I was still sprawled on the ground mesmerized by what had just had happened. Brent pulled me to my feet.
“We’ve got to go get our bodies while he’s still weak.”
“I may not be as strong as I was, but I’m still stronger than you,” Thomas spit out. The earth protested beneath me as Thomas gathered all his power to him, preparing to fight.
My feet were awkward and kept tripping as I followed Brent’s lead. I clutched Brent’s hand so tight our skin felt molded together. The darkness behind us was tipping the earth, twisting the ground, rolling the dirt.
Cherie stood at the edge of campus, a frozen sentry guarding our soulless bodies. We were only feet from her when a friendly voice called to Brent.
“Brent, please don’t run from me.”
Brent dropped my hand as his body spiraled around.
“Neal?” He exclaimed.
“Brent,” I begged, “we have to keep going.” The undeniable déjà vu of the moment made me dizzy. “Remember my dream?”
Brent’s body was stiff but he shook his head for a moment trying to clear his fuzzy mind before his eyes glassed over, appearing vacant.
“Neal needs me,” he explained, his voice hollow, pointing toward his brother who now stood out amongst the spirits that made up the mist.
“That’s right, Brent.” Neal smiled with his mouth, but it never reached his brown eyes. “Come to me.” He extended his finger, motioning for Brent to move closer.
“I can’t leave her,” Brent explained, gesturing toward me.
Neal beckoned Brent closer. “That’s alright. You can bring her with you.”
Brent smiled at me like this was the obvious solution as he pulled me to him. My already racing pulse quickened when the memory of my nightmare flashed in my mind, another nightmare coming true. Struggling against his strong embrace did no good; he simply hoisted me off the ground, dragging me forward. Neal and Thomas smiled at Brent encouragingly the closer we got, Neal murmuring persuasively about how much he missed him, his deadly siren song luring him in.
“Brent, we need you to take her necklace off and give it to us,” Neal said in a cooing, honey-smooth voice.
Without hesitating, Brent reached out, yanking my necklace hard enough for the chain to snap, the broken pieces of it plinking onto the hard, dry earth. Something inside me splintered at Brent’s betrayal and I crumbled as my vision blurred.
Thomas was going to make me part of his mindless army. I was going to join ranks with the other souls he had captured. I lay prostrate on the unforgiving earth, my hands flat in front of me. I could feel a steady rhythmic pulsing against my palm and realized my hand had come to rest over one of the fallen beads. Several things clicked together in my mind as the warm bead beat against my skin. I remembered the floral plant buds inside the necklace were meant to protect pure spirits from evil ones and how contact with it had weakened Thomas. As I lay atop the scattered pieces, the seedling of an idea formed in my mind. I kept my head down, resting on my forearms, while my fingers began stealthily gathering up the broken bits of my necklace.
“Stand her up,” Thomas ordered Brent, who roughly set me on my feet.
Thomas’s look of triumph was more than I could bear and I dropped my chin in submission. There was a loud ringing in my ears, a pounding against my skull and goose pimples rising on my skin as the darkness of the mist pressed in on me. The tinny taste of fear coated my tongue and my sweat-soaked fingers trembled.
Thomas opened his mouth to speak and I dove at him, pushing him backward, with me on top of him. His jaw hung slack in surprise and I took my chance, shoving the necklace fragments into his mouth. With every ounce of strength I had, I forced his mouth shut while slapping my other hand over his lips, not allowing him to spit them out.
The smell of singed hair and flesh permeated the air as he sizzled from the inside out. Writhing under my weight, Thomas threw his head back and the green of his eyes rolled up, leaving an empty white space staring at me. His fist smacked across my jaw and my head swung to the side as hot pain seared my face. Brent was beside me in an instant, catching Thomas’s hands, pinning them above his head.
Thomas’s chest collapsed into a dark crater where souls erupted free with a wet slurping sound that made me cringe. Released spirits hovered around him, shapeless and lost, confused at their sudden freedom after decades of imprisonment. With blinding brilliance, the white light reappeared, its rays shimmering enticingly toward the newly freed souls.
“No!” Thomas screamed from between my fingers as one of his former minions took a step toward the light. He struggled in a desperate attempt to regain control, but he was too weakened by the pankurem plant concealed within the beads trapped in his mouth. One by one, the boys stepped into the light, and were tucked into its embrace, the light restoring their frame from vapor into the young men they had once been, the blank expressions replaced by looks of pure joy.
As each spirit vanished, Thomas’s inhuman screams became more horrible. Thomas was transforming as well. Far from the threatening monster he had been only minutes before, he now lay stripped, reduced, and pathetic. Despite all that he had done, the murder and enslavement of dozens of young men, my heart twisted with pity and tears slid down my face as I listened to his pleas for mercy.
“It burns,” he cried. “Please stop! I swear never to take another body again!” On and on his promises went as he begged and bargained, promising me he would change his ways if I would just show him compassion.
His desperate pleas tugged at my heartstrings. I wanted to believe that people could change, and for a moment my hands loosened as I contemplated showing him leniency. Sensing what I was doing, however, Brent forced them back with a firm shake of his head.
“Yara, we have to finish it. There are some still trapped,” he said, softly but firmly, his eye shining with the same agony that my heart felt. Brent kept his trembling hand over mine, lending me support, as the remaining victims of the curse were sucked from Thomas. He now lay panting on the ground, a withered old man with thin hair, seeming too weak to even stand.
When the last spirit wrenched itself from his control, I pushed away from Thomas, shaking, disgusted and emotionally scarred. My stomach curdled and I dry-heaved, leaving an acidic taste in my mouth that I tried to wipe away with the back of my hand.
I was still trembling and needed Brent’s arms around me. Looking around frantically, I thought for a horrible moment he had gone into the light with the other spirits. I soon found him, though, standing a ways off with his brother. He and Neal were huddled together hugging and talking quietly to each other. Sensing me watching them, they both looked my way and Neal gave me a smile that was a twin of Brent’s charismatic grin. He leaned toward Brent and whispered something before turning back to me with one last smile. He hugged Brent before walking straight into the light.
With the last soul in its embrace, the light quietly shrunk to a small pinpoint, then vanished, leaving me blinking in the dark night. There were no stars in the sky but I could see Brent perfectly as he stared silently at the spot where his brother been, his eyes glistening. He angled away from me and I pretended not to notice him rubbing the tears from his eyes.
“Brent?” I called timidly, wanting to offer support but not force it.
My voice seemed to snap him back into the moment. He straightened, rolled his shoulders a few times as he composed himself, then turned to examine the remnants of Thomas, who was still curled up pathetically. Thomas’s eyes swung toward Brent, his expression wild as he watched Brent advance. When Brent was only a few feet away, Thomas suddenly roared, his face becoming crimson, and he morphed into a thin veil of fog.
Brent was prepared for this; his arms were thrown wide, conjuring a miniature cyclone out of the formerly still air. Thomas, weakened as he was, couldn’t fight back, even in his fog form, and his essence was trapped in the circular frenzy.
“You got him!” I shouted.
Brent shook his h
ead. “Maybe, but I’m not sure what to do with him.”
“I know where to put him.” I lifted my finger and one of my herb-laced vials that had been hidden in the nook of a tree floated toward me. “In here.”
I coaxed the stopper out of the glass and held it out for Brent who smiled in satisfaction. “If that isn’t poetic justice, I don’t know what is,” he said, pointing his finger toward his small twister and guiding Thomas’s fog toward the bottle.
Like a genie forced into its lamp, Thomas was funneled into his glass prison. Brent put the cork cap into place and made the vial levitate in the air. He walked completely around it, inspecting it
Thomas’s hatred radiated from the bottle like poisonous venom. His inky consciousness glittered lethally in the fading light. The smoke swirled and twisted like tentacles until finally Thomas’s face appeared, warped in a grotesque haunting grimace as he pushed against his glass prison, trying to escape, the vial barely rattling.
Brent and I may not have been able to read each other’s minds anymore, but he could still tell from my expression what I was thinking. “It’s over, Yara. We won.”
I gulped; I had the overwhelming sensation that what we had done wasn’t enough. I’m not sure what I had expected, maybe a fairy tale ending where a magic wand fixed everything, including all the darkness we had been through.
But this was no fairy tale. Nothing could bring back the thirty boys that had died. Nothing could take away the grief that had torn their family’s hearts into shreds. Experiences like this, I realized, are wounds that never quite healed; they stayed with you and no amount of justice would erase the scar.
“Yara? Are you okay?” Brent asked, touching my shoulder gently. “So . . . your grandma’s necklace, huh?” I nodded. “Who
knew?’
“She did.”
“Yeah, she did.” Brent smiled. “She’s sort of my new hero.”
“Mine, too.”
I shook off my previously morbid thoughts and turned to him with a wan smile. He rocked back and forth on his feet as he chewed on one of his nails, contemplating me. We just stared at each other, there not being words profound enough to encompass what we had just done. It had changed us. I felt different, like I had gained something, but been robbed of something as well. In Brent’s eyes, there was a deeper maturity, a travel-worn wisdom and depth that flecked the brown of his eyes. It made him more rugged, more beautiful but at the same time it gave me a pang of sorrow to see.
“I guess we should get back to our bodies,” he offered.
“Yeah,” I agreed shuffling from foot to foot.
Cherie still stood on the edge of campus, frozen in time, her face showing the traces of fear she had been bravely trying to hide. Steve sat beside Brent’s vacant body. I dove back into my body, the familiar icy chill snapping over me as time started moving forward at a snail’s pace. Cherie and Steve began moving, each blink and action slow, like a stop-motion movie. Our times were still out of sync as I crossed the campus divide and grabbed Brent’s body under his armpits. Drag marks cut across the rocky path as I brought him across the barrier line. Brent reconnected with a luxurious sigh, like sinking into a warm bath.
“We did it,” I whispered to Cherie.
Steve sat upright, looking around in confusion before leaping at Brent and catching him in a chokehold in case I had failed.
Cherie jumped to see me no longer by her side but in front of her dusting myself off. “How? Oh . . . is it over?” Cherie asked. “Just like that? Did it work?” She sent a suspicious look to Brent who was yelling at Steve to let him go.
“Yeah, it’s really Brent now.” I answered, fingering my throat where my necklace should have been. The real necklace had snapped with its spirit-twin.
Steve released Brent with an apologetic grin and swatted him on the back with a manly grunt.
“Ugh.” Brent smacked his lips. “What did you give me to drink?”
“A vile concoction of whiskey laced with black licorice and Brazilian herbs,” Cherie said. “Yara’s grandma said alcohol was the best way to dissolve and mask the flavor of the herbs.” Then Cherie launched into the details of our plan, from her fight with Steve to the clandestine meetings with my sister.
“I knew I couldn’t trust you to not do anything stupid,” Brent said half-heartedly. “I think he stretched out my body, it feels different,” he complained lifting his arms and stretching his legs. “It wasn’t meant to house thirty souls.”
Cherie then threw her arms around my neck, hurling questions at me. She finally noticed my monosyllabic responses and got the message I wasn’t ready to talk. She rather conspicuously tugged Steve away, leaving Brent and me alone.
A heavy silence hung in the air but I didn’t feel the need to speak. I picked up the scattered pieces of my necklace, carefully rubbing them across my palm, wiping the dirt from them, and stuffing them in my pocket. Brent grasped the vial in his quivering hands, his head bent.
“You saved my life again,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’ll never be out of your debt now.”
“It wasn’t me. We did it,” I corrected.
“I’m beyond grateful, Yara, but you weren’t supposed to take that sort of risk for me. I didn’t want you to.” He stood in front of me, his eyes still overly red from crying. He tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear then let his hand rest on my cheek, his thumb fanning softly across my face. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “What would I have done if you were killed permanently this time? Why would you do that?”
“You already know why,” I said, looking away and stepping back. I remembered too clearly how he had reacted to my declaration of love and how he had shied away from our potential kiss in my room. I was a smart enough and had enough pride not to want to repeat those experiences. I shrugged. “It was the right thing to do.”
The scarlet clouds on the horizon reminded me of blood. I pivoted away from them, shivering and taking a few steps into the groves. Brent caught my wrist and I curved toward him.
His rich brown eyes were dark, solid, no trace of jade; it was fully him. He looked like he wanted to say something but his jaw tensed and instead he let his hand travel from my elbow to my hand, the strong pulse from his fingers like a balm to my injured soul. I raised our entwined hands and placed them over the steady thumping of his heart a twin of the rhythm in my own chest. I pressed my head to his chest letting the steady pace of his heart and his citrusy, musky scent envelop me, lull me into a place of security. A place safe enough that I didn’t have to pretend I was okay. I failed to sniff back the tears that began to leak from me.
I should have been happy. I should have been relieved. I should have felt like celebrating, but I didn’t feel any of those things. I felt weak, fragile and helpless because all I could do was cry.
Brent put his arm around me whispering, “I know.” I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with the fact that we had conquered Thomas, if he knew the real reason I had risked so much to save him, or if he understood why I was crying. I decided it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was holding me.
Chapter 18
A few days later, Cherie and I were in our room doing a complex pre-homecoming dance grooming ritual. All it really involved was snacking and getting ready with greater care than normal. Beauty supplies were strewn across our floor and cluttering our desks.
“So what did he do with the vial? Bury it?” Cherie asked.
“No, he bought a small padded safe for his room. He’s afraid to let it out of his sight.”
“Well, I don’t blame him.” Cherie shuddered. “So Brent was pretending to be hypnotized by the mist?” She asked before taking another big bite of her green apple.
“He said when I reminded him of my dream, he came up with a plan. That’s why he didn’t give them the necklace, but broke it, spilling the beads. He trusted me to know how to use them.” I removed the cotton from between my toes. I held out my foot, wiggling my toes as I examined the
pale pink color.
“Why did I miss all the fun?” She complained, twisting the stem of the apple before it snapped off.
“You had the important job of guarding our bodies.”
Cherie guffawed at me and ended with a snort. “Lot of good I was, being frozen in time and all.” She tossed her apple core and the broken stem into her trashcan. “So even though Brent’s alive, you’re still going to the dance tonight with Dallin, huh?”
I plugged in my curling iron and laid it on my desk on top of a ratty blue hand towel. “Yeah, and Brent’s going with Sara. Thomas had asked her.”
“Oh.” Cherie cleaned her hands with a wipe and threw it in the trash. She patted her hands dry on her jeans and then took her blonde hair and piled it on top of her head, twisting so she could observe herself from every angle. Grabbing one of the bobby pins on her desk, she stuck it into the curls then grabbed some more, putting a them in her mouth.
“Why didn’t you both dump your dates and go together?” Cherie asked around the bobby pins pressed between her lips.
“Dallin doesn’t deserve that.” I guided the curling iron down a section of my hair. “Besides, Brent didn’t ask me to the dance. He seemed overjoyed that he gets to go with Sara.” I tried to swallow down the bitterness in my voice but it got caught in my throat by a lump of rejection. “I mean, sure, I risked my life to save him, you know. No big deal. So glad I saved him so he could date other girls.”
“Let’s not forget that you agreed to go with Dallin after Brent had protected you from the mist all those times.” Cherie coaxed a curl into place with her finger then made it stay with another pin. “And he was also willing to give up getting his own life back and freeing his brother to keep you from harm.”
“That was different . . .” I said defensively.
“Maybe not to him,” Cherie pointed out with a shrug.
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