Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4)

by Eva Truesdale

  “He’s right,” I said quietly, looking between the two of them and trying not to appear too panicked. “I’ve been keeping count.”

  “But what does it mean?” Kael asked.

  Joseph hesitated. He locked eyes with Vanessa, and the two of them seemed to be searching each other for a long moment. Exchanging thoughts, maybe. And then Joseph finally said, “If I had to guess, I would say it means that Vanessa had a pre-existing condition that’s put extra strain on her body, and in doing so, it aggravated the curse’s hold on her.”

  “A pre-existing condition…?” Kael repeated, giving his father a questioning look.

  I was looking at Vanessa.

  I was slowly putting the pieces together. Scenes from the past few weeks. The way Vanessa had seemed even more sick and exhausted than me. She’d even said it: Everything seems to be making me nauseous here lately. And then there was the way Will had looked at her, the way he’d danced with her, the way he’d laid with his head resting against her stomach. And the way she was holding her hands against that stomach now.

  “When you said you weren’t supposed to have to do this alone…” My voice was an aching, disbelieving whisper. “It’s because you’re…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish.

  But I didn’t have to, because she nodded. “Because I’m twelve weeks, and I wouldn’t have been alone at all, because he was going to be an amazing father.”

  Twenty-Five

  desperate

  I was so, so mad.

  I wasn’t sure who at. I just wanted to scream from the unfairness, from the impossible wrongness of this situation. How? How could the universe be this cruel? And who could I shout at to make all of these terrible things go away?

  Vanessa was closest to me. And I wish I could have stopped myself from doing it— because I knew she was already crushed— but I couldn’t help but turn on her and angrily demand, “Why? Why in the world were you here? Why were you fighting, why was he fighting when you knew you had a kid to worry about?”

  Apparently she’d reached the anger stage of the grieving process, too, because her tone was even sharper than mine as she jumped to her feet and practically shouted at me: “We were both fighting because we wanted to end all of this. Do you think we wanted to bring a kid into the middle of this war? Or into a world where monsters like the feral were running free?”

  She brought her face closer to mine— close enough that I could feel that white hot anger rolling off of her in waves. I had to make a conscious effort not to absorb it and add it to my own; my temper was dangerously close to breaking. Kael must have sensed that, too, because he stepped between me and Vanessa and gently took hold of my arm. His voice was in my head a second later. (Calm down. This isn’t helping anything.)

  I knew he was right. I tried to focus on his touch and keep my mouth shut.

  “What choice did we honestly have?” Vanessa’s voice was thin and torn, and her eyes pleaded with me for understanding. “To sit on the sidelines and watch the rest of you fight?”

  “I would have rather you’d done that, yeah. I thought I’d made that pretty cl—”

  “Well we couldn’t. I still can’t. ‘You call one wolf, and you invite the pack.’ There’s a reason for that saying, you know; because it’s true. We’re family. From the second we met, I knew I would follow you to the end. I can’t separate myself from you anymore than I can separate myself from this kid. And I know Will felt the same way.”

  The way she said Will’s name made my insides twist. I inhaled deeply. Exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. But I still wish you would leave. Go someplace safer.”

  “Like where?” She gave me a small, wry smile. “No…it doesn’t matter. Because I won’t go. We’ve made it this far, and we’re not separating now.”

  I gave an exasperated sigh as I tried to come up with a better argument.

  It turned out I didn’t need one, though.

  “It looks as though we may not have any choice but to separate,” Joseph quietly said. He was standing on the shoreline, squinting at the same islands in the distance that Vanessa had been looking at earlier.

  “So we were right, weren’t we?” Kael asked, stepping toward him. “About pinpointing the suspected source of their power.”

  Joseph hesitated. When the words finally fell from his mouth, they were reluctant, like he didn’t want to believe them even as he said them. “I imagine that’s where Carrick ran to.”

  I gave Vanessa one last hug, and then I turned and walked to Joseph’s side.

  “Do you see what I do?” he asked, pointing at those islands.

  I stared without blinking, and I saw the way the air around the island occasionally shimmered. It was as though the whole island was encased in a giant glass dome that sometimes caught the sunlight just right and reflected it back. I didn’t want to see it, but I did. Worse, though, was what I began to feel after I’d been staring for several moments.

  “You recognize the energy, don’t you?” Joseph’s tone was soft, phrased as a question that I think he already knew the answer to.

  “Sciath domhanda,” I said, frowning. “And if we can feel it all the way from here, that means…”

  “It’s incredibly powerful. Though it feels like part of it was neutralized—likely Carrick’s doing.”

  We all stared at it for a few more moments without speaking. The feeling of misery and new impossibility in the air was palpable.

  “You said these sort of barriers spring up at points where other worlds intersect, right?” Lora thought out loud, finally breaking the silence.

  Joseph nodded. “Do you remember the legend I told you, Alex? A lot of people refer to the feral as hellhounds. This might be why—because if this is the source of their power, it seems they really might have slipped into our world from another hellish one.”

  “So we’re basically facing a portal to hell now. Awesome.”

  “Likely not a functioning one. Well…hopefully not a functioning one. It probably gives them power still, but I don’t imagine things are actively going in and out of it. We’d know if that was the case.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now, judging by the neutralization and the way that otherworldly energy is radiating from those islands all of a sudden, it seems like Carrick is daring us to follow him into his true territory.”

  “But we can’t,” Vanessa said in quiet, horrified realization.

  “Why not?” Alanna’s voice surprised me; she’d moved to our sides silently, and now both her and several of her pack were eyeing me expectantly, almost impatiently.

  “Because only innate magic users can walk through spells like this,” I said. “We encountered one a few weeks ago, and Joseph was able to partially neutralize it—but doing that almost killed him, and it still didn’t make it completely safe for non-magic users to walk through.” My gaze slid to Kael. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t look at me. “…And this barrier is much, much bigger than that other one was. And it feels much stronger.”

  “Yes,” Joseph agreed. “But on the positive side, if the source of the feral’s existence is truly inside of this barrier, then destroying it would likely rid us of them for good—all in one fell swoop.”

  “Assuming it can be destroyed, and that I can get past Carrick and whoever else might be inside, guarding it. Waiting for me to do exactly this one, insane thing.” My voice was perfectly even. I saw this road, this destiny, unfurling in front of me, but I wasn’t committing to either walking it or running away from it yet.

  “Whoa, whoa—wait a second,” my little sister said, stepping in front of me. I couldn’t meet her gaze. “We have hours before the red moon rises,” she said. “No time to prepare… and Alex is supposed to go alone?”

  Nobody—not even Joseph—seemed to be able to meet her eyes any better than I could. We were all quiet. I’m not sure if everyone was trying to think of some other plan, or else trying to find a way to
just tell me goodbye and good luck, it’s been fun.

  And I couldn’t even be upset about that last part, because what else was there to say?

  “It was always going to come to this, wasn’t it?” I said, mostly because I couldn’t stand this funeral-like silence any longer. “Carrick has been leading me toward this for weeks now. And if I had followed him in the first place, then maybe we wouldn’t have had to lose so many of our own.” My voice threatened to crack, but I kept going. “That’s why he made sure it escalated to this, you know. That’s why he made sure I saw plenty of blood spilled—so I would be desperate enough to walk into hell to try and end this. And you know what?”

  I saw Kael shake his head. Still not looking at me, but he was obviously, silently begging me to stop. To not say what I was about to say.

  But I had to say it.

  “I am desperate enough.”

  Everyone shuffled uncomfortably

  If Will had been here, he would have made some sort of joke, I think, to diffuse the tension that had settled over our circle. But he wasn’t here, and I suddenly felt his absence like a physical weight hanging over my shoulders.

  I couldn’t let his death be in vain.

  “Cerin is as good as dead,” I said. “Carrick is on the run, basically. Their forces are scattered and weak, and even if we didn’t have the red moon to worry about, I still don’t think we’re going to get a better opportunity than this.”

  “But there has to be some way we can help you,” Alanna said.

  “Not most of you, I don’t think.” The words left a lump in my throat on their way out. “Unless you have innate magic—but even then, I don’t want to watch any more of you die.”

  Silence for another moment. And then Joseph cleared his throat and said, “But I’ll go with her, at least.”

  There was something poetic to be said about that, probably; my old enemy and I, united against this evil, crossing the sea to face it together. I didn’t say anything, though. I just nodded.

  And then there was nothing left to do except say goodbye.

  I didn’t know where to start. How to start. But Lora was closest to me, and she’d always been better than me at the touchy-feely stuff, anyway, so I wasn’t surprised that she moved first. I was still grateful for it, though. I might not have managed to move at all if she hadn’t hugged me so fiercely that my mind could think of nothing except moving to squeeze her back.

  “This is all wrong,” she whispered into my ear. I felt teardrops falling against my neck, and that threatened to make me cry, too.

  “I know,” I said.

  “And I wish there was another way.”

  “Me too.” I hesitated, thoughts of our mom flickering through my thoughts. I didn’t want to make this moment any harder for Lora, but I couldn’t help but say, “Tell Mom I’m sorry about all this, okay? Just, if you see her again before I do I mean.”

  She leaned back and fixed me with the most deathly serious look I’d ever seen on her face. “Why should I?” she said, with just enough of a hint of ‘argumentative little sister’ to make me smile. “You can tell her yourself, you big jerk,” she concluded.

  “Okay,” I said, blinking back tears as she hugged me tighter.

  “Okay.”

  “But I have to go, now.”

  She nodded against me and then stepped away.

  My gaze fell on Vanessa next. I forgot all of the anger I’d felt earlier; it was gone in a rush of disbelief and fear that this might be the last time I saw her, that I might never roll my eyes at her matchmaking attempts again, or have the chance to spoil her kid the way she promised to spoil mine. I couldn’t even speak, thinking about it. She didn’t seem up for speaking either, though, so there were only tears and embraces. No goodbyes, no promises we couldn’t keep. Silence was so much easier.

  And it was mostly silent nods and handshakes that I quickly exchanged with Alanna and her pack, and with all of the others who had gathered to fight with us, and who still remained. It was only as I started to turn away from her that Alanna said, “I was wrong to doubt you before. And whatever happens now, I’ll make sure everyone knows how hard you fought for peace in our world.” There were murmurs of agreement all around her; I just nodded.

  Maybe they’ll build a statue of me when they hear about it, I thought, thinking of Will and smiling to myself. I just wanted him to win our bet, I guess.

  My smile faded abruptly, though.

  Because there was, of course, one more goodbye left to say.

  Kael was standing close to where his father had earlier. He was staring, same as Joseph and Vanessa had, toward the islands that held my fate. And somehow, the distance between me and him seemed more daunting than that sea I would soon be swimming across.

  (Time,) Joseph reminded me gently.

  Kael and I had been running out of time since the moment we met, it seemed like. So I should have seen this moment coming, maybe. But that didn’t make it any easier to walk over to his side.

  When I finally reached him, he spoke first.

  “As far as I can, whatever it takes. That’s what I said I’d do.”

  “And that’s what you’ve done,” I replied softly. He slowly looked away from the islands and met my gaze. I could see his thoughts racing and arguments building in his eyes. So before he had a chance to say anything else, I added, “But I don’t want you to follow me anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” he said.

  He was right, of course. Because just saying those words had made my lungs forget how to function properly, and I couldn’t get myself to repeat what I’d said—even though I tried. “For what it’s worth,” I tried saying instead. “I’ll be carrying you with me. Wherever I go now. It sounds lame, maybe, but I don’t think you can really separate us now.”

  He stared at me. Not really disagreeing, but his expression was still filled with uncertainty. “And yet this still feels entirely too much like goodbye.”

  “…I know,” I said, voice so quiet that the sound of the waves at our feet nearly swallowed it up. There was no sound but those waves for a few more moments, until I asked, “Do you remember when we met?”

  “You asked me if I was a stalker, if I remember correctly. And I vividly recall you trying to impale me with a fireplace poker, too.”

  “Yeah. I did do that.” I laughed, in spite of the tears threatening to spill from me. “But then the next day…You saved me anyway. Even though I’d acted like an idiot.”

  “A lovable idiot, I guess,” he said with a small smile. And it might have just been the way the late afternoon sun was hitting his eyes, but they looked like they were shining with the same sort of stubborn tears mine held—drops just building there but refusing to fall.

  “I know I already said thanks for that, back then, but I’m not sure I said it like I meant it. So. Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t followed me that day. I don’t know how to tell you…”

  I trailed off as his fingers brushed across my cheek, smoothing a piece of hair behind my ear. I was clearly at a loss for words again, but he just shook his head and said, “You don’t have to say anything. We’re already even.”

  “You think so?”

  He nodded. “Because you’ve done your share of saving me, every day since.”

  My face was soaked with tears by now; there was no point in trying to hold them back anymore. I stood up on my tiptoes so I could kiss him better, and his arms wrapped around me and pulled me closer. And for once it seemed like time was actually on our side.

  Because it felt like it had stopped.

  Though when I pulled my lips from his moments later, it somehow still seemed like it happened too soon.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too,” I whispered, the words hitching in my throat. “And I’m coming back.”

  “I know,” he said.

  But I don’t think either of us believed it.

  “Just in case, though�
�”

  He nodded. He wasn’t going to make me say goodbye, and he wasn’t going to say it either. There were probably a million other things we could have said just then, but the way he’d said I love you was still dancing at the front of my mind, and I decided that was the only thing I wanted to think about—the only thing I wanted to carry with me as I left.

  So I turned away without crowding it with anymore words.

  Beside me, I saw Kael go to his father and pull him aside; I could only guess at what they were saying. I would probably never know. I focused my attention on the waiting islands. The sun was lowering toward it; not gone yet, but I could already see the faint outline of the full moon, ready to rise red over this sea.

  I took a deep breath, and I stepped into the water.

  Twenty-Six

  trapped

  (Brace yourself.)

  We had crossed the sea as wolves, and both Joseph and I remained in that form now. We stood on a rocky beach that nearly mirrored the one we’d left behind—save for that barrier that started about twenty feet away from the water. The sheer energy of that wall, now that we were so much closer, was almost enough to paralyze me into not wanting to take another step closer.

  And we had to walk through it, somehow.

  Through its opaque shimmer, I could see a rocky path that twisted deeper into the island’s center, toward the wide opening of a cave. The muddy area around the opening’s many jutting, stalagmite-like structures made it look as though that cave was frequently flooded. I wondered how deep it went. What we might find inside.

  First things first, I reminded myself, cautiously sniffing toward the shining barrier, searching for the neutralized area Carrick that had left for us. His scent was all over this island.

  Joseph had assured me that, because of that innate blood in us, walking through this barrier wouldn’t feel much worse than the one that I had walked through at Eleanor’s old home.

  I might not have believed him, still, if he hadn’t leapt through it first.