We rode through the streets of the city, by mosaic-like houses and elaborate stone buildings and rich green lampposts and cherry blossom trees in full bloom. The trees, pushed gently by the wind, were the only things that moved. No Vampires or Wolves roamed the streets or flagstone walking trails that serviced the city. I had to keep telling myself to breathe, just breathe, as the death march seemed to carry us on. I thought I saw some of the curtains of the houses twitch, as if people were peering out of them, and I imagined that I could hear the locks on their doors sliding into place, as if they knew that something terrible lay just ahead, lurking just outside their backdoors.
It was sort of like having my life flash before my eyes. Not in the literal sense, but because people had been treating me this way, cowering when I passed by, since I was small. Kids would never play with me on the playground, friends hadn’t come easily in school, adults had immediately pinned me as a troublemaker. Two Rivers had been the first place that I had ever known where everyone treated me like I was one of them, like I wasn’t some uncontrollable monster who was just waiting for my chance to rip their throats out. Like I was good. It was somehow too much to see them hide from me now, though I had no idea that it was me they were actually hiding from. All I really knew was how I felt, and I felt very much like it was.
Jackson pulled to the side of the street and put the car in park. “Get out,” he said, and he opened his own door and hopped out before I could say anything. Not that I would have.
I got out of the car and tucked my Gladius into the back of my jeans, pulling my shirt down over it. It gave me some comfort, having it there, feeling its cool, smooth surface against the hot skin on my back. I knew that there was no point in taking it though, because the sun was just peeking its head over the horizon, and I could feel in my soul that my sister was near.
Nelly
I looked at the wide river that rushed by in front of me and felt a twist of fear. I hissed, as if I could scare the water into halting its flow. I knew that I could cross it, and there was even a bridge lowered down over it conveniently, as if someone had wanted me to cross it, but I hesitated where I was anyhow. Something about the sound of the rushing water, the sight of its constant motion, even the fresh, clean scent of it scared me nearly stiff. It felt somehow wrong, like a betrayal of my nature to cross here.
I pulled my eyes from the water and looked up at the wall beyond. I could feel it there, the thing I had come for, the sun-soul that had haunted my dreams and starved me with the memory of its taste, made me feel this untamed thirst within me that could been quenched by no other. I set one foot on the bridge, another sharp stab of wrongness twisting my gut. Then I put my other foot in front of that one, and so on. I would cross this river.
And then I would finally drink the sun.
I could feel it growing closer and closer, each step I took sending waves of heat through me. I tilted my head back and shrieked to the heavens, my lips pulling wide and my eyes rolling, when I made it to the other side. Yes, yes, yes. I was so close now.
The light of the new day was just beginning to really seep over the city, which glowed now softly in its wonder. I could feel all the souls cowering behind their doors, saying prayers and arming themselves with weapons should I choose to come in. They’d heard my cry, and they had been waiting for me, some man they referred to in their heads only as the King had told them about me, that I’d be coming, and they were right to hide. If the sun-soul did not satisfy this burning need in my stomach, I might just have them all.
I ran now, faster than I had ever run, another hissing shriek issuing from my parched mouth.
She was just up ahead.
Alexa
My body went tense, though I couldn’t see her yet, I could feel Nelly coming toward me. There seemed to be a terrible, powerful energy pouring from her, crashing over me in thick waves. My right hand reached back on its own accord and retrieved my Gladius. Its blade shot out and the silver caught the dawning sunlight. I held it down at my side, knowing it was a useless weapon in the current battle I was facing, the last battle I would ever face.
Then I saw her, coming at me like a white wind, her hair billowing behind her like a curtain of dark honey. Her eyes still that awful black onyx, her mouth pulled wide in a fearsome grin that bared her long fangs. Blood smattered her clothes and her hands and her face. Her feet were bare.
She stopped smoothly only three feet from me and the smell of the dried blood made my stomach turn. Her head tilted to the side, though no recognition showed on her face. My Gladius pulsed icy cold in my right hand, and my Monster offered no fuss. Around me, the city and its hiding eyes melted away as I looked into the demon eyes of my sister.
“Hey, Nell,” I said.
Kayden
The sun was just peeking over the horizon. They were gunning down the dirt road through the forest that led to the city. Pine trees whipped by in a green and brown blur. Kayden’s heart was pounding so hard that he could swear his ribs were bending in his chest. He sat forward in the leather seat, his muscles all tense and his hands clutched into fists.
Tommy slowed a little when they reached the wall, its bridge already lowered across the wide river, and Kayden was filled with a sense of foreboding so profound that his eyes burned. Tommy seemed to sense it, too, because his foot fell down hard again on the gas petal, and the Mercedes leapt forward, its engine purring like a huge cat.
Then Kayden felt the most agonizing sensation, like someone taking a corkscrew to his heart and twisting without mercy. He doubled over in his seat, his forehead hitting the dashboard hard enough to make stars burst behind his eyes. And very faintly, over the drumming of his heart and the harsh air pushing in and out of his lungs, he heard Tommy speak the worst words that were ever spoken in the history of language.
“I think it’s too late.”
Nelly
I had to stop for a moment just to admire her beauty. Now I remembered the gray world from my dreams, where she had come to me, and she was just as glorious in this world as she had been there. Her dark hair flowed down over her shoulders, and big brown eyes regarded me with something that I couldn’t put my finger on, something eternal that was lost on me now. A silver sword was clutched in her hand, but it was lowered at her side, as if just there for decoration.
“Hey, Nell,” she said, and her voice was familiar to me also, but slightly different than I remembered from my dreams. It was like it had been lacking some essential quality, one that could only be accomplished when it came directly from her mouth. I took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of her, my stomach all but screaming at me to complete the task. But I had to savor this moment the way one savors a fine wine, swirl it around in my glass.
She would not fight me. I could feel that in her fire-filled soul. She was here to deliver the promise she’d made to me in the gray world, to let me drink from her and taste the sunlight that ran through her veins. I could hear it coursing there, warm and sweet. And it beckoned me.
I opened my mouth and let one last hungry shriek rent the air. And then I moved in to take what was mine.
Jackson
Jackson stood off to the side and watched, though his father’s orders had been to deliver Alexa to the center of the city and to get out of there as quickly as he could go. He knew that Andre was probably somewhere around here watching, too, waiting for Jackson to get far enough away from the fireworks so that he could take Jackson to his father. But when he had seen Nelly, what had become of her, the sight seemed to have frozen him in place.
This had been the part of his father’s plan that Jackson was counting on to fail. He had known that Nelly was half-Accursed, and that she had used her power to escape his father, and he had believed his father when he said that Nelly had gone mad because of it. What he had not believed was that Nelly would ever, ever harm Alexa, no matter how crazy she had gone.
But the girl that stood only three feet from Alexa was not her sister. She was not Nelly. O
ne look at her all-black, endless eyes was proof enough of that. She was looking at Alexa the way that a starving snake watches a mouse. Still, so completely still and poised to strike.
His father had been right again. She was going to do exactly what he’d said she would do. He could see it in every line of her body and the nothingness of her eyes. Nelly was going to kill Alexa.
And Alexa was going to let her do it.
Jackson’s broken heart gave one huge thud in his chest.
Alexa
Everything that happened next happened very fast. One minute Nelly was standing in front of me, studying me like a butcher studies a fine piece of meat. And then I was flying through the air and landing hard on my shoulder, the world spinning before my eyes. My right hand was empty, my Gladius having been ripped from my grasp as I’d been thrown. I struggled to my feet and looked around wildly, my heart jammed up in my throat.
Jackson stood in front of Nelly, my Gladius clenched in his hand. Nelly had her head thrown back and was laughing up at the heavens. I could tell by Jackson’s posture, fierce but defeated, that he knew as well as she did that he stood no chance against her.
I took off at a run toward him, my feet seeming to move in slow motion as I watched so many things happen in front of me at once, just flashes of images that would burn themselves into my mind for the rest of eternity. Jackson’s head turning to look at me, the look in his big green eyes. Nelly standing behind him with her head thrown back, her long white neck shaking with that terrible laughter. Jackson’s face telling me that is was okay, knowing that I would not reach him in time. The sliver blade of the Gladius rising up to his throat, the muscles in the arm that held it bulging with tension. The sound it made as he slid the silver swiftly and gracefully to the side. The scarlet that dripped from the end of it, that sprayed out in the air like red rain drops, splattering Nelly’s face and shirt. The wild look in Nelly’s eyes as her head snapped forward, and the way her white arms shot out to catch Jackson before he collapsed to the ground, holding him in front her like nothing more than a ragdoll. Her crazed face disappearing in his neck. The sounds of slurping and moaning. The sound of my own scream.
I snatched up my Gladius when I finally reached them, Jackson’s blood still slick on its blade. I stood there clutching it as Nelly drank and drank and drank from Jackson, unable to move or think. The sword was cold in my grasp, but useless, nothing Nelly could ever do would make me turn it on her. But if there was ever a time when I seriously considered doing it, it was now. The scene taking place in front of me was the worst thing I had ever witnessed, and I have witnessed some pretty awful things.
Jackson’s head was tilted back, his reddish-brown hair stirring softly in the wind. His green eyes were open and staring heavenward, but they saw nothing. They were blank, dead. Nelly’s hands were wrapped in his blue flannel shirt, holding him to her with enormous strength. The top of her head was all that was visible as she slurped and moaned and hissed against the opening in his neck. His blood dripped down between them, and the ground was so saturated that the drops made plopping noises when they fell. Nelly’s hands were completely red, as if she had dipped them in a bucket of paint, and it rolled down in streams to her forearms, down to shirt and to her feet.
And I just stood there watching. My knees gave out beneath me and I pitched forward, but rough hands caught me and kept me on my feet. I pulled my eyes from Nelly and looked over to see Kayden beside me, and it took me a moment to know it was him. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything other than how sick I felt, and I felt really sick.
I doubled over and began retching, the meager contents of my stomach spilling out in front of me, splattering the ground at my feet. Kayden held me upright. Otherwise I would have fallen over right into my own bile. He wiped my mouth on his sleeve and wrapped his arms around me, holding my head firmly against his chest, spinning me so that I was looking in the opposite direction of Nelly and Jackson. I wanted to push him away and tell him that I was fine, that I could handle this, but my muscles seemed to be locked into their positions, using all their strength just to hold me up.
I didn’t close my eyes. I was facing east, so the sun was the most drawing thing in my line of vision. I stared right into it, my eyes watering and burning, blinking and refusing to shield my gaze. I could feel the air going in and out of my lungs, could hear it rushing in my ears. Kayden’s heart was pumping so hard that his chest was pulsing where I laid my head. My hands dangled at my sides, my mouth hung open, and I stared at the sun.
Forever seemed to pass by in that moment, as I stood in Kayden’s arms and seemed to drift out into the world. I felt like there was no way this could happening, that surely this nightmare would end and I would awaken hot and sweaty in my bed. I thought nothing at all, except for maybe that I was going to go to hell for this, and that it would not be punishment enough. But none of this was happening. I breathed, and told myself none of this was happening.
And then Kayden gasped, the air seeming to catch in his lungs, and I spun around on my heel so fast that the world blurred. My chest rose and fell and then stopped moving all together, as I looked at my sister, kneeling on the ground with a very dead Jackson sprawled across her lap, her pretty face covered in blood, all of her covered in it.
And her hazel eyes that were staring up at me. Very, very wide.
Alexa
I still was unable to move. I just stood there gaping at Nelly and hearing a terrible ringing in my ears. Kayden must have been stuck in place also, and I noticed Tommy standing beside him for the first time. We all just stood there staring at Nelly, with Nelly staring back at me.
Her red mouth opened, but no sound came out, and then she looked down at what was across her lap and she screamed. It was a terrible sound, one that seemed to have been ripped out from her soul and tossed into the air like confetti. It was a scream that held so much pain, so much anguish that it hurt just to hear it, though no one of us moved to cover our ears.
Nelly’s hands were trembling, sobs making her entire body jump, as she brought her fingers down and ran them along Jackson’s face. “No,” she said. And then she cried it over and over again until it was just a nonsensical sobbed-mumble falling from her lips, her body rocking back and forth as she stroked Jackson’s face.
Tears sprung from my eyes, not the first I had ever cried and certainly not the last. I made no move to hide them or wipe them away. I still made no move at all.
It was Tommy who stepped forward and kneeled down in front of Nelly, his handsome face as grave and gentle as I had ever seen it. He stayed there in front of her a moment, just staring into her eyes. Nelly looked back at him like she was lost and he was someone who might show her the way. My ruined, black heart twisted then, and I ran forward to my sister, knowing that I was the one who was always supposed to show her the way.
Tommy moved out of the way when he saw me coming, and I fell down hard on my knees in front of her. My hand came up and cupped the side of her cheek, and her skin was soft and warm against my palm. Her bloody hand came up and rested over mine, her hazel eyes telling me that there was nothing else in the world that she would rather see than me, though they reflected my own pain and suffering so clearly that I found that I couldn’t breathe.
Then we hugged each other fiercely, Jackson’s body between us a still-warm reminder of all that had been lost to allow us this simple embrace. We stayed that way for a long time, and she whispered something in my ear that made the destroyed contents of my chest ache.
“I missed you so much.”
We cried then, both of us together, and somehow it only felt right that way, not that any of this felt right. My brain seemed to be refusing to process what had happened, refusing to accept that Jackson, my poor, sweet Jackson, lay between the two of us, gone beyond reach. It was something that wouldn’t settle over me, wouldn’t set in for some time.
But I knew that he had done it for me, had willing sacrificed himself so that I could keep
breathing, even though I’d torn his heart to pieces, and that was enough to make the tears that kept falling from my eyes never truly cease to be.
Only the blood of one completely willing, only the soul of one who knows true love can save her.
Yes, I cried.
Until your veins run dry and your tether to this world is forever broken.
The next thirty minutes or so after that are a blur. I was too wracked with grief, maybe always would be, to really remember it clearly, like my mind had gone blank for a few minutes in a last ditch effort to save my fragile sanity. I remember Kayden saying something, and then looking up to see the hard look on his face. I remember glancing all around me, seeing the thing that had made his back so rigid. People were stepping out of the houses, slowly, only a few at first, and then more. They were holding swords and daggers and other weapons in their hands, glaring at us with an unmistakable threat in their eyes, even from this distance.
The Rise (The Alexa Montgomery Saga) Page 23
