Ashes and Ice (23 page)

Jade is turning more into the Devil’s prodigy every day.

There will be a moment of reckoning, and if Jade Turns, she will be a weapon against mankind.

Once her choice has been made, the Apocalypse begins.

I sit back in my chair hearing the crinkle of the beanbag. Well, that would blow anyone’s Saturday evening.

The reckoning will be marked by an eclipsed Blood Moon and the beginning of the
Apocalypse will be marked by twelve shooting stars and the earth’s quaking.

Blood Moon. Eclipse. 12 shooting stars. Then, bam. It begins. My head ping-pongs from apocalyptic movie to movie. Lava, floods, earthquakes, demon legions slaughtering the world. I shudder. Jade could be one of those demons. Those green eyes black, that laughing smile quirked up with malice. The Jade I held could be a monster… the monster I already had a glimpse of, a monster I could see taking control.

I tap my fingers on the page. But,wait… I re-read the passage.

The eclipsed Blood Moon is the night of Reckoning… the night that the Greater
Demon
,
Dejanira, could rise up.

Which means… whatever is poisoning Jade at this very moment could still be fought off, could still be denied.

There was still time.

Still time to get Jade back.

“Connor, Connor!”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Come take a look at this.”

I walk downstairs and see the news on. “What’s up?”

“Just listen.”

“The Etcher’s symbol has just been leaked to the press,” says a wiry reporter in a brown, suit, a microphone poised in her hand.

Two symbols flash on the screen. I stare at them. The lines, slashes and curves, familiar.

The first one is similar to Jade’s but the markings are slightly different. More intricate curls around the edges and slashes through the middle. The other one I have never seen before.

Or have I? I run upstairs.

“Are you okay, Connor?”

I ignore Mom’s call. I scatter papers with the strange writing across my bed, searching.

I find both images immediately as if they were searching for me too.

The one on the girl’s backs: Sacrifices to Raise a Greater Demon.

The girls… they were all sacrifices. The seven sacrifices. I think back to the news reports. Six. There have been six victims. If the prophecy is right, there would be one more.

The one branded on their necks: A Mark To Animate the Dead. I draw my brows together. What does that mean? I keep reading, grateful this symbol has a longer explanation.

This symbol is marked on the dead for the purpose of torturing or haunting a living soul. It is generally used to persuade the living into a specific course of action or is used to drive the living into insanity.

I sit back. Haunting? Have these sacrifices been used to haunt and torment Jade?

My eyes fall to another image, a very familiar one. Jade’s symbol. I take a deep breath before picking it up. I don’t know if I want to know what her symbol means. What the symbol she drew on everything means. I take another breath before reading the translation.

A Symbol to Fight Inner Evil.

I deflate. She was fighting it, even if she hadn’t known it. She was fighting. Fighting Dejanira.

Pain stabs my stomach. I double over and lean against the wall.

“She is coming.” The voice is a low whisper in my ears. I try to open my eyes, but my vision is blurry. “She is coming. You can’t let her win. She cannot rise.”

“Dad?” my voice trembles.
Could it really be him?
I gather my strength and stand upright, my shoulder still braced against the wall. “Dad, is that you?” Tears burn behind my eyes. They’ll spill over any minute. Not because of the pain. Because I hear
him
. His voice isn’t frantic or desperate; it’s familiar and…real. He’s here.

“It’s me, Connor.” His voice is a low steady sound in my ears. “But I can’t stay…”

“But Dad, I—” I want to tell him he needs to stay; he can’t leave me again. I reach an arm out to grab his body, but my fingers meet air.

“Connor, you don’t have much time. You have to stop Dejanira from rising. Otherwise, all is lost. I tried to save you from this, but I was,” his voice falters, “too weak. You are strong, Connor. And the vessel that holds Dejanira…”

“Jade.” I can’t keep the edge out of my voice. Jade isn’t a vessel. Dejanira is a leech.

“Yes, Jade. There is still time to save the girl you love, Connor. You must seek her out where you first saw real hope in her eyes. This is where Dejanira will want to rise. She is a destroyer of hope.”

“I thought—I thought she was the destroyer of man?”

“Yes, but man cannot live without hope, Connor.” A warm presence is beside me now. I can almost feel his arm over my shoulders. “You are her hope.” With that, the warmth starts to slip away.

“No, Dad! Wait!” I stumble forward, reaching, and end up on my hands and knees on the floor. I swallow hard. He’s gone. I rock back onto my heels. Gone.

The pain is gone too.

You must seek her where you first saw real hope in her eyes.

I look to my desk to the bowl of gold orbs I gathered there for safekeeping. If I lost Jade, I would still have these memories. But I didn’t want memories. I wanted a real girl in my arms. I walk over, grazing my hand over them and pick up a single marble. I close my eyes and re-live it, see it as if I was there all over again. Jade’s eyes were open, looking at a sky, her arms and body within my arms, within the water. Her eyes were alive and clear, bright with awe and peace.

I know what I am holding in my palm. I am holding hope.

I run downstairs to head out into the night. I open the door and gasp.

A red, harvest moon burns in the sky and creeping along its edge is an ever-growing black crescent.

The Shadowed Blood Moon. Tonight is the Reckoning.

“Is it—you?” He comes closer and eyes me cautiously.

As I skid to a stop in front of him, I see how he watches me. There is something tangible drifting between us in the air. It’s desperate and full and pulling us closer. But we stay still, watching.

“It is you.” He says finally. His eyes stay locked with mine and within them seems something so bold and new: longing. I’ve seen traces of that look before, but then it was mixed with shyness—a guarded expression and a wry smile looking only partly real. I didn’t believe it then. Now I do. I could be his; he could be mine. “I thought you were gone.”

“I was.” I take a step forward, smiling and watching as he slowly smiles back.

I falter. No, I was here for a reason. As I look into his eyes though, I can’t remember. Then I remember the mirror, the shards of glass, and the blade left in the center of the circle.

“You have to leave, Connor.” I say. “I have something I have to do.” My whole body shakes, desperate to sob, but unable.

“Jade, did you talk to Lynx?”

I shake my head. “Lynx is dead.” I look away towards the red glow in the sky. “I was too late. Too late for everything.”

“That’s not true, Jade.”

“Stay away Connor. I have done terrible things, unforgiveable things. I never meant to hurt you and I never meant to drag you into this.” How could I tell him that I was the Etcher all along? The evil that carved up girls and left them dead. “The Etcher…”

“Isn’t you.”

I jerk my gaze to him. “You don’t know that.”

“I do…”

“Connor, you have to leave,” I say. “Now.”

“No, I won’t leave you. I won’t let you do this alone. I can help you fight it. I know I can. I can help you remember who you are…”

“Connor, you can’t stay with me. I’m dangerous. I am not good for you…”

“Dammit, Jade! I don’t care!” He’s fierce, lethally potent. It slaps the breath out of me. He’s all fire—as if something has ignited within him and its tendrils are flaring up and out of him until he’s ablaze. There is nothing broken about him now. He’s alive—brilliant, blinding, and beautiful. Looking at him, I feel a now-familiar ache in my chest. A pain constricting my breath and reaching deep in my belly, a pain that solidifies the reality I love him, truly and completely. And I can never have him. He doesn’t see it.

He strides toward me with his shoulders squared. As he closes the gap between us, he reaches out and grasps my biceps, eyeing me with a non-yielding look. I shy away, averting my eyes. He lowers his forehead to mine and leans in. “Jade, I don’t care.” He releases one arm and points an index finger to my chest where a heart should lurk beneath, but doesn’t. “I don’t care,” He says again, softer now. “Because I know you are wrong. I know what’s inside you… I know you are real, beautiful, good, and right.” His voice catches. He leans back.

My eyes flutter up to meet his. They search mine, desperate. As if he’s fighting for oxygen, but holding his breath. When he speaks, it’s a whisper. “You are right for me because I love you.” And the moment he says it, my chest spasms as if my invisible, non-existent heart is growing, unfurling, blooming into something lovely, whole and tender.

And then, my cold, non-existent heart…starts beating. A heart in my chest beats. It is a steady drum in my ears. His words hush the wrongness in me, the fear and the screaming. The very core of me—my heart, so tattered and raw and untouched—thumps wildly, exposed and vulnerable. It scares me. And yet, I love it. This is why, when he leans in toward me, holding me closer, I don’t pull away.

He brushes his lips against mine softly. I inhale against him—because it feels so right—and kiss him back. His whole body deflates in a sigh. His hands run up my arms and cup my face and he kisses me again and again, more and more urgently. I gasp against his lips. I realize then, it was me who was holding her breath, me who was so desperate to breathe, to inhale the air, to gasp for life. And here he is, this boy of warm light, giving it to me, giving me this chance to be alive. I want to melt into him, kiss him forever because, with him, I don’t feel raw and wanting, I feel whole and happy and real and alive. I love. I love him.

“Connor, I love—”

Heat assaults my insides and steals my breath. I fold over clutching my stomach. I had forgotten how the heat burned, how it felt like it could char me to ash.

“Jade! Jade! Jade—”

His voice is lost in a tumble of blackness that stretches out and masks everything. It is just me in this black, hollow space.

I cannot scream. I cannot move.

I see him: Connor. Bloody. The dead girls scrape past him, a violent, harsh sound hacking out of their blue, rotting lips:
Improbus es, Improbes es. Improbes es. Improbes es.

Stop.
The thought inside me echoes in the blackness.
Please, stop.

They come closer and closer, their feet dragging on the ground until they are beside me slithering their dreadful words in my ear:
Improbuses. Improbuses…

Something starts to materialize in the blackness, new shapes. It morphs into a person… into me. A reflection of myself appears behind Connor. Eyes black. Blood smeared on my face. I look
hungry.
My dark self contorts and starts to reach savagely for Connor, while something holds me back. I’m clawing at him. I’m trying to devour him. I’m trying to kill him.

His eyes wide, he chokes out my name. J-a-d-e. My dark self lunges forward and then blackness. Everything’s gone. A single tarot card flutters to the black ground.

“
Death.”
Connor’s death.

Alathea predicted it. I open my eyes and Connor’s strong arms are still around me.

I shake my head, the whole of me trembling. I will die from drowning, drowning in my own blackness. I can’t bring Connor with me. He’s sunshine. I’m the rain—rain as violent as the August hurricanes that drown and destroy.

As the blackness dissipates, I see Connor’s face close to mine. His arms are wrapped around me. “Jade—Jade are you okay?”

I gasp.

No. No one else will suffer because of me. No one else. I feel my blood coursing with something venomous, something itching to be released. A monster. I will not let the monster win. I stumble away from him.

He’s shedding light like a beacon. He is beautiful and I love him. But he can never know that, because I don’t want him to mourn over me. I want him to hate me, despise me, curse my name because I deserve it. A monster, a demon deserves to be hated.