Jonah Page 3

The beat of a drum.

  I remembered the bonfire erupting in the garden of the Henley house, how it seemed to melt the entire world around me. And a lone soldier was marching, calling out through the darkened wasteland. Calling out for me.

  The scene below me unfolded in slow motion.

  The star was smoking, the towers that had stood at its points had become molten, and a blazing ball of blue flame glided, forming a circle around the outside of the five points, connecting the rivers together.

  Making his claim to this world, Zherneboh’s signature swirled below me, spelling out his name in the form of an inverted pentagram.

  Tens of thousands of scavengers flung themselves at the riverbanks, dismembering one another’s limbs in a frenzied fight to drink the fueling substance before it evaporated. Nearby, the frozen Pureblood with whom I had been faced was obliterated as yet more scavengers charged. But against the glow of the orange hue, I was enlightened. As I sought out the soldier I could hear but not yet see, I came to understand the meaning of the cloud, the rain, and the rivers.

  On Earth, the Purebloods drank the blood of mortals with dark souls. From this blood, they would extract the dark matter that sustained their forms and grow their power when they were in the second dimension. But here in the third, they had created a never-ending supply. The science, the engineering, and the architecture all around me, manipulated and constructed, to create one thing …

  A sea of souls.

  And as I observed every last inch of Zherneboh’s masterpiece, I convinced myself that far below me, there was nothing but death.

  Just like the memory of the bonfire, I thought the beat of the drum was imaginary.

  But then, there it was again.

  My eyes searched the grounds below until … through the destruction and chaos, I found him.

  To this being left behind, this lone soldier far below, I must have shone like a beacon—someone in the nothingness.

  The figure, illuminated by a flare over his shoulder, strode across the barren landscape. The hood around his head slipped down, and he stared up, his eyes finding mine.

  “Jonah,” I whispered.

  The rumble of the rifts continuing to open silenced all sound. The light within me rose, heating Zherneboh’s hand, which was still pressed to the back of my head. If I was going to end the Purebloods and their world, I had to do it now, before they were able to escape through the rifts. But Jonah was down there, and he would be ended, too. I’d sacrificed myself to save him once, but to do it again, I would have to sacrifice the lives of the many I might save by not killing Zherneboh along with this world.

  Jonah’s was but one life. One life in exchange for the many—the greater good …

  But sometimes it’s for the good of the great.

  And to me, there was no one greater than him.

  Zherneboh and I were magnets, getting too close. In my neck, my veins swelled and splintered as my light—my internal bomb—rode up the side of my cheek. Drawn to Zherneboh’s clawed thumb, luminous stripes forked before flashing out of my left eye. A flare struck him, sending an electric shock down his hand and arm.

  I screamed.

  Static crackled in my left eye as my sight was taken with that single sheet. Zherneboh fought to pull away, and I had to work hard to stop my light from leaving me. I had to get Jonah out first, even if it meant letting Zherneboh escape.

  Finally, Zherneboh was able to break the connection, and he retracted. His form shifted into that of the raven once more, and he swooped. Springing from my shoulders, he used me as leverage to gain traction. The force sent me into a spin, and I somersaulted as I fell. The flight of the raven blurred across my impaired vision as it headed toward the dispersing cloud that had surrounded the peak of the main tower.

  Unable to see light against light, the Arch Angels were unaware of the rifts between the first and the second dimension. And here in the third dimension, despite being able to hear them, I hadn’t been able to see the dark rifts opening against the black. But now with an arc of autumn color swirling in the backdrop and no structure concealing it, the fixed gateway to the second was revealed.

  Without Zherneboh’s force attracting my own, my electric energy stopped rising and fizzed, waiting for me to detonate or disarm.

  At first, I drifted like a leaf riding the breeze, a part of the autumn, but all too soon the wind dropped. I plummeted toward the smoking moat below me with no threads left to grab onto.

  But I didn’t need them.

  The same as always, Jonah was there to catch me when I fell.

  He leaped through the air and met me, so when we landed on the bank of the moat, I was pressed into his chest. Jonah planted his feet firmly into the ground, placed his chin to my forehead, and, with a sigh, murmured my name.

  Smoke swirled around us, but Jonah tightened his arms around me, keeping me safe at the center of the cyclone.

  “Up there,” Jonah said with a heavy breath.

  Squinting, I peeked up from my refuge. High above us, and stretched out across the spectacle of luminous greens and burnt oranges, was the fixed gateway. A way home—but only for Jonah.

  I had to finish what I’d started.

  I locked Jonah’s arms in mine, and together we levitated into the air. I couldn’t risk meeting his eyes; I knew how easily they could change my mind. So when he rested his chin back on my forehead, I let him.

  In line now with the fixed gateway, the world below us smoked in ruins, but it could be rebuilt. I had to destroy what was left and seal the rifts once and for all.

  I delayed, indulging myself for a final time by breathing in Jonah’s fragrance. Then, without warning, I thrust him away from me, aiming for the middle of the gateway. But as his arms slid down mine, he snatched my wrists and tugged me back to him.

  My hesitation had been warning enough.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t have to explain myself. He knew me too well. Raising his finger to the middle of my lips and shaking his head, he quieted me.

  “No, Lailah.” His eyes were the windows into his soul, and he dared me to peer inside, where, stripped bare, was his truth. “You stay. I stay. We live or we die together. There is no in between.”

  Taking my hands up in his, he placed them on his chest and the trump pump of his heartbeat sounded in time with mine. “I always get the last word, do you understand? Always.”

  It was nonnegotiable. He wasn’t leaving without me.

  And so I willed my atom bomb to break apart and for the rings of light to disperse. I threaded my fingers through Jonah’s; and without a word, I led him back home.

  THREE

  THE DARK GATEWAY SUCKED US IN, only to spit us back out into black.

  I barely noticed.

  In the shadows, I ripped my hand from Jonah’s. I smacked it to my left cheek, trying to quash the simmering sensation that was vibrating under my skin. Dizzy and disoriented, I dropped to my knees.

  “Lailah,” Jonah said, bending before me and squeezing the tops of my shoulders.

  I couldn’t see him. My vision was blurred. He tried to pull me up, but I was too unsteady. I crumpled onto all fours. I tried to claw my way forward, but my feet slid underneath me, and I hit a rectangular stone that rose up from the ground. Exhausted, I crawled on top and turned onto my back. I fought to find balance inside and out.

  I possessed the abilities of both Purebloods and Angels, which made me more powerful than either race. By embracing my gray being, the mix of the two that lived inside me, I had set myself apart from the Purebloods and the Angels. This had allowed me to end a Pureblood here on Earth, but in the third dimension, I had to divide myself—to separate out the lightness from my Angel side—to stand a chance of defeating Zherneboh. But that meant the current of electric white light that had shocked him had also shocked me—my own dark side—and the damage was still sitting on my skin here in the second.

  I took a deep breath as I stared at the rock above my head. The
rift through which we’d entered the second had churned us out into a cave that shimmered like stars, just the same as the rock in the third had.

  “Zherneboh…” I warned in a raspy voice. The Pureblood had left through the gateway only minutes before Jonah and I, which meant he couldn’t be far.

  “No, there’s no one here. I’ll get you out and into the sun in just a second,” Jonah promised.

  My stomach rumbled in response to the word sun, as it had when I still had a hunger for sustenance in the form of food. I’d depleted most of my light energy, and Jonah knew I needed to refuel. I realized then how dangerous it was to split my soul in two. I needed to retain my balance of light and dark, not only to fuel my body but also to remain a greater force than my enemies. But then, when I’d made that choice, the state of my soul hadn’t concerned me; I’d had no intention of returning to the second. I should have been dead by now.

  The scrape of heavy stone fighting against flint was as cruel to my hearing as a knife dragging across a bottle. But for every second it sounded, with every inch Jonah shifted the stone above my head, more sunlight cascaded in, stretching ever nearer to where I lay, until finally I was bathing in sunlight.

  I no longer wore around my neck the ring that housed my crystal. I had left it for Gabriel. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need it. My skin warmed as a golden hue surrounded me. The sunlight sank through my skin, absorbing at superspeed, feeding my soul. Twinkling crystals exuded from my body as I basked in the sun’s rays. Then, with a whoosh and a burst of light, I stopped glowing.

  The light merged with my darkness, and once again, my soul was painted gray.

  My vision was still hazy, and it took me a moment to realize that Jonah had taken himself out of the way of my light and was waiting aboveground. Now that we were out of immediate danger, half of me expected him to reappear, shouting, blasting me for undertaking a suicide mission. The other half hoped he might take me in his arms and tell me that he had come for me because he loved me, not because he couldn’t bear to be alone in the darkness.

  Staring down at me from what was now a rectangular hole above my head, Jonah reappeared, his lower lip parted from his top, but no words came out.

  “Jonah?”

  In a flash, he was kneeling down at my side, and as he pulled me up into a sitting position, he said, “It’ll be all right.”

  I shook my head, confused.

  Jonah’s Adam’s apple bulged as he swallowed, and he helped me up from the stone slab. Visible only because of the glow of the sun spilling in, to my far right the fixed gateway to the third dribbled with black ink.

  The stone Jonah had shifted to allow the sun inside acted as an exit. I bent my knees and sprang up high, landing outside in a catlike position. Shadowed stripes crisscrossed over my skin as daylight strobed through wilting tree branches. The ground around me was covered in a carpet of leaves. They lifted in the bitter breeze, twirling, before scattering through the air.

  Gabriel had told me that the fixed gateways to the third and first dimensions were both positioned in Lucan, Ireland. And here on the Emerald Isle, it was fall, but it had been winter when I’d left through a rift in England. The shift in season didn’t make sense.

  I inspected the world around me, searching for clues.

  The aged tree the leaves had fallen from stood centrally, raised up as though it were a monument. The land around it sloped dramatically from either side of its enormous trunk. A thin, light dusting of discolored topsoil spread as far as I could see. There was no grass nor any other plants; it was as though nothing else could grow here.

  The structure we’d been catapulted into, housing the gateway to the third, was buried deep in the ground. It appeared to be constructed from the same material that made up the landscape of the third dimension. Cold, dark matter. Manipulated, presumably, by a pureblood.

  The heavy hunk of rock concealing the gateway had been cut to resemble a tombstone, one only visible from this exact angle and positioned in a concerted effort to disguise what lay beneath it. Strange, I doubted a Pureblood would care.

  In the distance, the land rounded off into a point. I strode toward that cliff’s edge, gesturing for Jonah to stay. I needed time to collect my thoughts.

  With my failure to destroy the third, nothing had changed since I went through the rift that morning. The Purebloods had survived me, same as I had survived the third, meaning no ground had been lost on either side. The only difference now, perhaps, was that I understood what Zherneboh wanted, and, to a degree, why he wanted it.

  Anger twisted in the pit of my stomach. Everyone I loved would be safe now in a world without the Purebloods if Jonah had just listened to me when I’d told him not to follow. It was my choice to exchange my existence for his, a decision he hadn’t respected. Worse still, I owed the universe a debt. And I expected that when the universe came to collect, it would want interest.

  A part of me wished to forget all this, but all this was a part of me. And there was no escaping any of it.

  Because of him, I had failed.

  Because of him, the Purebloods were free.

  I glanced back at Jonah. As our eyes locked, a thought—no, a feeling—surfaced that didn’t belong to me, at least it didn’t belong to me yet.…

  Because of him, I was afraid.

  Unnerved, I rubbed my bare arms. Jonah had stolen my ending, and in doing so, he’d taken me straight back to the beginning. What was I supposed to do now?

  At the cliff’s edge, I stared up at the sky, silently searching for an answer. Below me, waves whistled as they lapped at the base of the cliff, the river working hard to wear down the rock.

  And, like the river, the answer was clear. I had no choice; I had to start all over again.

  I turned and faced Jonah. His huge hazel eyes drilled into mine, refusing to leave me as I circled back to him. As I watched him watch me, a cold tingle came over me as though someone were walking on my grave.

  In an all-too-familiar fashion, the scenery around me began to warp, and I halted.

  As though an artist were sketching an outline with charcoal, shapes were drawn against the autumn backdrop, morphing, one by one, into ghostlike silhouettes. Faceless bodies smudged together in small clusters, dotted around the oak tree’s roots, ready to be colored into life.

  The clouds above drifted and the river still whistled, but everything stretching down from the cliff’s edge was still, simply waiting. The only thing untouched by the changing picture was Jonah, who remained with his foot perched atop the tombstone, regarding me with a puzzled expression.

  Over my right shoulder, my name sounded, and I twisted around.

  The scenery bounced.

  I became unsteady as, outside my own skin, I watched myself begin to fall.

  Just as in a dream, I woke before I hit the ground.

  I knew immediately what I’d been given: a window in time. A vision, one not of the past but of the future. I swayed in place. It was oddly serene.

  It was so quiet.

  It was so still.

  I heard her before I saw her. Screeching Jonah’s name, she disturbed the tranquillity and yanked me back to reality.

  The carpet of leaves sprang into the air as fast feet tore over them. She leaped onto Jonah’s back, her arms meeting around his chest as she clung to him tightly.

  Brooke.

  Relief coursed through me. She was okay.

  When Brooke had fled with Fergal, he was near death, despite my best efforts. I doubted he had survived. Despite his double-dealing and carefully crafted deceptions, I knew Brooke loved him, and I worried how she would cope if he died.

  I had started toward Brooke when the smallest change in the flow of the river below caught my attention. I leaned back, and though the water undulated, whatever had caused it was now gone.

  I made my way over to Jonah and Brooke.

  “Lailah!” Brooke said, sliding off Jonah’s back. Stopping just short of hugging me, she glanced a
t Jonah instead.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, not giving any consideration to her hesitancy.

  “I sensed Jonah and came straightaway,” she replied, tucking the wayward strands of her red bangs back into her purple beanie.

  “Straightaway?” I said, confused. “The fixed gateway opens in Lucan.”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “That’s where we are.”

  “I know, what I don’t understand is how you got here so fast.” The rift Jonah and I had traveled into the third from originated in Henley. With the Irish Sea to cross, even with her Vampire abilities, she couldn’t have arrived here in Lucan in a matter of minutes.

  “After you disappeared, we moved here.” She punched Jonah in the arm. “Thanks for leaving me, by the way.”

  “I didn’t leave you for long,” Jonah said, scraping his hand through his messy dark hair.

  Before I had a chance to interject, Brooke replied, “Three years might seem a drop in the ocean when you’re immortal, but a gal gets hungry! Thank feck, I learned how to feed before you did one.”

  “Three years?” Jonah and I repeated in unison.

  “Yes, three years. You won’t believe what’s been going on here, the world’s gone mad,” she enthused, as though she had the biggest piece of gossip that ever existed.

  But before Brooke had a chance to tell us anything, heavy footsteps sounded, and all three of us turned in the direction of Ruadhan’s voice, which met me before he did. “Little love.”

  I jumped as burly arms pulled me in from the side. It was then that I realized I hadn’t seen Ruadhan in my peripheral vision. He patted and then rubbed my back in a circular motion before parting from me. The lines around his mouth smoothed out as his smile receded, and his bushy eyebrows dipped.

  I stroked my eyelashes with my fingertips. I couldn’t see anything out of my left eye, and long, lumpy lines ran the length of my cheek. Now I understood why Jonah had tried to reassure me and why Brooke had hung back.

  I kneaded my fingers into my skin and began to tremble. Jonah was quick to tug off his hoodie and wrap it around my shoulders.

  “It’s cold,” he said, using the weather as pretext. He gripped my wrists, guiding my hands through the sleeves in a bid to stop me from clawing at my face any further.