I landed two gashes to the man plus the deep puncture wound to his chest, yet he did not fall. His face was ashen, his eyes wide with what? Pain? Fear? Or bewilderment as to what had befallen him. Whatever the meaning of his look, I knew I had a shot at bringing him down.
Despite the chill of the air that poured into the lobby, killing was hard work that made me feel like I’d run hard in the summer sun. I panted and sucked wind as sweat poured down my face, my hair wet and stuck to my scalp, my T-shirt clinging to my chest. If I’d allowed myself to stop and think about it, I would have fallen to the ground exhausted. But I didn’t allow myself to think or to stop. My mind sang in my head, “For Megan,” as I slashed and hacked like a madman in a horror movie at the lump of flesh before me that used to house a human soul.
I don’t know if I’d have found it so easy to kill the man if he hadn’t had those damned, terrifying, black eyes of the turned. His eyes were devoid of color or nuance. They looked at me with dispassion, even as he met his demise. He didn’t ask me to stop or beg me for mercy. He batted feebly at the sword as I pummeled him to the ground. I cut and slashed and beat the hilt of the sword against that guy until he looked like a piece of bloody road kill.
I had killed a man, or a thing that used to be a man. But he was only one of at least twenty of the damned things in that room, and it had taken all that I felt I had in me to take down just that one.
As I stood over him, my arms shook and my legs were wobbly beneath me. My battle had ended in a corner of the room, away from the main fight. Even over the loud rasp of my own breath, I could hear screams and groans as the battle raged on.
A part of me said to get back to the fight, that my friends needed me there. But another part of me wanted only to breathe and to rest.
Just to catch my breath. A quick rest.
I panted hard and filled my lungs with the cool air. I looked down and caught sight of the man I’d shred nearly to pieces. My stomach turned over at the gruesome sight. My eyes landed just beyond the felled man, and I saw Megan. It was the sight of her face, her eyes open but unblinking, that made the bile rise.
I turned to the side so I’d miss my shoes, and I retched. “I’m sorry, Megan,” I whispered to myself as I wiped my mouth with my sleeve.
Megan’s empty eyes made something inside me constrict. It was like a coil ran through me from stem to stern, and as it tightened, it pulled me up straight and forced bravery into me that I never thought I had.
I began to walk the twenty feet or so needed to close the gap between myself and the battle when I saw it. At first I thought that I was seeing things. Just sweat in my eye, I thought. I wiped my eyes with my left hand, blinked, and focused my eyes again.
It was no trickery of my vision. No figment of my battle-blinded brain. There she stood.
Emily was encircled by the Lucent Tribe, or at least by those still standing. I saw Tanner and Greta, Tristan and Rob, John and Taisha, Ashley and Tom, and Julie and Amy.
Where are Heather and Sherry? I wondered.
I couldn’t see Emily’s shield of Lucent Energy, but I knew it was there. It was something she’d practice from time to time in training. She’d gather people around her and practice putting them in a protective bubble forged from the Lucent Energy Emily found around her. As long as her concentration was good, I’d seen her able to shield our whole group for quite a while before the exercise exhausted her.
Shadow creeps had gathered around the Tribe, but they all stood back at least a few feet. Despite our losses, most of the Tribe was still alive, and Emily had come. I felt a small surge of joy at that. She’d broken her promise to me and saved our collective bacon. I was glad she’d broken her promise.
Well, the bacon of the rest of the tribe anyway. It occurred to me that I was outside of that protective bubble. The twenty feet or so that separated us suddenly felt like a mile.
As if it had come from the bottom of a watery well, I heard a voice call to me. “Jake,” she called. “Jake, where are you?”
My mouth opened to answer, but my brain caught hold of the words before they could escape my lips.
Don’t answer, fool. You’re not protected. The shadows will all attack you at once.
Instead of calling back to her, I shrunk back into the darkness by the wall. I didn’t know what to do, but shouting out would be certain death.
I looked to my right and saw nothing but a long expanse of marble wall lit by the bright sun. To my left it was darker, and I found a shadowed doorway.
I eased to my left and didn’t take my eyes off the scene. The dark creatures spat at Emily and our Tribe, called them foul names, and accused them of being cowards.
“Your goddess is false,” one taunted. Another boasted of the Dark God’s boundless power. “You hide from the power of the shadow because you know it will crush you,” he said.
Emily didn’t take their bait or respond to them in any way. But she continued to call out to me.
Why doesn’t she call to Megan or Heather or Sherry? Does she know they’re already dead? Can she feel that I’m still alive?
As I eased along the wall, I gripped the staff in my left hand and the sword in my right. Emily, too, was on the move. She and the L.T. shuffled toward the door. They were again a large amoeba and moved as one.
She’s going to leave. She wants me to get into that bubble so she can protect me and take me out of here with her and the others.
But as she eased to the door, the distance between us grew even larger. And the Dark Mob still surrounded our Tribe and moved with them.
In a few more steps, I found the small indentation in the wall. Blend into the shadows. Find a place to hide, and sneak out later. It was my only hope.
That was my plan, anyway. I stepped backward a few feet, and I was in the shadows. I was in a small vestibule that housed a water fountain and a phone. The natural light that bathed the lobby in a warm glow didn’t reach into the small alcove. There was a light fixture overhead, but it was either burned out or no one had bothered to turn the light on. A few more steps backward and I found the back wall and nearly complete darkness.
I can hide here, at least until the lobby is empty again.
I squatted down, rested my butt on the floor, and hunkered down out of sight. I was ready to get myself comfortable and wait it out when I was wracked with a searing pain.
My hand let loose the sword, and I heard it clang on the marble floor. Then my fingers let loose of the staff, and it clacked to the floor too. I was completely defenseless as fiery fingers of heat licked up through me. I, too, fell to the ground, and my face met the cold stone.
Ciardha’s Dark Energy fire. I remembered it all too well. With each pump of my heart, a new wave of agony overtook me as the Dark Energy pulsed through my body.
The room and everyone in it faded away from my consciousness. I knew only the searing heat of Ciardha’s dark fire as it consumed me from the inside.
“Mr. Stevens, welcome back.” I couldn’t see Ciardha, but his acrid stench filled my nostrils, and his churlish voice filled my head. “Perhaps you are a masochist, unable to stay away from my dark fingers of suffering.”
“No,” was all I could manage to whisper.
“No? Are you sure?” He punctuated his question with an even more intense Dark Energy volt. My body convulsed from the torture.
“Please,” I rasped. “Please stop.”
“You of all humans should know by now that it is a tireless waste of breath to beg or plead with me. But I shall stop your delicious misery. For now. But only because I have other plans for you that require that you be alive.”
As suddenly as Ciardha’s torment began, it stopped. My body no longer convulsed, and the fiery heat no longer filled my veins. But the ordeal had left my body aching beyond measure. I panted and sucked in air like a fish on a dock, deprived of oxygen.
And all at once, I no longer felt the cold marble beneath me. I hung in the air like a piece of laundry drying
on a clothesline. In the mental confusion caused by being cooked alive, I didn’t know who or what had pulled my body into the air like a puppet on a string. Is Emily drawing me to her?
My hope was dashed as I looked down and saw a dark-haired man below me. He said, “Miss Adams, I am deeply offended by your lack of courtesy. You break into my house, make a mess, and leave without even so much as a hello.”
“Jake!” she screamed.
The man below me had short, black hair, fixed in a spikey style. Ebony eyes shone out from a face made of chiseled pale skin. He had the high, prominent cheekbones of a male model. He wore a long, black leather coat and smooth, black gloves, and all of the rest of his clothes were black, as well as his shoes. The body was probably no more than thirty, but the entity that inhabited it was old beyond counting.
“You make for the door without your so-called love? Some things never change. See how quickly she forsakes you? Again, I might add. As last time, she leaves you in my clutches to do with you as I will.”
“Shut it, Ciardha. You’re trying to manipulate him and put a wedge between us, but it won’t work. Not this time. Jake knows that I love him.”
I do?
“And I won’t leave him to you. Not this time.”
“Courageous words from a scared little girl that runs away. Do you hear that, Mr. Stevens? She says she loves you and will not leave you. Shall we place a wager on that?”
“I’m not a betting man,” I said. “Emily, go. Save the others and yourself.”
“No!” she screamed. “I will not lose you. Not again.” I could see the tears spill down her cheeks.
If she allows those negative emotions to overtake her, she’ll lose her grip on her shield and she’ll lose them all. And the world will lose her.
“Emily, don’t give into your negative feelings. That’s what he’s trying to do. You have to keep your shield up. For the others.”
“I am amused that you think your flimsy vapor of so-called Lucent Energy can keep me out.” Ciardha let out a loud, otherworldly laugh that filled the entire volume of the lobby. It bounced off of the stone walls and floor and even rumbled my chest.
As if to illustrate his point, Ciardha hit the Tribe with his Dark Energy volts. Everyone fell to the ground as if a wire had held them up and it got cut. They writhed and twisted like snakes from the torture meted out by Ciardha. Everyone, that is, except Emily. For some reason Ciardha chose not to torture her.
Maybe he can’t. Maybe he can’t touch her.
Watching my friends suffer the same punishment that he had given me made my insides hurt as if it was happening to me again.
“Stop it!” Emily screamed. “I’m the one you want, Ciardha. Not them. Make an accord with me. Make an oath to let them all go, including my dad and any others you have taken, and I will give myself to you. An even trade. My life for theirs.”
“Brighid’s bitch has come to her senses,” he bellowed. His voice was somehow larger than the man he inhabited. “But as for the proposed trade, to that I say no. It is not an even exchange. You think too highly of yourself. So like my dearest sister.”
“You may be a god, but you suck at bluffing. I don’t understand why you want me, but you do and badly. It’s a fair trade, and you know it. In fact, I’d say you’re getting the better deal.”
While they negotiated for lives, I had to hover above it all, a puppet on a string unable to do anything to help them. The Tribe suffered intensely. Tristan looked like his eyes were about to pop out of their sockets from the strain of the torture. I pushed and kicked, trying to break free of Ciardha’s hold on me, but I was powerless.
“Emily, gather more Lucent Energy. He’s killing them.”
Emily looked around her and saw her tribe on the floor. They were curled into balls and moaned and gasped for air.
“There’s so little of it here,” she said.
“I know, but you have to try.”
“Go ahead, try to do what your goddess could not do,” Ciardha said.
I watched as Emily pulled herself up straighter, closed her eyes, and sucked in a huge breath. She pulled her arms up to her side in a wide arc, then down, and she placed her hands in prayer position in front of her chest.
I did my best to think positive thoughts. I remembered what Tristan had told me, about how when the shit got him down he thought about how he’d like it to be, not as it was. After we’d had that conversation, I’d practiced going to my ‘happy place’.
We were in a wide, green meadow. Her long, red hair bounced in waves on her back as she ran. The sun hit the top of her head, and it made her hair glow like it was on fire. I ran after her and heard her laugh tickle the air. In my daydreams, I’m faster and stronger than she is. Hey, it’s my dream. I can create it any way I like.
I catch her arm, turn her around, and reel her into me, curling her into my arms. Her lips are mere inches from mine, and I feel her soft breasts against my heaving chest. In the sunlight her eyes sparkle. Gold flecks radiate from her pupils and set her emerald eyes ablaze. She’s still Lucent. Even in my dreams, it warmed me to my core to know that she was still Emily and not a shadow fiend.
I tip my head slightly, and she tilts hers up to meet me. I pull her so tightly to me that not even a single photon of light could pass between us. I feel her heart pound wildly in her chest. Or is that mine? We’re so close together, I can’t distinguish between my own beating heart and hers.
Her lips are soft like the tender flesh of a ripe peach but smooth and warm. Rivers of molten desire run from her lips to mine and to regions farther south. Love and passion and desire all mixed into a delectable soup I don’t want to stop eating.
I opened my eyes, but my mind was filled with the delicious joy of kissing Emily. When I looked at Emily, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It was like her body was a huge light bulb emitting a soft, white light. The Tribe was back on their feet, rolling shoulders and shaking limbs. And the torc around Emily’s arm was the source of the powerful light. It shone on her arm as if lit from within.
It was in that moment when I felt more love for her than I’d ever felt that I knew the way it had to be. I knew what she had to do.
I’d crapped all over Emily for reading people’s minds. “It’s like an illegal wire tap,” I’d said. And, “It’s freakin’ rude. Stop it!” I’d also practiced building a wall around my thoughts when I was around her so that she couldn’t trespass into my head.
But at that moment, I hoped she wasn’t doing as I’d asked. I hoped she had her ‘receiver’ tuned into my station.
Emily, I thought to her, you have to let me go. You have to take the Tribe and get out of here while you still can. It’s the torc he wants, and you can’t let him have it. You can’t give yourself willingly to him. You said it yourself a few days ago. Sacrifice the one for the many. But you are not the one we need to sacrifice. I am.
Emily cried out, “No!” There was a fresh river of tears on her cheeks. The bright, wide halo of light that had surrounded her dimmed.
“No?” asked Ciardha. “No to what, Ms. Adams?”
Your light is fading, Em. You can’t let it. You have to hold on to Lucent thoughts. You’re their only hope. You have to leave me now.
“No,” she said softly.
“What are you babbling about?” Ciardha bellowed. “Do we have an accord or not? You will give yourself to me, and I will allow your lover boy and your little friends to run along home.”
“No,” she cried.
“No? Are you telling me no?” Ciardha’s voice thundered and echoed throughout the room.
“No,” she said. Her voice was soft but steady. “I will not give myself to you.”
I love you, Emily. I’ve always loved you, even when I tried not to. Now go. Quickly. Go and stay Lucent. Go, my love.
“You will give yourself to me, or he will suffer for an eternity.”
My body convulsed with the shock of Ciardha’s dark fire.
&
nbsp; Go now, before the sight of this robs you of your Lucent Energy. My only hope is for you to leave and find a way to defeat him. You have to do this. If you love me, you’ll go. Now!
I tried to picture us kissing again and to remember the way even the imaginary kiss had filled me with joy. It was difficult, but I managed to conjure up a mental image of our lips locked. I closed my eyes and attempted to cement that image into my brain even while my body trembled in agony.
Through my closed eyelids, I saw a bright light. I opened my eyes, and I saw a flash of light so bright, it hurt my eyes. And then Emily and our Lucent Tribe were gone.
“You will suffer beyond what your primitive human mind can begin to grasp. You like to meditate. Meditate on this.”
A new wave of fire filled my body, and I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. It was too much. I knew I was going to die, and I felt a tear form in the corner of my eye. I never got to kiss her for real, I thought. Then all I knew was the dark.
17. Lost to Me … Again
Emily
I’d never intended to keep my promise not to go to Ciardha’s. The way I saw it, we had less than a fifty percent chance of surviving the ordeal. If we died, no one was going to bitch at me for breaking a promise I’d made while living. And if we lived, I didn’t figure anyone was going to complain about me being there to help.
I stowed away in the trunk of Tom’s beat-up old car. Being in the trunk was a bit like being buried alive. I was anxious to get out of there as soon as the car stopped. But my plan was to wait until the Tribe was gone about ten minutes before I joined them. That way, no one would be able to talk me out of it.
I’d used my telekinesis to pick the lock to get into the trunk. But when it came time for me to escape, my telekinetic lock-picking didn’t work. The more I tried, the more frustrated I got.
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