Revenant

by Catrina Burgess

  An even more disturbing thought entered my mind. Or is he talking about Gage? Would he understand that Gage had taken control of my emotions and mind? I’d been helpless as Gage forced me into the role of his fiancée—no, his wife. That word stopped my protest before it reached my lips. I’m Gage’s wife. We completed the dark wedding ceremony.

  Caleb—no, Luke—reached out, grabbed my arm, and pulled me roughly to my feet. His expression was hard, cold, and angry. It was an expression I’d never seen on Luke’s face before, but it was one that I often saw Caleb wear when he looked at me.

  “You’re hurting me,” I hissed, trying to pull myself out of his grasp. The old mage, Walter, who had taught me the spell to transfer Luke’s spirit into Dean, said that if Luke transferred bodies more than once, there was a chance he could come back wrong. Sometimes the spirit would change and morph into something…not quite right.

  His fingers tightened. “I thought you loved me, but you care for him. I saw you kissing him…being with him. Did you make love to him?”

  Had he been spying on me? I turned my face away, ashamed. I didn’t know which one of them he was talking about, but I no longer cared. I just wanted to get away.

  “I never stopped loving Luke—you,” I whispered.

  “I don’t believe you,” he hissed. His eyes blazed with so much anger. I twisted out of his grasp and he made another grab for me. When his fingers touched my wrist this time, I screamed out in pain.

  “You’re burning me!”

  I fell back, uncontrollable tears streaming down my face, my wrist still feeling like it was pressed against hot coals. I looked at his hands. They were on fire. Reddish-orange flames slid along his fingers and down his arms. He was creating hellfire. He looked at me, hatred still in his eyes. He looked as though he wanted to hurt me.

  “Luke…don’t do this,” I pleaded, cradling my burned arm.

  He was standing over me, looking like he wanted to kill me. I knew something was off. This wasn’t Luke’s nature.

  Luke had always been in control of his anger. When the darkness had run through his blood during the death dealer trials, he’d fought against it. He’d kept control. He didn’t let anger overtake his emotions. He’d found a way of balancing himself. It was something I’d been desperately trying to do myself since the death dealer rituals.

  But that balance was something he’d possessed before, when he was completely himself—the Luke I met at the magic shop. The Luke I fell in love with.

  When he possessed Dean’s body, there was very little darkness to contend with. Dean never finished the death dealer trials.

  Caleb, on the other hand, was sadistic. He’d taken such pleasure in hurting me. And inside Caleb was hellfire. Was it Caleb’s uncontrolled darkness now swirling inside Luke, influencing him? Or was it something else? Had he come back wrong?

  I wanted to believe with all my heart that the Luke I loved was now standing before me. That he had not come back damaged. That the body he was in was not such a dark influence that it had changed him. Or that a piece of the darkness from the other side hadn’t come back with him. “Luke…I love you,” I said softly.

  Luke looked down at me, turned, and with so much force I flinched, slammed his fist into a tree. Then he stalked away.

  I gave him ten minutes to cool off and then went after him. I found him twenty feet away, sitting up against a fallen log. The skirt of my dress kept tangling in the underbrush as I made my way over to him. The ridiculous ball gown was obviously not made for hiking through the forest. I tugged on the skirt, but the brambles it had caught on wouldn’t release their hold. With a huff of frustration, I pushed and pulled my way out of the contraption. Feeling self-conscious in only a silk slip that fell just below my knees, I wrapped my arms around myself and walked over to Luke.

  I demanded, “Let me see your hand.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “Don’t come near me. I can’t be trusted.” I sat down next to him and grabbed at his hand, but he pulled away. “Colina, I’m serious. There’s so much anger racing through me. I can barely breathe. When I thought of you in someone else’s arms…” He looked off into the distance and said in a quiet voice, “I couldn’t control the jealousy that raged through me. I hurt you. I could’ve killed you.”

  I reached for his hand again. “But you didn’t.”

  He let me examine it without protest this time. His knuckles were bloodied, his fingers swollen. I held his hand and then dropped it abruptly when he turned to look at me.

  Caleb’s eyes met mine.

  I steeled myself, looked into his eyes, and tried to remind myself that inside this body was the guy I fell in love with.

  Whenever Luke had taken over Dean, Dean’s blue eyes had changed to gray, the color Luke’s eyes had been when he’d been alive. That’s the only way I could tell who was in control. But, surprisingly, that wasn’t happening now. Caleb’s eyes were brown. The eyes I stared into now weren’t exactly brown, but they definitely weren’t Luke’s gray eyes, either. Somehow they were both colors at once. A ring of gray spread out from the pupil and a circle of brown rimmed the irises edges.

  What does that mean? I wondered.

  Luke interrupted my thoughts by saying, “I thought you were dead. I didn’t know you were still alive until I saw you in the square.” His free hand reached out, and before I could move away, he touched my face gently. “She knew that if she told me you were alive, I wouldn’t have stopped until I found you. And if Gage knew I was inside of Caleb, we would have lost our advantage. She’s a cagey old thing. She planned all of this. She helped bring me back.”

  Had Mildred orchestrated this all? I’d been steadfastly distrusting her, but she had only helped us since we arrived at the mining town.

  I watched as Luke pulled a velvet pouch from his pocket. He unwrapped the leather rope around the top and let the contents fall into the palm of his hand. A pile of runes laid there. “She told me to carry these with me,” he explained, carefully pouring the runes back into the bag and tucking it back into his pocket. “The hellhound ripped the soul from Caleb’s body. The exact moment his soul left, my soul entered. She transferred my spirit from Dean to Caleb. I don’t know how the old woman did it—the timing of such a spell, the power it would take…” He looked off into the trees.

  It was all making sense now. During the transfer ritual, I recalled seeing runic symbols in the fog. At the time, I hadn’t given it much thought, but now I knew it had been Mildred performing a spell. “She planned the hellhound attack?”

  He nodded. “She had control over the creatures somehow.”

  I remember Mildred cooing and petting the beasts. “I saw her with them in the woods once. She fed them and talked to them like they were pets.”

  “Who would’ve thought the old woman had so much power?” Luke said.

  What was Mildred? She told me she’d walked with the demons a hundred years ago, and now she’d somehow brought Luke back to me. Was she even still alive?

  Luke continued talking. “When it first happened, I was so confused. I wasn’t inside Dean anymore. Mildred grabbed me, pulled me aside, and told me our only chance of escape was if I pretended to be Caleb.”

  “You were in him the whole time after that ritual?” I recalled the times when Caleb had been almost kind to me. Now it made sense. It had been Luke all along.

  Luke looked away. “I couldn’t tell you. If I told you, I worried you would react to me differently than you did to Caleb. Then Gage would suspect something was up and realize what happened.”

  Every time I saw Caleb, I’d felt only fear and hate, but Caleb died during that ritual. All the anger I’d thought I was focusing on Caleb had actually been directed at Luke. What must it have been like for Luke to see me looking at him with so much hatred in my eyes?

  Luke got to his feet. “We need to keep moving. A couple days ago Mildred used her disappearing trick to go off and find my family. She told them where we are. They’re comin
g in to attack Gage and his men. I thought we would’ve run into them by now.”

  I felt my heart thump wildly in my chest. “Your guild is out here?” My eyes scanned the trees. “If they find me, they’ll kill me.” I remembered Darla promising to kill me herself the next time she saw me.

  “I’ll explain to them why you had to do what you did.”

  He reached for me, and I instinctively cringed and slid away.

  Luke pulled back his hand and narrowed his eyes, but continued. “We need them. With their help, we can take down Gage. We can free the others.”

  “If they’re still alive,” I whispered, getting to my feet. I’d left my friends to die in the middle of a bloody battle. The guilt that washed over me was suddenly overwhelming. Gage had made it clear he didn’t need or want Dean around. What would happen to Dean once his berserker power was gone? Will he be killed? Is he dead already? I forced the thought away. Dean, Wendy, Mildred… They have to be alive.

  Luke was watching me. “We can hope, Colina. I’m sorry—I had no choice, I had to get you away from Gage.”

  This time I couldn’t meet his eyes. Did he know about the new power Gage had over me? I wondered whether Mildred told him about my bewitched affection for Gage and how he forced me into marrying him. I wanted so desperately to ask the questions swirling around in my head, but I was afraid of the answers.

  I looked up into the sky. Dark clouds were slowly covering the full moon.

  Luke pulled out a small flashlight from his pocket. “If we keep heading north, we should run into my guild.”

  I nodded, but swallowed back a lump of dread. When we came face-to-face with the Phoenix Guild, would they try to kill me before Luke had a chance to explain?

  * * *

  We scrambled over logs and pushed our way through heavy brush in silence, and I was thankful for it. I didn’t know what to say to Luke.

  I thought back to the time I’d rushed into Dean’s arms for comfort. It had been Luke, not Caleb, who stood there watching as I ran without hesitation straight to Dean. Sonja found me with obvious signs that Dean had been in my bed the next morning. Had she mentioned it to Gage? Had Luke stood by, listening to them gossip about Dean and me?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a loud shuffling noise in the bushes ahead of us. Luke grabbed my arm and pulled me to the ground as two shadows separated themselves from the trees, but it was too late to hide. Two men dressed in camouflage gear stood with deadly crossbows in their hands leveled right at us.

  Before I could even think to react, Luke stood up, yanking me with him, and shouted, “Phoenix rising!”

  The guards seemed to relax, but they didn’t lower their crossbows. Without a word, one turned and walked into the darkness, gesturing for us to follow. We walked down a trail barely visible in the darkness with the second man covering us from behind.

  After we’d walked a few hundred feet, we stopped. I could see bodies moving in the bushes to our left and Luke whispered in my ear, “Stay here.”

  Where was he going? Did he really expect me to stay put while he headed off into the woods? He started to move away, but I grabbed his arm and hissed, “I’m coming with you.”

  I walked by his side, trying to calm my pounding heart. I’m not some wimpy, newly initiated death dealer, I reminded myself. I might not have power over the living, but I have magic.

  We came into a small clearing and Luke stopped abruptly. Hooded lanterns cast a wavering light on the surrounding trees, making it look as if a mysterious group of giants towered over us in judgment. The sky had gone dark as the clouds ate up the stars and the moon. The clearing seemed to be an island of light in a very dark world.

  Over Luke’s shoulder, I saw a familiar face.

  Darla stood in front of a group of thirty or forty young men and women. Her camouflage clothing faded into the greens and browns of the forest. Dressed in a well-worn fatigue jacket and pants, she looked older than the last time I’d seen her. Her blond hair was still short, though, cut above her chin.

  Luke strode toward her, but this time I didn’t follow him. I hung back in the shadows.

  Darla stopped, her face anxious, and asked cautiously, “Is it really you?”

  “It’s me,” Luke answered.

  Darla stood staring at him, a hard look on her face. “Prove it,” she demanded.

  “Once, when you were seven, you got mad at me for taking the head off your doll. To get even, you made me lemonade…but you substituted salt for the sugar.”

  Darla stared at Luke. Her posture was rigid and one hand held a dagger in a sheath at her side. The tense silence stretched uncomfortably as she considered his words. I could tell by the look on Darla’s face that Luke’s answer had been the right one, one only he would know. But now that he’d answered her question, it seemed like Darla didn’t know what to do next.

  Another familiar face emerged from the middle of the group—Freddy, Luke’s friend who’d joined us in saving Darla what seemed a lifetime ago. With no hesitation, he strode up to Luke and gave him a big bear hug, laughing a few times before finally letting him go. A wide smile crossed his face. “I don’t care who you look like, buddy, I’m just glad to see you.”

  Luke returned the smile. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  It was only then that Darla spied me hiding back in the shadowed tree line. She gave me a withering stare, and in a flat voice, said, “You’re still alive.”

  “I am,” I answered. I straightened my shoulders and made my way to Luke’s side, highly aware of the fact that I was wearing only a skimpy slip. Wrapping my arms around myself, I studied Darla’s face. From her expression, it was clear she still felt the same way about me. Her eyes shone with anger and the threat of violence.

  Luke moved in front of me protectively. “Darla, I wouldn’t be here if it weren't for Colina.”

  Darla hissed, “You defend her after what’s she done? She raised the dead. Our people are targets thanks to her.”

  Luke raised his voice. “She is not our enemy.”

  Darla advanced toward me, a menacing gleam in her eyes. “She needs to pay for what’s she’s done.”

  I could feel a rush of adrenaline course through my veins as my heart started to pound. A crowd of death dealers faced me with hostile expressions on their faces. They hated me. They wanted to hurt me. That’s when I heard the howl on the wind.

  And I wasn’t the only one to hear it.

  The younger death dealers looked around in fear. A few raised their hands and began speaking Latin. A dozen banshees suddenly filled the air between the crowd and me.

  Luke shouted, “Stop this!”

  Shadows raced past me—my spirit pack had materialized. I heard shouts of panic as the crowd began to scatter, but one thin young man stood his ground. Ignoring the fleeing death dealers and the swirling, ghostlike wolves, the young death dealer’s dark eyes glittered in the light of the lanterns. He shouted something lost in the chaos and gestured toward me emphatically. Two banshees circling around him rushed in my direction.

  Without thinking, I took a deep breath and focused all my energy on the spirits coming toward me. The air wavered. Where moments ago there was nothing, a shimmering light appeared. I was opening a rip in the veil to the other side.

  I heard voices cry out in astonishment, but my focus was solely on the banshees. I used every ounce of energy in me to redirect the spirits’ path and push both of them toward the rip in the veil. Rays of light broke through the rip and shot out to surround the spirits. In a rush of sound and light, they were engulfed. There was a loud whooshing noise and the light disappeared back from where it came—and the spirits went with it. I’d crossed them over to the other side.

  My spirit pack had circled around me. Dozens of ghostly wolves were poised in the air, not attacking, but ready to protect me. Directly beside me, a huge shadow in the form of a bear stood imposingly. My heart soared and power rushed through me. My pack survived the battle with Gage. I had
no idea what the fight had cost them, how many spirit wolves had been lost, but the pack still survived. I lowered my hands and looked straight at Darla.

  Her face had gone white, but she seemed to shake off the fear. Her face filled with determination and she started toward me. She was ready to take me on despite the threat I posed.

  “I said, enough!” A voice roared through the night, and seconds after it came a whirlwind of orange and yellow flames that scorched the earth between Darla and me. When the flames went out, I saw Darla had stopped, her eyes wide with shock. She wasn’t the only one who seemed frozen with surprise. A stunned silence settled over the clearing.

  Luke walked between us. Flames wreathed him, creating a tornado of hellfire that reached nearly to the treetops. Dozens of banshees weaved in and out of the flames, but they were different from any other banshee I’d seen. Rather than the normal, transparent forms of most death dealers, Luke’s banshees now burned with hellfire. I knew without any doubt that if I crossed these banshees over, they would go straight to hell.

  I watched Luke with both awe and trepidation. His face was full of fury, flames flickering along his body. How would he ever find a balance against a power that was so rooted in evil?

  With a wave of his hands, Luke released the fire and banshees whirling around him. Though they faded slowly from sight, small flames still slid off his hands.

  He looked my way and then at Darla. “We have a common enemy. He’s the one we need to focus on. He’s the one we have to destroy.”

  Darla's face was emotionless when she addressed her brother. “We’d heard that a death dealer in the Dragon Guild was able to use hellfire, but…we thought it was just a rumor.

  I noticed a quick flash of fear in Darla’s eyes, though it was gone quickly. Was she scared of her brother? Did she think he would harm her? I had the same doubts swirling through me. I was scared of Luke in his new form.