ONE
I WAS WEIGHTLESS IN THE WATER. There was nothing to be done now but wait for the tide to take me to shore.
Nothing happened.
Perhaps I had already washed up.
Perhaps I hadn’t survived the journey to the third.
Perhaps I was dead.
As quickly as my thoughts turned over, so too did the realization that the word I had formed in my mind, and I knew then that I was still alive. In the nowhere, that empty space where I was trapped between life and death not long ago, I’d had to fight to comprehend the “I” that referred to my existence.
But I still knew my name.
Lailah.
I knew his name, too.
Jonah.
I struggled to see, but there was nothing to be seen.
Malachi had said that the third dimension existed in a state of cold, dark matter, which was nothing more than a void, just another version of nothingness.… But then, the Purebloods existed here as did their scavengers, so nothing had to be some thing, some place, surely?
And then I hit the rocks.
* * *
DISORIENTED, I was slow to react to the chill creeping up my neck. The ground was black ice, and I lay facedown, my cheek pressed against it. As I pushed myself up, my skin ripped, like Velcro being peeled apart. I flinched, but it was at the thought of it, not the sensation. Pain was a feeling I hadn’t felt in so long it was almost forgotten.
It belonged to a girl who hadn’t known her real name.
A girl who both sought out and hid from change.
A girl I’d said good-bye to.
Now, with my Angel and Vampire lineage joined in the perfect balance of light and dark, my gray being made me superior to anyone and anything to walk any of the worlds. No amount of darkness would be able to blind me from the truth of what was here.
And with that thought, the dark veil that shrouded my surroundings began to lift.
I bent my knees and stood, brushing an object as I did.
Caught off guard, I jolted backward on my unsteady feet at the sight of a Pureblood Vampire. He loomed above me, his arm stretched out, with his razor talons pointed dangerously above curled claws. I raised my hand defensively, but a second later I realized he wasn’t moving.
The Vampire was a statue, but he was no monument—he was a real demon.
At least he had been, once.
Present in body but not in mind, the Pureblood was frozen from the inside out—he had perished in this place.
I stepped around him, quick to continue on. Beneath my feet, the black ice shimmered like a dusting of stars in a night’s sky. All around, there was nothing more than the same, just a landscape of freezing, dead rock. But as I followed a line of cracks and splinters running into the distance, out of the ground a tower grew, giant and magnificent in its perfectly cylindrical design. The same speckles twinkled along the tower’s exterior, twisting all the way up the building’s curves. There were no windows or doors, no joins or seams, no evidence that it had been constructed piece by piece. Instead, it appeared to be formed from only one material, as though it had once been a lump of clay molded into this.
Whatever this was.
A massive cloud sat static, covering the peak of the tower, and elongated raindrops fell from it like stringy tar. Each drop was collected in a moat that circled the base of the astounding structure. In the river, the liquid churned clockwise at a sluggish speed. Two shoots branched out from the moat, allowing the river to flow farther, but from here, I couldn’t see where they went. Everything beyond the tower remained shrouded in shadow.
I shivered at the bitter cold running the length of my fingers, but my attention quickly refocused. High above me, the sound of rifts opening rumbled through the atmosphere, and in this former vacuum where sound could not exist, now it demanded to be heard.
I tried to make sense of it all.
Malachi, an old and wise fallen Angel, once known in Styclar-Plena as the Ethiccart, had told me to “bring the Arch Angels and the worlds they exist in to an end,” implying that the Purebloods had once been Arch Angels. That they were the ones who had fallen through to the third dimension and then emerged as Pureblood Vampires; that it was not the fallen Angel Descendants, as Gabriel had once believed, who became Purebloods.
And Malachi had been right.
When I ended the Pureblood Emery, I was able to catch a glimpse of the form he once took—that of an Arch Angel—thus confirming what Malachi had said. I believed Malachi was also correct about the third dimension. Cold, dark matter might well be the makeup of this world, but whenever and however it had happened, a being created organically from the light of the crystal in Styclar-Plena—an Arch Angel—had ended up here and become the first Pureblood: Zherneboh.
After the Arch Angel arrived, this place that had once been a void wasn’t one anymore.
As the rifts continued to form, the ground beneath my feet vibrated and then cracked. From over my shoulder, a rattle grew into a roar. Overhead, a round object flew out of the nothingness, tumbling over three times until finally it stopped midflight high above me. The creature’s bulging throat weighed down its head, causing it to use care as it uncurled each bony limb. It rocked backward as though it were gaining momentum to catapult forward, but then stopped. The creature could smell me. It angled its face and then turned in my direction.
I would have met its eyes, if it had any.
A scavenger.
I had seen one before, and I knew the contents of what it was carrying—the dark energy released in death from a human in the second dimension. But for what purpose Zherneboh wanted it brought here to the third, I didn’t know. I tried to focus on the space from which I’d heard the rumble of a rift opening, from where the scavenger had emerged, but I couldn’t discern one in the darkness.
My instinct was to remain deathly still, but I had evolved beyond simple instinct.
I was no longer afraid.
I had given my life in exchange for Jonah’s, balancing the universe’s scales and equalizing out the equation. I hadn’t come here expecting to be able to escape.
And with that thought in mind, as the scavenger plummeted and scuttled across the barren land heading for the tower, I followed. I looked to the moat, willing myself beside it, and with ease I traveled there by thought. I was perched next to its banks when, like a ball shooting out of a cannon, another scavenger whipped past my shoulder. It was moving so fast I expected it to collide with the tower, but an invisible force caught it midflight above the moat. The scavenger stopped and, curled tightly, began to ascend. As far as I knew, scavengers could not fly, but something was causing the creature to levitate.
As I searched for an answer, I realized that with every passing second that I was here—that I was accepting that here was in fact a place—the clearer my surroundings were becoming. Much like a photograph being developed in a darkroom, the image at the center was being exposed, allowing me to process the picture.
There wasn’t just one lone scavenger being dragged up toward the thick cloud at the top of the tower, there were many. So many that I lost sight of the one I had been observing. The creatures were like magnets, each one being pulled in and up, narrowly missing the others that were dropping out of the cloud.
Next to me, a scavenger smashed into the freezing rock, causing a huge crater in the ground. It clawed its way back up to the surface, finally stretching out on all fours. This creature’s throat was not hanging heavy, and it darted with superspeed across the land, sniffing the air in search of another rift.
I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Why were the scavengers levitating up toward the cloud? And why was rain falling into a contained river?
It struck me then. I was thinking about this all wrong.
This wasn’t Earth—this was the third dimension.
That was no ordinary cloud, rain, or river.
The scavengers collected the dark energy released in death from a human, and that dark matter left the human form in a plume of smoke. The scavenger’s throat was no longer bulging because it was now empty; it had just deposited that very smoke into the cloud.
And now that gas cloud was releasing tarlike raindrops into the moat. Why? My train of thought was interrupted as my skin rippled with a sharp, scratching sensation. My hands were beginning to freeze from the cold. The cold … the cold … this world existed in a state of cold, dark matter.…
Just like my hands, the smoke was cooling in the freezing climate. Only it was a gas, and so it was turning into liquid form—into the tarlike rain. And the rain was pooling into the moat, running into the river, but where did the tributaries go? What purpose did they serve?
Distracted once again by the bitter sting on my skin, I tried in vain to shift my weight. My hands were weighed down at my sides, and I had to concentrate to bring them to my face. I flexed my fingers, and one by one, they broke. Wanting to devour me whole, the frost was not satisfied with just a bite and quickly spread through my veins. I had to think quicker. Gabriel had always been able to control his temperature, and now I knew that the Angels commanded their gifts simply by using the power of thought. And so I closed my eyes and imagined the ancient fireplace in the derelict house in Creigiau. I recalled the stifling heat as the logs burned next to me, scorching my skin. I willed the warmth to move out from my chest and down my body, until my hands grew hotter and my palms sticky.
My bones healed, and I was able to move my limbs once more.
Now I had to make good on a promise. I’d made a deal with the universe to turn back the clock, to exchange my existence for Jonah’s, and it was time to pay up. But if I was doomed to die here, then I would take this world and the Purebloods that inhabited it with me.
Speak of the Devil, and he shall appear.
“Zherneboh,” I called.
On the ground, the scavengers stopped in their tracks. Every last one of them cricked their necks toward the sound of my voice.
But Zherneboh did not come.
I spoke his name again.
Still, he did not emerge.
I considered the moat of dark matter. It fueled the Purebloods and their Second Generation Vampires. It even fueled me. This might be the third dimension, but on Earth, fuel was flammable, so maybe, just maybe …
Rubbing my hands together, I created some friction, generating the smallest amount of heat. The scavengers remained still, and as I regarded the hundreds of them before me, through the crowd one moved forward. Uncurling its spine, it stood upright, and though its shape was deformed, oddly, it resembled a person.
The scavenger had no eyes, but I was sure that it could see me. Maybe it was going to try to stop me? And then a strange thing happened. The creature tilted its head and, as though it were willing me on, nodded. I’d assumed that the scavengers had somehow been created here in the third, that they belonged to the darkness and knew nothing else. If they had been born here, then this was their home. Their task of moving the souls of mortals here would be their purpose. So why was this scavenger asking for death? Unlike me, he had a choice, and he was choosing to die.
Over the lone scavenger’s shoulder, in the distance, the frantic flap of a raven’s wings came into view. The scavengers dispersed, but the one in front of me stood tall and absolute. It yawned, dropping its jaw low and allowing the skin that covered its orifices to tear. Fleshy, slimy tentacles spat from the hole, but this time the scavenger was not trying to suck up dark energy, it was trying to speak.
I stepped forward. Reaching up, I put my hand behind the scavenger’s head and brought its face down toward my ear just as the raven swooped in a vengeful descent. The moment my skin met the scavenger’s, the raven stopped. I hadn’t intended to, but my will to hear the scavenger’s message had been strong enough to distort time. The scavenger’s slimy hand slid over the top of mine, and now its voice was crystal clear as it simply said, “Please.”
The scavenger’s appearance may have been one born of children’s nightmares, but its sweet plea was entirely Angelic. I remembered something else Malachi had said to me then: “Things are seldom ever what they seem.”
My eyes shone, and I was able to see through the scavenger’s translucent skin, beyond the darkness that had consumed him, to the face of a young and beautiful being.
I knew then what the scavenger was. Sadly for him—for all of them—who they had once been was surely gone, lost forever.
I considered his request.
The scavengers did not take human life as the Purebloods did, they merely mopped up the remains, and the fact that this one was asking for death told me that this existence had not been its choice.
I would honor his now.
So to the fallen Angel Descendant, I replied in a whisper, “Be free.”
Copyright © 2017 by Nikki Kelly
