Enflame (Book 6) ((Insight) Web of Hearts and Souls)

by Magee, Jamie

“You’re not at peace,” I countered. “How do we fix this?”

  “Listen, Willow. Whether or not I become a Witness or follow Dane to the life of the damned, I will be at peace because I am with him. I am his light, and he is my balance.”

  “Where is he? We can’t let that happen.”

  “You can’t stop what will be. Only he can.”

  “I’m not going to stand by either,” I argued.

  “The only way out of this is to follow your own path, unweave the spell. When you fight each other’s battles, you stop progress, time.”

  My frustration exploded into a pounding thunder all around us.

  “I’m so lost. I don’t understand. You’re dead, we could lose Dane, Landen is a different person. I don’t know what to do. I thought finding Madison would end this, but from what I’m picking up here and there, I think I’ve doomed her—all of them. Time has stopped because I have no plan. I have no idea what to do right now.”

  “I know it has stopped, and I know you will resume it.”

  “How?”

  “Unweave your spell.”

  “What spell? It was a curse before now. And that doesn’t even make sense. That boy with Landen told me I was darkness that because of that, I couldn’t feel other dark people. If that is true, why would Donalt ever create a spell, curse—whatever—to join me with Drake? Phoenix said two people from darkness would destroy themselves. He’s wrong, so wrong. That can’t be true.”

  Her pale green eyes drifted deep into mine. “You can call it a spell or a curse. You are fighting eight beyond the sun and the moon. But blindly in your past lives, you bargained against that spell, adding to it, and when you lived in illumination, when Landen became a Phoenix, other deals crossed. They were added to what you fight. Souls were pulled into this, and now it is so massive that the only way out is to follow your own path. When others cross your path, you fight with them. If they are not in your path, you fight alone.”

  “Dane is in my path. What spell? I don’t buy that he is dark. I have felt him my entire life.”

  “You are both dark. The only time you can’t feel someone who is dark is when they are not touched by light. Dane was bound to me long before I found him in New York.” Noticing my doubt, she went on. “You want another example? You felt Draven intensely. He is dark, but he has Charlie’s heart. Even if he didn’t, he has surrounded himself by light. His music alone gives him that joy. Stating that someone is dark is not an insult. We all have both.”

  “Are you telling me I don’t feel Drake because he is not loved? That he is darkness? That Alamos isn’t either?” I argued, knowing I loved both of them in some way. I was sick of arguing about the absurdity of light and dark.

  “I don’t understand the dynamics of them, Willow. Perodine could have had something to do with them for all I know.”

  My head was spinning. I was in denial. I was not dark, or evil. I knew that. I had dark emotions. Battles with fear and anger, but I was not dark. “Then how was my light so tempting the last time I was in here? How did I get that Britain boy to go away?”

  “You are not simply loved, Willow. You are loved deeply, and the light you carry is Landen’s. It has been with you through all of time, and in this life it has been with you from your first dream. Don’t feel shame for this. It is who you are, and it is not evil. Your intent has never been evil.”

  “All right, fine. It all has to cross, then. You are my family. So is Dane. That alone makes it cross.”

  “It’s more than that,” she said as the ground behind me gave way, giving us a pedestal to stand on. Below, I could see a raging war in a lost time. In the distance, I could see the burning pentagram off to the side of the battlefield, with three shadowed images around it.

  “When Landen was a Phoenix, he had one goal: to find you and take down Donalt. He knew that The Realm was that gateway, the place where Donalt fed off the darkness of Esterious. Landen also knew that the only way to get into The Realm was through a mass of people creating the same emotion. In that time, the only way to find a mass of people was on the battleground, and the emotions were the darkest: shock, fear, grief.”

  I felt my insides crumble as the guns exploded, as I watched bodies fall to the ground, as the cries of the innocents bellowed into the night.

  “Landen and Phoenix would ride the fallen souls into The Realm and search for his way to you—and your victory. What he did not realize was that when he escaped The Realm, the energy he harnessed could not, that it was sent to the core of the power Donalt was drawing from. Landen was aiding him, not hurting him.”

  She nodded in another direction of the battlefield, to a man holding a woman who was covered in blood near the front steps of a beautiful home that had been ravaged by gunfire. There was an eerie figure of a man in a cloak standing above the couple.

  “I’ve loved Dane through time. He had my light, my essence with him. On this same battlefield, my vessel was destroyed. At my death, a man bargained with him, told him that if he gave part of his soul, a part that would not be missed, that he would save me, bring me back. Dane agreed without even looking at the man. He thought it was the wandering voice of God in his thoughts.”

  Nervously, I glanced from her to the couple, to the burning pentagram in the distance.

  “My body came back to life, but Dane’s soul, part of my light, followed the souls that Landen rode into The Realm that night. The hole that was left in Dane allowed him to be overtaken time and again.”

  “What is Landen doing right now?” I gasped.

  “He’s trying to open the gateway to let the souls he rode in out, to let them rise or fall as they wish. He is taking the energy away from Esterious.”

  “When he opens that gate, will that part of Dane’s soul come out?”

  “In theory.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I gasped.

  “No one knows until it happens, and if it happens, there is a chance that all that Dane did when he was overtaken will be undone.”

  “How can that be bad?”

  “Deals were made, spells were cast to counter his actions. There is no imagination that could grasp what would occur if that did happen.”

  “Let me throw your words back at you. He needs to fight his own battle, find his soul and what will be, will be. By not doing that, he is fighting others’ battles, stopping his path.”

  A ghostly grin echoed at the corners of her mouth. “You know him well. He is going to try. Until Landen opens the gate, he is facing his other deeds, one by one.”

  “Like a test or something? How is he doing? If it’s like what Draven went through, I don’t think it will be easy.”

  “It’s never easy facing your own judgment, but he is faring well.”

  “Is he down there now? Is this happening now?”

  “I don’t see or feel him, so that must mean the spell is not working because when the door is open, he will have no choice but to face this battle.”

  “Why is it not happening?”

  “This battle lasted days, and the source of the energy needed is about to happen,” she said, nodding to the home again.

  I saw a young girl with long dark hair pushing children, slaves, and women into a cellar door on the side of the house. A young man in uniform was with her. He urged her into the cellar, but she fought violently with him. Even when he fiercely kissed her before pushing the doors closed. She ignored his demands and chased him across the battlefield, nearly tripping over where I knew Clarissa and Dane to be.

  A few feet later, they had reached the center point between the pentagram and Clarissa. The girl screamed the boy’s name, and he turned to shield her. At that moment, bullets from every direction brought their death.

  “Your death, Drake’s, opened the largest passageway into The Realm that Phoenix and Landen had ever witnessed.”

  “Lan...Landen let me die? In Drake’s arms? To open a gate?” That couldn’t be true.

  “No.” She nodded to the
burning pentagram. There, I saw the same eerie figure that had stood over Dane approaching Landen with an image of me.

  “Xavier, a known enemy to Donalt, told Landen he had you, that he would bring you to him at this ceremony. Landen had felt you there, knew you were close. By the time he realized it was not you, but Madison, being brought to him, it was too late...your death had come, Dane’s bargain had been made, and the souls were rising into The Realm for the damned energy to feed on.”

  “We have to relive this to undo it?” I said with a tremble in my voice.

  “Not entirely. He has to figure out how to open the gate. Your death is not needed, neither is mine or Drake’s. Only our energy, and only when they have found every element they need.”

  “What would be missing?”

  “I’m not a Witness yet, but I hear them in my thoughts. The battle plans, the warnings...they are all fighting to protect the metallic angel.”

  “The what?”

  “I think it’s a nickname. Basically, we are all meant to be in balance, both light and dark side by side; our lives require both for us to learn. Evil lives in power, and whether that is light or darkness doesn’t matter. From what I understand, there is a child that carries a blend of both. Her energy is metallic. No one really knows how powerful she is, but they know she can open any door, move any power, and if she falls into the hands of anyone with a negative intent, her power will be harvested for gain. That can’t happen.”

  “We’re missing her?”

  “You’re not. She basically sent you here.”

  “Monroe?” I gasped.

  Her placid stare told me I was right. “They may need her to open this gate, but they cannot ask her,” she stated flatly, as if she could read my intent to go to Chara and bring Monroe here.

  “Why?”

  “If her path is ever encouraged, it will not work as it is intended. She will not help unless she knows it is what must happen.”

  “She’s, like, fifteen. How would she know? You realize she is Donalt’s daughter, or something like that?”

  “From what I gather, she knows all the spells, where they cross and how. She feels it inside. She knows. And if this gate is not to be opened—if we have reasoned this the wrong way—then it won’t be. Landen will have to find another way to pull the energy out, and Dane will have to fight for his soul on a different path.”

  “Charlie can get her to open the gate.”

  “No, she can’t, and you can’t ask her. If you tell them any of this, your intent will taint their path and the spells will cross even further. You have to trust that what will happen is what needs to happen right now.”

  “You sound like Landen. Did you put that notion in his head?”

  “No. He didn’t believe me when I told him. It wasn’t until they opened his eyes that he saw how complicated this all is.”

  “I think they’ve ruined him.”

  “They saved him. This is Jupiter, expansion. He needed to understand this. If he didn’t, he would be in Perodine’s study, leaning over scrolls and glaring at Drake and all the while, this battle, those lost souls would suffer. In the end, you would lose, he would. You have to expand your mind to see this outside of what it is, to understand that life is woven together to create a perfect story that can only be read once each lesson is learned.”

  The battle below seemed to be caught in a loop. I was watching the same people die over and over again, and it took all I had not to just stop it with some wrath of Mother Nature.

  “I don’t want you to think Landen is ruined, that any of us are. We are growing. Nothing will change the way he feels about you.”

  “But it will change the way he feels about himself.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “He doesn’t think he deserves me.”

  “Deep down, he does. Let him work through this, trust him when he holds back. In a few hours, he relived thousands of years. In his mind, it happened yesterday. Who he was before that life span, who he is in this life, is a bigger part of him than that past.”

  “I can’t feel that girl or Phoenix. Do you know if their intent is pure?”

  “I doubt Landen would be with them if it wasn’t.”

  “How close did he come to killing Silas last night?”

  “Very.” I glanced to my side at her. “Landen doesn’t know your new friends well, but he feels indebted to them. He knows Silas is not a fan of Draven, but he also knows that Silas is in some way loved by Charlie and that Silas has been charged by him in a past to deliver a message.”

  “What message?”

  “I don’t know. It was bound by Landen, and Silas must obey what he was told.”

  “You can’t hear it? In his thoughts or something?”

  “No.”

  Frustrated, I watched the battle rage on once again, feeling powerless as I twirled my ring on my hand then all of a sudden it hit me.

  “What if I use the looking glass to go back to undo this? Would that solve it?”

  She nodded to the battleground. “This is old. If and when the elements are in place and your soul wishes to undo the present result, I have no doubt the looking glass will give you that power.”

  “So I’m the ‘Reset’ button.”

  She laughed. “I suppose. As complicated as the spell is...it feels good to have you in our corner.”

  “I’m forever more in Landen’s.”

  At that moment, the ground began to shake violently, and the people on the battlefield collapsed into a fiery pit. The energy around us was so dense that it vibrated my very being.

  “It’s happening,” I gasped, trying to move.

  Chapter Nine

  I blacked out completely. I thought I heard Clarissa tell me that it wasn’t happening, that we were being forced out by the energy, for me not to worry, another time it would work, but her voice fell to the background. My mind took me to that battlefield, to the sound of bullets and cannons. The ones that I’d seen take my life moments before.

  What was odd was that I didn’t feel them, the pain of the piercing bullets. Instead, I felt flames, burning, agonizing flames.

  I heard Phoenix scream, “Guardian!” just as death consumed me.

  The sunlight across my face and cool hand caressing my brow made my eyes flutter open, ending the agony of the fire. Nana was above me, smiling down. I raised up, looking for everyone else. Landen was passed out at my side. No one else was in sight. There was not even a trace of the burning pentagram.

  “The front door is half a mile that way,” she joked.

  “I was in The Realm.”

  “I saw.”

  I sat up slowly. Hearing Landen groan, I reached back for him. He opened his eyes but closed them immediately.

  “The light still hurt?” I asked him.

  “It’s not as bad,” he muttered, rising.

  At that second, Phoenix appeared to his left. He nodded politely to Nana.

  “Paths crossed?”

  She smiled to confirm.

  “Is that where you stay? Is there a room for him?” he asked.

  “Yeah. The kitchen. He needs to eat.” Nana’s firm tone made it obvious she was more than serious.

  “Oh yeah. I keep forgetting he’s human,” Phoenix grumbled just before he and Landen vanished.

  “What?” I gasped, furious that he kept taking him away like that.

  Nana laughed. “Let it be. Drive me back.”

  Feeling abandoned, I rose from the dewy grass and walked side by side with her to the Jeep. As I drove it across the field, I glanced at her.

  “What is it with men? I told them the paths crossed, but no, they wanted to go play in some graveyard all night.”

  That really made her laugh. “Their caution is warranted.” She carefully glanced over me. “Your control is strong.”

  “I was able to let some emotions out in The Realm,” I said. She nodded like she knew that. “What do you know about Monroe?”

  “Not enough. I’ve been listening, thou
gh. I fear for her brothers.”

  “Why?”

  “Her mother is in that Realm, somewhere deep. One of them wants her back, and he will bargain to get her, even if that means losing Monroe.”

  “Winston?”

  She nodded. “And Grayson will stop at nothing to protect his sister, the way he promised his mother he would. I think the evil will use her illusion to draw them in.”

  “Let me guess: I should not warn them or stop this; let it be.”

  “My advice word for word. If it collides, you will have no doubt.”

  “I passed out in your backyard. How is that not colliding? Give me an arguing point I can use with Landen.”

  “Not my backyard. Many fates run side by side. You will know if it collides, trust me.”

  “It’s okay for us to be here?” I asked, noticing the random people along the driveway, the house that looked like it belonged in a museum.

  “The property was leased by our friend for the film. The shoot is over, and they’re packing up. You are more than welcome here.”

  Just as I rounded the driveway in front of the house, an image of a little girl appeared in front of me. I slammed on the brakes, but the Jeep rolled right through her.

  “Control,” Nana firmly stated as my pounding heart caused the taste of blood to surface. I pushed that sensation away and charged out of the Jeep, thinking I’d seen an image, that they were back. But when I reached the back of the Jeep, the little girl looked up at me, then vanished.

  I heard the Jeep cut off. A second later, Nana walked around to where I was.

  “Not your images, sweetheart.”

  “A ghost?” I asked as what I witnessed last night echoed in my thoughts.

  “Right. It seems you are starting to see into the veil. The images can’t be far behind.”

  “I never saw ghosts before,” I muttered.

  “Child, the goal is not to repeat our past, but recreate it. Seeing the veil is a plus. I’m sure Phoenix is helping you with that in some way,” she said as she held her arm out to guide me into the home.

  When we reached the bottom stair, I heard a haunting violin. Somehow the music was putting me at ease, helping me hold that control that was demanded by my soul.