Death Before Daylight

by Shannon A. Thompson

  It was the last thing I heard before I succumbed to darkness.

  60

  Eric

  Jessica slumped to the floor so fast that I almost didn’t catch her head, but that moment changed everything. Her light form was gone. She shifted back into her human form, and her skin paled.

  “Jessica.” My voice shook as I remembered Darthon’s threat. I glanced at him, half-expecting to see Darthon, but he was Robb. He was dead, and Jessica wasn’t moving.

  “Jessica.” I squeezed her arm. It had to be exhaustion. “Jessica.”

  Her face was getting paler, as pale as a shade’s, but she was human.

  “Jessica.”

  She didn’t respond, and I pulled her into my lap, repeating her name like it would change something, but it was my hand that caught my attention. My ring—the one she had replaced—was no longer glowing. It wasn’t sparkling. It wasn’t doing what it was intended to do. It was supposed to keep us alive. It was always supposed to keep us alive.

  “Eric.”

  I startled, staring down at Jessica, but her lips hadn’t moved at all. Crystal landed on her knees next to me, her face bruised. “Eric,” she repeated my name, but I could only stare back. “Eric, you’re bleeding.”

  She was acting like Jessica wasn’t dying in my arms.

  “Get back.” The voice was Luthicer’s, but it was someone else who had grabbed me. I tried to fight it, but I was too weak. I was yanked back like a child, and I looked over my shoulder to see my father. He was alive.

  “Jessica—”

  “Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked, leaning me against the wall.

  I tried to stand, but he pushed me back, lightly at first, rough the second time. He gripped my shoulders. “Eric, listen to me.”

  I was doing everything but listening to him. I was watching the others—Urte, Jada, Pierce, and Luthicer. They were all alive, and they were surrounding Jessica. Luthicer dug a needle into Jessica’s arm. She didn’t move.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep fighting it,” my dad’s voice sounded far away.

  My mind was racing, and all the muscles in me were tightening, but I kept pushing. I didn’t even care about breathing anymore. I just wanted to know if Jessica was alive.

  “It was a lie,” I screamed, trying to explain what Fudicia had insinuated—the prophecy, the threat, everything—but I didn’t have the energy, and I didn’t need to, because Luthicer said the only thing I needed to hear.

  “She’s breathing.”

  61

  Jessica

  I woke up in a burnt world. Everything was coated in gray ash, and the walls were feathering out into dust. There was no ceiling. The sky was black and starless—like Darthon’s eyes. I took a breath. I never knew I could breathe in death.

  “You aren’t dead.”

  The voice sent chills up my spine, freezing my head in place. I had to take another breath before I could unlock my muscles and bring my face down to look at the woman.

  Camille stood in front of me, and she wasn’t alone. A woman with slick, black hair, cropped into a bob, was by Camille’s side. The woman’s blue eyes were too familiar—like Shoman’s. She had to be Eric’s mother.

  “Well,” I said, thinking I couldn’t breathe, but I breathed, nonetheless. “I must be dead.”

  “No.” Camille smiled. “Not exactly anyway.”

  But I remembered what had happened, after all. Eric had finally killed Darthon—Robb McLain—and I had died with my enemy. It had to happen if the Dark would live in safety. It was the right decision.

  “I don’t understand,” I managed.

  “That immortality spell was never meant for Eric. Neither was the necklace I gave him,” Camille spoke of a time that seemed too long ago to fathom. “Those spells were meant for you. I only wanted to see you one last time.”

  “How?”

  “My spirit has been trapped here,” Camille spoke as I realized where we were—the destroyed Light realm. I recognized the burnt horns on the crumbling wall. We weren’t in the afterlife at all, but she was still dead, and so was Eric’s mother. “She’s trapped as long as I am.”

  Eric’s mother never spoke, but she smiled for the first time. She had Eric’s smile.

  “We won’t be trapped anymore,” Camille said and stepped forward. She lifted her hands, palms facing me. I couldn’t move as her fingers landed on my face, tracing over my cheeks. “Just like before.”

  She was even dressed in the same clothes she had died in.

  I pulled away before she could do what she did before—send me back—but Camille reached out again. “You have to lead the Light, Jess,” she said it like I wanted to die, but in truth, I didn’t want to leave them behind. “You need to live.”

  “And my shade side?”

  “That no longer exists.” A frown escaped her. “When you transform again, you’ll officially be a leader, and they need one.”

  “And you?”

  “Tell the others I love them,” she said.

  I swallowed my nerves. “They’ll think I was hallucinating.”

  Camille’s face tilted to the side as her frown flipped into the only sweet smile I had ever seen from her. “Perhaps we all were.”

  With her words, Eric’s mother moved forward, and her hand landed on my arm. She was warm. They both were. And as soon as they had appeared, they were gone.

  ***

  I gasped as my lungs filled with ice-cold air. My muscles ached as I sat up, and a groan escaped me as I leaned forward, elbows on my legs. I had been lying down on a bed I recognized too well. I was in the nurse’s ward of the Dark’s shelter, and I was alive.

  And so many people weren’t.

  The hum of the chaos caught my ears. The battle wasn’t completely over. I only sat up so I could hear more, but what I saw stopped my original decision.

  Eric was sitting at the edge of my bed, his upper torso collapsed on the mattress. His brown hair was mangled, matted together with dirt and blood, but his injuries had healed. I must have been out for hours, and now, he was deep asleep, clutching my hand.

  “He hasn’t let go of you since you were brought in here.”

  The voice was all too familiar, and it filled my lungs with relieved breath. Jonathon was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Little bags hung from his eyes, but he smiled. He almost looked like he had been sleeping while standing up.

  He was alive, too.

  Before I could ask, he answered, “Crystal’s fine. The remaining elders, too.”

  No one I knew had died, and as much as I wanted that to be a comfort, I knew others weren’t so lucky.

  “The battle is still going on,” he whispered after a minute. “Just not with us.”

  I stared back at him. “What happened?”

  I could only remember Darthon dying, how his death had brought mine, and what I saw in the burnt Light realm.

  Jonathon’s eyes moved to my hand that held Eric’s. “I think that kept you two alive.”

  I glanced down, but only for a moment. The jewelry was no longer glowing. Whatever power it had held was gone. It had done the job it was meant to do, and the spell had died with the passing of Eric’s mother and Camille, two souls that had been trapped all along. In their death, I had found my own. I could feel it—how my Dark side was gone. My heart was heavy against my ribs, but it was beating. I had another identity to control. The Light side was mine, and it would be in chaos until I accepted it. Once I did, they would stop fighting. My veins tingled with a desire I had never felt before, but with a confidence I knew too well—it felt like the home the Dark had given me so long ago.

  I had to tear my eyes away from my guard before I told him what I was thinking. My battle wasn’t over yet. My journey wasn’t complete. Only theirs was.

  “How long have I been out?” I asked.

  “A day,” he answered. “It’s midnight.”

  I stared at Eric. His breathing was hoa
rse, but he didn’t wake up, even when we spoke. It was unlike him. Too unlike him. “What’d you do to him?”

  “Drugged him.”

  I couldn’t help but gape at my guard, but Jonathon only shrugged. “The guy wouldn’t sleep until you woke up.” He scratched his head, but it didn’t prevent the shameful blush from cascading over his cheeks. “We didn’t really have a choice. He had to heal.”

  I bit my lip so I could nod in agreement. Eric had already been through too much, but I squeezed his hand out of reflex. As much as I didn’t want him to wake up, I wanted him to wake up. I wanted to hear his voice, to see the light in his eyes, to hug him.

  “Darthon’s dead, Jessica.” Every word Jonathon said came out in struggled pauses. “It’s over.” The words were the words the Dark had wanted to speak for decades, but it had finally happened, and resulted in the death of a teenager who hadn’t chosen it.

  In that moment, I remembered Darthon as Robb McLain—the first person I met in Hayworth as a human. It seemed fitting that I had met Eric the night before as a shade. I had been connected to both of them from the beginning, and while Robb started as a friend and Eric as an enemy, it had flipped over a year’s time. Now, only one was alive, and I was left to take Robb’s place.

  I shivered. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For being there for me—and Eric.”

  Jonathon didn’t speak, but I looked up in time to witness his nod. Thanking one another over the circumstances seemed cruel. People had died, after all, but at least we hadn’t lost one another.

  We remained like that—in our silence—for only a moment before the others heard us. One screamed, “She’s awake,” and then, the room was filled with familiar faces. Urte was in his shade form, and he only stayed for a minute before disappearing to join Luthicer and Jada. They were trying to get the Light under control, a sect that was only fighting itself out of madness, but Bracke stayed.

  “How are you feeling, Jess?”

  “Better,” I managed before I finally found the strength to explain what I saw—his wife and Camille in the realm, protecting us all along.

  Bracke returned my words with a smile. “I always was wrong.” He had thought his wife was trying to kill Eric when all she had done was guarantee his life if his guard died as well.

  “Stop beating yourself up.”

  The voice came from the last person we expected to hear from.

  Eric shuffled around, lifting his head from his sleepy state. “And don’t think I’ll forgive you for drugging me,” he spoke directly to Jonathon, but a smile crept along his lips. His tone said the opposite—he had already forgiven all of us—and his eyes said what he wanted to say. His soft irises were locked directly at me. “Glad you’re feeling okay.”

  I laid my hand on top of his hair, trying not to cringe at the crusty feel. “Are you?”

  He nodded, never lifting his face from the mattress. “I will be.”

  Eric had killed Darthon—finally—and unlike the rest of us, he didn’t praise it. Not even his expression did. He only looked groggy, as if a part of him had faded away in the chaos, and I squeezed his hand as if I could pull him back.

  He reciprocated the squeeze. He never said a word about his mother, or Camille, or what had happened in the control room, and I imagined it was because a part of him already knew they hadn’t truly died. They had lived through us all along. It was the reason he had never dealt with their deaths. I could see it now, even though it was finally over, and because of that, I could breathe again.

  He fell asleep again, and no one spoke. Bracke simply nodded and left the room. Jonathon followed, and I was alone with Eric for the first time in what seemed like months. But it wasn’t peaceful. The room sizzled with energy from the battle that had happened, and the battle that was continuing to happen outside.

  The new breeds of Light and Dark members existed, and the Light had crumbled beneath their leader’s death. Until they got a new one, they would fight, and I was the only one who knew how to step in and fix it, but not yet, not now. I was too tired.

  My eyes closed, and I fell into a deep sleep once more.

  62

  Eric

  I didn’t know how much time had passed, but it hadn’t been as long as I thought. When I found the clock, only a few extra hours had ticked away, but I felt alive again, not drained like I had felt before. I glanced at Jessica—her sleeping face, the calmest expression I had seen on her delicate features in weeks—and I slowly inched away from the bed.

  I needed to talk to the others, figure out what was happening, and see if there was a way I could help, but I wanted to do it without waking Jessica. In a way, she had died and come back to life—all in the name of the Dark and the Light—and I had simply killed Darthon.

  Simply.

  It disgusted me, but I pushed myself away from the bed with a focus on making it right. Still, Jessica woke up. She never let me get away with anything.

  “Where are you going?” Her voice was as groggy as her eyes as she rubbed them.

  I didn’t speak as I looked at her blue eyes. I doubted I would ever see them as violet again. Even though the prophecy could’ve been a lie, I believed what Darthon had said. Jessica would be a light. It was a matter of time until her eyes would be black.

  “I’m going to check on the others,” I managed as I stood on shaky knees. My legs were tired, but with every movement, my strength grew.

  She sat straight up. “Me, too.”

  I didn’t argue with her, because there was no point in fighting. She would come if she wanted to. That was her right.

  I walked out, knowing she was behind me, and when I stopped in the hallway, she stopped next to me.

  Everyone was there. Urte, Luthicer, and my father were still in their shade forms, but Crystal and Jonathon were human, and they were the first ones to see us. Crystal even had her lip ring in.

  “Jess!” She ran over, and before Jessica could react, Crystal’s arms were wrapped around Jessica’s torso. “You’re awake.”

  Jessica hugged her friend back before slowly prying Crystal off. “I’m alive.”

  Crystal’s lips formed into a pout. “Don’t be so dreary.”

  Somehow—in some way—I wasn’t surprised that Luthicer’s daughter, out of all people, was the most callous about everything. He must have raised her that way, gone against the rules and trained her from the beginning. We knew she was tracking Zac, after all, and that was long before she had developed powers. The one elder notorious for following a strict policy was also the one who had broken the most rules.

  “You two lovebirds get some alone time?” she joked.

  Jessica laughed—actually laughed—before she responded, “We got some nap time.”

  Crystal cringed. “Boring.”

  “These two are boring,” Jonathon interrupted, sporting his usual grin, but this time, he laid his forearm on Crystal’s shoulder. She didn’t even move away from him. “And they probably need more time alone.”

  Before I could argue, Jessica grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the two. Even then, I kept my eyes on my best friend and Jessica’s best friend. Her white hair was eerie next to his dark hair—almost as if they hadn’t transformed back into humans at all—but they smiled like humans, and they talked like it was any other day.

  Jessica and I didn’t speak as we leaned against the wall feet away from them, our arms pressed against one another. I no longer sensed her heartbeat in my veins, and I knew she probably didn’t sense mine. Our rings were regular pieces of jewelry now, but they still mattered to me. Even then, our touch seemed to be missing something when I watched Jonathon and Crystal interact.

  They talked, seemingly in their own world, but the sight relaxed me. “She doesn’t seem too heartbroken about Zac.”

  In my peripheral vision, Jessica cringed. “I’m pretty sure she was only doing that for research.”

  “That’s ethical journalism.” I knew Cr
ystal’s reason when I spoke, but I wanted to hear Jessica’s voice say anything, and a bigger part of me wanted more than that. Even though they were apart, Crystal and Jonathon were standing so close to one another that they were practically hugging. I had never seen Jonathon like that with anyone. It made me realize how far apart Jessica and I were, but I focused on our friends. “They seem awfully close.”

  “Jonathon has a crush on her,” Jessica said.

  When I turned to look at her, my neck popped.

  She shrugged. “He didn’t know she was Crystal at the time.” None of us did. Not until it was almost the end, but a part of me wondered when Jonathon had confessed to Jessica. He hadn’t said a word to me, but I knew that happened between guards and their warriors. Camille had told me things she had never explained to anyone else—like how she wanted to go to college—but she was dead, and she was finally able to pass.

  I looked at Jonathon as if I saw Camille. I wondered if she would’ve found anyone if she were alive, but I had to push the thought away because it was a useless one, a depressing one that would never be resolved.

  Jonathon and Crystal, on the other hand, had a chance, and meeting as shades wasn’t rare. “I guess that’s how most shades used to start relationships,” I said, knowing the old rules the Dark had valued before my birth. My great-grandfather had changed the rule of arranged marriages, and there was still speculation that his law change had caused my birth. A part of me believed the rumors were true.

  “You don’t think they’ll actually date, do you?” Jessica whispered. “They’re opposites.”

  It was true. Crystal was brash and invasive. Jonathon was shy and supportive. But watching them was like watching the sunset and the sunrise, equally beautiful in different ways.

  “Maybe they’ll balance each other out,” I joked.

  Jessica nudged my arm. “If you mention balance one more time—”