The Gateway Through Which They Came (25 page)

My body rejects her, pushing me back into the stone walls. Chills prickle my skin so violently, I feel like my whole body could burst. I gather my thoughts, as her sobs erupt through the uncomfortably silent tomb.

“I don’t… I don’t understand,” I force out.

“Please,” she begs, reaching out for me. I back away. Her expression is wounded, but I can’t seem to care. I’m too busy absorbing the brunt of the blow. This is a nightmare.

I hold up a hand in mock surrender, forcing her away.

“I didn’t want this to happen, Aiden,” she pleads. The tears continue to rush down her pale face, when she adds, “I didn’t ask to be a part of this.”

The words push my thoughts aside. I’m all ears.

Now that she has my attention, she continues. “My parents were brainwashed. How could no one see that?” She turns away and paces the length of the stone slab.

With her safely out of reach, I lower my hand to my side. As I watch her, I recall the way her parents shut everyone out, shunning themselves. Even from my mother who’d been there for their wedding. Koren’s birth. All of it. How
did
we not see it?

“My father is a member of the Brethren of Shadows,” she goes on. “They’ve corrupted him to resurrect the Dark Priest.”

“The Dark Priest? How do you—?”

“Just listen!” Her breathing is deep and heavy as she reveals every detail. All I can do is pray whatever she’s about to tell me can’t possibly be any worse. Not that there’s a possibility of it getting better.

“Another member of the Brethren manipulated him. I don’t know who. I just know one day, out of the blue, they weren’t my parents anymore. I mean…” She’s still pacing and it’s making me nauseous. “They started talking about how there was evil in the world that the church had been hiding from us. That all our friends and everyone we knew were part of some plan to tear us apart. It’s like this guy convinced them to believe that nothing is as it seems.”

“But your parents were always so…”

“Normal. Yeah, I know.” She stops to face me when she says this, but continues back on her path. “I didn’t get it at first. I mean, I didn’t believe what they were saying. No one was trying to hurt us, but the more they kept saying it, the more I was convinced they had to be right. So I—”

“Started pulling away?” I finish for her.

My body is still locked in place. I’m unable to move, or do anything, besides observe her.

She pauses again, her body now facing me. “Yeah. I didn’t know what else to do. It’s like everything I knew was a lie. Does that make sense?”

Does it ever.

“I get it,” I say.

What I don’t get is who started this. The man from the Brethren. Could this be the same guy sending Bleeders my way?

“Is that why you pulled away from me?” I have to ask. I
need
to hear that it’s not because of the rumors. Or that she was embarrassed by me. I have to know I mean more to her than that.

“Aiden,” she says, “you were the last person I wanted to stay away from. But my parents… they said things about you.”

“Like what?” I’m defensive now.

“Well,” her eyes shoot downward, “they said you weren’t good for me.”

“Not good for you?” This shocks my body back to life. Now I’m the one who’s pacing. “What did I do? I’m just—I never did anything.”

She steps toward me this time. Her hand lifts as if to comfort me, but it only hovers for a moment before she lowers it. “You have to understand.”

I stop pacing and pivot toward her. Ready to listen.

Koren runs her hand through her hair and says, “We thought
you
were the one trying to hurt us. They said—”

“Me?” I say a little too loud. It’s hard biting back the anger I feel at this.

She rushes forward, her cold hands cupping my cheeks. Her eyes look deep into mine. “Whoever manipulated my parents made them believe that you’re the one we should be afraid of. That people like you were what was wrong with this world. I didn’t want believe it, so I came to you for the truth. I needed to hear it from you that what they said was a lie.”

I place my hands over hers, and lift them from my face. With her hands in mine, I lower them between us and squeeze tight.

“You wanted me to tell you the truth. About what I am,” I say. “And I let you down.”

Her face is so close to mine in this morbid crypt. If we weren’t standing in the middle of a cemetery, I would probably kiss her. Even thinking that in this moment feels incredibly inappropriate.

“I wanted you to say something that would prove them wrong. That you were… you. Nothing more. But I could see it in your eyes that night. The way you hid your secret from me. And it made everything they said that much more true. That if I didn’t even know my best friend—someone I’d know my entire life—than maybe I didn’t know anything at all.”

“And so you left with them.”

“Yes.”

“Because of me.” Guilt slams into me at this.

“No, Aiden,” she says, “because I didn’t know what was real. And neither did my parents.”

“Did?”

Koren nods, her eyes begin to fill with tears. She closes them tight, forcing the tears out.

When she opens them again, they set on me, and I search her face for what’s she’s not saying.

“Where are your parents, Koren?”

She releases my hands from hers and walks to the back of the crypt, leaning on the stone wall.

“When I left with my parents that night, we left everything behind. I was so distraught with what happened between you and me, that as we drove out of town, I don’t even remember falling asleep.”

I watch silently as she crosses her arms over her chest, like she’s trying to hold herself together.

“When I woke up, everything was dark. I could hear my parents talking and all I can remember is that they thought they were saving me.”

Dumbfounded, I shake my head. Saving her from what?

Koren uncrosses her arms to wipe the tears from her face, and crosses them back again. The late afternoon sun shining in is beginning to cast strange shadows throughout the room, and I’m fully aware that we’ve been here way too long. I need to leave before the Bleeders find me. Considering they’ve been traveling in groups lately, I’m not doing myself any favors by standing here.

“What did they do to you?”

Koren lifts her head, the movement slow and weak.

“The man convinced them that in order to save me, they…” Her chin begins to tremble, her voice breaking into sobs. “They thought they were saving me, but really, they made me a sacrifice without even knowing it.”

My skin goes cold.

“They sacrificed—” I blink with astonishment.

The words don’t even register. It’s too crazy. Too unbelievable to think her parents could be capable of such a thing.

I step forward but stop myself. Running my hands through my hair, I try to digest everything she’s said. How could I be so blind? All those times I’d imagined Koren alone in the dark, it’s as if I knew even then. Her ratted hair, the sunken eyes, and the dullness of her skin. I was right that day I saw her in the plaza. Koren’s been a Bleeder all along.

She pushes herself from the wall and does what I couldn’t, because I’m too stunned to move. Finding her way to me, she stays just out of reach. My heart ripples through my chest with everything she’s told me. I’m so angry. So broken. Not just for me, but for her.

“You can’t be—It’s not possible.”

It’s such a stupid thing to say, since, clearly, it is possible. But how?

Koren attempts to touch me, but I flinch. I don’t mean to. It’s just… too unreal.

She pulls back, her eyes peering downward with hurt.

“There’s a Gateway in this town that will lead the others here. The Order of Shadows,” she says. “All they needed was a sacrifice to call the Dark Priest back. He’s the only one powerful enough to resurrect the Order. It’s what the man who brainwashed my parents had planned all along. To sacrifice me to get close to you. You’re a Mortal Gateway, Aiden. The last thing the Brethren needs to bring them back.”

At the mention of the Dark Priest, I picture Redhead’s vision. The man in the cloak rising from the ground.

“It’s time, Aiden.”

This is what he meant. Time for me to bring back the Order.

Redhead knew. She knew what she was setting me up for. Their resurrection.

My gaze meets Koren’s in the nearing dark. The stone walls accentuate the cold.

I’m overwhelmed by everything she’s telling me, and how everything that’s happened in the past week has finally clicked in place. And if the Gateways I’ve been sensing are centuries-old like Father Martin said, making them immortal—inhuman, even—then the Mortal Gateway must be one of each. A mortal and immortal. A human and a Gateway.

Someone like me.

I somehow manage to stash the mention of the Order in my mind to report back to Father Martin later.

“Gateways don’t bring back the dead,” I tell her. At least this is one thing I know for sure. I think.

She keeps her distance when she says, “The Dark Priest is why I’m here. He wanted me to manipulate you. To take you to him, but I can’t do it, Aiden. I can’t sacrifice you like my parents did to me.” Her voice continues to shake as she speaks. “I won’t do this to you. I just won’t.”

I can’t take it anymore. Closing the gap between us, I slip my fingers through her hair and use my thumbs to wipe the remnants of tears from her cheeks.

“What does he want me to do? Tell me how I can fix this.”

“You can’t,” she whispers, her eyes filled with shame. “If you bring back the Order, they’ll destroy everything. He killed my parents.
Killed
them. I can’t imagine what else he’s capable of with all that power.”

Her face constricts with pain as if the very memory of her parents tears her apart.

I rest my forehead against hers. Her lips a breath away from mine.

“He told me he’d bring them back if I brought him you. But all I can think to do is save you from yourself. I can’t bear the thought of bringing my parents back into this. I’ve been staying here because it’s the one place he can’t go.”

“Why can’t he?”

She lifts her head from mine and points to the markings along the coffin. “Because when he was buried, they bound him to this tomb. Once he comes in here, he won’t be able to leave. My sacrifice was able to resurrect him, but that only means he’s vulnerable.”

I drop my hands from her face, running them down her arms. I look to the slab of stone and ask, “Who put him here?”

“People like you,” she answers.

My mind replays everything that has occurred from her arrival until now. From the shadow on the track, the abundance of Bleeders, and the monstrous infection consuming me. I’m beginning to understand what kept Koren from the school chapel.

I glance back to her. “He’s controlling you, isn’t he?” I don’t know how else to explain what’s happening to her. How she’s even here with me now.

“No,” she says. “His energy feeds into me, gives me life. That’s only a sliver of what he can do. But the longer I’m away from him, the longer you’re just outside his reach, he drains me.”

“Torturing you,” I choke out.

“Yes.”

It’s why Koren’s appearance has changed so drastically in such a short amount of time. She’s a trapped soul inside a body that should no longer exist.

“You’re not supposed to be here, Koren.” An ache in my chest burns through me when I speak the words, like a dull knife dissecting my heart. “You should go. I can help you.” I weave my fingers through hers.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “It’s already started.” She lifts a hand and taps her index finger against her ear. “I can hear them.”

This hits me harder than anything else. I’ve only confronted Dark Ones after they’ve already turned, going Dark Side before I had the chance to save them. That’s if they wanted saving. But seeing Koren now, slowly turning, I know it’s only a matter of time until she gives in. The sight of her guts me, knowing that she’s suffering. Never did I expect to be standing here with her, contemplating whether or not to let her go. My best friend. My heart.

As if reading my thoughts, she says, “Not yet.”

I hate the part of me that sags with relief at these words.

Koren’s fading blue eyes stare into mine, and in that moment, I forget everything. I have her in my arms and hers lock around my waist. Her body quivers against me as if the fear she’d been fighting all this time has finally burst its way out. All I can do is hold her as tight as I possibly can, and hope that it’s enough.

An ache in my chest swells with it all. If I’d only said it sooner. If I’d only told her how much I loved her when it really mattered. If only the one thing separating our lives now wasn’t her unbeating heart against mine.