The Breaker's Resolution: (YA Paranormal Romance) (Fixed Points Book 4) (12 page)

“You want me to find her, yes? You want me to bring you to the Bloodmoon?”

My eyes darted toward the trees. “Not here, Sevie. Anyone could be listening. Let’s get you back home, and then-”

“She would not recognize me, not the me that I am, that I was before. She only saw the weak boy, the one she thought needed saving from the Serpent. As though that was something she would ever be capable of. As though it isn’t her who brings the Serpent here, who brings us all here.”

“Sevie, just stop talking, okay?” I said, grabbing him by the sleeve of his medical gown.

“She was sweet though; a good girl set to do a horrible thing. It’s almost too much to comprehend. But most things seem that way these days.”

“Sevie, you’re not making any sense. Just let me take you home.”

He pulled away from me. “You wish to see her. You wish to use the energy that stirs up in this used up vessel. So be it!”

His hand slammed against mine, and suddenly I could feel myself leaving my body.

“No!” I said, or tried to say. He was doing it now. Somehow Sevie was allowing me to dreamwalk while I was awake. And he was doing it right out in the open, not protected by the secrecy of the bond Merrin and I shared. They would be able to track him, to track me. And because of that,they would be able to find Cresta.

“No Sevie!” I screamed, but I wasn’t sure my words actually came out. Was I still in my body? And, if I was, could I even control it anymore?

Sevie’s powers never worked like this. They were always very passive, and only effected people who were already asleep.  This sort of thing, pulling me out of my body and throwing me to Fate knows where was something else altogether. And it just might have proved disastrous.

The world disappeared around me. The air pulled from my lungs. And when I stopped spinning, everything was dark. We had done this before, Sevie and I. When we were kids, he used to sneak into my head and pull me into his dreams. At first, it was because he was afraid of the dark and he didn’t want to be alone, not even while sleeping. But soon, it became the best part of the day. Sevie would throw me into some strange dreaming mindscape, and we’d the off. The brothers Lightfoot having secret adventures and all that. It was a little cliché but, as a kid who thought he was going to die young, it was also a way of escaping, of living a life I figured was going to be taken away from me. And for Sevie, I think it might have been a way to squeeze every last drop of time from the rbother he knew he was going to lose.

This though, this was nothing like that.

I heard footsteps in the distance and pretty pronounced dripping sound at first. My eyes were still blurry, still coming to terms with whatever was around me. I coughed loudly, relieved to be able to breathe again. But through what?

My body wasn’t here. Wherever here was.

No, I had seen people dreamwalk before, and their bodies always stayed put. Which meant that I was, at this moment, lying on my back in the middle of the Meditation Grotto; somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be in the first place, with someone who might not even be my brother anymore staring down at my defenseless body.

And where was the rest of me; my mind, my spirit, my soul? Whatever piece of me this was. Where had I gone?

The footsteps grew louder and, in the distance, I saw a faint blue glow. A pair rounded the corner; two women, one of whom was holding some sort of electric lantern.

I moved forward, my feet splashing against puddles on the floor of what I was now pretty sure was either a sewer or a cave. As the light grew closer, I saw the tunnel I stood in was laden with bricks and the floor was concrete…and covered in disgusting brown water.

Yeah, definitely a sewer.

I didn’t speak. I knew better than that. These people could be anyone, and if I went around shouting for Cresta in a sewer, then who knew what sort of tips I’d be inadvertently giving them. I did rush toward them though. There was no use in hiding in this state. No one could hurt me like this.

As I neared, I saw that the figures were both women. One was hugging herself and sniffling. The other-the one holding the strange blue lantern- was stone face and aware.

Still, even as I closed in, neither of them seemed to notice me. As the stone faced girl swung her lantern, surveying the property, I flinched, ready to be observed. But she still didn’t see me. And what I saw as she brought the light closer to herself stopped me in my tracks.

I should have been prepared to see her. I was here, after all, because Sevie (or who or whatever was now controlling Sevie) decided to bring me to Cresta. But as I took her in, as the fake heart in my dream body leapt as if it was trying to escape from my chest, I realized that no amount of preparation would make me ready for this.

She stood in front of me, the love of my life. Her hair was longer than it had been and her lips were pursed together uncomfortably. But she was still, without question or contest, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Just being in her vicinity took the pain away. A piece of me, the piece I never stopped thinking about being without, suddenly snapped back into place. And for a glorious moment, I was able to forget about Fate’s wicked plan and the life it had subjected us too.

But only for a moment.

As her eyes moved to, and then passed me, I realized two things. She couldn’t see me. If she could have, it would have stopped her cold. And, more disturbingly, she had been crying. Hard.

“Cresta, what’s wrong?” I asked, instinctively forgetting the things I needed to tell her in the face of her pain. “Cresta!” I repeated, but she didn’t hear me.

“We need to keep moving,” the other woman said. “It won’t be long before they track us down here, and if we aren’t through the barrier, then I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Fate above, she was in danger. Had I brought them to her? For all I knew, the Council could have locked onto what was going on the instant Sevie pulled me from my body. They could have held me in some sort of status while they tracked where I was going and found her. And now-now that they had made their move- they could have brought me here just to witness it happen as some sort of weird prophecy fulfillment.

But who was this person she was with? What barrier was she talking about? And where in Fate’s fertile acre was everyone else?

“Cresta, I need you to listen to me,” I said, trying and failing to grab her hand. Why was it like this? I could always touch things in the dreamscape before. But I wasn’t sleeping this time, and neither was Cresta. Something was happening to Sevie’s powers, and it was stopping me from being able to tell her what I needed to.

“What does it matter?!” Cresta shouted. “They’re all dead, Liv. It’s over. They’re dead. It doesn’t matter.”

Dead? The word brought my racing heart to a screeching stop. “Who’s dead?” I asked, realizing what she meant. She didn’t say he or she. She said them. She said all of them.

Of course, that’s the only reason she’d be alone. They would never leave her, and Fate knew it would have taken the cold hands of death to Casper from her side.

“I should never have left you,” I said softly. Of course, she didn’t hear me. “Was it Royce?” I asked. “He did something to them, didn’t he? He did something to Sevie too, Cress.” My mouth tightened. “I know you can’t hear me, but I promise you-a Breaker’s promise- that I will make that sonofabitch pay for everything he’s done.” I dropped my head. “I should have been there. I could have saved them if I was there.”

“Of course it matters,” the other woman-Liv- said. Her eyes glazed over me and paused. Something in them lit up. Could she see me? If so, she made no note of it as she continued. “There are things you don’t know Cresta. And there’s still an entire world that needs your help.”

“I don’t care!” Cresta spit out. “I should have just let them kill me and get it over with! At least then, everyone else wouldn’t have had to die.”

“Don’t say that,” I muttered, batting back tears. “Don’t ever stop fighting. You promised me you would never stop fighting!”

“Sometimes saving the world doesn’t mean saving ourselves,” Liv said, and her eyes moved back to me for the briefest of instances. “But in your case,” she went back to Cresta. “I’m gonna say it’s one and the same. You dying doesn’t help anybody. You giving up, doesn’t help anybody. You wanna crawl into a corner over there and die, well that’s your prerogative. But some would say that letting a bunch of people sacrifice themselves to get you where you need to be just to stop short of the finish line makes you something way worse than the Bloodmoon.”

“You shut the hell up,” I turned to the woman, who probably couldn’t hear me. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “But I will stop it. Just hold on, okay. Just hold on. I’ll do something. I’ll think of something.” I pulled closer to her, and whispered fruitlessly into her ear. “I love you.”

And then I felt the pull again. I scrambled, trying my hardest to stay here, to make her hear me. But I was powerless. Whatever was pulling me back was jerking pretty hard, because I literally lifted off the stone floor of that sewer.

I watched her as I floated away, the strongest person I had ever known in the darkest moment of her life. And I couldn’t even help her. There was nothing I could do.

“I love you! Be strong! You’re so strong!” I screamed, forgetting all about saving Sevie or even the world. I just wanted her to know. More than anything else, I wanted her to hear me and to realize that, even though I couldn’t touch her or talk to her, or even see her in real life, she wasn’t alone. She would never be alone.

***************

I woke in a cold sweat. I wasn’t outside anymore, which was a bad sign. How long had I been out? What was happening?

“You’re awake.” Merrin’s voice was weak. Looking at her through sore eyes, I saw she was even frailer than before. Her skin was sallow and pale and her body nearly slunk out of the chair she sat in.

“Merrin, what’s happening?” I sat up. “How long have I been unconscious?” I shook my head, unable to stop the torrent of question as they bubbled up with emotion and spilled out my mouth. “I saw her Merrin, but something’s wrong. I couldn’t talk to her or touch her. And,” I swallowed hard. “I think I might have sent them to her, because she said they were dead, Merrin. I can’t be one hundred percent sure who she was talking about, but she said they’re all dead. We have to find a way to get to her. We have to help somehow.”

“Owen,” she answered, her voice so weak that it was almost a whisper. “Owen, something’s happened.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins. “Is it…is it Sevie?” I swallowed hard, trying to steel myself for the answer and knowing that I never could.

“No, Owen. It’s-“

A man appeared behind her and she stopped short, as though she felt him there.

Chant stood in the doorway, cane in hand. “If it isn’t the man of the hour,” he grinned. “I’m glad to see you awake. You have work to do and time is of the essence. Though I suppose your wife told you as much.”

“They do know,” I answered, looking at Merrin. “Fate’s hand, I brought them right to her.”

“No, no!” Chant chuckled. “Don’t worry, Dragon. Your spotless spirit is still intact. You didn’t betray your love, only your family, people, and legacy.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, straightening under paper sheets.

“While it’s true we know where the Bloodmoon is, you can rest easy. Though it won’t stop you from having to kill her, you can sleep well knowing that you’re not the one who gave her up.”

“Get to the point,” I barked, fed up with his nonsense. “If not me, then who?”

My face dropped as I saw someone enter behind Chant. It couldn’t have been. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here. If he was here, then that meant-

“You betrayed them,” I shouted. “No, not you. You couldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry,” Echo answered, holding a bandage over his hand. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

Fire batted up from the building like ribbons flailing towards the sky. It didn’t seem real. How could it be? The entire hotel was destroyed, engulfed in fire and crackling shade. No one could have survived that.

And every single person in the entire world who I could trust had been inside.

“I did this,” I muttered, looking at the building.

Though I didn’t remember sliding, suddenly I was on my knees, looking at the hotel with tears in my eyes. “I did this to them.”

And I had. I trapped them in their with my shade barrier. I turned them into sitting ducks. And for what? So they wouldn’t follow me? So they couldn’t explain themselves? And now they never would explain themselves. They’d never do anything ever again.

“I did this. I
am
the Bloodmoon.”

“Say it a little louder. I don’t think everyone heard you quite clearly enough.” Liv stood over me. Her hands were on her hips and she looked more than a little pissed.

“I killed them,” I said, looking up at her. “I killed them all.”

“You didn’t,” Liv said flatly. “Those bastard Breakers did. But if you keep sitting here, you’ll be responsible for making all those deaths meaningless. We’ve got to get you out of here. Now where’s your team?”

I narrowed my eyes at her and motioned to the rubble in the distance.

“Your people were in there?!” She gasped. “Toby was in there?” She blinked hard, presumably trying to process this information. “Alright,” she finally nodded. “We still gotta go.”

“What?” I asked, my mind still full of the fog of what just happened. “No!” I screamed as Liv grabbed my hand. “I have to get in there. I have to see if any of them are…”

The word wouldn’t come.

“Look at that place, Cresta.” Liv pulled me forcibly to my feet, stronger than I figured she’d be. “I don’t want your friends to be dead any more than you do. And Toby, he was…important to me. But they didn’t survive that. The Breakers have killed your friends. And, while I know that’s a lot to deal with and that what I’m about to ask you to do isn’t fair, I’m going to need you to pull your head out of your ass and listen to me. Because, if you don’t- while I’m familiar enough with your prophecies that I know they won’t kill you without your precious Dragon in the line of sight- then a lot of my people are going to die trying to defend you.” She turned me around. Behind me, stood what was pretty much an army. Men, women, even a few kids, stood with baseball bats, knives, and a few weird looking weapons that I didn’t recognize right off.

“Those are families, Cresta. And, while they’re willing to die for you and for what you stand for, believe me when I say they’d rather not.” She flipped me back around so that I was facing the building again. This time three people-two men and a woman- were running toward me. “And those are the Breakers who are going to try to do it.” She shook me, literally shook me. “We. Need. To. Run. “

“No…” I muttered.

“Cresta, they’ll-“

“They won’t,” I said, my voice trembling with anger. I pulled myself away from Liv, anger and shade crackling around my body. “They’re dead because of them.” I moved toward them, my mind racing, and my heart pounding hard against my chest. “Royce, Dahlia. Ca-Casper.” My voice broke when I said his name. Casper, my best friend, the closest thing I would ever have to a brother, the person that life had taught me I needed the most. He was my strength. He was my anchor. And now he was dead.

And someone had to pay.

“Cresta, get back here!” I heard Liv say from behind me, but she might as well have been a million miles away. I was done listening to people, and I was done playing games.

When I first got to Weathersby, the idea of all of this nonsense was as foreign to me as brie cheese. To think that I’d ever become adept enough to be able to access the shade, let alone control it, was an idea so laughable that I didn’t even consider it.

As rage lit up every piece of my body know, I thanked God I was wrong.

My hand twitched and, with a flick of the energy that these bastards produced the way humans produced carbon dioxide, I solidified the air in front of them. They slammed hard into a wall of shade, knocking the three of them on their asses.

I went for the woman first. Using the shade, I lifted her up, jerking her hand into the air. Her eyes shot toward me and I felt her power. She control gravity, and she was attempting to use it to crush me where I stood. For anyone else in the world, that might be an issue. For me, it was an inconvenience. I flicked my hand again, twisting her arm and only stopping when I heard it pop.

I moved my hand again, and threw her into the air. She slammed against the pavement, grabbing her arm and rolling across the parking lot.

One of the men was standing now, gathering his own energy. Looking down, I saw its effect. A bright red blade of energy shot out of his hand, like a knife.

I lifted my arm, twisting the shade so that it took complete control of him. The other man was stumbling to his feet now, but he wouldn’t stay standing for long.

I lifted the other man’s arm, moving the blade toward the standing man. Anger burned through me. They killed them. These people killed them all.

I pushed the blade toward the standing man. They killed them. They deserved this. They deserved to-

A shot of electricity flew through the sky, slamming into both men and knocking them to the ground, shaking and unconscious.

“What the hell!” I spun around, my eyes practically burning with white hot rage.

Liv stood behind me, a weird metal firearm in her hand.

“They were mine!” I screamed.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she answered. “You’d have killed them, and we can’t have that. Not when we’re so close.”

“What are you talking about?!” I screamed.

“You’ll find out,” Liv said. “Right after your time out.”

She shot at me, a bright line of electricity colliding with my chest.

I shook, my jaw locking up and my body convulsing.

“You…you…” But I couldn’t finished. My body went limp, I slid to the ground, and the world went dark.

*********************

I woke slowly to a hard nudging on my shoulders. My head hurt and m body felt drained and limp.

“Hey!” A voice said over and over again. “Come on now! I haven’t got time to drag your blonde ass all over this place.”

My eyes flickered open. Liv leaned over me, shaking me hard. Curly hair spilled down into my face and her eyes looked more than a little peeved.

“That’s it. Just open your eyes, Sunshine,” she said. “And get the hell up.”

“You-you shot me,” I swallowed as she stood up straight.

“Oh, it was a Taser. Don’t be so dramatic. Besides, you should be thanking me.” She folded her arms.

“Sure,” I answered, sitting up and trying to catch my breath. “Come a little closer again. I thank you properly.”

“Toby never told me about your temper,” Liv answered. Her voice dipped into the ‘mournful’ range, which sent my head spinning. Toby was Casper. Casper was dead. The world didn’t make sense.

“Shut up,” I answered.

“You would have killed them,” she said.

“I would not have,” I shot back, stumbling to my feet. “They deserve to die, but I wouldn’t have killed them.”

“Tell that to the shade knife you were about to thrust into that Breaker dude’s gut,” she quipped. “Not that it matters. I saved you from yourself. I also saved me from yourself, given that it looked like you were about to go Dark Willow all over the place.”

Buffy reference notwithstanding, I didn’t like this girl. She was pushy, too good with weaponry, and she had a piece in all of this that I still didn’t understand. What the hell did Casper see in her?

“You were practically drowning in energy. You needed to chill out. That’s why I encouraged you to take a little nap…with my Taser. “

“Where are we?” I asked, looking around. Wherever I now stood, was dark and wet. Bricks lined rounded walls and puddles sat deep on the stone floors. There was, of course, another pretty prominent sensory feature to this place. “It smells like ass in here.”

“That’s cause you’re standing in a sewer, Sunshine,” Liv smiled.

“So what I’m smelling is-”

“Actually ass? Yeah. Welcome to the big leagues, Sunshine.”

“Why do you keep calling me that? Casper called me that once, back in the Hourglasss,” I answered.

“Guess I rubbed off on him,” she beamed.

“And we both know where that led him,” I scoffed, tears brewing behind my eyes.

“I’m not the one who locked him in that room.”

“Don’t you dare!” I snapped.

“Temper, Cresta,” she lifted her hand to me. “Can’t have you powering up down here. The blockers will overload and we’ll be as visible as a zit on prom night.”

“Where are we?!” I shouted. “Where is this place?”

“It’s the infrastructure, the bowels of Clarity.”

“We’re in Clarity?” I asked, a shock of pain running through me as I remembered how much Casper wanted to be here, how much he wanted to keep his child safe.

“We’re under it,” Liv said, starting down the darkened corridor. “And we need to get you to the surface as quickly as those red and black Sketchers will take you. It’s the only place you’ll be safe.”

“It’s not,” I said, following her through the darkness. Looking down at my feet, I realized that I was, in fact, wearing black and red Sketchers. They must have gotten them for me while I was unconscious, somewhere between the desert and fleabag motel. It was their last gift to me, the last one any of them would ever give me. “I get that you think you’re helping me, and I guess I appreciate that. But the truth is, the Council knows where I am now. They killed the others,” I said with a lump in my throat. “I’ll be next. They’ll get Owe- the Dragon out here, and they’ll force him to take me out.”

I couldn’t imagine a world where Owen killed me. He’d never do that, no matter what happened. But Fate was Fate. And I knew better than to underestimate her.

”You can’t keep me safe. Not here, not there, not anywhere.”

“Do you have Dr. Seuss aspirations? Because that was pretty spot on, Sam I Am.” She turned back to me. “What you’re not taking into consideration is what you don’t know.”

“Well, it would be pretty difficult for me to take what I don’t know into consideration, but what the hell. I’m stuck in a sewer with a weird girl and all of my friends were just murdered. I’ll bite. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Clarity isn’t just Clarity, Cresta. There’s a reason Toy was brought here.”

“His name is Casper!” I yelled.

“Fine, whatever. There’s a reason he was brought here. It was so that he could bring
you
here. Clarity isn’t a town, Cresta. It was built a long ass time ago for this moment, just for you. It’s the base of the Taggers. And it’s a damn fortress.” A smile slid across her face. “Let the Council come. Let them bring every Breaker from here to kingdom come along with them. Let them throw the Dragon on a golden throne and prop him up like that white hair Game of Thrones queen. It won’t make a damn difference. Nothing gets into Clarity, Cresta. Nothing.”

“You know,” I said, breathing heavy as the weight of everything started to settle on me again. “They used to say nothing got out of the Hourglass too. And we both know how that turned out.”

“Just follow me, Gloomy Gus,” Liv said after looking at me for a long second.

“Fine,” I answered. “But you have to spill first.”

“And what is it you want to know exactly?” She asked, raising a brow at me.

“What are the Taggers? What do you want with me? And what did you do to Casper when you stole him away?”

“So predictable,” she shook her head. “Though, I wonder how you can steal somebody who’s basically been thrown away.”

“I did not!” I yelled. “He was in danger. You don’t know anything about it.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” she answered. “We know everything there is to know about you. We’ve been watching you since well before the breakers, since before Allister Leeman even. Your mothers thought they could hide the truth of who you were after your dad died, but the truth was, we already knew. We always knew.”

“Why?” I asked, my forehead knitting.

“We’re the Taggers, Cresta. It’s what we do.” Liv lifted her hands, splaying her fingers in front of her animatedly. “You know how Breakers are this age old sect of people who basically run the world behind the veil of secrecy and exploitation?”

“Yeah…” I started hesitantly.

“Well, we’re like that two, with a couple pretty pronounced differences.”

“You’re Breakers? I asked. Like, you have powers?” Instinctively, I stepped backward. Sure, Casper might have loved this girl, but the only thing I knew for sure about her was that she knocked me out with a Taser and dragged my unconscious body down to a sewer. I was powerful, sure. But if this girl was capable of going on the offensive, I wanted to be prepared.