Descendant (37 page)

Kye’s blood pools at my feet and I drop to my knees, trying to staunch the flow with my hands. His hand brushes my arm and I fall apart, sobbing until I can’t breathe, and lay my head on his chest near his wound. Memories of the past few days streak through my mind like a distant movie I once watched. His heart heaves, stutters, and his energy hiccups, blinks, starts to fade very quickly.

“Eric, help me.” I push myself up. “I ... I have to ... do something. I have to fix him.”

Eric kneels next to me, his hand covering mine on Kye’s chest. “What can I do?”

I’m reminded of the day in Yellowstone when their roles were reversed, and hate the grim reminder of my past failure. “Make sure I stay conscious. If I look like I’m going to pass out ... just don’t let me. Slap me if you have to. Whatever happens, keep me upright. Watch my hands and make sure they don’t stop moving until the light around us turns clear, okay?”

“Raina.” Eric’s voice is thick with emotion. “Abby, you could die. Healing something this serious could kill you. I’m not going to help you die. I won’t watch that again. I can’t live with it.”

I ignore his hand on my shoulder and unclasp the pendant to place over Kye’s wound, along with the Sunstone. “Yes, you can. It’s not like you haven’t done it before.” My voice has an edge of cruelty. “You lured me here, betrayed me, and then almost murdered me. Again. You
should
have to watch me die if that’s what it comes to. And then you can live knowing that it didn’t have to be this way. Again.”

“All right.” His hand falls away from my shoulder and he gives a curt nod. “I deserve that. And worse. But please ... Abby, please don’t die. I’m begging you. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just wanted to free the man I consider my father.”

My hands start the familiar spinning motions of chakra balancing. “Well, it did. It happened.
You
screwed everything up and now I have to fix it. I have to make it right, just like I did the last time.” The pendant glows green, the energy so bright it hurts my eyes. “Just promise me you’ll get him out of here, get him help. And if I ... if
something happens to me, bring my body to my mother so she knows I died doing what I couldn’t do for my gram.”

He sits next to me, stiff and formal, but nods.

Kye’s eyelids flutter. He reaches for me and croaks, “Abby, don’t.”

“Shh.” I put my fingers to his lips. “We aren’t going to argue over this, okay? I have to try. I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t.”

“Come here,” he says.

I stop spinning long enough to lean in and steal one last moment with him. “I love you,” I whisper. “Through space and time and however many lives we live. Forever and ever.”

He strokes my cheek with his thumb. “I love you too. Don’t worry, I’ll find you again. And again and again and again. I’ll keep finding you until this curse is broken. I promise. I’ll never stop looking. Never.”

I swallow, closing my eyes while a tear slips off my face and onto his. “Forever.”

Kye’s hand slides to the ground and his eyes glaze over when his heart stutters again. My hands—covered in his blood—shake as I spin Kye’s chakras in a rhythm as sure as my own heartbeat. The Healing tones flow strong and true from somewhere inside me and the stones glow stronger, brighter. Light floods into the tunnels. Kye’s energy streams out of his body, broken in millions of jagged pieces, and funnels toward me, spinning and spinning in a tornado of colors. The broken pieces rise and fall, rise and fall, and then surge into me with a blinding flash. I taste nickeline in Kye’s blood, then iron and cinnabar. A flood of poison burns down my throat. Spots blink in my eyes—white, red, blue, black, yellow, orange—but I keep my arms moving, don’t let myself pause, even when my muscles get tired, and a hot ache like nothing I’ve ever felt before spreads through me. I spin and spin, swallow more energy, more poison, more and more and more. Everything, every virus, every illness, every scar Kye has accumulated in his life, flows into me, and still my arms hold on to the steady motion. I hum, sing, chant centuries-old charms Gram never taught me but that I somehow know.

The energy pours into me, through me, fills me up, and then, when I’m sure I’ve mended it all, I reach down, deep, deep down into my most inner self and push it—everything good—back into Kye.

Fire spreads in my blood, hot like lava, pressing weight on my lungs, and oxygen feels precious but so hard to catch. I try to cough it up, to become an erupting volcano and expel the horrible pressure building inside me, but it keeps building, and my body feels hotter and hotter. The pendant spins like a top, hovering over Kye, glowing like a light bulb. My chest feels tight, I can’t breathe, and then I’m falling down a tunnel. Sinking. Falling. Sinking.

“Abby!” Eric sounds alarmed, but so far away.

The room is in motion. Kye reaches up to touch my face, his cobalt eyes stare into mine, through mine. “No, Abby, stop.” His wide eyes reflect his panic, but his voice is stronger now. “Don’t do this. Stop it. I don’t want you to do this.”

My eyes are heavy, so very heavy, but I fight them open. “It’s already done.”

His hand falls away and his eyes close again.

I keep going, keep working until the energy around me swirls and melds together and I can no longer feel Eric’s touch on my shoulder, until my toes go numb and my lungs can’t catch air. And then everything goes black.

It’s over.

Bright
  light shines through my closed eyelids and the air sighs with music. I’m floating, surrounded by luxurious fabric that feels like feathers on my skin. There is no trace of hunger or the nausea and ache I expect, but something is familiar. A soft scent I can’t quite place. Baby powder, ocean breeze, fresh-baked bread, fruit on the vine, rain, all mixed together to make a unique and wonderful perfume.

I’m warm, relaxed, content, until I reach for Kye, expecting him to be lying beside me in this heaven, but my hands clutch empty space.

“Open your eyes, Abigail.” The words glide over me, the sound of angels singing, of rain softly falling, of waves crashing on the shore of a perfect, untouched beach. It floats over my skin, into my ears, the voice of a mother to her child.

So I obey.

My bed is circular and surrounded by a flowing, gauzy substance. Three women hover near my feet. The one on my left smiles. A mane of blonde hair cascades past her waist, and without reason, I know her as Macha, goddess of war. To my right is Badb, goddess of death, with her rippling waves of midnight hair and shrewd, unblinking eyes.

Between them, with fiery ringlets of red hair curling around her body and eyes the same green as the emeralds in the Pendant of
Sadira, is Morrigan, the supreme fertility goddess. The oracle. The head goddess of the Morrigana.

These three great queens are the heart of war and rebirth, regeneration. Their presence is all at once overwhelming and familiar, as if I’ve met them before, known them as friends or mother figures in another existence.

I push myself up and realize I’m no longer wearing the silver dress from New York, but a soft white one that drapes around me, flowing down my legs to my toes. Warm calm spreads from the bottom of my heels into the rest of my body, blurring my memory until everything feels fuzzy, faded. “Am I dead?”

Badb answers in a throaty, seductive voice. “Do you wish to be dead?”

Confused, I tip my head to the side. “I don’t know. Is this what dead is like? Am I in heaven?”

Macha’s laugh sounds like tinkling bells. “Oh no, Abigail. This is the crystal castle. You’ll remain here until your true destiny is decided.”

I rub my hands over the silk bedding, feeling it glide between my fingers and tickle my palms. “Decided?”

“Your body has taken in a great deal of broken energy, but your soul is strong and fighting, your life purpose incomplete,” Morrigan says, clasping hands with her sisters. “What do you desire, Abigail?”

I slip to the edge of the bed, curling my legs under me. “What are my choices?”

Morrigan spreads her right arm wide. “You may choose to continue your human life. There will be anguish and sorrow in your future, broken hearts and death. Wars will rage, battles will be won and lost. Some humans find joy and then they create more life, more humans who will suffer for their own happiness.” Her left arm spreads now. “You may choose a life of paradise in the world of eternal youth and beauty, located on the Phantom Island of the legendary Tir na nog. In this place there is no heartache, no war, no death. Only joy. You will need no one, and be needed by no one. You will be free from the burdens that bind you in the mortal world. But you will go there alone. There is no returning from Tir na nog, where unions between souls do not exist. The man you loved will be erased from your mind,
replaced by the pleasure of paradise. You will know nothing but singular contentment.”

For the first time in my life, my heart feels free, light.

Empty.

Why am I here?
My mind is full of clouds, my memories fuzzy, broken. It takes a great deal of effort, but a face shimmers in my mind. Eyes blue as sapphires that seem as deep and endless as the sea, a dimple bending his left cheek, a lock of wavy blond hair falling across a tanned forehead. A familiar voice.
I love you too
 ...
I’ll find you again
 ...
I’ll never stop looking. Never.

Kye.

“Did I save him? Did I Heal him?”

The women nod in sync. Morrigan answers. “He lives.”

The voice burns like sunshine in my memory, bringing back flashes of other people, other places, other things I know I should be doing. A deep ache of longing settles in my chest.
I don’t want to forget.
“I promised I’d come back.”

Morrigan’s hands flutter across my forehead. “Your body has endured much. Should you return, you’ll experience excruciating pain.”

My fingers run curiously along my arms, touch my skin, pull hairs, pinch. There is no pain, only a pleasant sensation of pressure. “But ...”
The boy.
Already, I’ve forgotten his name again. A sense of panic wells up and squeezes my throat, though I’m not sure why it’s so important that I remember this one detail. “Why? Why can’t I remember?”

Macha pats the sheets near my foot in a maternal gesture. “The boy lives. This pain will be yours and yours alone.”

Badb frowns.

Morrigan reaches inside her gown and produces a silver bough with white flowers blooming up the length of the branches. She plucks one and offers it to me. “There is a third choice. By eating this, you may return home for a time.”

The bloom brings to mind another face, a gray-haired man. Relieved to have a face in my mind again, I hesitate and don’t accept the offered gift. “The bloom of eternal life.”

The women nod again. Their singularity is getting annoying. “What happens if I eat it?”

“You’ll return home for a while,” Morrigan says again. “And when your purpose has been served, you’ll be taken across the crystal bridge.”

The memory of the man fades as well, and my remaining contentment along with it. My mind continues reaching, but is unable to grasp anything solid. “What about the people I love? The ... others.” The blue-eyed boy, the woman who held me when I cried, the friend with the hypnotizing voice.
Why can’t I remember their names? Their faces?

“They are still mortal, and as such, will someday die while you’ll continue living for many years. It is the best of both worlds.”

I have no pain, nothing binding me to earth. Nothing but a pair of deep blue eyes and the words
I’ll find you again.

Then I manage to grasp an agonizing memory of deep, unforgiving ache. “If I eat this blossom, will I feel pain?”

Macha shakes her head.

Another memory. A hand holding mine, keeping me grounded, arms pulling me close. “Then how will I know joy?”

No answer.

More memories fight through the fog, leaving me confused, frowning. A dark-haired boy who betrayed but then saved me. A woman tenderly combing my hair when I was little, trying so hard to understand me, to help me. The older woman, the Healer, what she wanted for me, what she always told me I would someday become. My own desires for future possibilities. Blue eyes. The boy in my dreams. The boy who always finds me.

“If I go, he won’t be able to find me.”

A cloud of confusion darkens Macha’s face. “Immortality is a great honor offered to few chosen souls.”

“But I have to be mortal so he can find me again. So I can find him,” I murmur, shaking my head. “I need to find him.”

“I will never understand the attachments of humans.” Morrigan presses the flower hard in my palm. When she removes her hand, the bud has morphed into a large pink diamond. “The tasks ahead will be more difficult than the ones you’ve yet survived. You will call on us again. Swing this diamond over your palm in a clockwise circle and sing the calling tones. They are the same ones you used to call the broken energy out of your beloved and save his life, and which
summoned us to your aid. Be warned; with the next summons, your choices will not be the same.”