Mud

  A new voice calls to me from where they stand.

  “And what then, after you find her? Do you really think you’re worthy of going back to Terath?”

  It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. The stinging taste of regret coats my tongue.

  I can’t help it. I look again.

  A strong young body cloaked in deep red. Blood drips from the open gash across his gut. It’s the Hunter, the last one I killed.

  Not it’s not. Not real.

  “You’ll just continue the cycle. You’ll just keep on killing.”

  The blood still drips out of him, hot and fresh. It covers his hands like it did as he lay dying on my temple floor, trying to keep his life inside him.

  He’s not real.

  But he’s still right.

  In Terath, all the rules will be in place again. The Hunters will never stop coming. And I can’t stop what I’ll do to them.

  But if I stay … at least here I am in control.

  Still I have to go back.

  Because going back is the only way to end all this, too. I'm done with hiding. I'm done with the box determining my actions. Getting my soul will make it all stop. It will break the box’s hold.

  I kneel to the next soul. Not her.

  “And what of the others who have fallen to your bloodlust?”

  A new voice. I whip around to see and immediately wish I hadn’t.

  The Silencer glares back at me, his head disconnected and limp on his neck, twisted with streaks of blue bruises.

  “You think you only kill because you have to? It’s time you admitted to yourself what you really are. You love the kill. You will never stop killing. You will never be free of the thirst for blood.”

  My fingers remember the feel of being around his throat, the anger, the power, the thrill.

  “No. I can control it.”

  “You don’t control anything. They control you.”

  My fingers twitch. They crave to strangle him all over again.

  Abazel steps in front of the demon-Silencer. “You’ve killed too much to stop now. It’s what you were made for. I know the darkness that lives in you, the rage. You belong here with us now. Where you can put it to use.”

  It’s not true, I tell myself. It’s lies. Tricks to slow me down. I must be getting close, for him to act so desperately.

  But a small voice inside me whispers—what if it’s true?

  At least part of it is.

  Because there is something in me that wants it. The kill. The action. It roars within me even now, begs to be let loose, to rip off the Silencer’s head, and end his taunting.

  The power, the unrestrained struggle, the lights going dim behind his eyes. There’s a brilliant flash of it in every kill. And then it is over and it is swallowed in the guilt, the disgust at what I’ve done. But it’s always been there. I’ve been afraid to look it in the eye. Afraid of the monster I really am underneath. Can I control it? It is worth the risk, more lives ripped away by my hands?

  Maybe I should stay here, find a dark corner to wrap myself away in. Bury myself somewhere I can’t hurt anyone.

  Something inside me fights back.

  Maybe it is the right thing to do. I can't tell anymore. But I can’t do it.

  I have to go back.

  Not just for my soul. Not just for my promise to Jordan.

  It’s where I belong. After so many ages spent across Terath, it is mine. I am made of its very earth, and my body craves to return to it. It is where my home is, where my hope lies, where the answers are that I need.

  “Where is Rona?”

  “Why? So you can go back to Terath and send more of its souls to join me?” the Silencer sneers.

  “Where is Rona?”

  “Is there no end to the wake of your destruction?”

  “Where is Rona?”

  “Give it up, Adem,” Abazel steps to the ledge, the Silencer shatters into shadow and collects again at his shoulder. “This entire mess is far beyond hope. Rona. You. All of it.”

  The word floats in the space between my ears, swells inside me—hope, hope, HOPE—until there is nothing else.

  The light expands with it; a wild throbbing that takes over, blocks out the world, and fills me with giddy joy.

  Beyond hope?

  Jordan’s bright eyes come to me in my mind. There is always hope. When you take everything else away, hope is what’s left. I have to believe this. How else can I go on?

  “Come now, Adem.” Abazel stretches out a pale hand to me.

  I shut my eyes.

  I stop trying and just listen.

  The light is strong, angry, and burning hot. Railing at me to go forward. For me to give in to it and let it lead.

  So I do. I give in.

  The light erupts over me, a painful searing force. It takes over, blinds me, and forces me forward.

  It races me through the Pits with my eyes still shut, my legs barely keeping up with the pull. Abazel calls out after me. He sounds far away, nothing more than an echo.

  The light grows and grows until there is no room for anything else. Until the light is all I am. I can see it behind my eyelids and feel it tingling in my fingertips. And then without warning, it bursts. Spills over me like a fiery explosion as it leaves me. Brings me to my knees with a raspy cry.

  When I open my eyes, somehow I know the soul in front of me is her. From my head to my toes, I pulse with searing elation.

  I reach my fingers into the mess of hair, stroking my thumb across her once-proud cheek bone.

  “Rona.”

  I try to keep the roughness out of my voice.

  She is motionless. Dead to the world.

  “So,” Abazel hovers from the ledge, panting. “You found her after all.”

  I turn to him, still cradling Rona’s limp soul in my arms. His mouth is pulled in to a terse line.

  “It changes nothing, you know. Believe me when I tell you, her condition made her easy to collect. She chose this. She will not waken. It makes no difference what you try, you will not succeed. She is too far lost. Come with me instead.”

  I turn my back on him. Focus on Rona. He was wrong I would not find her, and he is wrong about this too.

  Rona is all that matters now.

  “Rona. Rona, listen to me.” There is no way to tell if she does or not. “I am Adem. I have come for you. To take you back to Terath.”

  She remains a limp heap.

  “I have come to bring you back.”

  Nothing.

  A pit starts to form in my chest. She’s not coming.

  “Do you see now, Adem? There is no point to this. You have done what you came for. You have offered her this second life, and she has made her choice. Put an end to this now. Come with me, and we will find something better for you. Something your own.”

  Abazel’s voice carries a sharp edge to it, thin and tense. I push it away and steady myself with slow breaths, trying to slow my shivering shoulders. I just have to keep trying until she hears.

  I lean in close to her so Abazel can’t hear. The rotten stench of the souls is losing its sharp edge. What to say? What could possibly bring her back? She must come. I did not come this far to turn back empty-handed.

  I kneel down, placing my head in the sod inches from hers. Run my fingers over the side of her face, around her slack jaw. “Rona?”

  Nothing. The growing pit in my chest swells with fear. She has to, she has to wake up.

  “Rona!” It comes out in a fierce growl this time, the force of all the fear inside me behind it. I give her head a sharp shake.

  Her sunken lids lift to me. I choke on a gasp and try to keep my hold on the moment.

  I speak softer now. “Rona. Come with me. Now.” But she pulls back into herself. Curls in and buries her head in her knees.

  “No.”

  I stand.

  “No!” I shake her by her thin shoulder. “No. Get up. You have to get up!” Lifeless at my feet. Deathless.

&
nbsp; Abazel’s mocking laugh hangs in the acrid air. Too soon. My back stings, my muscles ache, my entire body shakes from the cold, but I’m not done yet. Nowhere close. I kneel to her side again, put my palm to her face. With my other I take her hand, remembering Ceil’s soothing touch on my own hand. I squeeze it.

  “Rona? I’m sorry, Rona. Please, listen to me.”

  Her lids flutter halfway open.

  “Please Rona, you must come. I cannot leave without you. I cannot face Kythiel and tell him I failed.”

  Her eyes shoot open. “K… K… ”

  The pain, the chill, the desperate clinging—all of it lifts from me like magic.

  “Kythiel? Yes! Kythiel!”

  She bolts upright with speed I could not have imagined she possessed. She turns her head side to side, searching with tense energy. Possessed.

  “He’s not here. We must go. Let’s go, Rona.” I try to reel myself in, contain myself to match her energy, to not do anything that might scare her back within.

  She is on her feet in a second. Wired and alert on weak, wobbly legs. She is too skinny, covered with bruises and sores. Her clothes are tattered and torn. Through one hole I can see the wound she gave herself in the end, a large cut across her middle, a festering gaping raw slice.

  I take her hand. “Come, Rona, I will take you back.”

  “No!”

  It is Abazel, his voice twisting through the haze, sharp and wild.

  I turn to him. He forces his grimace back into its stoic mask. A tight grin stretches over his lips. His eyes are hot and simmering. Feathers twitch in his dark wings.

  “You will never make it back to Terath. It’s a miracle you made it this far.” He’s quiet, but his voice wobbles as if on a tightrope.

  My hand is going numb with cold where it is pressed to Rona’s. The throbbing pain pulses through my wounds with each shiver, through my chest, my toes, and my fingertips.

  “The realm is already angered by your very presence here. And you want to break the Order and bring a soul back to Terath? Break through the barrier again? Can’t you feel it? The waves of your disruption are magnifying.”

  Even as he speaks, a faint rumble shakes the ground under my feet.

  Rona sways, too weak to hold herself steady over the rumbling. I grab her arm to keep her from falling.

  I need to get her out of here. I turn to run.

  I don’t make it one step.

  A force drags me down from behind, shoves me onto my back, and pins me to the cracked dirt. Abazel pulls my head up by the neck of my cloak, his great wings spreading their full length.

  “Where is it? Where is the necklace? I can feel it, I know it’s here,” he hisses.

  All this and he was after the same thing as all the others. It all comes down to the same frenzied attacks.

  But why? What could he possibly want with it?

  “You cannot have it.”

  I have to get away; it’s my only chance. I’m no match for an angel, even on Terath. And right now the pain is taking over and my breaths are rattling in my chest.

  But not without the box. Is this what he wanted all along? Is this why he let me make it so far? I’ve brought it right to him. I can’t imagine what a necklace would do for him, but if he wants it, he surely has something terrible in store. I can’t let him have it.

  I wrestle myself free and swing a punch to his head, sending bolts of sharp pain through my back and down my arm.

  He slams me down into the ground. “It does not belong to you. The humans have no right to have it in their realm. It belongs to Calipher.”

  Calipher? Who is Calipher?

  I kick him away with all the strength I can muster, turn toward Rona.

  Fingers wrap around my ankle, I crash into the ground, rocks scraping under me as he drags me back to him. His knuckles slam into my face and my head rings, a strange vibration that starts between my eyes and waves over my skull.

  This is Abazel weakened?

  He pats me down, hands frantically searching me over. I shake my vision back just in time to catch a double image of his hand ripping the box from my cloak. The demon cackles from the ledge. But his chest is heaving. He’s wearing himself down.

  A gruesome roar stretches over the Pits, and I realize as I leap to the box that it came from me.

  I throw myself at him and we wrestle for it, a blur of shoves and kicks and punches and searing pain, but I push it to the back of my mind. The box is clenched in Abazel’s hand. I reach for it, slamming his arm in the ground to shake it from his grip. Again. Again. But still he holds it tight, holds it as if it is his life. I smash and smash and smash his arm into the ground, he squeezes the box, and finally something gives way.

  The box cracks and bursts open. Shimmering shards of painted wood fly everywhere, and Abazel’s grip loosens for just a flash as the box crumbles, a shimmer of emerald and gold flash inside his hand. I swipe it away fast, before he can react. Broken chunks of wood and cool smooth chain bite into my fist. My other hand brushes against the ground, scoops up as much of the box’s pieces as I can as I turn away and run to Rona. I scoop her into my arms without stopping, running without knowing where to go, just anywhere but here.

  “Stop them.” Abazel’s command is quiet and sharp, huffed out between heaves.

  The demon-shadow rushes toward me, materializes at my side to claws at my fist. I whip my arm to throw it off. A rise of screeches and cackles edge toward the Pits, an army of demons responding to Abazel’s command, a hoard of shadow closing in from all sides.

  Faster.

  The shadows whoosh at us, materialize at my sides to claw, grab, and bite.

  My strength is no match for their speed, rustling through the air and swarming at us from all around. One keeps flying back to my hand, picking at the chain to free the necklace from my fist. I throw it off again.

  I don’t know how long I can bear the strain, the hurt, the cold. But I keep pumping my legs, my breaths heaving and rasping, to propel us forward. Just a little longer. And a little more after that. As long as it takes.

  But then, a faint shimmering in the air at the edge of my eye.

  I pull back, my heels digging into the hard ground, dredging it up in crumbles as I swerve away, so abruptly the demon shadows rush right past us. Rona gasps.

  Is it?

  I squint back at it, strain to find it again.

  Yes. There.

  It’s a glimmer.

  I reach into my cloak’s side pocket and I laugh aloud at my relief as my fingers run over something cool and smooth. The Keeper’s glimmer stone, it’s still there. But there’s no time to waste. I have only seconds before the demons are back on us. I use it to pull out the stone and turn toward our only hope for escape.

  The demons are on top of us again in seconds, surrounding us in whooshing shadows, nipping at my skin.

  Almost there.

  The ground’s rumbles are still growing, the earth cracking and splitting below my feet. It rises through me in panicky quakes, every tremor echoing painfully through my gut, my shoulder, my head, as if my body could just crumble apart.

  I reach the glimmer just in time. I shift Rona onto my shoulder, brace against the pain and chilling cold, and roll the stone over three times between my palms and whisper, “The river.”

  Then I leap toward the glimmer and tighten my arms around Rona.

  A demon materializes at my wrist, grabs on with its claws and digs its teeth into the side of my hand. It shakes violently until my skin tears, until my smallest finger separates from my hand with a sickening rip and pain so strong it edges into my vision. I feel a cry rise against my throat rough and raw, like choking on gravel. My hand seizes and draws back against the pain.

  As the glimmer pulls Rona and me in and the world collapses around us, I glance back just in time to see the demon materialize on the ground, my finger between its teeth and something gold clinking between its claws.

  It got the necklace.

&nb
sp; A vacuum of panic swells in my chest as the glimmer collapses around us.

  Chapter 22

  THE GLIMMER CRUNCHES me down to nothing and throws me into oblivion. I can’t breathe.

  I lost the necklace.

  All these ages I’ve guarded it. All the lives I’ve taken in the name of keeping it safe. And now it’s slipped right through my fingers. For so many years this is exactly what I wished for—to find a way to separate from the box, to leave it behind. And now that it’s gone, all I feel is panic. An emptiness so powerful it blocks out all the pain, all the cold, all the urgency floods me. A blankness stares right back at me from within with the certainty that I’ve just let something awful begin.

  The glimmer spits us out and we tumble to the ground. It’s still rumbling with the realm’s anger, crumbling and splitting from the tension. The river rushes in my ears.

  Next to me, Rona is gasping for breath.

  “Easy. Take it easy.”

  I tuck the box’s leftover pieces into my breast pocket, placing my one still-whole hand on her back. I take deep breaths with her until they are level again.

  Even then, she can’t stop shaking. It’s more than the trembling ground below her.

  “K… K… Kythiel.”

  “Yes. Kythiel.” The rustle of whooshing shadows and demon cackles are rising from the distance. They’re coming. “Rona, we have to keep going.”

  I scoop her into my arms and step to the water’s edge. The river tosses wildly. I’m about to dive into it when a creaky voice reaches out and stops me.

  “Surely even you know better than that, you heap of mud.”

  I whip around. It’s the Keeper.

  He’s rounding the river’s bend, pushing toward us through the choppy waves. I don’t know whether to be relieved or afraid.

  He shoves the boat toward us with a grunt.

  “Are you trying to destroy yourselves? Do you even remember how you got that wound in your shoulder?”