Hollow of Treason

by Lainy Lane

  Drake sighed. "That’s where Tristan is, so it just makes sense.”

  "Tristan is living with you again?" Calandra's voice was an annoyingly high pitch in her shock.

  “He needed somewhere to go after he was freed from Trinity, so I told him he could have the closet room back." He shrugged.

  "Since when is he freed from Trinity?" Calandra suddenly felt like she had been left out of something huge.

  "Since we told Jarreth to do it. Don’t you remember just before the whole renegade on fire stunt you pulled in the field we told him to release Tristan, you were there, right?" The sarcasm was more than unwelcome at the moment.

  "Yes, I was there." Calandra rolled her eyes. "I didn't realize he actually did it though."

  "Yeah, just before you forgave him, and here I thought that was the reason you were so willing to forgive Jarreth. Anyways, Tristan came here afterward, which was quite unfortunate since it was the middle of the freaking night. I don't really take too kindly to my sleep being interrupted."

  That must've been why Trinity was not only free to have her conversation with Drake, but also why she had been so anxious to get back to Kailen. She had been allowing Tristan to live with her in order to keep up her little be my lover scheme with him. Once she no longer had a hold on him, she must have kicked him out to get back to Kailen right away. Had she been shacking up with Tristan during their muse ordeal just to go to Kailen and mess around with him too? This whole situation screamed sick on a whole new level than what Calandra was prepared for.

  "So, do we know for sure he is home now?" she finally asked just before they walked through the door. She didn’t want to risk being alone with Drake.

  "I don't know, Calandra, just because he's staying here doesn't make me his keeper."

  "Alright, moody, it was just a question, geez!" Calandra threw her arms up in surrender of his attitude change. Maybe he was on edge from their encounter earlier as well.

  Calandra sat on the couch in the tiny living room. Drake's house was always so dark that Calandra always immediately felt downhearted upon entering it. The only lighting came out of a few lamps with dark shades over them. There were black curtains over the windows to block out most ambient light as well. It was a dark and dreary place, much like Drake was a dark and gloomy Faerie.

  "Tristan?" Drake called down the short hallway for him.

  The click of a doorknob followed immediately, and then light footsteps echoed down the hall. Tristan poked his head around into the living room and smiled at Calandra. "Hey!" he greeted her cheerily. "To what do I owe this pleasure exactly?"

  Calandra tried to throw out a smile at him, but her mouth refused to fully form one. "I need a favor. Not that I should be asking you for anything, but you're kind of the only person who can do it for me."

  "Anything," Tristan answered, looking confused at her stand-offish attitude.

  "Tristan, I need for you to kill me."

  Tristan's jaw dropped, and he stared at Calandra, unable to speak. Calandra looked to Drake, not sure of where she was supposed to really go from there. After asking your ex-boyfriend to kill you, it slightly altered the way you felt about looking at him. Was an explanation really in order for this kind of a situation? Was there actually a valid explanation possible? Calandra's mind flooded with possibilities of things she could say, but despite the million things filling her mind, none of them seemed even close to being the right thing to say. Calandra finally came to the conclusion that there was no right way for the conversation to go from there.

  Drake sighed from behind them. "Yes Tristan, you heard her right, we need for you to kill Calandra. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it after all she's put you through."

  "Drake!" Technically Calandra knew she fully deserves the comment, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t still be offended by it.

  "Well— it's true." Drake shrugged it off.

  Tristan had still yet to close his mouth.

  Calandra smiled over at him. "Maybe you should come sit down?" She patted the seat on the couch next to her.

  He looked zombie like at he walked, mouth still hanging open, eyes dazed as he took the seat next to her. He gawked at her, a helpless expression drowning his beautiful baby blue eyes in sorrow and Calandra couldn’t help but feel that she might have finally broken him.

  "I'll do it." Tristan shocked both Calandra and Drake by breaking the silence with a simple agreement.

  "You don't wanna know why?" Calandra's shock was apparent in her voice.

  Tristan shrugged. "I trust you must have a good reason for asking."

  "Told you he would want to," Drake broke into the awkwardness. "He doesn't even care if you're coming back or not.”

  Calandra had been wrong in thinking that allowing Tristan to be the one to do the act wouldn't hurt her. Her heart shattered at his willingness and his lack of questions for the reasoning. She had expected him to put up a fight regardless of her not deserving one. She fought down the lump of tears that built in her throat as Tristan turned to face the wall on the other side of the room.

  "So how do we do this?" Tristan didn’t look at them as he asked the question.

  "Simple enough really." Drake walked into the kitchen.

  Calandra couldn’t remove her eyes from Tristan.

  "You are coming back, right?" To Calandra's relief, Tristan’s voice trembled when he asked.

  "Yes," she managed to say barely above a whisper.

  "Good." Her heart lifted with the simple word Tristan muttered.

  Drake returned to the room with a knife. "You are going to need to carve her heart out." He had a dark hint of a smile on his face as he said it accompanied by a hard edge in his eyes.

  "I'm sorry?" At least Tristan was finally showing some sign of concern over the requested job.

  "We'll need to keep her heart preserved while we're gone." Drake seemed emotionless and calm as if all of this should have just been common knowledge.

  "So, we have to carve it out?" Calandra was suddenly regretting signing on for this. A few short weeks ago she had been a typical teenager. Now she was a part Faerie, part human, possibly part something else, future leader of Faerie waiting to have her ex-boyfriend carve her heart out so she could literally make a deal with death. This was not the kind of future that even your worst nightmares could come up with.

  Tristan seemed frightened now. He was showing some sort of emotion, which was a relief, Calandra had begun to wonder if Drake might be rubbing off on him. "How do we keep it preserved exactly?"

  "You," Drake corrected him, "will stay here with her body. You will keep her heart cold and protected, much to the contrast of what she did with yours."

  "Drake!" Calandra was sick of his sarcasm over this situation. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with it, her stress levels were far too high for that.

  "Sorry." Drake mocked her by expressing an emotion he was thouroughly incapable of actually feeling. "When we return, we will have to work fast to return her heart and stitch her up before her soul is forced to return to the Underworld. It won't take long for her soul to be convinced of her death and be sentenced to an eternity of wandering between here and the Underworld."

  Great, this proposition was only becoming more promising by the moment. Calandra suddenly found herself wishing for the electric current that coursed through her skin, which was something that only Jarreth could deliver for her. Her heart picked up the pace as if it knew what was in store for it. Maybe that meant it was a fighter and would hold up fine while she was wandering the Underworld, relying on a Faerie she was still unsure of whether or not she could trust as her only chance of coming back.

  She had known since she began this journey that it wasn't going to be easy, but things had still turned much darker than she could have ever imagined. Calandra couldn’t help but find herself wondering if this was all some kind of trick and Drake, who could possibly be working with Kailen or not, had some sort of alternative motive for this trip. She found
herself wondering what her mother would have to say if she knew this was where her letter had led her. There wasn’t exactly a set protocol for how to do the act that lay ahead of her. There was no comfort to be found in this situation, she was simply going to have to put her big girl panties on and deal with it.

  "So, we just keep it in the fridge?" Tristan pulled Calandra out of her thoughts.

  "No, in the freezer, Tristan." Drake rolled his eyes insinuating that Tristan should have known this already.

  "My bad," Tristan rebuked. "I haven't exactly done this before, not sure what is par for the course."

  "Anyways, we should probably get this over with." Drake placed the knife on the table in front of the couch where Tristan and Calandra sat.

  "Sorry, but would anyone mind if I take a minute, maybe take a few calming breaths or something?" Calandra's nerves had never been so high before, she felt as if every part of her was about to explode in sequence.

  "Absolutely not!" Drake was quick to crush her chance at a quick calming effect.

  "What?"

  "We're about to remove your heart, Calandra, the more you think on it, the more stress you will add to it. We’ve already discussed too many of the factors in front of you as it is. Time to get it over with before your anxiety builds even higher."

  Oh. Well, that made sense. Drake returned to the kitchen immediately. Tristan hadn't moved a single limb on his body for quite some time. He was focused on the knife on the table before him. Probably envisioning the act before he did it. That thought was more than disturbing for Calandra, and she blinked it away along with the tears that were trying to form in her eyes.

  Drake returned with a short glass with a thick liquid the color of a sapphire stone. "This will numb you, so you don't feel anything. I made it strong enough to last for the restoring act once we return as well. You'll be asleep for a day or so afterward." He handed her the glass and she took it from him apprehensively.

  "Do I even want to know what's in it?" The look in Drake's eyes answered the question for her. "Cheers!" Calandra lifted the glass, and with one quick intake of breath, she downed the liquid before she had a chance to chicken out.

  Her body felt as if ants were running around just underneath her skin. Calandra cautiously lay down on the couch and placed her legs over Tristan's lap. Despite not being able to actually feel him underneath her, knowing that she was in contact with him was enough to settle her nerves and she closed her eyes against her will. Her body hummed under the influence of whatever Drake had given her. That humming was the only thing she could feel. Her mind was overwhelmed with dizziness despite her eyes being closed off to the world.

  Memories of times with Tristan coursed through her mind. The first time she ever laid eyes on him. The loss of words that coursed through her when she allowed the beauty of his eyes to overtake her for the first time. The first time they kissed and how every nerve in her felt like it was set on fire. The first time Tristan told her he loved her, his face was so sincere and his eyes seemed to light up. The zombie experience that brought them to Faerie. The look on his face when she broke his heart and all the beauty behind his eyes faded away. Thoughts of Jarreth, before the betrayal, came next. Laying in the Faerie Field with him, the masquerade ball dancing, the times they’d spent in town. Just before the memory of his betrayal came flooding in, it was replaced by an image of Drake.

  Drake's voice pulled her from the memories in her head. "Let's go, Calandra."

  Calandra suddenly realized she felt like she was floating on air, she felt weightless. She opened her eyes, and there was nothing but darkness. "Drake?" A panic filled her.

  "Oh yeah." A light finally came into view and Drake was standing a few feet from her. "I forgot you can't see here, sorry." He smiled slightly, and the edge of the panic subsided, but it didn’t let up entirely.

  Calandra looked at herself and realized that her body was transparent, an odd emotion that she couldn’t explain overtook her at the realization. She wasn't alive anymore, she was no more than a ghost.

  "Sorry to tell you, dear, but we don't have a lot of time for you to compose yourself, we must go." His voice was rushed.

  Of course, it would be too much to give her time to recover from being dead, how could Calandra have expected so much? She looked around now that her eyes had adjusted. They seemed to be surrounded by a tunnel with no real form. Gray shadows loomed around them and an eerie feeling coursed through Calandra. The shadow figures seemed to be staring at them, and Calandra could feel the envy radiating from them.

  "Where are we?" She swallowed hard as she asked the question.

  "The tunnel between our world and the Underworld." Much to Calandra's comfort, Drake reached out and took her hand in his. "They are the lost souls I told you about. Cursed to spend eternity here, but not truly belonging anywhere."

  Despite the creepy feeling that surrounded her due to being surrounded by these cursed, lost souls Calandra felt a twinge of sympathy for them. To spend eternity lost and without any purpose would be the biggest tragedy Calandra could think of, and coming from someone whose life had been turned upside down and seemingly cursed over the last few weeks, that was saying something.

  "Come on." Drake tugged slightly on Calandra's hand motioning for them to walk deeper into the tunnel. "Let's go make a deal with death and get you back together before you have to join them in the shadows."

  Yeah, Drake sure knew how to calm nerves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Death Talks

  The journey through the tunnel to the Underworld turned out to be less dramatic than Calandra had predicted it would be. Other than the stares from the lost souls and the occasional cool touches as they reached out for her, grazing her arm from time to time, which Calandra expected would have been beyond bone-chilling if she were actually in her body and had bones to be chilled. Overall, it had been a tranquil trip. Calandra hadn't been able to bring herself to make any sort of small talk as they walked. She was thankful for the slight comfort of holding Drake's hand as they walked along. Grateful enough that she had forgotten she should be wishing it was Jarreth's hand instead. As soon as that thought occurred to her, it dissipated as she reminded herself that she wasn’t sure she should be desiring that any longer either.

  The tunnel came to a dead-end at an archway, where they now stood. It was a light gray metal, and there were hieroglyphics all along it. There was a thick film of swirling shadows inside of the archway acting as the barrier between the tunnel and the Underworld. There was a soft swooshing sound coming from inside of it.

  "I don't want to know, do I?" Calandra felt the fear rising in her as she asked the question and wished that being out of her body also meant being without emotions, another way having Jarreth here would have been more beneficial than Drake. Of course, that would have also meant she wouldn't be able to get back to her body. At the moment that seemed to be the least of her worries.

  "It's just the story of Ankou, it's quite interesting actually, and it might benefit you to know it." Drake dropped the sentence off, waiting for Calandra to signal that she wanted to hear it, she nodded him on. "Ankou was actually the firstborn son of Adam and Eve."

  "As in the Adam and Eve?" she asked, attempting to gauge how serious he was being.

  "The one and the same." Drake winked.

  "So how did he end up with this fate?"

  "How does anyone end up with a dark fate? He committed a sin and was punished." That sentence left Calandra wondering what sin she had committed to wind up in this position. "Well, I guess there are some exceptions to the rule." He smiled darkly.

  Calandra hated being an exception. "What was his sin exactly?"

  "It started with being born an arrogant man. He was an only child for six years and when that changed, so did his attitude. As more siblings came along, his jealousy grew into something uncontrollable. Eventually, he decided to take matters into his own hands. You know the story of Cain and Abel and how Cain was suppos
edly a murderer?"

  Calandra nodded.

  "Well, that's not exactly how it went down. Ankou saw Cain as his biggest rival since he was the one that took away his status as the one and only child. What the story you know didn’t tell you was the real reason that Cain killed Abel."

  "And that was?"

  "Because I told him to." A dark, sinister voice came from the other side of the veil.

  A shiver coursed through Calandra's spine and she didn’t have to ask who the voice belonged to. Her question now was whether or not they were supposed to cross-over to the other side, which was also the part of the entire experience that she feared most.

  "Ask him," Drake whispered and tightened his grip on her hand.

  "What?" she mouthed her question having lost the ability to actually speak.

  "Ask me why he listened." How Ankou knew what was happening on their side of the veil was a question Calandra quickly decided she didn’t want the answer to.

  "Why did he listen?" she obeyed the command from death, she didn’t need to be told it wouldn't be wise to cross or ignore him. She knew that she would need to remain on her best behavior here.

  "I had already made a deal with the devil, my dear. A deal to carry out work for him after my mortal life was over and do his bidding. In return, I would be able to persuade anyone to do anything I told them to for the rest of my mortal days." Ankou chuckled.

  "And you chose to have one of your brothers kill another one of your brothers?" The question wasn't supposed to actually come out, but it spilled out regardless of Calandra knowing better than to ask it.

  "Among many other things before my days on earth were done." A chilling laugh followed just after his words. "Now come, my dear, you and I have our own terms to discuss."

  "This is where I leave you." Drake offered a sympathetic smile that did little for Calandra's emotions.

  "What?" It came as practically a scream. This was not part of what Calandra signed up for. Drake may not have been her first choice of escorts to the Underworld, but he was better than being left alone with Death.