When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) (27 page)

I have no more time to think. Theosodore lunges at Asch, and the air around us seems to bend, putting pressure on my chest. Their movements are a blur, leaving only one other person in the room to look at. Sash. I turn toward him, and he smirks despite his blistered face.

“Thinking about your precious Oliver?” Sash says. “Or are you thinking about who killed your brother?”

“You bastard!” I run toward Sash, a stream of fire flying from my hand. But he has already leapt aside. He’s so fast. “Were you the one who killed him?”

Sash’s cool voice rises behind me. “I didn’t kill him alone.”

I whirl around, growling as I slash the air with more fire. But my blast meets Sash’s own fire. Our two streams of fire and heat collide, the pressure of his pressing against me like a waterfall. I can feel the muscles rippling beneath his skin as though they’re a part of his fire. He’s too strong for me. Almost as soon as I realize I can’t win, I am thrown back by the force.

I want to cry for Theosodore’s help, but he’s too busy dealing with Asch. For a brief moment, I can see his face. He looks disoriented, like he’s forgotten where he is.

There is no choice but to run. I give up all semblance of defiance and bolt through the door and down the dirt road. I haven’t taken twenty steps before I can feel the warmth on my back that means Sash is close behind. I look over my shoulder just in time to see the stream of fire Sash has thrown. I dodge to one side and only scarcely get my head out of the way. The fire catches the tuft of hair at the end of my braid, freeing my hair so that it flies behind me in waves.

Sash lets out a riotous laugh. He doesn’t even sound winded. “Do you want to know what we did to kill your brother?”

I concentrate on the explosive sounds of fire to block out his voice. Even so, my anger is rekindled, and fire is boiling again beneath my skin. My blood is the butane and my actions are the spark. What did life do to Sash to make him this way?

“Well, I’ll tell you anyway.”

A cry of protest bubbles in my stomach and stagnates there. All I want to hear are the thumping of my chest and the slapping of my feet against the ground.

“It was simple, so simple. He was locked in a metal shed, clawing and scratching like a caged rat. He’s a fierce little kid, I’ll give you that.”

I don’t want to hear this I don’t want to hear this I don’t want to hear this.

Sash’s voice distorts, along with everything else but the road underfoot. The shacks blur into the shadows of my mind. I cling to the strings of pain that rise through my legs and fill my lungs. They connect my feet with the road. With my escape. My only hope is to run longer than Sash is willing to follow. Chasing me is a game for him, but I feel certain Oliver needs him elsewhere. If I can only outlast him.

A loud rumbling breaks through the shadows, hurling me back into the present. There is heat dangerously close, and I make a hard turn to dodge another ball of fire. After it passes I realize the rumbling is coming from below me, moving through the earth like thunder. And I can feel him searching for me. Oliver—no, Purgatory—must be tired of Sash’s game. He must be preparing to send roots through the ground to stop me, or impale me.

I’m going to die not nailed to a cross, but to a vein that keeps the earth alive. I’m going to die with the story of my brother’s death on my mind. With that dark thought, my mind latches on to Sash’s sickening details.

None of this matters, though. I will be joining Nathaniel shortly.

“—and I combined my power with another Shadowman’s power to turn the shed into an oven.” He chortled as he spoke. “An oven with him inside. I wish I could have seen him at those last moments. But it got too hot, and the whole thing exploded. Nothing left to see, unfortunately.”

With a scream in my throat, I stop mid-stride and turn to hurl a mass of fire at Sash that creates a wall of smog, obscuring our views. The earth still rumbles. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

I watch until the smoke clears, and Sash strolls easily forward. His smirk is plastered to his peeling face. Black blood seeps from fissures in his cheek, flowing down to his chin and dripping to the ground. I’m trembling, though my feet are planted firmly in the dirt.

“Your brother is your weakness, isn’t he?” He stops only a few feet from me. “That would make for an interesting Malady. You’re quite good with your fire, too. Not as good as me, of course.” He peers into my eyes. “But fire wouldn’t be your power. It’s weak.”

Fire hums in the palms of my hands. I want more than anything to press my hand into his face again. Something, however, keeps me pinned to the road.

“I can’t figure it out,” Sash says. “I suppose Deus will judge that.”

My tongue grows sharp. “And what is your Malady?” Even with so much rage inside me, I can’t help wanting to understand him. Wanting to understand why he is the way that he is. How he could kill sweet Nathaniel. “Is Claire your Malady? She’s dead, isn’t she? At least, I’ve heard you talk as if she’s dead.”

A tiny flame appears in Sash’s palm, one whose sharp dance threatens to rip off my skin. “Don’t speak of her.” The flame shrinks. “Ever. If you mention that name again, I will kill you and leave your remains for the world to see. I won’t care what Oliver ordered me to do.”

The flame shrinks again. This draws my attention more than Sash’s threat does. “How did Claire die?” The flame is now a tiny point in the middle of Sash’s palm. Claire is his Malady.

Sash screams and tries to hurl his fire at me. Nothing happens. “Shut up! Stop speaking her name.” He slams his foot in the dirt, sifting up a small dirt cloud that settles on his black boot. He seems smaller, weaker.

I draw myself closer to Sash. “Claire must have been a beautiful girl. What did Claire look like?”

Sash throws himself against me and pins me to the ground. He wraps his hands around my throat. His grip is weak, though, like he can’t draw even an ounce of strength that it would take him to end my life. “Stop! Just stop!” Pain radiates from his tone. “I will make your death so painful that your Shadowman life will be unbearable. Your only hope will be suicide.”

Sash gives up on all semblance of being snarky and begins to sob. The pitiful cry of a Shadowman.

“I won’t stop. You killed my brother.”

Sash’s sobs heighten, his hands releasing my neck and his chest rising and falling with misery. His pain twists my heart, and I know then that my weakness is that I care too much. Every part of me is screaming to kill him, but his pain taps into my buried sympathy, and he becomes a helpless child instead of the murderous Shadowman I know he is.

“You’re just a child,” I say, my tone unexpectedly soft. He seems to have forgotten what he wanted to do to me. “Just a child. You have had so many chances to redeem yourself, to let your soul heal, and instead you chose to make things worse.” I pull myself from beneath Sash, leaving him on his knees. His face is downcast.

“I have no redemption for you, though.”

For his own sake, Sash will be better off in nothingness. There will be no pain for him. No grief. No Claire. No Shadowmen. Nothing. I close my eyes and build the fire beneath my skin. Sash made my brother suffer, but this doesn’t mean I have to make him suffer. I will make his death painless and full of mercy.

“At Cathedral Reims, I learned that forgiveness is the epitome of what it means to be human. But I can’t forgive someone who murdered a person so precious to me. I would have severed my limbs to grant my little brother happiness.”

I bend down to Sash’s level, the hot fire ready to burst from my flesh. “I don’t know what happened in your life to make you this way. Though I will never forgive you, I implore you to forgive yourself. Whatever happened to Claire, I’m certain, was not your fault.”

Sash’s sobs stop almost as suddenly as they had begun. The seething hatred returns to his eyes, and, quicker than the tail of a scorpion, he leaps atop me. The action sends the fire back beneath my skin, freezing it in the pads of my fingertips. His hands fly back around my neck, and this time, there is burgeoning strength in those sinewy muscles.

He lets out a single laugh. “Forgiveness? The concept is foolish.”

Under his tightening grip, my breaths come out short and painful. My limbs flail about as my fists try to make contact with his body. My strength is leaving me now, and my arms fall heavily to the ground. Tears fall involuntarily down my cheeks in hot streaks. Sash bends over and licks my cheek. My stomach lurches.

“Such lovely tears. I wish every day for such a release. To mourn my losses.” He twists the skin of my neck, the taut muscles of his fingers digging into my throat. Then he pauses for a second to bend down to my ear and whisper. “My Malady is that I am forever heartbroken.”

The sky above Sash appears calm, now, and Sash himself is beginning to fade into darkness. All feeling is gone from my body, and it is only in the last flicker of light that I notice the hands. Two large, burly hands are wrapped around Sash’s neck. They twist with sudden force, and Sash is lifted away from me in what seems like the same motion. His eyes have lost all their ferocity.

With the pressure released, instinct inflates my chest with air.

I can only feel sorry for him, his Malady pounding in my mind.

Why would Deus grant Shadowmen with immense powers and then burden them with Maladies that can make using those powers difficult? Then again, why would Deus force cruel Exaltations upon them? Will they truly be free if they meet the terms of their Exaltations? I don’t know, but after seeing Sash’s suffering, the true enemy may not be the Shadowmen after all.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“I killed Asch,” Theosodore tells me as he gathers himself and flexes his meaty fingers.

He gives Sash’s crumpled body a swift kick, making me wince. Sash’s death saddens me. I know what this means for him. He will never exist again, in any life. There will never be another boy like him. Ever. He may have murdered my little brother, but I wish I knew what he was like in life. I wish I would have understood him more.

No tears come for my little brother. There isn’t time to fall prey to heartbreak.

I follow Theosodore as he walks away from Sash’s body, his stride uncertain.

“How did you manage to take care
of Asch?” I ask.

“I stabbed him through the skull.” Theosodore’s jagged smile appears, twisting my stomach. “Oh, he took a few of my memories in the process, but I gained them back after I killed him.” The smile disappears. “What do you plan to do now? I still have business with the Shadowmen Alliance. I will kill every last one of them, even if it takes me all day.”

I wince again. I have become sensitive to death, even for those who are supposed to be my enemies. They were humans once, who loved and hated, laughed and cried, just as the living do. I want to stop this. I don’t want anyone else to lose their lives. I’m certain Nathaniel would want the same. He took care with even the smallest of creatures, after all. He never had the heart to crush even a cockroach.

Colette told me she believed I could talk Oliver out of this. Do I still have that chance?

“I’m going to find Oliver,” I say.

Theosodore sighs. “I suppose I can’t let you go alone. Mother Aurelia would do Deus knows what to me if she found out you were murdered under my watch.”

“How generous of you,” I deadpan.

“I say we follow the quakes.”

I forgot about the rumbling. I haven’t been impaled yet, thank Deus.

“What is he doing?” I ask.

When we come upon the ruins of the shack, the scene before us answers my question. A maze of roots chokes the surrounding apartments, rising to the sky like giant beanstalks. To my horror, there are people speared on the ends, slick blood flowing down the roots. I heave what little I have in my stomach on the dirt. I look up at Theosodore. He clicks his tongue, his hardening eyes taking in the damage that Oliver’s fearsome powers have caused. He closes his eyes, then snaps them open.

“We’ll head toward the main road. The quakes seem to be coming from that direction.”

Theosodore leads me through the tiny alleys. As we cross each back road, I note the vines and roots that trap everything in a cage. Stragglers pick their way among the chaos, their faces glazed over with numbness. There are people strung among the pandemonium, their mouths open in dead screams, their heads dangling askance, and their eyes painted with the colors of death. And the Shadowmen Alliance will most likely spread their horrid rebellion all across Warbele until they have the entire country under their duress. I shudder to imagine what will happen from there.

The final back road that leads right onto the main road bears a more grim reality than the ones farther back. Oliver’s nature doesn’t hold this road under siege. Instead the road is littered with crushed bodies. My knees weaken. I can’t hold myself up. I fall to the road, trying to suppress the scream and the tears that want to overtake my body. The witch burning crosses my mind. This is more than just an efficient way to kill witches. This rebellion started the day of the burning. Those witches were a mere example of what people’s hatred toward them does. Witches are out in the open now. People can no longer pretend witches are just monsters under the darkest of beds. What better way to oppress the oppressors than through fear?