House of Imperial

by Jaymin Eve

  5

  It took longer to die than I would have expected. In the movies, a throat gets slit and then the person is dead almost immediately. Right? But that didn’t happen for me. There was just pain, so much pain, and then blood seemed to be everywhere, making it difficult to breathe. I felt like I was choking to death on my own blood, in slow motion.

  Laous must have released me from the chair. In my pain-filled state, I realized I was draped across the tiled floor, red washing across my vision, tinting the world into a single tone of death. There was a roar, loud, and then it faded away to leave nothing but an endless silence. I kind of missed the roar.

  Why am I still alive?

  The warmth of my blood disappeared as I was lifted, hazy white light replacing the red.

  “Stay with me, Callie.” The deep rumble of a voice was comforting, so I clung to it, letting that soothing sound and the haze of white take me away from all the pain. The rasping of my breath became more labored with each inhalation, echoing in my ears. Wetter. Blood spattering. There was one last shuddering breath … then only silence. I didn’t hear anything more. I didn’t see anything more.

  I expected to fade away. Only … I continued to be tethered to life, despite the lack of heartbeat or breath in my lungs. Because even though I was not breathing, someone near me was, and it somehow filled my body with oxygen at the same time. The pain in my throat subsided; the blood stopped painting my skin red, and instead refilled my body, moving through organs, repairing injuries.

  I wasn’t unconscious. I wasn’t conscious. I had to be dead, only … that didn’t feel quite right. Was there another state of being I’d somehow missed in the facts of life my mom taught me?

  The hazy white disappeared from my vision, to be replaced by a bright blinding light. Light at the end of the tunnel? This had to be it, the moment I ceased to exist. The moment I faded from the world.

  “Callie, open your eyes.”

  They’re open! I wanted to scream. I had no voice to do so, but in my head I was yelling at the rumbly-voiced male. I was busy dying over here. Who the hell was he to order me around?

  Out of nowhere, my heart started beating again; my chest expanded as air surged in and out of my lungs, this time by my doing. The white light faded, and I finally realized my eyes had been closed, so I let them spring open – only to find that there was still nothing but white surrounding me.

  “Whhh-a…” My first attempt at talking didn’t go so well, but as I tilted my head back to see the richest cinnamon and gold eyes staring at me, I finally found my voice.

  “How … am I not dead?”

  It was almost impossible for me to read the expression on Daniel’s face. I had never seen anything like that look before, a blending of fury and pain, staring down at me like he was seeing more than just my face. He was seeing into the darkest recesses of my heart and soul. Usually I’d be trying to hide that side of me, but I’d just died … almost. Or something had happened to me and I was feeling exposed and raw, unable to shield myself behind my usual barriers.

  Feeling started to return to my arms and legs, and with that came awareness that I was cradled across Daniel’s lap. He held me tightly, his long legs spread out in front of him, muscles visible through his dark pants.

  I tilted my head back again, and I didn’t even question how comfortable it felt to be resting against his shoulder. More feeling returned to my body, and I knew in a moment I would have to move off him. But until then I was going to let someone support me – for the first time ever. Reality could stay away for a few more seconds.

  Daniel’s eyes flashed a pure gold; I had to blink and make sure I was seeing that color correctly. “I’m so fucking sorry, Callie,” he rumbled. “I never thought Laous could get the drop on me like that. I let you get taken. I let you down.” His long lashes hid his eyes briefly, before he met my gaze again, the brown bleeding back through the gold as he tried to calm himself.

  “He hit me with a piece of starslight stone, a very powerful piece which he stole from Emma. It malfunctioned my powers, knocked me off the grid, and disconnected me from the network. When that happens, our powers need to reset. Like a knockout punch. It takes some time for all faculties to come back into working order.”

  “Did you know the stone could do that?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Emma’s necklace is a small piece of the stone which is hidden on Earth. Like a tiny sliver of the power which Laous will have should he find that original stone.”

  This was why it was so important to stop him from finding it. He was crazy and evil. He’d tried to kill me.

  I almost died.

  As if he’d heard my thoughts, Daniel’s arms tightened around me and I wondered why my chest suddenly felt like it had tightened, too. After a few seconds of contemplation, I realized what it was … emotions. I was filled with a million feelings, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I had been so used to numbness, but ever since New Orleans, where the soul and music of that city started to pierce my icy interior, things had been changing.

  Daniel topped it off. He changed everything for me, and now he had somehow saved my life. I knew it was him. There was no one else who would bother.

  “You saved my life,” I rasped out, my voice not completely back to normal yet. My eyes were burning. Was I going to cry? I literally never cried. What was happening to me?

  “I was too late to save you,” Daniel replied softly, and suddenly he had all of my attention. “I did the only thing I could, which will allow you almost a full life.”

  A beat of silence, and then I was struggling against his hold, managing to roll out of his arms and onto the white floor. My legs were like jelly, but I didn’t give up until I was standing before him. My skin was tacky with blood, and I didn’t bother to look down because I couldn’t bear to see the red staining my body.

  “Explain?” Less rasp this time.

  He was on his feet now, too. I had to tilt my head back to see him clearly. “As Jason told you back in NOLA, I’m the interim overlord of House of Imperial. I haven’t had the initiation ceremony yet, but when I do, I will rule this house.” He paused, as if weighing his words. “We’re the guardians of the underworld.” My heart rate picked up. Had he just said underworld? “When you died…” he continued, “I used the only power I had at my disposal to save you. I tethered your soul to me … and the land of Imperial. We’re the house where souls come to be judged. To rest. So we have a unique power over them. You died in my arms, and I stopped your soul from leaving while I healed you.”

  I swallowed roughly. “Why didn’t you just let me go through that … the rebirth?”

  Everything about him went hard again. His eyes narrowed, lips tightened, jaw became rigid. “Because you would be gone.” The words were ground out from between clenched teeth. “Gone, and a new version of Callie would be reborn in a new body. You’d have no memories. No connections. You’d start again.”

  I rubbed a hand over my face, trailing it down across my neck – which was no longer sliced in two – continuing down to press against my chest. “I have a heartbeat. I’m breathing. I feel alive.”

  Daniel nodded, still looking ten shades of pissed off. “For the most part, you are alive. But there’s some things which will change. I’ll do my very best to help you deal with it, but it’s better you understand now.”

  I crossed my arms tightly over myself now, trying to hold it together. “I prefer my bad news straight up, so hit me with it.”

  He did.

  “You’ll have to spend a certain amount of time in the underworld. This world will renew your life essence, because its energy tethers your soul. A soul which has somewhat tasted the afterlife and will want to make its way back there.”

  Fuck. “Okay, what else?” Visiting here frequently was something I could live with.

  “You’ll also have to spend a lot of time with me. More than a few days outside of my presence, away from my energy, and you will fade awa
y. Your soul will end up in our justices, and you’ll be properly dead.”

  I couldn’t read his face. It was blank for the first time since he’d saved me. Which sucked, because there was no way for me to know how he felt about his sacrifice to keep me alive.

  And in all truth, right then I was struggling to think about anyone but myself.

  A roaring filled my mind, like a tornado had just sprang up. I wanted to yell and scream. I’d been a prisoner most of my life already, and just when I was planning on some freedom, I found myself in an entirely new sort of jail.

  I knew I was an ungrateful bitch, but I couldn’t look past it right now.

  “What are the justices?” I asked, my words echoing weirdly in my mind. I sounded detached. I felt it, too. My body wasn’t my own anymore and that had my brain struggling to comprehend who I was in this moment.

  Daniel stepped closer to me, and I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that my body reacted. It wanted to crawl back into his arms. I couldn’t just pretend it was because of our new bond; I’d been wanting to crawl into his lap since I first saw him. Too-good-looking alien bastard.

  I would be stronger than this new dependence I had on him, though. I might have to be around him, but I didn’t have to touch him.

  As I stepped back, he paused. “I’ll show you.” His voice was flat. He turned and waved his arm, and the white-walled dome we were in opened with a pop that left a low ringing in my ears.

  My nose crinkled as I stared around trying to figure out where the hell I was. It was a room of egg-shaped pods. Everything was very white, like I could barely make out another tone or shade in the place. Daniel stepped out of the egg we’d apparently been in, and started making his way through the other pods, which were closed, but I could see shadows within them. Were they…?

  Holy crap. This place was filled with dead souls, or dead … Daelighters. Whatever the hell they were. It was taking every ounce of my willpower not to start freaking out. I just kept telling myself I was stronger than this. I’d faced struggles my entire life. I could manage this next little hurdle.

  Hurrying after Daniel, I caught up to him in moments. When the long white room ended, we exited out into a dark world. I couldn’t see what was above us, but I got the feeling that it was not sky up there. That panicked feeling returned, so I forced my mind to focus on the rest of this world around us.

  We were on top of a cliff. The white building behind us was tall, seeming to hold many more floors than the egg one. There were a few other scattered buildings further back as well. In front of us was a series of staggered cliffs … levels, like a staircase for giants. I moved forward, trying to comprehend what it all was.

  “The Cascading Justices,” Daniel explained, his voice low. “When someone dies in Overworld, they come here. They end up in the incubation level first, where we just were. There they are weighed. Their good and bad deeds are tallied, and then they are given choices. Those who have pure souls are allowed to be reborn, or they can spend their days in the utopian land at the base of the justices. Those who have darkness in their soul are dropped into the justices. The purer of a soul you have, the lower you’ll start. Eventually you’ll get to the bottom level. The truly terrible souls, like my uncle’s, end up on this first level.”

  He pointed down over the cliff to what looked like a ton of trees below. “It’s next to impossible for them to journey to peace from here, so they get stuck living out their days in one of these levels.”

  The top levels were filled with monsters, and lava, and creature-infested water. All the things which were not going to make the afterlife easy or comfortable or fun.

  “They can die again?” I asked, trying not to stare at the screaming souls in the level with the fire and lava.

  Daniel shook his head. “No, there’s only one death. This is their afterlife, where they can enjoy torture over and over without relief.”

  Whoa. “Remind me not to be an asshole during my life, because I really don’t want to end up there.”

  Daniel actually smiled at that one. “Most beings have more purity than darkness in their souls. These upper levels of the justices are reserved for the truly evil. If you land in one of the bottom three, you’ll eventually make it to utopia. To redemption. You just have to work a little harder for it.”

  “What’s the normal lifespan of a Daelighter?”

  Daniel’s expression turned contemplative; there was a decided spark of something in his face then. Amusement, I would guess. “We’re long-lived, let’s just put it that way. Age is not something that brings death.”

  That was amusing. And terrifying. And impossible to comprehend. Tied to him and this land now, I wondered if I too would be “long-lived.”

  “So Laous killed me…” It was the elephant in the underworld, what had happened to me. I was starting to wrap my head around it … around what I had become. I was ready to learn more. “He got my blood. I’m sorry I didn’t stop him.”

  Daniel’s arm brushed mine and I wanted to touch him so badly I had to clench my fists and plaster my hands to my sides.

  “None of this is your fault,” he told me.

  I changed the subject. “How did you find me? It seemed like you appeared from nothing as soon as he cut my throat.” The roar had been Daniel, I knew that now. Without a doubt.

  He hesitated briefly, and some of the fury was back in his expression. “The council knew he took you to Imperial. They can track him through the transporter and network, even though they’re often a step too late to actually stop him. So I was already here, searching for you. Then when he tried to kill you, he dropped his warding. I know your energy; I found you through the network. I came straight for you.”

  He’d saved my life. His quick actions and sacrifice of his own soul, or whatever happened, had brought me back to life. This was the part of the story I truly couldn’t understand. “Why did you save me?” My voice was doing some sort of stupid breathy thing, but Daniel had literally saved my life. It was a big deal. When he didn’t answer, I hurried on, “Surely it’s going to be inconvenient to have me attached to you for eternity.”

  Or however long I was going to live now.

  He turned away from me to stare out across the world he was the ruler of. I didn’t push; there was no rush. He would either answer eventually … or we could just live in this awkward silence.

  “It was my duty to keep you safe,” he said without inflection. “I failed at that duty.”

  I thought he was going to leave it at that, but then he continued: “I’ve been left for dead before.” A hard murmur. “Discarded on the floor like I was nothing. When I saw you there, all of the blood surrounding you, I just … couldn’t let you die like that.”

  No part of me believed he’d been a victim like me. Even when he was hit with that special stone, his energy shorting out all over the place, he’d still fought against it.

  But maybe he was talking about a time when he was young. Which had all of these soft feelings hitting me again. Baby Daniel should have been protected, and I hated that he had lived a life where that wasn’t possible.

  “What is the plan now?” I asked, straightening. Death had rattled me – understandably so – but I was ready to take this asshole down. I also needed to know where my mom was. Laous had been weirdly cagey about that.

  Daniel turned to face me, expression somber. “The council is taking immediate action. They’ve called a meeting, and all overlords are required to attend. They’ve been trying to keep this under wraps, but they’re starting to see that it’s bigger than they can contain. It’s time for everyone to know what’s been going on, to prepare for the fallout should Laous succeed in breaking the treaty with Earth.”

  “If I’m with you, I can leave the underworld?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I have the energy of House of Imperial within me. I will keep you tethered. The strongest tie your soul has is to me – Imperial is second – because I was the only thing there for it to cling o
nto.”

  It was his heartbeat I heard when mine stopped. His heart keeping the blood pumping in my body.

  “Thank you,” I said, with more passion than I usually showed. “I’m sure I’ve seemed a little ungrateful, but I know you did everything you could to save me. I’ll forever be in your debt.”

  Daniel just stared at me, and again I was getting the sense that he didn’t know how to feel about his new burden either. With a final nod, he turned to head back to the egg building.

  I hurried to follow after him, not wanting to be left behind in this strange world. As we stepped back inside, I noticed there were Daelighters everywhere. Whoa. Either they came out of nowhere, or I totally spaced the first time we walked through.

  As we passed, many of them lowered their heads to Daniel, some placing hands on their forehead in what looked like a gesture of respect. For all I knew that was their way of flipping each other off, but it didn’t feel like that.

  Daniel nodded to each in return, and I sensed his discomfort as he continued forward in long graceful strides. I had to take three steps to keep up with each one of his. At the back of the room of eggs, there was a sink next to another doorway.

  “You might want to wash up best you can,” Daniel said, before he pushed open the door.

  Glancing down, I shuddered at the red staining my skin and clothes. Hurrying forward, I let the thick water run over me, and without almost any scrubbing it sucked the blood from my hands and arms. There wasn’t much I could do about my clothes, but by the time I stepped into the room after Daniel, most of my skin was blood free.

  The new room was a small, stone-lined area, nothing like the white, sterile environment of the eggs. The only thing in there was a ball of light … actually, it was more like a ball made up of lots of strands of light, that moved about constantly.

  “This is a transporter,” Daniel explained when I joined him, close to the lights. “This is just a small one, which will take us to the large permanent one between Earth and Overworld. That transporter is the one which gives us power and keeps our network functioning. Most of my council and advisers have gone on ahead, so we need to hurry.”