Juliet Immortal (30 page)

Freezing. Heavy. Dying.

And Ben doesn’t know to watch out for Jason, doesn’t know about the monsters.

I should have told him the truth, no matter how crazy it
would have sounded. At least then I … At least then … Maybe he would have …

Dimly, I’m aware of Ben screaming for me to be tough, to fight back. And then the car is running and we’re moving fast. Faster. Faster. The world fades out, then back in again, consciousness slipping through my fingers, life slipping from my—

Something slams into the side of the car and we’re suddenly off the road, spinning in a circle, the smell of wet grass and exhaust filling the car. Ben cries out as we stop turning and begin sliding—down, down, down—careening down a hill so steep I can feel the car wheels rising off the ground, tempted to follow gravity’s urging and go tumbling. Ben screams again. I would too, but there’s nothing left in my mouth. No words, no screams, no breath. Ariel is dying. I’m dying. Ben will be all alone, without anyone to protect him.

The car has barely slid to a stop when faces appear at the window. Two of them—one a pale, evil moon rising in the passenger’s window, the other a sad, miserable mess with part of his head missing. Romeo’s curls are gone on one side, blown away, revealing skin and bone and slick, smooth pink that I don’t want to think about. He’s been shot. By himself or by Jason—I suppose it doesn’t matter which.

What matters is that Romeo is here now, and he’s grabbing Ben’s door, pulling him out of the car.

“No,” I whisper, finding the strength to lift my hand and reach for him, though it does neither of us any good. I see Romeo’s fist draw back and hear the sick thud of bone hitting flesh and know the end is near.

Jason opens the door at my feet and crawls into the backseat, leaning over me, wearing the same evil smile he wore when he was the friar, when he watched me bleed on the floor
of the tomb. I want to claw the smug, foul sneer from his face, want to drive my thumbs into his eyes and steal his victory away. I don’t want him to watch me die, to watch Romeo beat Ben to death, but I don’t have the strength to turn my head away, let alone do any damage. Even when he reaches for the handle of the knife and jerks it from my stomach, triggering a fresh wave of agony that bubbles inside me, I can’t do more than twitch reflexively before lying still once more.

“There, there.” Jason’s hands push my hair from my face, gentle in the way of a spider wrapping a fly in silk. There is no comfort in his hands, only terror, torture. If it weren’t for Ben, I would be grateful for the cold closing in all around me. Better to drift off to the forever sleep than go out screaming for mercy.

“I have a present for you, Juliet,” he says, voice soft, but loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the beating outside. Romeo’s fists continue to fly. I can hear them hitting their target, hear the groans and sharp cries as Ben learns what supernatural strength can do. I feel every sound slam inside me. Ben’s pain is worse than my own. Far worse. I would rather suffer than hear him suffer, this boy I love, this good soul who will never get the chance to be a man. “I think it’s time you experience dark magic firsthand.”

His hands turn to stone around my neck, fingers digging into my skin, making me cry out and my eyes squeeze shut. He can strangle me to death, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of watching the light go out of these eyes, I won’t … won’t … not a second time …

Power squirms inside me. I can feel it flood in through his fingertips, ooze into my veins, race—hot and horrible—into every cell, a ruthless invader that won’t stop until every weak
thing is burned away. Heat scalds my bones, cold fire freezes my core. My back arches and a scream bursts from my lips—a sound so raw it tears my insides as it fights its way out.

I am dying, but I’m also being born, melted and re-formed.

He pulls his hands away and I suck in a breath, gasping, shocked to feel my lungs expand without difficulty, to feel the necessary things inside me shift without pain. My hand comes to my stomach. My T-shirt is still hot and sticky with blood, but the skin beneath is smooth and unmarked. He’s healed me, saved my life.

I bolt upright, eyes finding Jason, who has already made his way out of the car. He holds a hand out to me. I ignore it. His healing isn’t a gift, it’s a bargaining tool, a manipulative measure, some new way to torture me that I don’t understand just yet. But I know better than to think this is over, or to believe for a second that he won’t just as quickly take my life as give it.

I scramble out of the car, darting past Jason and the truck that drove Ben off the road, searching for the only person I want to see. The car has been knocked down into a pasture, but it stopped before reaching the bottom of the hill, where the collected rainwater forms a lake. If it had hit the water, Ben and I could have drowned.

But maybe that would have been better. At the moment, I don’t know. All I know is that when I finally find Ben—a dozen yards away, illuminated by the car’s headlights, his back against a tree where Romeo has propped him up, his body limp and his face a bloody mess—my body fills with an agony worse than any weapon could ever cause.

“Ben!” I run to him, shoving past Romeo, who stands swaying on his feet. I don’t spare him a glance, don’t worry
when I kneel next to Ben, turning my back on him. He won’t stab me again—obviously that wasn’t on his superior’s agenda or I wouldn’t be whole right now. But even if he does, I don’t care.

Let him do his worst. Nothing can be more horrible than hearing Ben’s soft moan as I hold his broken face in my hands, watching his lids flutter as he tries to look at me but fails. His eyes are so swollen it looks like someone has slipped golf balls under his skin. His cheeks, chin, and forehead are split open and bleeding, and he’s lost several of his front teeth. His nose is broken and maybe his right cheekbone. Maybe both cheekbones. Even if he lives, he’ll never be the same. He will always be damaged and scarred and—

Scarred. Some faraway part of my brain senses the smooth skin on my right arm, feels the slight breeze stirring the soft blond hairs that have grown on my neck and face. Jason hasn’t simply healed me, he’s
healed
me, reversed years-old damage, something Ambassador magic has never been able to do.

And if he could do it for me …

Gently, I lean Ben’s head back against the tree and turn. Jason is already there, a few feet behind me, waiting for me to work things through with a smile on his face. Romeo stands woodenly beside him, staring blindly at some spot high in the tree, his lips moving without forming words, as if he’s in a trance. I begin to wonder how much is left of that brain I can see shining in the harsh yellow of the headlights.

“What do you want? I’ll do whatever you want,” I whisper through the tears that stream down my face. “Just … heal him.”

Jason shakes his head, feigning regret. “I wish I could, but
my powers only work on those touched by my magic. Ambassadors or Mercenaries. We’re all from the same source, you know.”

“I know.” I suck in a breath. My nose is running along with my eyes. If it could, I know the rest of me would weep as well. I can see where this is going, see the inevitable conclusion to our talk.

“So …” He lets the word trail off with a shrug. “In order for me to help Ben …”

I don’t say a word. It’s impossible. I’ll never do what he asks. Never.

“Come now, Juliet. Life doesn’t always have to be such a tragedy,” Jason says, laughing softly. “You’ve been granted an amazing opportunity. A second chance at true love that you shouldn’t let go to waste.” He tosses the knife he pulled from my stomach in the air, letting it spin once, twice, before catching the hilt in his hand. “I promise, it’s much more fun to play when you’re on the winning side. Just cut this boy a little here, a little there, enough to prove your lethal intent. Then you’ll take your vows to us, and she …” He turns to look over his shoulder, gesturing vaguely into the darkness before turning back around. “Well, she’s out there. I can feel her.”

I stare into the night, remembering Nurse’s shared memory of waiting in the darkness, watching, hoping. Is she out there hoping now? Why didn’t she show up at the theater and stop this before it started?

“She likes to wait until we’re gone,” Jason says. “But she’ll come take care of this boy. She’ll administer the vows and transform him into a vessel of light.”

I sob, unable to keep the sound from bursting from my lips.
I can see it now, this new life he describes, a second eternity stretching out before me, but this time it will be Ben I fight. Ben on the other side of the divide, bright and beautiful and unreachable. Ben, who will only know that I hurt him, betrayed him, that I didn’t love him the way I swore I did. This monster will never allow me to tell him the truth.

Maybe I won’t even want to. Maybe by the time I see Ben again, however many years from this moment, in whatever corpse I’m inhabiting, I will have become so twisted by the darkness that I won’t remember what it feels like to love. I’ll be like Romeo, wicked and hollow, the love I feel for Ben dead inside me.

Life is precious—
his
life especially—but there are worse things to lose.

I turn back to Ben, brush his hair away from his ruined face, a part of me wishing he was conscious so I could say good-bye, the other part glad that he’s beyond feeling pain. I lean my lips down to his ear, and the Ben smell of him drifts into my nose, making my heart break all over again. “I love you.”

“I assume that means your answer is no.” I turn to see that Jason has moved closer. His smile is lower on his face, his knife higher in the air. “You know what that means.”

I know. It means he’ll kill us both. Slowly. Torturously. See how long we’ll last before we break,
if
we break. If or when. I don’t know which it will be, but I know I’ll hold tight to the love I feel for Ben, to the light in my darkness.

I don’t answer Jason’s question, just stare into his empty eyes, wondering which are more vacant—Romeo’s because he has so little brain, or this monster’s because he has no soul.
None at all, not even the ghost of a memory of what it is like to love, to be mortal and gloriously, horribly vulnerable.

I suppose that’s why he doesn’t expect it.

I don’t expect it either, but when it happens I’m not surprised. Romeo is as wrong as he’s ever been—as he’s
always
been—but I heard the truth in the words he whispered onstage. He truly thought he was helping me by shoving that knife in my gut, just as he thinks he’s helping me when he lifts the gun tucked into the front of his pants and fires it twice.

Once into the center of Ben’s forehead. Once into the center of mine.

T
here is a moment of unbelievable pressure as the bullet pushes through bone, and then I’m floating, falling backward in slow motion, eyes sliding closed. Dimly, I’m aware that I’ve fallen on top of Ben. His knee is pressed into my back, the softness of his belly cradles my head, and I’m glad. It’s good to touch him, to know he’s close, though he lies so terribly still. But even the fear that he’s already dead doesn’t upset me the way it should. The moment is surreal, something happening onstage that I watch from a distance.

There is no pain, only the feeling of drifting inside my body and a strange, determined detachment.

I can imagine what I should be feeling as I listen to Jason
scream at Romeo and then the air goes quiet—quiet like the tomb, quiet like the mist, quiet like the end of the world.

I can remember the panic that should prick at my skin as the headlights illuminating the night fade to black and it begins to rain, cool drops that sting my face and slip between my parted lips. And then the sounds come, a soft sigh in the night, a hushed whisper to
“Come, now,”
and I know I should be afraid. My old body is coming. I can hear her in the distance, feel her on the wind, but I can’t move, can’t run. I should be afraid, but I’m not.

I haven’t betrayed Ben. He hasn’t betrayed me. We haven’t betrayed the promises we made or the things we believe. It is … good. And whatever comes next will come next.

And then I feel her hands on my face, hear her voice calling to me, and fear creeps into my borrowed heart. “Juliet! Juliet, please. Hear me. Open your eyes.”

My lids slide up, obeying her command. I don’t want to, but I can’t seem to help myself, can’t keep from struggling to focus, from pulling Gemma’s—Nurse’s—shadow from the surrounding night. There is no moon; there are no stars, no more headlights. It’s almost impossible to see. If she hadn’t spoken, if I couldn’t smell the hint of her expensive perfume, I wouldn’t know whose fingers feather along my neck.

“I’ve frightened that thing away. It’s not too late,” she whispers, voice bright as she finds my pulse. “You’re still alive and you’re ready. I can take you with me.”

I try to shake my head, to ask her what she means, to tell her I don’t want to go, that I want to stay with Ben until … until …

But I can’t move. I can only blink, disturbed, confused.

“You’ve found it. Your peace.” She sighs. “Now I can offer
you sanctuary and power. You will be one of us, safe in our realms, only coming to earth when you feel moved by the light to fight against them. When you feel ready.”

Her hand runs down my neck, over my shoulder, down to my hand. She takes it in hers and squeezes. “I’m so glad I found you in time.”

In time? She hasn’t found me in time. Ben is dead.
Dead
. Gone forever, and the world is a darker place for it. And what about Ariel? She has a bullet in her brain. No matter how detached I feel, some part of me knows that this body is dying.

“Where …” I swallow, wincing. The pain is beginning to find me, crawling over my flesh, a thousand tiny insect feet bearing misery. “Where …”

“I had to leave the school. I needed someplace safe, so I sent Gemma to Mike’s apartment before the play, instead of after,” she says, not a hint of regret in her voice. “And then they starting talking, and I didn’t want to interrupt them. I could tell they were so close to finding their faith in each other. And I was right!” She actually claps her hands together in excitement. “Gemma and Mike are both burning bright. We can go. Both of us. Back to the light.”