“You’ll call me immediately if you see anything out of the ordinary?”
“For the twelfth time, yes!” I huffed. As if I hadn’t been doing just that all week.
“I’m just making sure,” he said, adding as he left, “Stay safe, Nai.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled under my breath as I yanked open the diner’s door. I was pretty sure that Desmond’s concerns weren’t for my safety.
“Must be game night.”
“Duh,” I said without looking up at Jake. Since Jem and I spent every night at the diner, we were now on a first name basis with the staff. I’d already had to assure Jem that it was okay for him to go to his stupid party. I didn’t want to get into it again. As if I cared that I wasn’t invited to some stupid football party. Jem acted like it was some awful thing that I wasn’t invited, but really, I felt sorry for him for actually thinking that hanging out with a bunch of drunk morons was fun.
Instead of walking away or making a snarky remark, Jake slid a plate of fries on the table and took the seat opposite me where Jem usually sat.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I scrambled to hide my notes. He definitely did not need to see what I was working on.
“It’s my dinner break.”
“And you couldn’t find an empty table?” I looked around at the mostly empty diner.
“Maybe I wanted to sit here because it has the nicest view.”
I looked out the window. The diner faced the gas station next door and the view was of a parking lot covered by nasty crickets that were drawn to the bright lights.
“Not that view.”
I turned back to see Jake’s lips twitched upward into a mischievous smile and nearly choked on my coffee.
“Are you… Is this supposed to be some kind of a joke?”
I could feel the anger rising up. I’d fallen for this trick once before back in middle school. Never again.
“Well, no.” His smile faltered. “I just thought… never mind. That was kind of a creepy come on, wasn’t it?”
Since I was already thoroughly confused, and just angry enough not to care about what or who I was violating, I peeked into his brain and nearly choked again. Jake wasn’t lost. He wasn’t possessed or otherwise bewitched. He wasn’t joking either. He liked me. Clearly, the poor guy had brain damage. I couldn’t think of any other reason why a guy like Jake would be interested in me. It’s not like he was even that bad looking.
Actually, he was kind of cute. A nervous giggle escaped from some deep, dark part of me and I considered the possibility that I was the one who was brain damaged.
“Yeah, it was kind of creepy,” I admitted, but did so with a smile. It felt weird but not in a bad way. There was definitely something imbalanced in the universe.
In a way, it was nice to have a moment of normal in my otherwise abnormal life. I kind of liked the idea of doing something mundane and stupid, like sharing a plate of fries with a boy. But just as quickly as my brain shot off into la-la land, reality brought me back to Earth. There was a sudden shift in the diner’s atmosphere that I couldn’t ignore. The dark oppressive feeling was all too familiar. Out the window, I spotted the downtrodden figure of Chapman High’s guidance counselor and let out a startled gasp. He was walking up Main Street toward the west side. I looked down at the flyer I’d stolen from Jem’s trashcan, betting that I knew exactly where he was headed.
“Dammit!” I muttered, trying to stuff my notebook back into my bag and get out enough money to pay for my meal before I lost sight of him.
“You’re leaving? Did I say something?”
Crap again. It would figure that my hormones would finally kick in at the least convenient time in the history of awkward.
“No! It’s… It’s not… It’s an emergency,” I said, sliding out of the booth. “I’ll… um… I’ll call you,” I said in a breathless panic as I ran out the door, embarrassed and wondering why I’d said something so obviously stupid. I didn’t even have Jake’s phone number and besides, who calls people anymore?
Outside the diner, I looked up and down the street and swore when I realized I’d not only lost my chances with Jake, but the wraith as well. I pulled out the flyer, hoping I was right, and slipped out of time. No way in hell was I going to walk the whole mile to the party site.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
Aw crap! I slipped back out of time. I hadn’t wanted to reappear in front of all the idiots at the party, so I put myself on the jogging path. I hadn’t expected anyone to be dumb enough to go jogging in the middle of the night. Especially not on a Friday. I slipped back, putting myself behind a tree this time and cursed. Kayla stood, looking around like an idiot, clutching the same flyer I held in my hand. A quick look inside her head showed that she was oblivious to the fact that she was invited as a mean joke.
As much as she annoyed me, I couldn’t let Kayla fall victim to whatever cruelty Vampire Bait and her cronies had planned for her. But I didn’t need a confrontation either. I tried sending her somewhere else with a bit of influence, but her ridiculous desire to be popular was too strong and I didn’t know enough about the girl to put any weight behind my influence. I was about to just ambush her and knock her unconscious when I had a stroke of evil genius. Just in time too as I felt the sickening tendrils of the wraith’s presence getting closer.
I grabbed a pen out of my bag. Copying Emma’s stupid loopy writing style, I wrote the words “Operation Get Kayla” on the back of the flyer. I then listed out several awful things that someone like Emma would think funny. When I was done, I slipped into a tree and let it fall in Kayla’s path, as if by accident. As she read the rather cruel list, I patted myself on the back for a job well done. Whether or not the fake plans for her humiliation were anywhere near as cruel as what was likely waiting for her, I’d never know. As her mood shifted to anger, her soul shifted to balanced and she ran off. With any luck, that would be the last time I had to worry about her.
Admittedly, finding the break in the trees that led down to the river would have been almost impossible if I didn’t have the demon’s presence to follow. I stumbled over a few tree roots, but finally found the packed dirt path and saw the light of a fire up ahead.
“Gotcha!”
I stifled a scream as I was grabbed from behind. I twisted and tried to yank myself free, but whoever grabbed me had a strong grip. “Let me go,” I growled through gritted teeth.
“Not a chance, bitch.”
I recognized the voice as that of Gordon, one of Jem’s moronic football friends. Not surprisingly, his soul was so imbalanced that I was surprised there weren’t vampires jumping at the chance to feed off of him. He pushed me forward, past the bonfire. I was surprised to see the clearing completely empty. Coolers, beer cans, and the lingering aroma of pot indicated that there had been kids partying in the area, but they were gone now. Gordon pushed me through a small break in the dense forest growth.
“Hey, watch it, asshole!” I shouted as tree branches whipped my face, but if he heard me, he didn’t care. If anything, my shouting just made him more determined to run me into things. After a few minutes of being beaten up by nature, the trees cleared and I found myself face to face with Gary Marsden.
“Ah, Ms. Hawthorne! So glad you could join us.” His voice was his own, but there was an edge to it, as if the demon was hanging back. “Come, my child, it is almost time.”
“Time for what?” I hung back, but Gordon’s meaty paws pushed me forward.
“Don’t play games with me,” he snarled as the demon took full control. “It is time to fulfill your destiny.”
“Um, if by destiny you mean tear open my brother’s soul and open a portal to your realm, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t even know how to open a portal and blood’s kind of a turn off.”
“No, I imagine you don’t know much, do you?” he said as a smile twisted his features. “But luckily for us, I do.”
As he spoke, his face began to
sort of melt. The smile grew wider and wider until it twisted inhumanly across his entire head like something out of a movie with bad special effects. From the gaping hole he now had in his skull, an icy frost blasted me, and Gary Marsden’s body collapsed lifelessly to the ground. Hovering where he had stood was a shapeless mass. I barely had enough time to register that I was staring at the host-less wraith before it slammed into me, seeping into my nostrils and bringing on the worst sinus headache in the history of headaches. Suddenly, I felt as if I was being frozen to death from the inside out.
“What?” I gasped, realizing as I fought for control of my body what had just happened. “Did you just try to freakin’ possess me? Oh hell no!”
“As always, it’s a struggle with you, Nai, isn’t it? And here I thought you were the brilliant one.”
That voice, now bouncing around inside my head, so familiar, yet so different from what I remember, stabbed mercilessly at my heart. I’d shut my mind earlier, but now, with this thing inside me, it was impossible to ignore the truth.
“F-father?”
A derisive laugh echoed inside me. “Your father was a fool, child! A meddlesome academic whose inability to accept mediocrity found him face to face with that which no human mind is equipped to comprehend.”
Images bombarded my brain.
My father as a young man, slipping away from his excavation party to explore a fissure in the earth. A dark corridor descending downward. The alluring glow of a soft light radiating from somewhere farther still. A cavern, deep below the surface. Inside, his foot trips on a hidden catch and the floor falls away.
His fall is broken by the skeletal remains of those who met their fate before him. The walls, smooth as glass and offering no escape, are covered completely in the scrawling hand of one touched by madness. The text is an ancient, lost language, but father is not deterred by his incomprehension.
The key is here. Somehow, he knows and moves to the skeleton, lying prone, bone fingers still clasped around the shard of soft stone it had used to document its tale. His hand hovers above the skull, hesitant to disturb what may be the archeological find of the century, but the pull is too much. Father places his hands on the skull. A light shines from within and now he gazes upon the text in comprehension.
…The Cycle is life, the Cycle is infinite. The Cycle is Order, a balance of darkness and light. The Creator is life, the Creator is death. The Creator is everything and nothing, a part of the Cycle, but also removed. Order is balance, Order is law. Order must be maintained and defended, lest Chaos come and disrupt the Cycle is life, the Cycle is infinite. The Cycle is Order, a balance of darkness and light. The Creator is life, the Creator is death. The Creator is everything and nothing, a part of the Cycle, but also removed. Order is balance, Order is law. Order must be maintained and defended, lest Chaos come and disrupt the Cycle is life, the Cycle is infinite…
The words repeat, circling back to the first in an unending cadence, yet father continues to read, circling in place. With every repetition of the Ultimate Truth, his comprehension grows and his mind slips further into the abyss from which no mortal can return.
The Cycle is life, the Cycle is infinite…
His mouth moves of its own accord, speaking aloud, though his mind, terrified, wishes he would not. He is powerless. He reaches for the soft stone and takes up where the poor departed soul has left off.
The Cycle is Order, a balance of darkness and light…
But there is no balance for a mind corrupted by forbidden knowledge.
The Creator is life, the Creator is death…
The mind cries out for death. True death, oblivion, an erasure of that which it wishes not to know.
The Creator is everything and nothing, a part of the Cycle, but also removed…
The mind utters curse after curse upon the Creator, fearful of retribution, yet resigned that there is no other way.
Order is balance, Order is law…
“Help me!” the corrupted mind cries out as the hands continue to write and the mouth continues to speak.
Order must be maintained and defended, lest Chaos come and disrupt the Cycle…
In the shadows, a formless shape drifts closer, drawn by the broken mind. It meets no resistance. The entity enters the mind, finding the dizzying paradox of complete comprehension and terrified denial.
“I can end this,” it whispers seductively. “Will you help me?”
“Yes.” The mind does not hesitate. “End this, please.”
* * *
“Oh, you son of a bitch!” I shrieked. I don’t know whether I spoke aloud or in my head, but I knew the wraith understood as I felt its laughter. “You’ll pay for what you did to my father!”
“I did nothing but what your father begged me to do,” the wraith spat back, adding insult to injury by still using father’s voice. “I took away the madness. I brought him glory he did nothing to deserve. Without me, he would have starved, a slow lingering death, with his remaining moments in tormented madness.”
“I fail to see how that would be worse than demon possession.”
“I can help you with that,” the voice hissed in my head and I found myself swinging around, unable to control my own muscles. My head turned, forced downward and I stared at Jem, blindfolded, chained down, and barely breathing.
“What have you done to my brother?”
“He’s just been prepared. It is time.”
“Time? Oh, no. Hell to the no!” I shouted, but as I did, my arm snaked out and picked up a discarded silver dagger that sat on the stone altar at Jem’s feet. I tried to turn away and swung hard, nearly tripping over the body of the guidance counselor, whose jabbering form lay in a makeshift pentagram. Apparently, the witches had arrived because they were chanting something over his body. That was all well and good, except that none of them seemed to notice that I was being forced to climb up on top of my brother with the intent of killing him.
That is, if he wasn’t dead already. His color was all wrong and he didn’t appear to be breathing. Of course, that could have had something to do with the fact that I was digging my knees into his lungs. Looking down on Jem, I let out a bitter laugh. Today would have been our eighteenth birthday. The day we were to grow into our greatness, as dear old dad had said. What he meant, of course, was that I was supposed to kill my brother, enslave his soul, and turn his body into a vessel for safe passage between the Discordant realm and ours.
Apparently, our death didn’t hinder those plans as much as I’d have thought.
“Within my power…”
The voice came out of my mouth, but it wasn’t mine. I tensed, fighting against the demon inside, but it was a losing battle. My hand shot out and pulled the blindfold from Jem. The bastard obviously just wanted to add insult to injury by showing Jem that his sister was a psycho who was going to kill him.
“N-Nai?”
“I command the guardians of the realm…”
I lifted the dagger over my head. Well, I didn’t, the wraith did. I was using every ounce of muscle I had to keep the dagger right where it was. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many ounces of muscle.
“To stand aside…”
I clamped my mouth shut. I could feel the Discordant inside me clawing at my throat, but I held out.
“Nai? What are you doing?”
Jem’s terrified expression was no doubt a mirror image of my own as the dagger slipped forward slightly.
“Nai, it’s not your fault! Nai!”
“Dammit, Jem! I don’t want to kill you!” I managed to choke out as my whole body seized. Of course it wasn’t my fault! I was possessed! I just hoped that the damned cavalry would arrive before I ended up wearing Jem’s internal organs.
“I forgive you!” Jem called out.
“You what?”
For a brief moment, the demon let go, confused, as I was, by Jem’s words.
“I forgive you!” he said again, crying now. “It’s not your fault. He did this to us.
”
“Oh for fuck sake, Jem!” I huffed. Only my brother would get emotional and sappy at a time like this. “I don’t know if you’re fully aware of this or not, but there’s a friggin’ demon inside of me who is trying to make me kill you. This may not be the best time to- ugh!”
I was knocked to the side, splitting my head open on the side of the altar as I went. When I finally stopped seeing stars, I was pinned to the ground by all eight thousand pounds of Desmond and he had a knife to my neck.
“Wait!” I managed to squeak. “Uh, you know I’m possessed, right?”
“I got here just as it entered, yes.”
“So you know that wasn’t me…”
“Manipulate the girl all you want, but it was your own fault for jumping into a living vessel.”
“Wait, what?” The demon in me began to panic and it wasn’t the only one. It felt like it was trying to leave my body through every orifice at once, but that wasn’t what caused my blood to run cold. “What do you mean by living vessel?”
The demon roared. “That filthy, meddling cow!”
The image of my mother flashed before my eyes. Of course. Harry had suspected that she was a mystic. She…
“I’m sorry Nai.”
“What? NO!”
Desmond had moved the blade over my heart.
“Desmond, wait!” I heard Harry cry out to my relief. “We have to be sure she’s trapped the creature before we cut out her heart.”
So much for that. My brief glimpse of relief turned into full-fledged panic. Whether it was the boost of adrenaline or the fact that both the demon and I had the same idea, I don’t know, but I was able to break free from Desmond’s hold on me.
“Stay back!” I yelled as I scrambled back, but my voice wasn’t mine. “You shut up!” I yelled at the wraith. I turned to Harry. “I thought you had a corpus vessel?”
Rise of the Discordant: The Complete Five Book Series Page 34
