The clearing spans more than fifty feet of dry, cracked soil.
Gage spontaneously picks up my hand and leads us, quick as blur, to the other side. I glance back at the empty void.
Logan didn’t come. He listened.
A swell of relief rides through me. I don’t want Logan dead, not now, not ever.
We make our way over to a thick crowd and find a couple of girls and four boys about our age laid out on dry soil with arrows lodged in various places. A boy with dark hair starts to shiver, vibrating over the ground like a motor.
“Give him blood,” I shout making my way to him. It’s only safe to presume those standing around gawking are Celestra because for one, they’re not blue.
I snatch a dirty arrow off the ground and slit my arm open just above the line of injury Ezrina caused. A thin seam of crimson pillows to the top and I get on my knees to bring it to his lips. His face is pasty—lips are purple. He pants, opening his mouth for the medicine of my marrow. His iced skin touches mine then he disappears.
“Shit,” I hiss.
“Skyla.” Gage pulls me back by the shoulder. “Your blood doesn’t work here.” He says it sweetly, almost as an apology. His eyes sparkle like the sea and he hides a smile that says he’s proud of my fruitless effort, no thanks to my mother and her incessant need to punish me. “But we can still help.”
Gage and I move over to a girl with an arrow speared through her abdomen.
A boy with cut features, a chest like a brick wall, rolls up his sleeve and replicates my effort on his own arm and I recognize him instantly.
“Cooper!” I say it like he’s an old friend. “Where’s Flynn?” I look past his shoulder for his Count-erpart.
“Laying low. He’s not so hot on fighting with the resistance anymore now that he’s easily identifiable.”
“Sorry about that. It’s my fault.” Sort of like everything else. He lets the injured girl take all she needs. He’s nurturing her to health with his blood as if it were natural to procure medicine from your bodily fluids.
“We’re going to win this thing, you know that?” His hair gleams darker than I remember it, the exact color of a burnt umber sky as it prepares for a storm. He reminds me of Logan in a way, and this endears me to him.
“Yes. We win,” I say, charged from the proclamation, as if it already happened, as if the odds weren’t heavily stacked against us.
A burly man, with auburn-colored hair, slices both his arms and lets the injured come and take their fill.
We could save our kind, outsmart the Counts.
“We need a triage,” I say. “We need at least half a dozen of us willing to aid in recovery at all times. We can’t lose anyone else.”
“Are we giving up?” A young girl steps forward. God—she looks Mia’s age, with long, dark hair and beautiful, swollen lips.
“No,” I say, carefully extracting an arrow from the girl beneath me, “but keeping alive is just as important as winning.” The injured girl lets out an anguished cry as she tries to bat me away. I show her the bloodied stick before tossing it to the ground.
“Delphinius,” Gage calls to a group of men twenty feet away.
I glance up and see him there, lanky and unnaturally elongated. He dwarfs each one of us. We’re all grasshoppers in comparison to his magnificence.
He blips over and lands just shy of the girl I’m mending—peers over my shoulder to observe my efforts. “You’ll need much more than you can provide. There’s a trail of bodies leading all the way to the falls.”
“Ahava?” My pulse quickens at the thought of being so close to the sword of the Master. It’s my goal in life or death to reach it.
“No. You’re to get to the Jasper River to claim this victory.”
“Geography please,” Gage says as he situates an injured boy toward Cooper’s newly punctured wrist.
Truth is, I feel weak and dizzy just watching, but I can’t stand the thought of losing another Celestra, and to lose another soul when we can make a difference would be akin to suicide.
“Past the forest,” Delphinius thunders, “follow the river. A lake with three falls rests at the base. Ten Countenance must die and their blood poured out into the water for the victory to lie in your favor.”
“They have to kill ten Celestra to win?” I swallow hard at the idea.
“Yes.” Delphinius twitches ever so slightly as he sets his nose to the wind. “Seventy-four have perished this hour.”
“No,” I say, getting up.
“I thought you said they needed ten?” Gage rises, perplexed by the psychotic mathematics.
“The blood of ten in the lake. They have eight.”
The man with the brandy-colored hair looks up before tending to the remaining victims.
“Let’s go.” Gage takes my hand.
I bend over and pick up a bloodied arrow.
“Useless without a bow,” Gage warns.
“We’ll see.”
“Skyla,” Cooper calls just before we round out the thicket, “keep safe.”
“I will.” I say it hushed because I’m not so sure I can.
I tighten my grip on Gage as we rip through the woods.
“It’s downhill.” He picks me up and we glide through the air. We follow the river as it snakes clear to the bottom.
The sky swallows all of the lavender glory from above, regurgitates it into a bruised navy welt with dark ash clouds. A red trim lines the precipitous billows as they reflect the lake drenched with Nephilim blood.
Three separate falls dump into a large reserve. It’s so strikingly similar to the Falls of Virtue, a replica of the one down in the Transfer, it makes me wonder what it all means.
“Oh, God.” I gasp.
The water holds a burgundy cast. It glows under the moon like wine at midnight.
“The bodies are gone.” I marvel. “But the blood stays.”
A loud blast goes off.
Across the way, next to the middle fall, a pale blue Count flexes something over his shoulder—he sends a body flying into the water, rough, like a sack of potatoes.
“That was a Celestra—a person.” I snatch the Ruger from Gage and run to the base of the lake to hunt the bastard down. I come upon him at the shore as he crouches low enough to see his reflection. He observes the necrotic water as if examining his handiwork and I fire the potent pistol. A glowing blur moves in behind him, and I discharge a few shots in his direction for the hell of it.
“You got ’em.” Gage taps me on the side in excitement.
We bolt over, jumping tree roots and limbs to get to them before they rouse from their paralytic stupor.
“Shit!” I seize at the sight of Logan lying on the ground—the toxic dart pinned high on his heart like a lover’s note. He blinks up a moment before gazing out into the sky and sinking into unconsciousness. “No!” I drop to my knees and press a kiss over his forehead.
Gage takes the gun and the bloodied arrow out of my hand. “Turn away,” he instructs as he leans over a man in his early twenties, a tattoo of a snake rides up over his forearm.
I turn my head and hear the distinct sound of a melon getting pummeled.
“Wait here,” he whispers. Gage disappears down the trail to the lake, blood soaking the ground on his heels.
I pet Logan’s brow, slow and remorseful—my sleeping lion, fierce and noble as any king that ever lived.
A heavy splash garners my attention and Gage speeds back, panting. “He disappeared”—his teeth shine like lanterns—“as soon as I threw him in.”
“I’m sure he’s lined up in the queue down in the Transfer as we speak.” It’s Ezrina’s busy season, courtesy of the war. “Look!” I point over at a blue shadow darting in and out of the evergreens across the way.
Something small and presumably lethal swishes by my head, and Gage fires back nonstop until we see an iridescent film on the ground.
“Got the bastard.” Gage starts to head over and I pull him back.
/> “This one is mine.”
“Skyla—” His breath warms my neck as he holds me. “I don’t want you to do this.”
“Others are living it. I need to fight.” I take the bloodied arrow out of his hand and glance up with an apology pouring from my being. “I’ll be OK. I promise.”
“I’m coming with you.” Gage tucks Logan beneath an Elder tree as we make our way into the woods and extricate the body. It’s a girl with dark springing curls, same paper-white skin as Emily, and for a moment, I think maybe it is her only she’s not a Count. Gage carries her to the river and lays her over the ground just shy of the water’s edge.
I hold the arrow over her eye an unreasonable amount of time. I don’t know how long the effects of the Ruger last or if I want to find out, but I can’t help but look at her long thin limbs and wonder if maybe she’s in cheer, or if she likes a sweet boy who writes poetry or a boy with a dangerous smile.
“I can’t.” I toss the arrow to the side. I knew I’d make a lousy warrior. “I can’t kill under pressure like this,” I say stupidly. Although, odds are I would have a hard time killing without pressure. I lean in and whisper, “You’re safe.”
In an instant she seizes my wrist and lands me on the ground, bashing my head over the pea gravel. My temple lands on the jagged edge of a rock, and the world surrenders to darkness for a moment—an entire bevy of stars spray out in front of me like you see in cartoons.
Gage yanks the demon-possessed Count off me and she goes ape shit all over him. She picks him up and tosses him into the woods a good fifteen feet away as if he were a toy.
Shit! She’s a monster—a Count jacked up on superpowers that my mother may or may not have gifted her with for just this occasion.
She’s out for blood—it’s her or me.
I sway on my heels, still reeling from the after effects of the blunt trauma she inflicted.
This girl, this Emily lookalike, picks me up by the throat and lands the two of us in the lake. She pushes us out until my feet no longer reach the soggy bottom.
“This is for Countenance.” She says it sweet as if it were a sentimental dedication before kneeing me in the gut like she were stomping out a fire.
The wind expels from my lungs. She snatches my hair at the nape of my neck and dunks my head under as I continue to struggle. Water fills my throat, and I gag and wretch, ready to vomit from the bite of rust infiltrating my senses.
I promised Logan I wouldn’t die. His image rests over my mind, my heart—indelible, etched in stone, nothing but blood and bone.
I reach up and seize her by the shirt, pull her under and wrap my legs around her chest like a millstone. My fingers knot up in her hair, and I twist her neck—turn it until I feel a pop vibrate through my arms. According to the orator, death isn’t good enough. She needs to bleed. I claw a line up her neck so powerfully deep I shave her down to muscle in one brutal motion.
She evaporates to nothing—and so do I.
Chapter 94
Looks That Kill
Gage and I blink back into the butterfly room, dazed by the prospect we added tally marks to our personal body counts.
My phone goes off. It’s a text from Marshall.
Congratulations Ms. Messenger. You’ve won a region by your own hand. Your mother is beaming with pride. I’ll expect your company in the morning.
“We did it,” it expels from my lips clouded with grief. I pull Gage down into a warm, sultry kiss, forgetting all about the condom, the fact Gage might still be hiding things from me. For sure I’m not giving myself to him. I don’t want the night I murdered for my faction and the night I had sex with Gage to be inextricably linked forever.
My fingers weave slow circles through his hair as Gage caresses me with nurturing comfort kisses.
With Gage it would never be just sex. It would be tangible love, exploratory passion—ecstasy in action.
I pull back and examine him with the weight of a killer in my heart and the killer is once again me.
“Everything in me feels bad,” I say.
“Death is a horrible thing.”
“You think the Counts will resurrect them?” But really I mean her. The one I laid to rest by my own hand.
“I’m sure they’re in line, as are those Celestra.”
“Maybe it’s best Noster pulled out.” I breathe into his hair. “I don’t think you should participate anymore. It’s too dangerous. You’re risking too much.”
A palpable silence fills the tiny space.
“You can’t stop me,” he whispers.
“They won’t resurrect you.”
“They won’t resurrect Logan, either.”
God, he’s right. If Logan dies, it’s game over, just like Gage.
I wiggle down in his arms and look up at him. Just being near him takes my breath away.
“What’s on your mind?” He drops a kiss over my temple.
“I want to apologize for going off on you in front of my family. That was horrible and disrespectful.”
He glances at the wall and shakes his head. “It’s OK.”
“It’s not OK. I was confused about what Marshall was telling me and then I saw your hand brush up against Chloe’s when she was passing you the water and I lost it. I can’t for the life of me stand the thought of you with that witch in any capacity. It makes me insanely jealous.” I secure my arms around him and bury my face in his chest. “It kills me to think of you with anybody else.”
Gage runs his fingers through my hair before gently lifting my chin.
“I feel the same way about you,” he says as moisture glistens in his eyes, “and so does Logan.”
“Great,” I whisper, touching my cheek to his, “I feel like crap.”
“Don’t. I’m betting something happens soon that changes all our lives forever.”
I lock eyes with him.
“You know something.”
His expression grows all together serious as his features dim to pitch.
“Something.”
I’d ask what, but a part of me doesn’t want to know, especially not after my mother had that cryptic conversation with Logan in the Elysian Fields. I’m still not sure what it means that our paths will part for a while then converge again. And where does Gage and those flaming visions we shared of ourselves fit in all of this? Damn it to hell if I know.
But I still trust Gage. At least I still want to. Just because Emerson nailed the fact he had a condom in his pocket doesn’t mean anything. For all I know, it might be the proper storage compartment for all things prophylactic. It might be the very thing that boys are taught in school—some code of ethics in gym or boy scouts on how to protect themselves from wayward vaginas.
Perhaps the things he’s keeping from me are perfectly boring, like the fact he needs to change the tires on his truck or whether or not he should get a haircut. Although, I hardly think those things will change our lives forever.
I spend the night in the warm comfortable arms of the one I think I can trust.
But I see those mysteries lying in wait, like a snake in the grass.
I’m pretty sure I can only avoid them for so long.
***
In the morning the dull glimpse of sunlight blesses the fog outside my window, heavy and pale like a fallen halo.
I clean up Emerson and put her in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She looks totally cute and normal—not dead at all, so I invite her to have breakfast with the fam.
Downstairs, Mia and Melissa are busy scrambling eggs and burning bacon, which smells equally as heavenly as unburned bacon. Chloe and Ethan share their post coital bliss by way of looking and smelling skank as possible. Drake and Tad are going over a stack of paper bullshit that probably has something to do with gases forming in their digestive tracts and how they can market it to the free world.
Everyone is already noshing on Mia and Melissa’s creations sans Mom, who sits in the family room quasi defiling someone else’s child. On second though
t, I probably should have debriefed Emerson on the oddities of said fam, but I negated my responsibility as a good hostess and simply landed her in the shark tank dripping with pints of fresh life-giving blood.
“Good morning.” Mom does a double take. “Skyla, aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Everyone, this is my friend Emerson.” I stop shy of saying Kragger in the event the Landons are aware of the fact Arson’s daughter with the same face and moniker passed away a few years back.
“So nice to meet you.” Mom coos over the baby as he securely suckles off her faux breast.
Drake exams Emerson with great interest while lapping up a bowl of cereal. “Brielle says you were like dead or something. You run away?”
“Nope—dead.” Emerson doesn’t bother to spice up the truth with either euphemisms or enthusiasm. Instead, she makes herself at home and goes over to the fridge to inspect its meager offerings.
“I have to say you have gorgeous hair,” Mom boasts. “It’s the first thing I noticed. It’s so shiny and smooth. I’d love to know what kind of shampoo you use.”
“It was a leave-in treatment.” She hardly cuts a smile as she cracks open a diet soda.
Chloe strums the pads her fingers across the counter while eyeing Emerson as if she were a predator.
“So how long did you leave it in?” Chloe’s question might seem harmless on the surface but her voice holds a challenge. “Like three years?”
“The same amount of time I let my enemies go free.” Emerson hacks her to pieces with just one look.
Tad scoffs at the paper Drake is busy shoving in his face. “We need new ideas for the Gas Lab.”
“Air and coffee aren’t enough?” I ask before putting in my usual order with the girls. “Make it two or four,” I say, thinking of Emerson. I’m pretty sure not eating for several years can really ratchet up an appetite.
“Flavored air,” Ethan corrects with a mouthful of food. “Thirty-one flavors of air to be exact.”
“Very original.” I’d ask, flavored with what, but truth is, I’m afraid.
Knowing Ethan I’m betting there’s already one in the works called “Sweaty Sex with Chloe,” or “Killer Sex.” Either way, it’s disgusting.