Shade shrugs. “The important thing is they are gone. You fought them off!”
“For now!” Dirk grinds between his teeth. “But what about next time? Then what, boy? What will you do then? Wave your little moon-induced blades around and show us a few tricks? They’ll keep coming. Like they always have. Until we get rid of her!” He points a trembling finger at me.
“For all we know you could be the curse, Dirk!” Axle snaps. “You’ve been in this village far longer than Kyla has.”
“A good woman gave her life – her life – for this village. She is dead because of her!”
Otis looks up. “She will be soon.”
I freeze. She’s still alive?
Everyone seems equally shocked.
“The shadow blade’s poison is spreading through her body. She was conscious until five minutes ago. She told us what medicines to use. What remedies to insert so they could fight the spreading poison. She succumbed to it, though. She’ll be dead soon.” The leader’s eyes fill with tears that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. They drip down his cheeks and drown his brown beard.
She’s not dead. She’s not dead. She’s not dead!
“Kyla!” Shade gasps and tries to grab my arm as I swerve around Otis and run towards the house I saw them carrying Mama Opal to in my vision. “Kyla, where the hell are you going?”
Inside the room is practically empty, save for five victims spread out on tables. Women run back and forth between them with buckets of water. Two men are busily attending one wounded young man. Near the back of the room, in a tight corner, another healer bends over a plump form.
Mama Opal.
The healer gasps as I appear at his side and grasp Mama Opal’s hand. Her eyes are open but they stare upwards. Blind. Dark. Lost. Her dress has been cut open from neck to waist to expose the long gash carved into her belly. Around the wound, a thick, green paste has been applied.
Lanakin, I remember Mama Opal telling me. It could cure wounds and minimize the effect of ingested poisons if applied right.
But it hasn’t helped. Curving upwards towards her neck, black veins pulse beneath her skin. It’s like darkness curling through her bloodstream. The head of the poisonous venom has reached the skin just beneath her collarbone.
I press the back of my hand to Mama Opal’s forehead. It is cold. Cold like death.
“Otis,” the healer I’ve interrupted snaps, “who is this girl? Get her out of here!” He grabs my wrist.
I jerk it free. “No!” I snap and turn to Mama Opal again, framing her face with my hands. “Mama Opal,” I whisper. “Mama Opal, can you hear me?”
Her eyes find mine.
I smile at her.
She screams and her nails scrape my shoulder – just over the ostracized scar. Blood drips down my arm.
“Kyla, be careful!” Shade snaps and pulls me away, securing me with an arm around my shoulders. A tremor shakes his body when his hand draws away from my shoulder, wet with my blood.
“It’s taking her!” the healer snaps.
Mama Opal’s body starts shaking. It shakes the cot. It shakes the wall behind it. Her mouth opens and her screams are savage. Brutal. Painful. The veins along her neck pop out in strain.
The healer grabs her arms and slams them to the cot. He turns to Otis, who stands just behind Shade and I.
“I’ve done all I can!”
No. I shake my head. She can’t die. She can’t die. After all she’s done for me, she can’t die. Not because of me. She shouldn’t die because of me.
“It would be best if you didn’t watch this, Otis,” the healer whispers softly. “Wait outside. I’ll come to you when it’s over.”
They’re just going to let her die?
“You can’t! She’s . . .” Even as the words leave my lips, I know they’ll be futile. Everyone dies from a shadow blade’s sting. Everyone.
Or do they?
That night in Brunt – when Keegan was stabbed – hadn’t it been a shadow blade? And he was alive.
And me – I had been cut with a shadow blade. I was alive.
Mama Opal could live too.
I pull away from Shade and dart to her side again. I press a hand atop the black head of venomous poison spreading beneath her shoulder. It rises and falls like a living, breathing breath of oxygen in her veins. What if it is alive too?
“Give me your Illathonian blade.”
“What?” Shade stares at me.
“Give it to me,” I repeat, stretching my arm out towards him.
He hesitates. Everyone in the room is staring at me.
The black head of the poison reaches Mama Opal’s collarbone and, slowly, with deadly precision, inches over it. She screams, loud, long and clear, once more. The tremor of pain that rocks her body spurs me to action.
I stomp towards Shade and take the Illathonian blade from his hands myself. He doesn’t stop me. It’s like he’s in a daze, watching what I’ll do, but powerless to stop it.
The healer grabs my wrist as I raise the Illathonian blade over the spot near her shoulder. The black head of darkness is pulsing towards Mama Opal’s neck. Towards the veins bulging at her throat.
“You’ll kill her!” he snaps.
“She’s dying anyway!” I try to pull my arm free, but he doesn’t let go.
“I won’t let you do it.”
No. He’ll let her die.
“Go back to the hell you came from, Kelban, and let that woman alone! You hear me? Get away from her!” Dirk screams. Keegan grabs his arm, eyes locked on me.
Mama Opal cries out again.
There is no time.
The healer screams as I switch the Illathonian blade to my left hand and bash the hilt into the side of his head. Blood leaks from his ear. He falls to the ground, moaning. I move to the other side of Mama Opal’s cot where the black vein is shifting towards the curve of her plump neck.
“Shade! Axle! Hold her down!” They stare at me, shocked by what I’ve just done to the healer. “NOW!”
Shade stretches himself on top of her, and Axle pins her legs to the table. She thrashes beneath them, but, for some reason, I feel she’s not the one fighting them. Something else is battling them – something that knows its presence has been discovered.
“Stop her!” Dirk screams. He darts towards me, knife in hand.
Otis grabs him around the shoulders.
Keegan remains in the doorway, staring at me.
I close my eyes and place my hand over the pumping black vein making haste towards Mama Opal’s throat. A buzz tickles the back of my neck, vibrating throughout my entire body. I clutch the Illathonian blade tightly in my palm. The white flash I’ve prepared myself for doesn’t crack against my skull this time. Instead, it flashes in my face like a bright light and is gone.
I open my eyes.
I am inside Mama Opal, hiding in the red flesh of her shoulder. The black gooey vein that is the darkness moves beneath me. I search for the head of the infection. It hisses and growls.
Strange.
I find the head and resist the urge to scream. It is a head. The actual head of a grotesque little monster. Black needle-like teeth push flesh and bone aside as it seeps through the folds of its victim. From outside the encasing of skin I hear Mama Opal scream and everything shakes around me. She’s writhing again.
The poison on the shadow blade is a living thing!
I don’t wait for the vision to curl in on itself. There’s no time. I close my eyes and mentally push myself with all my strength from the image.
When I open my eyes, everyone is staring at me.
I can kill it!
Mama Opal thrashes beneath the Illathonian blade as I press it against her neck and wait.
And wait.
Until the head of the poison approaches the silver edge. Until the poisonous demon presses against the blade, thinking its another collarbone to dodge. Until it tips its black vein-like talons underneath the blade’s edge and they are sliced off. It puls
es beneath the skin, shocked and pained.
Now.
I slice.
Screeches fill the air – so loud, so horrifying – that they tear at the insides of my ears. Axle and Shade fall back, cupping hands over their ears, screaming. A black, smoky substance pours from the gash I’ve made in Mama Opal’s neck. It floats into the air, creating a dark cloud of pure night above her cot – and between me and escape.
The cloud begins to spread out, in inky talons, all over the room. Blinding me. Disorienting me. Trapping me against the wall.
Mama Opal’s bleeding a shadow!
The darkness leaves her body. She stops writhing.
I did it!
The black cloud hisses from every part of its creation. There is no mouth. No eyes. Just darkness and talons.
It knows it was me.
The fog moves towards me. I raise the Illathonian blade, and its weak light spreads out over the advancing vapor.
It is not enough. The darkness slams against the light, pressing me back farther and farther. The light fades away. The sword falls from my hands and clatters onto the ground.
I scream.
The darkness pushes up against me, slamming me against the wall with such force my spine tingles, and my legs go numb. Its wisps are like grips of iron around my arms and body. They flutter towards my mouth and nose.
The familiar attack produces an old memory – of foggy wisps fluttering towards my mouth and nose.
I cover them with my hands, as the goo slides from my ankles, up my legs, and over my entire body. The wisps push against my flesh, searching for a way to enter me.
I can’t breathe.
The gooey talons reach my neck and pause against the indents beneath my hairline. The formless monster screeches. My neck burns beneath its touch.
I scream along with it and the talons retreat from my neck. Raspy cries of pain fill the air.
A light flashes from behind the darkness. The vapor begins to curl in on itself. It screams, high and shrill, into the air. Light penetrates it.
It disappears.
With the seething darkness no longer holding me against the wall, I fall. The hard ground cracks against my knees. I take my hands from my mouth and nose. Air rushes into my lungs. I violently let it back out.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
I cover my ears in panic as my head fills with cackling voices and angry hisses. White flashes dot my vision, swirling in odd colors of gray and black. I force my eyes to remain open. I don’t want to know where the colors or dragging me. I don’t want to know the vision they will show me.
I don’t want to go.
They disappear.
“Holy shit!” is the first thing my throbbing ears hear. Axle is still on the ground staring at the space that the black cloud occupied just moments before. His eyes are wide with fear. “Holy shit. Holy shit!”
Shade is standing in front of me, his Illathonian blade stabbing empty air. He killed it!
He saved me.
He drops his Illathonian blade on the ground next to the one he lent me, and grabs my face, gently, in his hands. “Kyla,” he breathes. “Kyla . . .” His eyes flick to my neck and widen. He sucks in a sharp breath and places a hand on the right side of my throat.
Over the scars received so long ago.
The vapor shadow must have made them swell.
And, from the look in his eyes, he knows what they are.
Why is he covering them?
“Mama Opal!” Axle gasps.
Oh, gods, is she . . .
“Easy,” Shade whispers as I jolt to my feet. He presses me close, his hand still on my neck, and his arm around my waist, preventing me from approaching her cot right away. He leans close, his lips brushing my temple. “Easy.”
The healer moves to her bedside and checks her pulse. When he draws back his hand it is covered in red blood.
Did I cut too deep? Did I kill her?
He turns around. “She’s alive.”
Axle releases a whoop of joy while everyone else in the room releases a breath all at once.
Dirk sags in Otis’s arms, his eyes going blank in shock. He stares at me like he’s seeing something different in my place. His eyes narrow as he observes Shade’s hold on me.
“I think, Otis,” Axle says sweeping Shade’s discarded Illathonian blades off the floor with one hand and holding them out towards Agron’s leader, “that you have a new cure for a shadow blade’s bite, eh?”
Otis takes the swords without another word. There are tears in his eyes. He looks towards Mama Opal’s unconscious body.
“Go to her,” I urge.
He does, handing the healer the Illathonian blades. The healer stares at the swords, then at Shade.
“Use them to the best of your abilities. Return them first thing in the morning,” Shade instructs. He returns his attention to me and lifts his hand slightly off my neck. He lets go of me.
Apparently, the scars are no longer visible.
“Shade. Axle. Help me,” the healer pleads, approaching another unfortunate victim of the shadow blade.
The moment Shade walks away, I slip outside.
In place of the well, a trough has been set up in the middle of the city square. I bend over its edge and splash water on my face.
But no amount of water will wash away the feeling of the vapor’s hold on me. Its gooey exterior latching onto my skin like a leech sends icy chills down my spine. The feel of its wet edges trying to force its way between my hand and my mouth raises bile in my throat. I bend over and retch until nothing else is left.
I lean against the hard wooden side of the trough. Parts of my mind are shattering around me as fear bludgeons them with hammers of its own evil making.
I have dark gifts that I can and cannot control.
I have strange visions that can and cannot be explained.
I have shadows that will and are hunting me down.
The next time they come, they will find me. They will take me. They will hurt me.
Should I run?
Immediately, as the thought enters my mind, I know its impossible. Where would I go? I am banned from my homeland. And, if my talents are discovered, I will be banned here as well.
I thought if I tried hard enough, worked hard enough, proved myself, I would belong in the Wilds. But, truthfully, I never have and never will. Not in the Wilds. Not in Kelba.
Not anywhere.
I splash water on my face again, staring down at my reflection in the water. I cannot recognize the girl I see in the water as the Kyla Kelonia Bone that existed just three months before.
“You okay?”
I wipe the water from my face, but don’t turn around. “Yeah. Aren’t you supposed to be helping with the wounded?”
“I am.” Shade leans against the trough beside me and crosses his arms, tilting his head to the side in that animal way that has become somewhat attractive to me. “But, for some reason, Axle felt that you needed me more than the poor, bleeding fools in there so . . .” He spreads out his arms. “Here I am.”
I chuckle half-heartedly and stare at my feet. They are so dirty. Since we’d been riding horses I hadn’t bothered to put on my shoes this morning.
“You’re quiet,” Shade observes. “I’m not used to that.”
“More than half of my personality is quiet, so I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that,” I whisper back.
It’s dusk now. The sun has disappeared over the rim of the trees. It’ll be pitch black soon. Chills skate along my spine. If the shadows come back tonight looking for me . . .
I step away from the trough. I should go. Far away. A place where no one knows. Where no one can find me.
And then he steps in front of me, and I stop. He stares down at me for a few moments, eyes flickering over my face, before whispering, “We need to talk.”
My arms tighten and the lead weight in my hand returns with pulsing magnetism.
No. I force it into sil
ence.
“But not here.” He grips my arm gently. “Follow me.”
He leads me towards Agron’s gates. The guards are too tired to argue with the city’s famed shadow-killer and let us pass.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
Chapter XXXIV
Shade forges a trail through the forest. Leaves crunch beneath my feet. A knot tightens in the pit of my stomach, but his hand that leads me forward isn’t tight or rough.
He could be leading me like a sheep to the slaughter.
But I don’t think he is.
Finally, Shade pushes aside another leafy branch to reveal a clear, blue pool of water that shimmers in the moonlight. A small waterfall cascades into its rippling surface from the corner of the mountains. The water from the pool branches off to the right in a channel that must lead to a river or the sea I saw from Gavrone’s cliff.
The ground surrounding the pool moves in an unearthly fashion. It isn’t grass swaying or leaves fluttering. It ripples like a fur rug disturbed a slight breeze.
“What . . .”
Shade cuts me off with a shake of his head and lets go of my hand. He leans down and picks up a pebble from the strange earth and tosses it near the pool.
Millions upon millions of tiny lights rise into the air – blinking, flashing, glowing. Some are large. Others are so tiny they appear to be mere sands of sparkling gold. They illuminate the falls, the water, the trees, in a pale, golden light. It is beautiful.
Shade takes my hand in his again and leads me into the galaxy on earth. The insects flutter around my face, brushing their soft wings against my cheeks, and resting on my arms. My skin glows golden. I must look like a goddess.
I look at Shade and catch my breath. None of the little lights dare land on him, but they illuminate his ruddy complexion in a pale, unearthly glow. And I realize, with awe, that he’s staring at me just as amazed.
The lights begin to dim as the insects return to their beds on the ground. A few remain on my arms, their lights going out. “Shade, I . . .”
“I’ll answer your questions,” Shade interrupts. He speaks fast. Too fast. “Any that you have.”
Ostracized (The Ostracized Saga Book 1) Page 55
