The Forgotten Locket (14 page)

“No,” I breathed. The pressure that had been building inside me locked like a vise around my bones.

“That’s not possible,” Dante said, but I could feel the muscles in his back tighten with tension.

“Really? Because it seemed pretty easy for me to go down the spiral staircase into the burned basement of the Dungeon and waltz my way through the door V built for Abby.”

“Leo said he would watch—”

“He couldn’t watch forever.” She unfolded herself from her crouch. “I wanted. I waited. I watched. It was only a matter of time.” Her laugh sounded like nails clattering on metal.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” I said.

Valerie tilted her head. “I know exactly what I’ve done. Better, I know exactly what I’m
doing.
”

“You can’t go back, you know that, right?” I said. “It’s not that easy.”

“I don’t want it to be easy,” she said, taking a step forward. “I want it to hurt.”

Everything seemed to happen at once: Valerie rushed toward me at the same time I screamed at the same time Dante moved to intercept her.

“Dante! No!” I shouted, but he caught her in his arms, wrapping her tightly against his chest and lifting her off her feet.

She struggled against him, kicking and screaming and biting, but even in her anger, Dante was stronger.

“Let me go!” Valerie clawed at Dante’s arms, scratching deep, parallel lines all the way to his elbows. She reached up and ripped the bandage from Dante’s head, throwing the cloth to the ground.

“Stop it, Valerie!” I took a step forward, my heart skipping a beat in terror.

“No, stay back,” Dante called.

“Look out!” I shouted the second before Valerie rocked her head forward, and Dante dodged at the last moment.

I paced in a nervous circle around the two of them. I wanted to do something to help Dante, but I couldn’t see an opening. They were too tightly locked together. And I didn’t want to do the wrong thing at the wrong time and distract Dante. Sweat poured down the side of his face from the strain of trying to keep Valerie under control.

“I warned you,” Valerie screamed at me. “You may have given him your heart, but he can’t have you. I won’t let him. He’s mine!”

“It was a mistake!” I screamed back at her, my eyes burning, my throat raw. “I didn’t know . . . I didn’t mean to do it.”

“Too bad, so sad,” she chanted, her black hair flying around her head like the shadow of a halo. “What’s done is done,” she growled, a feral look in her eye. “And he’ll do what he’s going to do. You can’t stop him. You’re his girl now and forever.”

“Stop it!” I covered my ears with my hands, trying to block out her voice, but it was no use. Her words latched onto my mind, taking hold and not letting go. I fell to my knees. It couldn’t be true; I didn’t want it to be true.

“Move back, Abby,” Dante ordered.

“You’re late, you’re late, for a very important date. And you’re late, Abby. Everlastingly too late.”

“Go!” Dante snapped, turning toward me. Hard lines cut through the angles of his bones, turning his face to a mask of intensity and purpose. A power and a stillness gathered around him, honed like a weapon ready to be used.

I crawled backward, trying to stay as far away from Dante and Valerie as possible without also falling into the river.

“Abby!” Dante called out. “When I tell you to, I want you to count to a hundred. Concentrate, and count. Can you do that?”

“Yes!” I called back.

“Good. Then do it—start counting! Now!” He closed his eyes and tightened his grip on Valerie.

“One. Two. Three.” I bent my mind, my will, my heart to counting one number after another. I focused on each number, visualizing what it would look like, what it would sound like, what it would feel like on my tongue before I spoke. “Four. Five.”

I kept my gaze locked on Dante.

He took a deep breath and then leaned as close as he could to Valerie’s ear. He opened his mouth and spoke to her.

I couldn’t hear what he said, but I kept counting, loudly and rhythmically. “Twelve. Thirteen.”

The bank rumbled again beneath me, but quietly. More of a shudder than a shake.

I kept counting. “Twenty-five. Twenty-six.”

Dante’s mouth moved constantly, pouring words into her ears, and slowly, oh so slowly, Valerie stopped struggling.

“Thirty-nine. Forty.”

A sharp snap echoed through the sky like lightning, but without the flash. The river hissed and spat behind me.

Dante lowered Valerie to the ground, holding her up when her knees wobbled. His breathing quickened, his chest heaving with strain. Yet, at the same time, Valerie’s breathing eased, slowing into a calm rhythm that somehow matched my endless counting.

“Fifty-six. Fifty-seven.”

Valerie closed her eyes. Her cheeks still burned hot pink, but the smile that spread across on her face was peaceful instead of predatory.

Dante gently lowered Valerie to the ground, cradling her in his arms, covering her with a blanket of words.

She sighed and curled up on her side as though asleep in her bed at home instead of in a barren wasteland outside of time.

“Seventy-nine. Eighty.”

Dante dropped to his knees next to her, bracing himself with his straight arms against his thighs. He bowed his head, sweat running past his eyes like tears, dripping off his nose and chin. His shoulders shook with the deep breaths he pulled into his body.

“Eighty-eight.” I couldn’t take it anymore. “Dante!” I called. I moved to stand up, but he flung his hand out to me. His gray eyes seemed black against his unnaturally pale skin.

“Finish it!” he ordered.

“Eighty-ni . . . nine.” The words stumbled out of my mouth. “Ninety.” I wanted to go faster—I was so close to the end—but when I tried to speed up the rhythm I had already established, Dante turned those black eyes toward me and I had to stop and swallow and keep the pace he needed.

“Ninety-nine. One hundred.”

As soon as the last number left my lips, I scrambled to my feet and ran across the distance separating us.

I crashed to my knees next to Dante and wrapped my arms around him in a bone-crushing hug. “Are you all right?”

I felt Dante instantly relax in my arms as he locked his hands behind my back. He pressed his face into the curve of my neck. “Thank you,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and raw.

“What for? What did I do?”

“You trusted me,” he said.

“Of course I did. You said you needed my help.” I pulled back and touched his face and his scratched-up arms with my fingertips. “I’m not sure how my counting helped, though. What did you do?”

Dante shuddered one last time, the wounds on his arms already healing.

“I used a poem to help calm the storm in Valerie’s mind.”

“You did? Is she better?” Hope flowered in my chest and I looked down at my friend, sleeping, her face smooth and childlike.

Dante hesitated, then shook his head. “I wasn’t able to go that deep inside her mind. She fought me every step of the way as it was.”

“Is that why you had me count?”

He nodded. “Hearing you count helped me keep to the rhythm I needed in order to channel the power of the poem the way I wanted to.”

I reached out and almost brushed Valerie’s leg, but I didn’t dare touch her. I didn’t want to wake her up. “It looked like it took a lot of power.”

“It did,” Dante said, his words clipped. He wasn’t angry, though, just exhausted. “More than I thought it would. Zo’s always been strong, and his power over her has lasted a long time; it was hard to break down the walls.”

“But you’re stronger than he is, right?”

“I hope so,” he said quietly. “Today I was. But I don’t know how long the effects of the poem will last. A lot of it will depend on Valerie herself. If she wants to get better, I think I can help her. If she wants to stay with Zo . . .” He rubbed his arm across his forehead, wiping away the sweat, but leaving behind a streak of blood.

I shivered at the sight of the stark red line. It was too close to my memory of when Dante’s wound was fresh.

“What poem did you use?” I asked, hoping for a distraction from my past. “Was it the same one that you used to help me?”

Dante shook his head. “That poem only works for you. I knew Valerie had a different problem, so she needed a different poem. I had to create one for her on the spot.”

“Why wouldn’t the other poem work?”

He hesitated, and when he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly shy. “Because that one was yours; I wrote it for you.”

My mouth softened to an “Oh,” which was as far as I got before Dante leaned in and kissed me.

His lips found mine, at once soft and strong. He ran his palms over my shoulders, one hand sliding up to brace my neck, the other sliding lower to touch the small of my back. I felt the slightest flex of his muscles, and he pulled me close to his chest.

I melted into the curve of his arms, my mind alight with all that I had lost and all that I had found.

I kissed him back, tasting his sweat and blood and desire. His mouth burned with unspoken poetry.

I curled my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, holding him as close to me as I was to him. My heart beat in double time, a quick rhythm that made me think of a song, of dancing, of wings snapping open, catching that first thermal wind and soaring to uncharted heights.

Lost in the moment, I didn’t notice exactly when he loosened his hold and pulled away. I drew in a deep breath, feeling the cool air counterbalance the fire in my chest. I could still feel the heat pouring off of him.

He touched his forehead to mine. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all. He ran his fingers down the side of my arm until they came to rest in the bend of my elbow. My pulse fluttered. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“It hasn’t been that long, has it?” I blinked, trying to bring my vision back into focus. Dante’s kisses had a way of changing how I saw the world.

“Long enough. It feels like it’s been forever.” His hand dropped from my elbow to my hip.

“You would know,” I said with a smile. “Tell me, what
does
forever feel like?”

I hadn’t meant for him to answer me. Mostly I’d asked it to give me a moment to catch my breath and calm my racing heart. But Dante’s face grew thoughtful.

“It feels a little like this.” He half gestured to the barren bank that encompassed us.

“Really?” I couldn’t keep the disappointment from my voice. “I don’t want forever to be like this. I thought that going through the door a second time made things better for you. You know, so you could stay in the river and you
didn’t
have to be on the bank.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” He tilted his face upward toward the endless expanse of sky, his eyes looking at nothing. “I meant that forever feels . . . untouched. Open, all the way to the horizon. But it’s not empty like the bank. Not at all.” His voice, already soft, took on a reverence I hadn’t heard before. “Forever is stuffed full of . . . possibility. Potential. A blank canvas waiting for me to paint something, or draw something. To make. To change. Forever is where creation happens.”

A shiver ran through me, and my breath quickened at his words. “That’s beautiful,” I murmured. “I wish I could feel that too. I want to be where you are.”

“You are,” Dante said, sounding surprised by the hint of melancholy in my voice. “You’re here with me. We’ll always be together.”

I swept the bank with my gaze and bit down hard on my lip. How would it be to look out over such a wild expanse and see, not emptiness, but
everything?
I would never know. At least, not unless we found a way for me to go back through the door like Dante had. Not unless I became a Master of Time too. But in all my recent trips to the bank, neither a bridge nor a door had appeared for me. My future extended only as far as the thin boundary where the bank met the river. This place was my future—all the way to the horizon of my life.

I tried to shake off my bleak thoughts. We still had a lot of work to do—stopping Zo, saving my family, cleansing the river—and now there was Valerie to worry about as well. With her here, we would have to rethink our plans.

Valerie. I sighed. I wondered how she would react when she realized the extent of what she’d done. I had walked through the door with my eyes open; she had run through the darkness blindly, driven by rage.

“Abby?” Dante asked gently, touching my hand. “We need to go back. It’s time.”

I nodded, feeling the sharp edge of pain cut through my thoughts. I was already tired of bouncing back and forth between the river and the bank. How had Dante done it for more than a year? Or Leo, with half a millennium of experience? The weight of that thought was more than I could bear.