Endless (Shadowlands) (20 page)

“Krista,” I said through my teeth. “Run.”

“What?” she whined.

I was about to turn and push her as hard as I could back into the mist, but then—right then—I heard her. Her voice was so close she couldn’t have been more than two feet away.

“Rory! You came!”

“Darcy!”

I reached into the darkness—reached toward the voice—and my fingers found cloth. A sleeve. I dug my fingernails into it as hard as I could and pulled. I had her. I had Darcy. Then the person I was clinging to appeared, and it wasn’t Darcy.

It was Steven Nell.

He looked exactly the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. The stringy dark hair falling over his forehead. The thick glasses perched on his nose. The cruel smile on his thin, pale lips.

Suddenly time stopped. I felt the blade of his knife in my stomach as if it had just happened. Saw the blood in my sister’s hair. My father’s body crumbling to the ground. It was as if every nightmare I’d had for the past month was suddenly coming to life in vivid, horrifying, excruciating detail.

“Rory Miller,” he said gleefully. “You’ve come home.”

Suddenly I knew. He wanted to do it again. He was going to do it again. He was going to murder us, slaughter us, over and over and over again for as long as the universe existed. Until the end of time. He was looking forward to it.

I let go of him and ran. Right into Krista.

She looked up at me, her blue eyes dark with rage.

“Krista?” I whispered.

“Welcome to the Shadowlands, Rory.”

Then she shoved me with a strength I never would have imagined she had in her, right into Steven Nell’s waiting arms.

I stared at Krista, feeling Steven Nell’s awful breath warming the back of my neck. She was the accomplice? It wasn’t possible. She was my friend. My best friend. I’d treated her like a sister, and she had done the same for me. How could she have done this? How could she have tried to pin everything on me, dragged my family to the Shadowlands, plotted behind our backs, and lied to our faces?

Krista smoothed her wet hair back from her face and lifted her chin as she stared me down. But she was still Krista. Still a sweet, pretty girl who wanted nothing more than to be everyone’s friend.

Wasn’t she?

“I can’t just take her. You know that,” Steven Nell said, his watery eyes flicking over Krista like she was beneath his notice. “Rory Miller must come willingly.”

He held his right arm around my middle like a vise, my back against his torso, and reached up to run his frigid, dry knuckles down my cheek. I could feel the random stubble on his chin pinching my skull through my hair as my head rubbed up against it. Bile rose up in the back of my throat. I squirmed, trying to wrench away from him, but he was strong. So much stronger than he’d been in life.

“Krista?” I said, pulse pounding furiously in my veins. Every inch of my body trembled, which pissed me off. I hated showing fear in front of Nell. “What the hell is going on?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw something shift in the darkness. A whisper of a figure. My father? Darcy? Could I still save them?

“I just want to go home,” Krista said simply. “I don’t belong here.”

“That’s what this is about?” I demanded. “You getting to go to your damn prom?”

“Don’t you get it, Rory? I wasn’t supposed to die,” Krista snapped, bending at the waist. “You know it. I know it. And that night I brought Steven Nell up here, he told me the universe knew it, too. That it upsets the balance when someone takes their life by mistake. So he made me an offer. He wanted you for his eternal pet, but the Shadowlands won’t just take a goody-goody Lifer like you unless you come willingly. And he knew how to make that happen.”

“What about Darcy? She didn’t come willingly,” I said.

Krista smirked. “You forget: She wasn’t a Lifer yet. Not officially.”

“You’re insane,” I said, shaking my head, trying to pull away as Nell stroked my hair. “There’s nothing that could make me sign up for an eternity with him.”

“Oh, I think you will,” Nell said lightly.

He lifted a lock of my hair and slowly drew it under his nose, sniffing it. A disgusting shudder of sheer pleasure rocked his entire body before he reverently touched it to his lips. My bottom lip wobbled and I closed my eyes, trying not to give Nell the satisfaction of hearing me sob.

“He gave me the tainted coins. He told me that if I ushered eighteen souls to the Shadowlands, including your little family”—Krista spat the word as if it had singed her tongue—“I could have what I wanted. I could have my life back. I got Pete to help me because I knew I couldn’t overpower those people alone. Told him the Shadowlands would repay him for his hard work, too.”

“What did you promise him?” I bit out.

“He wanted to see his brother again. Kid died when Pete was only eight years old. So I told him he could go to the Light and see him.” Krista shrugged.

“And I’m guessing you never intended to deliver on that promise.”

Krista smirked. “How could I? I’m just little old me. Little old
persuasive
me. It was just too bad Cori followed me, when I went to meet up with Pete that night after he ‘disappeared,’ and overheard us together. It really sucked, having to push her off that cliff.”

My throat burned, and tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Couldn’t believe it was coming from Krista Parrish’s mouth.

“Why eighteen souls?” I asked. “Why take my family?”

“Because he knew if I did that, he’d be able to cut another deal. With you.”

I swallowed hard. My scalp tingled every time Nell’s fingernails brushed my hair. “What?” I asked. “What deal?”

Krista took a step forward. Her eyes looked dead as she tilted her chin and got right in my face. “Your eternal soul for theirs.”

My heart free-fell into my stomach. Nell started to laugh. I felt the breath of it against my ear. His scrawny body shook from the force of it, jarring against mine in fits and starts. I turned my head to gaze into the endless black. My family was in there somewhere, and I was the only one who could save them.

As long as I sacrificed myself.

Not that it was even a choice. Was there any way I could ever choose myself over them? They wouldn’t even be dead if it weren’t for me. If I hadn’t gotten away from Nell that day in the woods, Darcy and Dad would still be alive. They’d be sad without me, sure, but they’d be alive and they’d move on. Instead, their lives were over and they’d just logged a few days in hell to boot, thanks to little old me.

The choice was clear. If it was either me suffering forever in the Shadowlands, or them, I picked me.

I looked down at my feet, a steely cold resolve coming over me. I knew they didn’t deserve to be here, but in the end, in truth, didn’t I? Nell might have been an evil bringer of death, but he was still a living human being, and I had killed him. I had done it on purpose. I had done it with malice in my heart. I had relished the act of it. In that moment, murdering him had felt good. It had felt right.

My dad and Darcy didn’t belong in the Shadowlands. But maybe I did.

I closed my eyes and pictured my father, Darcy, my mom. In my mind’s eye, I looked at each of them, solidifying their images in my mind, and said good-bye.

“No, Rory!” I heard Darcy scream, though whether it was real or imagined, I had no idea. “No! Don’t do it! Please!”

I blocked out her appeals, which made what I was about to do that much easier.

I opened my mouth to say it. To say yes, I would willingly go to the Shadowlands if the innocents would be set free. I looked up at Nell. His awful grin widened, deepening the lines on his face.

“I—”

“Rory, no!” Tristan’s voice shouted. “Don’t do it! It’s a trap!”

Tristan and Joaquin appeared out of the mist. Krista reeled around, yelling, and struck out at Joaquin. His eyes widened in surprise, but he reacted quickly. He grabbed her arm, pinned it to her side, and kicked her legs out from under her, shoving her face-first to the ground.

“What the hell is going on?” Joaquin asked me.

“She’s the one who’s been sending people to the Shadowlands,” I said. “It was Krista the whole time.”

Tristan and Joaquin exchanged a look, as if this didn’t entirely surprise them.

“So Liam was telling the truth,” Tristan said.

Joaquin knelt beside Krista, his lips a millimeter from her ear. “If I were you, I’d stay the hell down.”

Then he shoved himself up and placed his foot on the small of her back.

“Rory.” Tristan reached for me, but Nell pulled me back, a few steps farther into the abyss. I eyed Tristan desperately, wishing there was some way he could save me from this, like he’d saved me from so many other awful moments. But not even Tristan could fix this.

“Rory, listen to me. It was a setup,” he said quickly. “Bea found Liam. It turns out he and Pete knew each other in the other world, and that was why they always acted so weird around each other. Liam didn’t tell us, because he thought his connection to Pete might make us suspect him, and Pete didn’t want to get Liam involved. But last night Krista let him go, hoping to distract us with another manhunt. He was with Lalani in her room by the docks, and he’s fine.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s good,” I said, trying as hard as I could to cling to something positive. At least Liam would be okay. Eventually. At least my first instincts about him had been correct.

“Pete’s so-called confession was a setup,” Tristan continued. “They wanted you to be alone—or sort of alone—when you heard it. Pete said Krista helped the Tse twins escape the mayor earlier and got them riled up again. The mob was just a distraction for the rest of us to deal with so she could get you to go into the jail alone and he could blurt it out to you—make you come up here. None of this is real.”

“What about my family?” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the abyss. “They’re real. And I can save them, Tristan.”

“You don’t know that.” His voice was a high-pitched croak, his eyes rimmed with red. “We’re talking about pure evil here, Rory. You really think you can trust anything he says? Anything they say?” he added, looking from Nell to Krista. “How do you know you don’t say yes and then you’re all just stuck here forever?”

The heavy reality of this possibility settled in over my shoulders.

“Are you calling me a liar?” Steven Nell asked, tightening his grip on me. Rage flared behind Tristan’s eyes, and I could tell it was taking everything within him to keep from lashing out, to keep control. He didn’t acknowledge Nell but looked directly at me.

“Don’t do it, Rory. Please,” he begged, inching toward me. “You don’t deserve to spend eternity in the Shadowlands.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t,” I told him. “And maybe this will work or maybe it won’t. But, Tristan, I have to try. If there’s a chance I can save my family, I have to try.” I looked up at Nell, swallowing back my revulsion at the sight of his face, so very close to mine. “I’d like to say good-bye.”

Nell’s watery blue eyes softened as he looked at me, and somehow, that expression of caring was more horrifying than anything he’d ever done to me. It was as if he was calling me his with that one look.

“You have one minute,” he said, releasing me.

I staggered away from him and threw myself at Tristan. He held me so close to his chest I couldn’t separate his heartbeat from mine. I buried my face in his wet T-shirt, gasping for air.

“Don’t,” he said in my ear, his teeth clenched. “Don’t you leave me. We’re going to be together forever. Please, Rory. Don’t do this. Don’t.”

I tilted my head up, and tears flowed freely down my face. “I’m so sorry, Tristan. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’ll never stop loving you, I swear.”

He leaned down and pressed his lips to mine firmly, desperately, longingly, and I kissed him back as hard as I could, trying to impress the memory of me into him, as if some piece of me could really linger there forever.

“I love you, too,” he said.

“I know.”

Somehow, I released him. I turned and looked at Joaquin. His chest was heaving, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. I stepped up to him, stood on my toes, touched his cheek, and kissed it.

“Good-bye.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I knew how he felt. I knew what I was doing to both of them. But I also knew that I was doing the right thing. I stepped past Krista, who was smiling beneath Joaquin’s boot, and stood in front of Nell.

“Don’t,” Tristan pleaded, tears streaming down his face. “Don’t, don’t, don’t.”

I lifted my chin, not letting myself consider what was to be.

“Yes,” I said to Steven Nell, to my worst nightmare come to life. “I’ll come with you.”

“No!” Tristan screamed.

Steven Nell smiled. My ears, my head, my heart, my lungs filled with the awful sucking sound that meant it was over. That meant I was being swallowed whole. Devoured. Never to see my family, my home, my love again.

“Rory, no! Please, no!”

Tristan reached for me, his arm and hand and fingers stretching out in pure despair, and then he was gone.