Chapter 27

CHAPTER27

Ifeel my sister’s hand on my wet shoulder. She presses grains of sand into my damp skin as she smiles down at me. The roar of the ocean surges, water pounding at the beach and the cliffs that jut from the sea.

Do not worry, my love. I will look after you.

I peel my eyes open.

The ocean is the blood rushing through my ears. The grains of sand are the grit of glass that peppers my shoulder and face. Gasoline and engine oil, coolant and blood fill the battered van with stinging scents. Urtur whines over the hiss of steam and the dinging of the dashboard electronics and the groan of the dying engine.

I look down at my body. I’m covered in blood and debris. Everything hurts. My head. My hand. One of my fingers is bent the wrong way. Broken ribs grate against their shattered points. A deep slice on my thigh screams as I shift to look at the driver’s seat.

Ashen’s head is tilted forward, chin to chest. Blood runs down his face in rivulets and taps on his leg in thick drops. I hear the rumble of a punctured lung and the swirl of internal bleeding. He’s unconscious and badly injured, but alive.

There’s a noise from the back of the van. I can already sense and smell the damage when I look back at Urtur.

The jackal’s amber eyes meet mine and I hear the swish of his tail, even as he whines. He pants in stuttering, shallow breaths. I can smell blood on his breath. The marrow of broken bones. Bile from a punctured liver. Urtur cries again and lays his head down, his body quivering with shock.

My fingers fumble with the button for the seat belt until it finally releases. I grit my teeth through the pain and shift, turning back toward Urtur. He whines as I drag myself out of my seat. My broken ribs are starting to knit back together, but not enough to stop from digging into my lungs with every breath.

“Hey, buddy,” I whisper. I kneel on the floor of the van next to where Urtur’s head is jammed between the seats. My hand flows across his silken, sulfur-scented fur. He cries, but it’s weaker now. Every breath is shallower than the last, every heartbeat fainter.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. I wrap my hands around Urtur’s neck. Tears slide across my skin. Urtur’s whines fade. I feel him slipping away in my grasp. His body slackens. “It’s going to be okay.”

Only a few last whispers of breath are left, and then Urtur is gone. I watch, and wait, and at first nothing happens, but finally the first flakes of ash lift from his body and I bend my head with relief. He’s going back to the Shadow Realm.

But my relief doesn’t last long.

“LuLu…” a voice calls from higher up the hill we’ve just rolled down.

Fuck.

I scramble over Urtur’s disintegrating body and look out a hole in the cracked glass.

Shit shit.

Ashen groans as he stirs in the front seat.

“Lu.” His voice is weak and slow, like he’s fighting to hold onto the consciousness he’s just claimed. I watch as he shifts his head to look at the empty passenger seat. His voice comes out stronger with rising panic. “Lu?.. Lu-”

I don’t answer as I climb back into the seat next to him. He winces in pain as he tries to move, and when I land next to him I can see that his left shoulder droops down, the bone dislocated. It’s one of many injuries to that side of his body, and his heart sings to me with a steady beat of alarm.

“All right, vampire?” he asks. Ashen’s eyes roam over me with concern as he scans the cuts across my face and the blood seeping through my shirt. He reaches up to brush away the pebbles of tempered glass still stuck to my cheek. I lean back, just out of reach.

“Lucky LuLu,” Ember sings. She’s getting closer, picking her way down the steep embankment. “Time to go back to the Shadow Realm, Lu.”

Ashen eyes meet mine and time stops.

I see fear. Real fear.

“How did she know?” I whisper. Hot, fierce tears gather in my eyes.

I should already be out of here but I can’t move. My lips tremble. My hands shake with shock.

Only one truth exists. It’s the pain that scours every inch of me, body and soul.

Ember pushed us off the hill knowing Ashen would only need to die to resurrect unharmed in the Shadow Realm. And me, a vampire, I could be mangled and still survive.

Especially if I had taken enough blood in advance. Alberto’s blood.

And Ashen’s. The blood he brought for me. And the blood he kept pushing me to take.

“How did she know where we would be?” My voice cuts as sharp as shattered glass this time. My eyes burn. My heart turns to cinders and sinks through my chest.

“Lu, I-“

“What have you done?”

There is rage in my eyes as they burrow into the layers of hurt and sorrow that surface in his.

Ashen holds my gaze. Resignation claims the building fire in his eyes and snuffs it out.

He reaches across the console and pushes my katana toward me. We look at one another as the sound of breaking branches draws closer and Ember calls my name.

“There is still Angelwing on the blade,” Ashen says. I glance down at the sword and back to him. My face must say a thousand things, none of them good, all of them about fear and confusion, about loss and rage and despair. Ashen lays his hand over mine and squeezes as I grip the sword with blanched knuckles. “Keep your word and run, vampire.”

I don’t press my lips to Ashen’s in a last kiss. I don’t say any kind words. I just give him a final, venomous look before I turn away, blade in hand. I hold onto the determination in my mind, the hurt in my heart.

“Vampire,” Ashen says as I grip the edges of the broken window. I stop against my better judgment, but I don’t turn around. “I love you, Lu.”

His words catch in my chest and land as cold as ice.

“Right,” I say, without looking back. “Just not enough.”

I push my sword out the window and follow it. I land on the ground with a dull thud that radiates pain through my broken bones. With the angle and the twisted vehicle between us, Ember can’t see me, though I’m sure she won’t be far behind. I’ll leave a trail of blood and footprints in the snow. No matter how quick I am, she’ll catch up.

I keep low as I roll and scramble across a rocky outcrop. It gives enough cover that I can slip further down the hillside toward a clutch of evergreens. When I reach them, I squat low and look back up toward the van. A path of shattered trees and scarred earth flows down from the road to where the broken heap of metal rests, hissing in the snow.

“I grow weary of cleaning up your messes, little brother,” Ember says. She’s at the driver’s side of the van. I can’t see her from where I am. I can’t see Ashen either, I can only hear his ragged exhalation. “I will be back for you.”

I turn and run.

I scramble over rocks and between trees. Their branches pull at my clothes and skin. I stagger through a shallow creek and slip on patches of ice hidden by snow.

“You might as well stop, LuLu. I’m only going to catch up,” Ember calls. She’s already closer than I thought she’d be.

I follow a game trail and burst into a small clearing. I make it to the far side before I turn and unsheathe my sword, dropping the saya in the snow.

She’s right. I might as well stop. My body is still too broken to keep going.

It feels like an eternity waiting for Ember, even though she’s not that far behind. That stupid saying rings through my mind on repeat: a watched pot never boils. I feel like I spend a thousand years watching the crack of shadows between the trees for Ember to finally appear.

But, of course, she does. She saunters into the clearing like she has all the time in the world.

Ember’s hair is scraped back in a high ponytail, her makeup unblemished by the crash or the effort of climbing down the hillside after me.

“I don’t suppose you’ll make this easy on me, will you, LuLu?”

I raise my sword and shake my head.

Ember smiles, withdrawing a set of twin short swords strapped across her back.

“I didn’t think so.”

She surges ahead and I meet her in the clearing, swinging my sword against her uncompromised strength. She strikes fast and hard. I fend off her attack but can’t land a blow. Ember is quick. She’s skilled. And unlike me, she’s uninjured. She lands two strikes in rapid succession, both to my left arm. The cuts are deep enough to force me back.

“Oops,” she says with a menacing smile. “Sorry about that.”

I say nothing, but my glare intensifies. So does her grin in reply.

She comes at me again. Flashes of sunlight glare off our blades. A hot lick of pain courses through my skin as she strikes my arm a third time. The smell of snow and blood and pine fills my nostrils. If I could just land a cut, that’s all it would take to bring her down. But Ember meets every swing and parries every attack.

I finally manage to kick out and get her in the hand. One of Ember’s blades pinwheels behind her. A dark and menacing laugh is the only warning I get before she comes at me with renewed ferocity.

Ember uses her strength to hack at me in an attack that’s both brutal and graceful. She’s relentless. Her sword hits mine again and again. She twists out of reach only to hit my blade with punishing strikes. It’s all I can do to stay upright. But maybe that’s the problem. I need to try something else. So I drop to the snow to kick her legs from underneath her.

It’s like slow motion, watching my mistake unfold.

Ember jumps up beyond reach but comes back down with her weight in her blade. The polished steel slides through the back of my ankle. My Achilles tendon snaps with an audible pop. Blinding pain follows and I cry out in fury.

“Well, well. You got your voice back. How interesting.”

Ember kicks my hand and the sword lands just beyond my grasp. She kneels close enough for me to feel the heat radiating from her body, but far enough that she’s just out of reach.

I’m looking up at her, red rage in my eyes, black flame in hers, wispy smoke curling from her back. Tendrils of sparks unfurl behind her. “I will cut you to ribbons if I have to, Leucosia. Whether in one piece or twenty, we are going back to the Shadow Realm.”

One moment a malicious smile is spread across her lips. And the next her hot blood sprays across my face.

“Not today,” Cassian says beyond the shadow of Ember’s wings. Ember and I both look down to the short sword she had dropped in the snow, its bloody point sticking out just beneath her clavicle. She takes a shuddering breath and our eyes meet.

I smile.

“Get fucked, Ember,” I say, and with a vicious hiss I punch her in the face with all the fury I can channel into my fist.

Ember falls to the ground unconscious.

“Stai bene, zanne dolci?” Cassian asks as he comes to my side. He gives me his familiar lopsided grin, those kind warm eyes smiling down at me.

I slump down, exhausted and bloodied and broken, but victorious. A victory that somehow still feels like a loss.

My throat closes tight with thoughts of what could have happened. She would have brought me back, just like she said. She would have thrown me into that dungeon. There would have been no second chance to escape, the Shadow Realm would have made sure of that. These thoughts are rolling away like debris in a tidal wave as Cassian loops my arm over his shoulder and I pull him into a fierce hug. “Thank you, Cassian. Thank you so much.”

“It’s all right,” he says. “You’ll be okay.” He grips me tighter as I lose a piece of myself in his kindness.

The accident. The pain. The fight. The fear.

The taste of copper on my tongue.

I’m such a fucking fool.

I shake with the effort to keep from crying or yelling or fucking screaming or full-on sobbing. It’s fury like I’ve never felt. Not just with Ashen, but with myself. I wanted my heart to prove my head wrong. I wanted it to be okay to forgive, to love. And where did that land me? At the bottom of a hill, in a twisted hunk of metal, cut to shreds.

“Why? Why do I keep doing this to myself? I was falling for him. Again. What the fuck is wrong with me?” I whisper. I know that sounds so full of self-pity, and that I’ve got myself to blame as much as anyone else, but Cassian still holds on tighter anyway. He shares his warmth and his quiet countenance. It’s a balm in the cold of the snow and the unknown.

“Nothing is wrong with you, Lu. Your heart is full of courage, and to love is an act of bravery.”

“How can you say that? I ran away from you. And we were good for each other.”

Cassian laughs and holds on tighter. “No, we weren’t, tesoro. We wanted different things. We just tried hard to not believe it for too long, even if we loved each other.” Cassian lets go enough to place a chaste kiss on my cheek. He gives me a long look, like he’s trying to share his strength and hope. “You did not run away from me. You ran to yourself. Now come on. Let’s get out of here.” Cassian holds my arm in his grasp and raises us both from the frozen ground.

When I’m steady on my good foot we start our trek across the clearing. It doesn’t take us long before we find a rhythm, and Cassian navigates us around roots and rocks with patience and precision. I know it’s going to be a long journey back up the hill.

I just don’t realize how little time we’ll have.

A sudden crunch.

Slick metal, sliding through flesh.

The flood of blood into a lung.

A wail shatters the quiet of the meadow. It takes me a moment to realize it’s coming from me.

Cassian drops his hold on my arm and I fall to the snow. He watches as the katana slides back from his flesh before he falls to his knees next to me.

No…

“Word of advice, vampire. Make sure your enemy is dead before you turn your back,” Ember says as she flicks the sword, spraying thick, dark blood across the snow.

Cassian slams down on his side. His lungs pump his breath into the cold air. I roll him onto his back and we lock eyes. He mouths the words I’m sorry as bloody foam gathers in his mouth.

No. No no.

I bite into my arm and tear his shirt open, even as he shakes his head and tries to give a reassuring smile. He catches my wrist before I can drip blood into the wound. Tears blur my vision as I meet his eyes.

“No, Leucosia. Andrà tutto bene.” he whispers. His body starts to shake. His throat strains as he struggles to take a breath. “Thank you, for all these years. Ti devo la vita.”

I shake my head. I grab his hand and squeeze. “I don’t want you to go.”

Cassian gives a failing smile before his body convulses. His hand is like an iron vice around mine, but I refuse to cry out.

“You’re a good man, Cassian. You’re a good man.” I tell him again and again, until he gives a rattling exhalation and dies in my hands. And still I grip his palm in mine, even when it goes slack and his arm is heavy in my grasp. I hold on until the last faint beats of his heart pass into oblivion.

“Very interesting,” Ember muses as her gaze flows from the hilt of my blade to the tip. Her eyes slide to mine. “Angelwing. Well, one last vampire in the world is no great loss, I suppose, though it would have been nice to drag him to the Shadow Realm with us.”

I vibrate with rage.

Ember leans a little closer. Her blood hisses when it drips onto the snow. “Are you done? I would rather like to get going. We have much to accomplish together.”

I’m going to fight with every breath. I’m going to make every second of this as hard on her as I can. If it’s going to be misery for me, you’d better fucking believe I’m going to make it misery for her too.

A poisonous smile spreads across Ember’s face as she extends her arm, her hand spread like a claw that’s coming for my hair.

A flash of light burns my eyes. For an instant I wonder if it’s the pain I’m expecting to feel.

And then a scream.

“Embrace your end, demon. For these are your last breaths in any realm,” a deep, familiar voice booms above the blinding light. Ember is still screaming when I shield my eyes and look into the light.

Blood pours from her severed arm. Ember’s hand lies in the snow, curled up at me like a dying spider.

The angel of Saqqara looms over Ember. She tries to swing the katana toward him, but doesn’t even have a chance to connect with the angel’s glowing blade. He swings his massive sword in a sharp arc and it cuts a swath across Ember’s stomach. Her viscera tumble from her abdomen and she screeches, falling to her knees in the snow. The angel’s blade makes a return pass, and Ember’s head flies from her shoulders, that awful shriek falling into blessed silence.

I’m unable to move as I watch Ember’s body twitch and jerk. Blood saturates the snow, creeping ever further as it consumes the pristine powder. It’s… deeply satisfying.

The angel moves to stand before me, obstructing my view of the gory scene with his shimmering wings spread wide behind him. He extends his hand to me.

“Come with me to the Realm of Light. We have much to discuss, Leucosia.”