Silence (44 page)

In a single motion, Sheikoh ripped the
amulet over Emili’s head and hurled himself out of the circle. He
flipped over the lines of the pentacle, twisting midair, to land
lightly on his feet staring back where he’d come from. A still
second later, tongues of white flame crept from beneath Emili’s
eyelids. Sheikoh took an involuntary step back at the sight. Goose
bumps skittered all over his clammy skin like the tickling feet of
a million spiders.

Camillio raised his hands,
and gestured. Three newly activate blood runes glowed blue through
the bloodstained bandages covering Emili’s chest. An alien
double-voice shrieked out a pain-rippled note, and a pair of
flaming eyes flared with a sudden burst of multicolored sparks.
Emili- no
Khryzt
scrambled backwards like a cornered rat. As Camillio pummeled
Emili’s bandaged body with flashes of blue, Khryzt accidently
allowed one of Emili’s fingers a glancing touch at one of the
pentacle’s runed lines. A roar of power bashed the Sycrarian back
to the center.

Khryzt tried to lift itself to Emili’s
shuddering feet, recoiling back under a barrage of blood runes.
Blue runes glinted through bloodstained bandages on time with the
creature’s stumbles, as though the blue lights of the runes were
physically slamming into it.

Sheikoh suddenly noticed that one of
the magic-traced, blue blood runes had burned an imprint through
the bandage over Emili’s shoulder. And then another shone through
her chest. And then another, and another. As Sheikoh watched, one
of the bandages, the one over Emili’s shoulder fell. Dancing with
flames, the white cloth curled into itself and drifted downwards.
Hungry tongues of fire quickly licked the bandage black. A few
moments later, it was joined by another tattered,
bandage.

Khryzt desperately stretched two
clawed hands outwards. Sheikoh flinched, covering his face with an
arm in futile protection against a burst of white flames streaking
at Camillio. The blast pancaked against the air above the pentacle
and rebounded, smashing Khryzt in Emili’s gut. The room shook and
heaved under the power of the strike that knocked the demon
backwards. Khryzt stumbled against the line and was knocked forward
onto Emili’s knees.

Most of the bandages had burned away
at that point. Sheikoh clenched his fists watching bleeding wounds
glow with blue magic. The sapphire magic rapidly flickered over
Emili’s skin, but even so, Sheikoh knew that Camillio hadn’t even
finished half of it all. Khryzt’s eyes spurted out a burst of
fearful sparks, and Emili’s mouth opened.

A massive pillar of blinding white
power blasted into the air above the pentacle’s edge. The room
shuddered and quaked, tossing books, pens and scattered papers
through the heaving air. Sheikoh dodged a falling bookcase and
grabbed onto a torch-holder attached to the wall. He watched as
rainbow spikes bounced against the pentacle’s circular edge and
flicker around the Sycrarian, inevitably striking its
body.

Howling wind flung objects through the
air in violent tantrum. Bookcases crashed onto the stone ground and
sharpened pencils became lethal weapons. Cracks lined the stone
floor under the tumult of Khryzt’s relentless beam of shattering
white. Sheikoh’s eyes widened with shock, when he noticed that the
point that the blast struck against slight blue haze of the
pentacle was refracted into eight. He shot a quick glance at
Camillio. The Celestial’s taunt hands just kept gesturing and
forcing runes to glow with sapphire energy.

The blast cut off, and the
room suddenly stopped shaking. Sheikoh sighed his relief, letting
go of the blacksteel table. He looked around. A tattered body,
pockmarked with burns and splattered with blood, caught his eye. It
kneeled upon the stone floor, wheezing, with white flames
flickering over its eyes. Realization slammed his breath out; that
was
Emili.
Scarred black and lying at the very precipice of
death
.

Shit.

Sheikoh watched in horror as Emili’s
body staggered up to its feel, her arms hanging limp. Blue runes
still glanced over its destroyed skin. This was worse than anything
he’d ever imagined; did Camillio truly intend to bring Emili back
like this? Sheikoh glanced at the Celestial whose face was taunt
with concentration.

Apparently he did.

Sheikoh pulled out his electroblade.
He knew that he’d rather her die than feel this, live jailed
somewhere within her own mind. But something stopped him. He
watched Khryzt straighten. His eyes widened.

Emili’s fire-blackened skin smoothed
and lightened, charred flesh morphed back into skin. Blonde hair
poured out of her healed scalp. All of the preactive blood runes
that Sheikoh’d carved into her, the ones Camillio hadn’t gotten to,
faded seamlessly into her pale skin.

Sheikoh clenched his fist around the
blade’s handle.

This wasn’t good.

But Khryzt had only slowed Camillio’s
progress. The Celestial could only mark Emili’s skin with one blood
rune at a time, as he now had to simultaneously carve and activate
each of them with magic. The Celestial’s and the Sycrarian’s faces
were hard with focus as they battled over Emili’s body.

Emili’s body was hunched in on itself,
flinching backwards and spitting white sparklets at each of the
blue glowing runes. However much he knew that Khryzt deserved this,
Sheikoh could hardly stand to look at Emili’s face twisted in
unimaginable agony, flaming eyes or no. Khryzt seemed to realize
that, at just about the same moment it realized the absolute
futility of its actions. Emili’s face, arranged desperation,
twisted to gaze at Sheikoh. He took a half-step back with
surprise.

“
Stop him
now, or I’ll be forever bound to your Emili,”
Khryzt double-confided in an urgent tone.
“
You’ll never get her
back once the Celestial is finished with me. He wants to control my
powers-

“
Silence!”
cried Camillio
harshly, and Sheikoh swung to face him.

Sheik quickly realized that Camillio
hadn’t been calling Sheikoh’s street name, he’d been shouting the
demon down. Sheikoh turned back to face the Sycrarian; Khryzt was
double-hissing again. The sudden sight of Emili writhing in pain
struck Sheikoh right in the gut.

“
You know
that I’m right,”
Khryzt went on,
stuttering as Emili’s skin burned blue with blood runes.
“The Celestial use people. It’s their way. He
couldn’t wear the amulet so he got you to use it for
him.”

Camillio opened his mouth furiously,
but Sheikoh didn’t give him a chance to speak.

“
What I know is the last
time I took you at your word I ended up with my head smashed in,”
Sheikoh responded quietly. His dangerous eyes held Khryzt’s twin
white flames for a suspended instant.

“
I trusted you, and you
stole her from me. You’re lucky that this is all the pain you’re
dealing with.” Menace shadowed his tone and his face.

Emili’s legs suddenly gave out, and
Khryzt fell onto her knees, screaming its frustration and pain to
the sky. The harsh, decadent scream cut off like at a deathly note.
Khryzt brought Emili’s insane glare to rest on Sheikoh. It was full
of unbridled, flaming hatred.

“
I will
make her hate you! I will invade her dreams with memories of you
trying to stab her throat! Of every single way you’ve tried to kill
me, and by extension, her!”
Khryzt
vowed hatefully, flinching under the ever-increasing barrage of
blood runes.
“And when I manage to break
free from these accursed bindings I will kill every last one of
you. The Celestial… Indigo and… and…”

Emili’s body suddenly toppled onto the
ground, out cold. Camillio added a few more blood runes, waved some
magic symbols in the air, finishing touches sort of things, and
then that was that.

“
And now we’ll see,”
Camillio murmured, watching Emili’s fallen body.

Sheikoh cradled the sight of her
within a pair of glittering, hopeful eyes and held his breath, as
four and a half hours of stress and sweat, of Sycrarian against
Celestial, of Camillio against Khryzt gave way before an endless
graveyard silence.

Please
, Sheikoh desperately prayed.
If
there’s a god in heaven, please give her back to me. I promise,
I’ll do anything, I’ll never steal again, I’ll never…
On and on, promise after promise, one compromise
after another, as he watched her. The moment stretched itself out,
longer and longer, until it could’ve easily been an hour and a
half.

Sheikoh clenched his fists together
until his nails dug into his palms, as silent tears dripped down
his cheeks. He knew that it’d been too good to be true. It looked
like he’d expected too much. Once again, everything he’d hoped and
fought for had been in vain.

Sheikoh thought back to Emili’s cloudy
eyes, horribly similar to those that Sheikoh’d killed. Death had
punched another, identical hole into Sheikoh’s chest, straight
through the hope that Emili might live. Its tattered edges of his
faith and conviction lay around Emili, dying alongside her. It was
time to admit that it was over. They’d failed.

Sheikoh wordlessly glanced over at
Camillio to see how the Celestial took the disappointment.
Camillio’s attention was still fixed upon the girl lying within the
intricate lines and runes of the pentacle.

What more was there to see?

However long you watched it, death
never changed into anything worth seeing. It was always exactly the
same cold, dead choking at the end of your hopes. Nevertheless,
Sheikoh’s neck turned and he took one long, last look at Emili,
lying there on the ground. One of his fingernails punched through
the skin of his palm, and a cool trickle of blood ran down his
hand. He looked down at his fists, anything to distract him from
the awful truth and forced them to unclench.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sheikoh
caught a flicker of movement. Camillio gasped quietly, and Sheikoh
swung back to stare at the girl lying on the cold, stone ground.
His jaw dropped in shock.

Emili had opened her eyes.

Epilogue

Back from the
Beyond

Nothingness. . .

Emptiness. . .

Timelessness-

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

Her throat choked itself into a tight
knot. Desperate gasping sounded harsh against her ears, the
surrounding blackness melted away to reveal colors and blurry
shapes. Vision blinded her eyes and burned through her forehead.
Skin and muscles made themselves known with aching and shivery
prickles like spiders, crawling and biting and searing. Sensations
ripped through her like she wasn’t there; she was drowning in their
storm. It was utterly overwhelming.

This wasn’t right…

Why wasn’t this right?

What had
happened
?

She looked around wildly. Then she
caught sight of a familiar face. She looked closer. Her thoughts
stuttered on a name… Sheikoh…

Sheikoh..?

Who-

Then her mind was viciously wrenched
to the sided.  Sickening coils and tendrils wrapped around
her. They latched onto her skin by a layer of slime. She tried to
scream, and the substance oozed into her mouth. She couldn’t cough
it out. It slithered down her throat, into her lungs. She could
feel her heart pumping it into her veins, dispersing it throughout
her body. It coiled into her muscles and began tearing and
burning.

The unimaginable, horrible pain sent
her staggering back deep into herself. She wrapped herself into a
ball and numbly watched from a distance as the pounding window of
sensations was consumed by dancing white flames. The boy’s voice
gave way to silence. She rolled over and went back to
sleep.

She was jerked back awake. She clenched her eyes, but didn’t
do anything to alleviate the ache all over her. Her skin felt like
it was burning. The harsh stone floor scratched at her skin. The
rasping sound of breathing dug into the tip of her spine. She let
her eyes blink open. She squinted against the glaring, blue light
silhouetting two dark faces. Her sight was slow to adjust, but she
was eventually able to make out a few details as the overwhelming
sensations drained into background.

She gasped at the sight of one, the
younger of the two faces staring down at her. His intense, dark
eyes, one of them lined with a scar, held hers steadily, half
obscured by a mop of shaggy raven bangs. His angular face and high
cheekbones were framed by locks of black hair. He looked sharp and
strangely innocent like an angel fallen from a stormy sky. His gaze
was one of wary hope. Memory jolted over her eyes. There had been
four of them, sitting at a booth. There were chips in the center of
the table and a little girl wearing a pink shirt, made dark under
the faintly blued lights and neon tubes of sparking light above…
and…

It was gone.

She grasped for it, but all she came
up with was the memory of the memory; a bunch of indistinct colors,
and faces that were frustratingly blank. She found herself longing
for the sight of the boy’s smile. He had been smiling in the
memory, she was sure of it, if he smiled again maybe she could
retrieve the memory.