‘Could you have put that a little more tactfully?’ He was attempting a wry smile, but without much luck, and he was so tense she could feel the sinews standing out against his muscles.
She smiled up into his nervous eyes, pitiless. He’d kept her from her prey, the interfering mortal; he could damn well stand in without a fuss.
… Something deep inside her quailed and shivered. What was she thinking?
But she was too hungry, too afraid, too desperate to worry. She slapped the small voice of her conscience away and tightened her grip on Jake’s wrists, thumbs finding his veins. She was aware of Isabella’s frightened breathing, her small nervous movements as she glanced anxiously from Jake to Cassie and back, but Cassie took no notice. Jake sucked in a breath as she focused, found his life, and began to feed.
His essence roared into her. He’d been working out, she thought with an amused layer of her mind. He was strong, fit, and more than that, he had a powerful will. The boy was determined. And she was soaking it all up, the life of him thrilling into her, racing through her veins.
Jake stumbled a little. She was aware of her fingers tight as iron bands around his wrists, her thumbs digging hard into his skin. Veins bulged at his temple, stood out against the tanned skin of his arms, and his face was drained by shock. Isabella was tugging at her sleeve.
‘Cassie, you need to stop.’
No. No we mustn’t stop! Not yet!
‘CASSIE!’
Cassie let him go with an angry cry. In front of her Jake wobbled wildly, grabbed for the wall, and righted himself.
‘Holy crap.’ He could speak before Cassie could.
She stood rigid, letting life-energy fizz into her fingertips, her scalp, the soles of her feet.
‘You … are never … feeding off my girl again.’
Says who? she wanted to snarl. Just as well she couldn’t speak yet.
Jake’s arm, she noticed, was tight around Isabella’s shoulders. The gesture looked protective, but Cassie could tell Isabella was actually supporting her boyfriend. He was still unsteady on his pins, she realised, a little shocked at the frisson of pleasure she took from that.
‘I’m going,’ she said with disdain. ‘I’ve stayed too long already. Thanks, Jake.’
‘Wait!’
She’d already flung open the door, but his voice had enough urgency to stop her. She glanced over her shoulder with irritation.
Jake looked steadier, and already the colour was seeping back into his face. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No. Really. You’re not.’ She sighed. ‘You’ll get in the way.’
‘Oh, get over yourself. And while you’re at it, get over Ranjit.’ He glared at her.
Cassie scowled. ‘You’re not coming.’
‘This theory of yours, about the Pendant. What is it, a wild guess?’ He twisted his lip in a cynical smirk. ‘You don’t have any proof, do you, Cassie? Thought not. So Ranjit might not be under a spell. Ranjit might just be doing what comes naturally. Either way, you can’t handle him.’
Cassie gave a bark of incredulous laughter. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘And I’m serious. I always knew there was something bad about Ranjit, whether it’s down to some curse or not. If he’s not in control of himself, he won’t hold back from hurting you. I could understand that you needed feeding, to be the best you can be – but you need to understand that you’ll need back-up. Frankly, even if he knows what he’s doing, I can’t imagine why you’d trust him. It’s not like he gives a damn. I’m pretty sure he’d kill you as soon as look at you.’
‘No, he wouldn’t!’
‘Uh-huh. Because he’s proved his love on so many occasions.’
‘Shut up.’ Cassie reddened.
‘You, on the other hand, won’t be able to hurt him. Not in the final analysis. You won’t so much as blacken one beautiful eye of his.’ Jake smirked again, folding his arms. ‘Go on and tell me I’m wrong.’
She breathed hard, wordless, incapable of arguing with that. At last she twisted her mouth into a sneer. ‘Fine, come on then. It’s your funeral.’
‘Now just wait a minute!’ Isabella flung herself between them. ‘I don’t like this talk of anyone’s funeral. And you two are quite likely to turn on each other! I’ll come too.’
Groaning, Cassie tore at her hair. ‘I haven’t got another minute! Jake, tell her. She’s not coming, no way!’
‘Cassie’s right, baby,’ agreed Jake. ‘You can’t come, not this time. Please, we don’t have time. Just trust me, do this for me,’ He pushed Isabella gently but firmly back into the room. ‘I love you.’ The girl opened her mouth to argue at the top of her considerable voice, but this stopped her. She nodded silently.
Trying to ignore the exchange, Cassie turned and briskly began to walk from the room. After a moment, she broke into a run, but Jake was at her heels.
She did her best to outrun him, leave him behind, but he wasn’t having it. He was at her heel through the dark passageways, down the stairs and out through the courtyard. At the top of the great flight of entrance stairs Cassie halted and flung out an arm. Jake collided with it.
‘Oof! What?’
‘Give me the Knife.’ She turned to face him.
‘No.’
‘It’s mine. It’s ours,’ she corrected herself.
‘See, you talk like that and you scare me. Forget it, I’m not giving it to you.’
‘You’ll regret it. You’ve no idea how to use it. None.’
‘I know better than you think. And I told you, it works just fine without your supernatural little paws on it.’
In the moonlight they stood for seconds more, facing one another, livid. It was Cassie, looking at her watch, who turned away first.
‘No time,’ she snapped. ‘Not now. You can hotwire an engine?’
‘Course.’ There was a distinct grin in his voice – partly, she thought sourly, from his small victory.
‘Good. So you can actually make yourself useful.’ She sprinted for the jetty. ‘We’re going to liberate a speedboat.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jake was still close behind Cassie as she bolted through the city streets. The buildings of Sultanahmet were tall, the streets and alleyways tortuously winding, but Hagia Sophia dominated everything, floodlit like a gigantic golden jewel, its dome and minarets towering above the city streets. They couldn’t miss it. Cassie leaped a railing and raced across parkland towards it. Constantly she was aware of the Knife in Jake’s possession, alive and calling out to her, but she didn’t let it distract her.
She’d get it later.
Both of them slowed as they approached the massive steps, careful now, senses alert. Cassie could hear Jake breathing hard. He’d kept up with her, certainly, but despite all the workouts he still couldn’t run so far or so fast. That was worth knowing.
No, stop it, Cassie!
‘Where do we start?’ muttered Jake, stopping beside her to catch his breath.
Cassie rested a hand on a gilded pillar, reaching out with her senses, trying to think every part of herself into this place. Yes, where? She should know. She could know, if she could only feel it …
Where would HE go, Cassandra? Think as he does, my darling! We must learn to out-think him!
All very well, she thought dryly, but Ranjit might not exactly be thinking like his usual self. She was sorely tempted to call Richard’s name, but she knew that was a temptation she had to resist. She knew by instinct that he wouldn’t reply, not now. But Ranjit might.
The mosque was huge. As they walked silently through its massive arched doors, even now Cassie was dazzled by its splendid beauty. Just for seconds, though. Splendour she was used to, now. She was impressed, but not intimidated. Jake, though: he was different. She could sense his awe. He positively reeked of it. She let a little smile flicker across her face.
‘Do you hear anything?’ he whispered.
She went still, reaching out with her senses. ‘Yes. Not in
here.’ She turned sharply to the south-west. ‘Follow me.’
Mausoleums stood to the side of the mosque, and Cassie kept to the shadows, but she was in a hurry now. She didn’t so much hear something as feel it. The central tomb was the one she wanted: a squat, domed building with a vaulted portico. Silently and swiftly, she ran up the stone steps and inside the mausoleum.
It was breathtaking. Eight huge arches, elaborately tiled, covered in mosaics and inscriptions, towered above the silent sarcophagi. The stone and the space smelled of centuries, and the silence echoed with ghosts. Shadows and ghosts. Cassie realised she wasn’t breathing as she listened intently. Carefully, she stepped inside. She stared, but not at the majesty of the architecture.
He was there, standing before the largest sarcophagus.
Ranjit.
He was looking straight at her but he didn’t seem to see her. His eyes were red from corner to corner and he was entirely motionless.
The sight of him, after so long, brought Cassie to a standstill as well. His fists were clenched tightly, and she could see the hairs standing up on his arms, as if he was electrified. At his feet, prone and barely conscious, lay Richard.
Cassie froze, riveted with horrified fascination, as Jake stopped dead at her side. Ranjit looked ferociously, vibrantly alive. He turned to them finally with a twitch in his mad face, a hint of recognition, and he smiled, but it was not a nice one.
‘Ah! This is wonderful. My friends!’
‘Ranjit, listen to me—’
He cut her off as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Jake has brought me the Knife after all! I’m so very sorry I missed our original rendezvous; I got a bit, uh, caught up!’ He laughed wildly. ‘Yes, Cassie, we had an appointment, Jake and I. He wanted to know all about Jess; I wanted the Knife. A pretty good trade, don’t you think? But I am sorry, Jake. I was unavoidably delayed.’
‘Ranjit,’ she cried, fear making her shrill. ‘This isn’t you!’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Cassie; this is more me than ever! Don’t you see? I’ve done all this for you! Getting the Urn from Sir Alric’s office was easy. He assumed nobody else was aware of its power but …’ His eyes darted, as though his mind was racing. ‘The Knife, well, I’d hoped I’d get it sooner, but it’s here now, isn’t it, my friends. But I knew I had to find the Pendant before I could really help you, and I did! I’ve got it. I told you, didn’t I? I told you I’d fix everything! And I know you’ll be grateful, Cassie. I know it.’
Grateful? Cassandra, we must go NOW!
‘Ranjit, stop this!’ she shouted, furious and afraid. Her voice echoed over the hard surfaces of the mausoleum.
‘But I killed them for you!’ he cried. ‘The ones who got you into this mess! I’m going through them, one by one, those who were at your ceremony. They forced you to host Estelle’s spirit. But it’s OK. I can get her out of you. I can get her out, and I can punish the ones who did this! My gift to you, my love! Isn’t it magnificent? My gift: your life back. And their lives – I give you those, too!’
Cassie was reeling. ‘I didn’t want them!’ she screamed.
He wasn’t even listening. Instead he pointed to a bulging canvas bag that lay on the floor, the pale edge of the jade Urn just showing at the open flap. ‘I have all three of the Eldest’s creations, now that Jake’s come along, now that he’s brought the Knife to me. But fair’s fair! I wouldn’t deprive him of our deal, I wouldn’t withhold what I promised! That wouldn’t be like me, would it, Cassie?’
‘Ranjit! None of this is like you! It’s the curse, the—’
‘Now Jake can have his answers. And he’ll be glad of this …’ he gestured to Richard, still lying at Ranjit’s feet, his eyes widening in panic.
‘Ranjit. No …’ he said, weakly.
‘… when I tell him that it was Richard here who delayed me the night Jess was killed,’ Ranjit continued, ignoring Richard’s protest. ‘And trust me, it was very much deliberate.’
Cassie felt like her heart had stopped – and Jake was like cold stone beside her. She couldn’t even hear him breathing.
Ranjit’s eyes seemed to look past them once more. ‘Yes. Yes, Cassie, I loved her once too, like I love you now. I was too late, too late to get to her because this little weasel kept me back while Keiko and Katerina hunted her down in the forest. Let’s be honest, Jess never stood a chance.’ He focused back on them. ‘But now you do, my love.’
Cassie wasn’t aware of Jake moving, only of a blur that flew past her and leaped towards the sarcophagus. The Knife was in his hand and he was screaming, incomprehensibly.
Ranjit’s head turned, almost imperceptibly, his mad grin unchanged. He looked quite unconcerned, but as if in slow motion Cassie saw one fist flash out, striking Jake with a fluid, lethal grace. Jake grunted with pain as he was flung like a rag across the floor of the tomb, then slammed into a pillar. Cassie saw it all, heard it all, as if she was watching some crazy piece of theatre, and through a curtain too.
Then she heard the terrible crack as Jake’s skull broke. And she screamed.
‘Ranjit, NO!’
She and Ranjit both stared at Jake’s limp body, heaped untidily on the floor, but Ranjit’s red eyes still held no human expression at all. Slowly he turned back to Richard, and stretched out a hand. As Ranjit grabbed Richard’s shirt, his chest arched up, head lolling, and a small rattling whimper came from his lips. He was slipping out of consciousness again …
Rage crept up Cassie’s spine, filling her, and suddenly the beautiful Iznik tiles of the tomb were purple-red in her vision. Snarling, she clenched her fists and focused her fury, a crackling aura beyond her body, and lashed it at Ranjit.
This time he took notice, head snapping up just too late. As her power hit him he was thrown back, banging into another pillar. He roared, lunging back towards Richard like an animal, and Cassie hit him harder, flinging Ranjit into the air.
He landed on his feet like a tiger. His eyes boiled as they focused on her, the light mad with passion and rage.
‘You’re protecting him?’ Ranjit’s voice was horrible, hissing through peeled-back lips. ‘He’s the one who got you into this mess! He’s the reason we’re apart! I’m the one who’s helping you, Cassie!’
‘Get away from him. From both of them!’ Cassie knew here already!’her own voice was shaking, but with fear or fury even she didn’t know.
Ranjit threw back his head and let rip a hideous, shrieking laugh. ‘God, it’s so ironic! You’re defending Jakey too!’
‘Ranjit, get a grip.’ She snarled it in a low voice, desperate to get through to him. ‘This isn’t you!’
‘I told you, it’s more me than ever, sweetheart.’ He laughed again, head falling forward as he leered at her, and she saw something swing free from his black T-shirt. A glowing green thing on a silver chain.
Riveted with horror, she stared at it, swinging gently, gleaming. Dawn was sending a creeping light into the vast tomb, encroaching on the shadows around the eight arches, and she could see the jade very well. It was a plain circle, but it moved, squirmed, lived. She knew if she looked closer she’d recognise the creatures carved into it. They’d be the same ones that lived and squirmed on the knife-hilt in Jake’s inert hand. The same ones she’d seen in the engraving on the manuscript.
‘Ranjit,’ she pleaded, tears sliding down her cheeks. ‘The Pendant. It’s the Pendant.’
‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘The jade. It’s perfect. Now just let me finish, let me complete my gift.’
‘Stop it, Ranjit! You’ve … you’ve killed enough people
here already!’
‘Yes of course, lest we forget, there was Jessica too.’ He gave Jake’s body a scornful kick. ‘Dear Jessica.’
‘No,’ whispered Cassie.
‘Yes,’ he snarled, his red eyes burning into hers. ‘I didn’t suck her dry, of course. But I stayed away long enough to let the others do it. I let her down, I let her die. I’m good at that, Cassandra. I’m good at
that. Like you told me. But now … Now I’m making it up to you, don’t you see?’
She closed her eyes briefly, struggling for control.
‘Did you hear me? Did you hear why she died screaming? It was me … but it was him too!’ This time it was Richard’s ribs he kicked. ‘Clever little Dick, chattering and delaying till Jessica was dead. Well, why not? She was only a mortal.’ Ranjit laughed bitterly again.
‘Ranjit, take the Pendant off!’
‘Not on your life,’ he grinned. ‘Or his.’
He snatched at the air above Richard, and this time the boy’s whole prone body floated up to him. Already it looked dry and empty, the veins staring, the life almost gone. How was he doing that …? He couldn’t be, could he?
But he was … He was projecting his spirit.
The Pendant was allowing him to draw out his spirit, just as it had said in the manuscript. He could control it, project it, use its power just like Cassie could with Est—
No more talk, no more time. With a scream of fury Cassie lashed her own power at Ranjit again, this time with absolutely all of her newly fed strength. He was flung back, skidding on the floor, but he rolled and sprang up as if she’d barely grazed him.
‘Don’t make me do this, Cassie.’ But he flew at her.
She felt his full weight slam into her, knocking her back, before he was anywhere near her. Before she could recover from the blow, he was next to her, his fist slamming into her gut, winding her. He seized her throat.
Recovering, struggling and roaring, she wrestled him off, striking out blindly with her projected power. Dimly she heard his gasps and shouts of pain as she beat him back, but then he was recovering and coming for her again. His fingers closed round her neck, and together they toppled backwards.
Let me in! He wants to separate us, he wants to kill me!
Estelle’s screech was panic-stricken.
Cassandra! You’ll die and I will too!
No way. No way …
SELFISH GIRL! He wants to SEPARATE US! Or KILL US!
Fighting two of them wasn’t helping – especially as Cassie couldn’t help but feel the consuming, overwhelming passion even as they exchanged blows …
Darke Academy 3: Divided Souls Page 17