Burden of the Soul

19.

We came to in the grassy field, the stars still scattered throughout the sky, though there was no sign of Diana or Rex.

“Walk,” directed Brik, pushing me forward to the cliff. He assumed I had met with the Masters, that they had been the ones to disclose his secrets.

“What did they tell you, Clara?”

I was silent.

“I’m so sick of this. You have no idea how much each of us has sacrificed for this… for you. Lying and keeping secrets could get any of us killed. We’ve already lost enough of our best.”

I turned to look him in the eye, angry at what he was implying. But I knew it was true. They were gone because of me, but still… were they right to trust him? I walked slowly, trying to stall and give myself enough time to work together a strategy. With all the images of the Guardians and Rex running through my head, one phrase stood out against the rest: “Why be a Master when you can be God?”

There was no way to know who I could trust now, including myself. I wasn’t going to reveal anything to Brik until I had the time to sort through everything I had learned. Albert and Rita’s spirits were floating along with us. Brik’s disdain for me was poignant in the air.

“Start explaining,” he said, jabbing me at the base of my spine.

“It is none of your business, Brik.” My tone was toxic.

“You are my business, Clara. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you put yourself in my care. I’ve been running things while we all waited for you to awaken. And I’m sick of putting up with your oh-so-tortured teenage melodrama.”

From the corner of my eye I saw one of the orbs of light begin to shake and flicker. I had seen it happen before when Dave was watching over me, but I couldn’t tell whom it was or why. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t in any immediate danger, unless Brik had been pushed to the brink of disposing of me.

I looked over his shoulder and watched as the orb began to shake violently with more and more force every second. The white of its center turned a blood red, sparking and thrashing. It crackled like a burning house being consumed by flames. Brik saw it too.

He took a step away from the light and grabbed my wrist. With a piercing thwack the light exploded in front of us and disappeared, leaving an ashen black mark hovering in mid air.

“Oh, god. Clara, we have to get back.” Brik’s voice was desperate.

“What happened to it? What’s going on?”

We both turned quickly and took off, charging back the way we came, while the second glowing orb continued to bob along a few strides ahead of us.

“They found us, our bodies. They destroyed Rita,” he yelled, pumping his legs to cover more distance.

“Who found us?”

“The Fallen. He’s sent Twin Flames. They’re taking them out.”

My jaw dropped, and a chill of terror ran through my spine as the bright orb in front of us flickered once.

“No! Albert, fight!” Brik was yelling behind me and pushing me to go faster. I tried to lunge at the orb, but it was beyond my reach. I tried again, but still it jerked forward and stopped. It started thrashing like the one before it, until the red poured out from its center, consuming the light and crackling through its destruction. And then another piercing thwack and the orb was gone, another blackened crater where it had once been.

“Clara, faster!” Brik was yelling with fierce desperation. He was pulling at my wrist, coaxing me to keep up with him, but then I felt another tug on my other wrist pulling me in the opposite direction. It yanked me back and I fell to the ground, knocking my tailbone.

Brik reeled around and jumped toward me, yelling for me to get up. But the invisible force took me over again, this time pulling me harshly up into the air. I thrashed and dislodged myself from its grip and fell back to the ground. I heard a snap in my ankle and screamed out in pain. An invisible gag silenced me. I felt it pulling at the corners of my mouth but couldn’t see it, then felt my arms pulled around my back and clasped there.

My eyes were wide with fear, trying to scream for Brik to help me, though unable to get the words out beyond the hidden barrier. He was running to me, pumping his arms and yelling. I couldn’t make out what he was saying—my muffled screams cast echoes back into my head, ringing out through my ears and blocking all other sound.

Then I felt a tingling all over, and my eyes grew heavy. I tried to fight them from closing, but eventually the silver light of the starry sky and the image of Brik running faded away and I was cast in a deep shadow. My skin tingled with pins and needles. I pulled air through my nose and got a blast of the mustiness of Belvedere Castle.

I forced my eyes open. They split slightly and I could see the blurred room—two bodies on the floor with their faces turned away and Brik’s motionless body sitting next to me, his head still resting back against the wall and his legs spread out relaxed in front of him.

I tried to scream, but the gag was real. There was a red handkerchief stuffed inside my mouth. I tried to launch it out with my tongue, but a hand clamped over the front of my jaw and stopped me.

“Gotcha!” His voice was right by my ear, and I could feel the scrape of stubble against the side of my neck.

I was shaking and thrashing, trying to free my arms from behind my back, but they had already been secured tightly. My legs were free though, so I started kicking at my side, using my legs to push me away from the gritty voice to my left. I wasn’t able to get far before slamming into Brik’s body and sending him teetering. The strange man to my left pulled me back, and I watched as Brik’s body fell forward and hit the ground. His forehead smacking against the stone floor made a sickening thud that made bile rise in my throat.

“Now that wasn’t very nice, was it?” With his hands on either side of my face he turned me to him. I saw the red stubble gathered around his chin and upper lip. His nose cocked a little to the left, suggesting a badly healed break, and his eyes were a deep shade of gray.

“Hello there, Clara.” I recognized his accent as Irish or something like it. He stank of tobacco, and his breath hammering onto my face had a spoiled tinge to it. He slid a hand back over my mouth, grasping at my chin and jaw tightly enough that it hurt. With his other hand he reached into the back pocket of his dirty jeans and pulled out another handkerchief.

“Now this is just for good measure, darling. We can’t have you waking up the neighbors and whatnot.” He wrapped the second handkerchief around my head, tying it in a rough knot in the back that dug into the base of my skull.

“Now then, just gotta make sure this is nice and tight. Good.” I stopped thrashing for a moment and looked up. He leaned down and pinched the dimple of my chin between his thumb and pointer finger.

“Well don’t you got a bit of fight in ya,” he said, with a slimy smile that exposed his jagged bottom teeth.

“Get a move on, Alister. There’s no time.” My head shot over to the winding stairs at the sound of the second accented voice. The bodies of Rita and Albert were crumpled in unnatural positions at the bottom of the stairs with a pool of blood collecting in the shadows.

“You heard the man, Clara. It’s time we be going then,” said Alister, pulling at my left elbow trying to force me up, but the thrashing started again, and I tried to use my legs to launch myself away from him.

“I don’t have time for this,” he yelled through gritted teeth just inches from my face. With his hand clasped around my elbow, he held me steady while his other hand gripped at the hair above my forehead. With a wild grunt he slammed the back of my head into the wall.

A fierce pain split through my head and blew open my eyes as it shot out the front. I slowly felt the contents of my head liquefy with the pain. My eyeballs stung from behind and fell uncontrollably back as the room in front of me faded to black, his miserable face the last thing imprinted in my mind as he leaned in and said, “Nighty night.”

When I came to, I was lying on the floor and everything ached. There was a pain shooting from the back of my head that seemed to stretch its tentacles right down my neck and through my entire body. My hands were free, but burned at the wrists where they had been tied. With one hand I rubbed the other wrist and realized it was bare. The key was missing. I frantically looked around, dragging my hands across the cold dirt floor, but it was nowhere.

A sharp pain seared through my head, and I reached around with one hand and put pressure at the point of impact. My hair was wet. I used my other hand to push myself up off the dirt floor. Planks of wood formed each wall. Rakes, brooms and other odds and ends were scattered throughout the small room. It looked like the inside of a shed.

A cool breeze hit me from behind, and a sudden chill made me shudder. I was soaking wet. My clothes were drenched and dirty.

I scanned the room for something I could use as a weapon if it came to that. There were voices outside and they seemed to be getting closer. I uncovered crates of old magazines, newspapers and gardening tools. I rummaged through the tools until I found a small shovel that ended in a sharp tip. Hanging on the wall above me was a larger shovel, so I grabbed that as well and backed myself into a corner. I crouched down and huddled behind a pile of stacked sandbags and waited.

“How were we supposed to know she was to get the royal treatment,” I heard Alister say. “It just seems odd to bring her up to the house is all.”

“You heard what he said,” said a female voice. I heard their footsteps coming around the side of the shed. “You can’t go challenging him like that, Alister. You’re going to end up in trouble.”

“A ‘thank you’ would have been nice, is all I’m saying. Or a ‘job well done’ or ‘thanks for risking your life.’ It’s just nice to feel appreciated.”

I heard the click and whine of a door opening and saw early morning light splice down the center of the shed.

“Where did you put her, Alister?”

“Back in that corner like I said.”

“Would you mind explaining, then, why there’s nothing in that corner now?”

I heard a pair of feet approaching and watched as Alister, with his back to me, searched the corner I had woken up in. “She was here, right here.”

I let go of the larger shovel and clung to the smaller. I was going to have to make a run for it if there were two of them. I saw as the second figure, a slight female with dark, wet hair pulled into a bun approached him from behind. That was my moment, so I took off at a sprint through the doorway, slamming the door shut behind me. I pumped my legs as hard as they would go. The blood coursing through me made the back of my head throb with pain. My ankle scorched with electric shocks each time my foot hit the ground, causing me to cry out in pain. My sprint was off balance, though I tried to push through the pain and run for my life.

I heard them yelling behind me as I took off in the early morning light into a bank of trees to the left of the shed. My feet slid a bit against the dew-covered grass, and I guessed it was just before sunrise. How long had I been out?

I reached the trees and kept running, jumping over fallen logs, igniting the pain in my ankle with a fury. I heard them gaining on me, yelling at each other. The small shovel was still in my hand, my fist wrapped around its handle as my arms pumped in front of me.

I could hear his steps right behind, and felt two hands come down on my shoulders and yank me back forcefully. My body slammed against the trunk of a tree and my head snapped back, hitting at the exact spot it had been hit before making the pain fresh and new. My knees buckled at the new wave of pain and I began sliding down to the forest floor, but the two hands caught me at my neck and propped me back up. I opened my eyes, and through my dizzied vision I could make out Alister’s displeased face. His dirty rust-colored hair was wet and spiked at the sides.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He pressed his face in close to mine. Feeling came back to me as my fingers curled tightly around the shovel’s handle. With all the force I could muster, I rammed it into his side. He cried out in pain and surprise as I wiggled out from under his grasp and tried to escape, but he was on me again with one hand pulling me back by the soaked hood of my zip up.

He ripped the shovel from my hand and tossed it out into the shadows, then pressed me against the tree with one hand coiled around my thin neck. “That one’s going to cost you,” he said.

“Alister, calm down.” The dark-haired female was approaching, and I could see her face lit by the morning light. She had dazzling blue eyes and seemed not much older than myself. The run made her cream-colored cheeks a lovely rose color. “Imagine what he would do to you if you killed her now,” she said.

“What a pity,” he said, his hand around my neck tensing, making it difficult to breath. “Give me your belt, Katrina.”

The woman untied the knot of a colorful scarf wrapped around her waist and handed it to him. He whirled me around and pressed my front up against the tree trunk, scraping the side of my face with the motion. He pulled back on both of my arms and pressed my wrists together, once again tying them.

“There, that will make you more cooperative I think,” He said, gripping my arm from behind with one of his hands. “Ladies first.”

He pushed me to follow Katrina as she turned and led the way back through the forest. In the distance I could see a stone cottage with lights on and smoke spiraling up from the chimney. We walked across the damp grass past the shed to the cottage as the sun’s orange light began to fall across the ground.

At the cottage, Katrina opened the door and allowed us to walk through first. Alister’s hand still gripped tightly at my arm, pushing me through the doorway and then down a narrow hall. I could hear the crackling of a fire. Alister pushed me through a doorway into a small room decorated in deep maroons, navy blues and hunter greens. There were large still life and landscape oil paintings on the walls in cluttered formations.

A towering man with salt and peppered hair stood with his back to us, facing the fire, one arm resting on the mantel. In his hand, the thin golden chain from my wrist was wrapped around his fingers while the sparkling key hung, turning slowly, bouncing shards of light onto the wall behind it.

It was Rex.

“Hello, Clara. It’s so good to see you again,” he said, turning to me at a pace similar to that of the key hanging from his hand. He spoke slowly, each word annunciated perfectly with equal attention and revelry given to each letter that seemed to uncoil over his bottom lip.

The light from the crackling fire lit the side of his face. His eyes were dark and smoldering in the waving light. A graying, tightly trimmed beard covered his chin and jaw line, wrapping along the sides of his mouth to his upper lip.

“Alister, is this any way to treat our guest?”

Rex approached slowly, my key hidden in his clasped palm. He wore the same cloak, which lifted slightly in the air as he walked forward.

“She tried to run off, sir,” he said, tightening his grasp on my arm. I winced at the added pain. “It was the only way.”

“And yet I don’t see Katrina taking such unpleasant measures.” He was standing just behind a high backed chair upholstered in a deep red with gold thread twisting in elaborate designs. His hand eerily caressed the top of the chair, his long fingers sliding across the fabric in such a way that made me shiver. “Let her go, Alister.”

Alister didn’t argue with him. He untied me, jostling me back and forth in the process. My arms were free then and I brought them to my front and rubbed my wrists. Rex smiled at me with a devilish grin. A few crooked teeth ruined his smile, which may otherwise have appeared friendly.

“That must feel better.” He took a few steps toward me, his hands held behind his back. “You may leave us, Alister.”

Alister gave a grunt of disapproval but then turned to leave the room.

“Close the door behind you, and do not disturb us.”

The door clicked shut and the two of us stood in silence for a moment. Next to the chair was a small end table holding a plate of steaming food—scrambled eggs and toast with a fruit salad of vibrant colors.

“You must be hungry,” he said, having seen where my eyes traveled. “Please, help yourself. You’ve had a long journey.”

Without moving I looked at him again. He spoke with an accent different from Alister’s, smoother with curved edges around the back of each word. It sounded more like what you would hear from a Shakespearean play.

“Where am I?”

“How rude of me. I apologize. It must all be so disorienting. Welcome to Ireland,” he said, walking back around the front of the chair, positioning himself next to the fireplace. I looked down at my soaked clothes, confused. How much time had passed? I couldn’t bring myself to believe him.

“What, did I swim here?”

He laughed, shifting his weight making his long shadow cast across the floor dance like a serpent. “In a manner of speaking.”

I felt queasy, sickened by the pain that still lingered throughout my body and by the possible fate I would meet standing so close to him.

“Please have a seat,” he said, holding his empty hand up to the decorative chair facing the fire. “Warm yourself. You must be uncomfortable in those wet clothes. I can send Katrina to fetch you something dry if you like.”

“I’m comfortable as I am, thank you.” My voice was flat as I tried to hide the fear that was rolling in waves through me.

“Alister was right. You are a bit stubborn aren’t you? We can fix that.”

He turned to face me directly, and his eyes widened as his gaze fell to my legs. Immediately, a heaviness rose inside me from my ankles to my knees and then on to my hips. My legs grew cold and heavy as if filled with cement. Then my left leg bent at the knee without my intention. It lifted and fell to the ground a foot in front of me. Then the right leg followed.

I willed my legs to stop, but they kept going on their own accord while a wicked grin stretched Rex’s beard, each hair casting jagged shadows across the darkened side of his face.

My top half wobbled as my legs forced my body across the floor and around the chair then turned, facing the fire. The heaviness lifted to my waist as Rex’s eyes followed, and then I was bent, lowering myself to the chair.

The heaviness sank back to my hips, my knees, and then dissipated around my ankles. My eyes were wide as I looked down at my feet and saw them wiggle as I was willing them to. I had control over myself again.

I looked up at him, terrified. “How did you do that?”

“There is so much you can learn, Clara,” he said smiling. “So much Masters reborn into the physical world are capable of. But first, there is so much for you to share.” His right hand opened, and the key dangled there in front of him. He turned, the key still swinging loosely from his hand. His eyes met mine and then swayed to the small table filled with food next to me.

“By all means, my dear. You must be hungry after your trip.” He raised his arm motioning to the table and allowed the key to lay flat in his upturned palm. My eyes stayed locked on his hand. I had so few things to remind me of my mother. The image of the key in his palm brought a sour taste to my mouth as I bit down on the inside of my bottom lip.

“I’m going to want that back,” I said, feeling a pulse of anger.

His hand closed around the key and then disappeared, tucked behind his back. “Oh, Clara. You will find there are things in my possession you want far more than an insignificant trinket.”

“If it’s insignificant, you won’t have any problem returning it.”

“Eat,” he said, his eyes focused on my left hand. I felt the heaviness again seep halfway up my arm from the tips of my fingers, and my hand began to move in jerking motions as I fought it, trying to pull it back into my lap from midair. He leaned forward slightly with his shoulders squared, and my hand lunged forward and clasped a triangular slice of crisp toast and pulled it to my mouth. I clenched down on my jaw as the toast poked through my lips and I felt the heaviness in my arm spread to my shoulder and trickle up my neck, folding around my jaw. His right hand rose with his long, thin fingers slithering in the air and my jaw dropped open allowing the toast to sneak in. My legs kicked with the excess force I was using to try and combat the control he had over me.

My jaw began chewing at the toast, taking bite after bite. Each bite rolled down my tongue into my stomach where it burned. When the last bite rolled down my throat, the heaviness in my jaw drew back and fell down to my shoulder, then back through my arm and evaporated at the tips of my fingers.

I looked down at the floor feeling completely helpless as the tears gathered around the rims of my eyes. My hands were on the chair’s armrests clenching at the fabric and my feet were planted on the floor preparing for the next time he would overcome me. I was bracing myself to fight him off with my mind.

“It’s useless,” he said. “This life has brought many fantastic discoveries, including what I am capable of on my own. What a cruel thing death is to take us away from such discoveries of our power just as we’re awakening to them, don’t you think?”

I refused to look up at him. Maybe if I could avoid his eyes he would not be allowed back into my mind.

“Have you come to a decision?”

“I won’t join you.”

“Yet. You won’t join me yet, but you will. You will come to learn the limitations that are forced on us all through the cycle of birth and death. Then you will realize you knew it all along, and that is why you chose to come. To help me make a heaven on earth that belongs solely to us.”

He crossed in front of the fire to the opposite end of the room where a plush, high-backed chair sat tucked under a large mahogany desk. He pulled it out and turned it to face me, then took a seat.

“There are so many luxuries this world has to offer us.”

One of his legs crossed over the other and his long arms reached out over the armrests, gripping at their edges. The key was hanging off the side of the chair from his wrist tucked into the shadows.

“Choose freedom, Clara,” he said, staring me down with a devilish grin. The fire sizzled as a log cracked and fell in pieces, throwing up orange and red sparks into the air. “Realize that you already have.”

“You’re sentencing people to death,” I said with a snarl.

“I am giving them life.”

The courage was boiling now, jumping up from inside of me as a resolve took over, giving me the urge to fight back. I could feel the other part of myself that had come out in front of the Masters uncurl itself from behind the curtain and stand beside me in my mind, backing me up. The feeling of being alone disappeared.

“You’re trapped here, Rex. You are not free. The power you speak of, the power you have discovered and manipulated for your own gain, is limited. You’re restricted to this place. This is your prison,” I said, emphasizing each word. “And you know it.” I watched as his knuckles whitened at the edge of the armrests and shadows in his cheeks deepened as his jaw clenched. “That is not life. That is death.”

A twitch at his nostril pulled at the thin, wax paper skin of his cheek, and his eyes burned into mine with pure hate. But I didn’t back down.

“You can kill me, Rex. But it won’t stop the Guardians from fighting. It won’t stop your soul from regretting what you’ve done.”

At that he shot up from the chair, kicking it back with the force of his movement. He took a few strides toward me and stopped frozen at the center of the room. The rage in his face loosened, giving way to the smile that crept up the corners of his mouth.

“Would Devin agree with your choice, I wonder,” he said.

I felt my stomach flip, and I fought back the urge to either attack him or throw up. I tried to stand up, but his eyes shot to my waist and the heaviness came quickly, cutting through my midsection and bending me again back into the chair.

I said nothing, resigned to simply taking the seat and keeping my mouth shut.

“So you are familiar with Devin… fantastic,” he said, suddenly excited by this prospect. I watched as he shifted his unspoken strategy. I heard the door click open behind me, but kept my eyes on him as he turned with a smile to whoever had just walked in. He nodded once and then motioned with his arm to the table next to my chair.

“You can set it there,” he said, his eyes still on the new body in the room.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the plate of food being pushed to the far side of the table and a tray complete with a teapot and two cups placed down on the tabletop. I turned and looked up to see Katrina’s face bright from the orange glow of the fire, her eyes turned down as she nodded to Rex.

Rex’s eyes turned to me with a smile. “Isn’t a long life reconnected with your other half something you want, Clara?”

His eyes traveled back to Katrina and I followed. Her expression had changed from soft to twisted. Her mouth was open as she tried to argue his point, looking at me with anger.

“Sir…,” she began, but he cut her off with his hand held up to her, his eyes back at me.

“Clara, I can give you that—an eternity here with him. With all the joys and luxuries this life has to offer. You two can be with one another.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Katrina shaking with rage, her hands coiled into fists at her side as she stood over me.

I thought of Devin and his deep blue eyes that seemed to pull me in. The shape of his arms. Even at the thought of them, I felt my fingers tingle with the desire to travel each curl and turn over the expanse of his skin. I thought of the way it felt to have his hands on my arms and the overwhelming desire to fall into his embrace, pulled by an invisible force to be connected with him.

There was no doubt I wanted Devin. But I also wanted Dave. I wanted my family back. I wanted to have it all, and I felt as if accepting his offer of being with Devin now would forfeit the possibility of having anything else. Although I had no guarantee I ever would. I went back and forth in my mind, battling with the desire to be with Devin and the desire to find a way to bring back what was taken from me—to restore the life I had before I had been plopped down in the middle of this war.

I decided the cost was too high. I would have to find a way to bring back my loved ones. “Thank you for your offer, Rex, but I think Devin and I will figure out a way to see each other again on our own.”

I felt her hand slap on my shoulder and then felt as her fingernails buried into my skin making my entire arm sting with the pain. She pulled at me, turning me to her and screamed in my face.

“If you go anywhere near him I’ll kill you.”

Rex took a step forward with his hand raised, and I watched as she buckled at the waist and her hand unclenched from my shoulder. In an instant she flew against the far wall and crumpled to the floor below frozen like a stone.

“Katrina, that is no way to treat our guest,” he said, taking another step to me and leaning down to look me square in the eye. I pushed myself back against the chair, trying to fit as much space as possible between the two of us.

“So you have met Devin,” he said with his thin lips twisting around each word. He leaned in closer until our noses were practically touching, and I could smell his stale breath as it spilled out onto my face. “Well I’m afraid that you’ve given me no other option, Clara. I can’t have you ruining everything I’ve built here. As I mentioned before if you are not with me, you are useless to me, and we can’t have that.”

I trembled at the severity in his voice and the weight that seemed to fill the room. I heard Katrina stand up somewhere behind me, now released from his control.

I was shaking with fear and could barely push the words out of my mouth, terrified, of the answer that could follow the question.

“Are you going to kill me?” I felt my lip quivering and my breath quicken as sweat collected in my palms. I searched his eyes and saw the specs of black that peppered his gray irises and the clouds of smoky white that sat above his pupils.

My heart was pounding inside my chest as I watched his head tilt slightly this way and then back as he searched my eyes, smiling at the fear he saw there, lapping it up like a kitten at a bowl of milk. He splayed his arms across me, resting his hands on the armrests of my chair to support his weight hovering over my face.

“No, Clara. I’m not going to kill you.” His voice was just above a whisper and playful in a sinister and chilling way. Then he stopped, his face directly in front of mine, and I felt the heat coming off him as I sat trapped in the cage created by his body and the chair.

“Devin’s going to do it.”