by David James
In a second, I was there.
I slammed into Morphis, grabbed him by the waist and threw him against a tree. He stood, but I shot a blast of fire that hit him in the chest.
“Kate?” I leaned down and wrapped my arms around her body. I shook her.
Nothing.
“Kate!” I cried. “Be alive! Please, Kate! Please!”
“She’s dead, Dreamer.”
Morphis moved like a ghost across the field until he was standing before me.
He grinned and blood spilled down his chin. Kate’s blood. “Pity, though. She tasted so good.”
Rage like I never felt before shot through my veins and beat my heart until it was all I could feel, until the world turned so blue it burned for the one thing I missed.
I gripped the fire in my hand, pulled Morphis against me, and shoved a fiery burst into his stomach.
He stumbled back. “You’ll need to do better than that if you want to defeat me.”
I turned my head up to face the moon, thought of my Dad and Mom and Tyler and Kate and everything I’d ever lost, and felt the light of the moon shine down on me like hope.
I closed my hands tighter, turned to Morphis, and let out an explosion of blue-violet.
He raised his hands in a shield of burning red.
“Your dreams are nothing,” he said. “You have no-”
He stopped, and put a hand against his throat.
“What is-” he choked.
His body started to glow, shine as though a fire had started inside of him. Slowly, the fire broke through his skin and erupted in violet flames over his entire body.
“The blood oath,” a voice from below whispered.
I looked down. “Kate! You’re alive!”
“It wasn’t for you.” Weak, she tried to smile.
I slid my hand under her head. “What wasn’t for me?”
“Before I knew you, Marcus forced me to make a blood oath with him. To kill you.” Her breathing came slowly. “I... I think the blood oath I made with Marcus was meant for Morphis, not you, Calum. Marcus knew all along that Morphis couldn’t have my blood. It was cursed to poison him. Marcus was protecting me.”
And, as Morphis exploded in a burning violet light, I leaned down and rested my lips against Kate’s.
-Kate-
“Kate!”
As I pulled my lips away from Calum’s, I heard a voice I had not heard for years.
“Kelly?” I shouted.
I felt a burst of happy energy.
All around us the Orieno were slowly falling back to sleep, and I knew they would wake as the people they once were. The Guard were rising back to the sky, and Calum was next to me.
I opened my mouth. “Karen?”
I looked and saw them walking slowly towards me. Shadows still covered their arms and legs, but they were smiling with tears in their eyes, calling me.
I smiled and, for that moment, my heart felt like it was bursting out of my chest.
I grabbed at Calum’s arm and pulled myself up. I didn’t feel the burn in my legs, or the pain in my neck. I just ran.
And then a man came out from the shadows, walking towards my sisters with a knife in his hand.
The Bloodletter.
“No!” I screamed and ran as fast as I could.
“Kate! Wait!” Calum shouted behind me, but there was no time.
Feet from them, I pulled Gae’s knife out and shoved it deep into the Bloodletters skull.
He fell.
Dead.
I flung my arms around my sisters, finally.
“I missed you both so much,” I cried.
“We love you,” they said with their faces buried in my sides.
I turned to find Calum, but when I saw his face I didn’t recognize him.
“He couldn’t have been the Bloodletter anymore. Morphis is gone,” he whispered. “He couldn’t have been possessed anymore. He wasn’t the Bloodletter.”
Chapter Twenty
Blood Calls Back
-Calum-
I heard her voice as though she were miles away. She kept calling my name, saying words I couldn’t understand, her eyes pleading with me to forgive.
I looked at her through eyes streaked with tears. She didn’t look the same. Her hair was just as wild, her eyes just as violet as they had always been. Her freckles, the same. I searched still, but couldn’t find the girl I loved beneath everything she had become.
“Calum?” Kate asked, her voice breaking. “I had to. I thought I had to.”
Just then the sun broke through the clouds, streaking in jagged lines through the dust. The light played against my skin. A new day was starting. The sun rose higher and higher in the sky until it became a beacon.
“Calum?”
The sun hit her body from behind. Standing a few feet away from Kate, I was trapped in her shadow. There, in that gray and cold limbo, I felt something inside me change. The fingers of the sun trailed across my hands, my arms, and then my neck. A disembodied soul. It seemed the hands focused there, each finger like a burn. Like sweet betrayal choking me.
Who did I blame for this?
“Calum, please. I had to.”
“I know, Kate,” I said, caught in the darkness she had made. “I forgive you.”
-Kate-
Blood.
I heard it singing my name-
calling to me louder than before, and I knew Magda was gone.
Dead and gone.
I reached out to touch Karen’s fingers, to brush my hand against Kelly’s, but I felt a dark shadow inside me pulling me back, away. My body flung back.
I heard my sister’s screams.
I said, “Keep them safe.”
Calum nodded but said nothing.
I met his eyes, deep and blue and wild as an untamed sky, and said goodbye.
The blood called me back to a place already dead.
Chapter TwentyOne
Those Found and Lost
-Calum-
Two bodies clung to me and, although I didn’t know them, I hugged them back just as desperately as if I did. I ran my fingers through their hair, squeezed their shoulders, and told them not to worry.
“Where did she go?”
“Where did our sister go?”
I pulled them closer.
“She’ll be back,” I said against their screams.
In this first light of morning, the world looked darker than it should have. Bodies littered the ground in pools of blood, pieces of misshapen lost lives, and severed heads stuck in odd places like headstones looking up at the sky.
This place was a graveyard for the lost-
My father laying crumpled in a dead heap with my mother’s blood still stuck to his lips. Knight, pale white and shaking, holding Kendra Little in his arms, sobbing quietly until both were silent again-
and the found.
My shirt was wet with tears and warm from two little girls holding on tightly to the only person still standing. Against their paled, golden skin, mine looked burnt and blotched with faded stars.
Still, I pulled them closer.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It will be okay.”
And then, as I remembered the place where I began and the people that once lived, I closed my eyes and whispered a simple melody into the air; a slow, sad song for a sad day; a few words to remember:
When the moon’s away
And our tears fall down
And our fears fall down
And our hopes fall down-
Our hearts beat on,
Our hearts beat on,
Our hearts beat on.
When the sun comes up
And the girl is gone
And the night is gone
And the world is gone-
Our hearts beat on,
Our hearts beat on,
Out hearts beat on.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I said.
I hoped.
Author’s Note
Th
ere are many facts woven into this story, but only some of them are completely true. I’ve taken liberties with the idea of Morpheus, Greek god of dreams and leader of the Oneiroi “Dreams” triplets. There are many interpretations of the Oneiroi, but I have molded the idea that Latin poet Ovid presented when he named them as Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos. I also played around with the Arthurian legend of Merlin, and the idea that Myrddin Wyllt was his modern image. There have been several claims that a prophet named Lailoken was truly Myrddin Wyllt, and therefore Merlin, so I thought it interesting to incorporate that as well. And, as with everything else, I chose to bend and break some of the constellations and star patterns in the sky to better fit the story. Any differences in the reality of astrology were intended. For Calum’s constellation, I focused on the latin word “Caeles” (pronounced "KAI-leyss") which means “divinity/dweller in heaven” and used that name as a model for both his character and his power.
Acknowledgments
To my Mom because she was the first reader, and the first believer. And to my Dad for always being there. I won’t thank you for all the things you both have done for me over the years because that list would be another novel entirely, but I will say this: Thank you both for letting me run after my dreams with my whole heart, and for giving me the courage to believe. To you both, I am forever thankful.
Thanks to my sisters, Kara and Kelsey, who would fight for me even harder than Kate fought for her siblings. Rest easy, because I would do the same. Thank you both for being there no matter what, and for being the only two people in my world that never asked me when I was getting a job.
Many thanks to Amy, Jean, Toby, Gordon, and the many people that helped me learn about myself at Hazel Park High School.
A special thanks to Abby, Lindsay, and Brandon who know me better than anyone in the world. You three were, and continue to be, my lifelines to the real world, and my closest friends.
A big thanks to early readers, Will and Rachel and Matt, who asked me repeatedly if they could read this story until I caved. And to Donna, who read this story years ago when it was a completely different story.
To my whole extended family, both blood related and not, who have given me endless amounts of happy memories.
A big thanks to Keary Taylor for designing such an amazing cover and for her early enthusiasm. To Helen Boswell, the Queen, for her support and superb editing skills, and for her friendship. And to you, the reader, and to all those I’ve forgotten, my thanks is yours. Always.
David James lives in Michigan. He has worked as an editor and a teacher, and still dreams to one day be a Power Ranger. He lives for cool autumn days, gummy worms, bad movies, popcorn, and books.
Learn more about David’s writing process at
http://djamesauthor.blogspot.com
Watch out for
The Warrior’s Code:
Zack’s Short Story
And find out what life was like
for Kate and Zack on their
journey to become Warriors.
Find out what happens next in
Book two
Shadow of The Sun
With Kate bound to live in
Ashfall, Calum is left to
Protect her sisters and help
bring the Order back to grace.
With more blood, more magic,
and more romance on every page
this second chapter will
leave you breathless.
To be released Late 2013
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Author's Notes
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Author's Notes
Acknowledgments
