Chapter Forty
A bell signaled the end of class, and doors began to open, and Nicholas turned in place, trying to make heads or tails of the souls around him. He could see them all, some brighter and more beautiful than others. Some black as hell. But that was adolescence for you.
He knew what to look for, based on what Adelaide had told him about her visions. A bright, beautiful soul in vast amounts of pain had a certain appearance to it. It was like a candle in a dark room. It was the only light in anything around it, but with the windows and doors shut, it was suffocating and small. Whoever and wherever “Rachel” was, this is what she would look like. She would be that brilliant flame in an unseen draft, struggling desperately to hold on.
He detected her presence a split second after Adelaide apparently did, because he felt Addie break away from him, lunging into an all-out run. He turned in place as time seemed to slow around him, and the young woman stepped out of the ladies restroom down the hall. On either side, the men around him began to turn as well, their bodies moving in an orchestra of gradual awareness.
Rachel’s stride was steady and purposeful, and down at her side, in a practiced and easy grip, was the infamous gun. She moved into the hall and turned, and Nicholas heard her boots stamp out a death knoll on the school tiles. It was strange how time seemed to be changing around him, sound was hollowing out, movement was braking, traveling at half the speed it was meant to. He seemed to be capable of advancing faster than the others.
But Adelaide was faster still. How it was possible, he wasn’t certain. But he had a feeling. He had a feeling it was that she was changing. Turning. Becoming. And the queen was always more powerful than the king.
It was a horrific realization, because it meant she was faster than him – and Adelaide Lane was an impulsively good soul, and that soul drove her forward now, straight for the girl she had come here to help.
A thousand lifetimes of nightmares passed before the Nightmare King’s eyes as Rachel Reyes raised the gun from her side and took careful, precise aim. Addie’s form moved too fast; he couldn’t reach her. He knew what was about to happen, could see the hellish pattern, but for all of his otherworldly power, he was helpless to stop it.
The bullet was faster than everything else. They always were, and now was no exception. Rachel’s scream of understanding filled the hallway, lasting far longer than the bullet’s flight. Nicholas felt the impact in Adelaide’s chest as if it had hit him instead. It dug deep, nicked his heart, and lodged somewhere in the spine behind it.
*****
All of the spells they’d cast, all of the planning they’d managed in the span of time between her last vision and now, all of the powerful people accompanying her – in the end, they didn’t matter. In the end, it was Adelaide who was able to do something. In the end, she was the only one who could stop the disaster her premonitions had warned her about.
She felt each of her footfalls like the chiming of a bell tower. Pound, pound, and closer she came. Again, she called Rachel’s name. The girl’s eyes moved, and the bullet left the barrel.
Confusion passed between them, between the two girls who had at separate points in time each been pushed to a breaking point. Understanding. Empathy. A shared pain.
But the slug of metal was released, the beast was un-caged, and the rest of the world was frozen. And suddenly, there was nothing else Adelaide could do but move.
So she moved in front of the bullet.
Rachel Reyes – now Addie knew her name, knew her soul – went very still. She went still but for the shape she made with her mouth and the sound that escaped her lungs and the horror that flashed before her eyes. “Nooo!” she screamed. An echo that reached into Adelaide’s soul.
The word, like the rest of the world, was sucked into that slow-motion grind that displayed the scene with grizzly accuracy. But Addie understood because she felt it deep inside. That bullet hadn’t been meant for her. It had not been meant for a fellow sufferer.
That hot, fast metal had been meant for one who sliced souls with words and fists and secret glances. It had been meant for someone else. Not Adelaide.
Even so, Addie felt the bullet impact with slow motion, too. She was punched in the chest. It stole her breath, and all of it happened in a dream. She felt the air move past her and closed her eyes. She was flying, ever so slowly, floating in the mass of terrified students that had all gone quiet. Everything had gone so quiet.
And in that moment, when the slightest motion edicted the worst outcome, the biggest regret in the universe, everything became crystal clear.
Life was pain. It was pleasure. But it never had and never would make sense. It was a never-ending battle that had no purpose. It was us and them and you and me and we and they and there was no rhyme or reason, no end-all, no goal, no transcendence.
Except this. This moment here. When everything slowed down and time stopped and took a bow and the veil was pulled back at last. That moment – when going to sleep meant waking up. At last.
Colors moved before her mind, streams of rainbow hues. There was no discomfort. There was relief, instead. And somewhere beyond her new sphere of comprehension, chaos reigned. But she was no longer a part of any of it.
Chapter Forty-One
She fell. It took forever.
She was an angel losing its wings, a bird callously shot from the sky. And as desperately long as it took for her to fall, it took twice as long for him to get to her, to slide into kneeling position beside her descending body, and catch it in his arms.
Everything changed. Then and there, everything was different. One moment, he had owned everything. A kingdom. A queen.
Now there was nothing in the world that belonged to anyone. He would make sure of it.
“Move away, Nicholas.” Someone was at his side, their hand on his shoulder.
The rest of the world was still out of focus, but time slipped back into its normal pattern and the wheels of life’s clockwork motion returned to their breakneck pace. Typical of time to speed up just when you needed it to stop completely.
There was acid in his veins. An explosive sensation in his mind.
Adelaide’s eyes caught his, and her lips parted. But no sound came out. Or he couldn’t hear it over the waterfall of blood in his eardrums.
And then she closed her eyes. Her aura began to fade. It was like watching a bonfire without oxygen. Nicholas’s grip on her body tightened. He felt his insides go completely and horribly numb. At the same time, by way of a terrible dichotomy, his outsides began to heat up with uncontrollable pain. His Nightmare raised its head. If she died…
Then everyone would die.
Every. Single. One of them.
“Nicholas!” the voice sounded again, and this time the hand on his shoulder squeezed, exhibiting unnatural strength. When his collar bone made an uncomfortable sound, he finally but distractedly looked up. It took a moment for his vision to focus on the face beside him through the blurriness of agony.
“You have to move right now,” the woman said firmly. He’d never seen her before. But she peered deep and hard into his eyes, and her voice was very, very clear. “Get up and let me help her.”
His vision was going red; the woman’s outline was not only focused now, but becoming stark in contrast – a hunter’s vision. It was possible that because of this, he wasn’t seeing her quite right… because she appeared to have purple eyes. Violet, like the flower, but a little lighter. Lavender, he thought vaguely.
He wasn’t thinking quite right either. It was as if his mind were trying to protect him from something. Something worse than anything else.
He turned away from the stranger with lavender eyes and looked back down at the woman in his arms. Open your eyes, he thought. Look at me with your amber magic.
“Sorry Nick,” said the woman beside him, her tone hard now. “But we can’t wait any longer. Boys, I need you to help me out here.”
Someone grabbed Nicholas by the arms. Several pairs of hands were on him, strong and tight. They lifted him into a standing position. But he didn’t lose his grip on Adelaide until someone literally tore her from his arms.
“Nicholas, look at me.”
He looked up, meeting someone else’s gaze. He recognized this one. “Andros,” he whispered.
Andros nodded, taking Nick’s head in his large hands to maintain eye contact. “Nick, Adelaide is not yet dead. Understand? She’s still alive, but barely. Time is short. Evangeline is a healer. She is going to help her.”
Andros stepped to the side so Nicholas could see what he was talking about.
At once, the rest of the world seemed to snap back into conscious focus like a rubber band that had been stretched nearly to the breaking point – but not quite. The hall was crowded, but there was no movement or sound from students or teachers because every single human being in the school had been enveloped in some kind of energy field. They were frozen immobile, some of them having been caught in running positions, others trapped on the floor, where they had clearly dived for cover. But all of them were wrapped in blue-white light, and fixed, motionless and stationary.
He was familiar with that particular spell and knew they neither saw nor heard what was happening around them. Once the spell was ended, they would simply move again as if no time had passed.
Roman, Kristopher, Thanatos, Alberich, Siobhan and Poppy stood on either side of Nicholas. Alberich’s eyes were glowing, as were Siobhan’s and Roman’s. They were obviously the powerful triad it took to cast the spell that held the entire school in stasis.
But it was Nicholas who had their attention. They watched him steadfastly, glowing eyes or not, their expressions stern, their faces serious. They were far more concerned about him than the students and teachers. Why?
Andros dropped his hands to his king’s very broad shoulders, and then turned back to face him. He glanced at something on either side of Nicholas, then leaned in and cleared his throat, “You’ve changed… your majesty.” He leaned back and glanced down at Nick’s hands.
Nicholas frowned. He raised his hands in front of his face. His skin was pitch black.
That must mean…. Nick glanced over his right shoulder. Massive bat-like wings had sprouted from his back and spread out behind him. He swore internally. He hadn’t – there had been no…. He turned back around, resigned. He’d never noticed that he’d made the transformation.
But now that he was thinking about it, he did notice there were fangs in his mouth – and he probably had horns to boot.
“Can you reign it in before the stasis spell ends?” Andros asked.
Nicholas looked past him. A few feet away, the woman who had touched his shoulder was knelt beside Adelaide’s still form. Her aura was bright but impossible to read. Her soul was powerful and old, but… its colors and patterns were chaotic, as if they were trying to hide something. Even that deep down. Even from him. He did get her name, though. At least, it was the name she allowed people to know: Evangeline.
That was what Andros had called her too.
Across from Evangeline was another person Nicholas had never met, but his aura spelled magic user plain as day. Nick dug deep – because that was what he did. The man’s name was Rodney Stokes. He was Adelaide’s butler and bodyguard. He was a seer. He had drawn Evangeline there to help Adelaide. To heal her.
She’s a healer, he realized. And then he realized that, too, was something Andros had told him. Nothing had been registering before, but now it was. Now it was all that was registering – the fact that Evangeline was a healer. That explained at least part of her aura. There was more, but that was all that mattered right now.
“Nick,” said Andros, drawing his attention back to his preceptor. Andros glanced pointedly to Nick’s wings.
“Oh,” said Nick softly. His voice was gravelly, changed as it was by his monstrous transformation. But his attention was again diverted before he could tend to his form. He looked back down at Adelaide. The light had now cocooned her completely. There was a flash that temporarily blinded him. He raised his hand to protect his eyes, as did everyone around him.
When he lowered it again, his gaze was immediately back on Addie. She didn’t move. He watched her chest. He held his breath as if in empathy. There was no rise and fall.
There was no life.
And then, quite suddenly, there was.