An Eternity of Dead Sun (An Eternity of Eclipse Novel Book 2) (20 page)

Father Baek smiled. “I wish you the best of luck sorting all of that out. We only get one family in life; if you can find it in your heart to forgive them and let bygones be bygones, then I hope you find that peace.”

Eclipse smirked almost too sardonically. “You don’t know my family. They’re not good people.”

“Everyone has the potential to be better.”

“Not my family,” Eclipse dismissed before diplomatically adding, “but thank you for your words of wisdom nonetheless, Pops. It is greatly appreciated.”

Father Baek nodded. His warm eyes assessed us. As if something had clicked for him, he asked. “You two aren’t really married, are you?”

“Not even close,” Eclipse and I admitted without hesitation.

“Gracie here is not even that fond of me,” Eclipse continued by himself. “In her eyes, the only things going for me are my ungodly good looks and my insanely perfect physique.”

“And the only reason he’s here with me is because he wants to sleep with me,” I added, glaring at Eclipse. I resented him for calling out my superficiality.

Father Baek laughed as a few cars started filing in. It was Sunday morning, thereby meaning that our private time with him was about to end.

He shook his head, giving us a playful, chiding look. “You two have gotten too comfortable with me.”

Eclipse chuckled, taking inventory of how busy the church was about to become. “Get back inside, Pops. We don’t want you to get sick.” He smiled cordially at a church helper in the lot before giving Father Baek a respectful incline of the head. “Thank you again. If you ever stop by Seoul, you have to visit us.”

“I definitely will.”

“Thank you again, Father,” I voiced, my heart wrenching at the thought of leaving him. This trip had been a terrifying one, and he was the only thing that made it bearable. “We’ll come visit again soon.”

“Travel safely,” he said, holding both of our hands. “And make sure to keep in touch. If you need anything, I’m always here.”

Bestowing him with another respectful bow, Eclipse and I watched as Father Baek waved goodbye to us before he made his way back into the cathedral. Once he was safely inside, Eclipse’s carefree face changed into a serious one.

Without warning, he began to whisper an incantation over the steps of the cathedral.

“What are you doing?” I asked, hurrying close to him with my backpack hiked on my shoulders. I smiled meekly at the cars that were beginning to pile into the parking lot, hoping that no one would see what Eclipse was doing. “I thought you had no powers left?”

“I have enough to do this,” he responded after he said his last incantation, his face becoming paler.

“What did you just do?” I inquired, racing down the steps with him.

“Protecting him,” Eclipse shared, his voice also surprised that he had done this. We hurried over the grassy slope to continue our trek home. “I erased our presence from there. Just in case anyone tries to track us, they won’t be able to bother him and interrogate him for answers.”

I nodded in approval, finding it ironic that Eclipse was voluntarily taking care of a priest of all people. There was no need for me to voice it because I knew he also found irony of everything that happened in this city.

As we made our way back into town where we had planned on taking a bus home, I could no longer allow the wonderful bond we created with Father Baek to overshadow the important discovery we unearthed.

“What does this mean, Eclipse?” I inquired, feeling the cold breeze pick up around us. Goose bumps appeared all over my body. “You told me that a Source is supposed to be born like any other human. Does dying and coming back to life thirteen weeks later, and then being born into the world thirteen days afterwards sound normal to you?”

“Far from it,” he answered distractedly, his weary face looking up at the skies. Dark clouds started to form over us in larger numbers. One storm may have passed, but another one was about to begin.

“Why do you keep looking at the sky?” I asked on impulse, sensing a strange omen from the weather.

Eclipse stiffened uneasily. As the wind picked up like an ocean of waves, he grabbed my hand and hurried me down the grass. Just then, the Heavens opened up and rain started to descend from the sky.

“I revealed myself when I killed all those Demons,” he said quickly, his pace hastening. There was an emerging urgency in his voice. “Now it has not only been announced that a powerful Demon is with a Source, but it has also been announced that a powerful Demon is trying to
convert
a Source.”

“It has been announced that a powerful Demon is trying to convert me?” I voiced, terror whizzing inside me. A big gust of wind began to whip at us, throwing leaves in our faces. In a panic, we continued to run down the road while my mind spun in a paranoid circle. Fear undulated in my next words. “What do we do?”

“We have to leave here,” he provided tightly. “We need to haul ass back to Seoul.
Now
.”

I belatedly took note that his face was becoming paler and paler by the second. Before I could ask about it, I felt his grip on me loosen and then—

“Augh!”

He collapsed to the ground with a groan, clutching onto his stomach in pain. I kneeled on the ground, trying to help him when an earsplitting cough emitted from the depths of his chest. From there, nothing but blood poured out from his mouth.  

“Eclipse!” I shouted, the panic within me morphing into hysteria. I stared at him with shock painted on my face.

His body was ice cold and his face was completely drained of color.

I took off my scarf and started to wipe the blood away from his mouth.

“This is because you used the last of your powers a second ago, isn’t it?” I asked as he hissed in pain. Anxiety rummaged through me. I didn’t know what to do and seeing him like this made me panic more. “Eclipse,” I started, my entire body shaking. “W-we have to get you help. This is really serious. I really think you need help.”

“No. No, I’m fine, Gracie.”

Even though he smiled lightly to assure me that he was fine, I didn’t feel reassured. He inhaled deeply to summon the last of his energy. After a full minute passed, he got up, wiped the blood away from his mouth, and began to walk, holding me alongside him.

“We have to go,” he continued. “We have to go right now.”

“But—”

“I’m fine,” he assured again, holding my hand once we reached the town’s bus stop. “I’m fine, Teacup. It’s just exhaustion. I’ll rest on the trip back, but for now, we have to leave this place.”

I wanted to object, but I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a sick Demon. Feeling utterly helpless, I stupidly bobbed my head and agreed. Together, we jumped onto the bus. To keep him warm, I covered spare jackets over him while we sat in the back of the bus. The wheels of the bus moved, taking us away from Serenity and taking us back home.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked uncertainly after having him drink some water to hydrate his throat.

Eclipse nodded, his eyes closing in exhaustion. “I’m fine,” he said again, his voice drowsy. “I’ll be fine once we get back home, Teacup.”

“Okay . . .”  

I could feel the weight of his blood on my scarf, haunting me as the bus drove through the rainy countryside. Eclipse had fallen asleep, and I was lost in my own world of fear. After several hours, the fear within me worsened when I saw that there was still blood dripping from the side of his mouth.

Biting my lower lip, I began to dab at it.

I shakily touched his forehead and nearly reeled back in shock. It was ice cold.

I didn’t know what came over me, but at that instant, I was desperate to wake him up. I no longer wanted him to sleep.

“Eclipse?” I called gently, touching his cheek for him to wake up.  

When he didn’t respond, I felt a pit of dread form in my stomach. Voice trembling, I called out his name again. “Eclipse?”

My once paralyzed heart began to pound wildly.

Why wasn’t he waking up?

I started to lightly slap his cheek to get him to open his eyes.

“Eclipse?!” I shouted, my voice rising exponentially.

Everyone on the bus was looking at us now, but I no longer cared. The only thing that mattered to me was Eclipse and the fact that he wasn’t waking up.

“Eclipse, what are you doing? Wake up! Wake up!” I started to scream out.

In the background, the people on the bus started to panic with me. I could hear them tell the bus driver to hurry and drive to a hospital—that someone had passed out on the bus.

“Eclipse.” I framed his cold face with my hands when the bus changed directions and started to head for a hospital. “Eclipse, wake up. Please wake up!”

The entire time as the bus sped towards the hospital, the entire time as some of the commuters started to push everyone away to give Eclipse some air, and the entire time as I shouted for him to wake up, Eclipse remained as he was: asleep, unaware, and completely unresponsive.

“I live in a world where my name reduces others to their knees”
14
: Hibernation

Everything felt like a blur after we stopped at the hospital.

In a crazy frenzy, the paramedics rushed onto the bus to carry Eclipse out, placed him on a stretcher, and wheeled him into the hospital.

With panic still surging through me, I tried to fight past the nurses to run into the emergency room to be with Eclipse, but I was held back. Although they kept me from him, I could hear the muffled and confused voices coming out of the room.

No one knew what was wrong with him.

At first, I thought they would find the stitches on him and attribute his comatose state to his injury. However, his arm was completely healed, offering no starting point for them to make their diagnosis. They checked everything. His vitals were fine, his heart was fine, and his entire body appeared to be in healthy condition. In theory, he was as healthy as any human being could be.

The doctors were mystified.

No one understood why Eclipse was unresponsive and they had absolutely no idea how to help him. The hospital had no explanation for me. The best they could do was to keep him in the hospital and run more tests on him.

I felt lightheaded as all of this took place.

It was surreal sitting there as he lay unconscious on the hospital bed.

“Eclipse, what’s wrong with you?” I found myself voicing softly. I stood over his bed, my eyes moving over his pale face. “Why won’t you wake up?”

Eclipse had always been the one with the answers. Now that he was unconscious, I had never felt more lost. In the real world, I would know how to get myself out of this mess. Sadly, in this biblical world, I felt like a child thrown into the wild without any directions on how to survive. My only ticket to survival was my Guardian, and he was lying dormant on a hospital bed.

“Eclipse, you have to wake up soon,” I continued desperately, shaking him. “I still have to go to school on Tuesday. I have a lot of projects to turn in and I can’t cut class.”

It was a stupid thing to say because my last concern was school, but I didn’t know what else to say to wake him up.

I can’t believe this is happening
, I miserably thought when he didn’t even flutter an eyelash at my comment.

The small part of me that was human was worried for him, but the bigger part—the sadistic part—was livid with him. How could he do this to me? How could he put me in this situation?

“Some Guardian Demon you are,” I bit out thoughtlessly, not really meaning those spiteful words.

I began to aimlessly walk around the hospital room, my mind swirling as I pondered over my quandary. I cursed at myself for allowing us to be here in the first place. I was so careless. I should have done everything in my power to keep them from bringing him to the hospital. Now we were not only screwed because Eclipse was in a comatose state, but also because we had gotten ourselves wrapped in another mess. How was I going to get him out of this hospital when he was completely unconscious?

Damn it.

How could I be so stupid?

What could possibly make me think that our doctors could help cure a Demon’s ailments? Modern medicine was not evolved enough for an immortal being like Eclipse. He needed something else. He needed something rare—something of biblical proportions.

My heart hammered and I could hear my blood flow through my veins.

My blood.

The single drop that saved that Demon I attacked . . .

Realization struck me. I whipped around to face Eclipse. I recalled him telling me that Royal Demons had no use for a Source’s blood, but what if he was wrong? What if my blood could help him?

Desperate to do something—no matter how impossible the chance—I extracted a pocketknife from his backpack. With a deep inhalation to quell my frayed nerves, I slit the tip of my left index finger. A small drop of blood was instantly produced from the cut. With my breath hilted in my chest, I hurried over to his bedside, leaned forward, and carefully tipped my finger over his mouth.

I watched as my blood dripped in between his lips and . . . nothing.

The agonizingly long minutes slipped by and nothing happened.

Then, my eyes bulged when I saw that the blood had begun to seep
out
from the side of his mouth. It was as if his body was rejecting it entirely.

Panic exploded through me.

No! I needed him to drink it!

Desperation blinding my senses, I lifted my fingers again to give him more of my blood. If I injected a large portion of my blood into his mouth, then there was a chance that at least one single drop would make it through his system and— 

“You should be more careful with where you flaunt that blood of yours,” warned a stoic voice from behind me. “You don’t know if a Demon will be close by to take advantage of your idiocy.”

I whipped around and found Lyna standing beside the window that overlooked the hospital gardens. She was wearing another one of her black dresses and she looked more pissed than ever.

My eyes bloomed with hope. Despite fearing her company, I also found comfort in her presence. I had been stuck in the biblical world with an unconscious Demon and it was a welcome relief to be in the company of someone else who was from the biblical world—someone else who could help fix all of this.

In that desperate moment, Lyna couldn’t have appeared more like an Angel to me.

The Demon’s cold gray eyes ran over me for a full second before she shifted her attention to Eclipse. “Hasn’t he told you that your blood will bear no effect on him?”

“I was just—”

“You thought it would be one of those fictional miracles where you’d be able to cure him?” she interjected coolly. The inflection in her voice swam with mockery.

“He won’t wake up,” I said numbly, taking no offense to the manner in which she was speaking to me. I was too distracted by my concern for Eclipse. “I don’t know what to do.” My eyes landed on his sleeping state. “The doctors can’t fathom what could be wrong with him.”

Lyna’s lips curled up tersely. To her, I was stating the obvious. “Of course they wouldn’t be able to.”

Undeterred by her abrasive tone, I continued to stare at her, my pale face imploring her for assistance. This was far beyond my area of expertise; it was far beyond my level of understanding.

“What’s wrong with him, Lyna? Why won’t he wake up? Why is he like this?”

A dreary exhalation escaped from her as she folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes scrutinized me, challenging me to use my own deductive reasoning skills to figure out what happened to Eclipse.

“What happened to his father?” she drawled in boredom.

I tilted my head at her, my brows inverting down. I regarded Eclipse and then turned back to her. “Eclipse is hibernating?”

She blinked in confirmation.

“For extremely powerful Demons, when their powers are at an absolute minimum, their bodies protect themselves by shutting down and going into hibernation mode. Under the hibernation state, the last percentage of their power is preserved. It is only in this state that their powers can be renewed.” She let out a sigh. “It should be noted that Demons rarely wake up from hibernation unless they have enough recuperated power to do so. Due largely to the fact that Eclipse is a Dimmed Demon, it is no surprise that he has fallen into hibernation mode. It is also no surprise that it’ll take him millenniums to wake up, if he ever does.”

Her judgmental eyes burned a hole into me.

“Which brings the question back to
you
, you useless doormat. Why the hell were you trying to stick your blood into him? Didn’t you stop to consider that other Demons could be close by? That they could sense your blood and not only come to kill you, but Eclipse as well? Did you not consider how much danger you’ve put him in?”

Shame for my own carelessness engulfed me.

I was so blinded by my desperation to wake him up that I hadn’t even considered this threat—that some Demon could’ve been close by, sensed my blood, and came for us. With Eclipse unable to defend himself, we were sitting ducks.

“I—”

“Ah yes, your silly human logic was just hoping for a miracle, correct?” she sneered again. Another icy smirk curved on her mouth. “Surely, Eclipse must’ve impressed onto you that your blood is useless to someone like him?”

“He did, but I was desperate,” I explained shakily. “I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to do something to help—”

“Or is your puny human brain too small to comprehend such a simple fact?” 

That insult was the final straw. I felt like a volcano, bottling aggression up and taking in all her insults. In real life, I would be too spineless to stand up to her. But this wasn’t real life. This was another reality and the sadist within me had had it with this bitch.

She called me a doormat.

I would show her what kind of doormat I was.

Before I could register what had happened, my legs took off. Instead of standing beside Eclipse, I was in front of Lyna, standing on a chair with the pocketknife pressed firmly against her neck. There was an indentation in the area where the blade touched her neck. One simple thrust from me and her throat would slice apart at my will.

“Listen up, you goddamn witch,” I snapped, sick of her superiority complex.

I was already mentally fucked up with all that had transpired. I didn’t need her to screw with me even further.

I glared down at her, my hand steady as I held the knife to her throat.

“I’ve just had three of the most awful days of my life. I have fought Demons left and right, and I’ve had to confront a goddamn past that I’ve tried to avoid all my life. I am pissed, exhausted, and livid beyond imagination. It doesn’t help that the only one who can help me find the missing piece of my soul is in a fucking coma.”

I pressed the knife closer to her neck, the razor already cutting through a layer of flesh. My gaze on her was lethal and merciless.

“I don’t care if you’re more powerful than me. If you continue to piss me off, then I will fight you and I will make sure to do a number on you before you kill me. My sadism may be a flaw in my human world, but in your biblical world, I know it’s one of the biggest advantages I could have. Now stop taunting me. I may be soft-spoken and polite, but you know that I wouldn’t hesitate to stab you in the throat. Does your puny, immortal-sized brain comprehend
that
?”

I swallowed tightly, sparing an anxious glance at Eclipse.

“Now help me help him,” I pleaded, cooling down and coming back to reason. As liberating as it felt to tell her off, she remained my only hope. I didn’t want to alienate her entirely. So with an even and polite voice, I lowered the knife, stepped down from the chair, and diplomatically added, “Please.”

The whole time as I held my knife to her throat, Lyna’s face was void of emotions. I could’ve sworn she was ready to rip my head off for having the audacity to threaten her. To my surprise, instead of killing me, an impressed smirk slid across her face.

“Took you long enough to show your sadistic side, little human,” she stated in an entertained voice. The small cut on her neck healed instantly. She appraised me like I was an enigma—like there was more to me than what met the eyes.

I inhaled deeply, maintaining composure. My rashness and stupidity aside, I still had more important matters to focus on. “Can you help him, Lyna?”

She smiled coolly, her face becoming serious as well. Although her superiority complex was far from gone, at least my status with her went up a notch with the unexpected bitch-fit I threw.

“I can’t help him directly because I’m not capable of doing so,” she began airily, casting a glance at Eclipse before locking eyes with me. “But I can help you indirectly by sending you to the very place where you can find help: Sloth’s dorm in Seoul. If there’s anyone who can help Eclipse, it’s his brother.”

I nodded encouragingly, urging her to do it. I became confused when she remained placid, not even moving a muscle to help. I peered at her strangely before noticing the devious smile edged against her red lips.

I knew that smile.

It was a calculating one, it was a cunning one, and it was a scheming one. It was one that wanted an exchange for my desperation.

“How desperate are you for him to wake up?”

I scrutinized her with disgust. I already knew what she wanted from me. “You want to make a
deal
with me?”

Lyna was unfazed by the revulsion on my face. She tipped her head at me, her features free of decipherable emotions.

“Do you want to help him now or do you want to wait several millenniums for him to stir from his sleep?” She evaluated his hibernating state. “Better hurry, Grace. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to wake him up.”

I bit my lower lip, glancing at Eclipse before staring up at her in helplessness. The answer was simple to me. My veil lifted on my birthday, which was coming up soon. I needed him with me now.