Purpose (28 page)

“No!” I cried. “No, no, no!”

My whole body suddenly went frigid. I started
trembling all over.

“
Yes, yes, YES! Fight her! Kill her! Watch
the life force drain from her eyes.
”

I could no longer tell the difference between
Sheree’s inner voice and my own. They both taunted for a killing
match.

“
Find out what it’s like! You want to.
Admit it. JUST DO IT!
”

Sheree’s body vibrated, her edges becoming a
blur.

“Don’t do it,” Owen warned with a low, firm
voice breaking into the internal argument. He wrapped his arm
around her shoulder. His face contorted with his own pain. But
Sheree calmed down. She gained control over the shift.

Evil energy coursed through my body, as if it
had been pent up there forever and was now finally free. Free to
take control. I squeezed my eyes shut but the images filled my
mind. My own visions of lashing out, hurting, killing these very
people around me.

No! I won’t! This isn’t me. Don’t let it take
me.

But that other part of me gained more
control. The slideshow played again, but now it was my own—yet not
the one I’d dreamed. These were all the horrible images. Tristan
leaving the safe house and twitching his hand to shut the door
behind him, closing me in. The battle on the mansion’s lawn.
Tristan disappearing. His body writhing in agony on the cavern
floor. Figures—some human, some not so much—beating him. And
suddenly my fists pounded on him. Then I gripped something in my
hands over my head. I slammed it down toward him. A sword pierced
through his heart.

“
No!
” I screamed. “
Tristan! No!
Tristan!
”

“Shh, shh,” Tristan whispered against my ear,
bringing me back to the balcony, back to reality. I hadn’t noticed
him sit down behind me, his legs on each side of mine, his arms
around me. My throat felt raw and I realized I’d been screaming his
name aloud until he quieted me. The cold began to subside as I
allowed his love to rush in. “It’s okay,
ma lykita.
I’m
right here.”

“
He doesn’t really love you. It’s all a
hoax. He wants to kill you. He hates you!
”

I ignored that other voice, knowing it lied.
Deception. The enemy’s most powerful weapon. Instead, I pulled on
Tristan’s love harder and felt it boosting my Amadis power again.
My body quaked with the change in energy, shaking the hell out of
Tristan and me and I knew we would both have bruises everywhere our
limbs collided. Sheree’s arm jerked like a whip as I pushed the
positive energy into her. She groaned and flopped onto the ground,
her body going into convulsions. She kept a firm hold on me as if I
were her lifeline, not just on my hand, but on my energy. On my
soul. She pulled on what little love and goodness I still had
within me, draining me of all of it, leaving only evil for both of
us.

“This has to stop!” Tristan said. “You’re
killing her.”

A growl rumbled in my chest, underscoring his
revelation. I didn’t know if he meant I was killing Sheree or she
was killing me. It didn’t matter. He was right. If we continued, we
would end up killing each other.

Tristan pried Sheree’s fingers back from
mine, forcing her to loosen her grip. He yanked my hand away from
hers and in one swift motion, had me in his lap in the far corner
of the balcony, too far for her to reach. Owen tried to calm her,
but her body still seized.

“I can take it, Alexis,” Tristan said and I
felt another energy pull on my body. My blood frosted over and I
shivered in his arms. I realized what he was doing.

“No, Tristan,” I whispered. “You’re not
stable enough.”

“I can handle it.”

He continued pulling and his power was too
strong for me to fight it. I fell limp in his arms as I felt the
evil energy leaving my body. I no longer felt cold. I no longer
felt anything. Numbness encircled my heart. I didn't even know if
it continued beating. The feeling began to spread throughout my
body and all I felt was overwhelming despair. Loss.
Hopelessness.

“
This is almost as good
,” the evil
voice hissed.

My mind clouded over and the balcony
disappeared. I found myself standing in a meadow, mountains on each
side of me, a lake reflecting more peaks lining its far shores. The
waist-high grass made a muted whispering sound as it waved in a
breeze I didn’t feel. I thought this place might have been
beautiful, if there had been any color. Instead, everything was in
different shades of steel-blue and gray, even the sunless sky and
the wild flowers in the field. I noticed the flowers
changing—wilting and shriveling. I smelled nothing but stale air,
even with the breeze still stirring.

I realized the mountains were the same ones
I’d sat on while watching the slideshow of images in my dreams. And
I now stood in the same meadow I’d run through in my dream the
other night, after Tristan saved me. But this world had been bright
and warm then. It had made me happy. Now I felt nothing, no concern
for where I was or how I got here.

Not even curiosity for the four bodies in
front of me, lying under a gray tree whose leaves fell all around
them. They were our bodies. They lay completely still with their
eyes closed, but I could hear their heartbeats, very faint, very
weak. I noticed how Tristan’s hand held mine. I stared at our hands
clasped together, waiting for something to stir within me. But it
never did. The scene meant nothing. I felt nothing for any of them.
I just watched them, for lack of anything better to do.

I couldn’t tell if any time passed. The light
didn’t change. Nothing at all changed. The clouds in the gray sky
didn’t transform or even move, though the breeze continued. The
scene remained constant, making me think of a computer
screen-saver, with the waving grass and falling leaves the only
action.

“Oh, dear God! Are they dying?” The voice
came from all around me, yet from nowhere. It should have echoed
off the mountains, but it just fell flat. The voice was a familiar
one and I thought I should know it, but I didn’t look around for
it. I didn’t feel a need or a desire to.

Dying
? It seemed as though that word
should mean something to me. But still I felt nothing. Nothing at
all. I was completely numb.

“No, not dying, but they are not well,” said
another familiar voice with a heavy accent. “They need us, Sophia.
Quick!”

Sophia
…another word that seemed like
it should mean something. I still couldn’t grasp at what.

I stared at the bodies in front of me, the
tree’s leaves still falling, though it appeared to be losing none.
I didn’t know what this all meant. And I realized I didn’t care if
it meant anything at all. I. Didn’t. Care.

But I did wonder….

What happens to a soul when all the goodness
and badness are removed? Is anything left behind? Or does the soul
die or disappear, leaving just a body with no humanity at all? No
emotions. No feeling. Just…some kind of soulless existence. Even
evil and hatred means you
feel
something. That you have
passion within you. That you still have a soul. I didn’t even feel
that. I felt absolutely nothing. Just an existence in this strange
world that never changed.

The scene suddenly flashed yellow, as if the
sun had decided to make an appearance in the gray world, colorizing
everything for a split second, then vanishing again. I even felt
its momentary warmth.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw
something changing. Color slowly started bleeding into the
grayness. A warm yellow seeped into the sky, as it does when a
storm cloud moves away, revealing the sun a little at a time. The
tall grass started turning green. The flowers reversed their
earlier actions and bloomed across the field. I felt the breeze
now, whispering across my cheek. I sucked the air in, as if I
hadn’t taken a breath since finding myself here. Perhaps I
hadn’t.

“Alexis, darling,” said the accented voice. I
could hear the relief in it. And I knew what relief was! An
emotion. A feeling. It all meant something to me again!

A powerful wave of warmth entered through my
heart and washed over me, like a splash of warm water. Something
inside me instinctively pulled at the warmth, drank it in with
large, thirsty gulps. My body reacted immediately. Goodness and
strength began to refill every cell. I could feel my heart again.
My limbs tingled as the numbness lifted away. But I felt cold. So
cold. I blinked several times, grateful to leave the gray,
meaningless world and to find a gorgeous face hovering over me.

“Rina?” I whispered as she pushed another
wave of warmth into me.

“Do not worry. You are okay now.”

“D-did…did I…?” I swallowed what felt like a
dagger wedged in my throat, its edges slicing all the way down with
the thought. “Did I k-kill her?”

“No. She is very weak, but I think she will
survive.”

“Tristan?”

Her eyes flitted behind me, then back to my
face. The corners of her mouth turned down as her eyebrows pushed
together and lifted. “I am afraid he is not doing well.”

Oh, no!
I twisted around and his arms
fell off me, to the balcony floor. His head lolled against his
shoulder. Rina kept one hand on his arm, pushing more Amadis power
into him, but we saw no signs of it doing him any good. I threw my
arms around his chest.

Another onslaught of images filled my mind.
Landing a blow to a stranger’s head with a powerful fist, looking
and feeling as if it were mine. But it was too big. Then an
eighteenth-century village blazed with fire, people running amuck,
screaming with terror, and a hand held palm-out in front of me. I
knew then Tristan’s memories swarmed through my head like another
slideshow. Our blood-covered hands and a body slumped on the ground
below us. Then faces, their hair or hats or bonnets indicating
various eras and cultures, from traditional Japanese and Chinese to
American hippies. Face after face after face. All of them twisted
in agony or horror. And the
screams
. The blood-curdling
screams of men, women and even children as they lost their lives to
us.

My stomach rolled with nausea and my heart
squeezed with sorrow.

“Tristan, stop it!” I was surprised at how
forceful the command came out because I just wanted to curl into a
ball and hide from the depravity and suffering.

A low growl rumbled in his chest as the
images kept coming. So I fought them with my own.

I remembered our early days, trying to push
each of my own images into his head without knowing for sure if I
even did it right or if I could do it at all. Or if it would do any
good. But I had to try to replace his old, bad memories—the ones he
would never talk about, never purposely share with me—with our good
ones. I pictured us sitting on the beach for sunsets, our first
kiss, riding on the motorcycle, our wedding…even the joy of waking
up in his arms yesterday morning. I felt my own good energy rising
with the thoughts.

“I love you, Tristan,” I said. I tried to
help Rina by pushing Amadis power into him, but I was still too
weak. I had too little to give. So I kissed him all over his face,
thinking if I couldn’t give him Amadis power, I could at least give
him love. It had to be at least as good.

Then I couldn’t see his memories anymore or
even read his thoughts. My mind went blank.

“If I’m going to have this stupid gift, it
could at least be reliable,” I muttered.

“You have done well, Alexis,” Rina said. “He
is coming around.”

I looked up at Tristan’s face. His lips
twitched into a small smile. His eyes opened. The gold sparked, but
at least there were no flames. He seemed to drink me in with his
eyes and the sparks died into just gold flecks.

“I told you it was a bad idea,” he said.

“I had no choice,” I cried. “I had to try.
But you shouldn’t have….”

“I shouldn’t have helped you?” Tristan
murmured. “I should have let you fight that by yourself and watch
the depravity consume everything I love about you? I had no choice
either, my love.”

He swept a thumb across each of my cheeks,
wiping away the wetness. I hadn’t even realized I’d been crying.
Then he folded me into his arms and I collapsed against his chest,
his heart pounding a steady rhythm in my ear.

“You should have waited for us,” Rina said,
“or at least for someone with more experience and power.”

I looked up. Her face puckered with
concern.

“She needed us, Rina. Owen said—”

“Owen needs to focus on his
responsibilities.” She shook her head. “He never could resist a
damsel in distress, though.”

A quiet noise rumbled in Tristan’s chest—so
quiet, probably only I heard the I-told-you-so tone to it.

“He just has a big heart,” I protested.

“Yes, he does,” Rina agreed, “but he also has
big curiosity. He has a desire to test the boundaries, to see how
far they can be pushed. He is often just a little late when you
have needed him, no? He has always wanted to know how much you
could withstand on your own. What any of us can withstand. He
enjoys testing our abilities. He would never purposely put you in
grave danger, but sometimes he overestimates our powers…or
underestimates the enemy.” She shook her head slowly and let out a
soft sigh. “I will need to speak with him if he is going to
continue as your protector. Our world is changing and he cannot be
so reckless. He must be more judicious or he
will
put you in
serious danger.”

The weight of her tone quelled any more
protest from me. We sat in silence as Rina gave another dose of
power to Tristan and me, and then she rose to join Mom at the other
end of the balcony.