Nevermore, The Complete Series (Boxed Set) (Twin Souls, Hybrid, Sacrifice, and Destiny)

by K. A. Poe

  “She is a vampire, then?”

  “Oh, he’s a smart one,” Hannah spat, clearly still sulking at our decisions from earlier.

  “Correct, but just like us, she does not feed on human blood,” Salem said, ignoring his sister’s rudeness.

  “Are you okay down there, dad?” I called as I tried to catch a glimpse of him without any luck. He must have dropped the flashlight at some point.

  “I’ll be up there in a minute, kid,” he replied.

  “Please be careful…”

  I heard a loud creak of wood as Paul’s weight pushed against another rung. He grunted and began climbing slightly faster. I could see him now – only eight, maybe ten, feet from the top. The steps creaked and bowed with each step. Then suddenly came the unmistakable crack of wood breaking and I saw him slip slightly.

  “Dad!” I shouted, as I watched him scrambling to pull himself up with just his arms. Just as I thought he had regained himself, the rung his hands gripped pulled free from the wall, it’s old rusty spikes that had held for who knew how long had given out.

  “Dad?!” I shrieked. “PAUL!?” Bile grew in the back of my throat as I considered the possibilities of what had just happened. Without thinking I went to climb down to save him. Salem pulled me aside as I fought to get out of his grip. Suddenly someone strong held me by the shoulder and I turned to see Hannah’s now barely red eyes looking into mine, there was no use struggling now that I had no powers.

  Salem peered down the hole as I watched from a mere foot away, but it was hopeless – he couldn’t see anything in the pitch darkness. Despite his exhaust, his eyes flashed violet and within seconds, the bottom of the cave was illuminated by a bright lantern. It was still too far away, as bright as it was the cave floor was so distant from here it seemed as if everything down there were pebbles. Salem’s eyes flashed again and a pair of small binoculars appeared. He sat down, breathing hard.

  I jerked free from Hannah and picked up the binoculars.

  “Alex, you should…” Salem said between breaths, “let me look first. Just…just in case.”

  Ignoring him, I looked through the glass and used them to scan down the ladder – no sign of Paul clinging on anywhere. As I adjusted the view and pointed them towards the lantern I saw him.

  Paul’s body was sprawled across the stone floor, both legs warped and twisted backwards in such a way that I knew he wouldn’t be able to stand or walk ever again...if he was even alive. I could see blood pooling beneath him and noticed the front of his shirt was shredded into nothing. His fingers were bent and bloody and I knew he must have tried desperately to claw at the cave wall as he fell, to catch or slow himself. I felt sicker the more I looked.

  Panic began to settle in the pit of my stomach as I stared downward, waiting and praying that at any given second he would at the very least open his eyes, or say something – anything! It wasn’t long before I couldn’t handle it any more. The room began to feel stuffy and I was positive I couldn’t breathe. The walls appeared to close in on me. Salem attempted to steady me as I felt my body collapse onto the ground as a wave of dizziness overcame me.

  26. TEARFUL

  Cool, refreshing water ran down my cheeks and a soft cloth patted tenderly against my forehead. My eyes fought to open and slowly, my surroundings came into view. Salem held my head in his lap as he gently held a washcloth to my head and for a split second I had forgotten where I was and what had happened. The panic was coming back, I could feel it. I wanted to run, scream, get away, but there was no escape – the feeling was in the core of my body, my mind – I was causing it. Slowly, I inhaled a breath of musty air and exhaled.

  “Is he…” I started to speak but Salem shook his head and I stopped immediately.

  “Relax,” he insisted. “Try not to think of anything but relaxing.”

  “How can I think of anything relaxing at a time like this?!” I yelled and attempted to raise up. As soon as I had tried a pang of dizziness overcome me again. I sighed and tried as hard as I could to relax and block out the thoughts that were swarming around in my head.

  I thought back to the night Salem proposed to me. I could barely feel the light weight of the silver ring on my finger and I smiled. Then I thought of how Paul, just hours ago, had congratulated me…and the sickness returned.

  I attempted to block it out, to remember anything not associated with him. I remembered the feeling of flying, of being the raven, of feeling invincible to the laws of nature. My body relaxed slightly and I felt steady enough to sit up without support.

  “Summon a new ladder! Someone climb down there and make sure he is okay! Do something!” I bellowed. “Please!”

  Salem nodded urgently and a ladder materialized at the base of the hole. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before?! We all would have safely made it up here, no harm done! I hated myself at that moment and wished I had been the one broken and unconscious on the bottom of the cave. That is what made me decide that I would be the one to climb down there, despite Salem’s constant refusals and begging me not to. Hannah even, to my surprise, offered to check on him. But he was my father, and it somehow felt like my fault that any of this happened.

  I kissed Salem quickly before making my way down the ladder. Despite wanting to get down as soon as possible I climbed slowly. Regardless of it being a new ladder or not, I was still very high in the air…and this one didn’t have the luxury of completely resting against the hard cave wall. One misstep, one bad footing and I could end up beside Paul faster than I had intended.

  Once on the bottom I picked up the lantern and held it in my shaking hand, aiming the bright light toward my father. With my unoccupied hand, I slid the broken piece of ladder from his body and knelt beside him. I gulped at the sight of the pool of blood underneath him and at last, I felt something I had been longing to feel for so long – tears of sorrow and pain welled in my eyes and I let them fall relentlessly. I had been unable to cry over anything for so long that everything flowed back at once. First mom…then Karen, my birth mother…and now my dad, too?

  At the sound of my wailing, Salem climbed down the ladder and sat beside me. I wanted him to hold me, to let me cry until there was nothing left but I couldn’t take my eyes off of Paul’s body. My hand fell across my father’s chest and I held it there firmly against his ripped shirt, sticky with blood. I begged and waited for the sound that would tell me he was alive. His chest didn’t rise or fall to indicate that he was breathing. Furiously, I slammed my fist into his chest and screamed until I was hoarse.

  “How many people am I going to have to lose!?” I bawled and raised my hand to strike once more, but Salem grabbed onto my wrist and stopped me.

  “There might still be a chance, Alexis,” he said quietly. “The spring…”

  “He is dead, Salem! Don’t you get it? The water doesn’t bring back the dead!”

  “You don’t know that he is dead,” Salem replied. “He might be close, but there is a possibility that there is some life left in him…would it really hurt to try?”

  I shook my head, the tears still falling. “By the time we got back to the spring…it would be too late. And besides, you put that damned rock in front of that way, too!”

  “She is right,” Ezra’s voice called down as he stepped off the last ladder rung, in my misery I had not even noticed him climbing down. “As much as it saddens me to say this, there is no hope left for him.”

  I shook my head fiercely as the tears fought to start over again. “This can’t be happening, damn it! He came all of this way to apologize to me, to make things right again, and this is what he gets in return?!”

  “I am so sorry, Alex…” Salem muttered, knowing his words wouldn’t fix anything. “I would sacrifice anything for your happiness; you know that…but there is nothing any of us can do now...”

  All of the grief I had been through was too much to bear anymore. What had I done to deserve all of this? I was doing the world a favor! I was saving innocent pe
ople, yet it seemed that for every vampire I had slain, for every innocent life I had saved…God took someone away from me! With the last of my strength, I shut Paul’s eyes and blinked away a tear before Salem pulled me into his arms and held me tightly.

  Time appeared to no longer matter as I lay emotionless in Salem’s warm embrace. My eyes had grown sore, my throat was dry, and I felt as if my body had been drained of all hope. My cheeks felt sticky from all of the tears I had wept and I couldn’t take my eyes off of the body lying on the cold stone floor – the body of the man who risked proper fatherhood in order to ensure my safety, the man who taught me to kill the undead, who taught me who I was, what I was, and what my purpose was…the man I had grown to love like the father he truly was to me. All that I had left now was Desmond, the man who played my father for years and then abandoned me.

  Without speaking, Salem slowly laid me against the ground and a white sheet appeared bundled up in his hands. He looked at me for a moment, and I noticed a sparkling tear rolling down his cheek. With one swift movement, he rested the sheet across my father’s body and whispered an apology to him.

  “I am sorry, Paul. For everything. But I promise you I will take care of her. Be at peace.”

  Salem walked away from the corpse, past me and leaned with both hands against the wall. Suddenly he hit the cave wall with a fisted hand. “He was right.”

  “What? Right about what?” I asked hoarsely and attempted to clear my throat.

  “None of this would have happened had I stayed away, had I not followed Raziel’s vision in search of the mysterious girl that stole my heart away in just a single glimpse.”

  I shook my head. “We both know that’s not true.”

  “Perhaps,” he sighed and helped me up. “We should go.”

  “I don’t want to…”

  “I know that, Alex…but, we cannot stay here forever. What is done is done, and the wisest thing for us to do is walk away. That is what Paul would have wanted.”

  “Was it this hard to stay away from your parents after they died?”

  “I hardly had a choice in the matter.”

  “That’s true,” I sighed and reflected on the fact that Salem wasn’t able to ever say goodbye to his parents before they perished in the fire. With that thought in mind, I slowly uncovered Paul’s face and looked at him one last time. “I love you, dad…thank you for everything…goodbye…”

  With one final glance, I covered him up and began walking away with Salem right behind me. “Wait,” I said and turned around, nearly colliding with him. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Summon a picture of Destiny and me, and some flowers.”

  Salem nodded with an understanding smile and the items appeared in his hands. He offered them to me and I uncovered Paul one last time. I glanced at the picture momentarily and realized it was identical to the one from 1995 that I had found on the floor in his trailer, and then I laid it across his chest along with the flowers.

  I reluctantly turned away again and followed Salem up the ladder and back into the abandoned lighthouse.

  Ezra gave me an unexpected hug and whispered a sincere apology into my ear. Hannah merely stared at me and didn’t say a word, but I didn’t expect any sympathy from her.

  Salem summoned a flashlight and I noticed him wince for a moment. It was going to take him a long time to realize the limits of a mortal life. He shined the light curiously at the stacks of boxes and pallets, but they didn’t appear to contain anything useful. The spiral staircase was rickety and appeared unused and dangerous, plus we had no reason to venture up when our goal was to get out and go home. I felt sick to my stomach when I thought of the fact that we were deserting my father below, but there was no way to rescue him from his fate. Before we left the lighthouse, Salem and Ezra pushed the ladder down and shoved some of the boxes over the hatch leading into the cave and concealed it in case anyone was to go searching through the place.

  The door leading out of the lighthouse was stuck and difficult to push open. It squeaked noisily as Salem finally got it to budge, revealing a mossy hill and a crowd of people in the distance. The sky was dark, making me wonder just how long we had been down there in the cave.

  We stumbled down the hill in silence so as not to attract any attention from the distant people, or any officers lurking around – we were trespassing, after all. I forgot how noisy a human could be when walking, how ungraceful they…we…were, and how much it hurt to tumble down a hill when you weren’t paying attention to your footing because you were so used to not having to. Salem shouted my name when he spotted me rolling down the side of the hill and slamming my side into a thick tree trunk. I gasped in agony and curled up in a ball beside the base of the tree.

  “Are you okay?” Salem whispered as he turned me over onto my back slowly.

  I nodded my head slowly as I bit down hard on my bottom lip to lessen the pain. My side radiated with pain and I was almost certain something was broken, if not fractured.

  “Nothing’s broken,” Hannah mumbled.

  “How would you know?” Salem asked, glaring in her direction.

  She shrugged. “I saw it coming.”

  “Why the hell did you not say anything?!” he shouted furiously. “This could easily have been avoided!”

  “The future isn’t set in stone – it can be changed!” She mocked, bobbing her head back and forth.

  “You are still going on about that?” he seethed, rose from the ground and pushed his half-sister but she barely budged.

  Hannah cocked her head to the side and grinned. “Really, Salem? You’re going to attempt a fight with me? We all know how that would end.”

  “Just because you saw some possible future, does not mean that you should willingly allow Alexis, or anyone, to be harmed. You may be stronger than me physically, but you know what I am capable of…as well as what she is capable of.”

  “Oh please. Right now, she is capable of nothing much more than whimpering on the ground,” Hannah replied with a grin.

  As I struggled to get up, Salem rammed straight into Hannah in another attempt at knocking her over. She roared with laughter and pinned him to the ground, her hand coiled tightly around his throat. “Don’t be stupid, Salem! I could have you dead in less than a second if I wanted – not that I do. But don’t change my mind, big brother. Go tend to your little pet and let’s get back home. I am sick of the scenery here and that god-awful ocean stink, blech,” she said and pushed him aside.

  “She isn’t my pet,” he growled and rubbed at his sore neck as he approached me. He reached for me with his outstretched arm and pulled me up. My side ached miserably but I tried to ignore it as I leaned on him for support. I grimaced at the purpling bruises on his skin, which hurt me more than the physical pain inflicted on my own body. “I will be fine,” he said with a gentle smile.

  Ezra offered to take my other side to help us walk faster, but I insisted that I was more than capable of walking. “Where is my car, Hannah?” I asked as we made our way into the streets of St. Augustine. It was nice to be among the real world again, rather than living like moles beneath the dirt.

  “Your car? A few blocks away, parked at a Subway,” she answered and led the way.

  27. RETURN

  I was mesmerized by the appearance of my white Prius parked in the parking lot of the deli building. The smell of bread caught my attention and I was momentarily tempted to stop for a bite to eat, but decided I would just have Salem summon me a snack or two during the trip back home. I was dreading the idea of driving back to Colorado, but glad to know that this time I would be capable of sleeping through it as much as possible. As Hannah climbed into the driver seat, I eyed Ezra curiously and approached him. He stood silently, observing us from the sidewalk.

  “Where do you plan to go from here, Ezra?” I asked him.

  Ignoring my question, he replied, “How…how long have I been in that box?”

  “Well it’s
2013 now so…”

  “Two-thousand and thirteen!?”

  “Yes…so…almost five-hundred years?”

  “It is a strange thing…time. I knew I had been locked away for a long time, probably years...but would have never imagined such a length. I had no night or day in there, no changing of seasons…just dark, wet, and cold.

  “This world is a stranger to me. These lights…the very ground I walk on…so much has changed. And this,” he nodded towards the car, “what sort of magic gives way to horseless carriage.”

  Despite the situation, I giggled. “This is a car, it’s not magic. It uses fuel. I guess you can say you feed it gas and it moves.”

  “So then it is alive?”

  “No…no,” I felt sorry for him, he had missed so much. In all honesty, I believe he was taking it better than I would have. “It’s a machine. It’s like…well, it’s like a lantern. You burn the fuel and the heat makes it work. Parts move and twist and it is able to move.”

  “I see. To answer your question, Alexis, I do not know what I will do or where I shall go. I fear I am a relic in this place. I wish I had died in that box.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Ah, but yes I do, child. Five-hundred years, you say? What of my family? My father’s estate? Long gone and forgotten, I fear. And you already know what has become of my once sweet Eleanor…”

  In that moment I was glad of my choice of a mortal life. Although nearly all of my family were now gone, I couldn’t imagine watching everyone else around me grow old and pass away as I remained. Namely Jason…and Mitch.

  “You could come with us,” Salem said politely when he came to our sides. “We can teach you of the changes to the world as we go.”

  “That is a very generous offer,” Ezra replied thoughtfully. “I think I shall take you up on it, and see where things go from there.”