The Ballad of Aramei

by J. A. Redmerski

  Nathan and Isaac are already on their feet again, looking to and from Zia and Harry, wondering what to do and starting to feel like they could care less about Harry’s demand and go for Zia anyway. They remain still; Isaac in so much shock he doesn’t run to help me up like he normally would and I’m in so much shock I can’t get up by myself. I sit on the ground with my back arched forward, my hands holding up my weight.

  Phoebe’s curly raven-black hair is twisted around her face. Her dark eyes are bulging from their sockets as she gasps for air and claws at her throat as if trying to pry away invisible hands she thinks are choking her. Her black claws protrude from her fingertips, but she can’t do anything. She can’t transform and she can’t move.

  Zia drags Alex across the ground on her stomach to the edge of the trap line, knowing that it’s there but she can’t cross it.

  Xavier bursts through the crowd that has gathered away from the trap and runs toward Zia, eyes swirling black. With my keen senses, I can hear his ribs breaking with every thrust of his feet. He’s starting to shift form, but the second he crosses the trap line and into Zia’s realm, it’s like he runs head-on into a brick wall. His body slams into the invisible barrier that Zia created and then he’s sent flying through the air. His back hits the light pole near the pond with so much force that it snaps in half and crashes into the water; sparks spew and sizzle and pop until the light blinks out completely, leaving the landscape bathed in an eerie blue smoking haze.

  Phoebe falls forward, gasping for air. I watch helplessly as the veins in her face come to the surface and implode underneath the skin creating pools of blood around her eyes.

  “You’re killing her!” Isaac roars.

  He starts to move forward again, but Nathan grabs him by the arm and stops him.

  I see Daisy standing near the crowd with Camilla clutched to her side, their faces streaked with tears. Daisy’s probably the strongest one here, but she knows not to shift. I know Harry has drilled this moment into her head over and over again so that when the time came she would know to do nothing. It would be suicide.

  To the amazement of everyone, Zia’s true identity begins to unravel before us. Her short hair grows longer and starkly whiter—I never imagined it could be whiter than it was. The tips of her silky strands seem to shimmer in the darkness, moving unnaturally around her shoulders as though alive. Her eyes glow the brightest pearl-white I have ever seen.

  Sebastian is still on the ground, like me, staring at Zia in such shock that he looks frozen in horror.

  Zia cracks her neck and cocks her head to one side, looking down at Phoebe’s struggling body.

  “A sister for a sister, Isaac?” she says venomously and a terrifying grin spreads across her perfect white face. She reaches out her free hand in front of her and crushes it into a fist. Phoebe’s neck caves in on itself and her body stops moving in a gruesome instant. She slumps over onto the ground, dead.

  An eerie silence falls over us all.

  I can’t look at Isaac because I literally can’t move, but I can feel him, the wrath coming to the surface in a sort of delayed reaction caused by shock. I feel the beast inside as well as inside of Nathan, on the very fringes of control.

  Isaac wants revenge for his sister’s death, but he sucks it down into the pit of his stomach and holds himself back.

  He steps forward and I finally jump to my feet, but he thrusts his hand backward at me and I stay put. It feels like my heart is about to burst. I feel it in my kneecaps and in my toes.

  Harry steps past me to stand with Isaac and Nathan grabs me and holds me still, probably just in case. He’s right to do it. All three of them know that I could make a run for it at any second, trying to get to Alex.

  I can’t bear to watch her die like I just watched just Phoebe die.

  “Who are you?” Isaac says carefully, but something in his tone leads me to believe that he has an idea now of exactly who she is now.

  Zia smiles bitterly and yanks on Alex’s chain, causing her to flip over onto her back, her arms suspended above her head.

  I can’t understand how, but the entire area about thirty feet outward in four directions around Zia seems vaguely brighter than everything else. It’s as if the trap barrier is keeping not only Zia inside of it, but also the strange light that emits from her body, which is similar to the color of her eyes. But it’s faint, just barely noticeable.

  “Is it not obvious by now?” Zia says cocking her head to the other side and looking upon Isaac with mock fascination. “Think back a couple of years. Surely you haven’t already forgotten about Avril. Or—,” she gazes coldly at me and my heart reacts to it by skipping a few beats, “…has Adria helped convince you that it wasn’t your fault that Avril died? That’s what a good girlfriend does, right? She pats you on the back when you’re feeling guilty and tells you all the reasons why you shouldn’t.”

  “Avril was your sister,” Isaac says.

  Zia smiles in answer and jerks Alex’s chain again just to keep her from getting comfortable. “My sister and my Charge.”

  I feel the hope of the situation completely draining out of me. I think back on the story Isaac told me of his ex-girlfriend, Avril, who died after he sired her. And then something Genna Bishop told Isaac once: “They go Dark for endless reasons—pick anything that might make you want to betray your own kind and it could be a reason.” I see now that I have been the source of Zia’s revenge since the night I met Isaac on that dark street after leaving the skate park. She knew I had caught his eye and she wanted to take from him what he took from her.

  A flash of the attack by Sibyl in the car, the one that technically killed me, crosses my mind, too. It was her. It was Zia who was with Sibyl and Viktor that night, the unknown werewolf that Isaac never could identify.

  “But how could she say the word Praverian?” I think to myself, dumbfounded. “She said it! I know I heard her say it. Twice!”

  “The answer is simple, Adria: illusion,” Zia says and I see that I have been so traumatized by this that I let my mind wall down without knowing it. “I didn’t really say it. You just thought I did.” She points her index finger upward, “Oh, and I was the one that wrecked the car with you in it. I was the beastly face staring in at you from the shattered windshield.”

  “You’ve been plotting with Viktor all this time…,” I say, my voice trying to agree with the disbelief in my mind.

  Zia chirps a small laugh, but somehow it still manages to sound spiteful. “I wouldn’t say plotting—I have Viktor by the short n’ curlies. He sired me in exchange for protecting his mindless little human bitch, Aramei. Being what I am, I can only hold illusions for so long.” She rolls her eyes as though that is an unfortunate inconvenience.

  Harry speaks up, “And so you became what they are so you wouldn’t have to maintain an illusion.”

  Zia’s grin just gets bigger with Harry’s voice. It’s like he’s the cherry on top of this massive retributive treat.

  “I should’ve known you were one of us,” she says. “Your attraction to me in the beginning—we’re always more attracted to our own kind. I guess I dodged a bullet with you.”

  Tears are burning my eyes and when I catch Alex’s tortured gaze near Zia’s feet, those tears burst to the surface.

  I can’t lose my sister again.

  I throw my body forward to try and run, but Nathan’s arm is tight around my waist. I wail. “Please! Just let Alex go! Please, Zia!” I can hardly see straight the tears are clouding my vision.

  “I don’t think so,” Zia snaps. “I don’t play that an-eye-for-an-eye bullshit, Adria.” She glares back at Isaac in a sidelong glance. “You take one eye from me and I take two. Consider it interest.”

  “NO!” I slam my body against Nathan’s, over and over again trying to break free from his relentless grip, but I can’t move.

  When my ribs start to break and my skull begins to expand, I’m suddenly rendered immobile and powerless. I can’t shift, just li
ke Phoebe couldn’t and I don’t understand why until I look over and see Harry’s glowing red eyes staring back at me. How is it possible that he can control a full shift in such a way?

  He turns back to Zia and Alex, but it’s Zia who speaks:

  “You know you can’t drink my Soul.” There’s a grim warning in her voice, dancing around maliciously on her grinning lips.

  Isaac moves toward me and looks up at Nathan, “Get her out of here.”

  “What? Wait….No I’m not leaving!” I thrash around in Nathan’s hands.

  “I can’t hold her off much longer,” Harry says and suddenly I realize he’s talking about me. He’s starting to show signs of distress; his eyes open and shut from exhaustion as he does everything in his power to continue holding back my transformation.

  “PLEASE JUST LET HER GO!” I finally break free from Nathan’s grasp, but just fall right into Isaac’s who seems to have been waiting for it.

  As Isaac holds my thrashing, screaming body back, I see Alex on the ground looking at me. Our eyes lock and then in one solid motion, she breaks the chain between the shackles in half and then just as quickly reaches down and pulls apart the ones binding her ankles. Almost a half a second too late, Alex rolls out of the way just as Zia realizes what is happening and she makes it across the trap barrier. Zia’s hand barely brushes through the strands of Alex’s hair, but misses the handful she had been going for to keep Alex inside the trap with her.

  Now Zia is inside of it all alone.

  Chapter 22

  “ALEX!” I SCREAM OUT her name as Isaac lets go of me and I run towards her. We crash into each other’s arms. But the moment is quickly changed when the ground begins to shake and rumble beneath our feet.

  Alex drags me back with her to stand with Nathan and Isaac, who like Harry, can look at no one but Zia.

  Zia falls to her knees and raises her fists in the air and when they come back down against the earth, the ground ripples outward around her in all directions but crashes into the barrier and stops.

  “How is she doing that?!” I shriek.

  Isaac and Nathan fall into each other, almost knocked completely from their feet.

  “Harry do something!” Isaac shouts, grabbing onto my arm and pulling me and Alex towards him.

  Daisy and everybody else are all doing the same to stay on their feet as the ground shakes; some have fled into the woods.

  “I can’t!” Harry yells back. “I told you I can’t reap her!”

  “Why not?” I scream, gripping Isaac and Alex both each in one hand. “That’s what you do! You drink each other’s Souls!”

  Harry, tired of letting Zia do all the damage, stumbles closer to her and makes one violent slapping motion through the air with his hand and Zia falls backward as if his hand had actually made contact with her face. She skids a few feet across the dirt.

  But so does Harry. He falls beside us as if the trap was also helping keep his power from doing much damage inside as it is keeping Zia from doing damage to the outside.

  Harry jumps to his feet and looks back at us, “Not one gone Dark,” he says, out of breath, “If I drink her Soul I drink in her darkness, too!”

  So, this was what he meant earlier when he said there was one thing they hadn’t quite worked out yet.

  Great. Just great!

  From the corner of my eye—and I do a double-take—an old figure with leathery-brown skin and deep-set wrinkles around her eyes emerges from the path on the other side of Zia. Harry and Zia both stop cold and the ground stops shaking in an instant.

  Minna Abrahamsen.

  And then in the snap of two fingers, Harry is gone.

  My head darts all around every which way and Daisy runs out of the crowd to the place he last stood. She runs over and grabs me by the shoulders, “Where did he go? Adria!”

  “I-I don’t know!” I look across the space at Minna, fearing the absolute worst.

  “Not him!” I say, pushing Alex and Isaac away from me and running towards Minna. “What did you do?!”

  I stop just short of Zia’s barrier. My chest heaves with breath, my eyes are wide and panicked.

  “Good to see you, too,” Minna smiles crookedly, “And I appreciate the confidence you have in my abilities, but I didn’t do nuthin’ to the skinny one.” She shrugs her old, decrepit shoulders. “He saw me and did what they all do and got the hell outta Dodge.”

  She dismisses me and shuffles right up to the edge of Zia’s trap; a purse hangs from her right shoulder.

  “Well hello there,” Minna says, wriggling her bony fingers at Zia.

  Isaac and I share the same look of utter shock—how did she know where to find us? Nathan can’t seem to move his muscles anymore and he looks like he’s just come down with a stomach bug.

  “Get away from me,” Zia warns with her teeth clenched. She backs away from Minna, but keeps her pearl-colored eyes on her.

  Minna chokes out a laugh and crosses her arms over her chest. She cranes her neck; the rope-like muscles in her throat stretch bizarrely. She begins to walk the length of the invisible barrier as if inspecting it. “I guess it did work, after all.”

  Isaac and I look right at each other and he’s probably thinking the same thing: What? Was she not sure it even would?

  Zia backs up farther until she can’t anymore and her sadistic, grinning face has fallen victim to trepidation. When Minna reaches down inside the purse she carries and pulls out a jar, Zia presses hard against the back of the barrier like a frenzied cat trying to scratch its way out of a box. “I WILL KILL ALL OF YOU!” Zia roars and with it the wind seems to blow, shaking the leaves of the nearest trees. Her pearl-colored eyes are swirling with white-hot light, the shimmering tips of her hair dance madly in the breeze behind her.

  Isaac and Nathan both push Alex and me safely behind them. We hold our arms around each other so tight that I can feel Alex’s ribs grating against mine. The cold silver of one shackle still locked around her wrist sends painful shivers up my spine.

  Minna begins to chant strange words into the night; her eyes roll back in her head.

  “Don’t let her do this to me, Adria,” Zia yells out to me. Fear has dominated all of her features. “You were my best friend. And I lost my sister just as you did! You should know how I feel!” She screams out the last sentence hoarsely. “Stop her, Adria! Don’t let her do this!”

  My best friend? I shake my head at her, my eyes wide and unbelieving and scared of what will happen to her just the same. I feel the wind drying out my front teeth as I inhale small, rapid breaths through my parted lips. “No, Zia…,” I can’t stop shaking my head and the more I think about everything she’s done, the more rapid my head begins to move side to side. “No…you tried to kill me. You tried to kill Alex and you—.” I look a few feet away from Zia at Phoebe’s dead body lying on the ground, her eyes still open peering at me, lifeless and cold and empty.

  I look back up at Zia, not having to say the words I had started to say about Phoebe.

  When Zia sees that nothing she can say will save her, her fake pleading face becomes something more hateful. Her white hair begins to move in a frenzy above her, like snakes on the head of Medusa, and she brings her arms back behind her, fists clenched. She opens her mouth and an ear-shattering scream is forced from her lungs, sending all of us scrambling farther backward with our fists pressed against our ears. All except for Minna, who remains standing close to the trap, chanting her strange chant. The trap barrier absorbing the movement of the intense sound starts to become visible. It begins to fade in and out like a dull fluorescent light constantly licked by a short in its wires.

  Zia falls to the ground, gripping her head in her tightly-clenched fists. “Cras es Noster!” she says to Minna, pushing the foreign words through her teeth. “You’ll never harvest us all!”

  My eyes grow wider as Zia’s form becomes wispy and transparent. Three, five, six duplicates of her appear and disappear like wind blowing through intricate s
waths of smoke, each one of her ghostly faces screaming out into the infinite night.

  I feel my fingers pressing and shaking against both sides of my face; tears barrel from my eyes.

  And with a great and loud whooshing sound, Zia’s smoke-like body is sucked into the jar in Minna’s hand and all sounds cease to exist except the small clinking of the lid being placed back on the jar and tightened.

  The barrier blinks out indefinitely and all that is left inside the trap is the stirred dirt falling down softly against the ground and around Phoebe’s body.

  No one can speak. Or move. Or do anything for several long, silent moments.

  Isaac breaks the quiet.

  “How did you know?”

  Minna carefully slides the jar swirling with reddish smoke, down into the bottom of her flowery purse. For a brief second, even amid all that has happened and is still happening, I think about how tacky that purse is.

  She tucks the purse back under her arm and pats the side of it once. “Young people amaze me,” she says. “Why don’t you ask that delicious man-cake standing behind you?”

  Everybody looks at Nathan, who still looks sick and depressed. When he realizes everyone is staring at him he shakes off the stun of the moment and holds up his hands, palms up, “What?” The creases between his eyebrows deepen.

  Minna rolls her eyes and whips out a cigarette, placing it between her cracked, leathery lips and it dangles there precariously until she lights it with a Bic. Inhaling deeply, Minna closes her eyes and savors the moment as if that cigarette is the most pleasurable thing she’s ever experienced. She drops her head and opens her eyes as she exhales; smoke filters up and around her lips and creeps into her eyes.

  “Ahhh,” she breathes with a smile. “Knowing that I can smoke forever and it’ll never kill me makes each one taste better than the last—I smoke three packs a day now!” She says this triumphantly.

  “You look like you smoked four packs a day before the Blood Bond,” I say, snarling.

  I find myself constantly looking to the spot where Zia last stood and back and forth to Minna’s purse where she is now and it makes me sad.