Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (43 page)

Dino smirked. He grabbed a book and flipped through the pages, searching for any clue about this Toby Blackwood’s fate. His eye caught some odd notes, and he pressed his finger on the page, pulling the book closer.
 

I must be doing something wrong. The dust cannot compress. It will not, no matter how much force I apply. Why? Why does it refuse my command, yet answer the call of others? If he can do it and dust devil trash can do it, then so can I. I need more dust. Fresh dust. The answer is there. I will find it, my love. I swear I will.

“Come look at this, Amber,” he said. “I think I found a note from the archduke.”

He thumbed through more pages. When she didn’t reply, he slapped the book closed and looked up with a frown. “Amber?”

Amber stared at the picture trembling in her hands. She recognized it almost immediately, buried amongst the books where she was searching for clues to Toby’s fate. And there, buried in a layer of thick dust, she caught the silvery frame glinting in the moonlight. She pulled it from the books, blew the dust from the broken glass, and just stared blankly at thing squeezed tightly in her hands.

It was a picture of her, grinning the way children grin when they’re bursting at the seams with innocent happiness, cake smeared all over her eight-year-old face, fingers coated in sugary icing. Toby and Chris stood beside her. Chris wore his own sloppy smile and carried a wad of frosty chocolate in his fist. Toby gripped a red balloon by its curling string, his shirt stained with streaks of cake and icing.

She remembered that birthday party. She remembered the laughter, the cake fight, all the neighborhood kids invited over to play in the backyard while their parents barbecued.
 

Help me
.

The faintest whisper of Toby’s voice sent a shiver down her spine. She looked up and glanced at the others. Jason rummaged through a box at the far end of the room while Dino was engrossed in some notebook.
 

Help me
.

Amber jumped at the sigh tickling her ear and darted for the door. “Toby?”

Help me
.

She trembled as she neared the door, her pace slowing. “Toby, is that … Is that you?”

Help me
.

Amber reached the door. She clasped its cool handle and turned, carefully pulling it wide. “Toby?”

Help me
.
 

She stepped into the next room, and the door glided shut behind her. It was a simple room with a single chair and a fireplace piled high with ash. A single window framed the sprawling, glittering city beyond the palace’s walls. Amber hugged the picture against her chest and stepped toward the fireplace. “I’m … I’m here, Toby. Where are you? Please … Please don’t leave me again.”

Help me
, he whispered and this time his frigid breath washed across her neck and sent a chill racing down her spine.

Amber whipped around.
 

A mirror hung against the door, tall and wide. Her reflection shifted and shimmered. It warped, transforming into a tall man in a black suit who wore an expressionless mask shaped like a skull, his bright, frigid eyes fixed on her.

Help me
, he whispered.

Bone Man burst from the mirror. Amber screamed, hurling the chair at her attacker. He twitched his hand and the chair flung aside, smashing into pieces against the wall.
 

“Get away from me!” she shouted, her will bubbling up inside her.
 

Power flung from her body and slammed against him. He shuddered against the weight of her will, his tall frame bending like he faced a strong headwind.

Eve swirled inside her. Amber could feel the serpent slither in the black, slowly sliding her way closer and closer to the light. The more power Amber used, the closer Eve came to the surface while she slipped into the darkness.
 

“No,” she rasped, her power fading beneath the swell of fear.

Bone Man straightened. He snapped his fingers, and the lock on the door clicked in place. He whipped the sword from its cane sheath and swung it in a lazy figure eight before him.
 

“Get away from me,” she said. “I’ll….”

Bone Man cocked his head. “Do what?”

“Dino! Help!”

Bone Man took a step closer. “He can’t help you. He can’t hear you. No one will hear you.”
 

Amber lurched away and sprinted for the open window. She cried out, leaping into the cold night. Her body sailed into the open air, wind whistling wildly in her ears. As she fell, a force coiled around her stomach and jerked her back inside.
 

Amber slammed on the ground, the wind rushing from her lungs. Bone Man wagged his finger disapprovingly and strolled toward her. She scrambled back and accidentally kicked the picture toward him. He paused, looking down at the frame. He bent to grab it.
 

He would take it. Bone Man would take this picture of her family and he would destroy it.
 
A terrifying force exploded within her as she rocked forward, her eyes full of fiery tears. “NO! It’s not yours!
IT’S NOT YOURS
!”

Her will crashed into him, and his head snapped back. His mask cracked. He wobbled where he stood, his spine bent unnaturally back, arms wind-milling wildly beside him.
 

Amber gasped at the chill blossoming in her core. Her hands and feet went numb. Her mind swam, and black edged her vision. She lurched to her feet and leaned against the hearth for support, her body drenched in a cold sweat. “You can’t have it. I … I won’t let you have it.”

Bone Man stiffened and stilled. He straightened, each vertebrate cracking as it realigned. He stared at her and heaved heavy breaths. A long, thin fissure divided his mask in a jagged line like a lightning bolt. One of his icy blue eyes twitched. He stepped toward her. He reached for her, breaths heaving through his mask.

“I won’t let you take me,” Amber said. Her lip trembled as she reached inside for the power of her curse. Eve happily poured it through her veins, its power rocketing through her and pulling her within it all at once. “What did you do with my brother? Where is Toby?”

Tears poured freely down her cheeks. There she was, trapped in a room with a madman in nothing more than a hospital gown, covered in dirt, dust, and ash. Dino and Jason couldn’t reach her. She couldn’t transform, and she couldn’t escape.
 

“No,” she said. “I won’t give up. I’ve got to find him. I’m coming for you, Toby!”

Amber lashed out at Bone Man with every ounce of strength she had left. The poltergeist curse exploded from her as Bone Man’s power exploded from him. The two forces collided in a clap of thunder that shook the palace to its foundation.
 

She glowered at Bone Man, fixed her gaze on his mask. Her vision shrunk to a point framing that pale disguise, and as the black closed around her, she aimed at it, remembering all the lessons Liam taught her about the poltergeist curse.

You’re broken
, she told the mask.
You’ve always been broken. That’s all you know how to be!

The crack on the mask split, and it slipped from his face in two great shards. Amber’s eyes rolled back, and she succumbed to the deep, cold darkness.

Amber heaved a deep breath in a black room. She shivered in the cold, the only light to see by a needle of silver coming from a distant point far beyond her reach.
 

“Amber, Amber,” Eve said, her voice sighing from the darkness. “Poor Amber. My power was just too much for you.”

“Am I dead? Did he kill me?”

“Of course not, silly girl. No one wants you dead. We need your body.
I
need your body.”

Amber rolled to her knees and searched the darkness. “Let me out of this. I need to stop Bone Man. Please.”

“You had your chance. Now it’s my turn.”

“No,” she sobbed, bending over. “I can’t fail. I’ve got to save Toby.”

“You were too slow, too meek, too mild. Then again, you’ve always been a weak one.”

“No! I’m not weak. I’m not!”

“You’re weak, child. You let them walk over you. It doesn’t matter if it was Chris and your mother, or Jason and Tiffany, or even Dino and Bentley. Don’t you see? You’ve always been spineless. You’ve never led. You’ve always been led. It’s time for me to change things. In our new world, Amber, we will be strong. We will be
gods
. No one will walk over you ever again.”
 

“But I don’t want a new world. I don’t want anyone else dusted or killed. I just want Toby back.”

“Forget him. He’s gone now. Just lie down. Sleep. It’s time.”

Amber curled into a ball. She wept on the floor, hand flat on the cool stone. She was weak. She couldn’t save him. Even given a second chance, she couldn’t save her brother.
 

“That’s it, close your eyes,” Eve cooed.

Her lids were heavy, so she closed her eyes
. I’m alone
, she thought.
I’m always alone
.

“And you’ll always be alone,” Eve said. “Unless you give in to me. Give yourself to me. End the pain. Say the words, and give yourself to the only one who can save you.”

Say the words
. Amber swallowed. She wanted to sleep so badly, to drift into a nothing and never feel pain again.
 

The words balanced on the tip of her tongue. They pressed against her lips. They begged for freedom.

Amber took a deep breath, and as she began to speak, a memory came to her that she had very nearly forgotten. Toby had whispered something to her on the very night she received the curse.
You were the only one I remembered.

Amber’s eyes shot open. “I was the only one he remembered!”

“What?”

“Toby. When he brought me to the graveyard, he said I was the only one he remembered. He loved me enough to remember me after his death. He never … He never blamed me for his death.” She sat up. “He risked everything to get to me! I was his one memory!”

“Forget him. Say the words and forget him!”

“No.” Amber stood, warmth rushing through her. She stood beneath the silver thread of light and squeezed her fists. “I won’t say the words because I’m not alone, am I? You just want me to think I don’t have anyone. You want me to be weak.” The warmth turned into hot anger. “You want me to forget everything I’ve gone through, what I’ve lived through to get to my brother. You need me weak, because you can’t be reborn if I’m strong. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“No, of course not!” Eve’s scales slid hurriedly around her. “I want to give you peace. Give in. Say the words, Amber.
Say the words
!”

“I will
never
give in to you!”

Two red orbs flared in the black. “I will have your soul, and I will have my freedom! Fight me now, but you cannot stop me. I will consume you. I will deny you my power, and you can suffer knowing you will never find the truth!”

Amber shook her head and stormed into the shadows. She lanced out, her hand latching around a serpentine neck. “Oh, screw you. I’m done with this.”

The snake’s sinewy muscles twisted and writhed in her grasp. The red orbs flared. Fangs glimmered in the dim light.
 

“This is
my
body,
my
soul, and you’re
my
guest,” Amber said. “As long as you’re staying here, I think I’ll take whatever power I want.”

Fire ignited along her skin. It blazed into a roaring inferno, illuminating the shadows and revealing the twisting serpent coiled loosely around her. Eve writhed in her grip, fought her pull, hissed and shrieked, but Amber poured her will into the darkness as the flames engulfed them.
 

Eve’s scaly skin ignited, burning away like dry paper. The snake shrieked, her great eyes reflecting the flames cloaking Amber. “You are cursed, Amber. You’ll always be cursed, and there will come a day when you lose the strength to fight me. Second Eden will come, and I will be its queen!”

Eve reared back as the flames scorched her flesh. Amber tossed the snake into the black and glared at the pinprick of silver light. “It’s not over yet.”

Amber’s eyes snapped open. She flipped forward and landed spryly on her feet, her palms pressed against the ground and gazed fixed on the enemy before her. Eve’s raging power burned through her bones and ignited every drop of blood. She was a bottled tempest shaken up and let loose upon the world.

She raised a hand, palm facing the hunched figure trembling before her. The shards of Bone Man’s mask lay in his shadow. He sobbed over them, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes.

“You hunted me,” she said, her voice filling the room with the weight of an ocean. “You killed innocent people, dusted innocent souls. For what? Why, Bone Man.
WHY
?”

Bone Man shuddered. His hands fell away from his face, and he slowly met her fiery eyes.
 

Amber sucked in a breath as the inferno turned to glacial ice. She dropped her hand and stumbled back. “Oh my God, it can’t be.”

Bone Man blinked, his bright blue eyes focusing on her. Without the mask, she could see the man behind it, and she knew the face. She remembered it well. She’d seen it in the Census Master’s memories, and while it was older than the one in the picture she had found in the room beyond this one, she would recognize Toby Blackwood’s face no matter his age.

“Toby?” Amber’s knees wobbled. She leaned onto the hearth for support and stared at her brother. “You’re Bone Man? All this time, it’s been you?” Tears suddenly welled in her eyes. She sucked them back and looked away. To think that after all this time, after all the trials and torture she’d survived to find him, her brother had been her greatest enemy all along, and now, she was so confused and angry she couldn’t even look at him when all she’d wanted to do was wrap her arms around him when she finally found him.

“It was the mask,” he murmured. “When the archduke put it on me, the mask became me. It controlled me. It … It did all that. It made me do all that.” He started sobbing uncontrollably. “I didn’t know anyone, Amber. I couldn’t turn to anyone for help. It was so dark, so … so
cold
. He made me a murderer. He made me a monster. God, Amber, what … what am I?”