Between the Shadow and the Soul (27 page)

Chapter 32

D
arko stared down at Nela’s sleeping form. She was curled up on her side, still naked. The sun was setting behind the forest. Only a few more hours. He needed to be in his Master’s lab around midnight. He trailed his fingers over the smooth skin over her hipbone, then turned away, unable to look at her in view of what he’d done. How could he have slept with her knowing what he was going to do to her mere hours later?

Fierce self-hatred burned through him. But it was too late. He wrapped the blanket around her and lifted her into his arms. She snuggled into his chest and he wished he could extract his own heart as he’d done with so many of his victims. He closed his eyes against the last rays of golden light and called the shadows upon himself.

He appeared in his bedroom and for a long time he stood with Nela in his arms, relishing in the feel of her warm skin. Part of him, the darkest, ugliest part of him was glad she’d given herself to him, glad that he got to have her before he lost her forever. He hated that part as much as he hated the Brotherhood, maybe even more.

Pressing a kiss against her forehead, he put Nela down on his bed before he left his apartment and headed toward the Melaten cemetery. Silence reigned around him as he thrust the shovel into the soil of his sister’s grave. “I’m sorry, Milena,” he whispered. His parents had taught him that it was a sin to disturb the dead and though he hadn’t cared about sinning in a while, this sacrilege against his own sister reminded him of what they’d wanted him to believe in.

After ten minutes he was covered in sweat but the dark wood of his sister’s coffin lay in the open. He couldn’t lift it out of the hole. Ignoring his shaking legs, he brought the stone hammer down on the wood with full force. He hit it again and again until he’d removed most of the lid. Magic might have sped up the process but he was worried about damaging his sister’s body by accident. He wasn’t exactly in control of his emotions.

His breath gathered in his throat as he stared down at what remained of his sister. She was even smaller than he remembered, still dressed in the blue dress he’d chosen for her. Most of her skin and flesh were gone, and only the sinews, hair and fingernails were still attached to her skeleton.

Darko heaved and emptied what little he had in his stomach beside him.  He forced himself to climb down into the grave, his feet in the narrow space between his sister’s legs and the walls of the coffin. He bent down, feeling oddly lightheaded, and pushed his hands under her body. He suppressed a shudder as he straightened and lifted her out of the grave. What was he doing? That question kept echoing in his mind but he’d learned to ignore the voice of reason long ago.

He gingerly put her down on the ground and took a few moments to catch his breath before he grabbed her again and transported her to his Master’s laboratory. As promised the magical barriers were gone and he appeared in the lab itself and not the ante-chamber.

Master Valentine didn’t acknowledge his presence. He’d somehow managed to remove his workbench, bed and stool from the room. Instead there was a massive stone altar in the center. Darko had to look away and put his sister down in a corner of the room.

“It’s time. Bring the necromancer to me.”

***

Nela felt a hand on her cheek and peeled her eyes open. She glanced at Darko’s face, illuminated by the bedside lamp, and then toward the window. It was dark outside. “What’s wrong?” she mumbled, surprised to find herself back in his bed.

The last thing she remembered was that she’d fallen asleep in his arms after they’d slept together for the very first time. The heat she’d felt then was already fading, the unwelcome cold creeping back in, and with it the hollowness. She’d dreamed about her parents, about her father’s last fearful expression before he was shot, about her mother’s hopeless face, about the smell of blood.

Darko was watching her with eyes like black mirrors. “I need your help,” he said hoarsely. He smelled like death and dank soil, and shadows darkened the skin beneath his eyes.

Nela sat up, ignoring the soreness she felt. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “My Master has found a way to bring my sister back, but he needs our help.”

“
Our
help?”

“During our last meeting I told him about you, and he started reading about necromancers. He’s got a lot of old books and apparently there’s a way to bring my sister back.”

“What about my parents?”

Darko blinked. “Only if they weren’t burnt.”

A heavy weight settled in Nela’s chest. The Brotherhood always burnt witches. A week had passed since they’d died, they’d be long gone. She closed her eyes, fighting tears.

“Will you help me?”

She nodded.

“But it might be dangerous.”

Dangerous? What was there to lose? “I don’t care. I’d do anything to help you, Darko.”

He smiled a stiff, little smile. This was hurting him. Nela wasn’t sure how his Master wanted to bring his sister back after all those years, but she was willing to talk to him. She owed it to Darko after how he’d taken care of her after her parents’ death.

She untangled herself from the blankets before she realized that she was still naked. She quickly grabbed her clothes and put them on. She could feel Darko’s eyes on her the entire time, but the look in them was different from the one she remembered from the Tower Rock. “Okay,” she said finally, tearing him from his stupor. He wrapped his arms around her. He was tense, his grip almost hesitant.

Their surroundings blurred as the shadows gathered around them and then they were ripped from the apartment. The shadows seemed to reach into her body, attracted by her shattered soul. Nela pressed her forehead against Darko’s chest in an attempt to stop her head from spinning. She hadn’t eaten enough today. Her mind was foggy.

Their feet hit stone floor and Nela almost lost her balance from the impact. Immediately a wave of strange thuds filled her ears. Darko leaned down, his lips against her skin. She shivered, remembering his earlier touches and kisses, but his next words made her feel as if she’d been plunged into cold water. “I’m so sorry, but it’s the only way.”

Nela pulled back, staring into his glassy eyes but before she could ask what he meant, a gnarly white hand appeared in front of her face and pressed a tissue over her nose. She sucked in a scared breath and the world darkened around her.

***

Darko held Nela’s limp body in his arms. She’d trusted him. That would be her last mistake. Guilt wrecked him but he kept his face a cold mask. It wouldn’t do if the Master saw him so weak.

“Put her down on the altar,” Master Valentine said, an ugly eagerness in his voice.

Darko carried Nela over to the massive white stone and laid her down. He smoothed her hair until it fanned out around her head like dark silk. The Master pushed him aside with a sound of impatience. “I don’t understand why women don’t wear skirts anymore,” he said. He held a long knife, his Atlame, in his crooked fingers.

“What are you doing?” Darko asked in alarm.

“I need her blood to draw the pentagram,” he said gruffly. “Either you help me or you get out of my way.” He held out the knife for Darko. “Cut her palm. My hands aren’t what they used to be. We only need enough blood for the pentagram, we aren’t going to drain her.” There was mockery in his words.

Darko gripped the knife and his hand was steady as he pressed the blade into Nela’s skin. He made a long but shallow cut and immediately blood seeped out of the wound and dripped into the stone vessel the Master was holding. When it was half full, he pulled it back and shoved it at Darko. “Now paint the pentagram, but be quick.” A wave of resentment washed over Darko but after a glance at his sister’s skeleton, he took the vessel and knelt on the floor.

He couldn’t stand seeing Nela on the altar, ready to be sacrificed, couldn’t stand the thought of hurting her, of
losing
her, but his sister’s death was his fault. He should have protected her, should have sent her away without him, to a place where people didn’t know she was the sister of a wizard, but he’d been selfish and hadn’t wanted to live without her. She couldn’t bear living as an outcast, much less among witches. He should have given her the chance at a normal human life, maybe then she could have forgotten about the horrors of their past and lived a happy life.

He brought down the brush and began painting the pentagram on the rough stone floor with Nela’s blood. The people he loved always had to bleed. Love – he’d made peace with the fact that he’d allowed himself to fall in love with Nela. Love wouldn’t save her, just like it hadn’t saved his parents.

***

A sharp pain in her left palm was the first thing Nela noticed when she came to her senses. She’d lost any sense of time. She shifted and something cut into her wrists and ankles, sending another wave of pain through her. She couldn’t move. Her legs and arms were bound and she was lying on a cold, hard surface. Her bonds were made of some kind of metal; she would never be able to break through them. For a moment confusion flooded Nela. Where was she? What had happened? Too many questions shot through her head and the headache that had been a gentle thrumming in the background turned into a bone-splitting throbbing in the forefront of her skull. Her eyelids felt heavy but she forced them open. She was staring at a gray stone ceiling with black burn marks like an intentional pattern all over it. The sound of hundreds of rhythmic thuds filled the room.

Dimly she remembered someone drugging her with a white tissue. The stench of decay hung thickly around her. She twisted her head until she could see her hand, which was tied to the corner of a stone platform. One of her palms had a long cut, which was still dripping blood. With a jolt, Nela realized what it was she was lying on: an altar. Like a sacrificial virgin.

No, not anymore.

Darko had taken care of that. Resentment and a deep sadness pierced through Nela. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have given herself to him? That she’d slept with him wasn’t even what bothered her the most. She’d never understood why some people revered their virginity as if the value of a girl was attached to her virginity. What really got her was that she’d given Darko her trust, that she’d thought he could be the person to lean on after what had happened. The memories that thought brought up were even more painful and Nela pushed them aside. She couldn’t cling to the past, not now. She glanced around and immediately her eyes came to rest on a massive shelf with hundreds of glass jars, and each of them contained a beating heart.

She tugged at the old-fashioned shackles around her wrists. They were iron and didn’t budge, but the sound of them clanking against the stone altar had drawn attention to her.

She stifled a gasp when an old man came into view. His veins shone through his ghastly ashen skin, but much worse were the brownish blotches and spidery lines all over his body. It looked as if his skin was decaying. That probably explained the smell of rot that pinched Nela’s nose. He was dressed in a long gray frock not unlike the ones members of the Brotherhood wore, and a horrible thought grabbed her. “Are you from the Brotherhood?” What if they’d somehow forced Darko to bring her here?

He gave her an ugly smile, revealing teeth that were coated red as if he’d drunk blood. As if he had been drinking blood
for years
. That would explain why he was so thin. Though he looked at least a head taller than her – it was hard to say with his bent posture – Nela was sure he weighed less than her. Had it been human blood? The hearts definitely were.

“No, my dear. I’m definitely not a member of the Brotherhood.” A dry cackle left his lips, followed by horrible hacking. It sounded as if water filled his lungs. “I’m Darko’s Master. Maybe he’s mentioned me.”

For an instant, Nela wondered if she was imagining this, if her mind had conjured this up as a way to cope with the loss of her parents. That would explain why she felt so detached from her emotions, almost eerily calm. Suddenly heat pressed against her eyes and a tear trickled down her cheek. She blinked furiously. This wasn’t the moment for weakness. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying.

The old man misunderstood her reaction for fear of her own fate. “Don’t worry. It’ll be quick and you won’t feel any pain,” he said in a fake-simpery voice. “And your demise will be for a good cause. You’ll help an old man prolong his life.”

Nela narrowed her eyes. “I don’t care if you live or die.”

“I suppose you don’t,” he said with a nasty little smile. “But surely you care about Darko’s wellbeing? He’ll get his sister back once I’ve come to my full powers.” The old man’s cold blue eyes darted toward a figure that knelt on the ground. She would have recognized his black hair anywhere. He had his back turned to her and was kneeling beside a skeleton. That was probably the other source of the rotten smell.

“Darko?” she tried to call, but her voice was a croak. Her neck ached from the new position. How long had she been tied to the altar? Darko hunched his shoulders as if he was trying to shield himself from her presence; he didn’t turn around to her. His fingertips were resting on the bones that were his sister’s hand. Sinews and fingernails were still attached to it. Nela lifted her head as much as she could and glimpsed at the rest of the corpse. Tufts of dark hair stuck to the skull and sinews were still attached to her legs and arms.