Cursed (Demon Kissed #2) (4 page)

She shook her head. “It was garbled.
Too many possibilities. Too many choices yet to be made. The only
thing that was certain was that you weren’t being treated like the
girl who sealed the portal to Hell. They still see you as a
threat.

“
My guess is that the
Tribunal won’t retract their position on the prophecy. That means,
this trial isn’t about testimony—it’s about life or death. If they
don’t overturn the old prophecy, they won’t let you leave here
alive.”

I stiffened. I knew I was in trouble,
I just didn’t realize how much. “I can’t believe this. I fought
next to them…on the same side! They saw me kill Valefar! How could
they possibly question my loyalty?” I sighed and leaned back into
the cushions. Why was I so shocked? Martis protected humanity and
their own kind.

I was neither.

“
It doesn’t matter how
they could think that. The problem is that they do. The Tribunal is
the embodiment of Martis law. They are the strongest branch of the
Martis. They meet rarely, but when they do,” her voice softened,
“well, let’s just say they deliver justice swiftly. That’s why I
came. They didn’t ask for my testimony, but I’m giving it. And I
think it would be worth pushing your visions a little to see if you
can control them. You need to know when the hammer will
drop.”

This was bad. Very bad. “You don’t
think I’m going to walk out of here, do you?” She shook her head.
“Why are you helping me?” All the other Martis were question marks.
They would protect themselves, but Al seemed to be carving a
different path. She was sticking her neck out for me.

Her wrinkled lips pulled back into a
smile. “I ain’t stupid enough to throw out a pie just because it
didn’t look like the others. Sometimes those are the best ones.”
She winked at me and laughed. “You’re not like nothing I
expected.”

“
Right back at ya babe,” I
laughed. And we jumped straight into more Seyer lessons, trying to
refine my skills while we still could.

CHAPTER FIVE

“
No, you have to do it
like you’re sleeping. Otherwise it don’t work. Something with rest
is tied to your visions, so you gotta try to make it happen. Relax,
stop thinking, and it’ll come.” Al was ready to beat me with a
newspaper. I could tell. I just didn’t understand how I could
possibly summon a vision—or if I wanted to. They were turning into
nightmares, showing me things that were terrifying. I groaned and
suddenly felt her magazine smack into my arm.

“
Al, this is pointless,” I
said. “Asking me to relax is like trying to talk to a kid jacked up
on Pixie Stix—there’s no point. I just can’t. I’m surrounded by
people who want to kill me. It’s not exactly a relaxing
environment.” We’d eaten dinner in the room, and I’d yet to see
Shannon. I don’t know what I’d expected, but I thought that Shannon
would come and tell me what was going on right away. Either she
couldn’t get away yet, or they weren’t letting her. Either way, I
was glad Al was with me.

Al sat down on the couch in front of
me. I was on the floor with my legs folded in a meditating pose.
Her ancient eyes sparkled when she spoke. “I know it’s hard, but if
you can control your visions here, you can control them in other
less than ideal situations too. Seeing visions is a power—a rare
power. If you can learn to do this, you’ll be able to glean more
information from the things you see and I suspect that you can do
more than merely see visions. Your powers aren’t manifesting like a
typical Martis. It’s possible that you’ll be able to speak to me
through your visions, even if I’m not there.”

“
What are you saying?” I
asked. “That I can just dial you up and leave a message, and you’ll
get it the next time you see a vision?”

She nodded, “Something like that.
Visions are complex. While some are of the future, others are
warnings, while others are noise. I think you could possibly leave
some of that noise I have to sift through to get to the heart of
the visions.” She shrugged.

“
So you think I can leave
you a message in the noise that surrounds your visions? I don’t
have noise around mine. There’s only mist. Thick black mist. It
seals out the things around me so that I can only focus on whatever
it is that the vision is trying to show me.”

“
Black mist, huh?” Al
replied looking perplexed. “You may see things differently
altogether then. We might have the same Martis powers, but they
sure don’t work the same way.”

This seemed like grasping at straws,
but I wanted to know what I was capable of, and communicating with
Al when she wasn’t around seemed like a good idea at the time. “Ya
know, I’m never sitting up when I have a vision. It’s not really
sleep. It just kind of knocks me out.”

She nodded, saying, “Try lying down.
Can’t hurt. Nothing can hurt at this point, Ivy.”

She tossed me a throw pillow. Before I
flopped onto my back, I tucked the pillow under my head. Now I had
to wait. I closed my eyes and listened to the noises of the room. I
couldn’t hear any of the sounds on the street. After a while the
only sound I heard was my own breathing, and the tension washed
away from my shoulders. I remembered this feeling. It’s the place
between slumber and wake; the place where dreams feel vivid and
nightmares seem real. Lingering in that relaxed mental state, I
wondered what I was supposed to do. I knew that sleep wouldn’t
come. Sleep wasn’t required anymore, but this was
different.

Warmth slid down my arms and caressed
my back. I felt like I was floating downward, light as a feather.
Then it was black, and the sounds of the room changed. A thin
shroud of black mist dissipated revealing the vision had started.
Dripping water was around me, but I couldn’t see where it was
coming from. Moisture tickled my nose and coldness chilled me to
the bone.

But, where was I? Too afraid to speak,
I tried to focus on something. Seeing anything would be great.
Although the mist cleared, the space was covered in a darkness that
my eyes could not penetrate. I knew I was somewhere else. This
wasn’t the Villa. That place was warm and bright, and quite the
opposite of where I was now.

I felt my way through the
darkness. This wasn’t the same as my other visions. Nothing came
into focus, and the black mist that usually blocked my view
surrounding the vision wasn’t there. It burned off almost as soon
as it appeared. There was only utter darkness with the
constant
drip, drip, drip
of water.

I moved slowly through the space
expecting to find something or someone, but nothing was there.
Slowly, I followed the sound of the dripping water uncertain of
what else I was supposed to do. It felt like I wasn’t anywhere,
lodged in utter darkness and surrounded by frosty air. It was the
most whacked vision I’d ever had.

Where was I?

Following the sound of the water, I
moved across the blackened space touching nothing, until I saw
something glimmer in the darkness. Moving towards it, I reached out
and slid my hand across a pane of glass—black glass. Its surface
glowed a dim mixture of blues and blacks. Its reflection contained
me and the nothingness behind me. When I reached out and touched
the pane again, the glass moved under my fingers. The surface felt
like gelatin—thick and cold—with just as much give. Moving
cautiously, I slid my finger down the glass watching it ripple
beneath my touch.

Suddenly an image began to form within
the black pane, and I could see the place where the water dripped.
I gasped, not expecting to see him there. Collin was sitting in the
corner of a cell that was carved from stone. Water dripped down the
walls, staining the rocks with colored streaks. When I gasped, he
looked up. His eyebrow arched, as he rose to his feet, walking
towards me with a perplexed expression on his face.

My heart raced in my chest as I put my
hand on the glass and pushed. But no matter how hard I tried, I
could not go through. The dark mirror had hardened. “Collin…” I
spoke into the glass as my fists hit the unyielding
surface.

“
Ivy?” he said softly. He
stood in front of me, and finally shook his head. I watched him for
a moment trying to understand what I was seeing. It was the place
where Collin was trapped. He’d walked right in front of me, but he
didn’t seem to see me. But, how did he know I was there? He shook
his head and mumbled, “I’m losing my mind,” before he sat back down
in the corner.

I beat my fists into the black glass
screaming his name, but it didn’t give. It didn’t let me pass. It
wouldn’t let him hear me. It was the cruelest thing I could have
imagined. I was so close, and I couldn’t do anything. What was
happening? Was this the past or the present? It seemed like he knew
I was there, but he thought he imagined it. And this black glass,
what was it? Did the mist leave it behind?

I sat at the foot of the enormous dark
glass and watched Collin for a while. All the things I wanted to
tell him swam into my mind. But he couldn’t hear me. My teeth bit
my bottom lip as I sat there helpless to free him. Collin didn’t
seem hurt the way he was in the vision with the dragon. That was
yet to happen. The scars on his body were few, and his skin didn’t
have the sickly pallor of the dead. Collin hung his head and ran
his fingers through his hair. He looked up one last time when I
decided I should go back and ask Al what the black glass was, and
how to use it. There had to be a way to use it. When I first
touched it, the glass didn’t resist me—my hand almost melted into
it like it was nothing more than a slice of warm butter. But it
wasn’t. Something I did made it hard. The pane didn’t shatter under
the blows of my fists. It wasn’t glass no matter what it looked
like. But what was it?

As I stood to leave, Collin’s eyes
connected with mine. For a moment, I thought he saw me. I wished he
saw me. I wished he could hear me. I wished I could save
him.

Touching the glass, I said softly,
“You were right. I was so blind. Why couldn’t I see it when you
were standing in front of me?”

I shook my head. Why is it that I
don’t notice things until it’s too late?

It’s not too late. Not this time. I
wouldn’t grieve for him. He wasn’t dead. He was trapped, and
trapped people can be freed.

CHAPTER SIX

When I awoke from my vision, or
whatever it was, I described the black glass to Al, telling her
everything I had seen. But, in all her visions, Al had never
encountered the black mirror. That made me uneasy. She should have
seen everything by now. She was ancient.

That was when Al spoke the words that
plagued me. “It could be your powers are not as static as we
thought.”

“
Static?” My voice was
flat. “That’s a nice way for saying my powers are morphing, because
I’ve been tainted with demon blood, right?” I pushed my hair out of
my face and slouched back into the couch.

She nodded. “You aren’t the same. It’s
foolish to behave like you are. Whether you like it or not, you
have some of the Valefar’s abilities. Until now, I’d hoped the
Martis and Valefar powers would remain separate—clearly one or the
other. It would allow you to know whether or not you should use
those powers. Opening the door to evil, even slightly, could have
lasting repercussions; repercussions that you don’t
want.”

I leaned forward. “You mean the
slippery slope theory? If I let a little bit of evil in, I’ll slide
right into a mess of it?”

“
Not entirely. It’s just
that you should know what’s behind a door before you open it.” She
leaned towards me, her face utterly concerned. “That’s what my job
is—to tell new Martis what their powers are and what those powers
do. But, I’m afraid I can’t help you with this Ivy. Your powers are
changing and combining things that don’t go together.”

“
What am I supposed to do
when I come across something that’s whacked? Ya know, when I find a
power that’s neither Valefar or Martis.” I ran my fingers through
my hair. “What should I do? Ignore it?”

Al shook her head. “I doubt that would
be wise. You’ll have to trust your gut and make sure the purpose of
the power moves in line with your plans. What did you feel from the
mirror?”

My eyebrows pulled together at the
weird question. “Feel? What do you mean? I stared at the glass for
a while. I tried to move through it, but I couldn’t. It felt like
Jell-O, kind of cold and firm.”

A smile spread across Al’s face. She
laughed, “Not physically. I mean what did you feel coming from the
mirror? Did it fill you with dread, fear, cold, warmth, or
what?”

I cocked my head, not really
understanding what she meant. “I didn’t feel anything coming from
it. It’s an inanimate object—a hunk of Jell-O glass. It’s not like
it was alive or something.”

“
How do you know?” Al
asked completely serious. The smile slid off my face when I
realized she was serious. “Ancient things, be they good or evil,
seem to have a life of their own over time. They can become
something else, something that they weren’t intended for. Sometimes
they take on the attributes of what’s around them. If that mirror
was in the Underworld, you should be able to sense it. You should
feel evil, darkness, emanating from it. It’s possible if you had
walked through its pane, you’d be trapped there with Collin right
now; or somewhere else entirely. Not knowing what it was or who
created it—Martis or Valefar—puts you in a very precarious
situation.”