Exalted (18 page)

Julia gasped and pulled away. She closed her Sight, then
opened it again, trying once more to touch him. This time she focused on one
wound, and a minor one: a little knot over his right wrist. She tried to gently
untangle it, but the strands only wove themselves tighter.
 

Breathing hard, she turned to Drew. “I don't get it,” her
voice quivered. “What is going on?”

Crouching beside her, he held his hand out, like he wanted
to touch her but thought she might bolt if he did. When he spoke, the words
came slowly. Carefully. “I don't really know. As soon as we got into that huge
room, you tried to heal Cayne, and...”

Julia nodded. She remembered that part. “But how'd he—I
thought Methuselah was dead.” Her voice cracked as her thoughts got stuck in
high gear.

“He is. It was The Adversary...that, back there.”

Julia’s heart was pounding, the room spinning as she stared
down at Cayne.
“No.”

Drew nodded. “We only saw him a minute. He appeared after
you and Cayne got all glowy. That's when...” Drew swallowed. Lowered his voice
to a whisper. “Meredith came and—” His face crumpled, and this time he threw
his arm around Julia, pulling her to his chest. “She pulled you off Cayne. She
stopped you from continuing to get your energy sucked away. I think she must
have felt that you...” He inhaled deeply. “She knew that you weren't doing
well. She grabbed you and that’s when you...things kind of exploded,
and...Julia, it's not your fault. It's not the fault of anyone in this room.”

Julia was surprised to hear a keening sound come from her
throat. Drew, now shaking from head to toe, stroked her back as she turned
around toward the other side of the room, but nothing could prepare her for
what was in front of her: Meredith's body, laid out on her back, with her head
lolled to the side, a thin trail of blood coming from her mouth, and a deep red
rash all over her skin.

Meredith, sacrificed for her.

She heard Drew say, “I'm sorry.” Saw him reach for her.
Read the grief etched in his face. But Julia just couldn't believe it. She
could heal Meredith! No one else here was a healer—that was it!

She pushed past Drew and lunged for her bestie's feet.

Julia didn't look to her friend’s face, cradled in Nathan's
lap. She grabbed Meredith’s ankles and shut her eyes, willing herself to see
gold and purple. Instead she felt like she might be sick. Where she looked for
an aura...there was nothing.

“No,” she mumbled, clutching Mer's strong calf. She shut
her eyes, seeing painful flares over the auras of Carlin and Nathan. She glared
at them, feeling rage bubble somewhere deep inside. Meredith could not be dead!
Why were they acting like she was? Closing her eyes, Julia looked again for
Meredith's aura, the beautiful purple and gold, and when she didn't see it, her
mind stopped thinking. Feeling shocked and numb, she turned toward Cayne.

His aura was still there, nothing but a ball of knots, but
still there.

Her mind raced: disbelief. She whirled to Drew, feeling
like she was living in a thick gel. “Where is the Adversary?” she rasped.

“We didn't see where he went...after. There was some
commotion—”

“Something was happening,” Carlin cried, waving her arms
around her chest, like she was trying to explain something she couldn't put
into words. “He was...building power! I don't know! He spoke, but we could not
understand the language! The ground shook! We left!”

Drew nodded. “We came back down the hall a bit. This room
is close to the...to the big room,” he said thickly. He moved to Meredith's
side, opposite Carlin, and took her hand, looking down at her sparkly nails.
“We haven't seen him since.”

It was simply impossible to believe. The net had come down.
Julia was still alive. And Meredith...

***

She thought she'd been crying for a long time when she felt
someone shake her shoulder. Julia came up swinging, keeping her eyes shut
tightly, because damnit, she didn't want to be back in that room!

She sobbed even louder, and immediately, arms locked around
her. She took one deep, half-sobbed breath and she
knew:
“Cayne!”

His skin was hot and sticky, and he groaned when she
squeezed his waist too hard, but he was there. Cayne was holding her.

She closed her mind to the sounds of the world outside and
clung to his beautiful, murmured voice like the life raft that it was.

“Oh Julia... I'm so sorry... Shhhh...”

He was gentle. He was perfect. He was alive and he was
hers, but Julia wanted Meredith. All she wanted was Meredith.
“I don't know
if I can do this without her!”

She clutched Cayne's forearms, and as she sobbed she dared
to look again at her friend, lying so still on the ground, with Nathan's jacket
folded neatly over her body. She stared at Meredith—at her hair, at her closed
eyes, at her still mouth, at her blistered skin—and it still seemed like it
couldn't be real.

After an eternity, Cayne led her over to Meredith. Julia
crouched down beside her head; she gathered Meredith's long, beautiful, black
hair and pressed it against her cheek. Even after everything, it still smelled
like vanilla and flowers.

When she started whispering to Meredith, she felt Cayne
scoot away, just a few feet behind her, and she loved him ten times more for
giving her that privacy.

It was only when she'd cried some more, and said some more,
and asked
why
and said
thank
you
and kissed Meredith's
cool forehead, that she started to wonder where everybody went.

“Cayne?” He was right beside her in an instant, looking
tired but focused. “Um...where did everybody go?”

She could tell by the way his brows drew together that she
wouldn't like the answer. “We...heard some noise. You were sleeping. I had just
woken up, so we couldn't leave, and so—”

“So, spit it out!”

“It sounded like a bomb,” he told her quietly. “Hellfire,
maybe. I don't know. They went down to see, but I can tell you already... The
Adversary's been through here, and whatever they find... It isn't going to be
good.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

They could just stay put, or Cayne could see if he was
strong enough to fly her out the blown-out top of the pyramid. He could leave
her in the little room with Meredith while he went downstairs to the area where
the rest of their friends had gone and checked things out, or—

“Cayne, no way! We're staying together, and we're not
leaving Drew and Car and—” She choked on the name she didn't say, then tried
hard to push past it. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can't believe they left
us!”

To her surprise, Cayne hung his head. He mumbled, almost
too quiet for her to hear: “They didn't want to. I asked them to. I'm sorry.”
His voice was low as his green eyes rose to meet her brown ones. He groaned,
running his hands through his hair. “I'm sorry for all of this. For—for
her," he motioned to Meredith, then looked away. "I was such a
fucking idiot!"

Julia, still holding Meredith's silky hair in her closed
fist, shook her head. She reached out to touch Cayne's arm. “This is not your
fault.”

“Of course it is!” Cayne's eyes flashed, and he was on his
feet, unsteady, weak, but unable to sit still. “Do you remember the Authority
on the ski lift? He warned us that I was fated to kill you. But it wasn't an
Authority. That was The Adversary! He started manipulating me, then, and he
kept it up when I was in hell. I thought I had tricked him…" He laughed
bitterly—an awful, self-deprecating sound that hurt Julia's heart.

“He let me loose in Hell, and he had Edan bring you right
to me. And I was so sure of myself I didn't see how easy it all was."

He stopped pacing, panting with a pained look on his face,
but he was too angry to stop his tirade now. “I killed Methuselah, and The
Adversary used me as bait—for you!
If
Meredith hadn’t done what she did—"

He stood there, shoulders heaving, breathing hard. Julia
spread Mer's hair out beside her and got up, but as soon as she got close to
Cayne, he thrust his arms out in a stay-away stance. “I'm sorry, I just—” He
rubbed his face ferociously, almost clawing at it. “I'm so sorry.
GOD
.”

He sank down to his knees and clutched his head.
 
Julia knelt beside him. "It's not your
fault," she whispered. He turned his head into her shoulder, and Julia was
surprised to find tears soaking through her shirt.

***

Leaving Meredith was one of the most horrible things Julia
had ever had to do. As she and Cayne worked their way down the hallway, in the
direction in which they thought they'd find the common room, Julia felt like
each step brought her closer to breaking.

Cayne gave her a reason to hold herself together. He was
too weak to walk any distance, so she was practically carrying him.
Occasionally he'd glance at her guiltily, and she would make herself smile.

It was hard to put on the brave face when all she wanted to
do was curl into a ball and cry forever, and it only got harder when they began
to hear noises below them. Things that sounded like yelling.

"I think I should go ahead," Cayne murmured as
they slowed their steps.

Julia threw him a skeptical look. “Dream on, weakling.”

Cayne grumbled, and she could see the wheels turning in his
head. But he couldn't deny what she'd said. Their theory was that channeling so
much energy had overwhelmed his body, which explained why he got worse instead
of better when she tried to heal him.

Julia's ears strained, but all she could make out clearly
was a male voice; it seemed to be booming, as if over a microphone, and it only
took a few more steps down the narrow hall for Julia to identify it.

“Nathan,” Cayne said in unison with her thoughts.

The sound seemed to be coming from their left, probably
from behind the two big, stone doors a few dozen feet down the hallway.
 

They were almost to them when the doors flew wide and Shea stepped
into the hall. Julia shrieked. She seriously shrieked just like a horror movie
victim, and Cayne stepped in front of her, summoning his blood dagger.

Julia had last seen the girl near the gate to Heaven
outside St. Moritz, where Shea had been fighting on the wrong side. Right now,
the girl's eyes were huge, and she definitely didn't seem to be after them. She
backed up, bumping into the stone door, then fumbled behind her.

"Watch out," Julia warned, bracing herself for
whatever trick the girl might play, but a second later Shea was holding a pad
and pen, looking like she wasn't sure if she should use it or bolt. With a
frightened glance at Julia, she held up her finger and started writing, holding
up the pad when she was finished.

Nathan asked me to summon Julia, and to make you both
invisible before I led you into the commons.

Julia frowned, and Cayne took the note from her. When he
finished reading it, he gave the poor girl the evil eye.

“You can put your blood dagger away,” Julia murmured.
“We're fine.”

She stepped around the girl and peered into the common
room. The vast room, with mud walls, stone floors, and an arched wood ceiling
was filled with hyped up Chosen, plus a bunch of broken, wooden chairs and
tables, and Julia was, for a moment, shocked to see Nathan and Carlin on a big,
stone dais situated at the far left corner of the room.

What she didn't see was The Adversary. Julia shook with relief,
which she tried to hide, and took the pen from Shea.
Did he tell you why?

The younger girl shook her head, but then wrote:
Perhaps
to hide the Nephilim as you enter the room
. After a second's
hesitation, she added:
It's not a trap. And by the way, I'm sorry about
Switzerland. Really sorry.

Julia turned to Cayne. “What do you think?”

He shrugged, and Julia wrote:
Details?

 
It's just an
illusion. Promise.

“Okay.” She nodded, and Shea got to work.

By the time Julia and Cayne had both been
magicked—something they couldn't tell had been done at all, as they could still
see each other—and were walking into the common room, Julia had heard enough of
Nathan's talking to piece together what had happened after she passed out.

From what she could tell, The Adversary and a bunch of
Demons had passed through shortly after the net had come down. They'd killed
fifty-three Chosen, wounded dozens of others, and shocked everyone else, who,
aside from noticing that Dizzy, Adam, and a few others had run out of the
dormitory area, never to return, had no idea anything out of the ordinary was
transpiring.

As they followed Shea toward the dais where Nathan was
speaking, Julia noticed that a few sheet-cloaked bodies still dotted the room.
The sight drove the air out of her lungs, and again her mind cried:
not
true, not true!

Meredith was not—

No way was she—

Julia gritted her teeth. Every time she thought about
Meredith, diving into the fray to save her...

Out of nowhere, a sob rose in her throat, and she had to
stop in her tracks to breathe through it.
  

Cayne wrapped his free arm around her, and Julia tried to
focus on the moment. A Chosen woman was saying something about food rations. Another
mentioned burning the dead. Cayne was leaning on Julia heavily, and she
wondered how long it would take him to be back to normal.
  

They followed
Shea up the stairs and onto the stone dais, which was about the size of a
living room, and Julia gestured to a spot where the dais met the rocky wall.
She helped Cayne over, and the two of them sat side-by-side. After a second,
Julia realized they were indeed invisible, and she curled up against Cayne,
wondering what Nathan's plan was for them—and if she even wanted to find out.