The Rise (18 page)

I set my eyes on the horizon, which offered the only color and break from the gray monotony all around me. Golden light peeked over the gray mountain in the distance, their peaks stabbing at the clouded sky. But instead of steadily rising, every step forward that I took seemed to move that golden glow further away from me, always just out of reach, tickling the edges of my vision.

When my legs gave out beneath me my knees struck the gray rocks hard, sending jolts of pain through me, a pain I felt mostly in my soul. My head rocked forward and I screamed, but the sound was that of a monster howling in agony, of a beast bleeding out black rivers of blood. The cry echoed against the gray world and rebounded back to me, and there I sat with my head in my hands. Nothing else to do.

A voice rolled past my ears like a tumbleweed blown in the wind, a sweet voice, a voice that I thought I should know. The inflections and rhythms seemed as familiar as that of my own, and yet the words that it whispered sent a cold chill walking up my spine. But wherever this was, it was a place of no fear, a place beyond it, a place beyond everything a soul can feel except for pain and loss. So much pain and so much loss.

The words carried to me on the wind were three: Drink the sun…

I lifted my head and saw a girl standing before me, a girl with dark, wavy hair hanging well past her shoulders, with sun-kissed skin and big, dark brown eyes. Crawling up both of her arms, across her chest and over her shoulders were silver vines sprouting sliver lilies, and she seemed to glow in the gray of the world, like a single bright star hanging in an endless night, like a dark angel lit by heaven’s light. I felt my fangs slip out and bite into my lower lip, and salty blood touched my tongue. I stared at the girl, yearning to touch her, but unable to move.

Only when she spoke again did I shy away from her, shielding my eyes with my hands, a hiss escaping my mouth.

“Drink,” she said, and then she was gone, leaving me lost, alone in the darkness.

Alexa

I closed the door behind me, looking at the room in front of me, my breath catching in my throat. The walls were painted with enormous pastel-colored flowers, and the artist had spared no detail. Bits of pollen like pixie dust were painted in gold at their centers, and swirling green vines crawled from floor to ceiling, where more painted flowers bloomed. A large princess bed took up the majority of the middle of the room, loaded with thick pillows and draped in a coverlet that looked as if it were made of pink rose petals sewed together. A matching armoire stood in one corner, and the entire northern wall was floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked out onto a garden that tinkled with the light of hundreds of lanterns. Not for the first time I stopped to admire the beauty that this world seemed to drown in. How was it that such a beautiful place could hold so many secrets, so many dangers? I felt the way Alice must have felt after falling down the rabbit hole. Lost and confused and awed. And tired as hell.

I slumped back against the door and noticed for the first time that Kayden wasn’t here. Before I could get too worked up, a door on the other side of the room opened and Kayden stepped out. My jaw fell open and my nervousness came back to me with a vengeance. I snapped my mouth closed, but I was helpless about averting my eyes.

Kayden stood across from me. His golden hair was slicked back and dripping small drops of water onto his wide shoulders, as though he hand just run his hands through it. His chest was bare, and only a towel wrapped low around his thin hips covered him at all. My eyes ran down his muscled chest, where beads of water were rolling along the hard lines of his stomach to the white towel below, which seemed to make his skin look as golden as the rest of him. I found myself staring at his hipbones, which formed a wide V, like a tan arrow pointing down. When I looked up again, Kayden’s face was unreadable, but a sad smile burned behind his golden eyes.

I swallowed, hard. “Uh,” I said, but nothing else followed. I know, real smooth, right?

Kayden stepped to the side, his head bowed a little between his shoulders, but those gold eyes stayed on me. “There are more clean towels in there,” he said.

I nodded, seeming to snap out of my stupor, and headed for the bathroom door, my stomach in tight knots. Only now did I think about how I must look. My dark hair hung in a tangled mess down my back and dirt and blood covered my clothes and skin. My hands were still raw from digging, my wrists swollen and slightly purplish. I slipped around Kayden and was about to shut the door to the bathroom when his hand caught my wrist. Pain bloomed like a fiery flower where he touched me, but pain has been my longtime companion, and I didn’t wince. His gripped loosened a little, as if he realized this. I wondered if he could feel my racing pulse beneath his fingers.

His eyes met mine, and I had to look away, self-conscious, the way I was only with him. “Don’t take too long,” he mumbled, his voice low and somehow ragged. Then he let me go. I closed the bathroom door and slumped back against it. My heart felt like it was taking a battering ram to my ribs.

Leaning there against the door, I felt exhaustion come over me hard and thick, and I pushed to my feet. If I stayed still too long, I might not be able to get moving again. I turned the shower on as hot as it would go and stripped out of my dirty jeans and black t-shirt. I didn’t have any other clean clothes with me, not even fresh undergarments, but I would worry about that later. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to wash clean the evidence of the day, the physical reminders of all that had happened.

Before I stepped into the shower I caught a look at myself in the half-fogged mirror above the sink, and for a moment, I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. My skin was a pallid color, dirty, with multiple bruises and cuts in various places that I had obtained God-knows-when. More dirt and blood were caked under my fingernails, streaked across my face, clumped in my hair. And of course there were my eyes, which seemed to stare back at me with complete indifference. Yet, their deep brown color somehow told me that they were not just indifferent, but haunted. The silver crawling up my arm and down my back sparkled on the edges of my vision, another constant reminder.

I stepped into the shower stall and winced as the steaming water fell over me and seemed to burn into my injuries. I found some lavender scented shampoo and scrubbed it through my hair, my hands aching and stinging. I felt like a robot, just going through the motions.

Well, if you’re going to have another breakdown, have it now, Warrior.

“I’m not. I…I have nothing left in me to be broken down.”

I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”

My Monster let me be after that, and I felt its presence settle down inside of me, as if it were just sleeping, but I knew that it wasn’t. Left alone with my own thoughts, I thought about what lay ahead of me, about the dark road I was surely going to have to walk before all was said and done, and what waited at the end of it. I thought about my Mother, about the dull ache that seemed to fill the empty hole her death had left inside of me. I had only just gotten her back. Somehow, losing her a second time was even harder than it had been the first.

But mostly, I thought about Nelly. I wondered if she knew what was happening to her, if she understood her own monster the way I understood mine. I thought about where she was, what she could be doing. Because the difference between my sister and me is that I have always known, in some vague way or another, just how dark my soul could be, but Nelly, well, I think she fooled even herself about her darkness. I think I underestimated it because she never gave any indication that it even existed, which made me feel very much like someone had stuck a blade into my chest and was slowly twisting. I thought about all this and I didn’t cry, just kept washing away the dirt and the blood. Just kept going through the motions.

I turned off the shower and stepped out, grabbing a white towel from the rack beside the sink. The bathroom was just as pretty as the rest of place, decorated to look like the rainforest, all soft greens and browns. I towel-dried my hair and wrapped another towel around my body, staring down at my dirty heap of clothes, and sighed.

“Great,” I mumbled. I glanced around the bathroom hopelessly, as if I just expected a fresh pair of clothes to appear wrapped in bundle with a bow on top. It didn’t.

My hand shook slightly when I placed in on the doorknob and turned. I poked my head out first, then stepped out of the bathroom, clutching the towel at my chest. Even before I saw him, I could feel Kayden’s eyes on me. He sat in the far corner of the room in a chair over by the glass windows. Moonlight streaked through the glass and made his gold hair appear more silver in the shadows. His position was relaxed, his hands resting on the arms of the chair lightly, his back angled back as if he had been dozing, but his head up and alert. He had put back on his jeans, but was otherwise unclothed, and the thin scars from previous battles marked his skin and somehow made his seem more perfect, more beautiful. His golden eyes blazed out at me where the rest of his features were swathed in the darkness. My blood felt like hot rivers under my skin, having washed away any thoughts of rest or sleep as swiftly as a monsoon, the wet tips of my hair feeling all the colder where it fell down my back.

Between my next two breaths, Kayden stood in front of me, so close that I could smell the soap and that other scent of his skin that could only be described as
Kayden’s
, a mixture of fresh rain and earth and summer days. He came forward slowly, and then all at once, closing the space between us like a lion in chase, first careful and calculated, golden eyes watchful, and then springing forward with all muscle and grace and smooth movement. My back pressed up against the cold wood of the bathroom door, our bodies coming together so that I could feel the smooth skin of his bare chest, could feel the enormous weight of him, and the opposing force of my own.

His rough hands gripped my thighs and lifted me up, and I wrapped my legs around him with crushing force. A growl ripped up his throat as I looked down at him, his head titled back, golden hair wrapped around my fingers. I could see my eyes glowing Wolf-gold in the reflections of his own, could feel his chest rising and falling under me. Then his lips were against mine, not gently, but hard and desperate and almost painful, but not in a bad way. Not in a bad way at all.

Heat was blooming in my stomach, making my skin feel like it really had caught fire. I held Kayden where he was, hardly taking time to breathe, like the air just didn’t matter. His lips left mine and trailed down my neck, his fingers digging into the skin of my thighs. My head fell back, a low growl escaping my own lips.

All of a sudden I was on my feet again, bracing myself against the bathroom door with one arm, my knees about as stable as a Jell-O mold. My chest rose and fell in short gasps. I looked up at Kayden, who had taken a step back and was breathing as harshly as I was. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice deep and ragged. He held up his hand, a gray crumpled shirt clutched between his fingers. I wondered briefly how it was that I hadn’t noticed it.

You were otherwise distracted.

I sighed internally.
“Oh, great. You’re here.”

Well, you were putting on a pretty good show.

“I meant to just give you this,” Kayden said, still watching me with that feral look in his eyes. “It’s a little cleaner than your shirt, I think.”

My head tilted, trying to form a response to that which didn’t involve a curse word. I got nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Kayden said again.

Now I found my voice. “What the hell for?”