Endless (44 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

‘Oh, leave me not in this eternal woe, For if thou diest, my Love, I know not where to go.’

John Keats

M
y lungs sucked in air greedily.
It hurt. Every breath harder and faster than the last, trying to sate my oxygen-starved body.

Someone was with me, coaxing me. A low voice, speaking constantly, calling me. A hand touched me.

So familiar.

It brushed the hair from my face, shaking. The voice continued to murmur in quivering broken gasps, like crying.

Phoenix.

My body was coming back to life. I started to open my eyes, but as I did, I felt a terrible – and vital – snap.

The scream that escaped my lips was shrill.

It felt like I would never stop –
could
never stop – screaming. The pain went beyond the physical, beyond anything I’d ever known. I would have rather suffered an eternity of flying arrows than another second of this agony.

I was lost. Taken.

‘Breathe. You have to breathe, Violet. Please, God, just let her breathe!’ Phoenix cried out. He was shaking me.

What’s happening to me?

I managed to open
my eyes. Phoenix’s body sagged. ‘Thank you, God,’ he whispered. And then, before I could scream again, before I could cry, or make any sense of what was going on, his hands went to my chest. The impact was like lightning.

I sucked in a sharp breath, my mind and body in extreme overload.

No death should last so long. Surely the end was near.

But what I saw was not the end. It was something altogether new. Phoenix’s power shimmered all around him. I’d always seen the moving shadows that followed him, often with swirls of gold running through them, like spun toffee. He had told me once that he inherited them from his mother – but this was different. The shadows were gone.

What came from him now looked like black crystal fire. Dark – but beautifully so, with sharp lines and a reflective quality, it was like the midnight you long to see. And from within the flames dazzling silver strands exploded like fireworks.

They encircled us, bound us. Left him slowly.

And came to me.

At the core of Phoenix’s power tornado, something hovered, reminding me of the reflections I always saw in the angel realm – if that was the right thing to call it any more.

Phoenix was struggling above me, unusually weakened and looking like he had used everything he had to put on this extraordinary light show. He stumbled back.

As he did … I remembered.

‘You killed me,’ I whispered. The pain that I’d been feeling since I first woke was continuing to build. It was insufferable.

‘I’m dying again,’ I moaned. I wanted
it to happen soon, wanted this pain to end.

‘Relax,’ he said.

Before I could explain that was impossible, I felt the reality of what he’d done to me. A new and strange presence moved through me. It was foreign and my body began to violently spasm, trying to reject it, but another part, my angelic part, made room and pulled it close.

I could feel the power it offered. And more.

It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced except for with one other. An angel. I could sense Phoenix in a way I’d never done before. My heart broke for him. So much time. So much pain. Too much rejection.

I knew what he had done.

I grabbed his arm.

‘New death?’ I gasped, finally understanding, the unbearable pain still growing.

Coldness spread through me like burning ice.

He smiled sadly. ‘And new life,’ he whispered.

Tears rolled down my face. ‘You gave me your essence.’

‘Shh,’ he soothed. ‘It was the only way to release you from our bond. We still have one, but it’s different now. This one cannot kill you. You’re free.’

I closed my eyes. My body bucked. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Phoenix’s essence was changing me, but that wasn’t what was causing the world-shattering pain that was consuming me.

I heard the banging again, but this time it was from above. They were breaking through the ceiling.

Phoenix looked
up, frustrated. ‘The room is a vault!’ he yelled.

‘Let us in there, you bastard!’ Steph screamed.

‘Eden, are you okay?’ Spence’s voice followed.

I started to shake all over. ‘I’m cold,’ I said.

Phoenix turned back to me and attempted to hold me down, but it only got worse. My body started convulsing as if it were rejecting my very existence.

My eyes shot open.

Oh. My. God.

I grabbed at my chest. At my heart. I clawed at it, feeling as if it had burned away to nothing.

‘I died!’ I gasped. I turned my wide eyes to Phoenix. ‘I died!’ I screamed, the pain and the truth tumbling down on me.

Phoenix was wordless.

‘No! Tell me, no!’ I begged.

No words. He just stared at me.

‘No!’ I screamed.

But Phoenix didn’t need to say it.

I pushed my power out, searched everywhere for the link. I beckoned my soul and cried out for his. I pleaded, I begged, I cried.

Nothing.

Nothing but a billowing coldness that blasted me, freezing me to the core.

I rolled off the table I had been lying on and dropped to the ground, gagging, not wanting the air that continued to enter my lungs and torture me with life.

‘No,’ I gulped. ‘No, no, no!’ My head shook trying to make it so. ‘No, no, no!’ I gasped, again and again. ‘No!’

But there would
only be one answer for me.

Yes.

The connection was gone.

I had died …

Lincoln’s soul had shattered.

He was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

‘What can be worse; Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned.’

John Milton

P
hoenix held
me from behind, his arm around my waist, as I collapsed to the ground and screamed with everything I had.

Every second that passed was a long, unbearable eternity without him. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t possibly be expected to breathe, to live, without him. What was left of my soul battered me violently, demanding to know where its counterpart was, blaming me for its loss.

But he was nowhere to be found.

I grabbed at my hair, ripping clumps of it out as I grappled desperately for sanity. And failed.

Phoenix held on as I struggled against him.

First absent-mindedly and uncontrolled, but then, along with a dawning realisation, my screams focused on him.

‘You did this!’ I accused. I didn’t even sound like myself. ‘You killed me!’

He continued to hold me up.

I flipped around and jumped on top of him using strength that was not there. I don’t even remember the first punch, or how many times I hit
him, all I know is that he just lay there and let me until he was bleeding badly and I finally fell on top of him, crying.

He pulled me close, held me tight.

I screamed and cried. I screamed and cried.

Hours passed.

I heard the intermittent banging on the door as Steph and Spence and whoever else was out there tried to get in. But it was all so distant now. I lost track of reality and writhed with the pain and loss. The misery of everything Lincoln and I were and would never be again overwhelmed me.

Phoenix held me silently, so tightly I was sure if he let go my body would fall apart.

Finally, thoughts started to connect to form broken questions.

‘Why?’ I spat out, the one word breaking me all over again.

Was it revenge?

Phoenix kept his arms around me as he spoke. ‘It was the only way. We thought of every alternative but you needed the bond with him first to survive the arrows and this was the only way to release you from our physical connection.’

No.

‘We? Lincoln … He knew?’

‘I told him you were our only hope to destroy Lilith. He wasn’t surprised. He said Dapper had told him something before you left the city, something else that made him believe you were the key to her destruction.’

Dapper had always had suspicions about the thirteenth ingredient. He must have told Lincoln he thought it could be me.

‘My blood,’ I lifted a wrist then
slapped it back down. ‘The markings are poison. I’m the goddamn apple, snake, whatever!’ I cried.

Phoenix nodded sombrely. ‘They told me when I brought you here. Your blood is lethal to exiles in human form. Angels in human form, too, I would guess. That’s what Onyx told you, isn’t it?’

I nodded.

He sighed. ‘Lincoln and I knew that if I tried to help you, Lilith would turn on me. She has maternal power over me. If she chose, she could force me to inflict wounds on you or she could just kill me. I told Lincoln I knew how to break the connection so that no matter what happened to me, you would be safe. When I told him what it involved he said a source had hinted as much to him, but as far as he knew no exiles were capable of sharing their essence.’ Phoenix half smiled, bitterly. ‘But then, I’ve always been different.’

I remembered how relentless Lincoln had been in his quest to chase down sources and informants before leaving the city.

I’m such a fool.

‘When Lincoln drove me out of here the other night, we talked, we fought … we reached an agreement.’ Phoenix’s hand moved towards my face but did not touch. ‘We knew no matter what we said to you, you would still go there to save those kids – you would’ve just insisted on doing it without the soul-bond and we couldn’t risk that.’

I gasped for air. ‘For me, or for the children?’

‘Both.’

Everyone had been planning everything. My life, my death, my purpose, their ends.

‘Why not do this first? Break our connection
before I bonded with Lincoln’s soul?’ My anger was building again.

Phoenix shook his head. ‘We couldn’t be sure your death wouldn’t alter the soulmate connection. The risk was too high.’

‘I was never going to die,’ I said, arriving at the painful truth.

‘Not for any longer than necessary,’ Phoenix confirmed.

Lincoln had known what would happen since he came back that night with the bruise on his face. He’d already made his choices before we slept together. He had known that Phoenix would kill and revive me, that he would give me his essence to release me, that his own soul would shatter, that … That I would be left alive … without him.

More tears – sorry, sorry tears – slipped down my face.

‘There was no other way. Trust me, Violet, we looked at it from every angle. There was no way to stop Lilith killing all those kids.’

My voice trembled. ‘You could’ve let me die like we planned!’ My self-control broke and I struck out at him again, this time with swipes and desperate slapping. ‘You should’ve let me die! I don’t want to live without him! I can’t! I can’t … I can’t breathe, I can’t … I … You should’ve let me die!’

‘I know,’ he winced. ‘But I couldn’t.’

‘I was there! They forced me back. I was so close I could almost reach out and touch the reflections. They wanted me to go with them, but the angels stopped me. I should’ve gone!’

‘What are you talking about?’ Phoenix asked, suddenly grabbing my shoulders. ‘What do you mean
reflections
?’

‘The shimmerings. I see them when the angels come to me. They’re always in the background calling to me.’

Phoenix slumped
down, defeated. ‘Oh, damn them all. They’re pulling way too many strings.’

I didn’t know what he meant. Didn’t care.

‘I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I am,’ he said. ‘I know I brought Lilith here. I know how awful it is to lose the very thing you have started to live for. I’ll hate myself for eternity for doing this to you. But there
is
a way to stop Lilith. Together. We can still get the rest of those kids out. We can get the Scripture back, your mum. And … we can get Lincoln, too, get … his body out so we can …’ He looked away.

I punched him, then gripped his shirt, shaking him. ‘So we can kill him? That’s what you want to say, isn’t it? That’s what the two of you agreed, didn’t you? That you’d kill him!’

Phoenix took my hits, still doing nothing to stop me.

‘Yes,’ he confessed. ‘He didn’t want to be … He wanted you to be free.’

I slumped away from him, exhausted, moving into the corner of the armoury.

‘I lost the only thing I would fight for.’ I hauled myself to my feet, my knees knocking together, colt-like. My body had been mostly healed from the wounds but I was broken and weak in every way that mattered. Phoenix moved towards me, the injuries I’d inflicted on him already healed.

‘No!’ I put out a hand. ‘Don’t come near me.’ I made it to the door and unlocked it before pulling it open. Steph, Spence, Salvatore, Dapper and Onyx all stood from where they’d been sitting on the stairs. Steph was crying.

They had heard.

Salvatore barrelled into the room and I heard him hit Phoenix. Steph made a move towards me but I put up my hand to stop her,
grabbed onto the railing and took a step. Onyx cast his eyes down when I passed. Dapper watched me with undiluted pity.