The Rise (34 page)

And I couldn’t say that I entirely disagreed with him.

Somewhere, though, amidst all of his dagger words and hurtful revelations, something didn’t make sense to me. Maybe my assumption about who Jack was referring to when he said his father was wrong. “How can the King be your father? He’s a Searcher.” I said.

A very wolf-like growl ripped up Jackson’s throat, and it carried through to his words. “How can Nelly be your sister?” he snapped sarcastically. “She’s a Lamia.”

And that shut me right up. A flash of anger went through me and I had to bite down on my tongue to keep myself from punching Jackson in the face. I think I preferred the silence to talking to whoever this person was pretending to be my Jackson.

And that’s your problem, Warrior. He’s not yours. He never was.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t love him. It’s possible to love more than just one person at the same time”

I don’t think that would make him feel any better.

Jackson stopped the car, and the air in front of the windshield shimmered. Now I stared up at the tall stone wall that hid Two Rivers, the wide river that flanked it, and the draw bridge that allowed one access to the city. Except the draw bridge was already lowered over the river, as if it had been left open for us, and I was struck with a sense that something was horribly amiss. I had never seen the bridge left open before. Jack pulled the jeep forward slowly, across the bridge, and into the city. And I stared out the window as a fear so total that is was beyond that. It was terror and horror and the thoughts of a dead man walking.

We rode through the streets of the city, by mosaic-like houses and elaborate stone buildings and rich green lampposts and cherry blossom trees in full bloom. The trees, pushed gently by the wind, were the only things that moved. No Vampires or Wolves roamed the streets or flagstone walking trails that serviced the city. I had to keep telling myself to breathe, just breathe, as the death march seemed to carry us on. I thought I saw some of the curtains of the houses twitch, as if people were peering out of them, and I imagined that I could hear the locks on their doors sliding into place, as if they knew that something terrible lay just ahead, lurking just outside their backdoors.

It was sort of like having my life flash before my eyes. Not in the literal sense, but because people had been treating me this way, cowering when I passed by, since I was small. Kids would never play with me on the playground, friends hadn’t come easily in school, adults had immediately pinned me as a troublemaker. Two Rivers had been the first place that I had ever known where everyone treated me like I was one of them, like I wasn’t some uncontrollable monster who was just waiting for my chance to rip their throats out. Like I was
good.
It was somehow too much to see them hide from me now, though I had no idea that it was me they were actually hiding from. All I really knew was how I felt, and I felt very much like it was.

Jackson pulled to the side of the street and put the car in park. “Get out,” he said, and he opened his own door and hopped out before I could say anything. Not that I would have.

I got out of the car and tucked my Gladius into the back of my jeans, pulling my shirt down over it. It gave me some comfort, having it there, feeling its cool, smooth surface against the hot skin on my back. I knew that there was no point in taking it though, because the sun was just peeking its head over the horizon, and I could feel in my soul that my sister was near.

Nelly

I looked at the wide river that rushed by in front of me and felt a twist of fear. I hissed, as if I could scare the water into halting its flow. I knew that I could cross it, and there was even a bridge lowered down over it conveniently, as if someone had
wanted
me to cross it, but I hesitated where I was anyhow. Something about the sound of the rushing water, the sight of its constant motion, even the fresh, clean scent of it scared me nearly stiff. It felt somehow
wrong,
like a betrayal of my nature to cross here.

I pulled my eyes from the water and looked up at the wall beyond. I could feel it there, the thing I had come for, the sun-soul that had haunted my dreams and starved me with the memory of its taste, made me feel this untamed thirst within me that could been quenched by no other. I set one foot on the bridge, another sharp stab of wrongness twisting my gut. Then I put my other foot in front of that one, and so on. I would cross this river.

And then I would
finally
drink the sun.

I could feel it growing closer and closer, each step I took sending waves of heat through me. I tilted my head back and shrieked to the heavens, my lips pulling wide and my eyes rolling, when I made it to the other side. Yes, yes,
yes.
I was so close now.

The light of the new day was just beginning to really seep over the city, which glowed now softly in its wonder. I could feel all the souls cowering behind their doors, saying prayers and arming themselves with weapons should I choose to come in. They’d heard my cry, and they had been waiting for me, some man they referred to in their heads only as
the King
had told them about me, that I’d be coming, and they were right to hide. If the sun-soul did not satisfy this burning need in my stomach, I might just have them
all
.

I ran now, faster than I had ever run, another hissing shriek issuing from my parched mouth.

She was just up ahead.

Alexa

My body went tense, though I couldn’t see her yet, I could
feel
Nelly coming toward me. There seemed to be a terrible, powerful energy pouring from her, crashing over me in thick waves. My right hand reached back on its own accord and retrieved my Gladius. Its blade shot out and the silver caught the dawning sunlight. I held it down at my side, knowing it was a useless weapon in the current battle I was facing, the last battle I would ever face.

Then I saw her, coming at me like a white wind, her hair billowing behind her like a curtain of dark honey. Her eyes still that awful black onyx, her mouth pulled wide in a fearsome grin that bared her long fangs. Blood smattered her clothes and her hands and her face. Her feet were bare.

She stopped smoothly only three feet from me and the smell of the dried blood made my stomach turn. Her head tilted to the side, though no recognition showed on her face. My Gladius pulsed icy cold in my right hand, and my Monster offered no fuss. Around me, the city and its hiding eyes melted away as I looked into the demon eyes of my sister.

“Hey, Nell,” I said.

Kayden

The sun was just peeking over the horizon. They were gunning down the dirt road through the forest that led to the city. Pine trees whipped by in a green and brown blur. Kayden’s heart was pounding so hard that he could swear his ribs were bending in his chest. He sat forward in the leather seat, his muscles all tense and his hands clutched into fists.

Tommy slowed a little when they reached the wall, its bridge already lowered across the wide river, and Kayden was filled with a sense of foreboding so profound that his eyes burned. Tommy seemed to sense it, too, because his foot fell down hard again on the gas petal, and the Mercedes leapt forward, its engine purring like a huge cat.

Then Kayden felt the most agonizing sensation, like someone taking a corkscrew to his heart and twisting without mercy. He doubled over in his seat, his forehead hitting the dashboard hard enough to make stars burst behind his eyes. And very faintly, over the drumming of his heart and the harsh air pushing in and out of his lungs, he heard Tommy speak the worst words that were ever spoken in the history of language.

“I think it’s too late.”

Nelly

I had to stop for a moment just to admire her beauty. Now I remembered the gray world from my dreams, where she had come to me, and she was just as glorious in this world as she had been there. Her dark hair flowed down over her shoulders, and big brown eyes regarded me with something that I couldn’t put my finger on, something eternal that was lost on me now. A silver sword was clutched in her hand, but it was lowered at her side, as if just there for decoration.

“Hey, Nell,” she said, and her voice was familiar to me also, but slightly different than I remembered from my dreams. It was like it had been lacking some essential quality, one that could only be accomplished when it came directly from her mouth. I took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of her, my stomach all but screaming at me to complete the task. But I had to savor this moment the way one savors a fine wine, swirl it around in my glass.

She would not fight me. I could feel that in her fire-filled soul. She was here to deliver the promise she’d made to me in the gray world, to let me drink from her and taste the sunlight that ran through her veins. I could hear it coursing there, warm and sweet. And it beckoned me.

I opened my mouth and let one last hungry shriek rent the air. And then I moved in to take what was mine.

Jackson

Jackson stood off to the side and watched, though his father’s orders had been to deliver Alexa to the center of the city and to get out of there as quickly as he could go. He knew that Andre was probably somewhere around here watching, too, waiting for Jackson to get far enough away from the fireworks so that he could take Jackson to his father. But when he had seen Nelly, what had become of her, the sight seemed to have frozen him in place.

This had been the part of his father’s plan that Jackson was counting on to fail. He had known that Nelly was half-Accursed, and that she had used her power to escape his father, and he had believed his father when he said that Nelly had gone mad because of it. What he had
not
believed was that Nelly would ever, ever harm Alexa, no matter how crazy she had gone.

But the girl that stood only three feet from Alexa was
not
her sister. She was not
Nelly
. One look at her all-black, endless eyes was proof enough of that. She was looking at Alexa the way that a starving snake watches a mouse. Still, so completely
still
and poised to strike.

His father had been right again. She was going to do exactly what he’d said she would do. He could see it in every line of her body and the nothingness of her eyes. Nelly was going to kill Alexa.

And Alexa was going to let her do it.

Jackson’s broken heart gave one huge thud in his chest.

Alexa

Everything that happened next happened very fast. One minute Nelly was standing in front of me, studying me like a butcher studies a fine piece of meat. And then I was flying through the air and landing hard on my shoulder, the world spinning before my eyes. My right hand was empty, my Gladius having been ripped from my grasp as I’d been thrown. I struggled to my feet and looked around wildly, my heart jammed up in my throat.