Prophecy Girl (Angel Academy) (27 page)

It burned through the air in searing waves. The kind of Arctic wind that strips the skin right off your face. Jack must have had the same idea as I did—to help Luc—because he’d scooped his sword off the ground and readied it for a strike. He was in motion when she grabbed him.

“No!” My hands flew out in a defensive splay and I screamed, “
Redivivus!
”

Instantly, the flow reversed itself, Jack’s life force funneling back into him. I held the channel as Lisa’s face twisted with fury.

“
Silencio!
” she screamed, at the same time I yelled, “
Desisté
.”

I felt her silencing command hit me and dissipate like steam. It was much the same effect as when Channelers tried to heal themselves—which is to say, useless. My freezing spell vanished in a similar puff and I realized we couldn’t curse our own souls any better than we could heal them.

Lisa must have understood about the same time because, quick as a bunny, she flattened her hands back on Jack. “
Doloré
,” she said.

“
Salvé pacem
, you evil cow!” I responded, before the pain curse could rip into him. Her upper lip curled into a snarl.

“
Maledictus!
” she cursed him. “
Tenebrae!
”

“
Immunis!
” I deflected. “
Concordia!
”

It was pathetic. We couldn’t fire on each other, so in the art of war, Jack became our canvas. She threw weirder and weirder spells at him, and I kept returning to the basics—curing, calming, deflecting. Thank the gods of irony Lisa made me pay attention to that lecture in Hansen’s class last year.

I was vaguely aware of Luc and Alec moving like ghosts in my periphery. Every so often, they would slow and I’d think it was over, then they’d be off in another blur of dark hair and expensive clothing.

“Stop it!” Lisa finally ordered me. She sounded furious. “This is ridiculous. You know he has to die. It’s
prophesied
, for heaven’s sake!”

“Prophecies were made to be broken.”

“That’s
rules
, moron!
Rules
are made to be broken.
Prophecy
is law!”

I shrugged. My relationship with the law was patchy, at best.

It was probably a good thing we’d stopped, because Jack looked like he was about to keel over. Though none of the spells took hold, each carried its own brand of Crossworld poison. It billowed into him like black ink through water.

“Dang it, Amelie. I don’t like killing innocents any more than you would, but if it’s a choice between a few petitioners and the end of our species, then I’m willing to sacrifice.”

“Yeah,
other
people. What kind of lame-ass sacrifice is that?”

“Oh, grow up. It’s us or the Inferni. Either he dies now, or we all die slowly. So go away, and let me kill him!”

“Never!”

Lisa narrowed her eyes to slits. “You can’t beat me. I am you!”

“And I am you,” I retorted. “Which puts me in the perfect position to make your life a living hell.”

I was spared elaborating on the nature of that hell by a gut-wrenching crunch, followed by a shriek of agony. All three of us turned to see Alec, huddled on the floor with his arm at an odd angle, a metal crossbow bolt lodged in his thigh.

Lisa’s hands flew to her mouth, silver sparks at her fingertips. “Alec!”

Sick as it was, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Over the past week, I’d seen Jack beaten to a pulp more times than I cared to count, and it never got any easier. Maybe I
did
want to rip out her eyeballs at the moment, but the kind of pain that came with seeing your Watcher get hurt wasn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy.

Luc’s face was bruised and bloodied as he turned, the crossbow leveled at Lisa’s heart.

“Luc! Stop!” Jack yelled.

But Luc didn’t stop. He was vengeance personified. Like every nightmare I’d ever had come to life. His eyes seemed to burn with hellfire and his face had morphed into something inhumanly, brilliantly monstrous. Make no mistake, it was still Luc—haughty and beautiful—but it was a version of Luc that didn’t belong on this plane.

It was demon.

I wish I knew what happened next, but the truth is, I don’t. My eyes fell shut to the chink of the crossbow launching. A blink, that’s all it was. In that instant, a soft swish of air brushed my skin like the whisper of dragonfly wings, and a rustle of fabric sounded. When I opened my eyes, it was over.

Jack stood between Lisa and Luc, clutching her small body to his torso like a baby kangaroo. Her hands were flat against his chest, and a red stain had begun to spread along his spine where the crossbow bolt protruded. But the bleeding didn’t come in fierce pulses as it had last night. It barely trickled at all.

The first thing to hit was relief. If he wasn’t bleeding, then it couldn’t be that bad, right? I would heal him, just like before. We’d be together.

That’s when I saw his eyes.

Empty.

Nothing but frozen lakes of ice, all the way to the pupil.

Jack hit the ground with an awful thud, his skin dull and papery. For a long time, nobody moved. No screams, no shouts of triumph. Just silence. I thought of the times I’d watched him sleep, his body limp and warm, his breath so sweet on my face as I matched my exhale to his. He looked as if he could be sleeping now. Except he wasn’t.

I couldn’t remember anything; not where I was or why I’d come here. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at him.

His body was sprawled in a sort of half-collapsed languor that I didn’t think a living person could manage. My brain couldn’t process it. It wasn’t Jack. It couldn’t be.

Chancellor Thibault scrambled to sitting and re-sheathed his cane with a soft
shink
. Then came the maniacal laughter.

“At last! Gabriel’s blood is dead!” His joyful burbles filled the room, shallow and shrill.

Luc’s crossbow clattered to the ground and he whirled, puking blood onto the floor behind him. My body ached, my limbs like lead pipes. I expected Lisa would celebrate, too. This was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? No Peace Tenets. No Jack. Her bondmate safe. She was free to do whatever she liked, go wherever she wanted. I couldn’t stop her.

With painful slowness she stepped away from Jack’s body, her eyes fixed on him. The air seemed to grow quiet and still around her.

“Ami, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I never meant…at least, not like this.”

I slowly sank to my knees in the ash, unable to speak. It was a lie. This was exactly how she’d meant it to end, how Jack had planned it. What kind of idiot was I to think it could be any different?

“Just go,” I whispered.

“But I can’t leave you. Ami, please.”

She reached out a hand but I flinched away. I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t want to hear how she’d done this for me, or how it would be okay, how we would always have each other, blah, blah. I couldn’t take it. Not anymore.

Lisa’s eyes met mine in a brief, tearful flicker as she paused in front of me, but she said nothing else. There was nothing to say. She wasn’t sorry. She
had
meant to kill him and that’s what she’d done. After more than a hundred deaths—some bloodless surrenders like Lutz, some hard won by Alec’s sword, like D’Arcy—the enemy, my sister, had won.

Her victory rang like a hollow slap between us. Then she was gone.

I don’t know where she and Alec portaled, but wherever it was, they didn’t bother taking Thibault. They didn’t need him, and I guess he didn’t need them anymore, either. He sat in the rubble of the fallen statues, happy, like a child in a sandbox.

It’s weird how death doesn’t come all at once. It doesn’t ride in on a stallion, swinging a scythe and yelling about the apocalypse. Real death teases. It prods. It inches up behind you with its claws out, and laughs while you bleed.

I cradled Jack in my lap as his soul unwound itself from mine in soft twitches. The space it left behind felt cold and damp, how a cloud might feel before a snowfall.

“You couldn’t have stopped it, Amelie,” Thibault said. “He had to die. They all did. The prophecy says it’s the only way to end the war.” His words grew quieter in my head until they dissolved.

It wasn’t fair, not one bit of it. For five days, Jack and I had been chased through hell and told to be heavenly. We’d been buried alive and ordered not to scream. And for what? A stupid prophecy?

I was
done
.

Done with prophecies. Done with demons. Done with stupid politics and holy wars. It wasn’t my war anymore. These weren’t my rules. And nothing that had cost me this much deserved to be written in stone.

My lips brushed Jack’s face where my tears had fallen—his beautiful face, with its hard curves and tiny imperfections. I smoothed back his golden hair and stroked each of the little lines around his eyes where they crinkled when he laughed.

It couldn’t end like this.

With a violent tremor, my fingers coaxed the sword out of his lifeless grip. If there was one thing I’d learned in the past week, it was that death, like everything else, is negotiable. The world doesn’t shut off when you close your eyes. Things aren’t true because someone wrote them down. And, most importantly, Lisa wasn’t the only one with power.

“
Redivivus,
” I whispered.

A violent wind sprang to life, whipping my hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luc sit up, the demon rage on his face having faded to pain.

I turned to Luc as Thibault eyed us suspiciously from across the room.

“Good luck at the signing. Tell Jack I’m sorry. And Luc—” I struggled to think of something profound for my final words, something that would stick with him for eternity. Nada. “Just try not to be such an asshole, okay?”

Luc scrambled to his knees, struggling to rise. He was still bleeding from a cut on his forehead and several of his fingers looked broken. Maybe some ribs, too.

Yeah, Jack was going to hate me for this, but what choice did I have? I was a Wraithmaker. This is what I was born for, right? I shut my eyes and let the world go silent inside my head.

Things were about to get ugly.

“
Ex dona spiritus. Bis vivit qui bene vivit.
” With hard cracks and shrill screams, the world splintered into jagged pieces around me.

“Amelie, no!” Luc yelled, but it was too late.

I’ve read about humans who try to stab themselves. They hesitate. There’s always a part of them that doesn’t want to die, so no matter how committed they think they are, they still hesitate in the end.

I didn’t.

A kick of adrenaline pumped through my veins and I lifted the blade high. It barely made a sound as it descended into my heart.

Chapter Twenty-three:

Just Like Heaven

That was the
plan
, anyway. Unfortunately, plans and vampires go together about as well as Kleenex and hot tubs.

“No!” Luc launched himself at me. The tip of the blade had barely broken the skin when I felt it being knocked out of my hands. Before I knew it, my fingers were empty and I was pinned to the ground by a hundred and eighty pounds of vampire. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Get off me, you stupid…
Crossworlder
! This is none of your business.”

“None of my business?” he yelled, about four inches from my face. “I swore an oath to protect you! You think I’d let you kill yourself now?”

“I’m not killing myself!” I hollered back, narrowing the gap to two inches.

“You had a blade to your bloody chest! How is that not suicide?”

“Because you’re a blind moron.” I snake-wiggled out of his iron grip. “Now get off me so I can finish!”

Poor Luc looked so confused. His face was pale and blood trickled from a gash at the side of his cheek. Above our heads, light and wind swirled, the channel I’d called still pulsing with power.

“But what—”

“She’s trying to save him.” Thibault’s amused baritone broke in from the edge of the room. “A life for a life. Isn’t that right, child?”

I glared at him evilly.

He sneered. “Your sister warned me you’d try, though I admit I didn’t think you had the nerve. Perhaps you take after your mother more than I realized. Pity you have to die.”

That was when I noticed what he had in his hand. The little silver box with the red button—the remote detonator we’d all conveniently forgotten. In a flash, my fingers unwrapped themselves from Luc’s throat and extended toward Thibault.

“
Desisté
,” I shouted, throwing all my remaining power at him. Which wasn’t much given the lack of a Watcher, the semi-mortal wounds, and the channel I was still trying to maintain for soul transfer. Nonetheless, that command should have done something—other than make him chuckle.

“My dear, naïve girl,” he tsk-tsked. “I admire your tenacity, but I’m afraid your sister thought of that already.” His hand dipped into the collar of his shirt and he pulled out a circular, glyph-carved silver pendant. The protective charm swung like a pendulum between his fingers. “Think of it as diplomatic immunity…for me, at least.”

Call me jaded, but if he thought a little chunk of metal, no matter how charmed it was, would protect him from a field of explosives, I wasn’t the only one with naiveté issues. “Wow, you really are insane, aren’t you?” With a small nod at Luc, I curved my fingers toward Thibault again. “
Doloré
!
Desarmé
!
Incendia
!”

The volley of curses bounced off him like a rubber ball off concrete, each one pushing his cackles to a more ghastly pitch. Tears of laughter streamed down his face, but for once, I didn’t care if my attack failed. It wasn’t meant to succeed—not in the traditional sense, anyhow.

In a blur of arms and legs, Luc flew at Thibault. His momentum was so great I swear I heard Thibault’s bones crack as the two collided. They skidded over the rubble, the detonator hitting the ground hard. Despite his crippled appearance, the old man was still quick. He rolled to his knees and drew his sword.

“Luc, be careful!”

“Get the detonator,” he shouted back.

Right, the detonator. On hands and knees, I scrambled across the floor, my eyes never leaving the metal box. Every muscle in my body was on fire, my bones fusing to each other from the residual Crossworld burn. I could practically feel my skin melting into the floor.

Don’t give up,
a voice whispered in my head.
Jack wouldn’t give up.

I pushed harder.

Unfortunately, Thibault also heard Luc’s directive about the detonator. He jabbed his sword into Luc’s belly and thrust upward toward the heart, at the same time rolling his own body toward the silver box. It was a brilliant move, tactically. A blow to the heart was one of about three things that could kill an Immortal. If Luc hadn’t twisted out of the strike so quickly, well, I think we can all say “vampire kebob.”

With bare hands, Luc gripped the sword and shoved it at Thibault, using it as a lever to force him backward. He also managed to slice up his palms worse than any slasher movie I’d seen, and re-situate the fight right over the detonator.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

“Go to Plan B,” Luc yelled, though I wasn’t entirely sure what Plan A had been.

Around the room, eight gray blocks of explosives still clung to the walls. Okay, new agenda.
Plan B: Don’t Die
. If I couldn’t get to the detonator, maybe I could disable the explosives.

I concentrated on not hurling as I dragged myself to the first block. A silver cap slid out of the gray putty-mound with a harmless
splooch
then dropped to the floor.
Thunk
. Not exactly James Bond, but effective enough.

There was no point in standing up. My brain had already gone fuzzy from the Crossworld draw, and the outer edge of my vision was tinged with black. At least that meant my channel might still be active. I caught glimpses of Luc and Thibault still duking it out, hand to sword, though I had no idea if I was seeing accurately. Luc was so hacked up and dripping blood it was a miracle he hadn’t passed out. At a glacial pace, I made my way around the room on hands and knees.
Splooch, thunk.
Splooch, thunk
. Eight times. I counted.

Across the room, Thibault’s sword slammed into Luc’s stomach again and Luc fell. This time, he didn’t get up.

“Ah-ha!” Thibault snatched up the detonator. “Victory!”

Like King Arthur wielding Excalibur, he raised his hand and brought it down hard on the button. All around me little pops went off—eight of them—each with its own terrifying puff of smoke. Then the room was silent.

Dust and ash still danced through the air, the marble floor littered with debris. Thibault’s face slowly registered confusion, followed by annoyance. He jabbed at the detonator again, his knees jack-knifing to the floor.

“No!” he growled. “No, you’ve ruined everything!”

“Not quite,” I mumbled, still dizzy from the lingering channel. “
Ex dona spiritus. Bis vivit qui bene vivit.
”

I’d long since given up hope of finding another sword to finish myself off. Jack’s blade was buried somewhere under the rubble. My vision had tanked so badly all I could see was pinpricks of light, and the channel’s power made my brain lobes feel like they’d been fused together with a soldering iron. I reached blindly around Jack’s body and grappled for the crossbow bolt still stuck in his back. With a hard yank, I tugged it out, lifted it high, and jabbed it toward my chest.

Again.

This time, I hit the mark.

It was as if a cold hand had wrapped around my heart and given it a squeeze. I yanked the bolt out and let it fall. Blood poured out of me in thick, uneven spurts that spattered onto Jack’s skin.

“There,” I gasped. “
Now
I’ve ruined everything.”

Then I died.

…

It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought—the dying part. It kind of felt like the time I fell into the deep end of Lisa’s pool in first grade, with my clothes all soggy and my tennis shoes like bricks. Water had flooded my lungs and the need for oxygen had felt like a hole in my chest. Same deal—only it was blood choking me, and there was an
actual
hole in my chest. Go figure.

I pressed my ear against the rumpled folds of Jack’s shirt, listening for his heart—that melodic rhythm that had lulled me to sleep last night. No dice.

“But—but, the prophecy! The angels!” Thibault sputtered, unaware of Luc behind him, slowly working the sword out of his stomach.

I shut my eyes as Luc lifted Thibault’s blade and brought it down in a final, slashing arc. I couldn’t be too sad. Not that I reveled in anyone’s death, but that man had been such a heaping jug of crazy, I couldn’t imagine the “angels” being anything but relieved to have him off the planet.

Jack’s body stayed alarmingly silent beneath me.

Come on
, I pleaded silently.
Breathe
.

I squeezed my eyes tighter until an image of Jack’s face surfaced in my mind. The hard line of his jaw when he got angry, the crooked curve of his lips when he smiled. Even when he tried
not
to smile. God, he was beautiful.

The wind seemed to sigh as a sharp electric current pulsed between us in deep, kaleidoscopic colors. Images drifted in my head, then I felt his heart sputter.

And begin to beat.

Maybe being a child of Lucifer had its perks after all.

By the gift of my spirit, he who lived once shall live again.
Simple words, even in Latin. The price for them hadn’t been specified, but I couldn’t imagine it would cost more than my life.

With
every breath, his heart got stronger. Sure, mine was weakening, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter what happened to me. I could die knowing that things were as they should be. Jack would live, the Tenets would pass, Matt and Katie would be safe, and Thibault wouldn’t hurt anyone again.

Jack would live
.

In groggy lurches, Jack’s arms tightened around me, his chest filling with air. One hand smoothed away my blood-spattered hair as he tipped my face to his.

“Omelet?” he said softly.

I opened my mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. Well, that’s not true. A lot of stuff came out. Blood mostly, and some spittle. He handled it well, I’d say. A scream ripped through his throat and he sat up like he’d been stuck with a branding iron.

“I tried to stop her,” Luc gasped from across the room.

Jack’s face twisted from confusion into horror as he registered the blood covering Luc’s shirt, Thibault’s dead body, the crossbow bolt beside me. Denial and rage and horror flashed through his eyes in quick succession, probably just how I’d looked before when I’d watched him die. Only it was worse. Because he knew I had done this for him.

“No, no. God, no.” He slid one arm under my head, his fingertips trembling as they stroked my face. “Amelie, what did you do?”

I opened my mouth again. I wanted to let him know it was all good, that I totally had this under control. But all that came out was a wet gurgle.

“Don’t talk,” he begged. “Just breathe. You’re going to be okay.”

I knew he was lying but I tried to nod anyway. There was something so…fragmenting about being stuck between worlds. Part of my consciousness was lodged in my body, viewing it all through blurry eyes and clogged ears. Another part of me seemed suspended in limbo. Clear-headed. No pain.

At some point, Matt hacked through the doors with a glyph-carved battle axe, Lyle at his heels with a mace in one hand and a knife in the other. They’d obviously raided the arsenal again. As soon as he saw me, Matt halted, and Lyle stumbled over him like some
Three Stooges
episode. It might have been funny under other circumstances. At the moment, not so much.

“Holy crap.” Matt made the sign of the cross over his chest.

Lyle paused for a second, then dropped his weapons and skidded to stop at my side. “Matt, get a Channeler. Now!”

“We sent them all away.” My friend hung back, confused. “Where’s Lisa? Is she okay?”

“Who cares? Find Hansen! Find anyone!”

Matt stared around the room, dazed, for another moment. Then he left.

With a strangled sound, Jack laid me on the ground like a broken doll. His hands came down over my ribs, where the narrow hole still gaped, black and runny. Maybe he thought he could fix it, or something. I knew he couldn’t. Our bond had begun to loosen again. Everything buzzed and hummed in my head, at once quiet and deafening—ironically like a perceptual vortex. I wondered if that was what death was. Just a great, black, empty nothing.

“She’s going to die,” Lyle said.

“She’s not going to die,” Jack hissed.

“She will if we don’t find a healer.” Lyle stripped off his tuxedo shirt and tore it into long strips, wrapping them around my torso like one of Gunderman’s pressure bandages. “Ami, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I never should have left you alone. I should have protected you.”

As soon as he said that, a knife of fury zipped through the bond, cold and sharp, like lightning bolts over my skin. With the back of his hand, Jack shoved Lyle aside so hard he flew across the room and slammed into Remiel’s statue. I flinched as Lyle slid down the wall, Remiel’s staff cracking over his head with a hard shudder.

“She’s not yours to protect,” Jack snapped. “Luc, I need you!”

“Me?” Luc paled.

“Your blood,” he said. “I need your blood.”

Cold air clung to my skin, odd smells of chemical ash crowding me. I watched Luc’s throat move as he swallowed nervously. “You can’t be serious.”

“The hell, I can’t.”

The vampire’s injuries had already started healing themselves, so although he was dripping scarlet, he didn’t flinch too badly when Jack grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the ground.

“I asked you for one thing, Luc. Keep her safe. You swore an oath, do you remember?”

The vampire glanced around the room like a trapped animal. “Cousin, please. Ask for something else. Money. Status. Anything you want.”

“
She’s
what I want.”

“Anything but that.”

In a flash, the first impression I’d had of Jack returned—fierce and dangerous. Cold chills slid down my skin as I felt his fury sear through the bond.

“You brought her here, Luc. She’s the only thing I’ve ever cared about, and you took her from me.” Jack met his cousin’s eyes with the coldest, most unforgiving glare I’ve ever seen. “Now heal her,” he demanded, “or I’ll see that your entire species burns in hell.”

Then, without another word, Jack released him.

Lyle had quietly picked his way back through the rubble to keep administering first aid, but the wound at my chest continued to gush. My whole body felt cold.