Death Before Daylight (14 page)

Darthon’s lip twitched like he wanted to
smile. “Of course not.”

“What are the others?”

“You can’t talk to her, touch her,
telepathically communicate, or anything like that. It’s forbidden.”
With every statement, my stomach churned. “But, most of all, I can
change the rules whenever I want to.”

“So, you control me.”

“Like a pawn.”

“This isn’t a game, Darthon.”

“I never said it was,” he retorted, “but
you’re stuck with me for now.”

I forced a smile back at him, wanting him to
see that I could remain positive despite his conditions. If he were
like me, mental torture would be the best way to fight him. “Being
stuck with you hasn’t been that bad.”

He flinched.

“If I agree—”

“Which you should if you want to leave here
alive,” he added.

“Sure. Sure. Life and all that.” I waved him
away. “How do I know you’ll free Jessica?”

“You don’t.”

I swallowed and focused on my face, refusing
to let the muscles budge a centimeter. He wouldn’t get the
satisfaction of seeing my hesitation. I didn’t know what he would
do, but I knew what Jessica would do. Even if he kept her, she
would escape and be loyal to the Dark no matter what. She could
handle herself, and our relationship was only a slice of the Dark’s
power. We weren’t the only ones fighting Darthon, but he had
forgotten that. There was only one problem.

“How will I know who you are?” I asked,
knowing he couldn’t order me around in the human realm in his light
form. Someone would sense him, probably Pierce.

Darthon’s smile stretched. “You’ll know my
identity soon enough.”

It was the last thing I expected to hear.

“And you won’t be able to tell anyone about
that either.”

“I could kill you,” I pointed out.

“You won’t be able to attack me.”

My stomach sank. “Another rule?”

He nodded.

“You can’t control my physical
movements.”

“Not unless you have reason to hold back,” he
said and tapped his head. “Don’t forget, the Light knows who Jess
is.”

He didn’t have to explain. If I attacked him,
they would attack her. I understood his upper hand now.

“Unless you don’t care about her life,” he
continued, “then, by all means, come after me.”

“I’ll find a loophole,” I promised.

He raised his brow. “Are you really
threatening me right now? When I’m giving you a chance to escape,
to go talk to your father, to learn about your bloodline?”

“You’re only letting me go because you can’t
kill me here,” I snapped, refusing to let his words mess with my
memories again.

“That’s a part of it,” he agreed, “but I need
to sever your connection with her first. Then, I’ll kill you.”

“I could find a loophole before then.”

“I doubt it.”

“You don’t know Jessica or me,” I said. “We
aren’t as vulnerable in the human world as we are here.”

His face hardened. “Is it a deal or not?”

“Deal.”

It wasn’t like I had a choice, but that
wasn’t new to me. I never had choices. It was how I lived my life,
and I was perfectly comfortable finding a way around it.

“Great,” Darthon said as he stood up, crossed
the room, and knelt by my side. He grabbed my neck, and my skin
scorched like it was on fire. When I squirmed, he held me down, and
my vision blurred. The only part I could make out was Darthon’s
face as the skin peeled over, as his black eyes lightened to brown,
as his skin washed out and his hair thickened.

“When you wake up, you’ll be home—safe and
sound.” Robb McLain promised right before I blacked out.

18

My eyelids were as heavy as the rest of my
body. When I woke up, I struggled to move anything, but I had woken
up. I was alive.

The breath that filled my lungs felt foreign,
a momentum of destruction as my heartbeat slammed into my ribs over
and over again. My sternum hurt. That was the first thing I felt
with my fingertips. It was hot and bumpy. When I looked down, I saw
the scar.

“How are you feeling?”

Darthon’s voice was the last thing I wanted
to hear, but it was the first thing I computed.

“How—” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

“I don’t know.” He was sitting at the edge of
the bed in a room I had never seen before. Unlike the rest of the
red rooms, this one was black, only lit from the single flame on
top of a lampstand. Kerosene. I could smell it.

I touched my chest, the place where I had
plunged the knife. It had healed, not completely, not like I was a
shade, but it had healed. Eric wasn’t alone. I couldn’t die either.
But now, I couldn’t kill Darthon in the same way Darthon couldn’t
kill Eric. Whatever was happening was beyond any theory I could
fathom.

“Why’d you do it?”

His question was the only thing I heard. When
I looked at him, his fingers were tangled in his hair, his
shoulders were slumped, and his eyes—for once—weren’t on me. He
stared at the bed sheets instead, and his whisper was barely
audible when he repeated the question. His fingers tightened in his
hair.

“It wasn’t for him.” I thought of Bracke and
Pierce and Luthicer, but I mainly thought of Camille and Eu, the
two who had died for my sake. Even when I did it, I knew it wasn’t
for Eric. It was never for Eric. It was for the Dark, for the
people who finally explained my identity and protected it with
their lives. My life was the only way I could give them back
theirs, and I had failed. I was alive, and so was Darthon.

“You don’t want to be one of us that badly?”
Darthon’s hiss was more of a whimper.

I searched his neck, the only part of his
body that was exposed. I yearned to grab his collared shirt and
pull it down. I wanted to see if he was scarred, too.

“I’ll never be one of you,” I said. Even if I
had to die, I wouldn’t become a light. Especially if it meant the
Dark’s bloodline had to die. The Light wasn’t my family. Even if my
biological family had been born into it, they had died trying to
escape, and so would I. They ran for a reason. They died for a
reason. I knew that now.

“Don’t do that again,” Darthon said.

I bit my lip, refusing to speak.

“It’s not worth it,” he said, opening his
mouth to close it, to open it again. “Do you know what Eric would
think?”

“It wasn’t for him,” I snapped, but Darthon’s
silence brought on the thoughts.

Eric’s mother had killed herself. He told me
how Camille had accused him of trying the same, how it had torn him
apart, how much he was against suicide. But mine was different. It
wasn’t out of depression. It was out of desperation. Mine was
different.

“I don’t care what it was for,” Darthon said.
“It’s not worth it. If you want to kill me—”

“I do.”

Darthon’s face flushed. “Then, do it in the
human realm.”

Realm—like everything was separated.

“Just don’t kill yourself,” he struggled with
his words, choking on them as he spit them out, one by one. “You
can’t die anyway.”

“That doesn’t make sense—”

“It will,” he said it like he didn’t
understand it either, but he promised that he would figure it
out.

“And when it does?”

“I’ll kill Eric.”

I swallowed.

“Until then,” he paused as he stood up, “I’ll
send you back, but only if you promise.”

I knew what he was saying. He wanted me to
promise to stay alive. “I can’t do that.”

“I’ll let Eric go, too,” he said, spinning
around to face me. His angular face softened, and for a moment, I
wondered what he looked like as a child. “I’ll send you both
back—alive.”

Eric.

The images of his bloody body flooded my
mind, crushed my insides, reminded me of how alive I actually was,
how alive he was.

“You’ll let him go?”

Darthon nodded without hesitation. “If you
change your mind about becoming a full light,” he began, “come back
to me.”

Before I could ask what he meant, the door
opened, and Fudicia walked in. The half-breed followed. He was
carrying Eric, and when he dropped Eric on the ground, I leapt from
the bed only to land by Eric’s side.

“Eric,” I gasped his name.

His shallow breathing was unnerving. While
most of his injuries were half-healed, dried blood stained his
skin. Like paint, separated shades of browns and reds mixed with
his bluish bruises. I doubted I would ever be able to paint
again.

“He’s not dead, Jess—”

“That doesn’t make it better,” I snapped,
digging my nails into the pieces of his shirt that had remained
intact. “What the hell is your problem?”

If I had lost my energy before, it was back
now. I was ready to fight again.

Fudicia and the half-breed stepped between us
like they knew what I was thinking.

I looked over their faces, young, yet old at
the same time. The indentions of their expressions, the
determination imbedded in their skin, told me they weren’t afraid
of hurting me anymore. They would if I tried anything again.
Darthon was better off hurt than dead.

“We’ll continue protecting you,” Fudicia
said.

“You’ve done enough.” I wanted to scream, but
my words were calm. I was too focused on Eric.

“
Wake up,”
I coaxed, attempting to
reach his unconscious mind.
“Wake up.”

His eyelashes didn’t even flutter.

“So, Jess,” Darthon was next to me when he
spoke, somehow moving past his guards without a fight. “Are you
ready to go home?”

I glared at him. “I don’t see why you’re
doing this.”

“I have my reasons.”

When he laid his hand on my shoulder, I tried
to move away, but his fingers dug into my skin. “You can’t get away
from this,” he whispered, only inches away from me. “Trust me,” he
paused, “I tried.”

And then, I was gone.

***

I was wrapped in the flames of the sudden
hell Darthon created. The heat tore at my skin, my face, my hair,
and my breath was stolen by the wind. As soon as I believed I would
burn to death, the flames flipped into frigid water.

My fingers tightened, and cloth ripped
beneath my touch. Eric. His faint heartbeat flickered, and I
reached out until I grasped his shirt again. It didn’t tear this
time. I pulled, yanking myself more toward him than him toward me,
and we spun.

I gasped as my head broke the surface of the
river, and my hair tangled around my neck. I tried to scream, but
the air escaped as a whimper. My telepathic line was my only hope.
“Eric.”
Every section of my mind screeched. If he didn’t
wake up, he would drown, and I would drown with him if I didn’t get
him up. The Dark needed him.

I dove back down. When my feet skimmed the
riverbed, I kicked to prevent my ankles from sinking into the mud.
Grasping Eric’s shirt, I attempted to swim up, but I couldn’t tell
if we had budged. The water was moving too fast.

With one last shove, I broke the surface as
thunder crashed above us. Even the surface was drowning with rain.
“Eric,” I shouted again, but the wind shouted over me.

Another wave smashed into my ribs, and I
dropped into the river again, my body crushing into the muddy
ground below. My hands searched the bottom, my eyes opened without
need, and my body shook with panic. After everything we survived,
we were going to drown. But I wouldn’t accept it until we did.

I pushed my way through the water and latched
onto a branch. Before I could pull, it pulled me.

“Jess.” The sudden voice came from the branch
before I realized it wasn’t a branch at all. It was a person—a
boy—and Darthon flashed in front of my vision.

I shoved him away. “Let me go.”

But he didn’t. He grabbed me again. “It’s
me,” he said. “Jess, it’s me.”

The boy’s green eyes pierced through the
brilliant lightning, and my fingers dug into his arms. “Jonathon.”
Even though he was a shade, his human name came first.

“You’re okay,” he said as I spun toward the
river.

Three men lunged into the water.

Urte and Bracke’s hair melted into the
blackness, but Luthicer was the glowing angel who yanked Eric’s
body out of the water. As soon as the elder picked Eric up,
Luthicer laid him on the shore. Eric wasn’t breathing. Urte knelt
down, breathed air into his lungs, and pushed on his chest. Bracke
barked orders, but I couldn’t hear anything except for Pierce.

“You’re okay now,” he kept repeating. “You
both are.”

19

It was a familiar scene. Bright, buzzing,
florescent lights. Feet tapping the ground. Heavy words masked with
low whispers. Even before I opened my eyes, I knew I was in a
hospital. I only prayed it was in the shelter instead of a human
one.

I shuddered as my eyes adjusted to the
brightness. The moist air was cold, and the bed beneath me was warm
from my body heat. It was soft. I had almost forgotten what it was
like to wake up on a mattress instead of a stone floor.

“Eric.” The man’s voice was as familiar as
his ice-blue eyes. “You’re awake.”

The last time I had heard that phrase my
enemy had spoken it. This time, it was my father.

“Hey,” I croaked out the word.

My elbows propped the rest of my body up.
That’s when I saw myself. My arms were torn, and even though my
chest was wrapped, blue bruises pushed over the sides. The only
difference from the Light realm was the rest of my skin. It wasn’t
covered in dried blood. Someone had cleaned me.

“How are you feeling?” The nurse spoke this
time. I hadn’t even noticed her, but I did notice the old walls. We
were underground. The Dark’s shelter was my hospital this time.

“I feel—” I paused as I moved, my sore
muscles inching around, “better.”