Endure

by M. R. Merrick

  Anger flashed in her eyes and she turned away, her dress drifting behind her. Her emotions rode the air like a storm and like a shifting wind, they changed. Her demeanor calmed and she turned back to me.

  “You know not of what you speak.”

  “You’re telling me the memories inside me from all these gods are lies? You can’t expect me to believe that.”

  “I…” Serephina’s brow furrowed. “Silence!”

  “No! This is the end. It’s happening right now. If you don’t tell me how to stop it, it’ll be your end too. I’m the soul piece, remember? If Ithreal kills me, you’ll be weakened. Then how do you plan to beat him?”

  Serephina’s fingernails traced her bright red lips and her eyes studied me. She looked up to the cloudy ceiling and sighed. “I hadn’t expected him to become so powerful so quickly.” She moved to the chaise and draped herself over it. “In the beginning it was about power. You were right. I loved being the Queen of the gods. When Ithreal would wage war on the others, they came to me for refuge. I would deny them, citing how important our oaths were, knowing one day I would destroy Ithreal and take that power for my own.”

  “And now that your world is in jeopardy the other gods are holding you to those oaths.”

  Serephina nodded. “And I cannot break the oath to defend my own worlds, for if I did, the other gods would see through my past and rise up against me. They already suspect it; I cannot give them more evidence of such things. Nathaniel is the only one who fears what Ithreal can do, but nobody else understands the true power that he possesses should he be truly released.”

  “They’re gods, how can they not know?”

  “The other gods believe they are holding Ithreal with ease. While they use but a fraction of their power, I’m invested almost entirely in his bindings. If not for that, Ithreal would have broken free on his own long ago. Only then would the other gods see the severity of things. It would be too late.”

  “So he breaks free and together you defeat him.”

  Serephina shook her head. “One god versus one god, never more.”

  “Well, if Ithreal breaks free, you won’t be using all your power to bind him to his world, and then you can fight him at full strength.”

  “Perhaps, but I’m afraid my ambitions got the best of me. I let Ithreal have too many of the other gods. He is an even match for me. I’m just as likely to be consumed by him as I am to defeat him. And if you do not succeed, all my magic that lives in you as a soul piece will be his, and I stand little chance against him.”

  “No pressure.”

  “You do not understand, Chase. My arrogance has put us in a position where the other gods are unaware of the danger we face. The gods have not condemned you to fight their battles for them, but I am relying on you to survive. You must defeat him and return stability to all the dimensions, and to me.”

  “So you can have the upper hand once again.”

  “I have made my mistake once, I do not plan to make it again. If Ithreal is weakened, I can take some of my power back that holds him and rule justly and fair, like I was once known.”

  “Then tell me how to stop him.”

  “I’ve done all I can to help you. If the other gods find out you are here, they will rise against me…just as they did your mother.”

  “What about my mother?” The demeanor I had worked so hard to maintain was gone, replaced by fear and anger.

  Serephina looked up the clouds floating above us. They were shifting from puffy white to a dark gray and they churned in the sky.

  “They are coming.”

  “Tell me.”

  “She was here, with the other souls among the Otherworld, living in her private heaven. But she reached out to you and that is not allowed. All souls are bound by our oaths. She tried to break that and as such, she has been silenced. Her heaven has been taken and replaced with a hell you cannot imagine. And if your friend in the Fade chooses to break those oaths, he too shall be punished. Without more of my power, I cannot help them.”

  My heart split in my chest, both pieces trying to outrun the other.

  “Hell?” I whispered.

  The clouds above grumbled and Serephina looked panicked.

  “Look at me, Serephina,” I pleaded. “I’ve gone from being a powerless hunter to a demigod and I’ve lost so much along the way. There are bits and pieces of hundreds of gods inside me, you included.”

  “Find Rayna.” Serephina lowered her gaze. “She is the only one who can help you now.”

  “But Rayna’s gone! I sent her away to protect her.”

  “I’m sorry, Chase, the gods are growing suspicious. If I do not go, they will know we’ve spoken and Ithreal will be the least of our problems. Find Rayna, weaken Ithreal, and ensure he remains in his dimensional prison. If he is weakened, I can take more of my power back and I will save your mother’s soul.”

  “Wait—”

  A blast of light blinded my vision and the floor beneath me vanished. Cold air bit my face as I fell through the sky. The light vanished as dark clouds swallowed me and then I hit the floor of the warehouse.

  The blue glow of Elyas was gone, but I could feel her inside me, whispering Serephina’s final words. I crawled to my feet, surrounded by blank walls and a deafening silence. How did Rayna know the answers? If she knew anything, she would’ve told me…wouldn’t she?

  Chapter 31

  With my back against the wall, I pulled my knees to my chest. My fingertips ran through the rough, dry hair that was in desperate need of a wash and I stared at the floor. My stomach grew tense, twisting in knots from the thought that my mother was in hell and that Rayna knew how to stop all this. She was my friend, my partner, and more. Rayna was the only person I trusted entirely with my life. Why would she keep this from me? Or was this just another game that gods were playing? Wordplay at its finest.

  My imagination wandered into all the different reasons Rayna could’ve kept this a secret, and silence drifted around me. It was this silence that allowed me to pick up on the distant crunching of glass. My head shot up and I strained to hear more. The glass cracked and shifted against the concrete again. Someone was here.

  I poked my head out of the room. Groups of men and women had crowded inside and more pooled in through the entrance. The room was full of strangers talking amongst themselves, and when I opened the door farther, it creaked and the room fell silent. Growls rumbled and the power of inner beasts being released filled the air. All eyes were on me and the first row of demons stalked forward, but they were silenced by the commands of Chief and Jax.

  “And there’s more where this came from.” Jax pushed through the crowd and came to the middle of the room.

  “They’re all with you?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised!” Chief laughed.

  “You sounded so discouraged at the start, I wasn’t sure you’d get anyone to come back.”

  “It wasn’t so difficult. Apparently during the past six weeks, Riley and Arian had made their rounds. If you think we responded badly to their advances, you should have seen some of the others. Most of the groups we approached were more than willing to step forward. Others took little convincing.” Jax’s smile faded and he pointed to the entrance. “What happened here?”

  “That’s…kind of a long story.”

  “Are we in a hurry?” Jax asked.

  “Actually, we are. In fact, we’re on about as tight a schedule as we can be. Everything is going down tomorrow and I need to find Rayna.”

  “What do you mean find her?” Chief asked.

  I ran my hands through my hair. With dozens of eyes staring at me for answers, I didn’t even know where to start. I paced back and forth in front of them when Jax’s impatience finally took over.

  “We can’t help if we don’t know what the hell is going on.”

  “Riley and the Brothers showed up and I sent her away with the others. It wasn’t safe for her.”

  “Why was she in any more d
anger than any of us?” Chief asked.

  “Because she’s a part of all this. They need her powers to raise Ithreal.”

  “How did we not know this?”

  “Apparently there is a lot that we don’t know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jax asked.

  “I—”

  “Chase!” Rayna’s voice came from somewhere in the crowd. Everyone turned toward the entrance and Rayna shoved her way through the group. Tiki and Vincent trailed behind her with Marcus draped over their shoulders. She ran forward and jumped toward me, wrapping her limbs around my body. “Thank gods you’re okay.”

  I wanted to hug her back but instead I pushed her away. “We need to talk.” I grabbed Rayna’s arm and led her across the room. I wasn’t sure what she was keeping from me, if anything, but she wasn’t supposed to be here. No matter what she had done, I wanted her to be safe. I pulled Rayna into the back room, closing the door on the others. “You have something to tell me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First of all, you’re not supposed to be here. Second, what do you know that I don’t?”

  “Whoa, wait. First, I came back to make sure you were all right. Second, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I didn’t know why, but in that moment I knew something wasn’t right. I didn’t want to call her out, but knowing she had kept something from me made anger rise in my throat. “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m—”

  “Don’t. Serephina told me you had answers, so cut the bullshit. We were in this together, remember? After all this time, why are you keeping things from me now, or have you been doing it all along?”

  “How can you even say that? It’s you and me, Chase, it always has been. We will stop this. You know you can trust me.”

  “I do trust you, but we’ve lost family and we’ve lost friends.” I paced across the room, my hands clammy and shaking. “I need to know what you know. I need to know how to stop him. I can’t risk losing this fight. Not for anything. Not even love.”

  Rayna’s eyes opened wide and she gasped. “Love?”

  The world around me stilled, and my heart made a massive thud inside my chest before it dropped into my stomach. Tension crept up my neck and everything seemed to stop. Had I just said that? Out loud? I knew what I felt and how long I’d felt it, but now wasn’t the time for this discussion.

  An eternity filled the gap between us. It took all my force to swallow the pit of saliva that formed at the back of my throat and it felt like a boulder going down. The world came rushing back with supernatural speed and I felt lightheaded.

  “I…um…that wasn’t supposed to come out.”

  Rayna arched a brow and I shook my head, waving my hands back and forth in front of her.

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean it is what I meant, but it wasn’t what I meant to say right now. It was for later…if we didn’t die.”

  “Uh-huh.” She didn’t look impressed.

  All the frustration I had felt was gone, replaced by scrambling thoughts on how to pull myself out of the hole I seemed to be digging.

  “Not that I thought we were going to die, but I didn’t want to distract you…or me…or—” I stopped talking, I wasn’t going to resurrect this massive fumble. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I released it, I looked Rayna in the eye and let it all go. “Rayna, I love you. I’m in love with you. Maybe I always was, but you know me, it takes me longer to pick up on things like this.”

  Rayna stared at me but remained quiet. I’d said the words. At some point I remembered being sure she’d say them back, but now that the moment arrived I didn’t trust any of my thoughts. My hands grew clammy and the twisting in my stomach tightened. I felt like tiny beads inside my veins were vibrating back and forth and forcing my insides to shake.

  “The thing is, I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t. I wanted to get through this first. I wanted to say it when the moment was right and I knew everything would be okay. I just didn’t want you to think I said it because it might be the end.” I had stopped pacing and I stared down into Rayna’s eyes. “Rayna, I love you.”

  Silence immediately followed. It was a million needles sliding through my body all at once. It opened me up and exposed me to a pain I never thought I’d risk having. I stood completely bare in front of her, and each moment she didn’t speak was another lifetime of madness that filled my mind.

  “Feeling a little exposed here…” I said.

  Rayna shook her head as though she’d just broken free from a trance. She smiled, her green feline eyes shining like a candle inside an emerald. “I’m sorry, this just kind of caught me off guard.”

  “You and me both.” The tension that had mounted my body tightened, squeezing the air from my lungs and making me feel woozy. I turned away, letting my eyes fall to the floor.

  “Don’t do that,” she said, using her hand to turn me back to her. Her thumb slid over my cheek, then down my chin. “How could you think for a second that I don’t love you too?”

  “I don’t know. I’m kind of getting used to thinking worst-case scenarios.”

  Hearing her say she loved me should’ve been enough, but for some reason I couldn’t shake the nervousness. She must have sensed the insecurity because the moment I thought it, her hand pulled me down and she pressed her lips against mine. The kiss was slow, and the sweetness on her lips shattered all the pressure inside my body. When she pulled away, I felt breathless. My hand cupped her face and with our foreheads pressed against one another, we stared into each other’s eyes.

  “And the heroes of the night have spoken,” Vincent said. I hadn’t heard the door open, but Vincent, Tiki, Jax, and Chief stood inside the room staring at us. “The end of the world is tomorrow and you two are in here making kissy face and sharing I love yous? Well, time’s up. Out with it. What does she know that we don’t?”

  Rayna and I both looked confused and Vincent looked annoyed. He touched his ears and shook his head.

  “Vampire hearing, remember? You didn’t honestly think this little wall could stop me, do you? So out with it. Tell me how we stop all this, because I’m not risking my life or any of my family until you do. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’d keep it from us in the first place.”

  I turned to Rayna, waiting for a response. I’d just told her I loved her and she had responded, but the moment was gone. I had to focus. The question on the table was how to stop Ithreal. It was more important than anything right now. No matter what I felt, I had to believe that.

  The frustration of the lost moment and the attack from both me, and then Vincent, pushed Rayna over the edge. She threw her hands in the air and cursed under her breath. “I don’t have the answers, okay! All I have is a fallback plan.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter!” she yelled, and her angry response caught me off guard. “It doesn’t concern any of you, so it’s not important. It’s something I can do, and none of you can help me with it, so just leave it alone.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said.

  Rayna pulled her eyes away and shook her head.

  “Tell me, Rayna. If you’ve ever cared for me, I deserve to know.”

  Rayna moved to the table that held The 11th Dimension and began flipping through the pages. “The book says in order to defeat Ithreal, it has to start where it all began.”

  “And…”

  “And we thought that was my house, the tree, Drakar, but that wasn’t what it meant. It started with me. My blood broke the veil that protected our dimension from the rest. I’m the beginning.”

  “There’s no way for us to be sure of that.”

  “Yes, there is.” Rayna looked up at me. “Remember after our…night, when you heard me in the bathroom?”

  I nodded, but I didn’t say anything. I already knew the answer.

  “Serephina was in there with me.”

  My stomach roll
ed over and my knees felt weak. I opened my mouth to speak, but Rayna cut me off.

  “She didn’t have much time so I don’t know everything. I know the Brothers need me to summon pieces of Ithreal’s soul, and help it break through the veil the gods have built. Most of the power they’re using binds Ithreal to the center of his dimension. The veil is practically unprotected. There’s enough there to keep the Underworlders from entering and that’s it.”

  “And if that happens, the only way to close the portal is with some of your blood,” I said.

  “Not just some of it…”

  I didn’t know where it came from but I laughed just then, shaking my head. “No, you’re not sacrificing yourself to finish this. We’ll stop it before it happens.”

  “And what if we can’t? What if Drake was right and we can’t kill Ithreal? You have to understand, Chase, what they want me to summon from that dimensional hell is pure power. I say this is a fallback plan, but my blood might be the only option we have.”

  Anger rose in my throat, burning like bile and flame. I wanted to scream out at the gods again. I wanted more from Serephina. She said Rayna had the answer, but this couldn’t be it. I refused to believe it. I clenched my fists and fire snapped inside me. I took a deep breath. Getting angry would get me nowhere. I had started this journey hoping to stop Riley. I failed to do that so I’d shifted my goals to finding a way to kill him. Now things had changed again. I needed to prevent Ithreal from rising altogether. Rayna’s life depended on it.

  “You shouldn’t have come back,” I said. “If Riley can’t get his hands on you, you can’t do the spell. That means all this is over.”

  “What if that’s the only way to stop all this? To let them do the spell, open the portal, and then use myself to close it before Ithreal’s power can escape?”

  “It’s not. There has to be another way. What’s the point of me being the Protector if I can’t protect anything? No, Riley can’t force you to do that spell, so that isn’t even an option.”