The Frozen Moon: Book Two of The Living Curse series + BONUS Full Version of Book Three! (8 page)

             
“Were you guys able to stay together?” Max asked with concern clear in his voice.

             
“Not exactly,” Nameh laughed, and briefly recounted the events, purposely leaving out the fact that she had nearly died at the fangs of a vampire.

             
“We were a bit luckier,” Max said almost apologetically, “Wyd was able to use some sort of a spell that kept us together.”

             
“Not some sort of a spell, it was a sentinel charm,” he said defensively.  “It basically just puts a weak shield around a whole group.”  He made a circular motion with his finger, “Some of them got through, and some of them didn’t.”  There was a silence as stories were processed and interpreted.

             
“You haven’t seen Gwen or Eve, then?” she asked with a doubtful expression.

             
“I haven’t seen them since the start of the attack,” Mira began gravely; “they went to go get a drink just before it happened.  Hopefully they ended up together.”  Without discussion, they knew what had to be done, and began to move to the furthest point of the hall, the last portion unexplored.  They now stood at the front of the hall, where the DJ table lay in ruins; she hadn’t noticed that the music had stopped.  Though there was no music, sound was not in short supply in the room; the clatter of weapons had been deafening, but was now receding.  In fact, she thought, it was nearly gone.  The battles around her were ending with final plunges, and people stood leaning against walls breathing and bleeding heavily.  Still, even through the thinned crowd, she couldn’t see the girls they searched for.  She turned to give a worried glance at the rest of the group, who seemed to mirror her expression. 

             
She remembered the first thing she had noticed about each she had found; with Seth it had been his sharp features, with Cal it had been his deep black hair, and with Mira and her group it had been the gold glittering off of her.  The first thing she saw of Eve was her loose curls spilling over her body, and with Gwen she saw her pale blue eyes, looking more ghostlike against pale white and blood red than ever.  The two were surrounded by what had to be nearly all of the remaining attackers, and were standing about twenty feet away.  In her next breath, the line of monsters was pulsing forward at frightening speed.  Nameh lunged with all the life still remaining in her frail body, determined to stop however many of them she could.  She fell upon the nearest vampire with such a vengeance that the creature barely quivered before its death.  The others could be felt around her more than seen, and she knew they had the same goal.  She knew that there must be screams and clinks of swords, but she could hear none of them.  Sound was gone.

             
The movements of the creatures appeared to her in slow motion, with lines blurred together and sound nonexistent.  Those they could not kill in time were upon the girls, crushing any attempt at defense they might have protested with.  She watched their faces contort into expressions of horror, an image that she would never rid herself of.  Her legs continued to heave beneath her, pressing forward with all the strength they could find in her heavily taxed muscles.  Her sword was up over her head, and she brought it down again and again.  She struck out again and again.  She killed again and again.

             
She slaughtered the monstrous things until her torn body could simply take no more, as the last one fell she dropped to her knees, and the floor came up to greet her.  She knew her eyes were still open, but she could barely force them to make out blurry shapes.  Through her mind swam the thoughts of disorientation,
Where am I?  What happened?
  The world went black, different from the soft white of the vampire bite.  Was this what death was like?  She felt free of pain, her body some distant entity that she was aware of but not connected to, like the sun, moon, or stars.  She was pulled up through the tunnel of a night sky, flitting away from her body without a second thought.  The vampire’s magic trickled into her thoughts and polluted her mind; everything felt easy and natural.  No more questions resounded in her mind, just the corrupted and repeated knowledge: this is the way of the world.

Fading Horizons

We are those who cling to moments,

Grasp at straws and time gone by.

We know not the onyx oceans

That lay beyond the horizon.

Can we not continue on?

Leave this sunset far behind

Before this golden light turns

To pitch black?

Even sunsets, in
all their splendor,

Give way to night.

When her thoughts began to clear, she could think only of Eve and Gwen; what had become of them?  She felt something warm encircling her tightly, giving her the feeling of being a child pulled up onto her father’s lap.  It was this that caused her to snap into reality, opening her eyes slowly only to snap
them shut again once she realized that she had a splitting headache. 

             
“Guys, I think she’s awake,” said a soft voice that sounded near.  Hushed exchanges of words followed, then movement on all sides.  Did she dare try to open her eyes again?  The only action Nameh desired was to slip back into the darkened sleep she had prematurely emerged from.  She decided to assess her damage first.  She twitched her toes, then her ankles, legs, hips, spine-ouch.  She moved her spine slightly again, and was greeted with a sharp pain up her back, and learned quickly not to do that again.  She continued with her fingers, wrists, shoulders, neck-that was the second thing she wouldn’t move again.  Her damage now assessed, she slowly opened her eyes again, and found a strange scene about her.  She was still in the warehouse, she must not have blacked out for too long.  She glanced up to see soft faces looking down on her, even in the dim light they looked framed with white; her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted.  Seth’s harsh features now took a softer, more concerned light, as they all did.  She realized that the warmth she had felt around her were arms, she was being carried by Seth, Cal, Max, and Talar.  Though she had nearly died, she was still surprised how comfortable she felt in the arms of her friends.  She thought it strange that four of them were needed to carry her, but then they were all fatigued beyond measure.

             
“Thanks for joining us,” Seth said in his low, raspy voice.

             
“Yeah, well I thought I’d grace you with my presence,” she mumbled.  There was laughter nearby, and she realized that Wyd and Mira also followed.  She was now growing more conscious of her own body, as though her mind was crawling slowly back into it.  She hung in midair, cradled by four separate points; it was not exactly a comfortable situation.

             
“Yeah, guys?  You can put me down now.”  Her voice cracked slightly, sounding softer than usual.  She missed the usual bite to it.

             
There was a grumbled response as she was placed lightly against the wall.  She tried to hide a cringe at the pain that raced up her back and neck.  More arms touched her shoulders, trying to help her get into a sitting position.

             
“Thanks, but I think I can sit up on my own.”  Her voice held certainty that her mind didn’t; could she sit up on her own?  The arms retreated, but she still felt the warmth of bodies near.  Now she could feel more pain setting in as the detached feeling faded; her left shoulder had surely suffered damage, and she’d taken a hit-probably a fall-to a hip.

             
“Don’t take it personally,” she heard Mira’s voice say, “she’s not big on the whole help thing.”  Nameh laughed in response to her friend’s truth, the laughter rattled in her chest, sounding sick and weak. 

She hated weakness.

“You don’t sound well,” said Cal with a worried tone.

“I’m fine, it’s just my back and neck,
I took a pretty hard fall.  Just have to walk it off, I think.”

“Ha, walk it off.”  Cal seemed genuinely amused at this thought.  He cracked his fingers-yes, actually cracked his fingers, and placed their tips just inches from her neck.  His eyes closed and she immediately felt warmth flow down her back and neck.  It was as though she
were in a hot shower and the water was trickling down her skin as well as beneath it.  When the warmth subsided, all the pain she had felt was gone, but the fatigue was still there.

“So, a Healer,” she grinned, “impressive.”
  It truly was impressive, she hadn’t met a healer before, but Cal struck her as the type.  She was beginning to think that all talents were determined by suitability to personality.

“Why don’t we get her back to The
Corner.” Talar said as more of a statement than a question.  She saw that he was now in human form, and looked ragged and tired.  In fact, everyone looked this way: smeared makeup and blood, torn formal clothes, and drawn expressions.

“Wait,” she said.  “
Where’s Gwen and Eve?”  The responsive looks on their faces were not comforting.  The silence that followed added to the dreadful feeling in the pit of her stomach.  As usual, Max was the first to form the words.

“We…weren’t fast enough.”  He seemed as though he couldn’t say anything else, but that was all that needed to be said.  The feeling that filled her was what she had come to expect; sorrow was nearly absent, anger and rage threatened to spill over her control.  Her hands tightened into fists; she had promised herself that she would allow none of them to die.  Images from the short amount of time she had known the girls flashed through her mind.  Gwen in the deep blue dress she had
worn, and Eve in the soft yellow.  The girls hadn’t been as slight as she or Mira, they were somewhat sturdier, she recalled.  The last image before her was that of Gwen’s eyes, the one thing she would never forget.  Their ghost blue hue now held more truth in the description than it ever had, the pale irises were the fuzzy and distant views of a memory.  The eyes seemed to plead with her, longing for the life that they could never again reclaim. She swore that she would die before any of them were taken, yet here she remained, broken yet thriving.  The weight of her silent promise laid upon her chest, crushing each breath from her tired lungs, and smothering any condolence she should have taken from the lives of those gathered in around her.

The sorrow set in. 

She felt the anger inside her pulling dangerously at the chains she had restrung, but she had no intentions of releasing it again.  Nameh didn’t know how many more friends she could let slip in and out of her life in the blink of an eye before she snapped.  She hadn’t even had the time to get to know them.  Sometimes, it was the people she barely knew that caused her the most pain at death.  So many had fallen around her, yet she, with all of her blood lust and spiteful intentions, still stood.

“Nameh, there’s nothing you could have done,” said a voice from around her.  She didn’t know who the voice had come from, but it didn’t matter.  The person was not what she was focused on, but the words.

“There’s always something you can do.”  Her voice came shakily through gritted teeth, she wondered if the others could hear the heavy restraint in her voice.  She heard Seth’s weak laugh, which surprised her.

“You were practically dead, and dragging yourself across the floor.”  She turned to see the smile flash across his face, and could not keep one from her own.  Simply being in the presence of the group was easing the self-hatred that now twisted at her throat.  The somber tone resumed, and there was a stifling silence.  She felt sorrow and doubt, but she felt no tears come; she knew that there would be tears in the eyes of the others but that didn’t change anything.  She hadn’t cried in so long, it felt as though her tear ducts were calloused over.

“Alright,” she said softly, her eyes in a glazed stare, focused on nothing, “let’s get out of here.”  Her words struck dead against the floor, nearly as empty and devoid of feeling as the pit in her stomach.

             
The sickly yellow light gave Nameh’s skin an unbecoming look of jaundice.  Her dark eye makeup was smeared down her face from sweat, where it mingled with the blood and silver glitter.  Black, red, and silver, like some moonlit rose, she thought.  Her thoughts scoffed at the concept, a moonlit rose?  More like some black angel of death, wrapped in a shawl of silver and painted with the vibrant life of scarlet blood.

             
Her dress was only slightly tattered, perhaps she could mend it, but then again, she would probably never need it again.  Images of death danced through her mind, tracing graceful pirouettes across the inside of her eyelids.  The hot steam from the shower welcomed her more readily than an old friend, embracing her with its dewy fingers.  She could feel the grime melting from her before she even touched the water.  She went through her mental process as the crystalline needles struck her skin and burned at her wounds.  She blocked out the memory, sealed it over with detachment as she always did.  Reason ticked through her mind, once again giving her the reason for the loss. 
It’s for the greater good
, she told herself,
if you don’t get over this, what good are you going to be in battle?  You hardly even knew them… 
She felt the stony silence of her heart, and eased back into comfort of sorts.  Still, these deaths would haunt her for a time.  She had never succeeded in making herself completely cut off from emotion as she sometimes wished she could be, but the blood of all those she had watched die accumulated over the years, seeming to dilute her sorrow as more and more filled her.