“He didn’t have to die,” Jessica growled, but she didn’t attack.
Fudicia’s touch dropped away from Zac. “He would’ve anyway. At least this way was quick and painless.” She stood up, but she never faced us again. “Follow me, or die like him,” she said and began walking away. “It’s your choice.”
54
Jessica
Eric was the only reason I followed. That and escaping death. Both were aspects I had to believe in, but Eric couldn’t keep up with Fudicia’s lightning-fast walk. I had to put my arm under his to support him, but I couldn’t look at him. He had clearly spoken to Fudicia more than I knew, and I definitely didn’t know they were on the same side—my side. It was almost impossible to fathom, even with Zac’s death proving it.
Zac really was the half-breed, and Fudicia truly was Linda, but that meant she had killed her own blood. I didn’t know if I could trust someone like that. Still, I took one step after another and tightened my hold on Eric as I did so.
My heart thundered as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Darthon was trying to find us. I could feel his presence in the walls, but I prevented our discovery by pouring my own powers into the floors. Air hissed out of Eric’s mouth as if he could feel it, but I kept my hold on him. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep protecting him, but I doubted it was for long.
“This way.” Fudicia instructions were difficult to obey, but I did.
We made our way down one corridor before meeting an open doorway. I knew the room well. It was the same one Camille had died in. The heatless fire was too close for comfort. I had brought real flames to the realm, and I was ready to make this room feel it.
I let go of Eric, but Fudicia spun around and glared at me. “Don’t let go of him.”
“It’s okay,” he said, but I didn’t listen to him.
I grabbed him again. “Now what?”
The edges of Fudicia’s darkened eyes illuminated like a claustrophobic eclipse. “I don’t know how much time I can buy you two, but—” she paused as her face tilted like an animal listening to the woods. “I can lead him to Zac to distract him, but he’ll figure it out.”
“What’s going to happen to you?” Eric asked like he actually cared.
It took everything in me not to let him go.
“I’ll be fine,” she said with a smile.
He shot one back. “Thank you, Linda.”
Her lip curled downward. “I’d prefer Fudicia at this point.”
Eric only nodded in return.
“Wait,” I interrupted. They both stared at me, but I only looked at Fudicia. “Save the books.”
“What books?” Eric asked, but we ignored him.
A small smile flickered over Fudicia’s face. She didn’t nod, but it was in her eyes. “Save your people.”
I didn’t have time to respond. Fudicia opened her mouth as if she planned on speaking again. Instead, the last thing I ever expected happened. Without moving her mouth, a chant of incomprehensible words filled the small room, and each syllable was marked with her voice.
“Close your eyes, and don’t let go of each other.”
It was the last words I heard.
Even with my eyes closed, I saw the light swirling against my eyelids. It darkened into shadows, and when they twisted, my body did, too. The feeling was too familiar. My molecules split, contracted, and burned. The only movement I could comprehend was Eric’s touch—the single motion that remained the same throughout the vortex. If two souls could become one, I was sure it had happened.
Almost instantly, my body slammed back together, and every bone inside of me felt as if it had been crushed and strung out again. I knelt as a gasp escaped me. Breath finally filled me again.
“Jessica.” His voice brought me back.
I opened my eyes to a sight that made me close my eyes again. The coffee shop was destroyed. The flipped over remains of the crushed tables were enough to solidify what had happened. Fudicia had returned us to our world, and our world was already crumbling.
Eric touched my arm. “No one’s here.”
It was the only reason I opened my eyes again. I had expected bodies—all the bodies of the innocent people that had been there—but Eric was right. There wasn’t even a spot of blood. Whatever had happened, no one had died. Still, the building was suffocating with the smell of coffee.
“Jonathon,” I managed and stepped forward. “Crystal. We have to find them—”
“Wait.” Eric’s hand wrapped around my wrist.
I tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold. “Jessica.”
“What?”
He finally let go, but I didn’t move. His emerald eyes clouded over. “Are you okay?”
“We don’t have time to worry about that—”
“I always have time to worry about you,” he interrupted, “and going into war confused isn’t going to help either of us fight.”
War. I could feel it in the air. It was worse than the Light realm. The atmosphere was crushing. The swirl of electricity and shadow told us exactly what was going on only a few miles away. The shelter was under attack, people were dying, and someone was going to win tonight.
I took a deep breath, and the rush of oxygen cleared Eric’s words. He was right. If my mind was racing, I wouldn’t fight well, and we both needed to fight well if he was going to win—if he was going to kill Robb. Darthon was probably already after us.
“He’ll go straight for the shelter,” I said.
“I know.”
My mind reached out as I searched for my connection with Jonathon, but everything sizzled.
“It’s too clouded to get through,” Eric said. He must have tried the same thing. I knew it by looking at his face. His squinting eyes were blue, and the rest of him melted into his shade form. “Can you be one of us?”
He didn’t want me to get attacked by my own people.
I confirmed it by transforming into a shade, but it prickled against my skin. Shifting from one to the other was more difficult than shifting in general, and both were already painful. I had to grab the wall to stay standing, and I took five breaths before I let go of my hold. My powers were slowly filling my veins, and Eric waited out each second.
“Since when has she been on our side anyway?” I asked in our last peaceful moment. I had to know before we succumbed to chaos again. I had to know in case I saw her again.
“For a while,” he promised. “I didn’t have time to tell you.” He reached out and offered me his hand. “Trust her.”
“I can’t.”
Eric’s fingers curled only to uncurl. “Then, trust me.”
I stared at his palm. I had never hesitated to take it before, but this time, he was asking me to take Linda’s, too. She had killed Abby. She had murdered her own brother, and her parents had taken my parents, yet he wanted me to believe in her loyalty. My allegiance had boundaries, and his pushed the limits.
I only grabbed his hand for one reason. “Just don’t die.”
“Not a chance,” he promised as his thumb skimmed the back of my hand. “I promise to see you tomorrow—in daylight—and every day after that.” His smile was the only bright part of the darkness we were prepared to face. It was the only daylight I focused on, the only one I could believe in during the moments of war.
“Let’s go, then,” I said. “Let’s win this.”
55
Eric
The smell of sweat and blood was suffocating, and we were drowning in it. The mixture of the powers from two sects hadn’t allowed us to transport directly into the shelter. Instead, we had appeared on the outskirts, so close to the river that I could taste the moisture in the air, but I was sure the blood wasn’t helping.
Bodies. Too many of them. All human now that they were dead. It was impossible to assess who had fought on what side, and the soldiers left standing were a blur of white and black. I couldn’t breathe until Jessica’s hand grasped mine.
“Concentr
ate.” Her single word was all I needed.
We let go of one another and ran across the ground next to each other. While she dodged one attack, I fought back another one. My thundering heart was all I could hear, and the entrance to the shelter was all I could see. Every few seconds, my eyes met it through the thicket of trees, and every few milliseconds, I was fighting off another person.
Being a shade was all I needed to fight, but I needed my ring to feel the confidence of living. I couldn’t die—not as long as we kept our jewelry on—but every passing moment seemed like a threat against it.
A claw met my wrist, and the singeing burn cascaded through my right arm. I barely had time to react. The light was fast—like a lightning bolt—and it caught my leg.
I only got a chance to hit them once before I hit the ground. The normally cold grass was warm with blood, and my fingers curled through the soaking mud as the light landed on top of me. Before I could even push them off, they flung off my torso.
Jada was looking down at me. Her multicolored eyes were the only stars I saw among the deathly night. “About time you showed up.” Despite her small size, she yanked me up, and all of the sounds broke my eardrums.
Clanging metals, shattering screams, tearing flesh. I thought I heard someone throw up. My vision was blurry, and for a moment, I swore I saw the snowflakes from the night of my first battle, but my vision cleared, and I realized the whiteness was Jada’s hair. It looked so much like Jessica’s when she was a light.
Jada shouted at me, her mouth moving in frantic movements, her jaw bouncing up and down, but it wasn’t her that I heard.
“Why aren’t you with Pierce?” It was Jessica. She was next to us, and she had already grabbed both of us. We were running.
“Why isn’t Eric thinking?” Jada spat back.
My real name curled through my heavy limbs. I was freezing again. It didn’t matter if I were a human or a shade. I always froze. I always remembered the blood—the life Abby lost, both of the car wrecks, every person I would never see again.
“Get it together,” Jessica’s voice was in my head. It hadn’t been in my head for so long, and I wanted it to stay there, to drown out the dying cries of more shades I knew, more students and humans and citizens I had known. But it dissipated.
I could only watch Jessica’s black hair—her shade hair—mix with the darkness as she pulled me after her. Jada’s white strands were ahead of Jessica. Like a beacon, she guided us through the crowd, broke through the people, and tore across the forest I had crossed too many times to count.
It was the same forest where my mother had killed herself.
As we entered the shelter, the amount of black hair increased so much so that the memory of the bats flooded over my vision. There were more shades than lights, but I could not breathe.
“Jada!” Luthicer’s voice bellowed as he shot between Jada and Jessica. His hands were on his daughter’s shoulders before we could move a single inch forward, but his eyes had locked onto mine. “What are you doing here?”
Apparently, I was in the wrong place.
“We escaped,” Jessica breathed. “Where’s Pierce?”
Luthicer flipped around only for a second, and in that second, he slit someone’s throat. Talking was out of the question, but he managed to shout over his shoulder, “Go to the control room.”
The Dark was trying to lockdown again, but time had obviously passed. Lights were in our hallways. Whoever was in charge had failed.
My dad’s face flickered through me.
“Eric.” Jessica was in front of me. “Eric.”
I didn’t know how many times she had shouted at me, but she was shaking me. Her nails were dug into my biceps. Her skin burned mine.
I yanked back.
“Where’s the control room?” she asked, her voice loud.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
A hand smacked the back of my head. The pain vibrated down my spine, but my reflexes took over. I flipped around, and my hand wrapped around my attacker’s throat.
Jada cringed, her face reddening.
I let her go.
She gasped. “At least you’re back.”
My eyes darted around the room, and every inch of the building zoomed into focus. There were more lights than I originally thought. They had covered themselves in mud, drenching their white locks with brown guck. The dark hair would throw everyone off, and my eyes had to search their faces to see what they really were. Dark pits for eyes were the only difference, and in their eyes, I saw Darthon’s.
He would be here any minute. The control room was our only hope.
Breath filled my lungs as I spun around. The air tasted like bile, and I knew what it was. I was breathing slaughter.
“Follow me,” I shouted, not knowing if Jessica or Jada had already done so, but as I sprinted around a corner, Jessica shot out in front of me and blocked an attack I hadn’t seen.
She was always by my side, and now, I was her shadow, following her through the destruction I would have to end. But—for once—I believed I wasn’t alone. We were all together.
We didn’t waste any time.
We flew down the hallway, following the only plausible direction I could think of. Changing to another hallway would demand more time, and we were already fighting time. The seconds were ticking into minutes, and the minutes would be someone’s last. My blood was cold, but I squeezed my hand into a fist to keep my strength.
I couldn’t forget my sword. If I didn’t concentrate, it wouldn’t work, and I would die. We all would.
Art that had once decorated the hallway was shattered on the ground, and Jada leapt over it, skimming my peripheral vision. It was the next thing she jumped over that caused her to get in front of me. A body.
After we passed, the vision solidified. The person was a boy—a young one—and another body had laid right next to him—an older woman. I wondered what Ida had looked like when she was killed, and I knew Jessica was right. I had never killed anyone. Not a single person. The thought squeezed my lungs into unmovable sacks.
I had to grab the wall to keep myself from falling over, but my hand slipped.
Blood. It was everywhere.
The only reason I didn’t fall was because someone had grabbed me. I half-expected it to be Jessica, but the grip was larger than hers.
“Pierce,” I breathed as I met his green eyes.
Unlike everyone else, he wasn’t glaring at me, but sweat shone off his brow. “What the hell happened to you?”
“He got hit,” Jessica spoke, but it didn’t register immediately—not until I tasted the sickening sweetness in my mouth.
My fingertips rose to my face, and my skin met a gash near my hairline. When it had happened was beyond me, but I had to bet it was in the forest. I wiped away what blood I could as I surveyed my surroundings. It was the only part of training I could remember, and it was useless. The hallway was empty—aside from the no longer living.
“I cleared it,” Pierce explained as he moved into the nearest room.
I stumbled after him. Even my best friend had killed, and he wasn’t even a warrior. He was Jessica’s guard, and—in a way—Jada was, too. When I glanced at her clothes, I saw the speckles of red soaking against it. Everyone around me had murdered. I was the only one that hadn’t.
“It won’t shut down,” Pierce rambled and pressed himself against a panel I had only seen on a number of occasions. Only elders were allowed in the room. In fact, elders were supposed to be the only ones who knew the location, but Camille had found it years ago while exploring the secret passageways. She had taken Pierce and me without hesitation, and it had been our secret—a secret the elders must have known we shared since Luthicer told us to go to it.
“Urte and Bracke went back to get you,” Pierce was talking to me, but I didn’t realize it until I looked at him. “Eric.” He wasn’t screaming. He was calm. Pierce was never calm.
“I’m here,” I managed.
I looked down at my skin, my flushed tone, and it tore apart as I transformed into Shoman again. In all my thoughts, I had lost my concentration.
Pierce turned around like he couldn’t face me, but he could face Jessica. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll figure it out,” she said and slammed her palm onto the console. Her violet eyes moved over the board of buttons and sticks.
Even in my spying, I had never learned what they were all for. She flicked one anyway, and nothing happened. Her hand curled around a joystick before she yanked it back. All of the lights went off, but they came back on when she flipped it back.
A curse escaped her. “Which one is it?”
“That one.” Pierce pointed to a single keyhole, but the key shoved inside was broken. It was always a key. “It didn’t work.”
“Obviously.” Jada pushed past the two. “There’s another emergency one anyway.” Her mumbling was almost impossible to hear as she yanked open a drawer and shuffled through a pile of objects.
Even elders had a junk drawer.
“I swear—some organization around here would’ve done some good,” she kept talking, and with every word, her husky voice sounded more like Crystal’s high-pitched one. She breathed as she pulled a slim bar out. It was longer than anything I thought could be in the drawer. “Here it is.”
“That’s a stick,” Pierce screamed.
“Exactly.” Jada didn’t hesitate. She started pounding on the electric board. Every thump was louder than the chaos I had heard outside. It split the air with furious smacks, and Jada huffed with every blow.
She only stopped to stare at us. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“You can’t break it,” Pierce started to grab her stick, but she swatted him away.
“If it breaks, the whole place will lock down.” Her voice was as solid as her stare. “Trust me.”
Pierce stayed back, but Jessica didn’t. Her sword ripped out of her arm—all purple and bright—and she slammed the blade down on the panel. Her power, alone, caused my powers to vibrate through my veins. It drew me to it. It grew somewhere deep inside of me, and my own sword was out. I stepped forward and hit the panel as hard as I could manage.
Death Before Daylight Page 31
