The Rise (24 page)

The King sat back in the armchair. His midnight blue suit sparkling and glittering like a clear night sky flecked with thousands of brilliant stars. Diamond and ruby crusted rings sat on every digit of his old, long-fingered hands; hands that Jackson knew were still incredibly strong despite the wrinkles that had cut deep trenches in them with his old age. There was a story behind each of the rings, and Jackson knew them all but one. His father used to tell of them as bedtime stories, and Jackson could remember sitting in bed at night, waiting for William to come in and tuck him in and tell his stories. The King remembered this, too, his thoughts of it now spurred by Jackson’s remembrance. He remembered the boy, skinny with shocks of reddish-brown hair sticking out all over his head, and wide, wide green eyes sitting on the edge of his bed, beaming the moment his father entered the room.

Now Jackson looked at ring on his father’s left pinky finger. It was the least elaborate of the lot, delicate but beautiful, just a thin band of black diamonds. The ring that Jackson didn’t know the story to, didn’t know where it had come from or how his father had come into possession of it. As if reading his son’s thoughts, King William folded his right hand over it on his lap.

“You’ve done well, my Son,” said the King. “You’ve answered all of my questions willingly and truthfully. I am beginning to believe that there might be hope for you yet.”

Jackson gave a stiff nod, the left side of his mouth pulling up in a crooked smile that King William knew had been a nervous habit of his since he was a boy. “Thank you, Father,” he said.

The smile that lit up the King’s face was the fanged grin of a jackal. “I know where the girl is now,” he said, and paused, drinking in the sudden alarm flashing in his son’s green eyes as his words sank in. “The Sun Warrior. I know where she is hiding.”

Jackson’s voice was clipped, strained. “Where?”

“She’s hiding in a small, undesignated Territory. I believe I’ve mentioned it to you before. The Outlands.”

A spark of red anger went through the King as he saw a spark of hope appear in Jackson’s eyes. The boy had always been smart. Maybe too smart. “But,” said Jackson, “if I remember right, one who means harm cannot pass through the portal into the Outlands. How am I supposed to get to her if she is behind its walls?”

 “You are a smart boy. I expect you to figure that out. You will find a way.”

Jackson’s tone now was nothing but resigned. “Where do I bring her after that? Assuming I can get her to come anywhere with me at all. Alex—”

King William slammed the sole of his shoe down so hard on the floor that it made a sound like cracking marble, though the floor beneath it seemed unharmed. Jackson flinched. His father was leaning forward in his seat now, his expensive fingers digging into the fabric of the armrests, his face twisted with rage and age. “You will refer to her as Sun Warrior,” he hissed. He took a breath to calm himself, sat back and forcibly peeled his fingers out of the armchair’s fabric. “And she will come with you. You needn’t worry about that.”

Jackson chose his words carefully. “And what makes you so sure of it?”

The King smiled again, wide and ugly. “First, answer for me one more question, my sweet boy,” he said. “If the Sun Warrior had to make a choice between her sister and her soul, what would she chose? Better yet, say that Nelliana were to try and kill her, would she fight back?”

The raw horror that came over his son’s face was like rays of sunshine peeking through the clouds on a dark and rainy day. Jackson’s mouth fell open, and his answer fell from his lips, though he knew that his father already knew the answer to his question. The man just wanted to make him say it.

“She would choose Nelly,” he said. “And no, she would never fight her back.”

King William clasped his hands together in front of him. “Wonderful, my Boy! Why, that’s just
wonderful.
So you see? She will come with you. She will follow you willingly, and you will deliver her to her death. You will take her to her sister.”

Jackson felt like something essential broke inside of him then, like maybe his heart had cracked down the middle and was crumbling slowly into bits of nothing at the pit of his stomach. Surely, that was what was happening, because the pain and wretchedness inside him now had to come from something breaking. Something broken. Something that would never and
could
never be put back together again. He rose from his seat on the couch, feeling like the robot that he was.

“When do you want me to leave, Father?”

King William’s hands spread out in front of him. “Right now, my boy. Right now.” He snapped his fingers at Andre. The Warrior never left his King’s side, but he was so silent and still sometimes that you completely forgot he was there. “Andre will be following you, making sure you don’t deviate from the plan. You won’t see him. But he will be there. He will be there every moment. Isn’t that true, Andre?”

The enormous Warrior nodded his head once. “Yes, my Liege. That is true,” he said, his voice a rumbling baritone.

The King rose and stepped forward, his arms opened to his son. Jackson came toward him without hesitation and wrapped his arms around his father, hugging him the way he hadn’t done since he was a boy. The embrace felt cold and stiff and hard, but there was still affection between them, though mostly only on Jackson’s part.

King William pulled back, gripping his son by the shoulders. Staring coldly into Jackson’s green eyes, he said, “It is a far, far better thing you for me do today, than you have ever done. Just bring the Sun Warrior to the gates of the city by sunrise, her sister will be there waiting for her. Do this for me, my Son, and all will be forgiven. When you get back I will not be here, but Andre will bring you to me, and we will leave together.”

Jackson reached up and took his father’s hands, gave them a tight squeeze. “Yes, father,” he said. “As you wish. Always, as you wish.”

Andre and the boy left then, with Jackson taking one last look over his shoulder at his father before they shut the office door. King William spun on his heel and headed over to the Queen’s desk, where he sat down with a wistful sigh. He slid open the long drawer under the desk and withdrew the enchanted amulet the Sorcerer had given him, a simple fist-sized smoke-gray stone dangling at the end of a long silver chain, a jewel of the rarest kind, one that did not exist in the human world. As he wrapped his long, bony fingers around the amulet, it pulsed in his hand softly, like a small gray heart. He closed his eyes, slipping into the dream world to complete his plan. He could feel through the stone that the girl was lost, broken, and had fed the previous night on supernatural blood, had killed an innocent. She was right where he wanted her. This was the just the final push that she needed.

He worked quickly but flawlessly, concentrating all of his power that had been paid for in blood. There were still many things to be done, examples to be made. If the people wanted to rise up, he would slap them back down with a mighty fist. He would usher them unmercifully into his New Age, and eventually, those who survived would thank him for it. Better yet, they would worship him for it.

And come sunrise, the Sun Warrior would be out of the picture; wiped out along with the rest of her self-righteous brothers and sisters when they had risen and fought him so many years before. One Sun Warrior. He had managed to kill thousands in the past. Surely, just one would be a walk in the park to destroy. And he wouldn’t even have to fight her. She would destroy herself because of the love she had for her Damned sister. What had the boy’s thought been?

Oh, yes.
To destroy one would be to destroy the other.

Two birds, one stone, indeed.

Nelly

Back in this place again. The gray world. I only sat now, with my chin resting on my fists, my elbows propped up on my knees. Thinking about the taste of rainwater, wishing some would fall from the gray sky above me, but this was a dry place, a place without life, so I was sure that water played no part in this world.

When I woke I would be hungry, and this is what I thought about also, for there was nothing to do in this place but think. When I looked around me at the gray mountains in the distance, the gray dirt under me and the dead sky above, I felt no more fear. The last of that had faded when I’d been here the last time, though I knew that when I woke, I would not remember having been here at all. But I felt now like I had never left. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I never would.

And these thoughts spurred no emotion in me either, just a resigned sort of peacefulness that I welcomed into my soul. At least when I was here there was nothing for me to destroy, no pulse of energy for me to steal. But admittedly, this disturbed me in some way.

Perhaps this was purgatory. Perhaps I had been dropped into a hell where I could still feel the burning in my throat, the hunger in my soul, but had no way of quenching or feeding it. Not even a single blade of grass to drink the life from, nothing in the sky or heavens but nothingness.

I blinked out at the barren landscape. A small but brilliant light had flared up in the distance, making me sit up and stare. My fangs slid from their sheaths as I looked at it, my eyes taking longer than I would have thought to adjust to the burning light. I was on my feet now, shielding my face with an upraised arm and racing in what felt like slow motion toward those glimmering rays of golden light off in the distance, flickering like the flames of a million candles. I could feel the hunger growing stronger in me the closer I drew, could feel my soul reaching out and charging forward, as if it could beat me to the source of the light.

I stopped. The burning soul was so close now that I had to bring both hands up to my face to protect my eyes, which were desperately seeking the darkness behind my lids. When I opened them, slowly pulling my hands away from my face, the light was gone, and girl stood in its place.

I remembered her instantly, as if I had spent an eternity in some other world staring at her face. The whole of her seemed to glow as she stood before me, regarding me with a sad look in her big brown eyes. There was no wind, but her long dark hair seemed to be billowing around her, shimmering with touches of that glorious golden light. Silver vines sprouting silver lilies covered almost every inch of her skin, crawling up from her bare ankles and disappearing under the hem of the silver dress she wore, then appearing again above her neckline, across her shoulders, down her small but muscular arms. Only her face was unmarked, as if God or some other Divine Being had deemed it blasphemous to alter such a perfect face.

I could smell the warm blood running through her, could feel the heat of it radiating outward and caressing my skin like tiny drops of sunshine. A hiss escaped my throat, and for just a moment, just a tiny little moment, I felt something again.

It felt like pain, but not the constant hunger pain that this world of torture was so generous at giving. It felt like the pain of lost love, the horror of vicious betrayal, the halting of a beating heart. And then it was gone, replaced with just the burning of my throat and the insistent, starving beast in my belly.

I found myself moving very slowly toward the girl.

A smile came over her glorious face, her brown eyes twinkling with something like love, and she held her right hand out to me. Her voice floated to me on the non-present wind, like distant chimes and sweet nothings. “Yes,” she said. “Come and drink from me, Child of the Night. I am the night’s sun, and the blood that runs through my veins belongs to you. You can live again in the sunshine. You can break free of this prison. All you have to do is drink. Drink the sun.”