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And bless the body that opens the gate
We bind what wanders with this blood
As it was, and as it will be
Allow the boundary to be undone
In blood and in this vow
In this world, so below as above
May the soul be as below, so above.”
A knife appears in my hands and without control, my left hand slices the knife across my right palm. I press it to my chest, the dark blood in my veins draping over the relic.
Thick, dark mist begins to coagulate and the walls press closer. My heart is at war, lungs seizing, reigning up and blocking any sound from emitting my throat.
Soon my body is cradled in the dark mist, but it doesn’t consume me. It pushes me upwards and into a thick wall—a thick wall of glass.
Surprise jolts me and I open my eyes wide, wildly darting my gaze at the sight before me.
It’s me on the other side, floating in water with an army of demon-like figures behind, all linked like a chain. My double bangs on the glass. We’re startled to see ourselves stranded in such a position. One body within a chamber. A soul on the outside.
“Help!” I scream from inside, kicking at the impenetrable wall of glass. From below, the chamber seems to be gliding toward a surface.
The soul—or what I believe it to be—mimics my action, both of us trying to escape our serous prisons. On the outside my soul is joined by hundreds of bodies, long hair flowing behind them, all shoving into the chamber. Like an angry wave pulled by the threads of the moon, they beat into the glass, shattering it like a mirror dropped suddenly on the floor. A stinging sensation zaps through me as my soul is sucked into my chest, and the amulet glows bright red.
The demons extend their hands, pulling me out and pushing my body upward and toward the surface, toward a dapple of moonlight and twinkling stars.
Stars.
There are stars in the sky when I surface through dark waters.
When I take my first breath, all memories come clashing in like a bull. It takes all my effort to keep my neck above water as the sensation the demons had given me is now gone. And so were they.
The heavy relic still hangs around my neck. And with the purpose of newfound revenge, each stroke of my hand against the waters helps me churn the simple plan I have to finally take down Kieran Lazarus.
FIFTY-TWO
When all hope fails, death follows.
It’s what Kieran would have likely been thinking when his ritual binding me as the gatekeeper to the Limina, did not go to plan. If he could just keep me right between life and death, he would have just the amount of power needed to go back and forth. It makes sense he’d hidden the relic with me, no one would think to look there.
But guilt has a way of seeping in. He’d given me a key but expected me to rescue myself. Little had he known that Christian had shed light on the entire operation, and that our evidence would bury him for years to come.
What hadn’t made sense was how my soul had been trapped when my physical body had been forced to reside in my own blood for who knows how long.
And Christian. Oh god, where’s Christian?
The night does nothing for the trepidation I feel in my chest; the humming beats are like a war cry as I drag my tired body across the forest and to the house. It’s dark because Kieran Lazarus has killed everyone he knows to feed into his experiments. What he truly does with these experiments is unclear. All I know is since the night I’d been able to contact spirits at Cassandra’s society party, the group has used my skills on many things from spiting lovers to figuring out what to invest in.
There is no precise origin of the skill to travel through these planes, all I know it’s been a curse. I push through the back door; the chill of the house greets me. Fists clenched, I stride right into the East Wing, empowered with all of the knowledge I had lost traversing between here and the Limina. All that is revealed behind the scenes.
I thought Kieran and I could have been friends…I don’t know what I thought when I pursued him many years ago and all of the in-betweens. All I’ve seen and experienced has been nothing short of sorrow and ache. I grab hold of a heavy candelabra, knowing I’m about to meet his lackey when I enter the house’s secret entrance that leads to the lab cove.
Cassandra’s shocked face greets me as she dusts off the same dress she had been wearing in the Limina. Was this just a game to them? Did they just get back?
The trapped souls, they’re still in the ballroom.
