Light of the Moon (26 page)

Behind me I saw Lisander and Marcus throwing bolts of light and fire at Layla. Her hands were thrown out in front of her, shaking as pale blue light engulfed them. A wall of light blue water broke the room in two, protecting us.

Suddenly, Kate was beside me. “Run!” she yelled.

As my fingers touched the door, I heard Marcus howl with an undying rage. “Morphis! Hear my plea and fight beside me! It is time!”

I turned just as the wall of water crashed down in waves, shattering into white-hot flames as it fell around Layla.

Even from where I stood, I heard her cries burst from her throat, wet and lifeless, until she was engulfed in light and fire. Until she was nothing but ash and dust and death.

Beside me, Gae whispered, “Sister.”

In a flash of darkness, gray smoke began to billow from behind Marcus. His body began to change, grow as he screamed. His teeth elongated, and his eyes grew as red as embers on a hot fire burning bright. His tongue reached out and licked at air and more flames burst from the smoke.

Lisander bowed to the thing that used to be Marcus.

“Lis
sss
ander,” it hissed. “Kill the boy. Kill him!”

I knew that voice, knew the devil-eyes and the shape of the dark smoke that reached like fingers. It was the monster from my dream, the one that couldn’t touch me.

Blood beat in my ears. Faster and faster.

“Morphis,” Gae whispered from my side. “No...”

A hand found my own. Kate.

I couldn’t speak.

“Run,” Gae whispered, her voice so filled with fear it burned my throat. She turned up to the ceiling and clasped her hands together. “Emaline. Christopher. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes were wide, and her lips white with fear. She reached into the folds of her robe and pulled out a small dagger, the hilt gleaming with emeralds. She thrust the knife into Kate’s hands and closed her fingers around it. “Sweet Kate, forgive me for not protecting you, for not telling you the truth about what I could not stop; Marcus has become Morphis. Now you must run toward the truth kept from you, and don’t look back until you’ve reached the outside. The morning sun has nearly risen, and Morphis will need the day to regain his strength; he will eat souls until the moon rises again. You both have until then to become what you must be. Run while you can. The Orieno are already here, and they will move as quickly as they can before the night leaves completely. The wards in the tunnel have already been broken. I can feel it.
Go!
”

We ran.

Chapter Fourteen

Darkness burning Bright

-Kate-

Invisible hands took hold of my heart, my lungs, and squeezed until I couldn’t feel or breathe. Until my whole world melted in death and betrayal, and burned dark around me from the bright flames of one body on fire.

Gae’s voice was a quake of power, surging through me so her words repeated furiously:
Go! Go! Go!

I remembered Dad screaming.

Remembered being afraid.

Hiding.

“Go!”

“Move, Calum!” I shouted, the words barely slicing through the air in time. I shoved Gae’s dagger up my sleeve. “Run!”

I heard a crunch behind me, bone against rock.

Someone else was gone. Dead.

Please let it be Marcus
, I thought as my legs pushed me forward, away. I grabbed Calum’s shirt and pulled.
Please let Morphis be gone
.

Marcus.

He had been my family when I had none, and my world when mine unraveled. My father when I could look to no one else, trust no one else.

And now he stood as a man possessed by a demon; Morphis, the dream-eating demon banished from Hell itself. Now Marcus’ soul was nothing but dust, a cold bundle of ash in his heart that beat as dark as death; that’s what they did. Morphis wouldn’t stop until he stole every soul in sight, eating the helpless dreams of innocents in the name of the Orieno. He wouldn’t stop until he had an army of damned, lawless victims to control. Until the world was dark.

Marcus was gone. Dead.

Calum and I burst through the falls and out into the lost beauty of the open cave. The shine of the angel tears on the lake was too bright against the horrific screams behind us. The magic was gone, almost forgotten. Even the tears were falling more slowly.

A piercing siren shook the rocky walls of the cave, bursting through the air and rippling across the lake and falls as if alive; a cry for help to all those Warriors still alive. A cry for death.

A reason to hide.

Time was a beating drum, sounding faster and faster until it kept a driving rhythm with my speeding heart, and I knew we didn’t have much left.

“The other Warriors will be here soon. They can’t find us or we’ll never leave; after what happened no one will be allowed to.” My eyes darted left and right, searching. “Come on!” I ran toward a small stone storage house, yanked open the red-rusted door, pushed Calum inside, and locked us in.

Except for blood sounding loud in my ears, racing through my veins like fire eating a thousand lines of gasoline, there was nothing but quiet.

“Quiet,” I whispered while I waited for the fire to reach my heart. To explode.

Calum jerked his head toward me. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Yes, you were. So, shut up and sit still. If they know we’re in here, we die.”

He nodded. “Should we hide or do you have a plan?”

“Hide.” I looked around. “Get behind those food boxes in the back. They should be big enough to hide us if someone comes in.”

“You think that’ll help?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all. But hiding will give us the advantage in an attack if someone does find us.”

We crouched down behind the boxes, our knees touching. This close, I could feel how warm his skin was.

I closed my eyes and tried to banish the beat of my heart so I could hear the outside. I listened and heard just this: A slow
beat beat beat
of a heart that wasn’t mine.

Calum.

I opened my eyes and saw the sky-

saw my reflection in his deep blue eyes.

I saw him looking at me like I was someone else, like I was a girl made of sunlight, the only thing shining bright in a world of complete darkness. Hope in a place without.

Like I was someone more.

“Stop it,” I said. “You said you’d stop looking at me like that.”

“I never said that.”

I turned away, curled my arms around myself and hugged my body. “Well, stop.”

For a while, I was alone with my thoughts, my heart. Alone, with Calum next to me.

“What
was
that?” he said breaking the silence. “What did Marcus turn into?”

I shuddered at the name, betrayal so thick in the sound of it that I felt it rattle my bones and crawl under my skin. I didn’t dare speak loudly, so I moved closer to Calum and whispered, “Morphis. He turned into the most powerful demon sibling of the three banished from Hell, and the leader of the Orieno.”

And then I realized, “Marcus had to be working for them all along.”

“I saw him in my dreams,” Calum said, his eyes darting back and forth. “He came to me. Spoke with me and tried to touch me but he couldn’t.”

“He should have been able to,” I said. “He’s so powerful. Maybe it’s because of who you are.”

Calum was quiet. His legs shook unsteadily against mine. “I’m sorry, Kate, but what do we do now?”

Remorse bit my tongue.
Why am I hiding? I’m a Warrior. I should be fighting with the others, not running away like a coward.

I ground my teeth together. “I don’t know. He’s too powerful. Even if all the Warriors stood as one, we’d die instantly; we’re trained to fight the Orieno, not the Siblings themselves. I’ve never done anything to prepare for this. No one has.”

He put his hand on mine. I didn’t push it away.

My sisters.

I’m not running away, I’m running to find them.

Truth will set me free.

I almost felt safe if not for the fear in my heart.

“We still need to find the key,” Calum reminded me. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against a box. “It might be our only hope in stopping this war. With it I know we can win.”

“You can’t know that.”

He said, “I believe we can.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Because I believe in you.”

“But why? Calum, you don’t know me. You can’t believe in someone you don’t even know.”

A shy grin played at the edges of his mouth and he said, “Maybe I don’t know you as well as I should, but I know you better than you think. I know that you miss your parents even though you hate them. I know that you loved someone once, before you came to the Order, and that you regret not meeting him that night. I know you are loyal and smart and incredibly stubborn. I know that sometimes you second guess yourself, but always have the best intentions. And I know that you will do anything to find your sisters and make sure they’re safe.”

I swallowed. “You don’t know me.”

“Yes, I do, Kate.”

“No,” I said, my voice flat, “you don’t.”

Suddenly, the siren died. It sputtered and coughed like a bird shot down from the sky and, just before it crashed to nothing, exploded in one last ear-piercing roar.

Calum looked at me in that way I hated and, in a voice filled with quiet determination that resonated loudly in the aftermath of the siren, said, “I want to know you, Kate.”

I was not afraid.

I was terrified.

-Calum-

My chest rose and fell, harboring a silent scream. If I let it out we would die in seconds.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. My hand was hot in Kate’s, and I knew I needed it to stay there. I pulled them to my chest, holding tightly to their warmth. I felt better entwined with her like this, less afraid.

Filled with fear, but less afraid of what that meant.

Still, why didn’t things just stay the same? I had been happy. I was happy with Tyler and Mom and my friends back in Lakewood Hollow.

I almost laughed.

No, I never was,
I thought. I’d always known something was missing. I had never felt like myself.

Now, even though I’d lost so much, I felt alive and a different kind of anger began to erupt inside me, from a brave new place, and my heart filled with the urge to fight.

This was my time. Ours.

Beside me, Kate whispered, “Why is this happening?”

“What do you mean?”

She leaned close and pulled her hands from mine, balling them into fists. “I mean why now? You’re the Caeles, the one born a thousand times before, so why are we just trying to figure all this out now?
You should have the answers, Calum!
Why didn’t you stop this war a hundred years ago?” Her fists pounded against my chest, softly at first, then harder until I was numb to everything else but the feeling.

With every blow, I thought,
No one can have all the answers, no matter who they are.

I grabbed both her hands, held them as tightly as I could, and shook them as I said, “Kate, be quiet! They’ll hear us.”

Her eyes blazed a furious violet in the dim room, and her teeth bared white. “I don’t care! Why didn’t you stop this! You could have saved us all! You could have saved my sisters!”

I whispered, “In all my past lives I don’t think I’ve ever been in love. Orion said that love would be the only reason the Devil could find me; he said it would be the only way to free the Guard. So, I couldn’t have been, otherwise they’d already be free. Orion said that in every past life, I’ve died before I even get the chance to live, to love.”

“Calum, I-”

“Can you believe that, Kate? I’ve always died before I’ve loved. I don’t remember why. Maybe I’ve never found a reason to fall in love, never let myself. I don’t remember anything, other than a flash of purple light blinding me. Even in this life I’ve dreamed of it. Of
you
, Kate. I think I’ve been searching for you. I think I always want to remember you, find you.”

Kate blinked and, for that one fleeting moment, I felt my heart drop as her eyes disappeared. “What do you mean? How?”

“Your eyes,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I might not know that much about you in this life, Kate, but from the first moment I saw you, I’ve known your eyes as if I’ve seen them a million times before. I remember when I saw you back in Mr. Brandt’s room, and all I could see was violet. It was as though I remembered that color from somewhere; as though I’d known you before.”

She shook her head. “That can’t be right, Calum. I’m not immortal. I’m just me. Nothing more.”

Calum smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong. When I look in your eyes, I know I’ve seen them before. But you’re right that you don’t die over and over again like me. You are mortal, and this is your first life. But it isn’t mine.”

I breathed, “I think I’ve finally found a reason to fall in love, Kate. That’s why this time is so different. You might be my reason. I think I’ve been searching for you for a thousand lifetimes.”

-Kate-

Lies.

Calum’s voice rang in my thoughts just as a cacophony of voices exploded outside the door; harsh shouts of power and courage and fear, and one scream filled with bloodlust. How many were out there? Thirty? Hundreds? Thousands? It sounded like more.

Calum tapped my knee. “Kate, what do we do when they find us?”

“Fight and run,” I said, choking back words I didn’t want to say. I bit down hard on my tongue, felt it pop, and swallowed my blood as though it were my secret.

I could swear I remember your eyes, too, Calum.