by David James
“Tell me,” Kate demanded.
Morphis laughed. “I want you both to kill each other.”
“What?” I asked.
“Death, Dreamer,” Morphis said. “You both must die for everyone else to live.”
“Take me!” Kate shouted.
“No,” I said. “You can have my life but no one else’s.”
Morphis said, “Both or nothing.”
“Then nothing.”
“So be it,” he said. “Death becomes you.”
Deep within my skin my blood became ice. My heart stopped. It seemed like forever until it started again.
His words pulsed with fire.
Hate.
In that I knew what Hell sounded like.
The redness of Morphis’ tattoos deepened, looking like blood flowing freely; snakes of evil slithering across his joker smile. They moved faster and faster until his entire body was on fire with a crimson light. Then, almost instantly, the crimson drained from his face and crawled across his body. His arms raised high above him, the color jumped from his hands in flashes of blinding blood-light toward the sky.
The sky turned a brilliant, shining red-
then cracked to black. The moon faded briefly and all was night.
Thunder crashed as burnt-red clouds raced toward us from the heavens, lightning clearing their way. Fire erupted from lightning strikes. Everywhere, random trees were burning, their branches falling with leaves to the ground in flames.
His hands revolted from his body and, in a spasm Morphis threw them down, palms to the ground, and shouted, “Come forth my fledgling demons. Come forth! Walk within your dreams to me! It is time for you to do my bidding. Rise. Rise! Rise!” His held tilted up toward the sky, his mouth open.
Suddenly a massive crack erupted in the earth where his hands pressed, revealing red light. Above, the circling of trees began to die, burn. Morphis howled, roared. I could see his veins, blue with blood expanding beneath his skin. They would burst at any second.
My tongue felt large, catching the back of my throat.
People.
People crawled out of the broken earth, moving like zombies. They were possessed with red eyes, just like Morphis.
I knew. These were the missing people. This was where they had gone. Hell.
“No!” I shouted, my voice breaking and my hands reaching out to save them, useless. Kate held me back, her grip on my arm hot and firm.
Pale. They were all so pale, their souls gone. The only life left was in their eyes. Red. They wanted to kill.
There was Kendra Little, skin turned whiter than snow. Her blood-red eyes seemed to look right through me, hunting for something. I could see her sharpened teeth and... blood. There was blood all over her mouth, dripping from her glossy lips. Brett, Justin, and Charlie were there, all covered in red. Falling leaves stuck to their faces. They didn’t bother brushing them off.
They were all there, all my friends, pale and changed like all the others.
Knight.
He was unrecognizable. A rip in his skin ran down his right cheek, making him a monster. His tongue lashed out and licked the wound. Every few seconds his face would twitch to the right; he wanted more.
I wondered if they felt, if when they were possessed they were still human. Could I kill them if they were still human?
My heart stuck in my throat. I was choking.
The world stopped spinning, blackness threatened to take over the scene.
There was a moment of nothing, a second before the battle, the calm before the storm.
And then Morphis raised his eyes and met my gaze. In them there was only black and red flames. His lips rose into a sly, wicked smile. He muttered under his breath something low and deep, chanting faster and faster. His head twitched left, then right.
As his neck cracked, Hell broke forth.
Bodies lunged forward, the possessed grabbing fallen tree branches and jagged stones to use as weapons.
They were closing in, running now, moving fast like bloodthirsty dogs.
A cry. That Warrior from the cave. Zack’s voice: “For the Order! The one and only truth! Let us fight and let death reap the lives of those against us!”
With Zack leading, his eyes like dark, crushing oceans, gray-covered Warriors exploded from the tunnel hidden in the mountain behind us. Their levitis pointed forward, the silver blades in their hands caught the moon’s light and, even in the dark fog, glinted with hope. They screamed, eyes mad and hungry for the sight of death, and charged against the Orieno.
Then: A familiar scent. Old raisins, with a metallic note hidden at the end. A body stopped me and I felt as though I had hit a brick wall. Ghostly hands seemed to find my lungs and squeeze. Squeeze until my eyes were too wet to see clearly.
My mother.
She was leaning against a tree, her shirt and pants stained red with blood and tinted with what looked like bits of flesh. She was smiling, laughing, and swinging a broken arm in circles. The limb’s hand, red and fleshy and bitten, glinted against the dim light shining on the field, and I saw something that made my heart fall.
A wedding ring.
Even covered in blood, it glittered in the moon’s light, its yellow diamonds pieces of lost hope in the night.
Lost memories.
Lost families.
Next to her was my father.
Their two smiles hit me the hardest, so red. Both thrust broken arms and legs like weapons deep into those that passed them, whether they were against them or not.
Then my mother reached down with one finger and stroked the phantom arm she held, gathering a glint of crimson blood on her finger. And, with a smile on her face, she brought her finger up to her mouth and licked it. Her cheeks sucked in, and her eyes flew back into her head, relishing the taste of death.
The Bloodletter turned to me.
“Son,” he said. “This will all end with you.”
-KATE-
I felt a fire start in my heart, kindling, burning and exploding in a burst of rage. Morphis was smiling against Warrior attacks, fire shooting from his hands like bullets. Karen and Kelly were crying, their shrieks like knives cutting me over and over again. Love poured from my heart.
I turned to run for them-
and then suddenly Adam was standing in front of me and everything else blurred and was gone. Only him and me, alone in a shadow-filled world.
“Adam.” I pulled my hand back and closed my fist, ready.
His eyes found mine. “Run.”
My fist dropped. I breathed, “What?”
“Run,” he said again. “I’m going to hit you, and then you’re going to run like hell. Don’t look back. This is the only way you’ll escape alive. Got it?”
“No,” I said. “I won’t leave without my sisters.”
“I’ll take care of them, I promise.”
I shook my head. “I can’t trust you, Adam.”
“I know. But can’t you trust that I still love you? That I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you or anyone you care about because I know it would destroy you and make you hate me forever?”
“Adam,” I said, “I don’t trust love, and I don’t trust you.”
“Then let me help you. Let me prove myself.”
“Why are you doing this, Adam?” I asked. I felt my shoulders fall. “What happened to you? Why are you on the wrong side?”
He shook his head. “There is no wrong side, Kate, just people doing wrong things for good reasons. After everything you’ve been through, don’t you see that?” he asked. “Even though you don’t trust in love, I still do, and there are things I need to make up for. You are my good reason. So I’m going to hit you, Kate, and you’re going to run. Ready?”
I stopped.
I breathed.
I thought of Adam’s eyes, the way they had made me feel so happy before. Thought of the way his touch had made me lighter than air. How everything about him had made my heart soar.
How eve
rything had changed.
“No,” I said, and it was though a part of me that had been waiting to die finally did. “I’m not going to run, especially not from you.”
His eyes wet, he said, “Then this might go a little differently than I hoped.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “You were right about one thing.”
He stepped forward, hopeful. “You love me?”
“I did love you once, Adam, but not anymore.” I ran a finger over my leviti. I thought of my parents, of the sacrifices they gave so that I could live. Of the images from the blood spell: Mom’s hands on her stomach, Dad’s hands on hers. Of what Adam had said so long ago. “You were right about this: I am a savage, and I am brutal. But I am not heartless and I won’t sacrifice the lives of so many others so that only I can live.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” he spat. “You’d let yourself die just for two people you haven’t even seen in five years? How can you be so blind and so stupid?”
“We all have a choice, Adam,” I said. “We can be anyone we want. Love anyone we want. It’s crazy, isn’t it, how love is kind of like war? People get hurt. Some even die because of it. But it’s worth it if we fight for the right reasons. And Adam? This is my reason: I’m the kind of girl that fights for the people I love even if it kills me.”
I took Gae’s dagger from my sleeve and plunged it into Adam’s chest. His eyes gleamed with betrayal, with the loss of love I didn’t have to give him.
“Kate, I lo-” he started, but blood took his words away.
I didn’t take the knife out until I heard his heart pop and break.
I reached a hand up and closed his eyes.
I said goodbye.
-Calum-
“I am the Dreamer. The Caeles.”
He said, “As if that means anything to us. You’re our son, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”
“To ‘us’?” I asked. “You and Mom are suddenly some perfectly happy couple?”
“Not at all,” he laughed, and as if he were trying to prove a point, he leaned over, ripped my mother’s arm off and drove the sharp, pointed bone straight through her heart.
She fell with a soft thud, twitching until she was dead.
Mom, my heart cried in a beat.
No.
“She meant nothing to me,” he said. “This has always been about you, son. About what you are to me.”
I choked. “What am I to you?”
“My reckoning. My means to an end.” He stepped towards me, slowly putting one foot in front of the other.
“I tried,” he said, his words as blood-filled as his mouth. “I tried to be better once I found out the truth, but I couldn’t control it.”
“What?”
“It happened when you were small,” he said. “Since the day you were born I would get these pounding headaches, like fire in my skull, and they would get worse whenever I was around you. Always. I hated it. I hated you because of it.”
I stepped back. “You never told me.”
“I shouldn’t have had to. Look at you! It’s your fault I’m like this. I didn’t know what was happening, until one day I realized this wasn’t me. It couldn’t be. I would wake up and find myself standing over your crib, a knife in my hand. And the thing is, Calum, I wanted to kill you. I still do. But I know they’re not my thoughts. They’re his. That demon’s. He’s in my head all the time. Controlling me. You are the reason he did this to me. He is part of me now, and we both want you dead. I don’t think I can live with him inside my head anymore. It’s too much.”
His lips twitched. His tongue ran across them as he said, “I tried to run away to protect you, but I couldn’t. I want your blood too badly. I tried to taste others but they were never enough.”
“But-”
“You have to kill me if you want to live. That’s the only way I can protect you now. Kill me and you’ll be free of me, son. You’ll be free.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Then I have to kill you.”
He ran at me, the mask of the Bloodletter stuck on his face with a wide, malicious grin. His fist connected with my stomach and, as I fell to the ground, I wished once more.
I am not my father’s son, I thought.
I am the Caeles.
I am the Dreamer.
But, no.
I was just a boy who loved a girl. A boy who needed her to live.
I would die for that, for her.
For all these people that didn’t have a choice.
So I wished.
Chapter Nineteen
Rising Hearts
-Calum-
The sky was on fire.
The high trees burned, lighting the field in a cage of danger.
The Orieno crawled across the field, rising and falling in waves of dead-gray, moving as if one large breath of darkness.
My Dad’s cold fingers grabbed at me, tearing bits of my flesh away until I felt the warmth of my blood drip down.
A cry broke through the moaning of the Orieno, a scream in the night so dark. Morphis: “Die, Dreamer! Die like you should have years ago!”
My head fell back and I saw the stars above, saw the moon shining full and bright in the otherwise darkened sky. I saw the leaves fall from the trees like drops of blood bleeding down from the stars.
My dream, I thought. This is my dream.
This is the future, the past come true.
And then the sky exploded in a light so blinding white it seemed almost black.
They fell from the burning sky like red leaves drifting down from autumn trees; broken constellations turned fallen stars. They were hundreds, covering all but a lone patch of moonlight next to me that shone red with blood.
“Caeles!” a voice called from above.
The Bloodletter snarled and fell back, rolling until he was feet from where Morphis stood with Kate’s sisters still bound and gagged.
“Orion!” I cried as a gust of wind hit my face.
The clouds around his body swirled menacingly in the night. He landed next to me and said, “Caeles, it’s come to this: You must choose a path. Life or death.”
His hand reached out and touched my neck, a cold moment in a dark night, and I felt better.
“I don’t want to die,” I said. “But I don’t want to be the only one left living, either.”
“A difficult choice.”
“I want to save who I can.”
Orion nodded. “You always have. You’ve dreamed it haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “But what does that have to do with anything? I already know the prophecy. I have to die.”
Around us, the Orieno demons and those possessed shouted and my heart exploded in fury. It was as it always had been: Death on death on bloody death.
“Please, Orion,” I pleaded. My throat exploded in pain. “How do I stop this?”
Orion’s hand fell to my birthmark. His skin matched mine exactly. Brilliant stars fell fast down his arm and shot through his hand to meet my own version of a night sky. Clouds swirled around my wounds and I felt myself heal. “The prophecy you heard was nothing more than words strung together by a witch who liked the taste of blood. Remember, Caeles, that you are the Dreamer, and the true prophecy was just a dream you had long ago. Anything can become true if we allow it, but what do you think dreams are if not the moments we step through time to see what could be? You can step through this. You can stop this, too, if that is what you want. Perhaps that is what the prophecy meant all along.”
“I can stop this?”
He nodded. “You are the Caeles. Use your power.”
“How?” I asked, my heart beating fast.
“Feel it in your heart, Caeles. Love is the key to everything. Let desire burn through your veins and explode out your hands in fiery glory.” His voice grew beyond the cries of the Orieno and the Order. Bold and fearless, he shouted, “Use your love to rid the world of everything against it, until the only thing left is your heart bursting,
rising in love!”
I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut, and thought of the girl I met days before who I had known forever.
Kate.
My heart boomed against my ribs until I could barely breathe and all I could think about were her eyes. So violet in a shadowed world. Our eyes meeting and that one moment lingering forever, shining a bright light in my life so dark.
You’re my reason to fall in love.
I thought of leaning forward, brushing my lips to hers and feeling the heat and the fire and the entire world burning around us in love.
Kate.
It had always been about love.
I opened my eyes and saw Orion smiling in the center of a mad world tinted red with blood. When I looked down, my hands were on fire, bursting with bright flames flickering blue-violet in the dark, red night.
-Kate-
I ran against stars and Warriors falling dead.
Move, I told myself.
Faster.
Run faster.
Almost there.
I pulled my hand back in a tight fist-
felt the rush of anger feed into my leviti as I gripped the dagger.
Five more feet, I thought.
Four.
Kill.
Three.
Just kill him.
Two.
Kill Morphis!
One.
“You’ve taken nearly everyone I’ve ever loved!” I yelled as I let my fist fly. “I will die before I let you take my sisters from me too!”
-Calum-
Among the falling stars, I could not find my heart.
And then, I saw her jump toward Morphis, saw him smile and grab Kate and sink his teeth deep into her neck. Saw the look of pleasure on his face as he sucked and swallowed her life.
I saw her fall.
“Kate!” I shouted. “No!”
Against everything, I ran.
My heart flew in front of me, carrying me forward so fast it was like I was flying through the air. Wind ripped my hair back and stuck in my eyes like needles.
