The Rise (7 page)

Almost as if I had blinked and missed it, the scene in front of me changed, the Lamias seeming to move instantly from one place to the next. I stood in shock as they seized my people, chalk-white cold arms wrapping around their necks, holding them all in hostage positions. I saw Soraya, so small, with tousled dark curls dangling around her little heart-shaped face, her bare feet dangling off the ground, a moon-white arm coiled around her fragile neck. Bethany discarded on the ground, having been ripped from Simon’s grasp and tossed aside like garbage.

The Lamias hissed, the sound seeming to grate up the bones in my spine, and I felt my own throat vibrate, returning the sound as does a rival lion, roaring out my anger. All of my companions were at the mercy of the Lamias’ stone arms and saw-teeth, looking out at me with wide eyes filled with terror and shock and defiance. They were not even inches away from death, and yet they all still
trusted me
. I stood in the middle of them all, the creatures at their throats leering at me, daring me to make my next move, my heart pounding like war drums in my ears, and for a moment, was taken aback by the loyalty of these nine people. It seemed to strike a chord in me that hummed, harshly but not unpleasantly, and my soul seemed to be choking with burning tears.

Wrong, wrong, wrong…

When the Lamias’ heads tilted back, wide mouths stretching inhumanly over rows of razor sharp teeth, inky eyes rolling back to show the completeness of those black, black windows, I shot forward. Not with my body, but with the force that was so fierce within me, and wrapped my mental fingers around the nasty souls of the creatures. They froze, eyes as wide as eight balls, hisses cut short like a stopped record. They struggled to be released, and I knew that I would not be able to hold them for very long, not while I was still controlling King William behind the stone walls of Two Rivers. Searching the Lamias, holding them was like trying to keep a slimy, boiling plasma from spilling out of my grasp, leaking between the cracks of my fingers. I was only vaguely aware of my physical body, swimming in a sea of only sensation. And I could feel my energy depleting fast.

Horror struck my heart, another chord plucked hard with a calloused hand, when I felt one of the Lamias break free of my hold. I managed to regain control of her quickly, snatching her back as one might a fly from the air. But it was not quick enough.

The Lamia holding Daniel seized her moment of freedom, and with arms as swift as white lightening, she snapped his neck. My people and I felt a link in the chain that held us together snap as well, something elemental breaking free and floating away like a large piece of ice in a cold sea, and to this day I am not sure whether it was the bones in Daniel’s neck I heard cracking, or the connection to his soul, which was gone. I felt it. My people felt it. We all hurt
,
but mostly, me
.

And I had failed them. Failed
Daniel,
and he was
gone
.

This is when I fell over that ledge, that cliff that hung over only darkness and broken things; that abyss which I would find so impossible to climb out of, for I was too broken to do so; broken in a way that could never really be fixed.

A bellow of rage, guttural and feral, the cry of a wild beast, rang out through the trees, across the land. It was the sound of heartache, of fear and rage and crumbling things. I was off handedly aware that it had come from me, and that my arms were rising, my hands clenched into fists hard enough to make my palms bleed. I squeezed them harder and harder still, raising and raising what felt like bloodless extremities to the star-flecked ink high above. My rage and pain and guilt, what seemed like countless years of it, a dark and brilliant force that had been forced into a box too small for too long, came pouring out of me, and I
commanded
it.

Around me the Lamias had released my people and were ripping at the hair on the sides of their own moon-lit temples, their shark’s mouths snapping shut, open, shut, open, the yawning jowls of demons. Their shrieks, high-pitched and wonderfully agonized, rang out in my ears, in my soul. I squeezed harder, harder,
harder
still. Drinking in their beings, sucking them dry the way they had done countless others. But it wasn’t blood I was after. That would have been a mercy, and I was fresh out
.

The Lamia’s bodies collapsed to the ground in unison, their cries cut off and disappearing on the breath of the wind. I felt a wild rush of energy, watched as whatever force gave the damned creatures their existence found a new home in me. My body stood ramrod still, strong as waves of it seemed to swell and crash over me. My companions were rocking back on their heels, eyelids fluttering, sharing in the sensation, my name falling from their lips in whimpered gasps, the way one might say that of their Maker. The dead Lamias on the ground began to fade, the way chalk does if swiped with a dry cloth.

And then the Lamias were gone. Just gone. I had ripped the very essence of life from the shells that contained them, separated the physical from the metaphysical, stolen the recycled energy that never truly belonged to anyone. I’d killed them. And, yes, it had felt
good.

When I began to move forward, my legs feeling like weightless buoys drifting in a sea of thick, dark waters, I felt my people move with me, as if tugged along on leashes, Simon gathering Bethany into his arms once more without having to be told. None of them had to be told.

The pain of Daniel’s departure was still throbbing within me, pulsing and heating like the fresh wound that it was. No tears fell from my eyes, but I felt those of my companions as truly as if they were rolling, wet and warm down my own cheeks.

And none of them blamed me. Worse yet, they all regarded me with that wonder and undeniable devotion that I was so clearly unworthy of. Worse
still
, I couldn’t seem to find it in me to care. And
worst
of all, I wanted more
.

Only when my gaze settled on Daniel’s lifeless body—his brown hair lying dully and limply over his forehead, his once-warm brown eyes staring heavenward, as if the light had that once filled them had returned there—did I take pause. I felt something then, not the ripple of souls around me, not the thrum of life that coursed silently through space, or the almost sweetly sickening adoration of my followers, or even King William’s red anger and hatred back in the Queen’s office. I felt something
physical,
and it seemed to zip me back from wherever I’d been, which somehow seemed to be a high place, in every sense of the word, and push me over the edge of nothingness, where only broken things lay, all at the same time.

My stomach clenched. Hard. I felt my legs, which had been of no consequence and so sure just a moment ago, go as soft as heated butter. I collapsed to the ground, the dirt and roots and sandy earth that were beneath my feet meeting me head-on and cold, very cold. I
felt
these things too, along with the sharp pains that accompanied them. But as I stared up through the thick trees and beyond, seeing so much more than just needles and branches and sky and stars, I knew that the physical pain was not so much a bad thing. In fact, I welcomed it. It seemed to clear my head, only a little, but enough for me to know that killing the Lamias the way I had, removing them in such a simple and basic and forbidden manner, had only left me hungry for more, had opened a dark box inside of me that would not be so simply closed.

The pain in my knees, my neck and head, and everywhere else was something I could deal with, something that I
understood.
And, no, it wasn’t bad at all. I had to fight this urge, this rooted inclination to keep taking and taking, stealing and stealing the life energy that did not belong to me.

It doesn’t ever belong to anyone,
whispered a voice in my head.
Not really, so why shouldn’t you take it. Why shouldn’t you—

I closed my eyes.

And saw sunlight. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. I recognized it as that thing I’d seen in the distance, the thing that my companions had wondered at. It was nearer me now, and somehow I felt like I should
know
it, that the answer of what it was should have been obvious, and yet I had not even the slightest spark of what that answer was. I could almost taste the warmth of it, like drops of sunlight on my tongue. I could touch it now, even though I was still too afraid to let my mind completely free once more. It was still too hungry. But that bright, burning life was so close now. And if I just reached a
little—

Suddenly, I was being lifted into the air, my body rising from the cold ground, strong arms under my neck and in the crook of my knees, my feet and hands dangling like loose rubber. I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t have to. Tommy was carrying me, and I could feel the tension in his body as he tried to handle me as though I were made of cracked glass and would shatter were he to breathe too deeply. I could feel my people all around me, hovering and speechless, filled with alarm and concern over my still body.

“We must get her to the van,” I heard Queen Camillia say, as if only the safety of my life were important. “Follow me.”

And then we were moving. No one had even asked a question. I felt their total agreement singing out to me, as though I was standing in the center of some gentle tornado, its force tugging and pushing at me from every direction.

But the sun. I want to see the sun. I want to touch it. We must wait.

My companions stopped in their tracks. Because of Camillia I knew that the van waiting for us was only some twenty-five feet to our southeast; but that sun, or whatever it was, was approaching us from the east. That’s the way I wanted to go. It made no sense, was possibly the stupidest thing to do right now, but that’s where I wanted to go.

That way. Take me that way.

Tommy immediately began moving east. The others followed. I still didn’t lift my head, didn’t open my eyes. Didn’t think I even could. Then I felt something so familiar… so unmistakable, and I jerked so hard in Tommy’s arms that he would have dropped me had he not been so…
aware
of me.

The sensation was mighty, fierce, almost painful. It struck me the way that a wave strikes the shore, loud and sudden and breaking. My eyes flew open wide, and I saw Tommy staring down at me, the lines of his face silhouetted and shadowed by the moonlight, which swathed his pale hair like a golden halo. His eyes were so clear a blue that I could see the reflection of my own inked eyes in their depths. All of the sly posture and façade he usually wore so closely was gone, and his truths were all open to me, as mine were to him, to all of them.

Another of those awful, nauseous waves crashed over me, making my body spasm once more in Tommy’s arms, which had tightened almost painfully around me, crushing my shoulders sideways against his chest. I was vaguely aware of a sharp, serpentine hiss escaping my throat, and then words passing through my lips and sounding nothing like my own.

“He wakessss.”

They didn’t have to ask. I had reined my mind back in, afraid to let it out for fear of what it might do—just maintaining contact with these eight people was hard enough, some part of me wanted desperately to tighten my hold on them and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until they were no more—and I had stopped battling King William to replace a thread of shredded leash on the beast that lived within me; stopped holding King William’s consciousness under water. And he was waking up.

And we were still heading east. Away from the van. Away from escape.

But that sun. That warm, soft and delicious sun is so close now. Sssso closssse now…

Above me, the canopy of tree branches had given way to the open night sky, and stars hung above like white freckles on a black, endless face. I closed my eyes as the heat of that brilliant, golden force drew nearer and nearer at a speed that seemed incredible. And for a moment, the growling hunger of my soul was silenced, forgotten along with all else.

Faintly, as if from somewhere outside of me, dim sounds filled my ears. Something like the screech of brakes, then a slamming sound. White light surged behind my shut eyes, turning the insides of my eyelids into an unpleasant, coral pink. I could feel something essential slipping away from me then, like the string of a helium balloon sliding through my desperately reaching fingers. Then the world went as black as the sky as I plunged into that deep abyss, without the light of a single star to show me the way.