Hereafter (6 page)

“Probably. I’m sort of a hard one to forget,” he murmured in a cocky tone against my ear.

I slapped against the top of his hand playfully and smiled. “I’m being serious. I won’t be a Link anymore, so I know I won’t see you, but will I remember you? Will I remember any of this?” My smile faded quickly, and I felt Jet’s thumb begin to caress my forearm gently.

“I’m not sure,” he answered solemnly. “But I can tell you this, you will always be with me, Rowan, always—right here.” He pulled away and drew my hand up to cover his heart. There was no heart beating rapidly beneath my palm, but I knew exactly what he meant—I would always be weaved within the threads of his soul.

I could say the same about him.

“Good, because that’s right where I always want to be,” I whispered and then pressed my lips to his.

We parted soon and I wondered how alive I would feel once we were no longer able to touch or communicate. Doubt crept back into my mind, and my resolve that I was making the right decision faded, until images of my father, drunk and lying broken across my bedroom floor, flashed through my mind once more.

Sacrifice. A word I now understood the true meaning of.

Either I remained a Reaper Council member and got to be with Jet, but left my father to suffer in his own form of hell. Or, I chose to save him by coming back, but lost everything I had with Jet.

Could I settle for a shadowed sense of myself, because I knew that was what I would be without Jet in my life, whether I remembered him after all of this or not. My very soul would be shadowed by its loss of him forever.

I leaned my head against his chest just as tendrils of blackness began to swirl around my ankles and I felt a familiar tug pulling at my soul. I was being summoned to another Reaper Ruling.

“No, every time you leave it’s always forever before we can meet up again. Hold on to me and close your eyes,” Jet demanded.

I did as I was told and felt anxiety swell within my soul. A strange sensation rippled through me, one I distinctly remembered from crossing through the veil and into the Spiritual Realm when Jet had been training me to become a Reaper. When I opened my eyes again, I found that I was standing in front of a gray stone doorway with the words
Purgatory Portal
harshly etched into it.

The difference between this portal and the Crossover Portal was infinite. Instead of a cute little building with a golden sign hung above a set of double doors, green grass, flowers, and an endless blue sky above, there was nothing besides the stone doorway standing by itself in a patch of burnt, brittle grass. A cool wind blew, sending strands of long hair brushing across my face. I shivered, actually feeling the chill sweep across me.

“I can already feel its coldness seeping into me,” I said, gazing up at the enormous door.

“I know, but we don’t have time to stare. Either we’re going to do this or we’re not. Decide now,” Jet demanded, taking my hands in his.

The blackness had already begun to create my cloak. I had mere seconds before I disappeared from his grasp, before I could no longer fight against the tugging of my soul.

“I don’t know what to do… I don’t want to lose you, but at the same time, I can’t leave my father the way that he is when there’s a possibility I could change everything back to the way that it was before,” I said, my voice more of a plea than anything. I was terrified Jet would think I didn’t care for him, that I was selfish and horrible for what I was about to do.

I watched as an emotion I could easily name clouded the blues of his eyes. It was the same emotion that had smothered me with a feeling of being isolated and cut off from everything more than once since I had become what I was—loneliness.

“I have to do this,” I whispered before he could speak, praying that he understood. Gazing into his sapphire eyes, I saw the tiny bit of hope Jet had that I would chose to stay with him die before a wall was put up to hide it.

“Let’s go then,” he insisted. His jaw set as he pulled me behind him toward the menacing doors of Purgatory.

CHAPTER SIX

Torment and sin, pain and evil floated through the air in a near suffocating haze. I could feel it surrounding me, brushing up against me, attempting to lure me in deeper and away from the door so I couldn’t escape as though it were alive. I licked my lips and tasted the bitterness of this place on my tongue. Jet’s hand tightened around mine, and I could sense his tension as he glanced at what lie before us. My eyes darted about in wonder, taking in my surroundings.

Purgatory was eerily beautiful, in a gothic sense. It was as if stepping through the door had taken us deep underground without taking any stairs. Cold, dark dirt lay beneath my bare feet, etched with deep ruts and grooves. There was no sky, only more dirt above me, bumpy and full of ridges. I felt as if I’d stepped inside a damp cave long ago forgotten by even the smallest of creatures. White fog bubbled from a crater a few hundred feet away from where Jet and I stood, and danced across the ground hypnotically.

Gripping my hand even tighter, Jet put one foot in front of the other, and we began making our way through the silent darkness that was Purgatory, toward the crater that dipped into the ground. After only a few steps, I noticed something at the cliff-like edge of the crater, something shinny and black that caught the small glint of light available and reflected it.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing, just before I realized what the objects were. “How are there crows down here?”

We’d taken a few steps before Jet shook his head and finally answered me. “Those aren’t crows; those are ravens.”

“How can you tell?” I wondered as we cautiously continued walking. The closer we got, the more I noticed. They hid in the shadows, watching.

“Ravens are much bigger than crows. All you have to do is look at their size,” Jet answered.

My eyes bounced from raven to raven until I found a cluster of three staring fixedly at me. They reminded me of the crows that used to stalk me with a similar haunting gaze and made fear prickle through my mind. I gripped Jet’s arm with my free hand and squeezed his hand tighter with my other. My eyes grazed over their inky feathers and obsidian eyes as I wondered what they were doing in Purgatory. If the crows had symbolized change—mainly the transition from a Link to a Reaper—then what did the ravens symbolize, if anything?

“Do you know why they’re here?” I whispered, afraid to spook them or anger them in any way.

“They’re drawn to death, darkness, and destruction,” Jet said as we crept up on the ledge of the crater. “They are also a mixture of Watchers and Trackers.”

My eyes remained fixated on them. “The Watchers of what, Purgatory?”

“Exactly,” Jet said, his footsteps faltering. “If we’re going to find your mother, then we’re going to need a little bit of help. I need you to summon one of the Trackers.”

I shifted my gaze from the ravens, breaking the hypnotic hold they had on me, and met his stare. His voice had been just above a whisper, but his eyes were intense and serious. “I don’t know how to summon anything.”

“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “Close your eyes and concentrate hard on what you need from this place—to find your mother. A Tracker will answer.”

I hadn’t even known there were Trackers until now, let alone that I held the power to beckon them. I thought of the definition of the word track and hoped that was a Tracker’s job, to find something, to track it down and nothing more.

Closing my eyes, I did just as Jet had told me and concentrated on what I needed. I repeated the same few words over and over in my mind:
I need someone to help find my mother in Purgatory
. There was a shift in the air, like a fan being switched on, and a cool breeze blew across my face. I opened my eyes and noticed that Jet and I were no longer alone and the watchful cluster of three ravens I’d been staring at had diminished down to two.

Jet tugged me slightly behind him. I eyed the girl leaning against the far wall, half in and half out of the shadows, who now stood in place of the third raven. How could Jet think she was a threat? She was slender and about my height with perfectly straight, onyx hair to her waist. She had violet eyes and a tight, black leather jumper on.

“Why would a Reaper Council member call out to help find a soul in Purgatory, especially one that was her mother? …This is the question I’ve been asking myself,” the girl said as she crossed her arms and eyed Jet and I suspiciously.

“The reason doesn’t matter. All that matters is you answered, so it must mean that you’ll help us,” Jet replied.

“This is true.” The girl smirked. “So, Council member, we’re searching for your mother, right?”

“Yes,” I answered, stunned this girl had been a raven seconds ago and now she seemed perfectly human.

“She was a suicide.” It wasn’t a question, but more like the girl was thinking out loud, gaining a feel for the entire situation. “What was the emotion behind the suicide?”

“Pain,” I answered and felt the word reverberate through my soul like a faint heartbeat. The air around me stirred, and I swore I heard it moan in ecstasy at the mention of the emotion.

The girl cast her violet eyes on me. “Good, this shouldn’t be too hard then…unless she’s been here a while.”

“What do you mean,
unless she’s been here a while
?” I bit my bottom lip while I waited on the answer I feared I already knew. Jet squeezed my hand in his reassuringly.

“As long as it wasn’t hate that fueled the deciding factor to end her life, the chances of her being deep within Purgatory are slim. Those she left behind probably miss her, which means they probably cried. This will lighten her sentence and lets me know that we won’t need to go in too deep to find her. Your mother should be on the outer edges of Purgatory somewhere.” She shifted on her feet, her violet eyes leaving mine in favor of the dirt floor beneath us. “This can also be a problem—her sentence being light—because it means that she would only have to be here for a short amount of time before she is allowed to Crossover. If that has happened, then whatever reason it is you search for her cannot be resolved.”

I couldn’t speak. There were no words for what I was feeling. Jet’s arm snaked around me and pulled me close, but even his touch didn’t ease the alarm and panic that the girl’s words had released within me. What would I do if she was already gone? What would happen to my father, then? I didn’t even want to think about the outcome of either.

“Then let’s go,” I said in a calm, firm voice that surprised even myself. “I don’t want to waste any more time standing here.”

Jet released me and I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, knowing that all I would see was the pain and heartache I’d created for him swirling within the sapphire blue of his eyes. I licked my lips and tasted resentment floating in the air. A tiny part of me wondered if it was emanating from Jet because of what I was about to do, what I wasn’t detouring him from helping me do.

“Okay then,” the girl said, pushing away from the wall. “By the way, my name is Val.”

“I’m Rowan and this is Jet,” I said as we began to follow behind her.

Jet didn’t speak. He didn’t grip my hand or touch me in the slightest. Instead, he crammed his hands into his front pockets and silently walked while staring at his scuffed-up sneakers. I frowned and thought once more about how selfish I was being.
Was
I being selfish? I didn’t know anymore. Either way I went, pain would be brought upon someone. It all boiled down to whose heart could handle the pain best—Jet’s or my father’s. My heart would inescapably be broken either way. Torment lingered on my lips, coating my mouth with its bitterness, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was emanating from me.

Wonderful. Not only could I feel my emotions more strongly here in Purgatory, but I could also taste them.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When we reached the edge of the crater, wisps of white fog clung around my ankles, an eerie reminder of what I was trying to escape, only a different color. At first glance, I thought the crater was nothing but a drop-off and silently wondered what we were supposed to do next, jump? But as I continued to stare into the swirling white mist rising around us, I began to see there was a set of stairs. Jet gripped my hand and helped me slip off the craters edge and onto the first chiseled step. They were made of a grayish stone, and now that I was standing on the first one, I could see that thousands of them descended into the misty fog below.

“It’s not as it appears to be,” Val said, obviously taking note to mine and Jet’s unease at the sight of the endless stairway. “That’s something you must remember about this place.”

“You’ve been here before?” I asked even though I already knew what her answer would be, but I sought comfort in the thought that Jet and I weren’t going into this completely blind.

Val smirked at me and then started down the stairs. “Of course.”

I counted thirteen steps before I finally decided to glance over my shoulder and see how far we’d actually come. I could see nothing besides the misty fog as it reached up into the endless darkness above. Jet squeezed my hand once and flashed me a hint of a smile. It was forced, I could tell, and then it was gone.