipping open in one swift movement, and I immediately locked my eyes onto hers. They were still a sapphire blue, matching my own, but now they were muddied, flecked with tiny dark spots. The black voids of her massive pupils sucked everything in with them, including me.

  If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought that every clock, in every world, had stopped ticking as she turned her head gently, bowing her face to the side. She stared straight back at me.

  I heard her voice then, gathering the Earth as it moved at an impossible speed toward me.

  Gabriel …

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANKS TO …

  All of my wonderful family, for your love and support.

  Mom—For daring me to dream. You always believed I could do it, but as John Lennon once said, “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” Building snowmen with you is by far my favorite pastime!

  Dad—For all your love and inspiration. “So shine your light so bright.”

  1L–whoever you are, wherever you are, we love you!

  Gillan—For making everything possible. When, one day, this life is over, I will tell them the best thing about it was you. In the meantime, please don’t ever stop turning up your collars!

  Penny—My second Mum, whose love and devotion to family is unparalleled. You make the world a better place simply by being in it.