The Lebrus Stone (44 page)

Leaning back, I watched my bloodied hand heal and connect into smooth, scarless tissue. A faint silvery scar ran all the way down to the top of my wrist.

Everything darkened.

"Crys? Crys are you alright?"

Cray was leaning over me, blinking with concern. He was back to normal. Most of all as handsome as ever.

I touched his face. "You're so…beautiful."

He smiled in that dazzling way of his "I think that was supposed to be my line."

He propped me up on his knee, blowing on my face. But it was hot, not cold like I needed it.

"Am I dead?" I mumbled.

"No, you're alive, just a little weak," he said guiltily. "You should be fine."

I pushed myself up. "Where am I?" I winced, hit by another dizzy spell.

"We're still in Agermont. We need to hurry up and move." He lifted me to my feet. "Can you walk?"

I couldn't respond.

"We really need to get out of here."

When I didn't answer him, he took my hand and guided me to the door. My legs surprisingly worked.

He pressed his ear to the door then opened it slowly. When we stepped into the breezy corridor, Cray pushed me into a dark corner and placed his hand over my mouth.

Two figures cloaked in red walked by, talking in an unusual, clipped language as they carried cauldrons steaming with green and yellow smoke. The odor was horrific, penetrating my sinuses. A wave of nausea made me heave.

Cray moved his hand and pulled me along the stretch of more windowless corridors.

"It's down here," I pointed, trying not to vomit.

We were approaching the exit when a large hairy foot appeared and barricaded it. "Ah, we have company," a rumbling voice jeered. A man with a fuzzy white hair and brawny shoulders stepped out from the shadows. His cloak was also red. It must have been some type of color co-ordination. Like a gang or sovereignty.

Cray eased me behind him. I gripped his shirt.

"Ah, a protector in our midst." The man laughed. "May I see your fair damsel?" He edged closer.

"Stay back," Cray said. "Or else."

The man grabbed Cray by the scruff of his shirt and lifted him off the floor to bash him against the low ceiling. "Worth the slaughter, is she?"

"Let him go," I yelled.

He continued to beat the walls with Cray like he was a drumstick.

I tried to hit him, punch and kick him below the belt, but it did nothing. It just made him chuckle.

"I mean it," I yelled.

He threw Cray onto the floor and faced me with a grunt, affirming he could spin me like a coin.

"Wanna play?" I asked, pointing my pen knife at him.

"Crys. No!" Cray yelled, getting up.

"Stay back, Cray. I can handle this."

The beastly guy went berserk and lunged for me. I plowed the knife into him until the blade bent in half.

Cray pulled me back as the man staggered with a baleful of spasms, spitting through his long teeth as his pupils changed from azure to black. His wounds quickly healed.

"Achlem tor reen es," he fumed, his voice demonic as Cray's had been at the manor. My hands shook. I dropped the handle of the knife.

The man crouched like a hot headed mongrel preparing to pounce and kill us with one strike of his huge fists.

"Zonahk," stormed a voice from behind him.

He came to a halt. The young female from earlier glided over and stood behind him, resting a hand on his burly shoulder.

She looked at me for a second before stepping toward Cray. "Mih hee ss der foorzz ak." Her every word was evenly distributed with a curl of her tongue. She smiled, trailing a finger down the front of Cray so that it reached his belt. He stiffened. "Very bad boys must be taught a lesson," she whispered loud enough for us all to hear. "It is only feasible." She kissed him, on the lips. "Mmm, how you tempt me so," she added, kissing him all the more earnestly.

Cray returned the kiss, splaying his fingers through her hair. It was no wonder I didn't deserve him, so many did.

I cleared my throat to part them, but it only made them all the more attached at the groin. I flexed my fingers, wanting to destroy Cray myself, take back my blood and the heart he was ripping to shreds with each kiss he shared with her so eagerly.

"You can still be mine if you so choose," she said when they finally parted lips. My heart pounded so hard it hurt.

"Then you have to help me let her go," Cray said, just as breathless.

I relaxed.

"Let her go," she echoed. "And forever be second to this ghastly kind?"

"I can't give you what you want if you refuse to help," Cray said, no doubt up to his old tricks.

Now it was my turn to smirk.

"And I am not so idiotic as to bend to even one of the most alluring of Lacs." She frowned.

"Don't take it so bad," I interrupted. "You're just not what my ghastly kind would call worth it."

She slapped me and faced the flaccid man-beast still panting through his stained blue teeth.

"Take them to Zeron," she bellowed, and strode down the hall.

~ * ~

I rubbed my cheek. It felt as if a razor blade had skimmed it.

Two men in red cloaks led Cray and me down an icy cold hall in the other direction. Two more were behind us, along with the beastly guy.

We treaded carefully toward a row of tall, cream pillars that were dripping with black leaves. Something else moved and even hissed.

Snakes?

A gasp caught in my throat.

"Why did you have to say that to Reeya?" Cray whispered, not caring what we might be surrounded by.

I tried not to let it bother me that they were on a first name basis; that he might care for her in some weird way. 

"Why did you kiss her back like that?" I kept an eye on what was going on around us in case I did find any slivery creatures.

"You first," he said.

"I was just trying to have your back."

"Funny. I was trying to save your skin."

"Well, you didn't have to act like you was enjoying it."

"How else would she have believed me?"

I looked at him, which made him grin lopsided and turn my insides to mush. Did he have to be so irresistible
all
of the time? Even after almost decaying?

"There's other ways to show how you feel about someone." I looked away to stop myself from pining to be kissed in the same way

"Like what?" he asked, genuinely interested.

"Like putting your life on the line, draining someone of all their blood, and riding with a maniac." I flustered. "Or something as surreal."

"You bled someone dry for me?" he asked, astonished.

"Judith," I admitted, fumbling my tank top and the specks of blood. "It wasn't for you."

He frowned, slipping into silence "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I got you into this mess. I know we were both manipulated into it. But still, I could have maybe done something. Tried harder."

I didn't answer him. I was too engrossed in the paintings on the walls. They seemed three dimensional and in motion. Most of them were of half human, half animal beings that gorged on flesh and drank from a fountain of red that cascaded with diamonds. It was crudely mesmerizing. I was forgetting why I was there. It wasn't like they could kill us. They needed me to need Cray.

"Crys, are you listening to me?"

I blinked, returning my focus to our conversation. "It's just too late for regrets, Cray, a little too late for anything. And like you said, we weren't in our right minds."

"Let's just forget it then. I don't want what could be our last conversation to end in an argument."

End?
I realized how much in danger he could be in. They could have changed their minds about prolonging his death. "How would you like it to end?"

"Like this," he said, and held my hand.

Before I could respond, we were pushed through the opening of crimson doors. I clenched Cray's hand tighter.

The room was gigantic and had a checkered floor. It stopped at a white circle that fanned out in the center. Above us was a dome of stained red glass that had black symbolic letters.

"Well, well, well," echoed an accented voice. A man materialized, exceptionally tall, bald and the size of an American football player. A tattoo began from the top of his head and ended in the middle of his furry eyebrows. It was black, and reminded me of a Celtic pattern.

Maybe they had them done when they visited Earth.

As for his lips, they were tinged purple; his skin was lightly tanned, making him seem like a cross between a Greek God and Herman Munster. Despite the situation, it made me smirk.

He noticed and whipped back his sage leather cape, his expression grim.

I wanted to cower behind Cray, but knew I had to face him with some shred of dignity. I had the powers of the stone, after all.

The man was swathed in black fraying leather. Gold amulets clasped his wrists, glistening against the moonlight reflecting through the dome.

"What a pleasant surprise," he said, more like a roar.

Others appeared behind him, cloaked and hooded, sat on metallic tall chairs at the top of a few steps that led to a small platform. One of them lowered their hood. It was a woman. Her hair was a dark purple, styled into tiny knots that were dotted all over her head.

She glowered at me as the man looked at how Cray and I were holding hands. He licked his lips. They became coated with black. It made my stomach lurch.

"How unfortunate that she had to be so fearless," he said. One smooth incisor protruded from his top lip as he sneered.

"How deluded, too, that she thought she could save him," the woman remarked.

There was a predatory air to her. It made me fear her the most. Wiping my clammy hand on the side of my leg, I fixed a glare as confidently as I could at Zeron.

Cray held my hand in front of him to keep him back. "What did you expect?" he asked.

"In hindsight, respect for what you are," Zeron said. His yellow-turning eyes narrowed on the birthmark on my chest.

I covered it.

"Are we here to debate who I choose to be with?" Cray bit back.

The woman started to tap one of her long black nails on the armrest of her throne.

"Your hostility will quicken your end!" Zeron's voice echoed throughout the room, capable of demolishing the walls. He stepped closer, but in my direction.

Cray eased me back. "That's as close as you get."

Zeron sneered, angry now, exposing more teeth.

The female rose. Her silver gown clung to the curves of her svelte figure as she glided down the steps. When she came into the light, I could see a similar tattoo to Zeron's running all the way down to the peak of her small nose. The green, red, and blue of it matched the tiny flecks that appeared and disappeared within the wide iris of her hypnotic, slit-like eyes.

"Come," she said to me in a comforting voice, draping a long, pale arm around me as I automatically relaxed my shoulders. Before I could recall the instance it had happened, I was cradled in her arms, looking up into the most intimidating eyes I had ever seen, the kind that exuded a dominance I couldn't look away from. Not at first.

Cray blinked, awaking, too.

Did she put us both in a trance?

I thought they couldn't cast spells?

Maybe their eyes could hypnotize you.

Cray walked groggily over to us, but Zeron gripped him by the shirt.

A hideous row of his sharp, jagged teeth gleamed in the dim room. A dark blue discharge oozed from his mouth as crimson formed in his eyes. It must have been something that happened to Sha'lacs when angry, not just hungry. It took a second for him to comprehend Cray's blow to his face. Just as swiftly, he lifted Cray and threw him across the room.

The floor shuddered from the impact. I screamed. Cray's neck was at wrong angle. His leg had twisted up to his spine.

The woman held me down as I tried to claw my way out of her grasp. But her aggressive voice made me eventually cower.

Cray jolted up and his leg untwisted itself. His neck clicked into place. I was beyond relieved, even though what I was seeing was totally unnatural. A pool of his blood, now a murky blue, vanished into the lining of the floor.

"Cray," I yelled. He didn't listen to me. He ceased to respond as he glared at Zeron.

"Eager for more?" Zeron taunted him. "Maybe I can make some other use of this descendant of a Fallion," he added, heading my way. "Enslave her to my wicked ways." His finger stroked my lips. It numbed them and my tongue. I couldn't whimper, struggle. I must have been entranced again.

I somehow tore my gaze away and saw Cray's eyes flash pewter then red. The muscles of his face slivered beneath coarse white skin as if blanched and skewed with holes. He became bunched and rigid, clenching and unclenching his hands while his bones cracked and snapped into place. His veins thickened to the same color as his vibrant puce-turning eyes.