Shades of Darkness
Page 23
“I think you should leave,” Jonathan said. “Normally, I wouldn’t have invited someone in like this, not without a more thorough screening. I’d thought you were a little more open-minded than the rest, but seeing as you’re already leading a witch hunt . . .”
He turned and walked toward the door. I didn’t move.
Why didn’t they see? How could I get them to stop? I wanted to rip my hair out. This was it. This was the key. And no one seemed to give a shit.
“You guys . . . you’re killing people. I know you think you aren’t, but you are. I’ve seen it. First hand. What you’re doing is wrong. You have to stop. Please.” It wasn’t until I reached the end that I realized there were tears in my eyes. But the kids weren’t having it. Tina actually looked sad.
“I thought better of you,” she said. “We’re all sad about Mandy and Jane. That’s partially why we’re here. To connect with them. To honor them. I wish you could see that. I wish you weren’t so blinded by your own fear.”
I opened my mouth. I wanted to slap her.
But how could I show them I’d seen the other side? I’d toyed with these powers and felt the full backlash.
“Nothing is free,” I said. “Everything you’re doing has a price. And you’re making other people pay it.”
Jonathan’s hand was on my shoulder. He led me to the door and unlocked it for me.
“I’ll tell them,” I said. “I’ll tell them what you’re doing.”
“And I’ll tell them you’ve read too many fantasies.” He said it with remorse. That was the worst part—he wasn’t vengeful or power hungry. He thought I was actually in the wrong. “I don’t want to play these cards, Kaira, but if push comes to shove I’ll have to recommend you graduate in absentia. After all, with your thesis and the stress you’re under, it would be an easy connection to think you might be inclined to suffer delusions. I don’t want it to come to that. So for both of our sakes, pretend you weren’t here. I’m sorry to have believed in you.”
Then, before I could rebut, he closed the door and locked it.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to kick and pound on the damn door until he opened it. I wanted to do anything I could to interrupt their stupid little ritual. If they went through it again, someone would get hurt. If they were invoking something darker, they might not know what was going on. They might not actually know the price other people were paying. And that ignorance was more dangerous than willful evil.
I stood there for a good fifteen minutes. I couldn’t hear anything on the other side of the door and had no clue if they were waiting for me to leave or had already started. Leaving felt like admitting defeat; worse, it felt like taking responsibility. If something went wrong, if someone got hurt . . . it would be my fault. Because I hadn’t stopped it.
What happened to not getting involved? What happened to graduating and going to college and living a normal life?
The questions were transparent. They didn’t matter, not anymore. I had to stop this. But no one in their right mind was going to believe me. I needed someone at my side to help convince the faculty to make Jonathan leave, or to shut this down. Maybe, if I called my mom, she could do something about this. I needed her, needed someone who could actually take Jonathan down, prevent him from hurting someone else.
Or you need me. The voice wasn’t Munin’s. It was the violet-eyed girl, the goddess with no name. I felt her hands on the back of my neck, a gentle caress. But it wasn’t just her hands. It was Brad’s, as he pulled me close, as he whispered in my ear and pushed her image down.
No one will believe you about this, Brad said. Just like why they would never believe you about me. You didn’t fight against me; you won’t fight against this. You will let them die, Kaira, because you will never stand up for yourself.
I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned against the door, tried to block him out, but he was there, beside me, against me, his cologne in my nostrils and his saliva on my tongue.
Your friends will die because of you, he whispered. And you will run away again. You are weak, Kaira. And you always will be.
“No.”
I don’t know where the word came from, but it didn’t feel like mine. It was a flame in my chest, the tiniest spark in the darkness, the glint of the moon on a raven’s eye. Brad hovered there, in the emptiness, a shit-eating grin on his face.
The flame grew.
“I’m done hiding from you,” I whispered. “I’m done hiding from what you’ve done.”
He stepped forward, reached out to touch me. But he wasn’t alone in the void of my mind. Ethan was there, and Oliver. My mother and Elisa.
And Chris.
“I’m not broken,” I said.
The spark inside grew, became a rage.
“I’m not going to let anyone get hurt because I was afraid. Not again. Not by you, and not by this.”
Brad laughed.
You couldn’t save yourself. How are you going to save anyone else?
“I did save myself,” I replied. There, in the darkness, the violet-eyed girl floated. Waiting for me. “And I’m not going to run away again.”
I opened my eyes, the flame inside me hot, raging. I knew what I had to do.
Or rather, I knew what I couldn’t do again.
I turned and pounded on the wood door over and over until someone finally opened it. It wasn’t Jonathan, it was Kai.
“Kaira,” he said, “What are you doing—”
I pushed past him and into the room. The kids all surrounded the circle, chanting something softly. Jonathan stood in the center of the ring with his arms raised, his head tilted back in invocation.
I didn’t think or call out. I ran headfirst into the circle and swung.
• • •
Darkness.
I knew, in the far corners of my mind, that this was somewhere in between. That the circle had been a gateway of sorts. That knowledge was infinitesimal compared to the man floating in front of me. Jonathan was there in the darkness, frozen, my fist inches away from his face. But it wasn’t Jonathan holding my attention. It was the force behind him. Around him. Within him. A ghostly white light that seethed in the stillness, a haze of snow and shadow that froze me to the bone.
He is coming.
Behind the spectral form of Jonathan appeared the girl. Her violet eyes were sad. Even Munin on her shoulder appeared upset.
“What is that?” I asked. My lips didn’t move, but the thought carried through the silence like a shout.
“The Endbringer,” she replied. “The god your professor has been summoning.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There has always been a balance between the realms of gods and men. Heaven and Hell, Valhalla and Niflheim, Olympus and Hades—they have many names, and they have always been at war for human worship. But this . . . this god, he is not of those worlds. He was cast aside, and now, he desires revenge. With every sacrifice in his name, his power grows. And now, he tries to breach your world.” She looked to Jonathan. “If he breaks free, if he upsets the balance, he will destroy us all.”
The Tree Will Burn. I didn’t understand what that had to do with anything, but I didn’t care, not anymore. I knew what I had to do. The bastard had killed Jane. He wouldn’t kill again.
“You cannot take him as you are,” the girl said, following my thoughts. “You must invoke me.”
“Will I die?” I asked. My voice didn’t waiver as much as it should have.
“In a sense,” Munin said. “But it is the only way the rest will live.”
“Then I’ll do it. I invoke you.”
The girl smiled. There was so much sadness in those lips. Munin cawed and flew from her shoulder, his wings unfolding into a greater darkness as she stepped forward and the world faded to black.
“Our will be done.”
I don’t know why I went to the academics concourse.
I told myself it was because I wanted to take a shortcut to the arts building, to check
out the space for my thesis. I told myself it was because it was cold and windy and dark outside, and the warmth of the concourse made me forget all that. Mostly, though, I told myself it was not because of Kaira. Not because I knew she was there for a tutorial group. Not because I hadn’t been able to get her off my mind all day.
It’s why I ended up skipping the movie. It wasn’t just the wind or the snow or the ever-present darkness. There was something in the air. Something beyond the crows clumped like snow. Something darker. And I knew, somewhere deep down, that it was because of her.
I felt stupid, but I’d had the boys and Elisa drop me off after dinner. It was a bit more of a trek for them but no one questioned the change of heart—we were all in that headspace, when nothing felt right or real. So there I wandered, slowly, down the hall, toward the arts building, and saw her farther on. She leaned against a door and there were tears streaming down her face, her fists balled tight. And she was shaking.
My heart nearly stopped.
There had been way too many tears lately. Too much death. Too much sadness.
I jogged toward her, but as I did so I watched her expression change, watched her face tighten and her fists slam into the door and then she was pounding on it, screaming at the top of her lungs. I called out her name but I know she didn’t hear me. I barely heard myself through the screams of crows outside the window. Then the door opened and she ran in, and everything in my head was crows, and for some reason, with every blink I saw her. My sister. In that ring of sand. I ran faster and pushed into the room.
Everything else was a blur.
The black circle on the floor, ringed with students. Jonathan in the center, his hands upraised as Kaira leaped at him, her fist aimed straight at his face. People were yelling, the crows in my head going wild. And then, the moment her foot stepped over that damned black line, a silence. A pause. Like that great big inhale before the bomb goes off.
And then it did.
There was an explosion. Kaira’s fist smashed into Jonathan as the window smashed open and then there were birds, birds everywhere. Crows and ravens, cawing and screaming and flocking toward the circle. They swarmed it, funneled around like a tornado, like a cocoon of black wings and beaks and flashes of violet light, and the kids around the circle were screaming too, trying to get away, but I was pushing forward. Forward. Pressing through the crows that slashed at my skin and pierced my eardrums and it was more than caws, it was screaming, the screams of a thousand dead and dying, the screams of the damned. I knew those screams. I heard them every time the nightmares came. Every time I heard my sister’s voice.
The birds imploded, collapsed in on themselves and the circle in a whirlwind of shadows. I braced for an explosion, but it never came. Silence rang loud as a gunshot. No birds. No screaming classmates. Just Kaira and Jonathan in the center of the circle.
I fell to my knees at her side and pressed my head to her chest. No movement. No heartbeat.
Jonathan didn’t move either but I was too focused on her. I picked her up in my arms. Her head dangled to the side and all I could see was my sister’s face. Back in the nightmare, back on the beach.
“Kaira, please,” I whispered, holding her close. “Please don’t leave me. Please. Please.”
Something scratched on the tile. I looked up, blinked hard. A bird. But not a crow.The falcon, its golden eyes trained on me.
“Get out of here,” I hissed. “Get out of my head!”
The fucking bird. The bird that was always there, always at the edge of my dreams and vision, saying my debt was yet to be paid.
You must rejoice, the bird said. She has banished our enemy. And now that she is dead, the Aesir will triumph in the battle to come. In our battle. Behind him stood a boy, his skin gold, a halo of daggers crowning his head.
“It’s not my battle,” I said. “I’m not going to fight for you. I’d never fight against her.”
I pushed the bird out of my mind and cradled Kaira close, prayed to every god I knew to bring her back, to make her okay. I can’t lose you. I can’t let you go. Please, don’t let her die. Take me instead.
Kaira gasped.
“Chris?” she asked.
I looked down and stroked her hair. “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Chris, I’m scared. She’s . . .”
Then her eyes closed, her entire body going stiff.
“No! No no no no!” I tried to steady her, tried to get her to calm down. Tried to ignore the sound of ravens in the distance. “Kaira, don’t leave me!”
“I am not Kaira, vessel of the Aesir,” she whispered. “My name is Freyja.”
She opened her eyes. Violet eyes. Then she screamed and curled over, away from me, shook harder.
“Chris,” she moaned. “Chris, please. Save me.”
I reached out to touch her, but she screamed again, and this time the scream was echoed by a hundred ravens, their oily wings bursting from her body. They circled her, swarmed her with shadow.
And when they flew out the shattered window, Kaira was nowhere to be seen.
This book began as a hasty sketch of a tree and a quote in my journal at 3 a.m. in Scotland. It was one of those lines that I knew was important: The Godchild was born in the tangled roots of the World Tree. Since then, the story has undergone countless transformations over three continents. From that initial seed on Scottish soil to plotting on trains across the Norwegian countryside to finishing a few (completely different) drafts in Seattle, the Ravenborn Saga has lived a dynamic life. And that means there are many people to thank along the way.
First, and always, my deepest thanks to my fabulous agent, Laurie McLean, at Fuse Literary. She has been my knight in shining armor every step of the way. Without her knowledge and encouragement, this book would still just be a scribbled page in a forgotten notebook.
Next, to my editor extraordinaire, Michael Strother, and the entire Simon Pulse team, for taking a chance on me and turning this story into a true work of art.
To my mother, for helping me leave the nest before I knew what it meant to fly; I couldn’t have done any of this without you. To my father, for inspiring my love of books and adventure. And to my brother, for showing me what dedication truly looks like.
To Will Taylor, for helping me fine-tune both this book and my life. And being the sparkly unicorn to my . . . opposite of sparkly unicorn. At least in terms of writing.
To Interlochen Arts Academy, for giving me a boarding school experience worth writing about.
To Adam, for groggily listening to plot points on that aforementioned Norwegian train ride (and the rest of that trip).
To my Seattle writing team—Danielle Dreger, Kristin Halbrook, and Danny Marks—for keeping me on track. Or at least caffeinating me.
And finally, to you, my dear readers, for being a constant source of inspiration.
©Kindra Nikole Photography
Alex is many things, but first and foremost, he’s a Sagittarius.
Originally from small-town Iowa, he sent himself to arts boarding school to study writing at age sixteen. This school may or may not resemble Islington. He hasn’t stopped moving since. In the past few years he’s taught circus training in Amsterdam and Madrid, gotten madly lost in the Scottish wilderness, drummed with Norse shamans, roughed it in the foothills of New England, and received his masters in creative writing from Glasgow University. And that’s the abbreviated list.
When Alex isn’t writing or climbing things or studying some esoteric lore, he’s probably outside with a coffee in hand, trying to find a new adventure. As he currently lives in Seattle, there is coffee (and adventures) aplenty.
Follow his travels at arkahler.com or on Twitter @ARKahler.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition March 2016
Text copyright © 2016 by A. R. Kahler
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kahler, A. R.
Shades of darkness / A. R. Kahler. —First Simon Pulse hardcover edition.