by Stacey Jay
Where is she taking me? And why?
“They won’t know you for what you are or what you’ve been,” she says. “I’ve given you only a small portion of my power. You lack great strength, but you also lack enough magic to alter the color of your aura. You’ll be safe enough.” She pulls the car to the side of the road and shuts it off before turning back to me. “Unless, of course, you continue to fail as spectacularly as you did this evening.”
“How was I to know that wine would affect her that way?” My tone is submissive, but I don’t miss the tightening of her lips.
Apparently I am incapable of pleasing any female of the species this evening.
I cover my sigh with the slam of the car door and follow Nurse as she starts down a tree-shadowed path leading still higher up the mountain. “But I know now,” I say, deciding assurances will serve me better than arguments. “I’ll win her trust again. Things were going very well before the wine.”
“Very?” she throws over her shoulder.
“Very, very.”
“As confident as ever, I see.”
“There’s no reason not to be.” I think of how Ariel let me hold her, how her heart beat fast in her throat when we touched. I had her close to surrender in hours. By the end of the month, she’ll be mine. “She’s ready to fall in love. I can feel it. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Excellent. Then I trust three days will be sufficient?”
“Three days?” I stop dead, but she keeps walking, and I have to hurry to catch up.
Is this woman mad? Three days? Three blasted days?
“That’s rushing things a bit, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps.” She lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “Three days was enough for Benjamin Luna to win Juliet’s heart.”
I fight the urge to snarl. “Ariel isn’t Juliet.”
“Regardless. Three days is all I can offer. You have until Friday at midnight.”
“And why is that?”
“In this reality, the soul mates you and Juliet were sent to protect have made their commitment, and the Mercenary and Ambassador sent to fight for them have departed.” She lifts a low branch and holds it for me to pass under before continuing up the trail. “But Ariel is important to the fate of the world for both sides. If the Mercenaries knew how important, they would already be guarding her against our influence.”
“But they aren’t.”
“No. Not yet. The dark ones can’t see the circular nature of time the way we can. It’s our best weapon against them. They won’t sense how important Ariel is until her heart begins to open. It’s only when they start to lose her soul that they’ll realize how vital she is to their cause.”
“You said that before, at the station,” I say. “But how can one girl be so important? This war has been going on for millennia.”
“And it will continue for many more,” she says, “assuming you sway Ariel toward the light.”
“And if not … the Mercenaries win?” My pulse speeds as I await her answer. I am a traitor. If the Mercenaries come into power, there’s no doubt I will pay for my betrayal. I can’t imagine a fate worse than being trapped inside the specter of my soul, but I’m sure the Mercenaries can. And they will. If I fail, I will experience torture that will make living in a dying body seem a sweet dream.
“Then no one wins,” the Ambassador says. “If the Mercenaries succeed in eliminating light from the world, they will eliminate themselves. Without balance, there is chaos, and not even the purveyors of chaos will be able to rule it.”
I believe her—the nature of the spell that created the Ambassadors and Mercenaries insists on light and dark. I’ve never understood why the Mercenaries believe they’ve grown powerful enough to ignore that all-important fact. Still, I need to know if there will be a period of Mercenary rule before the world goes to hell in the proverbial handbasket.
“But if I fail, the Mercenaries take control?”
“For a time.” She turns down a wider path. We’re able to walk abreast without tree limbs tugging at my shirt, and soon the trail opens into a clearing. A hundred feet ahead, at the top of the mountain, a cabin huddles amidst a gathering of stones. “If the Mercenaries win Ariel to their side, they will eventually cry victory over all the permutations of reality.”
“And this is the moment that tips the scale in their favor.”
She nods, confirming my fears. “Humanity would already have been doomed, but the first time the conditions were ripe for Mercenary victory, Ariel was killed before she could commit her future atrocities.”
I try to imagine Ariel committing “atrocities,” and fail. She’s angry and confused, but she’s only a girl. Just one sad, mixed-up girl out of hundreds of thousands of girls just like her. And even in the short time we’ve spent together, I’ve heard her laugh, seen mischief in her eyes, and tenderness in her smile. It’s hard to believe someone who made Dylan pay for his cruelty with something as benign as a naked serenade is capable of true evil.
“Hard to believe,” I mutter, echoing Ariel’s words from the playground.
“Believe. If left unchecked, Ariel’s acts of darkness will make the world’s cruelest dictators look like naughty children.”
Well then. Ariel. A surprising girl, on all fronts. “Then, I suppose I did you a favor the last time around. When I put a bullet in her brain.”
“It was better for her to die than to live to become a monster,” she agrees, surprising me. Ambassadors are sworn to preserve life, and yet this woman is ready to deign murder a necessary evil. More than anything she has said thus far, the pronouncement finally convinces me that Ariel’s fate will determine our own.
“Assuming I win her heart,” I say. “Will that be enough? If, as you’ve said, there are dozens upon dozens of realities, then—”
“Not for this girl. Her birth was difficult. In all but two versions of the world, she died before she could draw her first breath. If she’s taken care of here, the danger Ariel Dragland poses will be eliminated.”
Taken care of. Danger. Eliminated. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think …”
“I pray it won’t come to that,” she says, slowing as we approach the abandoned homestead. “It is ultimately best for her to live and become an advocate for peace.”
I stop, holding my ground when Nurse continues around the side of the cabin. Now that we’re closer, I can feel a troubling energy emanating from this place. There is something unnatural here, something that makes the food and wine in my stomach churn.
The Ambassador turns, waiting for me to follow. “Come.”
“But … there’s something … I feel …”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. Not yet.” She motions for me to join her. I do, but slowly, each step a battle won against the increasingly demanding urge to run, to flee this place like Ariel fled the playground. I don’t know what Ariel saw earlier tonight, but I know what I sense right now. I sense Mercenary magic, the cold pricking of evil across my skin.
But I must be mistaken. Juliet’s nurse needs me. She wouldn’t deliver me into Mercenary hands.
“What happens after?” I ask, trying to keep my mind off the dread making every hair on my borrowed body stand on end. “When Dylan’s soul returns?”
“I’ll address that concern. When the time comes.”
“He’s cruel. He doesn’t care for Ariel. He’ll undo all my hard work,” I say, seeing an opening. A few hours of life have made me greedy for more. “Perhaps it would be better if I stayed with her on a more permanent basis. I could be her … protector.”
Nurse smiles, amused by my obvious ploy, but I can’t smile back. The energy is even worse behind the cabin. Leafless trees and knotted brown vines squat in the grass, gnarled sentries protecting the black face of a cliff that rises another fifty feet before the mountain ends in a thick bald knob. I falter again, not wanting to go a step closer to that seething rock.
“You can’t stay.” She takes my hand and
urges me on. I want to pull away but curl my fingers around hers instead, letting her lead me through the brambles at our feet. “If you do your job well, there will be no chance of Ariel’s soul turning to darkness, and the Ambassadors can’t waste magic on a soul already won. When your work is finished, I will administer the peacekeeper vows and you will go to the mist until you are needed to serve the cause again.”
“But—”
“Ambassadors are Mercenary targets. You know that, Romeo. As soon as you take the vows, your aura will mark you as one of us and you will be vulnerable. But without the vows, you will return to the specter of your soul and rot.”
I sigh at her inescapable logic.
“The Mercenaries will want their revenge,” she says as she picks her way around a petrified tree, bringing us close enough to the cliff for me to see a dark slash in its middle. A cave. The evil threading through the air is coming from inside. I can practically smell it. “Any Ambassador still here when they arrive will be at risk.”
“And what about Ariel?” I pull my hand from hers, unable to take another step.
“What about her?”
“The Mercenaries will kill her before they’ll let her live on to become a force for love and light,” I say, spitting the last words. “If I turn her heart and leave her, I’m setting her up to die.”
The Ambassador places a hand on my shoulder. “Do you care?”
Do I? The angry knot in my gut, the way my fingers want to wrap around this woman’s throat and squeeze as punishment for failing to think her plan through, make me think I might. At least a little. My appetite for murder has vanished, making me wonder if it was ever mine to begin with. Perhaps it was the Mercenary magic inside me that craved death and destruction, and not my own soul at all.
“I already killed her once,” I say finally. “I don’t want to be the reason she dies a second time.”
Nurse cocks her head. “I’m surprised. Pleasantly.”
“I live to please, my lady.”
Her lips curve. “Save it for Ariel, my boy. I am immune to your charms.”
I sigh. “I only want to make sure she’s—”
“I will take care of the girl.”
“But—”
“I appreciate your concern,” she says sharply. “But your focus should be on doing whatever it takes to win Ariel, heart and soul.”
“Whatever it takes,” I repeat, apprehension tightening the back of my neck.
“Lie, cheat, steal. Even kill if you must.” The bite in her tone makes my eyes drift to her sharp little teeth. “That’s why you’re here, Romeo, instead of some worthy Ambassador. You can do things we cannot.”
I stand straighter, clench my jaw, steeling myself against the revulsion rising inside of me. I’ve killed before. If I have to, I can kill again. I must. “Who would you have me kill?”
“Anyone who stands between you and your goal.”
I shake my head, banishing from my mind the image of Ariel with a bullet hole between her eyes. That was another reality. This reality doesn’t have to end in the same bloody fashion. “I doubt that will be necessary.”
“Most likely not. But it’s important that you understand how far I’m willing to go to protect the future.”
I look over her shoulder, unable to keep my eyes from the opening to the cave. The evil energy still whispers there. The cave is a monster, and we’re close enough to hear it breathe. “But I … That isn’t why we’ve taken this drive.”
“I think it’s important that you see something as well.” She reaches for me again.
I clench my hands into fists. “Whatever’s in there, I don’t want to see it.”
“What you want doesn’t matter. Just as what you feel doesn’t matter,” she says, her voice all the crueler for its calm, patient tone. “No one cares about you, Romeo. You are a means to an end. If you fail to be useful to me, you will fail to matter to anyone, save those who will torture you for their entertainment.”
I bare my teeth in a horrible smile, hoping there’s still enough Mercenary in me to frighten her. “I assume you’re nicer to your other converts.”
“I’ve given you a chance at salvation. I don’t know that I can be much nicer. Except perhaps to provide you with the proper motivation.” She snatches my arm and pulls me along as if I’m a child who has wandered into the street.
She means to hurt me. I have no doubt of that now. I was a fool to believe the Ambassadors would be any different from the Mercenaries. For nearly a thousand years I was ruled by pain and fear, and my new master is just as cruel as my old one. The bringers of light simply have better benefits.
Though taste and touch and smell can be their own punishment.…
I learned that much in the weeks I was trapped in the specter of my soul. In that feeling-rotting-stinking nightmare of a body that taught me new ways to suffer. Just the smell of it was enough to drive a man mad.
The smell. The smell.
The stink floods over me at the entrance to the cave, making me choke. I try to rip my arm free, but the Ambassador grips me, forcing me inexorably forward, toward the thing growling in the darkness, the beast she has imprisoned with her magic and brought me to visit. To remind me how easy it will be for her to take away what she’s given, to assure me that I am her creature and that I must play by her rules …
Or not play at all.
INTERMEZZO ONE
VERONA, 1304
Juliet
The afterlife is a nightmare. Hell is knowing that you might never wake up.
The stone beneath me bruises my spine; my fingertips pulse from where I’ve ripped my nails trying to claw the lid of the sarcophagus away. I draw in stale air, pungent with the stink of Tybalt’s body rotting in his own deathbed a few paces away, but I lack even the luxury of gagging at the stench.
I’m back in my sarcophagus, buried alive, trapped and dying in the dark. Again.
Again.
I tell myself it’s only a dream, but I can’t open my eyes. I can’t move, can’t lift a hand to push against the marble slab that covers my face, can’t part my lips to cry out for help.
I feel the poison the friar gave me to help me fake my death pulsing wickedly through my veins, writhing into my brain like a maggot feeding, leaving madness in its wake. I’m dimly aware of my heart beating, of my skin sweating feverishly despite the cold in the tomb, but my soul remains separate from my body, lost and wandering in a terror-filled world from which I may never return.
Maybe this is Nurse’s work. Maybe she cursed me to this hell for refusing to rejoin the Ambassador cause. Perhaps I will remain here—believing myself buried alive and dreaming darkly—until the end of time.
I fight my way through dreamscapes peopled by feral corpses with black teeth bared, a hundred dead Romeos, each more rotted and wrong than the last, all hungry for a taste of my heart. He lunges at me from the shadows, rises from the mud beneath my feet, eyes burning red like a demon sent to pull me into the flames.
His clawed hands grab my ankle and drag me down, drowning me in liquid earth. Mud flows into my nose and rushes down my throat, cutting off any hope of breath. My heart slows, my fear-sharpened thoughts go fuzzy, and something deeper than sleep draws me close.
For a moment, I believe I am truly gone, at peace, beyond the reach of Romeo and the Mercenaries and my nurse, who betrayed me, and the pain of knowing that Ben is dead.
Ben. The memory of his face at the end—battered and bruised by Romeo’s fists—threatens to shatter what’s left of my heart. My Ben, my beautiful, sad boy whom I believed for one breathless moment I could make happy and whole. But there is no happiness in the world, and soon I won’t know the meaning of whole.
My heart sputters to life and the nightmares begin again, even more horrible this time. I watch Romeo’s corpse transform, becoming beautiful and filled with light. I watch him take the Ambassador vows and move on to find peace in service while I remain here, lost and alone, and somehow I k
now that it’s real. I have been punished for my refusal to serve the Ambassadors any longer, while Romeo—the most wicked being I have ever known—is rewarded.
Will be rewarded. It hasn’t happened yet. But it will. I know it will. This is a vision, not a dream, and it makes me want to scream until blood flows down my throat.
Life was never fair. I don’t know why I thought the afterlife would be any different—but I did. God help me, I did. But it isn’t, and I am proven the most tragic, tortured breed of fool.
I try to close my eyes, to open them, to force my dreaming self to turn away from the vision of Romeo’s golden beauty, or force my sleeping self to wake. But I can do nothing. I am nothing. I am more lost and powerless than I was before. Even as an Ambassador. Even in the mist.
Something breaks inside me, a fissure up the center of my being that allows the nightmares to sink their claws in deeper. The monster Romeos return, accompanied by every horror mankind has ever imagined, crawling on blood-soaked claws, dragging bodies bloated with evil through fields of death and decay. I run, bare feet squishing in the rot, howls of pain from the living dead becoming a roar that rushes inside, emptying me of everything but pure, unadulterated fear.
There are whispers in the air. They drift from the bleeding sky, floating down to feather against my skin. It’s Nurse’s voice, trying to soothe away my terror, but I’m too far gone. Lost. Mindless. Her promise to come for me, her insistence that time is a circle, not a line, her assurance that my fate is entwined with Romeo’s but I can escape and find salvation, make little sense to me. Words are only sound, drumbeats inside my skull that confound me with their irregular rhythm.
I run until my dream self pitches forward in exhaustion, and then I fall. And fall and fall, through seemingly endless inky space until I land with a jolt inside my body.
My real body, not some borrowed shell, not the body of Ariel Dragland. Mine. I am thirsty and shivering and sweating out poison, and am weaker than I can remember being in my life or afterlife, but I am myself. And I feel … alive.
