Path of the Heretic (The Beholder Book 2)

by Ivan Amberlake

  His lips tightened into a crooked line. Deep furrows marred his forehead as he moved forward again.

  You just have to ask the Energy, and it’ll respond, he thought. Come on, Jason. You can do it. Emily told you anything’s possible.

  He put his palm on the tree and concentrated hard. The bluish light emanating from the tree sent whiffs of cool, soothing air that enwrapped Jason’s hand and fanned his face and neck.

  “Is it a good or a bad sign?” Jason raised an eyebrow.

  He snapped his head up to look at the setting sun showing through the entangled lattice of the tree crowns. To his amazement, delicate threads of silver touched the twigs of the nearby tree, spreading gradually onto the leaves and thicker branches, gliding closer and closer to the trunk. Jason’s eyes sparkled at the beautiful sight that unfolded before him.

  The silver light consumed everything around and soon reached his feet, dousing him with warmth. His aura flared, setting the forest ablaze. Jason screwed up his eyes and stretched his hand forward to tone down the iridescent light.

  Now this feels like home. He smiled, relief coursing through him.

  His Sight wandered in all directions, and he squinted at the brightness of the object he had been looking for. There it was—the tree of the Ethans. Tiny letters started to form on its bark, as if someone had cut a word onto the surface with a knife: welcome.

  Below it, a photograph was pinned to the bark, and Jason’s heart sank. It was the same photograph he’d found in a secret room of Monsieur Bertrand’s office: the Ethans’ family picture. Only it was a copy, not the crumpled pieces Jason kept in the top drawer of his desk at Evelyn & Laurens.

  Jason plucked it off to take a closer look. Everyone looked happy in the picture, although the Energy coming off of it was cold. Jason knew what cold energy usually meant. That the people in the photo were dead. He turned it over and found a familiar set of letters on the back: AHS.

  “You again. Aaron Heretic Sloane,” he said.

  He turned around, to see Violet glowing with the most beautiful light.

  “Look, there’s something there.” She pointed behind the tree, but Jason didn’t turn that way, his thoughts entangled into an incoherent knot as he laid eyes on Violet, fascinated. Dazzling waves rolled off her skin, a luminous veil hovering around her like she was an angel that just descended from heaven.

  “What?” Violet asked.

  “Err, nothing,” Jason mumbled. “It’s just … when you’re standing close to that tree you look stunning.”

  “What?” Violet blushed.

  “Your aura. It’s really beautiful. I wish I could show it to you. Okay, we better be going.” His hand locked around Violet’s, and he pulled her in the direction she’d pointed. There the trees parted, shafts of light breaking through the thick canopy and bathing the clearing with warmth.

  Dry, crooked twigs snapped under Jason’s feet as they threaded their way through the forest edge and out into the clearing. Branches of ancient trees lashed his forehead, beads of perspiration burning the newly-formed scratches.

  As they moved swiftly past the trees, memories flooded his mind. He was about to see it again: Emily’s estate.

  A flutter of anticipation danced through his chest, so he strode with even more vigor past the blazing trees, eager to put an end to his inner torment. The ache in his right hand didn’t bother him as much as the longing he hadn’t had in a long while: to see Emily.

  Violet’s shoes got stuck in the mud, and he stopped to help her out. They bowed to pass below a weighty bough, and then his excitement faded. He couldn’t imagine he would be that horrified to see what the clearing had turned into. Beds of withered blackened flowers fringed a decrepit estate. Jason stood on a thin gravel path leading to the porch and to the door. The first thing about the house that caught his attention was the door that hung tilted on the top hinges. As if forced open. By whom?

  “Oh my God!” Violet said, clutching at Jason’s hand with renewed energy. “What happened here?”

  Jason narrowed his eyes and took a tentative step. The Sight didn’t show signs of movement in or around the house. He quickened his pace, but the porch steps slowed him down, crumbling like solidified sand as Jason put his weight on each step. He wrenched at the door, and its lower part scratched the dusted floor. They entered and the house’s rancid odor made Jason hunch his shoulders.

  “What a smell!” Jason murmured, blinking his suddenly rheumy eyes.

  He saw Violet’s nose wrinkling in disgust.

  He stepped over the threshold and inspected the chaos—picture frames lay broken, the canvases tattered; floorboards missing here and there, the chandelier crowning the disorder.

  “Someone’s definitely been here.”

  “You think?” Violet said sarcastically.

  The scene reminded Jason strongly of their office a few months back, after the fight against Pariah, only now there was no Pariah, Emily, or Legates. Small comfort.

  Jason checked the next room to find the same debris. This is what the Ethan family is—debris. Jason smiled ruefully. And what do I want to find here?

  Holding his breath, he made a few light steps towards Emily’s grandfather’s study and pulled the door open. He was surprised to see it untouched by the disease the rest of the house was infected with.

  Jason headed to the bookshelves on the left, and found them intact. He picked volumes D and L, the volumes where he’d found articles about Darksighted and Lightsighted, and the bookshelf groaned and moved into the wall to reveal a secret room stuffed with heaps of old documents.

  “Wow!” Violet exclaimed.

  “Here, you see? Darkness and light.” Jason showed the spines of the volumes to her.

  “So that’s what D and L meant.” She stared at the shelf at first and then peeked into the room. “To close the door put the Books of Light and Darkness where they belong,” Violet read aloud the words on the doorframe, then turned to Jason. “This is amazing!”

  “Yeah, I found it the last time. The shelves move when you take these two books.”

  Jason hurriedly leafed through the first book as Violet disappeared in the gloom of the secret room. Most of the article about Darksighted was missing the previous time, and Jason sought to check if anything had changed. Perhaps he’d be able to figure out how to make the missing part show. To his disappointment, the same blank space filled the pages.

  He tore both pages out of the two volumes, placed them carefully next to each other and ran his hand over them. Still nothing happened.

  “Why is it not showing?” he mumbled under his breath. “What’s your secret?”

  “Jason, look! There’s something in here.” Violet’s voice came muffled from inside the room, but Jason could tell she was really excited.

  He folded the pages a few times and tucked them into the inner pocket of his jacket, then rushed into the room, stale air enveloping him as he reached the threshold.

  Violet stood gazing at a shining mark. When she stepped back, he realized there were two of them placed next to each other. He’d seen them before, in that picture when he’d been studying the information about the marks found all over the world. Silver light rippled off of them. The mark on the left had two E’s superimposed—Emily Ethan—while the mark next to it flared with AHS.

  He pulled out the photo of his jeans pocket and gazed at Monsieur Bertrand, little Emily, and Douglas and Rebecca Ethan, Emily’s parents. Their smiling faces showed no signs of the doom about to befall them and destroy their family.

  “When Emily and I visited Minsk in search of Alexei, I touched Catherine Delacroix’s mark that was placed in Alexei’s room and could see a possible future,” he said.

  He vividly remembered the horrible things that were about to happen to the boy.

  “Do you think it’ll work the same way with these?” Violet asked.

  “Maybe.”

  He came over to the wall and placed his hand over Emily’s mark first, an
unusual warmth rushing over his body. He blinked…

  Soaring around the peaks of buildings, she could feel Jason’s ungovernable, raging energy pulsing into the sky. Pariah’s ravenous eyes shifted between her and Jason.

  Jason’s image swam into her mind, and the knowledge of what she must do empowered her, producing a wave that struck Pariah in his chest and threw him like a mote of dust. Without losing a precious moment, she darted downwards, streaking towards the ground, diving towards Jason.

  She landed, transforming instantly into her regular human form. In that moment, the pain rushed in, and she stumbled towards him, the Beholder. The luminosity lifted as she returned to the ordinary world, and she saw him looming in the dark.

  Just a few more steps and she would see what was hidden beyond his light. Then she froze, forgetting her pain. His sky-blue eyes looked expectantly at her, waiting for some kind of answer. Though she was about to collapse, though her heart pounded, she managed to maintain a calm countenance.

  “We need to get away before he regains his power,” she said, her voice shaking a bit.

  She was shaking. She’d been afraid of so many things, but the possibility that she might lose Jason terrified her to the marrow of her bones.

  The image flickered and he ended up in the dark. Cool wrapped around him, while his hand hurt so much he clenched his teeth not to scream. Was he inside Emily’s memories? Was she trying to show him how she’s actually gone through?

  The darkness didn’t last long, replaced by beautiful shimmering. It burned his corneas at first, but he couldn’t look away from it as it was terrifyingly beautiful. Jason was surprised to find out it was him shimmering in the dark.

  She pressed herself to Jason, soaking in his closeness, his soft touch, feeling constantly in awe of his sparkling beauty. Wandering through the dark corridors of the Maze with Jason wasn’t scary at all. Even though the dark wasn’t that dark to her, Jason made reality even brighter than usual. If she could only tell him how beautiful he looked.

  No. Not yet.

  She was afraid to tell Jason what was really going on, and why protecting him and his friends was so important. The black veil that kept Jason from seeing her made her more confident. She had been about to tell him everything when he told her he’d seen her in one of the fusions.

  The news had staggered her. She toed a dangerous line, and one wrong move could ruin everything.

  “How do you know it was me in your dream?” she asked.

  “It had to be you. It couldn’t be anyone else. The girl moved so fast the shadows could barely keep up with her,” he said, unwittingly slicing Emily’s insides as if with a knife. “Then the leader—I mean I did something, cut a rupture in the air and plunged into it, reappearing right in front of the girl.”

  Emily closed her eyes, not wanting to hear, but knowing she had to.

  “Then she was lying on the ground, writhing in pain, and the vision stopped.” Jason hesitated, and she felt him swallow. “I saw her eyes for one brief moment … and they were your eyes.”

  Emily touched his cheek with her left palm, smooth and as good as new. He took her hand in his, and she felt the tip of his finger tracing where her burn should have been. He would find nothing there. “Is it okay?”

  She sighed. “Yes, my hand is fine.”

  “How do you make it heal so fast?”

  “The ability to heal is just a tiny part of what I’m going to teach you. In theory at first.”

  After a long pause, he said, “You told me the Prophecy, but all I know is that it’s become even harder to understand. I need the plain truth.”

  Their time in the Maze was running out; Jason’s friends and Tyler were about to arrive. He was right. He deserved to at least know some of it now. “What do you think the Prophecy spoke about?” she asked.

  “Well, there are twelve pillars of light.”

  “Yes,” Emily nodded. “Go on.”

  “And someone attempts to destroy these pillars.”

  “Pariah and the Legates. You are the last pillar of light, the twelfth in the line.”

  “Why me? How do you know?”

  “Do you remember the beginning of the Prophecy? Through visions of torture and horror he will walk, reaping the pain of those unknowingly defending him. Well, you have had these visions, and your name’s Jason Walker.”

  That stopped him. “Wait. Just because my last name is Walker, you think that means—”

  “—that you are the Beholder. Yes,” she said, deciding not to tell him she’d also seen the brilliant pillar of light emanating from him when she’d been high overhead, battling Pariah. “I’ve been looking for you for too long, Jason. When I found you after all those years, no one would ever be able to persuade me that I was wrong. Especially not you.”

  “But what if you are wrong? Because after all this, I sort of feel there could be nothing worse than disillusioning you,” Jason blurted out. “It’s not really fair, you know. I don’t get a single clue as to what I’m supposed to do to stop these creatures.”

  She hadn’t been prepared for his honest outburst, but she couldn’t blame him, either. Something writhed in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know either,” she admitted. “But I know you’ll figure it out. And don’t worry. You won’t disillusion me.”

  Emily saw Jason smile involuntarily, and it made her smile as well. She squeezed his hand, afraid to let go. “Maybe we should go out into the light.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, that would be a huge relief to me,” he said, then wrapped his hand around her waist so he could help her stand.

  The memory blurred and Jason ended up in the clearing. They were sitting on the hammock tied to the garden trees.

  Jason looked into her eyes, and Emily listened without saying a word, mesmerized by his light.

  “A lot of things have happened to me recently,” Jason said. “Things that I’ve never experienced before. Nightmares, murders, amazing new worlds … But there’s still one thing missing.”

  “What is—” she asked, but his lips were quicker than her words. Her lips responded enthusiastically to his kiss. She got goosebumps; her pulse was double its normal rate and she could barely breathe. She didn’t know how long their kiss lasted, but she just wanted more.

  When she opened her eyes, tiny drops of rain started falling from the sky, tingling on her face and hands. The sun beamed overhead, but a whisper of a drizzle fell through the canopy of the trees.

  “Rain in the sun,” she said after she could catch her breath. “It’s a sign of good luck!”

  Before he could stop her, she’d leapt off the hammock and started running, arms stretched towards the sky. Jason took off his shoes and rolled up his trousers, then darted towards her. He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her high, then spun, whirling and laughing until he lost his balance and slipped. With a little shriek, she fell on top of him, his body breaking her fall.

  The grass beneath him was already wet, and the rain grew stronger, but Emily rolled and lay beside Jason on the damp ground. Raindrops dotted her skin, ran in little rivulets down her cheeks, and the sun made them twinkle like tiny suns.

  Emily glowed, and in her eyes Jason saw the reflection of his own desire. Her finger touched Jason’s forehead, nose, and lips, and the contact was an exquisite delight. He lay watching as she propped herself on one elbow, then leaned in until her hot lips touched his cold ones.

  “When all this is over,” Jason said softly, “we’ll have years ahead of us to be together.”

  Emily lay silent, her eyes sad. “And yet even with all those years ahead of us, I wish we’d met earlier.”

  Darkness ripped Jason out of this memory, lingering. At first he thought there would be no more memories, with nothing happening for quite a while, but when he heard someone’s quiet breathing he realized another memory had started already. He caught his own breath, and there it was, a slow rising of someone’s chest, and then falling. He peered into the dark and soon
was able to make out contours of the small room. He realized why he couldn’t see anything at first. He was in the very secret room, and huddled in the far corner was Emily, her thick hair falling down on her shoulders, its tips sweeping the floor.

  Unlike the other memories he watched that one from aside, not from Emily’s point of view.

  The door opened, and she snapped her head up to find Damien Bale on the threshold.

  “Have you seen him?” he asked, his voice unusually concerned.

  “Yes.” Emily nodded. The light that seeped into the murky room made the tear-streaked lines on her cheeks clear.

  “And?”

  “He said he can’t interfere. Said everything was going according to the plan.” She turned away and rubbed another tear with the back of her hand.

  “According to the plan? People are getting killed. Is this going according to the plan as well?” Bale fumed. “What else did he say?”

  “He gave me this picture.” She raised her hand and Damien took it from her. “To find the heretic the Beholder will have to apply it to the mark.”

  Damien came over to her and took it.

  “If something happens to me, promise you’ll let Jason find it.”

  Damien nodded. “I will.”

  Jason blinked, and the scene changed another time. His head was buzzing. Damien Bale. DB. It was Bale who pinned the photo to the tree. Emily and Damien worked together. And Emily talked to the heretic.

  Before Jason could recover from shock, Emily’s voice invited Jason into another memory. Her voice got clearer as the memory faded in.

  “… When I saw Tyler’s aura, I knew he belonged to the Light. There wasn’t even a speck of evil in him. For me it was wondrous, to witness a person with absolutely no evil in their heart. I mean, all people have light and dark within, even you. But not him.”

  Emily noticed that her remark hurt Jason. Even though he tried to hide it. “That’s all right, you know,” she said. “We should have a choice. It should be up to us to decide whether we want to be kind or unkind, tender or harsh, loving or detesting. It’s just that, well, Tyler doesn’t have that.” She lifted one eyebrow. “And trust me, it’s not as great as it sounds.”