Death Before Daylight (21 page)

Luthicer snatched his beard like it would
fall off.

“Absorption started because I felt it,” I
continued, knowing I had done everything to protect the people in
front of me, and they would do anything to protect me back. That
was what made us a team. Darthon had always been wrong about them,
but he had been right about one thing. Me.

I raised my tingling hands. “I can feel it,
not as much now that we’re out, but it’s there,” I said. “Darthon’s
telling the truth about everything. We’re connected.” I thought of
the bruises we had shared. “My powers will shift over to the Light
if he dies.”

I couldn’t say the other part, but Luthicer
did. “And you’ll stay a shade if he dies?” His forehead pointed
toward Shoman, but I couldn’t look at him. Not again.

I nodded.

“How do you know this?” Bracke asked.

I stared at my hand as it fell to my side. “I
used the powers.”

“What?” Pierce’s voice squeaked like he was a
human.

“I had to,” I stumbled over the three little
words. “I didn’t have a choice. Darthon was blackmailing me, and—”
Eric’s screams repeated over and over in my mind. I couldn’t
speak.

“Use them again,” Luthicer ordered.

I focused on his black eyes. “I can’t,” I
said before I corrected myself, “I don’t want to.”

“Use them,” he repeated.

Bracke stood up. “Don’t force the girl.”

“With all due respect.” Luthicer kept his
stare on me. “I want to know she isn’t lying again.”

“Luthicer.” Urte’s tone sounded more like a
curse than a name.

“If we’re going to be a team—a real team—then
we have to stop lying,” Luthicer’s bellow echoed around the meeting
room, and he stood, towering over us all. “That includes the
elders.” He took two steps toward me, only to stay a foot away.
“I’ll help you if something goes wrong,” he promised, “but you have
to use them. Burying an ability doesn’t help anyone.”

“I don’t want to,” I repeated, but my hands
were already warm. Just like the red color, the Light powers felt
like exposed blood.

“We all have to do things we don’t like.”
Luthicer’s voice dropped into a husky tone I hadn’t heard before,
and I wondered if he had used the same voice when he trained
Camille. “That’s war.” He reminded me of the battle we hadn’t won
yet. “And if you want any chance at winning this—at getting him
back.” His head swung to the left toward Shoman again. “You’ll show
us.”

I only looked away to glance at Shoman. He
wasn’t arguing, but his jaw bulged out.

I raised my hand toward Luthicer before I
tore my gaze away from the guy I had kissed too many times to
count. I couldn’t look at him if I had to remind myself of his
screams, the sounds of his torture that had tortured me, too. The
Light had forced me by using Eric against me, and now, the Dark
was, too.

“For the record,” I managed to speak as the
memory flooded me. “Darthon used the same tactic to get me to use
them.”

It was in that instant, Shoman finally
stepped toward me, but it was too late. Red. It fell from my
fingertips, and the dark room glowed with the fire I created. The
color melted across the shades’ faces, and they grimaced as I
curled my fist. I wanted it to stop, but my heartbeat raced, and my
body warmed as if I had been chilled before. I had to suck in a
breath to shut it out. Everything inside of me felt like it had
frozen.

I shivered and wrapped my arms around my
torso as if I could hide it from the others. “He might know I used
it,” I whispered, knowing it was the only way I could call him.

Luthicer’s black eyes had widened into large
pits. “Your hair.”

I glanced down, but the black strands were
the same as they had always been when I transformed into a shade,
straight and sleek. “What about it?”

“It was white,” Pierce explained. He was
standing further away from me than he had been before.

I touched my face. It felt the same, too, but
I wondered if anything else had changed. Were my eyes black? Only
the others knew what I couldn’t see, including Shoman. He was the
only one who hadn’t stepped away.

“Well, now we know.” Bracke coughed as he sat
back down only to stand again. I waited for him to pace, but he
didn’t. He smiled at me. “You don’t have to worry. We’ll figure
this out.”

“Until then,” Urte interrupted, “you are both
to live here under observation.”

“Both?” Shoman asked.

“Don’t act like you are any better,” his
father snapped. “We know you’re under an illusion.”

Shoman’s shoulders fell like he had expelled
a breath he had been holding. Whatever Darthon had done to him,
Shoman had confirmed it without arguing.

“But we can’t take it off of you,” Luthicer
added.

Shoman’s face dropped, and his hair covered
his eyes. He only did this when he didn’t want anyone to see them.
I knew him well enough to understand that, but I also knew him well
enough that I wanted to fight it. If he were under an illusion,
then Darthon had the power. It meant Darthon was winning. It meant
my powers were the only way we could fight back.

Bracke finally began to pace. “We’ll just
have to observe you two until we can figure out our next
steps.”

“I can’t live here,” I interrupted.

Bracke’s neck snapped up at my argument.
“You’ll be allowed to leave, go to school, and see friends. With
permission, of course,” he said it like it was a comfort. “We don’t
need you two getting kidnapped again.”

“That was my fault,” I argued.

Bracke inhaled a large breath. “We don’t need
to risk anything right now.”

“So, why allow us to go to school?”

“We can’t create that big of an illusion,”
Luthicer explained. The elders had thought about the situation
before speaking with us. “It’s for your own good.”

“You’re imprisoning us,” I snapped.

Everyone gasped, like I had accused them of
treating us like the Light had, but they were. The concept of being
forced to live in the shelter was no different from Darthon keeping
us in the Light realm without our permission. Torture or not, the
Dark couldn’t tell us where to be, especially given the
circumstances it would have to fall under. My parents would have an
illusion placed on them again. Everyone would succumb to the pain
of confusion I had to deal with, but I had chosen it. My parents
hadn’t.

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Bracke was the
first to break the silence. “But this is different.”

“How?”

“Darthon obviously wants you, and he’s done
something to my son, so we need to know everything we can if we’re
going to fight him back, if you are going to fight him back.” He
knew I had to fight, too. “It’s also better for you two to have a
place you can rest without the concern of being attacked.”

“And my parents?”

“We’ll have to use another spell,” Luthicer
confirmed my biggest concern.

“It didn’t even work last time,” I pointed
out, remembering how my mother hadn’t believed the news any more
than anyone else. The only successful one we knew about was the one
on my friends, and even they were acting strange. “Who knows what
will happen with our powers acting weird. You could hurt them.”

Luthicer’s face dropped, and for a moment, I
saw brown eyes peek out from his black gaze. His cheeks had even
softened. “I won’t hurt your parents.”

I turned to Eric. “What about Noah?”

His eyebrows shot up at the name of his
stepbrother. Even I knew the Dark had decided to keep the preteen
oblivious. He would have to be controlled, too.

“Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked.

“Of course I am,” Shoman snapped, but a
rumble escaped his throat. He stared at the wall before he spoke
again, “I think it’s a good idea, Jessica.”

My full name. He hadn’t used it in days, and
the sound of it felt more like a promise than anything else. If he
was under an illusion, I wondered if it were his way of telling me
to trust him again, even if he were telling me to do something I
dreaded. Even if we weren’t together, he was on my side, but I had
to listen more if I were going to understand him.

“Fine,” I agreed, unable to take my eyes off
him. I wanted him to look at me, to flat out say what he was
thinking, but his jaw locked, and I knew he wouldn’t speak. Not
again.

“Then, it’s settled.” Bracke clapped his
hands together once. “Go home and pack. We’ll pick you two up
tomorrow.”

Luthicer and Jada left in a beam of light as
if they had been waiting for the signal all along. Urte grabbed
Pierce’s arm and dragged him out as if he knew he would have to
force his son to leave, and Bracke followed the two as if he
understood Shoman and I needed to be alone. But Shoman started to
leave like he didn’t want to be alone with me.

I slammed my left hand on the doorframe to
block the exit. Shoman nearly hit my arm as he came to stop.

“How could you tell them without talking to
me?” I hissed.

Shoman lowered his face so he was inches from
me. “Why didn’t you tell me Darthon forced you?”

Eric’s torture. He knew that part now. He
just didn’t know the rest of it. I had kept more secrets than he
did, and I still was.

My hand curled against the wood, and Shoman’s
eyes moved over to my grasp. His chest dropped. “You took off your
ring.”

I hadn’t. It was strung on my necklace,
nestled right against the scar that burned my flesh, but when I
opened my mouth to tell him, I couldn’t find the words. He wasn’t
the only one who couldn’t speak. We were both being controlled in
one way or another.

“I guess that makes us even,” I said and
dropped my hand so he would stop staring at my empty finger.

As I walked away, I grabbed the necklace and
pulled it out of my shirt. Mine was on, but I had seen Shoman’s
hand. His ring was on, too. We were the same, even when Darthon
didn’t want us to be. We were still together, but we would have to
fight separately.

29

Neither of us had to go to school the next
day. Jessica was packing. I only knew because Urte told me after I
moved in. Jonathon was staying with her, and the day passed
comfortably. The opportunity gave me a chance to avoid Robb, but
more importantly, it gave Jessica time to avoid Darthon, too. But I
spent my time differently than Jessica did. After I finished
moving, I forced myself to walk to the front of the shelter to the
one place I had been avoiding.

Camille’s grave.

The marble room was coated with diamond dust,
and it glittered against the rows of candlelight that lit up the
wide space. Candles were colored the various shades of the
Dark—green for guards, blue for warriors, white for elders. Only
one purple candle existed, and I wondered if the Dark would change
it to red if they ever learned about Jessica’s other powers.

A stone larger than any memorial I had ever
seen towered against the back wall. Shadows curled up the sides,
but the golden candlelight licked the front. Cursive letters
spelled out her inscription.

Teresa Young.

Guard of the first descendant and protector of the
third.

She has saved us all.

As I read the last sentence, my kneecaps
slammed against the floor, and the noise ricocheted through the
room. Saved. She had saved us by giving Jessica her powers, and
Darthon had tortured them out of her by torturing me. Why she
hadn’t told me wasn’t the question. I knew why. I had pushed her
away like Darthon had ordered me. Despite that, she fought for me
like Camille had. Still, Jessica was alive, and Camille wasn’t. I
was the reason she was dead.

“Camille.” My hand shook as I touched her
gravestone. When I stared at it, my own face reflected back. My
human face. I couldn’t bring myself to transform after the night
before, but my brown hair looked black in the shadows. My
reflection was melting into my other half.

I closed my eyes.
“I need you.”
I used
our telepathic line even though it no longer had another side. It
buzzed with white noise.

I wanted to hear a scorning, a lecture
followed by her sweet laugher, but silence met me. I wanted to see
her long hair as half-breed and her short hair as a human. I wanted
to point out she looked like a shade as a human. I wanted her to
flip me off before she painted her nails again. This time of the
year, she usually chose pink. For spring. It was her favorite
season, and she was always too eager for its arrival.

My fist slammed against her grave. Usually,
she would tell me to get my anger in check, but she couldn’t now. I
was alone. The first time she ever told me I wasn’t alone was at my
mother’s funeral. It was that moment she became my friend instead
of a guard.

Now, my friend was dead.

I hit her grave again, only to fall
backward.

When my back hit the ground, I saw him. Even
though my position made him look like he was upside down, I
recognized Luthicer. He was standing in the entryway.

I sat back up before I said anything. “What
are you doing here?”

Luthicer’s footsteps echoed as he approached.
“I thought I would ask you that.” He sat down next to me, and I met
his eyes in the reflection of his greatest student’s grave. “But I
think we both know the answer to that.”

I was finally accepting it.

“Coping is a complicated thing, Eric,” he
continued to speak, “I would ask you to stop hitting it, but—” He
paused. “I think Camille would have a great laugh at that.”

A chuckle escaped me, but I had to rub my
burning eyes. “She’d be glad I was venting this way instead of
crashing another car.”

“We both would be.”

I stretched out my legs and pressed my feet
against the stone in the same way we had when we practiced
stretches. “How’d you know I was here?”