Lux (17 page)

“And Finn, my twin, is only my half-brother?”

She nods again. “It happens very rarely in life, child. But you are rare.”

I’m afraid to ask, but I do it anyway.

“Why?”

Sabine pours more tea and hands it to me, and I can’t help but drink it because it calms me it calms me it calms me, and I’m on the verge of hysteria.

“Because you are a descendent of Judas, and of Abel. Your blood is as powerful and old as is possible. Your brother is a descendent of
both
Cain and Abel. If he is sacrificed, the cycle will finally be broken.”

“What cycle?” I ask and my lips are numb they’re numb.

“Cain killed his brother,” she answers. “Abel made a sacrifice to God, and Cain was jealous so he killed him. God is owed another sacrifice from this family, a true sacrifice, one born of grief and torment, to pay for the sins of your fathers.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” she nods. “Dare understands, though, because Dare is of Salome. Salome harnessed the curse of Judas into a ring. The ring you gave back to Dare. You are all cursed, and only you can stop it by making the right choice, by not betraying what is right. The Rom believe curses are real, Calla. And surely by now, so do you.”

“I…”

My lips can’t move.

“It’s one for one for one, Calla,” Sabine adds. “That’s the way it’s always been. Make the right choice, and this will all end.”

Maybe her tea has valium in it, because I find myself agreeing. I find myself deciding that she is right.

But as I walk into my room, I decide I must’ve imagined the whole thing. Salome? Cain and Abel? Judas? Ancient biblical curses and Dare’s grave?

These things are impossible. Rom beliefs aren’t real.

I’m confused, like normal. I haven’t been sleeping well.

Obviously.

That’s the explanation.

I raise my hand to tuck my hair behind my ear, and that’s when I freeze.

My fingers smell like carnations and stargazers, the flowers that were on Dare’s grave.

It was real.

“
W
e’re related
,” I tell Dare, and my voice is urgent and my hand is on his chest. “We can’t…we can’t…we can’t be together.”

Dare’s face is pained and he knew.

“You knew,” I whisper, and the pain in my heart pangs loud loud louder, and he looks at me, and his gaze is so sorrowful and real.

“Things change,” he tells me, and I snort with disgust because we were together and it was incest and I still love him more than anything but Finn. I still love him I still love him I still love him.

“God, I want to die,” I groan, and I push him away and he shakes me hard hard harder.

“Don’t you ever say that again,” he snaps. “Don’t you ever. We’ve been through worse and we will weather this storm, Calla. We’re not truly related. It’s just complicated.”

I look at him and my eyes feel like they will explode with pain and with sadness.

“I don’t want to live if I can’t be with you,” and my words are painfully raw with honesty. “I truly don’t.”

“It won’t be this way,” Dare insists, and he is hiding something from me.

Something

Something

Something.

“What is it?” I ask, and I’m hopeful for just a moment.

“I want to tell you everything, but it’s something you have to figure out for yourself,” he tells me. “You have to see it, or you won’t believe it. It’s complex, it’s complicated, it’s real.”

His fingers lace with mine and the touch doesn’t feel wrong, it feels right.

He pulls me to him, and he kisses me, and his lips are warm and his breath is hot and his body is hard against mine.

“This isn’t wrong,” he tells me, and his lips move against my cheek. “Does it feel wrong to you, Calla-Lily?”

No

God

No.

It feels as right as anything.

His hands splay against my back and he whispers. “Don’t ever say that you want to die, Calla. It’s not your fate to sacrifice yourself. It’s not.”

“How do you know what fate has planned?” I ask him, and I pull away so that I can see into his face and he is so serious so serious so serious.

“Because I just do.”

“That isn’t an answer,” I tell him.

“But it is,” he says, and then his hands fall away and he walks into the house.

I’m alone, and the answers chirp from the trees, across the moors and I have to get them. I have to get the answers, because my sanity is slip slip slipping and if I don’t figure it out soon, I’ll be lost.

I know that.

I know that.

So I find my brother, and I insist that we seek out the truth. Finn loves me so he comes and he’s doubtful, but he’s here.

I stand at the mouth of the woods, and the trees bend and hiss and sway, and words form on my lips.

“One for one for one.”

“What does that mean?” Finn asks me, because he’s standing at my elbow.

He won’t leave me, not now that he thinks I’m as crazy as he is.

“We have to keep each other sane,” that’s what he said yesterday after I told him what happened in the mausoleum and in Sabine’s room.

I look at him now.

“I don’t know what it means,” I tell him honestly. “I just hear it in my head, over and over.”

Finn looks at me, and he’s scared and his pale hand grasps mine.

“That’s bad, Cal,” he tells me, and he doesn’t have to say the words because I already know. Of course I know.

I step into the mossy forest, and I’m surrounded by the cool ferns and shadows, and I don’t know why, but I know I’m supposed to be here.

“Don’t,” Finn urges me to come back, and he won’t follow. “I don’t like the way it feels in there.”

“I don’t either,” I tell him, but I keep going, one foot after the other, because I’m being pulled by an invisible tether or a cord.

Finn stays and his face is worried, but he’s unable to follow, and I don’t judge him for that. The feeling in the woods is oppressive, and dark, and terrifying.

There’s something here.

Something here for me.

Ahead of me, a shadow moves, it lurches, it glides.

I follow it, unable to remain still. It flits in and out of trees, and so do I.

And then finally, finally,

It’s gone, and I’m alone.

I feel the stillness, and I taste it with my tongue, and I’m alone.

I stare about, I whirl in a circle, and there are charred wooden pieces arranged in a circle, a bonfire.

I see something amid the ashes, something brown, something tattered, something old.

I bend and touch it, and it burns my finger.

The embers are still hot.

I rock back on my heels and prod at it with a stick until it falls away, out of the embers and to safety.

It’s a book and it falls open and the first page stares up at me, with my brother’s scrawling handwriting.

The Journal of Finn Price.

My eyebrows crimp and knit, and I take a breath, because why was Finn out here?

I wait while the breeze cools the pages, and even though they are charred, there are still some left that I can read.

NOCTE LIBER SUM NOCTE LIBER SUM

BY NIGHT I AM FREE.

ALEA IACTA EST. THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST.

The die has been cast.

The die has been cast.

Serva me, servabo te.

Save me, and I’ll save you.

Save me.

Save me.

Save me.

M
y breath comes
in pants and I can’t I can’t I can’t.

Because Sabine said these words to me, these same exact words, in different times and places.

She said the same things to my brother?

What do they mean?

The pages are fragile and the edges come off in my fingers, black and charred, but I can still make out more of the words.

I
’M DROWNING
. DROWNING, DROWNING.

IMMERSUM, IMMERSUM, IMMERSUM.

CALLA WILL SAVE ME OR I WILL DIE I WILL DIE I WILL DIE.

SERVA ME, SERVABO TE.

SAVE ME AND I’LL SAVE YOU.

SAVE ME.

SAVE ME,

SAVE ME, CALLA.

AND I’LL SAVE YOU.

T
here are
stick figures and symbols, and some of the faces are scratched out, and I don’t remember his journal being so morbid or nonsensical when I found it so long ago. If it had been, I would’ve taken it straight to our parents because this, this, this is crazy.

I stare at a picture, and it’s of two boys and a girl. One of the boys is scratched completely out, but I can still see his eyes and his eyes are black and I know the boy is Dare. Finn scratched out Dare.

O
NE FOR ONE FOR ONE
.

THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST, IT’S BEEN CAST.

ONE FOR ONE FOR ONE,

AND IT WON’T BE ME.

IT WON’T BE CALLA.

ONE

FOR

ONE

FOR

ONE.

I
’m frozen
as an ominous feeling builds in my belly, spreading to my chest where it threatens to stop my heart. Dark fingers seem to grab my shoulders and shake hard, harder, harder until my teeth chatter.

D
EATH IS THE BEGINNING
.

The beginning.

The beginning.

I need to start.

I
drop
the journal and take off running, back through the trees. The branches whip at my face and I slip around in the dew, but it doesn’t matter.

I know why Finn wouldn’t come with me.

He knew I’d find his journal, and he knew I’d stop him from whatever stupid thing he’s going to try and do. I can tell from his writing… he believes what Sabine told me. A sacrifice must be made, and he’s not going to let it be me.

D
EATH IS THE BEGINNING
. I NEED TO START.

A sacrifice.

A sacrifice.

The sacrifice is me.

We pay for the sins of our fathers.

I am the sin.

I am the sacrifice.

T
he words race
through my head, over and over, as I burst from the trees, and I see him. I see Finn, and he’s running with the hooded boy, with Death.

I chase after them into Whitley, as I bound up the stairs, as I race to Finn’s room. It’s empty…except for Pollux and Castor. Finn had closed them up in the room, and there’s only one reason. So that they couldn’t follow him.

“Go,” I tell them firmly. “Go find Finn.”

They run from my room, their great bodies so loud as they thump down the halls. I follow as fast as I can, and I slam into Dare as he rounds a corner.

“What the devil…?” he asks, and he’s confused and I shove past him.

“My brother is in trouble,” I yell over my shoulder. He doesn’t ask questions, but I hear him behind me, I hear him running, I hear his breath. But I can’t pay attention to that. All I can do is follow the dogs. I chase them from the house, I chase them through the gardens, and I watch the tips of their black tails disappear through the gates of Whitley.

“Calla, wait,” Dare grabs my arm. “We’ve got to get the car.”

“There’s not time,” I mutter, and Dare yanks me to the side.

“Then the scooters. We’ll never keep up.”

The old scooters are next to the gate and I don’t know why they aren’t put away, but I’m grateful as I grab one and the battery is charged and I go full throttle down the road. Dare is with me on the other one, and we go and go, until the dogs race up a cliff.

Our scooters make winding sounds and lag behind because the climb is too steep and so I cast mine aside and run, my breathing labored, because somethingsomethingsomething is going to happen. I can feel it, I can feel it.

My brother.

My brother.

It’s a chant in my head and I can’t focus, and then I clear the crest at the top and there’s Finn.

He’s standing on the edge and the dogs have skidded to a stop and we all watch my brother.

“Don’t do it,” I plead with him because his face is serious and pale. “I don’t know what this is about, but please don’t do this, Finn. I need you.”

“I need to save you,” he says simply, and his voice is emotionless and there is no fear in his eyes. Absolutely no fear. “It has to be me. I’ve always known. Dare told me long ago.”

His black Converses teeter on the edge and he lifts his hands.

“I love you, Calla,” he tells me. “I’d die for you. It’s got to be me, because it can’t be you.”

Life is in slow motion, and he limply falls back, like he’s falling into bed, but instead, he falls off the side of the cliff.

I race to the edge, and I watch and there’s no sound when he hits the water. No sound at all. How can that be?

Dare grabs my shoulders and I scream and scream and scream, and then two black flashes sail over the edge next to me.

Castor and Pollux.

They dive right through the air with purpose and I remember what Sabine said.

“He’d die to protect you.”

Maybe they’d die to protect Finn, too.

The dogs hit the water and I do hear them, and I turn, racing to the bottom, desperate to reach my brother and when my feet hit the wet sand, I run and the dogs are limping in from the surf, dragging my brother’s limp form between them.

The dogs are bloody and they’re dragging their bodies on splintered legs and they’re broken broken broken, and a wave of familiarity rushes over me and through me and I’ve seen this before,

I’ve seen this before,

I’ve seen this before.

I’ve been here before, but that’s not possible and I can’t think about it because all I can think about right now is my brother.

I yank him away from the dogs and I breathe into his cold mouth, and he’s limp and he’s cold and he’s wet.

I drag him onto my lap and we’re halfway into the water, and I hear Dare on the phone and he’s talking to someone.

“There’s been an accident,” he’s saying, and I’ve heard those words before, from his mouth from his lips from his voice.

“Was it?” I look up at him, and my eyes are burning burning burning. “Was it an accident?”

Because Finn’s words his words his words
. I’ve always known. Dare told me long ago.

Dare closes his eyes, and Finn’s eyes are closed, and he’s limp and he’s cold and he’s dead.

He’s dead.

Death is the beginning and he needs to start.

“I can’t do this without you,” I whisper in his wet ear. “Please God, please God, please God. Finn. Please.”

Silver glints and it’s his St. Michael’s medallion and he was wearing it and he wasn’t protected he wasn’t protected.

“Fuck you, St. Michael,” I scream and Dare’s hand is on my shoulder and I yank away because somehowsomehowsomehow, this is Dare’s fault. I feel it. I feel it. The pictures that Finn drew in his journal… Dare’s face was scratched out. Finn knew something I didn’t.

“What did you do?” I screech at Dare, and I refuse to let go of my brother. I clutch at his buttoned up shirt, and I clutch at his cold skin.

Help comes, but they’re too late, and they try to pry me away from my brother and I hate them I hate them I hate them.

I hold my brother’s hand as they lift him into the ambulance, but there’s a sheet over his face and they know he’s dead and no one has the guts to make me move. No one.

I ride with him to the hospital, and I hold his hand the whole way.

“What did you do?” I ask Finn, into his ear. He doesn’t answer and the sheet is over his face. His hand doesn’t move and he’s dead and he’s dead.

“Miss, you have to let go,” one of the paramedics tells me. She’s sympathetic, but firm, and they don’t know what to do with me.

“Never,” I tell them. And that’s metaphorical, and they know that. My hand falls away and they take my brother.

I sink to the floor and I stay there until Dare comes to get me, until he carries me to the car and straps me in and my head is on the window.