“I want to leave,” I demanded, sounding every bit as weak and pathetic as I felt, trembling before his commanding presence.
“And what would the point in that be, dear girl?” he asked, coming to place his hand on my shoulder. “The damage is done. All we have to do now is wait. The end will come soon enough, but until then, you and I will remain in here so that there aren't any further hiccups in the process. You really have made this challenging, Aspen.”
“It's really happening,” I whispered, finally able to voice the pressing truth that haunted me.
“Of course it is,” he replied, taking a seat atop the messy desk. “Why would you think it wasn't?”
“I thought . . .”
“You thought what?”
“I thought I was going crazy.”
“That's because you fought it. Now that you realize and accept what is to come, it will all be much easier. The choice has been made. It's only a matter of time now.”
“Why me?” I asked, wanting to know why I had been chosen to cause the extermination of humankind.
“She didn't tell you, did she?”
“Who? Tell me what?”
“Mother Superior. She didn't tell you who your parents were, did she?”
“No,” I snarled, “but she knew how they died.”
“Yes, well, that was a necessity of sorts. The rules of this game are painfully clear, so we've had to find ways to exploit the more gray areas. Killing your parents allowed us to control your upbringing and helped us to gain certain advantages that the others didn't have.”
“Others ?” I asked, feeling my chest tighten. “Who are the others?”
“The Light, the good . . . whatever you wish to call them.”
“Angels . . .”
“Ugh,” he moaned dramatically. “I'm so tired of that word. It sounds so glorious and pretentious; whereas, our name sounds so lowly and foul. Fallen . Or worse yet, demon. It just doesn't have that same ring to it, does it?”
I instinctively reached for the rosary around my neck, but it wasn't there. I'd left it in Julian's room, taking it off at some point the night before. Clearly understanding what I was trying to do, Julian's father roared with laughter.
“That's hardly going to save you now, child. Besides, how can it protect you from what you are?”
“I'm not evil. I'm no demon!”
“Aren't you, though?” he asked, peeling himself elegantly off of the desk to tower above me. “That's what Mother Superior forgot to mention to you. Your parents are to blame for who you are―why you're in this predicament. Your father was an angel who just couldn't withstand the dark appeal of your mother, just as you couldn’t turn away from the charms of my son. Your mother was one of us. Fallen.”
The light and shadow will war within . . .
“No . . .”
“Oh, yes.”
“And Julian . . .”
“Of course.” He gloated.
A storm deep within me began to build, born of hatred for his words. As it brewed and churned, so did the ground beneath my feet. A quaking of terrible force shook us both, knocking us to the floor. Constantine looked mildly surprised by the disturbance―I was not. The apocalypse threatened to unleash all of God's fury upon us through whatever means possible. An earthquake hardly seemed out of the question to me.
He reached for me across the floor, but I wanted nothing from him, most certainly not his aid.
“STOP!” I screamed, cupping my hands over my ears.
The shaking ceased immediately.
Startled, I looked up to see Julian's father, still lying on the floor with his arm outstretched toward me. He was frozen―him and everything else in the room. Everything but me. Objects that had started to fall from the desk hung suspended in midair, and nothing made a sound. It was eerily quiet, as if I'd somehow created a vacuum in which nothing else existed.
Assuming it was the only chance I would have to escape, I pushed myself up off of the floor and ran out of that room and the house as quickly as possible. In my hand, clutched tightly, was my birth certificate. It brought me the oddest sense of comfort knowing that once my parents had held it. My demon and angel parents.
When I broke through the front door of the house, I stopped dead in my tracks. At 11:00 a.m., it was pitch black outside. The moon had eclipsed the sun, entirely snuffing it out of the sky.
The moon did not shine.
“Lord help me,” I whispered into the darkness.
Barely able to see anything before me, I stepped off the front steps, only to slip and fall to the ground. I floundered around, unable to get my feet underneath me. The ground was slick with something. My initial thought was that it had stormed when the quake hit, but when I tried to wipe my hands off on the few dry patches that remained on my pants, I realized that it wasn't water at all. Water wasn't that thick.
The Casey home was the only house on the street with any illumination spilling out of it, so I cautiously stepped into a ray of that light. I needed to confirm what I feared was true. Slowly―terrified―I let my gaze fall on my open palms, held out in front of me.
The earth shall bleed . . .
“No, no, no, no . . . ,” I rambled, trying desperately to wipe the remaining blood off of my hands on the side of Julian's house, decorating it with the carnage of man. The carnage I was destined to bring.
A place . . . just outside of town . . . an ally . . . he will help you . . . keep you safe . . .
“Merrick,” I gasped, turning to look down the street that I had fled earlier that morning.
I carefully ran for the neighbor’s bike that I could barely see leaning against the fence, nearly slipping yet again.
“It makes sense now . . . he makes sense now,” I whispered as I climbed atop the bike. “He's the Light―an angel. Sister Mary Constance had to have known. He must have gone to her when he saw what was happening to me. If any of this can be stopped, surely he will know how.”
I pedaled hard, fighting to keep the bike from fishtailing about on the treacherous surface. As I did, I prayed for the moon to shine―my moon to shine. I was equal parts good and bad, and though Constantine had guaranteed me that all was lost, I knew I shouldn't trust him. I shouldn't trust anybody. That's what Merrick had told me. Ironically, I was about to put all of my trust in him.
With every turn of the wheels beneath me, the slightest glow began to emanate from above. My hope was rising, and with it, so was the light. The slightest breeze started to move around me. Trees rustled. Dogs howled, and people started to slowly emerge from their statuesque states.
“Not all is lost . . . not all is lost . . . not all is lost,” I repeated to myself as I sped through town. “There must be a way. Not all is―”
“ASPEN!” Julian screamed from somewhere off to my left. I turned to see where he was and quickly found myself spilling over the handlebars of the bike, having slammed into a curb.
I scrambled to recover before he could reach me, but my efforts were in vain.
“Aspen,” he cried, trying delicately to scoop me off of the blood-soaked pavement. “It's not safe. You have to―”
“Don't you dare talk to me about safe, demon !” I yelled, yanking my arm out of his grasp. His expression sank when realization set in. Unfortunately for him, I'd only begun to let him have it. “You can wipe that pitiful look off of your face, Julian. I know everything. Your father told me while he held me prisoner in his hideaway office.”
“Aspen―”
“SHUT UP! I don't want to hear another lie come out of your mouth for as long as I live, which shouldn't be long now. I don't know what is about to happen to me, or anyone else on this planet, but I will not suffer your lies for a second more,” I screamed, shoving him back from me. “How could I have been so blind ? You manipulated me on every level imaginable. You made me believe that you loved me!”
He reached for me slowly, but I smacked his hand away. My rage was all-consuming, and, as it escaped, the wi
nds that were mere breezes only moments before started to gust around us with terrific speed and impossible force. A storm was upon us.
“I did love you―do love you,” he exclaimed, rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger.
“Lies ! I will hear no more of them from you. You played me like a chess piece, strategizing with every turn, and now the world will be lost unless he can help me stop it.”
I tried to right the bicycle, but the second I did, it was whipped from my grasp and thrown far up into the air before disappearing completely. I never saw it fall, only ascend. The screams started shortly thereafter.
I wheeled around, squinting to see through the dusty cyclone that was encompassing Julian and me. Barely able to make out the bodies, I watched as people struggled to find shelter against the storm. One by one, they were plucked from the earth and whisked away. Away to where, I had no clue.
“If this is the end, Aspen,” Julian shouted, straining to be heard over the howling winds, “then you need to understand something. I cannot change who and what I am. I was born into my position, as you were yours. My whole life's purpose has been to sway you to the darkness, and I may have succeeded, but that does not change the fact that, though this started off as a mission to ensure the dominance and reign of my kind, it quickly turned into me struggling daily with the fact that I did not want to do this to you. I started to feel things . . . I hate myself for what this has done.”
“Stop it,” I cried, clasping my hands over my ears like a child. “I don't want to listen to you.”
“The night I found you in your room and brought you home undid me, Aspen. I drove you to that madness. ME! You nearly killed yourself because of what I did.”
“No more . . . ,” I screamed, crouching into a ball on the ground to escape his confession and the wind threatening to carry me away.
“Yes, Aspen. There's more,” he yelled, stooping down to join me. “Doing what I did was a choice between hurting you and killing myself, as well as my family. We all would have died if I had failed. I held my family's life in my hands, Aspen. Surely you can understand that loss.” He pried my hands away from my face and held my chin captive so his azure gaze was all I saw. “If I had known then what I know now, I would have chosen differently. I need you to know that, Aspen. I would have happily resigned myself to the death I now deserve if it would have saved you just an ounce of the pain and anguish I have caused you.”
I searched his face for any indication of a lie, but both it and my gut told me the same thing. It wasn't. Though he appeared sincere, it was of little consequence.
“But you didn't,” I countered, pulling away from him.
I stood quickly while trying to maintain my balance. The wind started to funnel around us, creating an eye to the storm, hemming us in together. I ran toward the edge of it, wanting to escape―to find Merrick―but there was no point.
He found me instead.
Emerging from the wall of wind with hardly any effort at all, he glared at Julian and me through sharp eyes. His disappointment was plain.
“Aspen,” he yelled, reaching a hand out for me.
But I couldn't make myself take it.
I looked back over my shoulder to Julian who stood frozen with a tortured expression tarnishing his face. My eyes then jumped back and forth between the two, unable to choose where to turn. Inside, my body felt physically torn in half, with each trying to dictate my next move. The screams around me still permeated the violent winds, and I knew that countless lives were being lost by the second. Warring internally, I felt my mind go back to the dark place―the place it sought refuge the night I killed Mother Superior. The night I let the evil take me.
But if the evil had taken me then, why wasn't I rejoicing in the moment of victory taking place? Why was I not dancing in the street, worshiping the Shadow as it swept across the earth, taking the souls of humankind with it? Would evil not act that way? Was it not what they were doing already? Instead, I stood amid the storm, both inside and out, searching for the answers I needed. The answers only I could find. Trust no one, Merrick had said, and he was right. No one but yourself . . .
Myself . . .
I had given myself the final pieces of the puzzle in the street that morning. Whatever delusion had led to me staring a surreal version of myself down in the road was the only one I would believe. I would only trust myself .
The light and shadow will war within and the choice will be made.
They were wrong. All of them, and I knew it.
I looked back and forth between Merrick and Julian and saw that the choice was yet to be made. A choice between light and shadow.
How will your story end?
My eyes stopped on Merrick standing defiantly, his hand still reaching for me. He was the light―the salvation of humanity. Would I choose him? I sneaked a glance back to Julian, who stood equally far away―the two polarizing one another with me in the center of it all. The nucleus.
Could I turn my back on someone who loved me, knowing that it meant his eternal doom?
As that thought played in my mind, I closed my eyes and everything around me stopped. In the still and quiet surrounding me, I saw clearly what I hadn't been able to before. The vision of my mother, standing over my father's dead body.
An argument.
A standoff.
A battle.
A blade.
She fell lifeless atop her husband―her chosen one. She was never meant to die. She had made her choice because she loved him. She had chosen love over duty. Love over her own.
She had fought for him―to save him. I would fight to save mine too.
When I opened my eyes back up again, they welled with tears. My bleary gaze fell upon Merrick, his expression masked as always.
“Will my moon still shine, Merrick?” I asked while a single salty streak stained my face.
“NO!” they screamed at me in unison, understanding what was to come. But it was already too late. The choice had been made.
“Like Eve with the apple . . . ,” I whispered to myself as I turned to Julian, eyes closed, reaching for him. “Forgive me, Father, for I know not what I do.”
Acknowledgments
If it takes a village to raise a child, then the same thing can definitely be said of creating a good book. Thank you to Dannielle for being a photographer/Photoshop goddess, for countless hours and cross country emails that produced a kickass book cover. Jennifer, model extraordinaire, for being willing to do anything to get the right shot and for having the best hair ever. Bethanie for helping to create the bad boys in the first place. And a special thanks to all the beta readers who fell in love with Aspen and company right along with us!
About the Authors
Separated at birth (and by a few years), Shannon and Amber recently found one another on Facebook and have been attached at the hip ever since, barring the fact that they're on completely opposite coastlines. Their penchant for the dramatic is trumped only by their need for constant and relentless sarcasm, as well as their love of bad boys. Shannon is a true redhead who bears the fiery temper to match, and Amber is a blonde (masquerading as a brunette), whose British-Canadian background makes her nearly as volatile. Though they collaborate on the Light and Shadow Trilogy, both have individual projects on the go including Natusch's CAGED Series and Morton's Immortal Treasures Series, scheduled to arrive in 2013.
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