Fire & Shadows

by Rochelle Maya Callen

  I could feel the evil digging deep and craving blood and sacrifice. When I looked at Giovanni and Lynx, a flutter of images flashed in my mind—each murderous image more gruesome than the last. Think of what we could do. The blood on an angel and a guardian! Think of the power... Dejanira’s voice grated against my brain. I could feel her fingers tickle my mind and yanking and contorting my thoughts. I fell to me knees, rasping. W—why was I here? Lynx. Lynx. It was an important name... I knew it was, so why was it so hard to hold on to?

  Giovanni’s voice was a rumble grazing my mind. “Jade—Jade, Don’t forget... who you really are.” Who I really am? I closed my eyes. You are a Demon Princess, Dejanira roared, thrashing against my insides. I could almost feel her clawing her way out. I didn’t know how much longer I could resist. I was stuck, crippled and defenseless. Lynx’s broken body and Giovanni’s weakening one lay on the floor besides me. The only way to win was to pull on my strength and fight back to save them both. I reached to Connor, searching for our link, our connection.

  Dejanira interrupted me with a whisper in my mind. Oh, he is—unavailable right now. You already took too much from him. You are always taking too much.

  No, no, no! My desperate eyes darted to Giovanni. He had started to stand, but in a flutter of more fallen feathers, and a deep, excruciating inhale, he fell back onto one knee. But he was closer to me and somehow, that helped.

  That was when the tattoo faded completely, leaving my skin untouched.

  And that was when I heard Dejanira howl with laughter. I tried, but I could feel her... clawing her way to freedom.

  48

  GIOVANNI

  JADE TURNED TO me, convulsing, and she lifted the sword sheathed to her back and trained it on my throat. Tears ran rivers down her cheeks. “Jade?” Blotchy blackness leaked into her eyes. Her hands were shaking violently, trying not to lift the blade any higher, trying not to thrust it any closer. Lilith twirled gleefully across the ice. “Yes, yes, yes! My princess is coming home.” I ignored her, staring into Jade’s changing gaze.

  “Don’t let me do it.” Desperation flooded her eyes, a shimmer of green blazing to life before dulling again.

  Jade’s head tipped back, the blankness shifting over her features about to let Dejanira take hold. The sword dropped to the ice, clanging against it. I lunged for her and wrapped my arms around her, pinning her to me. She jerked in my arms. “Jade. Jade,” I whispered into her ear, feeling her quake beneath my arms, feeling the monster take hold. “Jade, I am here. Fight. Fight!”

  My chest was all shallow breaths and hollowness. I stared into her face. I could see her wincing; see the pain shudder through her as she fought back. Sweat trickled from her brow and then blood dripped from her nose. “I—I can’t.” Her voice broke on the words. “Just don’t let me do it. Don’t let me become her.”

  “You won’t!” I insisted, but she shook her head.

  Another fierce spasm rocked through her and I knew that there was very little of Jade left in my arms, but she still fought. “Kill me, Giovanni. You have to kill me.” Every word came out on a labored breath, but she managed each one through gritted teeth.

  I shook my head. Never. I didn’t care if her other half tore me apart; I could never hurt her with those slivers of green peeking through. Not while Jade was still in my arms. Gold spires and home flashed to mind. When had I lost my battle sense? When did I forget that one life was always better to take than risking more? When did I lose the strength to kill? I looked down into her strained, desperate, and dulling eyes. I knew exactly when. It was when I loved. Love was a fierce and treacherous thing. It sneaks up on you and steals your breath when you aren’t looking. It reaches deep in your chest and settles there so that nothing else can fill it. It keeps your arms wrapped around the very thing that may kill you just because you hope that it won’t, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter, because at least you held it until the end.

  “No” I said back to her. “I won’t kill you. Ever.” Memories slammed into me... and I remembered a world of promises, and feelings, and shy touches, and the gold orb in my pocket. I remembered it all, everything I had locked deep inside and I suddenly knew how stupid I was forever pushing her away, for not holding her like this every moment she was close to me... because, what if this was the last time? “No,” I said back to her. “I won’t kill you. Ever.”

  She fell still and I almost thought that my words had quieted her, but then I heard it. A voice like knives and rust and tinkling bells all forged together. “That is very good to know.” I opened my eyes and saw black ones looking back at me. Her lips were quirked up in a grin above her pointy demon teeth. I swallowed hard. “So nice to see the angels finally falling prey to the demons. Did you enjoy this flesh?” She lifted a hand and stroked my cheek. “I would love to play.” A slitted black tongue darted past her lips and licked my cheek.

  I stiffened. I put my hand out and pulled her vision back to me. I searched her face, searched for her, but saw no sign of her. “Jade...Jade, please.”

  That was when it happened: her claws gouged into my gut, tearing. I groaned. “That’s not my name, Angel,” she hissed, her fist tightening; she was cutting me open at my center, letting my energy spill out to weaken me. I could feel myself collapsing, folding in on itself. “My name is...”

  Her head snapped back and then sideways at an unnatural angle. I could feel the claws unhinge from my skin and I fell on the ground gasping, watching as her eyes flickered and looked confused in their oily blackness. Her bloody claws reached up and stilled over her chest. It was shaking as if Dejanira didn’t want it there, but something... someone inside her did.

  I sat up. The claw dug deep into the skin and Dejanira howled and shook her head from side to side. The claw dragged down, twisting and turning and swiveling, leaving a gaping, flapping black veined skin and a trail of oozing blood. Dejanira’s black eyes rolled back into her head. Then the hand fell to her side and she fell to her knees. Her head whipped back, and a coiling, thick, black smoke poured from her lips. It was a cloud of flies, blackness, and shards of ice. As it stopped, she fell forward and I scrambled up to catch her before she fell face first onto the ice. I pulled her into my lap and cradled her in my arms. Her eyes were closed, but the vein tracks were receding. The color flushed back into her skin. She wasn’t breathing. I pressed my ear to her chest. No sound. No heartbeat. No, no, no. I needed that sound in the world. I needed that drum as a constant music in the silence between us. I inhaled deeply and shook. She was gone. Jade was gone and her corpse was sprawled out in my arms bloody as if I was the one who killed her.

  I leaned down and rested my forehead to hers. My breath stuttered in and out. Her cheek was so soft; her eyelashes grazed my skin, and her lips were so close to mine. I swallowed and murmured, “I’m sorry,” into her cheek; then I did the unthinkable and let my lips graze hers. She was gone and it was only now that I finally could kiss her. I intended to only let my lips linger for a moment, but then... she was kissing me back. I gasped and my eyes fluttered open to see her beneath me, her lips brushing and pressing against mine. She was alive! And she was kissing me back. I pulled away and cupped her cheek, desperate to make sure that this was real, that this was true.

  Her eyes were closed, her lips swollen and ripe. She was almost smiling. Smiling. I shivered from the intensity and leaned down to kiss her lips again, just as I heard it, her beautiful, but ragged voice whispered just a feather’s width beneath my lips, “Connor?”

  I flinched away, pitching her forward and to the ground, lunging back so there was space between us. She thought she was kissing him. There needed to be more space, more distance. There needed to be a world shoved between us so that she didn’t see me shatter to pieces like the ice all around us.

  My shoulders were shaking. Jade’s body was healing, her brows pinched in concentration and pain. She started to sit up as she brought her fingers to her lips to touch the wetness there. She said the damned boy
’s name again and I swore that it was the ugliest sound in the world. It was like a sliver of glass digging deep.

  A bark of laughter sounded behind me along with another tinkling giggle. I whirled around, swords in hand, and blinked.

  Lilith, elegant and shimmering in her black gown and frosty crown, her eyes alight with mirth, stood beside... her.

  Dejanira was a delicate and monstrous thing. Shadows writhed around her pale, ashen skin. She looked hollow and rotting: skin caving into the space beneath her cheekbones, dark circles smudged under her eyes as if the blackness of them leaked out, spilled and pooled beneath them. The cracked, chapped lips turned up in a terrifying smirk. Pointy teeth peaked out under her lips.

  I choked on my breath, blinking again, whipping my head to Jade to see if she was still on the ground. She was... she was there, a bright glow surrounding her, but she still seemed far away. I looked back at the devils in front of me. “What—wha—”

  Dejanira skipped forward and curled her clawed fingertips in front of her. “Oh, it feels so nice to be free.” Her voice slithered over and found me. “So nice to not be caged and leashed in such a pathetic host.” Her head cocked at an unnatural angle and slid over to Jade’s recuperating frame. I stepped into her line of vision. Her laugh was razor blades and breaking glass. “And you!” She pointed at me. “An angel! So fragile in the hands of a half-breed. Aren’t you supposed to be a warrior of Heaven? A divine soldier?” Dejanira twisted her head completely backwards to look at her mother as her body stayed poised forward. I swallowed bile. “Looks like Heaven and Earth won’t be so hard to destroy, mother... not with such weak competition.” Lilith smiled. Dejanira’s head snapped forward; her gaze fixed on me. “It almost seems like it won’t be much fun at all to rip all your life sources out from your guts if you won’t even fight to keep them. Won’t even fight...”

  “We. Will. Fight.” The words blazed behind me and even Lilith and Dejanira looked startled. The voice was familiar, but booming like a roar of thunder in this cavern of ice. I slowly turned toward Jade, expecting to see her in a heap on the floor. She wasn’t. She stood with not even a scratch defiling her skin. I gulped down, because even knowing what she was, I never imagined the true glory of it. She was riveting—gorgeous, pristine, and lethal. Shadows and flames undulated around her in an intricate dance. Somehow, she seemed to loom before all of us, expanding to fill the space. She wasn’t, but her power pulsed in the air. “You aren’t the only one free, Dejanira.”

  “But how—” Dejanira—all pointy teeth and sunken skin—looked confused and angry.

  Jade tapped on her temple and smirked. “I have another voice in my head, leech.”

  My gut tightened at the thought. Him. In her head.

  “And he told me a little secret.”

  “And what secret is that?” Lilith spoke, her velvety voiced edged.

  “Dejanira weakened me. She blocked my other strengths, the Seraph blood. And now, she can’t anymore.” Jade reached back and pulled out the twin swords I had given her, etched with the angelic symbols. She closed her eyes as she unsheathed them, exhaling as if a ripple of pleasure undulated through her. Her eyes snapped open, blazing green and the swords flared to fiery life. She swirled them in the air in slow, controlled, arcs and then rested them in Lilith’s and Dejanira’s direction. “I will tear you both apart. Limb from limb. And I won’t spare a single tear for you.”

  Dejanira let out a shot of nervous laughter, but her eyes narrowed. “Will you now? That would really need to happen soon, pretty girl. Because soon, the monsters below will rise up... and you won’t be able to stop us. We will destroy you all.”

  I couldn’t listen anymore. I whirled around, releasing one of my daggers in the air. It soared, spinning. Blade over hilt until it slid into Lilith’s chest. Dejanira screamed, whipping around and lunging for her. Lilith’s eyes grew wider and wider, her lips parting as an oily spill of inky blood trickled from her lips. She grasped at the blade, but the angelic poison must have already been spilling into her because after one tug, she let go, gasping in huge breaths. Dejanira’s ferocious gaze snapped to me and she leaped forward, claws outstretched. I didn’t have any more weapons, but even with the weakness rotting inside me, I wouldn’t give up. My legs felt weak, buckling beneath me. No, no, no! I needed to fight. Needed to get Lynx. Needed to protect Jade.

  Jade flung herself forward, sliding on her knees, dragging the blade behind her. Heat emanated from her in blistering waves. The force knocked Dejanira back. I don’t remember when I fell to my knees or when the walls started closing in. Jade was holding me, whispering in my ear, her lips grazing my cheek. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It all felt so far away. She shook me, and cupped my face in her hands. She was screaming at me, but the sound was muffled. The light was fleeting and all I saw as all went black was Dejanira standing behind Jade and thrusting her claws into her back.

  49

  JADE

  DEJANIRA’S CLAWS DUG deep into my back and I screamed, whipping around and thrusting a blade towards her. She ducked away, rolling and then she stood. “You! You ruined everything!” she hissed. “This world was supposed to be ours? And you let that—Seraph—kill Lilith, kill our mother. You are the monster you always thought you were...and you can’t even blame me.”

  “I don’t,” I said. I felt the well of scorching heat building in me, channeling into my arms, ready. “I can be a monster...when I need to be.” I took the swords, swiveled them in the air, and slammed them deep into the ice, the force of my anger, hatred, fire, and blackness charring the earth and the ice. A loud cracking splintered the ice and everything beyond where my swords stood piercing the ice, started to crumble and pitch backwards. The cavern of Hell—of Lilith, Dejanira, torture, and monsters, started to cave in on itself, and falling deeper into the earth. Dejanira tumbled back, rolling and thrashing against the ice. “You bitch!” She grabbed a jutted out piece of rock as Hell tilted to a vertical angle, just leaving Giovanni, and I standing and Lynx passed out in Giovanni’s arms. Lilith’s body rolled in a messy thud down the ice, smearing black blood as she went tumbling.

  Dejanira’s eyes met mine. “This isn’t over.”

  I swallowed hard, because even as if it seemed the very world was falling, I knew she was right. “I’ll be waiting.” I hauled one sword up and plunged it back into the ice, and yet another splintered ice face cracked, and as it did, Dejanira screamed as she fell into the abyss.

  50

  CONNOR

  NANAN AND MATT were gasping beside me. Blood had dried beneath my nose. The Unbinding spell had been cast and I wasn’t sure if the fact my body had started healing, my strength returning was a good thing or a sign there was no longer anyone who needed my strength. I didn’t have to say anything for Nanan to start smudging the runes of the Unbinding and start drawing the symbols for the portal. Matt heaved in deep breaths as he shook. I stood in the center of the circle. The candles’ fire burned brighter. I had to squint and step back so that the flame wouldn’t blister my skin. I knew what I had to do when Nanan and Matt stopped their flurry of movement and just sat back on their hands and knees. I traced the symbol on my wrist.

  I paused when I felt her like a warm presence in my mind. I could feel her, like an echo in my mind that I couldn’t make out, that I couldn’t catch, but she was there. And with everything for the spell cast before me, I was going to stand beside her every step of the way. If I made it there, that is. Nanan’s house was too quiet. Waiting. It was stifling and I was ashamed that a small part of me was happy to go, happy to leave these creaking floorboards and all this claustrophobic tension behind.

  “Connor?” Mom’s voice was tentative in the dark, probing, accusatory. All our gazes snapped to Nanan’s living room doorway. None of us had heard her come inside. Mom’s eyes scanned the room. She knew very quickly that this was all wrong. Her son stood in the middle of a two interlocking circles drawn in white chalk on the ground. Three candles
melting around him, flickering in time with the flames’ undulations and then in my hand was Jade’s shirt. “Connor, what are you doing?” Mom came in slowly, her arms and hands poised in front of her as if she was trying to approach a wild animal. “Baby, what are you doing?” She had followed me here. Her voice quivered and I hated myself for it. Even if she had tried to send me to an asylum...

  “Mom, I can’t explain. But I have to go...”

  Nanan and Matt tensed.

  “Where? Where are you going?” Her voice pitched upward, as if the sound could build a wall and try to stop me.

  “I—I have to go to Jade.”

  “No, Connor. No. You have to stay here. With me. You promised... you promised!” Angry tears pricked at her eyes. I didn’t want to add that she nearly sent me away. She was too broken to hear it. She was afraid and I didn’t blame her. She was clenching her teeth as she spoke. She was the one that looked like a wild animal. She was the one that looked like she was ready to spring the attack and I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t stay.

  “I’ll be back, Mom.” I threw Jade’s shirt into the fire, quickly traced the symbol and felt her presence within me. I reached for it, and the moment I did, I felt a sucking sensation as if the air behind me was about to slurp me up and swallow me whole. “I promise.” The wind spat out around me from the void at my back. Mom lunged, but I could already feel my body being yanked back. The desperation on Mom’s face crushed me. I had promised, but as the blackness stole me away from my home, my living room, my mother and whisked me off to somewhere I didn’t know, I knew it was a promise I couldn’t keep. I knew it may have been the last time I would ever see my mother’s face, and for a split second, I wondered if I had made the wrong choice. I wondered even if I did come back, if I would have a mother to come back to. I clenched my eyes shut and felt the air whip around me. A flash of light came before me and I opened my eyes wider. I smelled pine and ash, and…Jade.