by Platt, Sean
Did he save Abigail or chase the monster who held the fate of worlds in the crystals?
Gerald stood next to John, growling, “Want me to get ’em for ya?”
“No,” John said, not wanting to send another person to their death for a battle that belonged to him.
Jacob turned, walking back from where he’d come. He bent over, then picked up someone John couldn’t quite see. It was a man, naked and bloody, on the verge of death.
John focused harder, and the shadows started to pull away from the figure’s face.
Caleb!
“What are you doing with him?” John yelled.
Jacob slung Caleb over his shoulder. “He’s my brother. I’m taking him home.”
The air in front of Jacob began to hiss and crackle, black and purple lights blinking as a portal opened before him.
A tiny sliver, taking up the width of the passageway. In it, John saw nothing but blackness and swirling lights.
Jacob started to enter. “Care to join us, Brother? Make it a family reunion? I’ll see if we can scrounge up some barbecued something or other.”
John looked down at Abigail’s tiny body.
He needed to cast a healing spell if he wanted to save her. If he could save her.
But Jacob was right in his sights. As was Caleb. He could chase Jacob now, and end it. Get Caleb back, recover the crystals, and kill Jacob once and for all.
Suddenly a woman’s voice behind him. “What happened?”
He turned to see a pale woman with long white hair and red glasses — one of the vampires who had crossed through the portal with Abigail, the ones who had taken her to this godforsaken world.
“Judith!” the teenager said. “Abigail is hurt, bad. We need to do something!”
Judith came toward John, looking down. “Who are you?”
John didn’t answer.
He turned back to see Jacob stepping into the portal and the darkness beyond.
The portal began to close.
“I can go after him,” Gerald repeated his offer.
“Are you immune to Valkoer touch?” John asked.
“Resistant, not immune.”
“Then stay here.”
John’s heart was racing as he looked back down at Abigail then again at the portal.
The blonde was obviously Valkoer, and could maybe heal her. But she stole Abigail, persuaded her to cross over to this world, and was responsible for her now lying unconscious, on the brink of death.
He couldn’t leave Abigail with her, even with Gerald as a bodyguard. He watched the portal closing.
He closed his eyes, and instead of focusing on the missed opportunity, he began to recite his most powerful healing spell out loud.
“What are you doing?” the teenager asked.
Judith hushed her, indicating that she knew exactly what John was doing: saving Abigail’s life.
Fifty
Raina
Baltazar led them to the soma den. But as they were about to enter the seedy locale, a commotion behind them drew Raina’s attention.
She turned toward the noise coming from a narrow passageway opposite the den entrance.
And in the passageway was an oval patch of black sky with stars, floating as if someone had plucked a piece of the sky and hung it in the corridor.
A portal!
Jacob was stepping into the portal — a man she recognized from Caleb’s memories, with a naked man slung over his shoulder. Even without seeing his face, she knew it was Caleb.
“There!” She pointed to the portal.
Malachi drew his blade and raced forth.
Raina was right beside him, her dagger ready. Then she took the lead, closing in on the enemy.
Jacob stepped into the portal. It rippled and faded, starting to vanish from sight.
She picked up her pace, desperate to get there before it vanished.
“Wait!” Malachi said, failing to keep pace beside her. “It’s unstable.”
“I’m not going to let him take Caleb!”
She was ten yards away, close enough to hear the portal’s crackle and hum.
She pushed herself to run faster, propelled by a cocktail of adrenaline and fear.
“Caleb!” she called out, drawing nearer.
But the portal was almost gone.
She pushed harder.
Almost …
There.
Ten feet away, blackness and stars were barely visible. She could see something.
Seven feet away.
It was almost completely gone.
Must
Reach
It
Raina made one last push, and leaped into the portal.
Time seemed to slow around her, and in that elasticized moment, she could feel the portal’s vibration on her skin, in her hair, like ice all over her, as if she’d left the warmth of Golden Cove for the frozen mountains of Calladia.
Then the sensation was gone, as she slid face-first onto the passageway ground.
The portal was gone.
She’d failed.
But then she looked up and saw the last person in the world she thought she’d ever see — the woman who had stolen her and Talani.
Judith stood with three others — a teenage girl, and a man holding a small girl on the ground, blood pooling around her.
Raina felt like she’d arrived after a battle, obviously one with Jacob that these people lost, and a girl’s life was on the cusp.
But none of that mattered.
She could focus only on Judith, the woman who’d stolen her life, the woman responsible for every horrible thing that had ever happened since. The monster who stole Talani.
Raina screamed and raced forward with her blade.
Malachi screamed something from behind her, but the world outside Judith was only a blur.
There was just Raina, Judith, and a millennium of pain.
Judith stared, like a helpless animal with nowhere to run and no defense to mount, as Raina ran right at her, blade tight in her grip.
Raina closed the distance in seconds.
More yelling, this time from the teenage girl.
But none of them would save Judith from vengeance.
Raina struck, plunging the blade into Judith’s heart.
Raina fell on top of Judith, whose eyes were wide and surprised.
She started to say something, but Raina grabbed the blade, pulled it out, and stabbed her again — in the gut, the chest, and finally her face.
“Die! Die! Die! Die!” she screamed, still stabbing.
“Stop!” the teenager cried out, pulling Raina from Judith.
Raina spun around, launching herself at the girl, blade thrusting forward.
And then time slowed again.
As the blade arced toward the girl’s stomach, just inches away from ending her life as well, their eyes met.
And Raina felt as if she’d been hit in the chest by a battering ram.
No.
Impossible.
But …
“Talani?”
The blade was centimeters from gutting her sister, and momentum made stopping impossible.
Raina couldn’t stop, but she did manage to drop the blade before her fist slammed into Talani’s stomach, sending her sister sprawling backward to the ground.
As she fell backward, Malachi grabbed Talani in a choke hold. Seconds later, he brought his own knife to her side.
“No!” Raina screamed.
Malachi stared at her. “What?”
“She’s my sister!” Raina sobbed as she fell to the ground.
Talani looked at her, eyes wide. “Raina?”
Raina burst into tears as she hugged her.
After a moment, Talani pushed Raina away, and made her way to Judith.
Fifty-One
Judith
Judith felt her life slipping away as she brushed her fingers over the knife wounds, assessing the damage.
There were too many, all t
oo deep. Blood ran over her fingers, sticky hot.
She was losing blood fast, and because Raina had used one of the cursed black blades, the poison was destroying her ability to heal herself.
She was going to die, and knew it the moment she saw Raina.
She watched the sisters hug, and felt tears stinging her eyes.
Talani and Raina were finally together again.
Maybe they could find a way to make up for lost time. They had an eternity, assuming they could avoid getting stabbed with onyx.
As she watched their embrace, darkness clouded her vision.
And in that darkness she saw something moving toward her.
A new panic rose, though she couldn’t explain it. She was already dying; what other danger could there be?
She wondered if the stories of an afterlife were true. She’d heard many through her scattered years, on this planet and on Earth.
She believed a great many things, had seen so much, but when it came to a God, she had no belief.
No Heaven, no Hell, just nothingness.
But a new thought terrified her.
What if I’m awake for the nothingness? Not alive but aware of the nothingness forever?
And would it be like the In-Between? Icy, endless, and full of nightmares?
Before now she thought she’d be okay with dying. She’d lived a long life, longer than most had any right to. And she was okay with it ending.
But she wasn’t okay with an eternity in Hell, Limbo, the In-Between, or whatever else might be waiting.
And the panic of that possibility now swelled inside her.
More movement in the shadows, coming closer.
What if its the souls of all the girls I destroyed with Hugo? Not just their souls, but their families’ souls as well? Waiting to greet me as I go from this world to an endless hell.
No, no.
Another shape approaching.
Judith flinched, then relaxed when she saw it was Talani.
Talani looked at the wounds, as if seeing their severity for the first time. Her eyes widened.
“Oh no. No, no.”
She held her hands over Judith’s wounds, urgently whispering a healing spell.
“It won’t work,” Judith said.
“Then we’ll get you to the Druwan. They healed Abigail. They can heal you. Come on.”
Talani began to lift Judith.
Judith cried out in pain. “No, don’t.”
Talani gently set her down, then turned and called out to the big man who had come with John. “Can we get a horse and carriage?”
Raina intervened. “What are you doing?”
“Saving her,” Talani said.
“What?”
“She’s not the person you think she is.”
Talani started to explain why Judith didn’t deserve this death, and while the words were touching, they were muddled as darkness clouded her hearing and even more of her vision.
The thing creeping in the darkness moved close enough to feel it. A chill spread through her body, her limbs becoming numb and unresponsive.
She flashed back on her life, all the horrible things she’d endured as a child at the hands of monstrous men. Horrors she herself had inflicted on countless men, women, and children while helping Hugo to capture them.
She saw Talani arguing with Raina, trying to save Judith’s life.
Talani was the start of the only life she wished to remember. The life where she met Solomon, and discovered what love truly was. The family she had crafted from tragedy — she, Solomon, and Talani. A family that helped others like them. A family that was the antithesis of the horrors that had once tried to shape her.
This is who I am.
This is how I want to be judged — if there is such a thing as judgment.
But could such sins ever be erased no matter the number of a person’s good deeds?
She thought of the horrible In-Between, and the floating psychic monsters that tried to break her. She could feel something moving closer.
Go away. Just go away!
She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face.
“Judith?” Talani said through the muddled ocean in her ears.
Judith tried to open her eyes and see the girl, but found only darkness.
She tried to open her mouth, but couldn’t.
No!
“Judith?” Talani repeated, now sobbing. “Judith!”
I’m here! Judith screamed telepathically.
But she could only hear the crying.
She could no longer feel the link with Talani. Her comfort was severed, and she was helpless, listening as Talani mourned her in some faraway world she’d never be part of again.
Judith was no longer in her body.
Was in a pure darkness, floating, free of constraints.
Talani’s cries were already dimmer.
Judith struggled to stay close, but they hurt too much to hear. She didn’t want Talani to feel such pain in losing her.
Judith cried, though she had no eyes.
She still felt an aching loss, though she had no brain to recall what was missing.
How can I be and yet not be?
She looked around the darkness, searching for something, anything.
But she saw only nothing in every direction. Despite the vast emptiness, she felt it closing in, almost crushing her shapeless form. She needed to get away, but where, and from what?
She willed herself into motion, flying through the void, though without a body, or visual cues to signify movement, Judith couldn’t be certain she was moving at all.
She wasn’t sure if she was in the In-Between or somewhere else. Judith was only certain that she wasn’t alone.
And that something was watching.
Fifty-Two
Jacob
Jacob lay in the darkness of his father’s massive bed, now his, holding the amulet over his head, staring in awe at the glowing red crystals that had come together into a single shape, looking almost like a heart. Not the romantic hearts gracing greeting cards on Earth but an actual human heart.
“So, Wizard, now that our common enemy is dead, what should I do with you?”
“Set me free,” said a man’s voice, surprising Jacob.
He dropped the crystal and jumped out of the bed, looking around, fists ready to tear someone apart.
But Jacob was alone in the giant garish chamber.
He looked down at the amulet and smiled. “Was that you talking to me, Wizard?”
“Surprised, Prince Jacob?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be. I knew you were in there. I know that you gave me power. Why haven’t you spoken to me before?”
“Because you didn’t speak to me.”
“But you were there? Aware of what was happening?”
“If you’re asking if I’m aware of the horrible things you’ve done, then yes.”
Jacob was nervous to sit, not knowing what the amulet might do, and so stood a respectful distance from the bed. “I take it you don’t approve of what I’ve done?”
“It’s not for me to judge.”
“Surely you have opinions?”
“They don’t matter.”
“You’re right, Wizard. They don’t. So what are you asking? To be set free?”
“Yes.”
“And how would I do that?”
“Simply command me to leave my vessel.”
“And what will happen to you then?”
“My soul will go to the In-Between, like all passing souls.”
“Why would anyone want that punishment when you can be here, or Earth, among the living?”
“It’s hard to enjoy the freedoms of the living without a body, wouldn’t you say?”
“Fair point. So here’s a better question, why don’t you just leave the vessel now? Why have you allowed me to use you as I wish?”
The wizard said nothing.
“You can’t disobey me, can you?”
&
nbsp; “No.”
Jacob sat on the bed, picked up the amulet — glowing from red to orange in his hand — and held it up to his eye for closer inspection.
Light swirled within the crystal. He wondered if this was what a soul looked like out of its body.
“Why can’t you disobey me? Why can’t you merely do as you wish?”
Again, the wizard was silent.
“It’s the spell, isn’t it? It was made to protect the vessels. And in this case, I am your vessel, even though you’re not inside my body. Am I right?”
The wizard said nothing.
“So why would I set you free when you are of so much more use here, serving me?”
“Because you know it is wrong.”
“Wrong?” Jacob laughed. “You know who you’re talking to, right? You used to scold me when I would use the magick you taught me to hurt vermin. You said it yourself, I’m a wretched, wretched person.”
“You offered your father a chance to live, to join you. You did the same with your brothers. That doesn’t seem like a thoroughly wretched person to me. I think there’s a part of you that knows the right thing to do, and that part of you is what’s hesitating now.”
“Hesitating with what?”
“Your plans.”
Jacob harrumphed. “What do you know of my plans?”
“I can see inside your mind, Jacob. You can’t hide your thoughts from me. You couldn’t as a child, but it’s even harder as a man. You want revenge for everything The North did to you and your people. You want to destroy The Hand of the Seven Gods for their betrayal of the Valkoer and The South, not to mention a host of other sins before The Great Purge. And you think you wish a return to Earth so you can enslave the human race. But we both know different, don’t we? A part of you wants the violence to end. A part of you sympathizes with the innocents — the same part of you who murdered that poor girl in Esmerelda’s den rather than leave her to suffer. The same part of you that doesn’t want to become a monster like your father.”
Jacob hurled the amulet across the room.
It hit Father’s precious gold-framed Jska mirror, sending a spiderweb of cracks across the surface.