by Thomas Grave
“Cleo,” a deep bass voice rang out from the fiery portal. “The Seal has been made active.”
Her gaze darted to her armband. She smiled at seeing a sixth rune glowing. “Yes. It has.”
The deep voice continued. “It makes no difference about the newborn. We have succeeded without him. Come.”
“Yes, Nero,” Cleo said. She took Vlad’s arm and the two stepped toward the portal. At the entrance, she turned back to Sebastian. “We shall meet again. And next time, you will not be so lucky as to have these Angels come to your rescue.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” the Reaper said.
Cleo licked her lips, smiled menacingly, and stepped through the portal, Vlad following behind. The fiery ring sizzled and then disappeared.
Sebastian sighed as he turned to the Angels. No one spoke, but Raphael met his eyes and acknowledged him with a nod, as though they shared an understanding. Gabriel’s nostrils flared and he narrowed one eye. Then, without warning, Michael blinked away. Gabriel followed immediately, and then Raphael.
He stood face to face with Ariel, expecting her to follow the other Angels. She gazed on in earnest, but he couldn’t identify her expression. It was as though she wanted to say something, yet couldn’t. She bit her bottom lip and gazed at him with eyes so intense that Sebastian thought he understood.
The silence lingered longer than Sebastian would have preferred.
“Yes?” he prompted.
Her expression changed, became indifferent.
“It’s not important.” And without another word she blinked away.
Sebastian sighed. He was alone in the cemetery. Morose’s body had been completely devoured and all the zombies were gone. The tombstones lay in ruins, and many dead trees lay broken and splintered on the ground. In the sky, the crimson moon sat, fat and glowering. He sighed in exhaustion, yawned, and then blinked away.
Wednesday, 8:30 am
He came out of his blink on the sidewalk just outside Sara’s destroyed house. Was his blink off? He’d intended to go to his room. The looming, empty house stood in front of him, a small section of the roof cratered in, the rest of it missing entirely. Dislodged bricks and chunks of insulation and concrete littered the front yard. The house slumped before him looking ominous, as if it were possessed by some malevolent intelligence, daring him to enter and be devoured.
“Did the Angels relocate me again?” asked Sebastian, his tone annoyed. His robes were gone, leaving him back in his normal clothing. The sky was dark gray and overcast, and a light sprinkle of rain began to fall. He exhaled, mist forming from his hot breath.
No, I did this time.
“Why?”
I just detected a presence in this house I felt you needed to know about.
“A presence?” Sebastian repeated. “Who would be here? The only person who would consider coming here would be—”
His eyes widened. A beat passed.
“Sara,” he whispered.
Yes.
“Are you sure it’s her? You were fooled before, right?”
Indeed, I was. Makayla’s Soul was an almost exact match, but Makayla is now in the Light. I cannot feel her there. The same signature has returned. I must assume that this is Sara.
Sebastian’s hands shook and he put them in his pockets in an attempt to steady them. His heart rate picked up. A shy nervousness crept into his body. If this was indeed the real Sara, what would he say? Things just didn’t add up. What happened the night she “supposedly” died? If she wasn’t really dead, why hadn’t she come to him? Did she know about Makayla? Was she responsible for what happened?
No. Not his Sara. There is no way she would intentionally be a part of the crazy plan the Seals had put him though. There must be another explanation. Too many things just didn’t add up.
He rubbed the back of his head, trying to think. His memory flashed back to when he saw Ethan in the canoe. Ethan said something about Sara, but what? What had he been trying to tell Makayla? Sara was a . . .
I can clear that up for you. Here.
The memory played out once again, deep in his mind. He was once again a spectator viewing Makayla’s memory. Only this time, the storm had ceased. Ethan’s voice was crystal clear.
“Sara is a Seal Witch.”
Sebastian blinked. “No,” he whispered.
He shook his head, anger boiling in his gut. Could it be true? Impossible. But the facts were hard to deny. He narrowed his eyes. “It’s about time she and I had that talk.”
Wednesday, 8:31 am (Purgatorium)
Blinking into the room, he found Sara—though it took him a moment to realize it was her—lighting candles with an old fashioned lighter. The kind with a piece of lit wick on one end, and a candle snuffer on the other. The candles lay scattered all over the floor, desk, and shelving unit. There had to be twenty or thirty of them. She was dressed completely differently from her normal fashionable style. Where before she always looked as if she’d just emerged from a model shoot at Vogue, now she looked like she’d just come from a punky dive bar in Northern England. She wore a tight black shirt with rips in it and a tight fitting black leather mini skirt. Where before her makeup was always minimal, allowing her natural beauty to shine through, now her eyes were thick with black eyeliner and she even sported several facial piercings, including a chain that went from her left ear to her nostril, three eyebrow rings, and a stud through her bottom lip. Her hair, once long, thick and shining brown, was now red, shaved half way up one side of her head and pulled into spiky braids on the other. What confused him even more than the strange hair, however, were her eyes. They had once been the deepest, darkest blue, but he could have sworn they now looked brown.
Sebastian took in her appearance from head to toe, down to her black and silver thigh-high leather boots, with his mouth half-open.
Though it had been raining outside, and though Sara’s bedroom had no roof, no rain fell in the room and the candles burned bright. Sebastian thought back as he glanced around the room, so radically different from how he remembered it. So much had happened since then. Gone was the ruined and decrepit look. Now her room held more than a passing resemblance to an apothecary. Shelves of various vials of liquid hung on the walls. Odd plants decorated different sections of the room. In the center, on the floor, lay a large worn rug with a swirling design on it in faded reds and purples. Off in the corner sat a small cauldron that gave off the aroma of chili. Sebastian couldn’t tell where its heat source came from, as he couldn’t see a fire or even an electric element beneath it.
“Is this even the same room?” Sebastian said to himself. Then it occurred to him. “This is a haunt.”
“You’ve learned a lot since we last spoke,” she complimented, still busy with her candles.
“Since we last spoke?” Sebastian thought back. “You mean, when you came to my room a few days ago? When you gave me the book?” He rolled his eyes at himself, remembering how confused he’d been that she’d been able to carry the giant thing. Why hadn’t he thought more about that?
Sara didn’t answer. She simply went about her business, lighting the remaining candles that gave everything in the room an orange glow.
He was afraid to ask, but the words trembled out. “Is this your haunt?”
A half-smile tugged at one corner of her lip. “The owner of this haunt allows us to use his apothecary and, in exchange, we allow him to go on existing.”
Uneasiness filled the air. An awkwardness. He wanted so much to find out that Sara was just a victim, cruelly manipulated by the evil Seals. But it wasn’t just her appearance that seemed altered. There was no love in her tone, no sweetness in her smile. She was cold, indifferent. Her manner rattled him.
“Are you dead?” he asked in a pained voice.
“That’s a matter of perspective.”
Sebastian blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered, finally turning to him. Then she arched her brow. �
��Are you sure you want to have this conversation? I’m afraid you might not like the answers.”
Sebastian took a deep breath and pressed forward. “You’re helping the Seals, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered with a shrug. He didn’t like how casual she was about it. He could have easily replaced the question with “do you like cheesecake,” and her tone would have been the same. Her appearance didn’t matter. She mattered. But still. Her aloof manner, her admission . . . it staggered him. He swallowed hard and took a step back. “Why?”
“It’s complicated, Sebastian. Just as both life and death are complicated. The Seals have done a great deal for me. I was only doing my part.”
A glimmer of hope. “So you’re trapped into helping them?”
“No. I can leave whenever I wish. But I choose not to. This is the path I freely chose, and I embrace it.”
His heart sank. He paced back and forth. “But, what about everything else?” He stopped pacing. “Sara, you faked your death—”
“Not technically. You can’t fake dying if you were never alive to start with.”
That jarred him. He took a step back. So, she was dead. Well, that term was relative. Clearly Sara had been in Purgatorium at some point. The Seals must have recruited her from there in order to do their business.
He would need to go into an in depth discussion with the Elder about Seal Witches later.
He took a deep breath. “You used me, to bring down a Soul. Why?”
Sara shrugged. “You already know the answer to that. We needed another Seal. You were the one that could get it for us.”
“So, it was all a lie to you?” he asked in a pained voice. “Did you ever love me?” he choked out.
Sara’s eyes rolled to the ceiling and remained there, gathering her thoughts. “I loved the attention you gave me. That was nice. But love? I mean, come on.”
“So, if it was all just a lie, why Makayla of all people?” Sebastian asked through gritted teeth. “She was such a sweet girl, and you—”
“Who?” Sara asked.
A beat passed before Sebastian answered. “The girl you killed.”
Sara shook her head, annoyed. “What about her?”
That tone and disregard for life boiled his blood. He narrowed his eyes and the air in the room heated. She must have sensed it too because she took a step back, away from him. Her expression changed from cold and calculating to cautious.
“Listen,” said Sara, “you’re taking this way too personal. We just needed you to rip a soul down. That was it. This Makalinda?”
“Makayla,” he corrected with a stern tone.
“Whatever,” she waved her hand dismissively. “She was the closest match to my Soul. Think of it as somebody else on the planet that resembles you. Not a soul mate, that’s quite different. More like . . . a soul doppelganger. So, we matched her essence perfectly to mine and you brought her down thinking it was me. It could have been anybody really. It just so happened to be that girl. We did some research on her and found she wasn’t happy. We didn’t want her to end up in Purgatorium. You know that can happen sometimes if a person is depressed. So we made her fall in love. We found her soul mate, brought him into her life, and made sure she got into the Light. I mean really, we did her a favor. She probably died happy. Like I said, you’re taking this way too personal. It was just business.”
Feeling his anger rise once again, he exhaled slowly to calm himself. He didn’t want to run the risk of doing something he’d regret.
“You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”
“Of course I do.” Sara’s brows bumped together in a scowl. “What, do you think we just decided to do this on a whim? Believe it or not this took a lot of planning. Did you know that you weren’t supposed to be made active until you were twenty-one? But we couldn’t have that, could we? So we decided to activate you early. Seventeen years old is perfect. Seventeen-year-old boys are so stupid and immature.” She laughed lightly. “We knew you’d be controlled by your immaturity and do what any love sick teenage boy with new found power over life and death would do. Bring back his poor old girlfriend who had just died. Tragic really. If it wasn’t so pathetic.”
“You’re one cold hearted bi—”
“Did you like my hair color?” she interrupted.
Sebastian blinked. “What?”
She shook her head and her half shaved, red spiky hair turned back into the beautiful soft brown he loved. She smiled seductively at him. “Better, right? Did you know we did a study on you throughout your childhood? It seems you have a preference for brunettes. So we changed my hair so you’d like it more.” She rolled her eyes. “Seventeen-year-old boys are so shallow.”
Sebastian could only stare.
“Not only that,” she went on, “we learned you loved video games and kung-fu movies and Mortal Kombat.” She paused and smiled slyly. “As if any girl who looked the way I did would be into those things.”
She went to the cauldron and stirred whatever was in it.
“Oh, by the way,” she said, standing straight and turning to him. “Do you like my eye color?”
She turned her boring brown eyes onto him, blinked twice, and suddenly her eyes were the beautiful midnight blue he had loved.
Sebastian shook his head.
She laughed as her eyes changed back to brown. “I mean really, who has midnight blue eyes? Do you know how much of a pain in the ass that is to maintain?”
Sebastian still couldn’t find any words. This was probably the worst he had felt since the whole ordeal started.
But Sara wasn’t done.
“I mean, think about it Sebastian. You are so completely average looking. Do you think somebody who looks like you could possibly get somebody who looks like . . .” She shook her head, blinked her eyes, and waved her hands in front of her body. The beautiful Sara, the Sara who looked like a supermodel, appeared in front of him, “like this?”
Still, no words came. Only a pained heart.
And lots of anger.
Sara sighed. “You wanted to know the truth. I warned you that you were walking down a dangerous path. You wanted to wander, so here we are. Which brings me to the reason I even alerted you to my presence. I need something from you.”
Sebastian felt his face crinkle in absolute disgust. “You have lost your damn mind thinking I will do anything to help you ever again.”
Sara flashed him a smile. “Oh, you will. Or certain things might happen to a certain, cute little blonde I’ve seen you hanging around with.”
Sebastian inhaled. “Hope.”
“When we killed Jared the first time, it was just a warning that we could get to anybody we wanted. You can’t protect her all the time.”
She licked her lips and stared at him. “Listen close. If you want to save her life, you will bring down another Soul. You will do it right now, and you will hand that Soul over to me immediately. Or I will go to Hope’s house this instant and kill her myself. Trust me, the thought has crossed my mind many times.”
“Don’t you dare,” said Sebastian, taking long strides toward her, but as he reached the center of the room, the mangy looking rug faded away, revealing a glowing circle underneath. Within the circle, ritual patterning and runes pulsed and glowed. A mystical transparent shield flew up to the ceiling from the circle’s circumference, trapping him like a glass cage.
Sebastian gave her a twisted smile, staring her down. “You don’t want to do this,” he warned. “Now you’re the one walking down a dangerous road.”
“Please. Remember, I know you Sebastian. And one thing is for sure, you’re as harmless as a kitten.”
Sara gasped in shock as she leapt back as the tip of his scythe made contact with the barrier. The weapon tore a slit through it, causing golden hairline cracks to spread outward. She glared back at him in disbelief.
Sebastian cocked his head.
“You’re scared of me,” he whispered, more to himself than to her.
The Elder spoke. It is because you were a much darker person in the past. She must know that now. Use it to your advantage here.
“N—no, I’m not.” She took a step forward.
He closed his eyes. The image of his dark twin faded back into his memory. If he was that person once, then maybe he could be that way again. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. They were distant. Cold. Emotionless. He felt just like his twin. Deadly. The power of life and death in his hands. He knew his expression matched the one his twin wore the first time they met.
“Yes,” he said. “You are.”
He struck again at the transparent wall that had captured him. This time it shattered, fragments of the energy barrier falling to the ground, clattering around the room and shattering the glass vials that lined the shelves. Dark liquids spilled onto the floor.
Sara jumped back even farther, crashing into the table behind her. She fell to the ground, landing on her bottom. The table itself splintered into pieces. Her gazed locked on Sebastian, her still midnight blue eyes filled with fear.
“You wouldn’t,” she whispered.
He blinked forward, reappearing inches from her face, squatting down. “I’m onto you now. If you so much as lay one hand on Hope, I will hunt you down. I will find you. I will kill you. There is nowhere you can hide from me, do you understand? I will look into every haunt, tear them all apart just to get my hands on you. If you touch one hair on her head.”
“You—you’re lying.” Her voice came out raspy. “If you were going to kill me, you’d do it now. You don’t have the guts.”
He came even closer, pushing a strand of wayward hair behind her ear. “You would be surprised about the things I have done these past couple of days. Twenty minutes ago, I was about to murder my best friend. And I actually like him. Imagine the things I’m thinking about doing to you.”
