Hold the Light (39 page)

But I pressed on, strangely inspired by my own blood as it relentlessly tried to return. I pushed onwards, gritting my teeth until I crashed against the gravestone. I smiled as I read Jessica's name on the stone.

"Keep it up," I heard a female voice say.

Head drooping with sting of sweaty hair in my eyes, I looked up to Amber. She was smirking from above; hand on the sword hilt with its tip in the dirt. Crouching down, keeping the sword still, she spoke into my face.

"Almost dead brother?"

"Help, help me Amber"

"No. I think I'll watch you bleed to death," she said, and looked right into my eyes. "And take what's inside you."

"No, oh God, no. Amber, don't do it."

"Sorry, George, it's too powerful to pass up."

My head drooped. I had to fight to stay awake. All I wanted was sleep. My eyelids were so heavy. My blinks were slow and drawn out. I saw images of Jessica when my eyes were shut. My limbs grew too heavy to move. Oh God, how could Amber do this to me?

Sleep invaded like a bitter enemy and pushed fiercely against my eyelids. I struggled to retaliate until warmth tickled my face. I cracked a faint smile as my eyes slid open.

I had no idea what to expect to see, but to find a strange weaving fire was surely at the bottom of the list. Small sparks shot from the blaze and rocketed into the air like shooting stars. I watched in childlike wonderment as the sparks exploded. Curiosity made me search for the source. My eyes followed a trail that lead to the lantern atop the hill. I blinked in confusion.

The fire before me burned with more power and illumination than that little old lantern could ever possess.

I was hallucinating. Yes, had to be. Seeing things in the throes of death.

But no matter how I tried to convince myself, the flames burned in a chaotic yet gentle manner. Its warmth permeated my pores and melted the ice within me. As the cold beneath my skin receded, the grips on my throat and chest grew weaker and the gift's feel became distant, feebly echoing from the depths of my mind. For the first time in years I was warm.

Yet, at the same time, I began to loose feeling. My limbs tingled and began to go numb. Amber drew in closer.

My bottom lip peeled away from the top and cracked a small opening between my lips. The back of my jaw stung. A chill so cold it burned swelled on the back of my tongue and projected a thin blue radiance from my mouth. It shone directly into Amber's eyes.

"Yes," she greedily beckoned. "Come on now, come to me..."

Her laughter rang out loud and malevolent. I wanted to scream as I watched her slowly assimilate the gift, but serenity engulfed my worries. What I wanted didn't seem to be of much consequence any longer.

The cold of the gift gripped my heart one last time, in an earnest and pathetic scream, but as of then, tranquility coursed through my brain. I couldn't have cared less. Then, I felt the gift no more. It seeped from my lips in slow viscous dribbles, drooling all the way to the damp grass. The gift, slobbering from my mouth, gathered in a dull neon blue pool at my knees and shimmered in the moonlight. I stared in a stupor at the mighty gift, the ruin of so many lives, as it puddle together looking no greater than a glob of toothpaste.

As the last bit of slaver suspended from my lips fell, the puddle began to congeal. A black crust formed along the fringes, rapidly dulling the azure luster. The shell expanded beyond the edges and grew like a scab until it swallowed the blue sheen. The brilliant blue gift sat before us, after spewing from my mouth as weak vomit, in the dark slick grass like a navy blue lump of coal.

Last bits of motion manifested in my fingers as they pathetically twitched toward the granite looking gift. They didn't come near and I collapsed onto the headstone and rolled off it onto my back.

The last of my blood trickled from my wound. Not a single globule tried to reenter. Blood was everywhere. It was as if my eyes were tinted red. My hand timidly scuttled across my chest and fumbled around the inside of my coat until my fingers found my yellow piece of paper.

"Amber don't," I gasped. "It'll turn you ..."

"Of course it will," she interrupted. "I'll be powerful and use this the way you should've."

The gift sat quietly on the ground, as innocent as a fallen apple. Amber poked at it with the point of the sword. She pulled a thick glove from her back pocket and put it on. I stared into her eyes. Her betrayal sat heavily on the air between us.

"Please Amber, just let it go."

"No way. Besides, that's my plan for you. Dad always said, 'Never waste an opportunity.'"

"You'll regret this," I wheezed.

"Power buys forgiveness," she said and pinched the gift between her gloved fingers.

Amber gazed at it with awe and wonder as it rested comfortably on her palm. I could see her pondering how she could manipulate it to her will. She seemed prepared to handle the gift and her victory filled her eyes, but hadn't clue where to begin.

Leaning in close to the rock of a gift, her lips so near she looked to be kissing it, Amber whispered one short phrase to the chunk through a wide toothy grin.

Then it twitched. She gazed at the gift inquisitively. It shuddered again.

A strange utterance emanated from her gloved hand that cut through the autumn air. I almost missed the sound as it landed softly on my ears. It was meant for Amber, but I heard it.

"Centuries of sorrow, all for you."

Her eyes widened to saucers. The gift's dullness peeled away and it began to pulse. A blast of blue light shot directly at her. Weak and dying, I watched as she received all the gift had absorbed from its three hosts. Amber's face contorted in shudders of anguish. All the loss and suffering of our worlds hit her in a moment. She gnashed her teeth then screamed into the night air. Her breath puffed out and spiraled up to the treetops. She reeled under the weight of the gift's tortures. Under the weight of holding the light. All the carnage of the last two centuries ran through her.

She crashed to her knees and begged for mercy. Her pleas fell on the deaf. The gift tumbled from her fingers and fell to the ground beside her. I wanted to feel sorry for her. I wanted to help, but my sympathies were dying with me.

My fingers closed over the crumpled piece of yellow paper and I slowly unfolded it. I bore my soul to the open air. I tried to read the note but couldn't. All strength left my fingers and the note quietly slipped away. It swayed back and forth in the breeze until it hit the ground. I rolled to my side and let my arms collapse around Jessica's grave and squeezed it with every ounce of strength I had left. Every ounce I had left to her.

Chapter 77

And then I felt it again. It wasn't truly sensual, but more of a knowledge of my organs peacefully deciding to stop.

Trying to stay focused on something, I looked past Amber quivering in the dirt and spied the legs a figure walking towards us. I figured nothing could keep me on this God-forsaken Earth any longer, so I looked away, not caring who it was. I averted my gaze up to the moon. It stared at me again, but this time I knew it couldn't hurt me anymore. No more pain; a tune that I haven't heard in years.

"No," a low booming voice uttered in anger.

My eyes darted to the voice's origin and landed on the dark figure I knew to be the demon. It strolled up next to Amber, shaking its head in disgust.

"You see that, puppet?" it said to me. "You see that? And you trusted her!" A billowing laugh screamed from its mouth. "You have been most interesting to watch. More entertaining than any other puppet before you. But nevertheless, I've had my fill."

The wind blew but the demon's cloak didn't budge. Its black and ragged robes slithered with the shadows and against the wind. They snaked through the grass towards my feet. Its red eyes peaked from beneath its hood and stabbed at me.

Amber raged in a fit in the background and the demon's voice boomed before me. Dark shadows entangled my legs. The demon's cracked and blackened hands slid free from its robes and reached out to open air. The gift lifted from the grass and floated to its hand. His tattered robes tightened and dragged me forwards. I hadn't the energy to struggle against the cloth restraints. They pulled me before him and stood me upright. Lacking the will to breathe, I stood suspended before the demon, completely at its mercy.

"Now you will experience pain, puppet. Now you will feel death as I intend it."

The blood that flowed from me stopped. My weakness began to diminish. Strangely enough, I began to revive. The demon's eyes were burning coals of anger, piercing through the night, and right at me. More strength built within me.

"You haven't felt pain until you've felt what I've been through," it whispered into my ear.

My skin burned and the smell sizzled into the air. My hair singed and the fetor stung my nose. I hung like a limp sack, jittering in shocks of torture, as the demon laughed in my face. His breath was rank. I gritted my teeth not wanting to show weakness, but tears welled in my eyes. The pain was unbearable. Heat ate my skin. My organs felt like they were decomposing.

My energy built with the agony, nearly proportional to one another, except that the pain always exceeded the vigor by just enough to quell it. It was a sick joke, to give hope but burn it out before it could be used, just perfect for a demon's taste. Precisely when I felt the might to overpower it, its torture, burning from vengeful embers for eyes, rose up hotter and faster, to quickly quell the notion.

My eyes shot open and I glared at it. My features contorted with the suffering, but I wanted, no I needed to show it my contempt. Needed to burn it into the demon if I could. If I couldn't inflict it I would show it. My hands balled up into fists. I was dying to pummel it to a bloody pulp with my bare fists. My brain conveyed that very idea to my hands but before I could act, and before another wave of agony hit, a massive jolt hit the demon from behind. I fell from its grip. I landed before Jessica's grave and nearly on top of the sword.

The convict rose up from behind the stumbling demon. His hands were balled into tight fists like boulders as he readied to take another swing.

"Give it to me!" the convict screamed at the demon. "It is mine!"

Bracing under the powerful attack from behind, the demon's cloak planted its strands into the ground and braced. Strips of cloth shot from behind it and wrapped around the convict's throat and lifted him into the air. The old black oily rags struggled to keep a solid hold, slipping through and along his rotten flesh. The demon's cloak slashed at the convict, peeling dead skin away to reveal the bone and muscle below.

"It is for whomever I choose," the demon growled.

"I will kill you for it," the convict choked.

"Ha! That is your answer to everything. Amidst all that brawn, one would think some brains existed somewhere."

My scorched and bloody hand wrapped around the embroidered handle I knew too well. I held the sword firmly. The fuel that was pumped into me, artificial or not, was ready to combust.

Amber's thrashed across the grass, wailing at ear piercing volumes the woes of so many souls, as the demon whipped the convict to the ground. It stood above the decomposing convict, poised to tear him apart. Its arms spread wide and its robes opened further, revealing another corpse of a body. The skin that draped the demon was black and cracked like a scab. A red viscous liquid that was hard to call blood by the sight of it, squeezed up through the fissures that meandered around its entire desiccated body. As the demon motioned, more seeped free releasing a sharp sulfur reek onto the wind. I couldn't tell a single feature that would declare this creature a sex. The fires that burned away its body, and probably its soul, had taken those features.

The demon reached down with its scorched hands and dug into the convict's neck, cutting through veins and flesh. The convict shrieked and sent a retaliating blow to the demon's face that spun it around towards me.

Stunned momentarily, its claret eyes caught the sight of me holding the sword. The demon sneered at me as the convict kicked at its knees and forced it to the ground. It sprawled out flat on its back and the black hood flipped off its head.

A scarred face appeared. The convict towered above it and leaned over ready to tear his fingernails, teeth, anything into the demon and rip it to shreds, but as he bent over, the moonlight washed over the demon's face.

The naked white light revealed, past the scars and burns, a face that the convict knew when he was Mural. Below him was a scab of the man that had been with him since the beginning. Even after two hundred years, the convict could recognize the old eyes that lived behind the red embers. Mural had known them well, but they were always more timid than tumultuous. The air between him and his little brother held centuries of toil and tension.

"Nathaniel? Why? Why would you do this to me?" the convict asked as he hovered above his brother, frozen in shock, unable to continue his relentless charge.

I began to see Nathaniel's true face as the moonlight spread over him. The scabs and scars couldn't hide his features completely. It was strange to see the two siblings together, both of them practically battered beyond all recognition, reunited after countless deaths that they were both responsible for. I couldn't help but feel that all this carnage was nothing more than an ancient family feud.

"I had a feeling you would not know why. Never once did you wonder why you got this gift. Never once did you question it. No, because all you wanted to do was destroy." Nathaniel's voice cut through the rasp of the demon's sound. "The first time you held that sword,"

Nathaniel said, pointing at me and what I held, "you knew murder was your path. Do you even know how you started, brother? I bet you do not, you damned fool. You could not have, for all of this would not have happened if you did."

"The whispers. They told me..."

"It started with a whisper for me too, brother. Did you know that? A whisper from Mother as we sat at the bonfire on the night our family died. She told me. I didn't understand what she said for so long, until that one Christmas years later when I found what betrayal was, when you killed me. Do you remember shooting me Mural? Do you remember the gaping hole blown in my body? Do you still see the blood?"