Light of the Moon (31 page)

“Give me your finger,” she said.

“Why?”

“Your blood holds the words of the prophecy, but mine is what gives them a voice.”

I held out my finger and, before I could register the pain, her knife slid across it and my own blood dripped into the bowl. Red against red, the two were indistinguishable.

“We must drink to know the truth,” she said. She brought the bowl of blood up to her lips and drank deeply. When she turned to me, her lips were crimson. I felt my stomach drop as she licked them, her black tongue searching for every last drop of blood.

She lifted the bowl, tilting it toward me. “Drink.”

The church was quiet, so her voice echoed. Her breath sounded painful. Or was that mine?

“Drink, boy,” Magda whispered.

I took the bowl from Magda, brought it to my lips and tasted the metallic liquid as it flowed down my throat. At once I felt warm, and wondered if it wasn’t so much blood as it was poison.

“We are now connected,” Magda said, taking back the bowl. “A part of you is me, and I you. It is with this lifeblood that we will see the truth of the prophecy and hear its ageless voice of reason.”

Magda set the bowl on the table and started to flip through the old book.

“
Light, light, light,
” she spoke, each time a flame on the tall white candles flared bright. The words blended together like a hiss. “The blood binds our souls. With it our
ti bon anges
have become one.
Light
.”

Turning to face the book she raised her hands. I felt her blood inside me start to ignite, burn. My chest grew hot. My heart felt like it was about to burst.

The witch screamed. “
Blood of my sisters. Blood of the fallen. Light. Light. Burn. Burn. Turn my eyes to see the truth, and break the bond of life and death. Light. Light. Burn. Burn...
”

I felt my heart slow-

and then almost stop.

Magda’s voice slammed into me from all sides. It was all I could hear. “
Turn my eyes to see the truth, and break the bond of life and death.”

My vision grew white, then black. I tried to speak, but words failed. I could hear the blood bubble in Magda’s throat, and I felt it in my own. I realized, terrified, that I was screaming, too. My mouth was moving, the words flooding out just like Magda’s. My throat burned with pressure.

But still, no sound came.

There was only Magda screaming, and words dancing in the air like leaves in an autumn wind.

“Light floods over all,

Stars of the dream filled minds

Smile like white pearls above-

Until- They come,

Three kin with hearts so black,

Weaved tightly within dark.

Stars twinkle and fade,

So lost in the rising darkness,

Sun too weak to rise.

Then is hope, the time of the Dreamer.

The one who is lost but will be found.

The soldier who once was and will be always again.

Hope is dangerous.

Darkness will rise to meet it,

Wild and burning and cruel.

A commander will fall in blackness,

Leaving behind a ruling of false order.

They will be deceived and deceiving.

One will be two,

Heavy mind torn between those of truth,

And those of savage trickery.

Truth will be found for two,

Destroying all that was before,

And the heart of thieves will be clear.

Hope will come by two:

Two souls born as one,

Two hearts beating as one.

For one of two, shadowed heat of red will wage,

A future angered by the dwindled fire storms,

Vast as the Destroyer.

For two of one, a path not found will be taken,

Lost in dark places,

Found in light escapes.

Then, when all is lost, the time of hope is near.

One action will save them all.

One action to save the world.”

I heard her body collapse, bones crack. I moved my hand around the floor and felt a wet, sticky liquid.

The world seemed darker than before, less clear. Dim light cut through the dust in the church at odd angles.

My eyes searched the room until they found Magda. My breath caught in my throat. She lay on the floor. Bones, white and red, were sticking out of her arms and legs. Her eyes, once such a bright violet, were completely white and glazed over. Blood dripped from her mouth and down her chin, forming a puddle on the wood floor. Her tongue lapped in and out, reaching for the blood.

Always for the blood.

A bone moved. Magda’s hand tried to reach forward, but it was caught against the bone that was protruding from her leg. Her hand fell.

“Boy...”

I wasn’t sure if the witch had really spoken, or if it was the wind against the church. I wanted to put my hand against Magda’s face, but I couldn’t. What was left of it was nothing more than hanging flesh upon old bone.

“Boy...” she whispered again. “Come... close.”

I had no choice. With my stomach in my throat I crawled towards Magda, not daring to stand. I didn’t trust any part of me.

Her hand twitched, or her foot. Bone. It was the bone that twitched. Bone grinding against bone.

“You must...
run
. Nothing... will protect... you now. Find the key. Do not be afraid of it, boy. Your soul might be yours now... but you need the power of another to keep it. Do not be afraid. Be brave...
Run!
”

-Kate-

“Girl,” Magda whispered. Her breath bubbled out of her. Thick blood crawling up through her throat and out. “Kate...”

I ripped myself from the need for blood, away from the desire to do nothing but suck and lick and drink it. I felt myself break in two: Me and the blood.

For a moment, I was destroyed, and I knew what it meant to be what I was. This pain ran through my family’s veins; the blood would be my burden, just like it had been Magda’s.

“Magda,” I said stepping slowly toward her. One foot followed by one foot, always wanting to go back. “What can I do?”

She blinked, her eyes once more violet than mine now shone a dull, faded blue. “Nothing, child. This is what must happen now that you’s know the truth. I’m almost gone, but you still have time. You must run now before it’s too late. You must ignore the blood.
Run
. It’s not your time just yet. Destroy Morphis before you can’t leave this place no more.
Run
.”

I touched her, my fingers feeling dense, bloody bone, and said, “I can’t.”

“The blood calls to you,” she said. “I know. But you have a different path than I. Follow it now, and come back to this later.”

I felt a bone break in my hand.

Magda smiled, fresh blood covered her chin red, and said, “Girl?”

“What?” I asked.

“Drip the blood into my mouth. I need to taste it one last time.”

I dragged my palms across the floor, scooping up everything red, and cupped them before Magda’s face. Slowly, I dripped her own blood into her mouth and watched her eyes flash violet once again.

This was life, the blood.

Soon, it would be mine.

But not now.

Not yet.

-Calum-

Kate put her hand on my shoulder, then slowly moved it down in a line of red so she held my wrist.

“Your birthmark is glowing, Calum,” she whispered.

I looked to my arm and saw the softened light of my mark. Even through my sweater, it twinkled like the stars I knew it stood for.

Why was it glowing?

Kate’s voice drew me away, the quiet timbre of it too heavy inside the church. “We can’t run anymore, Calum. You’re the Dreamer. I’m the Destroyer. We don’t have a choice. We have to fight this. I have to while I can, before the blood takes over.”

I stepped closer to Kate and felt the room buzz with heat. I took her hand in mine and held it tight, hoping that somehow it would always be there. “I don’t know if we can save them all, Kate.”

“But we have to try,” she said against teeth so gritted her full red lips fell together and turned white. When  she looked at me and her lips opened, I could feel her breath hit my face, so sweet in this stale room. “What if today’s the day you die? Don’t you want to fight? Don’t you want to live a little louder, just for this moment when you’re so close to the end?”

I squeezed her hand.

Just for a moment, I forgot all about the war, that I was the Caeles and Kate was a deadly Warrior. Dreamer and Destroyer. The lost and the found.

Again, just for a moment, all was well.

I was just a boy. Kate, just a girl.

And then without warning, like so many of the worst things, normality was lost to silence; one so quiet even the lack of noise echoed in my head like an explosion as the church fell around us.

Chapter Seventeen

A Dark and Savage Light

-Calum-

The light was luminous, seeping through every crack of the old church, slowly at first, then faster until all I saw was a frenzy of blinding white.

Silence.
Silence.

I held Kate’s hand as our bodies tossed against the church wall and through it; limp dolls in a hurricane. Our bodies never touched the ground, but flew in the storm. At first, I felt nothing when we collided with the falling pieces of old glory. Then, all at once just as our hands broke apart, the pain and the sounds fell forever.

The white light exploded. The sound of wood cracking, walls crashing down. Glass shattering and falling like rain against my face.

I hit the ground hard.

I couldn’t breathe.

Sharp pain stuck in my chest. I looked around but the world was a mixture of blurred vision and dust. Still, I heard screaming.

I tasted blood.

“Kate?” I called. Felt slivers of church in my throat, choking.

I pushed myself up, splinters poking through my skin. I touched a finger to my lip and felt the wet stick of blood. “Kate?”

A voice made its way through the sky still falling, “Calum...”

“Kate!”

Against the fallen cross, she was broken. Both arms stiff, flayed out on the beams. Blood drenched her hands, dripping down and covering the words on the cross so they meant nothing.

She whispered, “I’m sorry.”

My hands grabbed her wrist. Her pulse was slow and nearly silent. Her eyes flickered open and then closed again.

She was barely alive.

“Don’t give up,” I breathed frantically. My heart jumped around beats, skipping some altogether, forgetting how to drum. “I need you for this. I can’t do it alone.”

A word bubbled from her mouth, red and sticky and silent.

I knew it then.

“Kate...”

There were so many different kinds of love in the world, but just one that lasted forever: This love, ours.

It had always been love.

Kate lay in front of me, bruised, beaten and bloody. Her once soft brown hair was now a dark rust color, damp with sticky blood. Her once golden face the color of a deep morning sky was black and blue and I could barely see the girl underneath.

Against it all, I felt lost.

In this I felt so cold: Love changing. Hearts beating. People dying. And in the dark of the evening, just before day passed to night, I felt the tug of regret against my heart.

“Stay,” I said as I closed my eyes. “There’s so much I want to tell you still.”

I imagined the stars above, the way they blinked in time to my heart as if they were keeping it alive, and wondered if they would beat for Kate’s as well. If there was anything I could do to save her.

I could not lose her.

I leaned forward and brushed my lips to hers and felt my heart cry. It was heat and fire when we kissed, as if our entire world was burning. The air around us seemed to spark and shine, with her and I breathing in the heat like oxygen.

It was only us.

And
, I thought,
Only this
.

I opened my eyes and saw a bright light surrounding us like falling snow, whiting out the world.

Silence.

“Kate?” I breathed, my voice echoing in the blank time.

Nothing.

Already, I missed her eyes. The way they held the truth she could not say. The way the violet glinted and sparked with strength.

They reminded me of stars, her eyes, and in them I knew I had found my heart.

“Please, Kate.”

There was nothing.

Nothing but my breathing.

My heart, lost.

Nothing.

Until-

“Calum...?” she whispered, opening her eyes.

I smiled down at her. “You’re alive.”

“What’s going on, Calum? Your skin!” she gasped.

“My skin?”

Blackness.
My skin was as black as the night sky and dotted with thousands of tiny, shining stars like diamonds. On my upper arm, in the place it had always been, was my birthmark. It shone the brightest of all, twenty-five glittering stars emblazed in a night sky.

I did it,
I thought.

I stepped forward. I felt like flying. “This is it, Kate. I’ve done it.
We’ve
done it. We’ve unlocked my powers. I am the Caeles.”

A voice to my left broke like thunder. “Now and for always, Caeles.”

Kate and I both jumped as Orion emerged from nothing. Next to him stood a beautiful woman, the same midnight skin and starry-night freckles covering her body. What looked like a ‘W’ was marked on her neck in tiny, flickering dots. Unlike Orion, her hair fell down past her shoulders in waves of curled silver.