Zero Rising: Soldier of Light Chronicles Book 3

by Ireland Gill

  Just then I saw Jaxon's arms wrap around Hayden's neck, lifting him to his feet and arching his back, but he was no match for my angel. Hayden pumped his elbow twice into Jaxon's chest and stomach, making his grip loosen. Hayden turned and right-hooked Jaxon in the jaw, then grabbed the mug from the table and shattered it on top of his head, forcing him to fall back onto the floor against the wall. I could hear them both heaving for air, along with the sounds of pieces of glass clanking onto the tiles.

  I could see all of these things clearly now, and my eyes could finally focus on Jaxon's expression again. It was worn and pitiful, but his eyes were closed. I couldn't see who he was at that moment. He was slumped over and coughing while Hayden advanced toward him. Fear struck me again.

  “Stop!” I found my voice. “Don't hurt him!” I cried out to Hayden.

  Hayden didn't stop, as if ignoring me. I watched him kneel down next to my brother and lift one of his eyelids carefully. I caught a glimpse of the deep, brown eyes of the Jaxon I knew.

  “He's been possessed,” Hayden said, still panting. He said it as if he'd expected it and didn't even need to see my brother's eyes. I should have known he knew exactly what we were up against since he’d already seen this before. He’d already had to protect me from my own brother many years ago. And those were memories I no longer had. They were only stories.

  “Blane! Indigo!” Hayden called frantically as he rummaged through the coat closet for something. “Where the hell are they?”

  I realized the only one who’d be able to hear Hayden would be Blane, since Indigo and Luka were nowhere near the house. I couldn't keep my eyes off of my brother's as I waited for his to open again, on their own. I sat up carefully and grunted at the pain in my head and back. I felt faint for a moment. Hayden rushed over to me and I felt him lift me to a sitting position. He must have gotten into the freezer without my realizing because I winced when he held an icepack to the back of my head. But still, my eyes didn't leave my brother.

  Finally, there was movement, and I saw Jaxon lean over, groaning and opening his eyes. They were still his; the eyes I knew. He looked directly at me and winced, an apologetic look upon his face. “What have I done?” he whimpered. “What's wrong with me?” His eyes filled with tears.

  Hayden rushed over to the bottom of the steps this time and yelled for Blane again, shaking his head, aggravated.

  I forgot about my pain and started to crawl over to my brother cautiously, as tears ran down my face. I was so afraid for him and I wanted to save him, no matter what I had to do.

  “Evika, no!” Hayden yelled at me, leaning over and grabbing my shoulders.

  I tried shrugging him off, but his grip was too strong. “Let me go!” I yelled. I focused on my brother again and watched him sit up stiffly.

  “I......I...can't keep it away, Evika. I'm...so..sorry. I can't....hold it off.” Jaxon squinted for a moment, jerking from something that seemed to hurt him. “Something's inside of me,” he looked at me desperately. “And...it wants...you.”

  “The Phantom,” Hayden said declaratively. “It’s been hiding in Jaxon since it left Rose’s body. I should have seen this coming from a mile away,” he said angrily. I turned to him and saw his face, looking at me with a face a guilt. “Evika, it's not safe for you two to be together right now.”

  I heard his words and they pierced me hard. “No!” I shouted at him. “Don't say that! We can fix this!” I cried.

  Instantly, I was struck with the guilt of everything that had happened. If it wasn't for me demanding so many things and changing the rules, my brother would have been safe. I looked back at Jaxon. He weakly rose to his feet as Hayden lifted me to mine.

  “He's...right, Evika. I can't -” he winced, “be around you. This isn't....safe.” He choked out his words.

  “Hayden, do something!” I cried to him. I’m not sure what I wanted my angel to do. I just knew I wanted him to have all of the answers for me.

  Jaxon started trembling as he tried to stand. “It's not safe. I...I can feel it.” Jaxon battled with himself for the first few steps he'd meant to take toward the foyer.

  “No! Jaxon! No!” My vision was blurry as I reached out for him, stumbling on my feet as I was held back by Hayden's strength.

  “No!” I screamed as I shoved him away.

  “It’s not safe, Ev. I ha-I have to leave,” he said quietly, but sternly. “I can't let it....get to you. I won't let that happen. Not. Again.”

  Jaxon swung open the front door, and just then, his back arched and he screamed in agony. I tried to focus my eyes to look closer and saw something fly through the air, hitting him in his back, this time forcing his arms to swing up after his releasing another bloodcurdling scream.

  Knives. Blane’s knives were being thrown directly into Jaxon’s body. Two in his back, then one in each of the back of his thighs, meaning to stop him from taking that last step across the threshold.

  I watched him stumble, trying to walk through the door, fighting the urge inside of him; the thing that wanted me. It was slow motion, what I saw next. Jaxon turned, part of his face glistening with his own tears, those innocent eyes staring into mine one last time before the light in them went out. I instantly squeezed my eyes shut as I saw his body teeter, ready for sound his body would make once it hit the floor. But I heard no such sound.

  I opened my eyes to see Indigo over the threshold of the doorway, crouched down and holding the weight of my brother’s lifeless body. He slowly brought Jaxon to the floor, still keeping his arm nooked under his neck.

  “Jaxon! NO!” It was a guttural sound – words shooting from my throat as I watched his glassy eyes spill the last of his tears across his cheek. Then they closed, and I went blind from the wave of despair and panic, dropping back down to the floor again as my knees gave out.

  Pain. An instant pain in my heart; worse than I'd ever felt before in my entire life. Except this pain felt familiar, as if I’d already known this type before. Well, because I did.

  An incomprehensible sound full of anguish escaped my throat, realizing my brother was truly gone. I felt like I'd died all over again. Jaxon. Was. Gone. Just as quickly as he'd entered my life – he was ripped away once more.

  “We’ve got to get him to the Council before these wear off,” I heard Blane panting as he jumped off the stair railing into the foyer next to my brother. He knelt down and lifted one of Jaxon’s eyelids. “Only have so much time before I have to sedate him again.”

  “Yes. We must get him there safely,” I heard Indigo say.

  A moment of hope fell upon me right then. My brother wasn’t dead after all. Hayden moved next to me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, guiding me to sit up. I had a sudden burst of energy and brought myself to my hands and knees, crawling over to my brother in a panic. I stroked his hair gently, almost afraid to break him.

  “What did you do to him?” I whimpered to Blane.

  “That thing is trapped inside for now.” The Phantom Hunter removed a knife from Jaxon’s back. He then slid up the t-shirt to check the mark. There really was no mark, except for a small rip in the clothing. No blood or wound.

  It was exactly as Blane had told me – the knives only hurt the malevolence inside the human, not the human. He pulled out a small tin from his back pocket, taking out a tiny, black bandage just big enough to cover where the knife had entered the body. He did this for all four of the marks. “Can’t get out until we let it. These start to fade in color when the sedation starts wearing off.”

  My brother wasn’t dead. He was being protected – protected by the man who’d been brought to this realm to do his job. He hunted and captured the Phantom.

  “And then?” I didn’t even know Hayden had been behind me. I hadn’t even noticed his hand on the small of my back as I’d watched Blane take care of my brother.

  “And then we’ll have to sedate him again. But we need to get him to the Council. He’ll be safer there until we figure out what to do with this
piece-of-shit demon inside of him.”

  My body stiffened, and my eyes jerked to look at Blane.

  “Demon,” I breathed the word out hardly audibly.

  Blane was never a man I’d ever expect to speak tenderly – not without some sort of jab or smartass comment that always reminded you he had that chip on his shoulder – but his expression softened as he met my stare.

  “Your brother is strong enough. He’ll survive this again.” And then he gave my arm a light squeeze, removing his hand just as quickly as he’d offered it, as if afraid someone had seen him show tenderness.

  “But the Phantom is stronger now,” I argued.

  Indigo took his free arm and placed his hand on mine. “So is your brother.”

  I heard Hayden kneel behind me, setting the ice pack against my head once again. “And so are you,” he said.

  I wanted to believe them. All three of them. I wanted to trust that whatever hope they had, it was enough to help us get through this mess. Enough to get my brother back, and to keep him safe.

  Indigo slowly slid out from under my brother’s weight and had Blane toss him a pillow from the couch to put under his head.

  “I’m going to go get Luka and let him know the news.” Indigo’s voice sounded so much smaller than usual. It was as if he’d been ashamed that any of this had happened at all. Or afraid that this was somehow his fault. I watched him walk out the door with his head hanging.

  I studied Blane’s hands as he put the lid back on the tin and back into his pocket. They were covered in blood, and I knew it couldn’t have been Jaxon’s.

  “What happened to your hands?” I reached for them, feeling the dry rugged skin of his palms.

  He balked at my touch, then pulled them away. “It’s not from my hands.” He nodded down at Jaxon. “Your brother waltzed out of the room this morning and bashed me in the head with a fucking paint can. Knocked me out pretty good.”

  “Jeez, man.” Hayden stood over Blane to take a look at the wound. “I’ll get you a rag and some ice.” He went into the kitchen, and the Phantom Hunter followed.

  I heard them talk briefly about the next steps, how we’d get permission to transport Jaxon with Indigo back to the House of Council as a “faster” means of getting him there quicker, and in order to avoid human eyes.

  I stayed on the floor by my brother, moving his right leg out of the way to close the front door. I slid up against it after it shut, tucking in my legs and wrapping my arms around them. That was when the light rain started. I hadn’t noticed when Hayden was at my side again. I only felt my chest tighten and my head throbbing as I leaned into Hayden’s arms, lying in them limply.

  “We'll fix this,” he assured me with a whisper as he knelt next to me. “This isn't his fate. I'm sure of it.”

  I heard him, but I had nothing to say as I kept my eyes on the still body of my possessed brother. I knew Hayden was right. It wasn’t my brother’s fate to die this way.... Because it was mine.

  Chapter Eighteen Another Dance with the Devil

  It was like a freshly sealed wound getting ripped open again, the pain of knowing my brother had been taken over by a Phantom; a dybbuk of the dark world, something over which even Alysto had no control, or so we thought. My heart was ripped out of me, yet again. I knew Jaxon wasn't dead, but he was being suppressed by the darkness of the Phantom and his life would not continue until he was saved. But how was I supposed to save him? How were we supposed to save him?

  One fact we knew for sure, the Phantom was the one inadvertently created by my own father; the evil that was lurking for many years just waiting for us to screw up so it could bait us and reel us in. My father had warned me about this creature and keeping Jaxon safe meant also keeping him near me which, in turn, was blinding me from the dangers I should have seen coming. It had searched the earth for so long trying to get to me, to rid of me, and now it was time. It finally found me and used Jaxon against me, just like my father had predicted.

  All of these lies, these secrets, were all in place to keep this moment from occurring and now, it was happening. My life was unraveling just as fast as it was threaded together in the year that had passed. All the pieces I'd finally acquired to understand my puzzled life were getting ripped away from me again. All I could do was grasp onto whatever I had left and to hold onto the little hope that hadn't faded away before it was all gone forever.

  I looked over at the kitchen chair and saw something draped over the seat. It was Jaxon's favorite gray hoodie. I walked over to it and yanked it out of the bag, pulling it over me. The sleeves were so much longer than my arms. I let the excess material drape over my hands and fold over, pulling them up to my face and inhaling the scent left on the sweatshirt. It still smelled like his cologne. I felt the tears coming as my back slid against the wall and I sank to the floor. I held my knees into me as I let the shock wear off and the tears come.

  Guilt seeped in again. For so many reasons. I could see things so clearly then; this was all my fault. I’d run for the bait - my mother’s murderer – while it got everyone to split up, distracted from the true event that had been planned: The possession of my brother.

  “We have to call to Alysto,” I said to Hayden.

  “What?” He was cleaning up the pieces of the shattered mug on the floor. “And why the hell would we do something like that, Evika? He's the enemy.”

  I didn't want any involvement with Alysto after that one encounter. It was bad enough that it had taken me so long to rid of the darker parts the lingered in me. I became frantic, but I tried keeping my composure in order to debate.

  “Because, if this thing has the ability to get to a live, innocent human, and now kill them after possessing them, then there is no telling how powerful it can become. Alysto wouldn’t want that. Maybe he knows a way,” I said, wiping the tears away.

  “That’s a crazy idea and you know it.” Hayden shook his head. “He won't help us.”

  “Why do you think he won’t?”

  “How do you even think he would?”

  My head lowered, and I pulled Jaxon’s hoodie closer to my face to inhale it again.

  I looked down at my wrist and slid down the ponytail holders I wore on my wrist to cover up my birthmark. I thumbed circles over the skin, noticing a burning sensation within the mark, much like it felt when I’d pushed the devil away to end the dream, which I later realized wasn’t a dream at all. He’d been very much real, standing in the yard behind my home. I wondered if I could bring him to my world again.

  Hayden stopped sweeping up the glass fragments and looked over at me with suspicion in his eyes. Then he laid the dust pan and broom on the floor and walked over to the chair closest to where I’d been sitting.

  “I feel like there’s more you haven’t told me,” he said.

  And there it was; the moment of truth right before me that would reveal itself between us. The moment that may break everything between us. The moment that I never wanted to arise. I swallowed hard. He was right. I hadn’t told him about the conversation between Alysto and myself the night he’d entered my dream; the night he claimed I’d called to him. I’d destroyed the dreamcatcher, but that didn’t matter. There was part of me that, no matter how much Luka kept trying to convince me didn’t exist, was actually a darker fragment to which Alysto called. It was a part of myself that I’d feared for so long, and I’d even let it consume me so deeply I’d done unimaginable things to my mother’s murderer. But they were true feelings. They were human feelings. Dark or evil, they were real. Just like any average human. But for some reason, the Keeper of the Wicked saw something different about me. Something that fascinated him. I wanted to use that to my advantage.

  Oh God. Oh God. My stomach contorted into knots as I tried to find the right way to tell him. “Do you remember a few months back when I came to your room that night, and you’d asked me if the dreams were back?”

  There was a short silence between us before he responded.

  �
��Yes. I remember.” He kept his eyes on mine and reached out for one of my hands. “It was the night you stood in the doorway. You seemed scared of something.”

  I took a long deep breath, then blew the air out of my lungs entirely before speaking again. I was stalling.

  “That was the night that I was visited by Alysto.”

  Hayden’s brow furrowed. His hands started to pull away. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  I shuddered. “I mean Alysto was able to contact me inside a dream. But...then it wasn’t a dream after all. I saw what he is, but also what he used to be.” I searched Hayden’s blank expression, unable to determine if my words were making any sense to him. “He said he had the help of a rogue angel.”

  Hayden’s lips pursed as he backed away. “That dreamcatcher.” He said it with conviction.

  I felt my body stiffen as I watched and prepared myself for his reaction. Finally, I was able to move, so I nodded slowly.

  “Okay.” Hayden’s eyes narrowed as he stood. “Let me get this straight.” He then started to pace. “You mean to tell me that you’ve kept that quiet all this time? Since before I Faded?”

  It stung to hear him say those words – the fact that I’d kept something from him, but also that he’d mentioned the timing of it being before his Fading for me.

  He continued. “You mean to tell me that the devil made contact with you and you completely ignored the fact that you promised you’d never push me away again? That you’d not keep shit to yourself anymore?”

  My eyes welled up with tears. There was hurt all over again. Another round. “It was only once. I was sleepwalking and came right inside, right to you. I thought it was a dream.”

  “But then it wasn’t! Goddammit, Evika! Do things like trust and promises mean absolutely nothing to you?” He flailed his arms in the air. “He could have hurt you!”

  “But he didn’t!” My throat burned after the words came out. “He didn’t hurt me.”