The Rise (32 page)

The night air was cool and pleasant against my sweat-damped skin, and I thought that a walk in the moonlight was something that I could definitely use. I found myself setting off on a red path that ringed around the perimeter of the city. As I stared out at the field of grass beyond that was part of the human world, I thought about how my life used to be when
I
was part of that world, how much easier and simpler it had been, despite the trainings my Mother had put me through.

Of course, I also thought about the deal I’d made today, the words the Seer had said to me.
The deal is struck, and so you are bound, as you will be for the rest of eternity.
Yikes, that didn’t sound good.

Yikes? You go and sell our soul and your response is “yikes?” You really have lost it, Warrior.

“One, just
one
little walk without your input. Is that too much to ask?”

I was answered with a grumble and then silence. I continued my slow walk down the path. If I squinted hard enough, I could see the lights of some human city far off in the distance. It was almost like the land in the Outlands was elevated above the land in the other world, though I was standing atop no hill, and when I had been on the outside looking in, the land had looked flat. I wondered at how that was even possible, at how any of it was possible, and thought that I would probably die soon without having the answers to countless questions. But that was okay, a mercy even, because the more I learned about this world, the more I wished I didn’t know.

Then, a cool, tingling sensation shot up my back, and I stopped in my tracks, my body going rigid, my ears perking up. I reached behind me and retrieved my Gladius, which sent more tingles through my hand where I held it. I tightened my grip and the blade shot out from the end of it, brilliantly silver in the moonlight and devastatingly lethal in my hand. I had learned to trust my Gladius and its intuitions, as strange as that may have sounded. And right now, it was telling me that danger was lurking.

I scanned the scene around me; the cottages, the trees and the gardens. There seemed to be nothing amiss.

You’re looking the wrong way, Warrior. The threat can’t be
inside
the city. No one who means harm can enter here. Sheesh, if you want to take walks all by yourself like a big girl, you gotta remember to look both ways before you cross the street.

I spun back around toward the field, ignoring my Monster’s sarcasm, mainly because it was right, and I did feel a teeny bit stupid. And then I saw him, just an all black figure hidden in the shadows of nighttime, walking through the tall grass of the field. He was approaching the invisible wall to the city, walking slowly, and two eyes the color of Wolf-gold stared back at me. I tipped my head back and inhaled deeply. I was downwind, so the Wolf’s scent carried to me strong and clear. Then my broken heart leapt in my chest and I was off running, not thinking at all, just running, past the barrier and into the field and out of the Outlands. And he opened his arms when I reached him and caught me up in hug.

And Jackson’s touch was as familiar and as warm as I ever remembered, but my Gladius, dangling from my hand that was wrapped around his back, holding him to me, had gone icy cold.

Alexa

I pulled back from Jackson, my brows furrowed in confusion. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

And why did the sword react like that?

Jackson’s face was grave, his green eyes more serious than I had ever seen them. Despite my Monster whispering that something was off about him, I reached up and touched his arm. This was
Jackson
we were talking about here. “Are you okay, Jackson?”

He shook off my touch, and I drew back as if he’d hit me. “I can smell him on you,” he said. No emotion whatsoever rode the words.

I felt my cheeks heating even though there were about a billion questions flying through my head. Guilt came over me so thick that I thought it might suffocate me, because I didn’t seem to be breathing. When I had hoped I’d get to see Jackson again I had imagined the encounter going several ways, but never had I thought that it would be like this. Of course he could smell Kayden on me. Hell,
I
could still smell Kayden on me.

I opened my mouth. “Jackson, I—”

He held up his hand. “Please, don’t,” he said. His voice lowered. “Just don’t.”

I stared at him, my eyes burning, though still no tears fell. I couldn’t bear the way his green eyes were looking at me, having lost the Wolf-gold glow when I’d hugged him. He was dressed like the same old Jackson, just jeans and a blue flannel shirt, his hair was the same reddish-brown that stuck out of his head in a strange way that was oddly attractive, he even smelled like the same old Jackson, but the look on his face was that of a stranger’s.

Why, grandma, what big teeth you have.

I took another step back from him, my cold grip tightening again around my sword, my watery eyes narrowing. “What are you doing here, Jackson? Tell me.”

“I’m here to take you to your sister,” he said plainly.

My breath caught in my throat. I swallowed. “You know where Nelly is?”

He gave a curt nod. “Yes. And that’s the only question I’m going to answer.” Then Jackson turned around and began heading back the way he’d come. “So you can come or not. I don’t care.” He stopped and turned back to look at me with cold green eyes. “But don’t talk to me about
him.
In fact, just don’t say anything to me at all. That’s the only way I’ll take you to her. Got it?”

How many times can my heart be broken in one day?
I wondered. But I just nodded.

Jackson spun around and headed off again, and I ran to keep up with him, half grateful and half devastated that I’d left the ring Kayden had given me on the table by the bedside back in the room.

Nelly

My Queen, if you go to the city now you will not beat the daylight back here.

I looked over at Carianna. Her black eyes were wide and shiny, her red lips down-turned, the color of fresh blood, striking against her pale skin and flawless face, shocks of red hair blowing out behind her. The white dress she wore was stained with blood, not hers, of course, but human blood from our last hunt. The smell of it carried to me on the cold wind, making my stomach rumble its emptiness. I smiled at her now and reached up to stroked Carianna’s face with the backs of my fingers. Her skin was like cold marble, and mine slid over it like drops of salt water. I sighed and dropped my hand, looking out over the land beneath me. I was sitting on the edge of the mountain’s cliff, my legs dangling over the nothingness. The thrum of souls beyond calling out to me, and yet I didn’t want to go. There was nothing there that I wanted.

“Do not fear for me,”
I told her.
“The sun will not harm me. I must go.”

And will you come back?

“I don’t know.”

We sat in silence for a long while. Above us the night sky was dotted with thousands of stars. The breeze that carried this high up was sharp, cuttingly cold, and it seemed to have seeped all the way through my bones, for I too, felt frozen, though I did not shiver. Carianna was the only one of my pack who had not gone out for the night to hunt. I had sent the others on without me, because I knew that no matter how much I fed on what waited there, the burning hunger in my soul would not be satisfied. 

What will you find there, when you go to the city? What is it you are searching for, my Queen?

I stared out over the dark land. Something was coming. Maybe it was the thing I had been waiting for, maybe it wasn’t, but I would go to meet it either way. I would go.
“I will know when I find it.”

And then I slipped over the mountain’s edge and floated down through the darkness to the land below. My feet the met the earth and I was off, heading toward where my soul led me, wondering if what I’d told Carianna was true, though it didn’t matter either way.

The sun will not harm me.

A voice I knew I recognized, but had no face or name or feeling attached to it followed on the heels of that.

Drink the sun, Child of the Night. Drink the sun.

Yes.

Alexa

I’m not someone who is good at keeping my mouth shut when I feel strongly enough about something. Not asking questions when I really want to know the answers is even harder for me. So sitting in the jeep Jackson had led me to, racing down the highway back toward Two Rivers—though he hadn’t told me that’s where we were headed, I’d just figured—and not demanding answers from him was almost torturous for me. I think I might have considered cutting off my pinky toe just to be given the opportunity to shake the crap out of Jack, to slap him in the face and tell him to snap out of this craziness that seemed to have taken hold of him.

But that wasn’t all I wanted to do. I wanted to reach out and put my hand over his, to hug him, hold him, maybe, even for just a moment, and have him look at me the way he always had, with love and acceptance and understanding. I wanted so much to see the Jackson I’d left only days ago, that felt like a lifetime ago, standing in his dorm room in just his boxers with sleep-rumpled hair, telling me he loved me.

I couldn’t do any of those things. I couldn’t even tell him that I was sorry, so damn sorry about how I’d hurt him, how I’d betrayed him with Kayden, about how my chest ached when I looked at him now, with his hands gripping the steering wheel and his green eyes staring coldly out of the windshield at the dark road ahead.

It was impossible, with the darkness rushing by outside my window, with the palpable silence hanging in the jeep’s interior, not to think about how much had changed over the past few days, not to think about how much I’d lost. I couldn’t help but wonder what my life would have been like if Olivia had never sent us to Two Rivers, if instead she’d told me to take my sister somewhere and hide, like my Mother had done us for years. I tried to tell myself that that would have been no good either, that a life of running and cowering and hiding was no life at all, but if we could pick our miseries, I really would pick the other one.

And, despite the fact that it made me feel like a terrible, worthless person, I wondered if all of this could have been avoided if I’d not gone off to Dangeon to rescue my Mother. I wondered if I could have stopped the darkness from overcoming Nelly, had I been there like I was supposed to. My Monster insisted that it would have happened eventually, but I wasn’t so sure I could believe that.

Besides, a lot of good breaking into Dangeon had done me. My Mother had died anyway, and it was impossible now not to think about
how
she’d died, about who had more than likely killed her. I thought about how Kayden had hummed Danny Boy to me as I sat crying by her graveside, mostly because I hated myself so much for not caring more about the fact that she was gone. But I couldn’t help it. When I thought of my Mother, I thought of the trainings she’d put me through as a child, about how I had thought of them more as
beatings
until I became old enough to hurt her back with my blows. I thought about the black eyes and long-sleeved shirts I’d had to wear to cover the bruises she left on me, about how eventually, somewhere along the line, she had turned me into the cold, calloused person I was today. I thought about her always being hard on me, and soft on Nelly, as if Nelly was the only one who mattered.