The Ballad of Aramei

  33

  “YOU COULDN’T WHAT, CAMILLA?!” Daisy screams, but I know she already knows what Camilla is having a hard time getting out. We all know it. Daisy roars at her, “DOES FATHER KNOW?”

  Camilla nods furiously, tears shooting continuously from the corners of her eyes. “I-I tried to keep him out of my head, but I couldn’t! I couldn’t concentrate; his link is too strong for me.”

  Daisy told me when we were alone in our room one night that Camilla was the weakest of them all when it came to controlling and safeguarding her thoughts. It was why she had always sought other means of mental and emotional discipline by practicing Yoga and all sorts of other human activities.

  I start to lower my head in defeat, until I think better of it and try to shape up, suck it down and figure out what I’m going to do.

  I start to pace.

  “Oh you can’t be serious!” Rachel cries out, popping completely off of the table like a snapped rubber band.

  “WHERE IS HE, CAMILLA?” Daisy shakes her body violently by the shoulders.

  Camilla sobs even louder, her cries shuddering out of her pathetically. When Daisy sees how freaked-out Camilla is, she pulls her toward her chest and holds her there, cradling the back of her head. “We’ll figure it out, Cam, don’t worry.”

  Adria is the opposite of Camilla. Camilla’s hysterical display nearly made me forget that Adria was even in the room. She stands off to the side, staring down at the floor and no visible part of her body is moving.

  I think she’s in a sort of shock and Alex rushes over to her, wrapping her arms around her.

  Daisy and I look at each other.

  “What do we do?” Daisy says to me telepathically as Camilla sobs into her shirt.

  I was going to ask her the same thing.

  And as is if God, or whoever it is up there watching all of this unfold, hates us, Shannon and Elizabeth burst through the entrance, screaming: “THEY’RE COMING! FATHER’S HERE! THEY’RE COMING!”

  I can’t tell which of them said what, maybe they both said it at the same time, I don’t know.

  Adria finally looks up.

  “I’ll face him,” Adria says suddenly, scared but as calmly as I’ve ever heard her say anything. “I know he’ll kill me, but we all know I’m the one he’s here for and I’m not afraid to face him for what I did.”

  “SHUT UP!” Alex roars in Adria’s face; clearly she’s petrified of Adria getting killed. “Screw that! Don’t pull that dumb movie hero drama bullshit!” She tries to grab Adria, but Adria pushes her away.

  “What do we do now?” Shannon screams at the exit; she’s bouncing around nervously like she’s trying to keep from peeing on herself.

  “We fight him,” Daisy says and her gaze falls solemnly on me.

  “You know what Isaac said, Harry,” she says in my mind, “Don’t let Adria out of this cave. Don’t let her shift.”

  “I’m not letting you fight him without me,” I say.

  “Harry…you have to stay in here with her. PROMISE ME!”

  I grit my teeth and hold back my dispute.

  I’ll think of something….

  Daisy looks around at everyone and they all know what to do. In a blaze of movement, they burst through the exit and head down the long, narrow tunnel that leads outside; the sound of their bones snapping and teeth gnashing and screams of pain ricochets off the cave walls and fills my ears with terror.

  I stop Adria before she gets around the stone table.

  I shake my head carefully, regretfully. “I can’t let you go. I’m sorry.”

  “MOVE OUT OF MY WAY, HARRY!” She goes to push past me, but I grab her by the arm and swing her body around crushing her back into my chest and I hold her here.

  I feel her start to shift under the weight of my arms.

  “Calm…,” I whisper into her ear. “Calm, Adria.”

  “NO! DON’T DO THIS!”

  My lips move along the arch of her ear and softly I shut my eyes to better delve deeply into her mind. “Just calm down,” I say, letting each word roll seductively off of my tongue and into her mind, letting my power to dictate her emotions overwhelm her.

  “HE’S HERE, ISAAC, HE’S—HARRY…please….”

  And she’s practically comatose, except that her eyes are wide open and she stares up at me with a drunken look on her face. I lift Adria into my arms and run with her through the tunnel behind me, which snakes around and deeper into the mountain, far past the room where Trajan once hid Aramei.

  And I hide Adria there, in the pitch darkness of the cave, behind a recess in the stone just spacious enough to fit her body.

  I run fast back toward the main room and dash past it, covering as much tunnel ground as I can with my long longs and I don’t stop until I make it out of the mouth of the cave and into the early morning air. The sun is barely rising over the top of the mountain, bathing the gray morning in pale light. I smell smoke. I inhale deeply to catch the scent and practically choke on it, only now realizing how thickly it moves through the forest. As far as I can see through the dense trees, the smoke leaves a heavy blanket of gray lingering in the air. I look up to see the first searing flame crawling up the trees on the hillside.

  They’re setting the forest on fire. They’re trying to smoke Adria out!

  A series of thunderous howls rips through the atmosphere and I take off running toward the sound. Trees and bushes whip by, snapping me on the face as I run. But I don’t stop; I have to get to Daisy and I don’t give a damn that she’ll probably never forgive me for leaving Adria alone.

  But Adria will be fine; this is the only thing I’m sure of. At least until Isaac can get here and I know he’s coming because I saw him in Adria’s mind just before her link to him was severed. She can’t hold a mind link when her thoughts and emotions are being manipulated and controlled. But I don’t know how long I’ll be able to sway her…or how long I’ll be able to do everything else I’m about to do.

  I run right through a blazing flame ten feet high devouring the landscape. The flames are spreading outward around me in a horseshoe shape. I see Daisy and her sisters out ahead, not too far off in the distance, surrounded by dozens of other Black Beasts. And there are more…at least eighty or ninety, appearing over the top of a ridge and from the tree-filled hills and some even from the trees. My head is spinning with indecision! I know Daisy’s beast form to an extent and can pick her out of the crowd, but I can’t tell the others apart. I can’t tell us from the enemy.

  A forceful roar tears through the air. And then another. And another, until all of the Black Beasts are standing tall with their heavily-muscled arms pulled back and their teeth-gnashing heads are pointed upward toward the sky. Their howls send chills all over my body.

  In a split-second that feels like slow-motion, they charge one another and I instantly lose sight of Daisy. I can no longer tell her apart from the others. The ground shakes beneath my feet as another large group of werewolves come charging over the burning hill, some dive right through the flames and come out the other side, on fire but unfazed. I can smell the burning and singed fur all around me mixed with the burning trees. I can’t control fire. Air is my element and that power is as useless against fire as water is to a flood. I feel so powerless!

  There must be more than one hundred beasts fighting below and on every side of me; enormous, beastly bodies charging and crashing into one another like bulls with demonic growls and roars more terrifying than a lion or a grizzly. One beast swats another one across the forest like a fly. The body crashes through dozens of small trees before hitting a wall of rock embedded in the side of an incline. A huge beast in my peripheral vision lunges at a smaller one and takes off its head with one deadly swipe of its massive, razor-sharp claws.

  I stumble backward into a tree, gasping for breath. My eyes are wide as they can be in the sockets; my strained lips pulling away from my teeth in recoiling terror.

  The severed head thumps against the leaf-covere
d ground and rolls several feet away from its body. I don’t have it in my heart to see whose head it is. I just can’t do it, even though I can tell that the head and the body both have shifted back into their human form.

  I can’t do it. If it was Daisy….

  The tree behind me snaps off just above my head and crashes to the ground. I’m left instinctively crouching, covering my head from the falling branches. Finally, I look up to see a colossal beast bearing down on me, blood dripping from its teeth.

  I can’t use my powers or Adria will be unprotected!

  I start to crawl away on my ass and my hands and just as I hit the top of the hill and find myself falling down the side of it, another beast comes in behind the one after me and backhands it past my rolling body. As my body rolls once, I see it flying across the space and the other beast lunging out after it. I manage to break my fall the rest of the way down the side of the hill when I hit a rock jutting up from the ground. Pain sears through my back and I cry out. The smoke is choking me now; it’s so thick closer toward the bottom of the hill. But beasts are everywhere and I can’t figure out which danger is more pressing, them or the raging fires. I just sit here and watch the slaughter, holding on dearly to Adria in my mind and hoping that by some chance I can figure out who is who out there so that I can help them. Even if I can only make out which one of them is Daisy.

  I should’ve known not to leave the cave and that I would be making everything harder on Adria and Daisy and myself.

  I watch in horror as more beasts are taken down, as more are killed and their beastly bodies give way to their naked human forms as they succumb to death. Tears coat my eyes, but I can’t actually cry. I’m too much in shock for tears and my power over Adria is diminishing. My mind keeps going back to her, seeing her body lying helpless behind the rock. I feel her struggling against me, pressing her mental hands into the deepest recesses of my brain.

  Suddenly, Adria’s face snaps out of my mind as my body is sent hurtling through the air. At first, I think I’ve been hit in the stomach because there’s so much searing pain there, but then I realize I’m hurtling because I’m being carried and the pain is coming from a beast’s massive arm tight around my waist. It feels like my ribs are pressing down on my lungs, the beast is holding me so securely.

  But it’s not Daisy. I would know if it were her being this close.

  I start to panic.

  “It’s Raul,” a voice says in my mind and I realize it’s coming from the beast racing with me through the forest. “Protect Adria!” And that’s the last thing I hear as he drops me hard on the ground several feet from the cave entrance and hurries away just as quickly, out of sight.

  They’ve switched sides…Raul and his men have sided with us!

  The realization numbs me, but gives me hope.

  I crawl on my hands and knees closer to the cave and all along the way the ground rumbles and shakes as beasts bound through the forest violently like a stampede of buffalo. Trees—full-grown scaling trees—fall all around me, crashing down against the earth from both the fires and the violence. Plumes of smoke rise high into the sky and smoke crawls its way across the forest bed, making it harder to see even six feet in front of me. But it’s also starting to rain and if I believed in God, I would think it was a miracle because the rain couldn’t have come at a better time to help put out the fires. No lightning and no thunder, just a steady, heavy downpour of cold rain. Already my clothes are soaked and my hands are muddy as I continue to push myself toward the cave entrance, but now that the rain is taming the smoke, I can get to my feet and run again.

  I push myself up and just as I reach the cave entrance, Trajan appears in front of me and embeds his boot in my chest, knocking the breath from me and me on my ass many feet away. My back hits something; it could be a tree or rock, I don’t know, but it snaps Adria almost completely from my power. I hold on to her as tightly as I can. I can’t let her fight him. He will kill her.

  Trajan says nothing to me as if I’m as insignificant as an insect, and his tall, menacing figure clad in an old leather trench coat and leather boots, disappears into the darkness of the cave.

  My head is spinning. I can hardly breathe or see straight or think straight, but I know I have to do something.

  I shut my eyes and let my head relax against whatever it was that I hit and I calm myself. The sounds of the battle go on all around me: the growls, the roars, the howls, bones breaking, flesh ripping, teeth gnashing, and beasts dying. I hear the fires sizzling as the rains pound on the flames and I hear Trajan’s footsteps echoing off the cave walls as he makes his way inside. Every little sound is amplified in my head as if I’m a werewolf, too, and somehow have their magnified sense of hearing.

  But I can’t focus on anything anymore, not when I have to localize all of my efforts into Adria’s mind, using all of my power to tame her beast and keep her from Turning.

  My God…she is so powerful….

  My chest shudders to a halt and I take one more deep breath and do the only thing I know to do: I envision Adria’s death. I picture Trajan finding her out in the wide open because my power is no longer strong enough to hold her back and keep her hidden behind the cave walls. I picture her facing Trajan in her last moments.

  And then I see him kill her….

  ISAAC

  34

  TRAFFIC AND STOPLIGHTS AND light poles rocket by me like long, rods of light snaking through some infinite space beyond. Buildings and houses and churches and gas stations look like nothing more than one-dimensional structures sprawled out across the landscape; those closest to me I don’t even see, I’m moving so fast. I have to get into the mountains. I have to get to Adria before my father does.

  And when my heart tries to tell me that I’m too late, I have to stop myself from reaching inside my chest and ripping it out just to cease its sacrilegious cries.

  I push on harder and faster, feeling the earth grind beneath my feet each time my boots thrust against the ground. We rarely get tired and we rarely ever feel the effects of exhaustion when running, but right now and for the first time in my life, I feel it. I feel every muscle in my body tightening beyond their capabilities in this form. I feel my bones heavy with enervation and excruciating pain. I feel the blood surging so hard through my veins that I wonder if my heart might explode.

  But I just push harder.

  Every town and small city I run through is nothing but a blur, a stain seared into the back of my mind. Several parked cars I know I destroyed when I covered their distance, using their hoods and tops as a means to propel me farther into the air as I leapt onto a train bridge just beyond them. And from the bridge, I find myself dashing into the outskirts of the mountain as I speed lightning-fast through the first layers of trees.

  Deeper into the mountain I run, only picking up speed instead of slowing down when for any split-second my mind attempts to tame my legs. I defy all reason; cast aside anything that might hold me back from getting to her in time.

  I smell smoke.

  And by now I’m running so recklessly fast that it is by sheer luck that I don’t run smack into something and crush my skull flat. Because I have tossed away my reason and supernatural instincts and have traded them for full and uninhibited speed.

  I smell death.

  My heart sinks like a stone and tears choke me. But I keep running and the closer I get the more death that I smell.

  But I can’t run that fast anymore.

  The world funnels back into my sight all around me as my pace begins to slow. Bodies. There are bodies lying naked and bloody and dead, everywhere. I try not to look at their faces, because I can’t bear it. My fists tighten at my sides as I run past them; blood oozes from the palms of my hands. My mouth is open, seeking breath that my lungs aren’t getting anywhere else. My eyes burn from searing tears and choking smoke and the reality of the death surrounding me. My vision is fogging.

  Smoke rises from the blackened earth where a fire had rece
ntly burned. Pockets of burning brush are still aflame here and there, but quietly going out as the rain continues to lick them. My eyes glimpse the extent of the damage stretching father than I can force myself to see in this moment. I press on, stumbling through scorched trees and past more bodies and I inadvertently see that one of them is my sister, Elizabeth. She lies naked against the wet ground, her body twisted horrifically as if her back had been snapped in two and the only thing holding it together is her flesh.

  I push past her, trying to hold down the wailing scream that wants to force itself from my lungs.

  I stumble to the front of the cave and fall against the opening, thrusting my hands against the slick wet rock as I try to hold my body upright and the pain and exhaustion catches up to me.

  I sniff the air and I can smell Adria inside.

  I can smell my father….

  I stop long enough—two seconds—to catch my breath and I run into the cave and through the snaking tunnel until I burst out the other side and into the main room.

  When I see the two of them there, I feel my body trying to move, but my mind is trapped between my conscience and my will. I can’t move and I can’t find my voice or my heart. My blood has become like acid in my veins. My heart has stopped. It utterly died the second I saw Adria lying dead upon the massive stone table.

  My father sits at the head in the high-back chair and he looks across at me with absolutely no emotion in his face.

  I’m shaking from the inside, but I still can’t move. Tears are burning down my face. My voice is still caught somewhere within me.

  Adria lies with her legs hanging over the side of the table, one arm twisted behind her head, broken, the other curled up near her chin. Her eyes are open and lifeless. Blood seeps from her nostrils and her partially-opened mouth, pooling into a puddle below her lips. The lower-half of her body is warped as though my father’s hands had been around each end of her and he twisted her like a dishrag until every bone and muscle in her body snapped.