Life Beyond the Temple

by Nikolai Joslin

  I gazed up, hoping to find some sign of the elf.

  “There,” I said, pointing up at a rooftop where a silhouette was lying down with a long gun aimed over the edge.

  There. Cinder’s voice echoed through my head.

  I followed his gaze to the streets and saw it.

  Two, maybe three hundred of the dead roamed the streets.

  We’ve never seen them attack. What do you think they do? Cinder asked.

  One of the dead lurched toward a door, turned it open, and disappeared inside. Moments later, we heard screams and then silence.

  Something bad. I answered him before looking back to Liam. He couldn’t do this all on his own.

  I turned to the nearest gray creature, which lumbered toward me, and stretched out a gloved hand, setting fire to the thing.

  They had noticed our presence, and it wasn’t good. They were shuffling toward us now. I got off Cinder and gathered Life Force in my palms.

  I saw a few get pushed down or jerked around from being shot, but they were moving again shortly after. Liam was wasting his bullets trying to stop these guys.

  I took a deep breath and reached out to the nearest one, gripping him by the neck and letting my hand become cloaked in flames, melting through his flesh until I met bone and could snap his head off.

  Cinder barked and clawed at the things, but there wasn’t much he could do. Fire killed them, but everything else only slowed them down.

  I reached down and touched the ground and watched as a thick wooden cage formed around ten of them, but then I had to move on, draining myself of even more energy as I stopped a few here and a few there.

  “Cinder,” I said, my voice cracking as I watched another topple to the ground. “I got one more thing up my sleeve, take cover.”

  He barked in reply, and I watched him turn around a building while I built up what was left of my usable Life Force. An explosion, not big enough to take them all out, maybe half, but it was less for everyone else to deal with.

  I unleashed it all in one moment, letting everything out and watching the corpses try and keep going while they burned, until they just stopped altogether.

  There were little fires everywhere when it finally subsided. I slumped to my knees and watched them move toward me, the ones I couldn’t kill.

  This was my end.

  This was it.

  I closed my eyes and waited for something to happen.

  And then Cinder howled.

  The sound was eerie, like it cut through more than air—like it traveled across worlds. It was lonesome and scared but also determined. It sounded like every emotion had been piled into that one sound. A cinderwolf’s howl. I had never heard a true howl like that before, one that could make you feel what they felt, but I had read stories. Cinderwolves were in almost every story there was. They had been feared by the people of ancient times, and then they faded into legend. Now one stood before me, howling that mythic howl, as if he were talking to the first star that had just appeared over his head.

  When he finally looked back to me, his eyes were burning red, and he stepped forward, leaving a black paw print behind him that blew away like ash.

  A growl echoed from deep in his throat, and he snapped at the nearest corpse. It didn’t back away; it didn’t even seem to register the threat.

  He put another massive foot forward, and I watched in awe as small lines of smoke came from his nostrils. He barked, and the sound bounced off the nearby buildings, making it seem even more threatening. He didn’t wait for the gray thing to stop; he just lunged forward and bit into its shoulder. I watched the entire thing burst into flames.

  He looked down at me.

  You saved me, Casey. It is about time I repaid the favor.

  What did I save you from? I asked after he turned his back to me and left a few more ashy prints.

  He didn’t answer, though. Instead he leapt forward into the thick of those damn things, and all I could focus on after that was the fire. Where the hell was it coming from?

  I yelped when I felt a hand on my shoulder, but the other hand quickly clapped over my mouth, silencing me immediately.

  “Dammit, Case. Be quiet,” Ston growled in my ear.

  I froze. Was he the traitor? Was this my end?

  “Get up. Liam is on the roof. Cinder has this handled, but you’re only getting weaker. I could barely find you with such pathetic Life Force. Come on; let’s get you out of here.”

  He stood up and held his hand out for me to help. I ignored it and stood up on my own, glancing up at the building that Liam was on. Ston ran ahead of me and held open the door. “Hurry up, Casey,” he groaned, causing me to jog over.

  We took the elevator up to the roof, and Liam was waiting for us outside.

  “Shit, was that Cinder?” he asked, pointing down below.

  I nodded. “What happened?”

  “He set the entire damn street on fire!” Liam exclaimed.

  “I don’t know what happened,” I mumbled.

  “He howled and then shit got weird?”

  “Basically.”

  “He found me and made me follow him to where you were. When he started that whole tearing them apart thing, I decided it was time to get you out of there,” Ston said.

  It was only a few more moments until Cinder barged through the door, panting heavily.

  What the hell happened? I asked, looking at his eyes, which reminded me of molten lava.

  The Old Ones. The Old Ones restored the powers of the cinderwolves. They said they had taken them from us eons ago because our actions had not been pure, but they gave them back. Because of us.

  What did we do?

  We believed in one another and protected each other from harm. They said that cinderwolves had been born from fire and lava to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. A wall of fire and passion was their exact words, but we deviated from that, and you and I changed that, Casey. We did.

  I smiled at him and reached out, placing my hand on the top of his head.

  “Casey, I know this is a special moment for you, but we have another thing to deal with,” Ston said. “You’re weak right now. Your Life Force is almost nonexistent. I’ve got some. It’ll have to do.” Dark-elf Life Force? How would my body handle that?

  I didn’t say anything, though, when he grabbed my wrist. I could feel it enter my body. It was warm and strong, like waves in the ocean. I closed my eyes and took it all in. Ston was powerful, and with this, my body could speed up the process of making my own.

  I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem.” He let go of me.

  “Have you seen Regan?”

  “Not since we got separated when that building crashed.” I didn’t say anything, I just nodded.

  “Hey, I’m sure she’s fine,” Liam said, touching my shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “And Cam?”

  “I haven’t seen her either.”

  I nodded again and pulled myself onto Cinder’s back again. “I have to go find them.”

  “Let us come with you,” Liam said, stepping forward.

  I shook my head. “You can’t do anything to stop these things, and Ston was running low on Life Force even before he gave me some. I can do this. I’ll send everyone back here when I find them. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything too stupid.” I smiled weakly.

  Ston sighed, and as Cinder and I went through the door, I heard him say, “I wish I could believe that.”

  Chapter 24

  CINDER RACED through the streets, and I searched for any sign of Life Force. I didn’t care who I found. I just wanted to find someone at this point.

  “Casey! Ston!” I heard Cam shout.

  “Down there,” I said, pointing to an alleyway farther ahead.

  Cinder took a sharp turn and slid into the alley. He barked loudly, and I followed his gaze to see blonde hair with dark red dripping from some of the tips. Those ice blue eyes looked
up at me, and she looked so relieved to see me.

  We were both surprised when the corpse reached out and slashed at Cam, scratching her across the cheek.

  I reached a hand out and shouted something that I wouldn’t remember later, and watched the flames travel from my hand to the dead.

  It collapsed to the ground, and we rushed forward to Cam, who had fallen to the ground and just knelt there holding her face.

  I jumped off Cinder and ran forward, falling to my knees in front of her. I pulled her hands away from her cheek and lifted her face up so she would look at me.

  She was sobbing and kept trying to reach up to her cheek. I had to keep stopping her from touching it. “What’s wrong?” I had a feeling it was about the scratch, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  She said from between gritted teeth, “It burns. More than anything I’ve ever experienced.”

  It sounded like when the Old Ones had punished me for my crime. Perhaps these corpses had been designed specifically for me, and I’d just been lucky. Any scratches I had gotten earlier would have been healed by Ston’s intense Life Force coursing through me. Cam wasn’t so lucky.

  Healing wasn’t my forte, not at all, but I could do it.

  I pushed her back so that she was leaning against the wall, and I pushed her hands away. “Stay still,” I mumbled while I moved my hand to her cheek. I pressed my palm over the bloody gash and took a deep breath while I built up Life Force in my palm and let it move in and out of the cut, like how the needle moves in and out of the skin to sew it up.

  I could feel her blood seeping through my fingers, but I just tried to ignore it. Cam was bleeding. She was hurt. I couldn’t help but feel that it was my fault. If I had just trained her more, or if I had been there. I could have helped. I could have done so much to stop this from happening to her, but I didn’t.

  Cam smiled weakly as I worked. “Don’t worry about it. Totally worth it to have a pretty girl this close to me.” She winced, and I felt my stomach drop.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered and continued to work, slowly but surely closing the wound.

  “I said don’t worry about it.” She reached out, her hand shaking from the pain, and touched my thigh. “I’ll be alright.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Chicks dig scars,” she said, laughing quietly, but I could tell she was still in pain.

  “I’m almost done here.”

  “Leaving so soon?”

  I ignored her playfulness and asked, “What happened to your head?”

  She sighed and said, “I got knocked to the ground when that building fell. Hit my head. No biggie.”

  “It’s bleeding pretty badly. I should probably fix it up too.”

  “I’m not complaining.” She smiled again and closed her eyes.

  “How bad is the pain?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Excruciating. That’s a good word, isn’t it? Not used much anymore, though.”

  “Is this how you ignore the pain? By talking a lot?” I smiled.

  “I have pickup lines too.”

  “You seem experienced ignoring this sort of thing.”

  “I am. Lived on the streets, remember? It’s not easy out there. I used to get into some bad situations, and occasionally I couldn’t get to a place to fix myself up without the world watching. Every now and then I didn’t want to fix myself up.”

  “Why not?” I asked, checking quickly to see how much longer I had left on her cheek. It was almost healed, but there was still a little longer to go.

  “It gets lonely out there. It was a dark part of my life.” Those blue eyes met mine when she said, “You changed that for me. You made me realize that being a mage isn’t a curse. You got me out of my spot under the bridge. You changed everything for me, Casey. My life is so different because of you.” She looked away from me again and whispered, “I know you love Regan. You don’t need to lie about it. I can see it. I would never do anything to make you unhappy, Casey. I’ll never try to break you two up, and I’ll never do anything that could hurt you. I guess that’s because I’m in love with you, Casey. I’m so in love with you that I’d rather feel daggers in my chest when you look at Regan than see you anything but as happy as you could possibly be. I love you, Casey, and I wish that… I wish that it could be more than it is. But it can’t. Regan and you are really great together, and I need to live with the fact that she’s better for you than I am.”

  Why did that hurt? Why did I feel this way when Cam was saying she wouldn’t pursue me so that I could be happy? Why did I hate hearing her say that she wouldn’t try anything with me? Because I hated seeing her in pain. I hated how I felt when she felt like this. “Cam—”

  She shook her head and looked back to me. “Don’t, Casey. Please. Please don’t say anything. I know that I’m no good for you. I know that Regan is… what you need.”

  I pulled my hand away from her cheek when I felt a tear slide between my palm and her face. A faint, pale line was raised on her cheek, a scar she would bear forever. “Cam….”

  She looked at me and shook her head. “Please don’t. I don’t think I could handle it if you started talking about it. Please, just… please don’t do that to me, Casey….”

  I bit my lip but nodded and moved my hand to the back of her head where the dark red blood had stained her platinum blonde hair.

  That one was quick to heal, and we didn’t talk while I did it.

  When I finally pulled my hand away, we just sat there together for a minute, avoiding looking at each other.

  “I replay our kiss a lot,” Cam said, letting her head rest against the wall. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t stopped it, but I know I did the right thing. You didn’t want to kiss me, you wanted Regan. It was always Regan.”

  I wouldn’t look at her. I couldn’t do that.

  I felt her hand rest against my cheek, forcing me to look up at her. “Regan’s a great person. She’s… wonderful for you.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself…,” I mumbled.

  “I wish you believed that more than you think you do,” she said, smiling weakly.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re beautiful, you know. I bet Regan tells you all the time, but I think it’s good to hear it from other people too. You’re beautiful, smart as all hell, and strong. You don’t need a protector. You are your own protector. You save people, Casey. You care about everyone, whether you know them or not. You’re brave.” She laughed quietly. “You chased me down, a thief, down an alley, and used magic on me, not knowing that I was a mage. You are a good person, Casey. And you deserve a good person.”

  “You are a good person too, Cam. You are.”

  “Not good enough for you.” She smiled and shook her head. “I wish I was, though.”

  “Cam—”

  “Don’t tell me I am.” She shook her head again.

  “But—”

  I couldn’t say anything else because she had crushed our lips together.

  I couldn’t help it, I pressed into her, tears running down my cheeks as I tangled my fingers in her hair to pull her closer. This kiss was so… bittersweet.

  I could feel my heart ache when she pulled away from me. She wouldn’t look at me; she just looked down the other end of the alley. “I’m sorry, Casey. You better go.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but I heard a scream that pulled me away from Cam. I whipped around to look out at the street.

  It sounded like Regan.

  Oh God, Regan.

  Hurry up, Cinder said. Cam’s fine. Tell her to find Ston and Liam. The girl you love is in danger, and you’re kissing Cam. He didn’t sound mad; I knew he could tell what I was feeling. I knew he knew what was happening. He was just scared was all, like I was.

  I looked back to Cam, who watched me with sad watery eyes. “Go after your girl,” she said with the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.

  I wanted to say she wasn’t my girl, but there was no use. Cam knew; there was
no sense in keeping it from her. “Liam and Ston are on a roof a few blocks down. Go there, stay safe,” I whispered before running over to Cinder and throwing myself on his back. I leaned down and whispered, “Let’s go,” in his ear.

  I raced off before Cam started walking away.

  How do we find her? Cinder asked as we ran in the general direction of her scream from earlier.

  Locating spell. It’ll track her Life Force. We’ll find her, Cinder. We’ll find her. I was trying to convince myself more than anything.

  I focused on my locating spell for a while until I found out where she was.

  “Two blocks down, second building on the right, third floor. Hurry, Cinder. Please, hurry,” I whispered.

  Cinder sped up, and I counted the seconds until we arrived at that building.

  I was off his back and running to the door before he even stopped moving. I threw the door open and raced up the stairs, skipping steps as I ran.

  I could hear Cinder behind me, but I couldn’t look back.

  I threw the door open and shouted, “Regan!”

  “Casey?” Regan was off to the side of the large loft space. She sat in a chair, her arms and legs duct taped to it.

  I ran over to her, slid to my knees in front of her, and started ripping off chunks of duct tape.

  “Casey, my parents.” Her eyes were red and puffy. “He has my parents, Casey. I don’t know what to do. My family is in trouble. Casey, please, find them first. Come back to me later. Please, keep my family safe.”

  I looked up at her. “We’ll find them together. You’re my priority right now, Regan. We’ll find them, I promise.”

  “You should really reconsider your priorities, Casey. Jaysun should be your number one, and I your second. Your girl here should be much farther down on the list.”

  I felt ice run through my veins, and I slowly turned around. Time seemed to move in slow motion.

  I saw shoes first, and then I slowly raised my eyes up to see Jaysun’s accomplice and the one who had betrayed me.

  A black ferret rested on his shoulder as he fiddled with some trinket of his sister’s from long ago. “Long time, no see,” Martun said, a smirk playing along his lips.