by Myers, J. L.
A sudden electric jolt knocked my hands from Kendrick’s shoulders as images swarmed my mind. I was pinned against the mold-caked wall of the cell, surrounded by the scent of death and decay. My wide eyes stared in horror. Caius held a girl in his arms, his fangs embedded in her neck and draining her of blood.
Was she another victim? Had Caius done this before?
There was something eerily familiar about the girl. She had porcelain-perfect vampire skin and golden-blond hair that splayed around her shoulders, hanging matted with dirt down to her waist. The girl wore damp jeans, a tank top, and…my ruined Vans. Oh shit! The girl was me.
Pinned against the wall and watching the horror unfold, I struggled. I couldn’t move. But I could hear. Do not move or speak. The compelling words repeated on a constant loop, clouding my head. No. Not my head…his.
Move! Kendrick’s internal voice screamed.
It was impossible, but somehow I knew exactly what was happening. I was reliving my own murder through my best friend’s eyes. I was seeing everything he had seen and feeling every crippling emotion he had felt.
Stop him! Desperation stole his breath, while his wide eyes remained locked on me. Within Caius’s arms I had stopped moving, stopped trembling. My arms now hung lifelessly and my head rolled back. I’m too late. Kendrick’s complete desolation tore into my heart. She’s dead.
Before him, Caius had ripped his fangs from my neck. Slowly he lowered my limp body back to the blood-painted circle. Then he pushed back the matted hair from my face and sighed.
Still locked inside Kendrick’s mind and body, I knew what would come next. Caius was going to kill my best friend. Fear coiled within my subconscious mind. But Kendrick wasn’t scared. He didn’t fear losing his own life, not anymore, not after failing to save mine. I could feel his emotional state as though it were my very own. He wouldn’t fight to survive, to live on, not when the girl he had loved and still did so purely, had ceased to exist. He wanted to die.
Caius’s compelling eyes, deep-set within his face, now appeared youthful and radiant, thoroughly rejuvenated by my life’s blood. They locked on Kendrick. “You killed Amelia in a jealous fit of rage. If you could not have her, no one would.” A look of sadness, perhaps even regret plagued his eyes. “You will forget I was here and everything I did. The use of your limbs and vocal cords will return after I depart. After that you will remain within the catacombs until the guards discover your treachery. You will confess to murdering of my niece in cold blood.”
Kendrick’s mind glazed with thick clouds. Before him Caius returned the empty jar of blood to the burlap sack. Next he smudged the blood painted symbol around my dead body. Then he pulled a slightly crumpled black calla lily from his breast pocket. He laid the flower over my chest. With a sigh he released the shackles from my wrists. Then he folded my arms, placing my hands over the stem of the flower. For a long moment he just stared down at me. His back was turned to Kendrick and his slumped shoulders almost seemed to tremble. Finally he rose with a swiped hand across his face. Affording Kendrick no notice, he disappeared, striding into the darkness beyond the gaping door.
Once Caius’s retreating footsteps had faded, feeling began to return to Kendrick’s body, tingling back to life with penetrating pins and needles. His eyes were set on my crumpled and lifeless form, mortified. Guilt loomed within his chest, escalating to swallow every inch of him. “Now no one will have her.”
Still watching through his eyes, our shared vision blurred with his heartbreaking tears as he staggered forward. After being frozen for so long, the sudden movement made his legs quake and buckle. He stumbled to his knees. His jeans tore on the uneven ground, but he didn’t even notice. Instead he hastily drew me into his arms. “I killed her!”
In his shaking arms, I could feel how cold my flesh was. How stiff and rigid my limbs were becoming with lack of blood. With the palm of his hand he smudged muddied water from my face. Then his eyes strained. Peering down at my lifeless expression he half-marveled at how I could still be so breathtakingly beautiful. How death hadn’t yet stole the shimmer of my graying complexion under the cell’s faint light. It can’t be too late, he wished, so badly wanting it to be true.
But my lips were blue and parted, without the breath of life passing through them. In his arms I was motionless. He had loved me his entire life. I could feel it somehow. But there was nothing he could do. And even though he knew that, he was unable to let go.
Kendrick reached up, placing two extended fingers along the carotid artery along my neck. “Please let there be a pulse,” he prayed. Still there was none. Anger began to pollute his crippling guilt. He shook my limp form. “Amelia, please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I never meant to… You can’t be dead.”
He elevated my chest, pressing his ear against my ice-cold flesh. There was no sound. No heartbeat. No rise and fall that would indicate shallow breath. Fresh tears flooded his stinging eyes, spilling down his cheeks and onto my chest.
Thud…
The faintest beat emanated from beneath my ribs. A sudden surge of hope-tainted-urgency took over, giving Kendrick renewed strength. He lowered my inert body, resting my cheek against his shoulder. Then using the nail of his extended finger, he sliced open his neck. Trapped inside Kendrick’s body, I felt the sting. It made me want to flinch. But I couldn’t move. I had no power. I wasn’t really there.
The deep incision along Kendrick’s neck now seeped with a steady flow of crimson. “Amelia, please come back to me,” he said, kissing my forehead. He clutched my head and pressed my gaping mouth over the wound. “Grant me absolution. Take my life as your own.”
A gravel-throated groan tore me from Kendrick’s memories, slamming me back into my own body. The dank and foul-smelling cell rose up around me.
Kendrick shifted, slowly lifting his drooped head. “You’re alive?” A mixture of emotions swarmed his face, and I gasped. Somehow deep within my core I could feel every one of them. There was relief and elation at saving me. Sadness and regret at his part in all of this. Most of all there was guilt.
I knew where the guilt came from. The experience I had just lived—which must have been another dream—had revealed the cause. Kendrick believed he had attacked me. That he had tried to kill me in a jealous rage. Still, beyond his guilt I couldn’t forget that he’d been willing to die to save me. The fact that I hadn’t killed him now surged jittery warmth within me. I threw my arms around his slouched body. “You freaking idiot, I could have killed you!”
Kendrick stiffened in my arms, self-loathing devouring his heart. And I would have let you. His voice, so unwavering, so true, wasn’t vocalized. It was internal, filled with heavy-hearted conviction.
Even without the weight of his guilt, I felt the undying truth within his words. If giving his life could bring me back, he would do it a thousand times over. Still the notion of feeling Kendrick’s emotions, of hearing his heartfelt thoughts, was unbelievable. I’m delirious, I told myself. But my conclusion was contradicted by the growing weight of my best friend’s guilt drowning us both. The pressure against my lungs was making it hard to breath. “You didn’t kill me!” I blurted, needing to somehow relieve the sensation. “It was Caius!”
Kendrick’s brows creased and he looked away, disbelieving. Crippled by his self-loathing, I instinctively knew what I had to do. I seized his forearms and shook them, forcing his eyes to meet mine. Please remember…
Instantly, Kendrick’s eyes grew distant, empty. Then I felt it, a prodding inside my head like actual fingers poking into my brain. It almost felt like being on an operating table and waking in the middle of brain surgery. It was dizzying, exhausting and entirely foreign. Yet somehow I understood what was happening. Kendrick was skimming through my memories. First he relived the torture of my death, then the compulsion Caius had used against him.
Focus returned to Kendrick’s eyes. The guilt that clung to his heart and soul relinquished its grip. Inexplicably, I knew that he now knew the truth
. That he remembered everything that had happened. With the relief that lightened my entire body, I knew he believed it too. Caius’s compulsion had been broken.
Abruptly the openness into his thoughts, emotions and memories rippled with a concept I didn’t understand. How is that possible? I wondered.
Kendrick smiled and cupped my hands with his. “I never thought…” He bit his lip and stared into my eyes. “When I offered my life, my blood to bring you back, the act…bound us.”
Bound? The word seemed too plain, too ordinary to explain the out-of-body experience of sensing Kendrick’s thoughts and emotions, just as he could mine. “How?”
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Kendrick shook his head, causing light from the naked bulb to cast highlights through his hair. “Only spirit users, royals by birth, can create bonds in this realm and the next.”
“So you’re…” I began, but stalled at an internal jab from Kendrick.
No, you are, he responded wordlessly.
Fragments of something Marcus had said pulsed across my mind. With it I could almost hear the trickle of the angel fountain, and smell the ash-turned paper still cupped in his palm. Speak with the dead. Create a blood bond. Glimpse past, present and future events. They were all abilities solely reserved for a vampire linked to spirit.
I gulped, craving chocolate to calm my rising nerves. I’m gifted by spirit? No, hell no! It was impossible, wasn’t it? I was a turned vampire. Not a naturally born one. I definitely wasn’t a Pure Blood. But so much of my past now seemed a contradiction. My lack of any reaction to the sun, superior even to a royal’s natural resistance, was abnormal. And the story of how we were turned had been re-written with Caius’s own admission. Can I really believe any of what that monster revealed?
“I don’t know,” Kendrick spoke, answering my unvoiced question. But we’ll figure it out. Together, we’ll uncover exactly who or what you really are.
Leaning into Kendrick, I thanked him in silence. I was about to say let’s get the hell outta here before the guards come, but stalled. The amethyst pendant was flaring against my chest. A second later the splash of running feet through pooled water sounded. Someone was bounding straight for the gaping door.
“The guards!” Kendrick jumped to his feet, blocking my body from the approaching threat. He swayed on his heels. The sacrifice of his blood had left him weak, but not me.
With Kendrick’s blood feeding my pounding heart, I felt stronger than ever before. I snatched a set of chains and sprung up beside Kendrick. My free arm linked through his, steadying him. My shoulders squared. There was no freaking way I was about to let anyone determine our fate again. Today we would fight. And with conviction that reinforced me, I knew somehow we would win.
But the person who materialized through the iron-braced door was not a guard. It was Marcus. His speedy entrance created a gust of wind. Caught in its path the naked bulb swung on its suspended wire. Rising shadows curled where its golden light evaded. My rapid-beating heart jumped into my throat. Caius knows I’m alive. He sent Marcus to finish the job.
Marcus had pulled to an abrupt halt, barely a few feet before us. His face was flustered as his teal-flecked eyes scoured over us. What I thought was a look of disappointment tinged by resentment shifted the determination from his expression. “You,” he hissed, glaring at Kendrick. “You saved her?”
“No thanks to you,” Kendrick spat.
My best friend was breathing hard and fighting to stay upright. Recollections of the dream I now knew had been a vision because of The Sight, buzzed through his mind. He saw and now knew what Marcus had compelled him to do. Every detail of his harsh violation in forcing me to drink Marcus’s poisoned blood returned. Damning weight tugged at his soul, transcending through the bond. His guilt consumed us both.
It wasn’t your fault, I reassured wordlessly. None of this was. It was his. I shot an icy stare at Marcus. He stood stationary, livid eyes filled with uncertainty as he stared from me to Kendrick. I choked on a sob. Marcus. Even now I could feel the connection to him, the inner part of me that recognized his essence.
“No.” Marcus shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to happen this way.” He threw a quick glance over his shoulder down the dark corridor beyond the door. Then he reached out to take my hand. “We have to go.”
I inched away from him, staring at his outstretched hand as through it were flesh-eating poison. My hand tightened on the chains. Yet against my better judgment, the irrational and stupid part of me, ached to take his hand. Just to feel the electricity that fired when we touched.
But Kendrick swatted his hand away with a threatening growl. “She’s not going anywhere with you!” His voice was so level, so strong and protective that it made me want to bawl. Inside his body was trembling, barely holding onto consciousness. But on the outside he was a pillar of strength. He’d die before he let any harm ever come to me again. “Make another move, and I will kill you.”
Marcus’s hands curled into fists. “I’m not going to harm her,” he grated. “Amelia…” His eyes shifted to mine, straining. “I would never hurt you. Deep inside you know that. I was coming to…” He began pacing and I cringed, reminded of Caius. “It was supposed to be me. I was meant to save you.”
Kendrick’s fury grew, flames licking at his insides. But I faltered. My connection to Marcus made me want to question what I knew and believed. Were my suspicions wrong?
Kendrick however, had no such reservations, and hurled himself at Marcus. “Liar!”
Marcus ducked, dodging Kendrick’s advancing fist. His hand easily collected Kendrick’s wrist, then twisted his arm behind his back. With his face lit by hardened rage, he drove my best friend against the stone wall.
“Stop!” I screamed. Kendrick’s connection to the wall hit me as if I’d been the one thrown against it. Oxygen belted from my lungs. I gasped for breath, staggering and dizzy. “Marcus, don’t hurt him, please.”
Marcus’s hardened expression froze, seeing the unmasked pain he had just caused me. His extended arm against the back of Kendrick’s neck softened instantly, but his iron crowbar strength didn’t let go. It kept Kendrick pinned without causing further pain. “It happened. Didn’t it?”
Kendrick was struggling to free himself, seething with the need to attack again. But he couldn’t muster enough strength to escape Marcus’s restraining arm.
I too felt the urge to retaliate, to rake Marcus over with the chains I held. But I didn’t. Instead I lowered the ready chains, strung tight between both hands. “What are you talking about?” I demanded. “What happened?”
A strangled smile fell from Marcus’s face and his teal eyes grew stormy. “Your soul, it’s bound to Kendrick’s.”
“How do you know that?” Kendrick’s voice mirrored my own.
Marcus released my best friend and shoved him back toward me. “’Cause it was supposed to be me! I was supposed to resurrect you. I was supposed to bring you back to life.”
Don’t believe a word he says, Kendrick’s deep voice echoed inside my head.
The words Marcus had spoken to Kendrick in my vision blew through my ears. It’s happening tonight. He had known all along what Caius had planned to do to me. He had helped him. Why would he want to save me? My voice emerged hollow. “But you poisoned me.”
Marcus crossed his arms over his double-breasted pea coat. “I did it to save your life.”
I laughed, mimicking Kendrick. Yet the part deep within me that recognized Marcus wanted to believe him.
“Amelia, no!” Kendrick tugged on my arm. Then my brain tingled with an almost prickling sensation of something, no someone, sifting through my thoughts. Through the eerie link of our bond, Kendrick could hear my conflicting thoughts. He could also feel the unexplainable connection I felt to Marcus.
I sent a wordless message to Kendrick, lacing my fingers through his. Let’s see where he’s going with this. Squaring my shoulders with mock strength, I looked pointedly to Marcus. My free han
d clutched the chains to my waist. “Explain yourself.”
Marcus grimaced, eyes set on our entwined fingers, but nodded. “Everything I did was to protect you: the compulsion, erasing of your memories. You needed to be unaware so that Caius’s plans remained unchanged. So that I would know when he would come for you.”
Kendrick’s grip on my hand tightened as words traveled from his mind to mine. Lies, all lies. Don’t believe him.
“So, you poisoned me because Caius compelled you?” I was desperate to exonerate Marcus. Desperate to believe he hadn’t acted of his own freewill.
“No.” Marcus shook his head. “That was all me. Caius didn’t know.”
“See,” Kendrick hissed while my heart squeezed. “He doesn’t even deny it.”
“Of course I don’t!” Marcus ruffled his straight blond hair, frustrated. “Poisoning Amelia was the only way to save her life.” He stepped forward, and a low snarl reverberated from Kendrick’s throat. “Amelia, I needed your body and heart to replicate death. As your blood levels became dangerously low, the poison would slow the beat of your heart. Caius would mistake its lack of beat for death. Don’t you see? The poison saved you. It foiled Caius’s plan to become immortal.”
Marcus took my hand. I half expected Kendrick to lunge again, to tear him away from me. But he didn’t. He was just as frozen by Marcus’s admission as I was. Through our bond I could recall the closeness of their friendship. How Kendrick had looked up to Marcus. How he had confided his feelings and worries for me. And Marcus had always been there to listen and make helpful, unbiased suggestions.
“You were going to be the one to bring me back to life.” My tone was hollow as I pieced the puzzle of everything together. Realization etched through mine and Kendrick’s minds simultaneously. “You knew I possessed a link to spirit?”
