“Where the thing bit you, is it okay?” I asked Meredith. “Will she be okay?” I shifted in my seat and directed my last question at Trey, relying on him as the only person who could give us answers.
“She’ll be fine,” he said, his tone softer. “It’s a wound, but it’s not going to infect her bloodstream and turn her into dust or anything.”
I looped an arm around Beth and clung to the door handle, feeling slightly dizzy. “Is that a possibility?”
“Depending what bites you, yes.”
Meredith cleared her throat. “The other raganas were throwing balls of fire and lightning, making a storm or wind to crash against the demons, and I couldn’t even muster a breeze.”
“You panicked out there,” Trey said.
She whirled on him, her nostrils flaring. “I didn’t know what to do! Nobody has taught me anything! I didn’t even know I could make lightning balls!”
“I wasn’t accusing you,” Trey said, raising his voice. “I’m just stating it like it was. We were not prepared. We all panicked.”
Even though his eyes didn’t leave the road, I felt the accusation.
Whatever I was supposed to be doing, I had better figure it out fast. “Did the people die?” I asked. “The ones hit with the lightning balls?”
Trey took a moment before answering. “Yes.”
My throat constricted, and tears burned behind my eyes. “What about their souls?”
“They’ve been claimed and escorted to the underworld.” Trey glanced at me, and I remembered the dream we’d shared where I was going down, down, down. To the underworld.
“What happens down there?” I asked.
“They’ll be sorted and judged. Then they’ll receive their eternal reward.”
I felt sick. “Will their actions count against them?”
Trey squinted, his eyes focused on the road again. “I’m not really sure. Since they were forced to act against their will, I’m not sure how accountable they are for their actions.”
“So maybe they can be redeemed,” I said.
“Maybe. But even if their souls are redeemed, they won’t come back to life. Their bodies are dead.”
*~*
Trey drove us back to the hotel, where I put an arm around Meredith and helped her out of the car. We stumbled down the hall to our room without a word. As soon as I got the door open, Meredith pushed away from me and collapsed on the bed, face-down. Trey carried Beth inside, and I helped him lay her down beside Meredith.
“Are we safe here?” I murmured, wrapping my arms around myself.
Trey sank onto the other bed and shrugged his shoulders. “As safe as we can be, I guess. Samantha doesn’t know where we are. As far as I know, she doesn’t have the ability to sense us out unless you or Beth use your powers.”
I nodded, only mildly reassured. “We need a bigger army.”
Trey gave a short laugh, and Meredith rolled over slightly to watch the conversation.
“We don’t have an army,” he said. “Period. We need to step up our game plan.”
Meredith sat up. “Can you help me?”
We both looked at her, and Trey hesitated. “I don’t know how. I’ve never known a ragana. I’m not sure what your powers are. But it seems to be coming naturally to you. The way you’re manipulating people—”
“And when we encountered Samantha in Maryland,” I added, “you summoned the storm to save me from her.”
Meredith looked down at her hands and turned them over. “But I couldn’t do anything out there.” She lifted her head and looked at Trey. “I’m not losing my powers, am I?”
Trey shook his head. “No, but we are all linked to Jayne. The stronger she is, the stronger we are.”
Again, the guilt rippled through me. Everything circled back to me. My mind flashed back on the battle, on Aaron. On my own failures. I looked over at Beth, where she lay unconscious on the bed. The blue had faded from her skin, leaving only black lines.
“What happened to her?” I whispered.
Trey met my eyes, his gaze exhausted. “They took her powers. The sword broke her.”
My throat closed up. “Broke her?” I squeaked.
Trey nodded. “When she became Karta, she changed, merging her mortal self with the immortal powers. Without that part of her being, she’s not whole.”
My heart broke at those words, and I looked at my little sister. What had I done? Everything I had feared about dragging her into this was coming true. “She was better off never knowing.”
Trey’s fingers closed around my wrist, forcing me to look at him again. “That’s not true. We need her just like we need you.”
“But what good am I? I can’t get her powers back. I can’t even get yours back.” I choked back a sob.
Trey shook his head. “She’s different. She’s your sister, both by blood and by legacy. You’ll be able to get her powers back.”
“How?” I practically screamed question.
“You forget you have a ragana.”
Meredith sat up on the bed, wiping her eyes and looking steely. “I guess I better figure out how to be one.” She pushed off the bed and limped to the door.
“Where you going?” I asked.
“To do what I’m good at. Research. I saw a business station in the lobby. Maybe I can find us some answers.”
I didn’t want Meredith to go alone, but I was not leaving Beth. I looked at Trey, and he read the question in my eyes.
“I’ll go with her,” he said with a sigh. “Don’t leave this room. We won’t be gone long.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Meredith and Trey were still out in the lobby doing research when Beth finally lifted her head and pulled herself into a sitting position.
“What happened?” she whispered. She looked down at her arms and the criss-crossed, jagged lines. She flipped her arms over and studied them.
My throat closed. “How do you feel?”
She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I’m okay. Hungry.”
Of course. We could remedy that. I picked up the hotel phone and quickly placed an order for pizza from a brochure next to the television. Hopefully Trey had enough cash to cover it.
When I turned around, Beth’s large brown eyes were staring at me, unshed tears shimmering in their depths. “What happened?” she repeated. “I remember the vadatajs. Aaron.” Her eyes flashed to my face, but I held myself impassive. “I thought he was going to kill you.”
“So you jumped in front of me.” My sister hadn’t hesitated to take the blow for me. My own eyes grew hot. “We owe you everything.”
“But I’m not dead. What happened?”
I let out a slow breath, my insides churning at my part in allowing this to happen. I’d overestimated Aaron’s ability to conquer the enchantment. “The swords weren’t meant to kill. They have a different ability: to take away our powers.”
“My powers are gone?” Beth whispered. “I’m not Karta anymore?”
She hadn’t been Karta for more than a few weeks, but I could see how much the loss devastated her. “You’re still Karta,” I said fiercely. “And we’re going to find a way for you to get your powers and put you back together.”
Her eyes went back to her arms, fingers trailing over the fissures on her skin. “Because I’m broken.”
This time I could not contradict her.
The hotel room door opened, and Trey came in, brandishing two boxes of pizza. Meredith followed behind him.
“You’re an angel,” he said to me, dropping the pizza next to the television and opening the top box.
“That’s funny. I’ve always been told I’m a goddess.”
Trey laughed, and I cracked a smile.
Meredith put a note pad on the bed next to me. I noticed she favored her left leg as she walked, but otherwise she didn’t complain.
“How’s the ankle?” I asked, picking up the notepad.
“It burns like someone wrapped a hot coal against my skin, but
Trey said that’s normal for being bit by a goblin.” She smirked. “Not everyone can claim that.”
No, I supposed they couldn’t. I looked at the notepad in my hand. “What’s this?”
“These are symbols, hieroglyphics that I researched. I want you to look them over, tell me if you recognize any.”
“Or have a reaction to any,” Trey amended.
A reaction. Like I had when I saw the symbol for war that was being engraved into the skin of every one of Samantha’s victims. As soon I saw the symbol, I knew what it meant, instinctively.
I looked at the notepad with renewed interest. “What are we hoping to find?”
Meredith glanced at my sister. “Something to bring back her powers.”
I stared hard at the notepad, almost as if it were one of those 3-D images buried in print and I needed to look crossways and upside down to make it appear. “Nothing.”
“Try them one at a time,” Trey suggested.
“Okay.” I took Meredith’s pen and proceeded to draw the symbols one by one on the preceding papers. I heard Trey turn on the television, and I knew he was looking for the news, but I focused on my work.
I finished drawing the third symbol and flipped the page over to begin the next one. The imprint of the image burned into my eyes, and I knew what it was. “Creator.”
“What?” Meredith had a slice of pizza in her hands, and when she leaned near me, the smell of basil and tomato sauce and spicy pepperoni rolled my own hunger to the forefront. I dropped the pen and paper on the bed, going for the pizza.
“She said creator,” Trey said.
Meredith hunched over the notepad. “Does Samantha have one of these symbols on her somewhere?”
Trey looked grim. “She might. It would increase her power.”
I came back over, pizza in hand. “If I carve this symbol into my skin, will it make me the creator?”
“It could. If you had an army of souls to convert. Which you don’t.”
“What a ray of sunshine you are,” I muttered.
“We could call the lesser gods to join us,” Meredith said. “Even the kaukas. Have something more on our side.”
Trey nodded. “We might have to. Samantha and Jods are already calling gods to their side. Velns is guiding them, and now his mother is involved.” He nodded at the notepad. “What else can you figure out?”
I copied down a few more symbols. “Messenger,” I said, tapping another.
“Keep going. We need more than that.”
“Water. Fire. Thunder. Wisdom. Healing.”
No one commented on the new symbols I had deciphered, and I was so absorbed in my task that it took me a moment before I realized they were lost in the news.
“A random lighting storm apparently caused the deaths of over a dozen people at Stadium Park today,” a reporter was saying. The camera panned over the grim site, and I looked away, tuning it out.
“She’s expanding her range,” Meredith whispered a moment later.
I lifted my head again. This time the image showed thousands of people gathered around the police station in Louisville, Kentucky, protesting, demanding to know where their family members had gone. I pushed off the bed and moved closer.
“More people are disappearing? But how? How is she summoning without a poem?” I asked.
Trey shook his head, his lips compressed into a thin line. “She doesn’t need a silly poem anymore. We know she’s taken the powers of at least one goddess of fate.”
“But she can’t, what, just make people do things, can she?” Meredith said.
“Yep.”
I felt that burning rage well up in my chest again, an emotion I’d come to recognize as not my own. That didn’t make it any less real. “Why are the humans so weak? Their minds are so feeble, so easy to control.”
“She’s just altering their destinies like you do,” Trey said.
“Except she’s doing a much better job of it,” I snapped. I picked up the pen and broke it in half and threw the pieces across the room. “I’m going out. I need a breather.”
Nobody stopped me, and for some reason that made me even angrier. But as I huffed down the hallway, the door opened and Meredith hobbled after me. I couldn’t stay angry at the sight of her limping, so I slowed just enough to let her catch up.
She held the notepad in her hands. “This symbol, right here, the last one you said. Is it used for healing?”
I glanced at it, pretending to be less interested than I was. “Maybe. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it, though.”
Meredith’s eyes glinted. “I think I might.” She handed me an unbroken pen, and I wondered where she was keeping her stash. “Draw it on me.”
I drew the symbol on her arm, two C-shapes facing opposite directions and intersecting at the back. Meredith placed her other hand over it and whispered under her breath. She lifted her hands, but the wound looked the same.
“What were you hoping to happen?” I asked.
“Well, I thought maybe I could use the symbol to heal my ankle. I wrote a few lines to a poem designed to make the body heal quickly, but I don’t feel any different.”
“Are you sure? Let’s take a look.” I caught some of her excitement. This could be our first breakthrough in days.
We wandered over to the hotel lobby, and she sat on the couch. She bit down on her lower lip and whimpered when I started to remove the bandage.
“That’s not a good sign,” I said, my heart sinking. I turned her leg so I could unroll the gauze.
“Stop, stop, stop!” she cried, putting her hand on mine.
“Maybe we did it wrong. Maybe I have to put the symbol next to your injury,” I said. It couldn’t hurt to try, anyway. I was desperate for this to work.
“Go ahead.”
I unwrapped enough of Meredith’s bandage to reveal a ghastly wound, as if a wild animal had sunk its teeth into her flesh and ripped the skin. How was she even walking on this? My hands shook as I drew the symbol next to the weeping wound. I had to make this better.
I finished making the symbol, and Meredith put her hands on it, again whispering the words.
Nothing happened. I sank back on my heels. “What are we doing wrong?”
“It must be the wrong symbol.”
“That has to be it.” I tempered my disappointment with a weak smile. “Let’s go back to the room. We can experiment with the others.”
*~*
None of the other symbols had any better result. Meredith grew more frustrated with each one.
“I must have the wrong words!” she said. She snatched the notepad from me, sweat beading on her forehead. She muttered to herself as she scribbled lines and scratched them out.
“You need a break,” Trey said. He opened a bottle of painkillers and handed her two. “Take these and rest.”
She glared at him. “I don’t need a break.” But she swallowed back the pills, making a face as she did so.
I kept quiet, but the guilt grew and festered inside of me. I knew the failure wasn’t with Meredith; it was me.
Amy called on Melissa’s phone to check on us. She spoke to Trey briefly, and he passed along the message.
“She says not to feel bad. We weren’t prepared because we didn’t know what to expect. It won’t happen again.”
I said nothing. But all I could think was that whether it happened again or not depended entirely on me.
“Did we lose anyone on our side?” Beth asked. The lines had faded into her skin, and she had some color back after eating food. But I couldn’t look at her without thinking of how I’d failed her.
“A few,” Trey said. He turned the TV off. “Everyone get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll strategize.”
I crawled beneath the covers next to Beth and faced the bathroom wall, pretending to be asleep. I heard Trey and Meredith murmuring as he redressed her bandage. The cot squeaked as Trey climbed onto it, and the room drifted into silence.
Only when I was sure every
one was asleep did I allow myself to give in to my emotions.
I tried to be quiet when I cried, but my body shook as my tears soaked the hotel pillow. I must’ve woken Beth, because she curled up behind me and stroked my hair.
We had come all this way only to face defeat. With all of those souls at her disposal, Samantha had only to snap her fingers and refuel her power, while person after person crumpled beneath her will. All because of me.
Beth’s hand stilled in my hair, and I knew she’d fallen back to sleep.
The hotel window opened with a sigh, and I rolled over to face it. I didn’t even know those windows could open. And then an orange glow suffused through a moment before the dark god of the underworld stepped in.
“I know you now,” I said.
“You only think you do,” he corrected. “You don’t remember. You saw me out there on the battlefield and think you understand.”
“Then enlighten me. I saw a god who followed in Samantha’s tracks, happily collecting the souls of the fallen.”
“You forget those bodies have no souls. Their souls are already trapped in the underworld. I followed along to seal the deal when their mortal bodies died.”
I turned away from him, in no mood to discuss the finer details of his treacherous role.
“I don’t want their souls, Dekla. I’m not their collector. I’m simply the escort. But they are dying, and needlessly. I told you I could help you. But you haven’t asked yet.”
I lifted my eyes back to his, fear whispering down my spine. The solution was within reach of my fingertips, and all I had to do was take it. But at what cost? I was afraid to know.
He opened his hand, again revealing the little orange ball, flames arcing and shooting off it. It called to me. My fingers reached for it so quickly he barely closed his hand in time.
“You want it,” he stated.
My eyes couldn’t tear themselves from his fingers. “It’s mine.”
“Yes, yes, it is. But you lost it. What do you say in this culture? Finders keepers.”
On the other bed, Meredith stirred, and both of us looked at her. My eyes went to Trey next, passed out face-down on the rollaway bed.
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