Shattered Promises 02 - Fractured Souls (17 page)

The idea of going there again doesn’t make me happy, but saving Alex does. So does the idea that he and I will be going into The Underworld to save my mother, even if she did look completely hollow, I still have hope that somehow, through all this, she’ll come back to me and be able to help figure out what Stephan’s up to. Or maybe, if I’m lucky, get the star’s energy out of me.

I set the cup down and take a deep breath. “I can probably get us into the City of Crystal, but I’ll need one of those ruby-filled crystal balls Nicholas is always using.”

Laylen cocks his head to the side. “You think you’ve learned enough about your power to be able to do that?”

I shrug, pretending to be casual, although on the inside I’m terrified that I won’t be able to do it or I’ll mess something up. If I can’t get it right, then what? My mom and Alex stay trapped wherever they are. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Laylen gets up from the chair, deeply thinking as he takes our empty mugs over to the sink. He rinses them off and turns around, leaning against the counter. “I know someone who probably has a lot of them.”

I get up from the chair. “Who?”

He gives me a small smile. “The person who owns the house we’re staying in. I think she’s got a whole room full of crystal balls.”

***

Laylen was right. Adessa does have a whole room full of crystal balls and she more than willingly lets us into it. I have the suspicion, though, that Laylen might be messing around with her emotions since at first Adessa seems reluctant, then suddenly she’s all too happy about the idea of taking us into the room concealed behind the shelves lining the walls of her store.

Once we’re in it she begins searching the seemingly endless amount of shelves that line the walls from front to back. Every time she dips down to look at the bottom row on the shelf her braided hair that runs halfway down her back brushes against the concrete floor. She’s also wearing heels with a patterned dress that make clicking sounds as she walks around and the noise reverberates around the room deafeningly.

“Why do you need this?” she asks, sliding a few jars and unique figurines out of the way.

I open my mouth to explain our dilemma to her, but Laylen shakes his head, exchanging a secretive glance with me as I pick up a strange looking clay eye. “Gemma just needs to look at one, for her training.”

My eyebrows dip down as I set the clay eye back on the shelf. I don’t get why he’s being so secretive with her when it’s obvious that she’s helping us.

Laylen crosses the narrow room and stops beside me. “We need to be careful who we tell,” he says. “Adessa doesn’t know about you, Stephan, or the star.”

I glance at Adessa as she wanders to the back section of the room and then I lean into Laylen. “Why does she think we’re staying with her?”

He shrugs, collecting up a two-headed horse statue from the shelf, and peeks under the bottom like he’s checking for a price sticker. “I just told her we needed help.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“No, I do, but it’s always better to be careful.”

I nod as he sets the statue down. “You know what, you’re right. I need to start working on doing the same... I let Nicholas know too much.”

“That’s because he has the power to fuck with your head,” Laylen tells me. “He’s always running around in circles and talking in vague sentences. It confuses people and makes it easy to slip up.”

“Well, I need to work on it,” I insist. “Regardless of how tricky he is.”

“I think I found it,” Adessa declares and we look in her direction as she walks toward us, carrying a miniature crystal ball with rubies floating in it. Red rays of light shimmer around the tiny storage area as the ceiling lights reflect against the glass.

Adessa offers me a small smile as she gives the crystal ball to me and I try not to grin as I take it from her because, for the first time, things actually seem like they’re going to be easy.

***

I spoke too soon. Way too soon. Yes, we got the crystal ball, but using it is turning out to be a pain in the ass. After Adessa gives us the crystal, Laylen and I return to the living. We ask Aislin to join us, figuring we all should go to The Underworld together because there’s power in numbers.

“I don’t get it.” I shake the crystal ball like a magic eight ball and on the inside the rubies swirl in a funnel. “I’ve gone into a crystal ball completely by accident, but this feels impossible.”

Aislin flips the page of the book she has opened up on her lap and tucks a strand of her golden brown hair behind her ear. “You know, there’s a lot more marks that I’m sure a lot of people would want to remove. However, there’s nothing on this mysterious triangular symbol.”

“I know,” Laylen agrees. “I can’t even think of one off the top of my head. Usually they appear later in life or something happens and they…” He drifts off, stretching his arm out on his lap and staring down at the Mark of Immortality.

Aislin glances up from the book and gives a fleeting glance at the mark. Then, looking guilty, she quickly sets the book down on the table between the three of us. “I’m going to go up to the library and get another book.” She stands to her feet. “This one’s getting me nowhere.”

“Adessa has a library?” I ask after Aislin leaves.

Laylen bends his arm back and wraps it around his stomach so his mark is hidden. “Yeah, it’s up in the attic. Nothing too fancy, but there’s a lot of books. The problem is that most of them stick strictly to the Wiccan history and there’s not much about other marks in there.”

“What kind of book do you think you’d need for something like that?”

“Honestly, I’d go with a Keeper’s book, since Stephan’s a Keeper and a lot of the Keepers’ history is mixed with other marks. In fact, there was once a mark of evil. It had a different name, but that’s pretty much what it stood for. It was directly related to the Keepers’ blood. I think the man who had it, though, died or something and it killed all the bloodlines linked to it.”

“So you think it’s extinct?” I ask.

He nods. “Yeah, from what I’ve been taught it is.”

I set the crystal ball down on the apothecary table and give it a good spin, causing the rubies to clink against the glass. “I can’t even feel any energy from it.”

Laylen reaches for the crystal ball. “Did Nicholas say anything while he was training you?” He scoops it up and turns it in his hand. “Like maybe there’s some magic words,” he teases, but he looks sullen, which is exactly how I feel. The more time we’re up here messing around with this thing, the more time everyone stays trapped. It’s also more time that the star remains inside me, which means the more time the Death Walkers and Stephan remain at our heels.

“When he was training me with the regular Foreseer crystal ball, he said something about channeling emotions,” I say. “That it would help.”

Laylen encounters my gaze and we exchange a penetrating look before our concentration focuses on the crystal in his hand.

“It doesn’t hurt to try, right?” he asks, peering up at me.

I waver because it might not hurt to try, but it could hurt for me to channel up certain emotions around him. Sure, things have been okay lately, but I’m still concerned that the tie I felt with him will surface.

He pats the sofa. “Come sit down by me. Let’s see if we can try something.”

I’m nervous, but I still get up and meander around the table to the couch, dropping down beside him. “What emotion should we aim for?”

I tuck my hands underneath my legs and shrug, anxious over how many ideas pop into my mind, ranging from an orgasmic feeling to an idyllic state of rapture. “You pick one.”

He dithers, his eyes all over me, then ultimately he sweeps my hair off my shoulder. “We could go for calm because I really do think you need it, but I don’t think that’s going to channel up much energy.”

I tense as he inclines inward toward me until his chin lightly grazes my shoulder. “I agree…” I lose my voice as his lips gently caress my skin.

“I really tried,” he whispers hoarsely. “I know I should stay away… and there’s Aislin… and so many other reason, but God you smell so good… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about your scent since I tasted your blood.” He breathes a path up my shoulder, heading toward my neck.

My head falls to the side. All this time I’ve been so curious to know what it feels like to be bit and now, well, I sort of regret it. Yet I can’t go back from what’s already happened.

I slip my hands out from under my legs and grip onto his legs as his lips move across my skin, hardly touching yet it’s enough to send flutters throughout my body. It feels so wonderful, to the point that it steals my breath away, and I end up gasping for air.

He groans and then drops the crystal ball onto my lap so his fingers can find my waist. “We should stop…” he trails off as he presses his nose into the arch of my neck.

My eyes slip shut and I start to helplessly fall into his arms. “We should….” I agree, telling my body to move away, but I feel the prickle poke at the back and I know I need to let whatever’s emerging make an appearance.

I hold my breath and wait as Laylen’s fingers reach my rib cage.

I wait as his mouth heads for my lips.

I wait until a vile sensation builds inside my stomach.

I wait until I can feel it, the heavy weight crashing upon my chest, pressing me down—the weight of my guilt.

I gasp, realizing just how wrong this is and that I shouldn’t be doing this, not when I have feelings for Alex and Aislin has feelings for Laylen.

“This is wrong,” I say and start to lean away when I feel the hot energy surging through my bloodstream like liquid fire “I think I…I…” My body goes limp as something deep within me roars. There’s a rough tug and I hold onto Laylen’s hand as he moves his mouth away from me. I hear him say something, but then we’re sucked away into the crystal ball, falling down, down, down into the unknown.

Chapter 17

I manage to land somewhat gracefully, catching myself with a very minor stumble and Laylen lands effortlessly beside me, gripping onto my hand. We’re standing in a cave with charcoal ceilings and a translucent crystal floor. A midnight river with bits and pieces of gold in it flows beneath the floor. Maroon crystals hang from the ceiling and rubies wave across the snow-white walls.

“Is this the City of Crystal?” Laylen asks in awe as he glances around.

I shake my head in disbelief as I put the crystal ball into my pocket. “I really didn’t expect to actually get us here… but this has to be it. I mean, I haven’t been in this area before.” I slip my fingers from Laylen’s and stroll up to the wall, feeling the smoothness of the porcelain. “But where else could we be?”

Laylen strides up to the side of me and picks at a chipped section in the wall. “I think you’re right.”

I step back, looking from left to right. Each side is the same, paved with broken multicolored pieces of glass, but the one to my right heads toward a bridge. Beside the path is an edge that leads to a very short drop off.

“The question is, which way?” I say. “And what are we even looking for exactly?”

He studies both directions, his head turning from left to right. “I just want to say first, that it’s not going to be pretty.”

“What’s not pretty?”

He locks eyes with me. “Where Alex is.”

I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “Why? Where is he?”

He circles around me and then drapes an arm around my shoulder. Guilt immediately soars through me from his touch because I want him to touch me more intimately. “There’s this crystal ball in the center of the city that channels the energy to all the other crystals. That’s where he is.”

“In the crystal ball?”

“No, outside it.”

I pull a perplexed face. “So what’s the point of him being down here, then?”

He tugs on my shoulder and guides me closer to him and I have the strangest compulsion to ask him to let me go, yet conflicted by my desire, I keep my lips sealed. “The crystal ball uses human energy to fuel it,” he explains.

I crane my neck, tipping my chin up, and meet his blue eyes. “
What
? And no one bothered to mention this to me?”

He offers me an apologetic look. “Alex had his reasons for doing it, I’m sure. He wanted to help you.”

“But not like this,” I say, shaking my head. “Not by fueling a crystal ball. It’s absurd.” My heart aches inside my chest, not just at the multiple ideas of what exactly is required to fuel a crystal ball, but also because the electricity has been missing for days now and I desperately miss it for reasons I both do and don’t understand.

Laylen searches my eyes with a creased forehead and then he removes his arm from around me. “We should get looking for him.” He veers toward the left, away from the bridge. “It’s a big city and I’m sure it’s going to take a lot of time.”

We walk in silence for a while, following the glass path. He looks like something’s really troubling him and, despite the fact that I don’t want to admit it, I think I might know what it is.

I’m just about to open my mouth and tell him that we should probably talk about what we’re feeling because it’s getting really complicated—at least for me—when I detect the sound of approaching footsteps.

Laylen and I freeze simultaneously then we whirl around, looking behind us to where the noise is coming from.

“Is someone coming?” I whisper.

“I think so.” Motioning his hand at me, he scoots us over to the side of the path, where we step off the ledge and down onto a frosty blue, smooth surface that’s as slippery as ice. He takes my hand, and we hurry over to one of the short pillars rising out of the ground and point up at the top. We cower down behind it and hold our breaths as we wait.

The longer we wait, though, the quieter it gets. Finally, Laylen ducks his head low and, placing his fingers on the ground he peeks around the side of the pillar.

“No one’s there,” he hisses.

“They must have gone somewhere else,” I whisper, hovering over him to look for myself.

“I knew you’d show up here,” Nicholas breathes in my ear.