Dark Diary (21 page)

I couldn’t protect them both, so I stayed in front of Kathera.

Ve’tani came behind Derek and snatched him up by the thin scruff of his neck. He let out a painful yowl and I extended a wing to keep Kathera behind me as she struggled to go to his aid.

“You can’t fight her,” I warned, pushing her back.

“Then help him!” She shoved me hard in the back.

“You insolent boy!” Ve’tani scolded and shook Derek like
a rag doll. Agony creased his face.

With Kathera pushed back, I lunged into the fight. My wings propelled me forward. I leapt up to gain the advantage and then came down on top of Ve’tani with a brutal thrust, slamming her to the ground. Derek fell from her grasp and hit the dirt hard. The smell of blood saturated the air and my senses spun into overdrive.

He managed to scramble to his feet, though not without a struggle. There was blood running from the back of his neck where she had held him, but he appeared otherwise unharmed.

“He will die, Matthaya!” Ve’tani’s eyes swore her determination.
“And so will she,” she added, knowing very well that I could not protect them both at the same time.

Her hatred toward Kathera saturated every crevice of her brain, but I couldn’t detect which target she would choose first. She masked her thoughts well.

Again, Ve’tani rushed toward Derek, and this time pounced
on him full force, sending him tumbling to the ground beneath her weight.

I flinched. There was a brief break in the mind link between Ve’tani and me when Derek’s knife pierced her flesh. She screamed in pain and brought a rain of sharp claws down across Derek’s chest. In a rage, she tore through the flesh of his ribs and I watched in horror.

“No!” Kathera cried out from behind me. She lunged toward
him again and I flapped a wing back to keep her where she was.

Shreds of Derek’s shirt curled at his sides and his cries for help were swiftly dampened by blood loss. Ve’tani rose from the ground and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of his knife—still sticking out of her chest. She jerked it stiffly from her ribcage and twitched, clenching her teeth and firing her gaze at me.

Kathera ran in the other direction and then came shooting past me. I snatched at her shoulders and pulled her back against my chest, bringing in a wing to secure her there. I was stronger than her, but she flailed and twisted her body in an attempt to break free.

“Kathera, no.” I used everything I could to hold her back without harming her, but she risked dislocating her shoulders with her blind adrenaline-driven struggle.

“Derek’s dying!” she screamed, oblivious to the severity of his wounds.

Yes. He was.
And it was too late for him. The growing pool of blood surrounding him affirmed it.

“Let her take her revenge,” Ve’tani taunted, bending a finger inwards. “I’m enjoying this game.”

Kathera kicked free, ducked under my wing, and darted after her. Ve’tani grabbed one of Kathera’s thrashing wrists and then the other and flung her onto the ground, forcing the breath right out of her. She jerked Kathera’s hands up over her head and knelt down, pinning them beneath her knee.

“Ve’tani!” I charged forward but stopped at the sight of Derek’s knife glimmering in Ve’tani’s grasp.

“No! Please, Ve’tani!”

The thrill of the battle gleamed in her wild-eyed grin. She drew the blade across Kathera’s wrists and split flesh open. Kathera released a bloodcurdling cry, writhing frantically in pain. Even
I
felt a sting of the horrible ache that was her blood spitting from the wounds.

“I’m finished playing with your little toys!” Ve’tani stood and tossed the knife into the grass.

I dropped down at Kathera’s side.

Ve’tani straightened her cloak down along her arms and flattened her hair against her neck. “Someday you’ll learn to
obey,” she snarled. Then she shook her head with disappointment, pulled up her hood, and fled from the scene without another wor
d, leaving me to watch Kathera die.

I lifted her up into my arms and felt the heat of her body rushing violently from her. She trembled, growing colder by the second. The short, choking gasps from her lips made me cringe.

“Help me.” She coughed weakly, turning to look at one of her wrists as it poured blood onto the grass. “Please.”

I couldn’t.

Her eyelids fluttered as she drifted in and out of consciousness
and she tried to reach for my face, but she was too weak and the tendons in her wrists had been severed.

I’d witnessed true mortality many times over in my lifetime, but Kathera’s young death was all my fault. Blood collected on both sides of me as I held her up in my lap and pressed my fingers firmly against the deep lesions.

Her skin grew paler and the soft locks of hair tumbled over her shoulders, its red color enhanced by the fresh blood. My thumb brushed across her quivering cheek, leaving a streak of crimson. She
would
die soon.

Beautiful Kathera would die in my arms.

I traced the scar-like smudge on her cheek and closed my eyes, raising my face to the sky in hopes of an answer.

The sweet scent of her innocent blood teased me; I had smelled it once before. Though it had been old and dried at the time. It was back when Aldréa had struck her and… I had been able to heal it.

No. This was far more complicated than that. I couldn’t simply lick the wounds closed. Still, I couldn’t let her drift away in my arms. I had to try something.

Saliva can heal an external wound. Could blood heal an internal one?

I carefully laid her body down. She was quaking
violently, even in her weakened state. Her head fell back against
the wet grass and her arms twitched as a fever of chills swept over her, shaking her like a seizure.

I straddled her waist with my legs and took her hands into mine, lifting them and laying them back down against the ground parallel to her shoulders, palms facing up. My wing stretched out to the side and dragged Derek’s knife from the dirt beside us, bringing it to my hand. Tightening my grasp around the hilt, I raised my other palm, spread open the fingers of my empty hand, and pressed the blade into my skin, swiping it swiftly and deeply across the indention of soft flesh. I switched hands and quickly did the same to my other before too much blood squeezed out. It stung, but the sensation couldn’t be described as pain.

Blood oozed out of the wound and hit the grass in splashes
of deep burgundy, a color much darker than her mortal red.
I leaned over Kathera, whose breath was hardly audible anymore, and could barely hear her soft heartbeat.

I extended all of my fingers and flattened the palms of my hands down against her wrists.

Her eyes widened and she howled in pain, her back arching
and her body coming up from the grass a few inches.
My blood surged from my body into hers. I pressed harder and harder until the blood from her wrists stopped seeping from between us and her squirming ceased.

The exchange of blood made my own body ache and churn
with an unnerving sensation. The colored fringe faded
from around her body, as I grew hazy and disoriented.

Some of her color was returning to her skin and the wounds were shrinking beneath my palms. Kathera gasped and pushed against me, then her eyes rolled back into the whiteness and she blacked out, her body going limp and falling back into the grass. I shifted my weight and took a seat beside her, sitting back against my heels. A sweep of my tongue across my bloody palms accelerated the healing of my wounds and I watched as the flesh regenerated itself from the outside in, sizzling before fading into fresh skin.

She would live. I could feel it.

Saving her life, however, would come with a cost. Ve’tani
wouldn’t tolerate Kathera
not
being dead.

I’d seen horrible things in my many years, but I had forgotten what it was like to watch people you know suffer. My clothes were soaked with red, the ground was covered in blood, and Kathera had nearly died.

And Derek…

I felt weak. I felt sick. My veins pulsed with hunger and
my head spun with a million impossible-to-answer questions
. What would become of Kathera now? How could she
ever
forget this? How could she forget what she saw? How could I tear myself from her world, now that she and I shared the same blood?

There was so much more to it than that. I stretched my
fingers down into my shirt collar and slipped the golden cross
pendant out, holding it between my bloody fingers. I’d
never believed in fate before, but Kathera and I had far too many things in common for them all to be coincidences. When
I had kissed her, I saw Kathryn. When I left her with Derek, she cursed me with the very same words I had heard as a
mortal trying to dismiss Kathryn’s love. And then… the dream
of us in the meadow together. It wasn’t a dream at all.

She was remembering things.

Her life.

Her death.

Me.

Perhaps she wasn’t just a girl in love with a curious stranger.
Perhaps she
was
Kathryn.

CLACK…

CLACK…

CLACK…

The window shutters flapped back and forth in the wind and the banging sounds woke me abruptly from my sleep.

Who left the window open?

I wiped the back of my hand across my warm, sweaty forehead. My stomach grumbled, but I felt very sick and even lightheaded.

I couldn’t remember what had happened before
I had gone to sleep—how I had gotten to bed, why I was back in
my old room in my dad’s house, or where Derek had gone. I felt stupid that I couldn’t recall anything, but I couldn’t
concentrate long enough to remember. Every inch of my skin ached as I moved and my face radiated feverish warmth. I tossed the covers off to the side and put my feet onto the floor.

“Ugh.” I cupped my face in my palms. “My head.” It was pounding. My eyes burned. My inner ears hurt.

I pushed the feeling aside, made the short walk into my bathroom, picked up my brush from the sink, and started to comb my hair. It was thick and matted, but I assumed it was from the sweat.

Why was I feeling so sick?

The hair on my arms and neck perked up and I sucked in a
sharp breath. I could have sworn that I wasn’t alone in the
room. It felt like Matthaya was there with me. I veered around
to check, but there was no one there.

I turned back toward the sink and took a deep breath. It had been months since I had seen him last. I missed him so much.

I set my brush down on the bathroom sink, opened my eyes, and screamed.

My hair was caked with a dark, rusty-colored substance
—blood!

I shrieked and jolted backward from the sink, slamming my body into the bathroom wall. My head throbbed twice as violently.

I looked down. My clothes were soaked with red.

What the hell had happened to me?

A violent stabbing pain struck deep inside my stomach
and I doubled over, crying out to deaf ears. It felt like my intestines were being coiled into a tight knot. My spine ached
and
I
wrenched back and forth, moaning uncontrollably as invisible nails were driven into me from every angle.

Someone knocked on my bedroom door. Each thump made my head pulse.

“Kathera? Is that you? What the hell’s going on in there?”
Aldréa asked, her voice muffled and distorted by the closed door.

I gasped again and stumbled out of the bathroom. My hands
shaky, the knob was difficult to turn, but I managed it after a moment of trying.

“So you’re back already?” Aldréa crossed her arms and sneered. “What’s wrong with you and why are you covered in
…
blood?”

I bent over and held my stomach while another wave of needles pierced my insides. My ankles weakened and I toppled over onto Aldréa’s feet.

“Get off me!” She yanked her shoes out from under me and backed away.

Was I dying?

“I need help,” I uttered, the words barely coming out. My
eyes began to water and violent chills rippled through my body.

“Deal with it,” Aldréa huffed, turning away from me.

“Come back!” I reached out toward her. The sight of her back made me anxious and a rush of adrenaline pushed my pain aside.

“Damn you,” I seethed, coming to my feet.

“What?” She turned to face me again. “Don’t you talk to me like that, you little bitch.”

I held myself and stumbled closer to her, dragging my feet
as the stinging slowly subsided. The pain went away for a
moment and then returned. It came and went in sharp bursts.
The anger brewing inside made my heartbeat spike and I was intimately in tune with each new wave of pain.