Crossed (6 page)

The chanting starts again, but soft now and more lyrical, like a lullaby. It seems to enfold us in its embrace. The music swells around us, comforting, gentle. The chalk lines on the floor begin to glow a pale, white-rimmed blue. Glowing dust lifts from the lines and streams towards our joined hands where our blood mingles. It infiltrates our blood, making it glow, too, then it flows up the bloody rivulets until it reaches our wounds.

Then it slips inside.

I scream.

It flares through my veins, it delves into my heart and into my head. I feel it searching me, ferreting out my secrets, devouring truths I won’t even admit to myself. It’s like a possession, but not, because it is so wholly
not human
.

Then it flies from me, taking part of me with it, and sinks into Armand.

“. . . bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh . . .” The chanting swells around us, the words suddenly recognizable, though I know it’s not in English. It’s deafening, drowning out my screams. It drowns out everything and suddenly I see myself as just a point, a point in the brilliant black of the sky. A web appears between the little flames, ropes made of the pale blue stardust, of varying lengths and thicknesses, connecting the dots. Connecting
me
. I’m just a tiny axis in the web of life around me.

And there next to me, bound to me, tied by an unbreakable rope is Armand.

The chanting reaches a triumphant crescendo, and the volume of it no longer hurts, because I am a part of it. I rise with it, I swell with it, I shatter into the dust, into the stars. I skate along the night sky, I sizzle along the taught ropes connecting us all. I’m spread among them, a little piece, a drop in the ocean of all who are and all who have been. I feel a thousand strangers.

I feel a half-dozen loved ones.

All of us are tied up in this brilliant tapestry of stardust and blood. I want to soar forever, free of my body, free of everything but my connections to everything. And there, soaring with me, is Armand. We’re counterpoints in an eternal song.

Then it stops.

The stars blink out of existence. There a violent rushing sensation, as if the bottom of the world fell out, then the black of the endless night is replaced with the jarring starkness of the fluorescent classroom lighting.

I don’t know when I fell to the ground, but I’m unmistakably looking up, a cluster of Crusaders bent over me. Jo’s face is in the forefront and it takes me a minute to realize she’s speaking. Her mouth is making the same shapes over and over again. The ringing finally clears from ears and I can make it out. “It’s over, Meda. It’s over.” She grasps me by the arm and hauls me to my feet. We both stagger, my weight too much for her unsteady stance.

She tugs me from the circle, and arm protectively curled around me. I’m still wobbly, still disoriented.

I was among the stars and now I’m in a classroom, albeit a nice one, in northern Maine. It’s a bit of a come-down.

The other Crusaders, reassured that I survived, have turned their attention elsewhere. They all watch Armand who stands in the center of the chalk circle. He looks as shaky as I feel. He has his arms braced on the altar, without which he would no doubt collapse.

The Crusaders watch him, waiting for some evidence that something has changed. They want some proof that this crazy plan might actually work. When Armand does nothing, Puchard, the only one within the circle with him, takes a shuffling step toward him.

The sound of the footsteps seems to wake Armand from his trance, and his eyes alight on the holy blade that remains on the altar. Wonderingly, he stretches out one finger towards it. He stops just an inch shy of touching it, and everyone holds their breath. Armand sets his jaw and with a sudden movement he presses his finger to the hilt. He shudders, but doesn’t pull back. He keeps his finger on the blade, then looks up, his nostrils flaring. “It’s weaker. The demons’ hold on me,” he says, and there’s an exhalation and exchanged grins around the room.

This could work.

Armand’s attention goes back to the blade, an expression of furious concentration and grim determination on his face. He wraps his whole hand around the hilt and lifts it, sweat breaking on his brow.

He looks at Puchard and presses the blade to the tender skin on the underside of his forearm. His hand shakes but his elation is unmistakable. “Next,” he orders, and the Crusaders can’t help it. They cheer.

Puchard holds up his hands for silence and starts chanting again, and this time the Crusaders chant back. This is the part where Armand swears his blood oaths to the Crusaders, a safeguard the Crusaders want imposed before they grant him the Inheritance.

Puchard pauses in his chant and every Crusader in the room but me fills the silence he left with a reply chant. Puchard picks up again, and his voice is stronger, the rhythm more driving and primitive. The Crusaders in the room join in, chanting a higher and softer chorus. Then Puchard lifts his hands and the chanting halts. There’s an expectancy in the sudden silence.

“Do you swear loyalty to the Crusaders?” His voice has the emotionless, even cadence of a memorized script.

“I swear,” Armand says, strain evident in his voice as he holds the blade. Then with a quick, hard movement he adds a red slice on his arm just a breath higher than the one I had put there minutes before.

“Do you swear loyalty to the Crusaders’ cause?”

“I swear.” Another red stripe marks his arm, fresh rivulets of blood joining those already on his skin.

More oaths and more bloody red gashes mark Armand’s arm. They seek to bind him as tightly as they can. Finally, when his arm is as striped as a prison uniform, Puchard lifts his hands and four Crusaders, the Sarge and Graff among them, step forward. Obviously choreographed beforehand, they surround him, the Sarge taking his shoulders, and push him to his knees. The next portion of the ceremony is the Inheritance ceremony, and it hurts like ever-loving hell. The Crusaders are there to pin him down so he won’t break contact. When I underwent the spell I had to fight to stay still as my every instinct screamed to escape the pain of the magic, so the pinning is actually a courtesy.

“Wait,” Armand says suddenly, jerking from the Sarge’s grasp. The Crusaders look suddenly wary, and Graff looks meaningfully at the Crusader across from him, who pulls her knife.

Armand ignores them and, from his position kneeling on the floor, he looks through the crowd until he finds me, pressed against the wall with Jo at my side. His eyes latch onto mine and there is something in them I can’t understand, a gleam that defies analysis.

“I swear,” he says, his husky voice somehow loud in the tense silence of the room. He brings the blade to his arm. “I swear to tell Meda Melange only the
truth
.”

What?

He smiles faintly. “Unless, of course, she doesn’t want to hear it.” Before anyone can react, he drags the knife across his skin and the blood swells along with a murmur through the room. Once done, Armand lifts his arms like a caught criminal in surrender, his eyes still on me, and drops the holy blade with a clatter as the Crusaders seize his arms. They press him to the floor. Their gazes dart back and forth between each other, their expressions calculating as they try to understand what this means and how they can use it.

I’m wondering the same thing. Then something obvious occurs to me. I shove through the crowd, elbowing people out of my way. “Why?” I demand, reaching the edge.

After all, he has to tell me the truth.

The Crusaders, also interested in his answer, lessen the pressure they’re exerting on his arms.

“Because it’s what you wanted,” he says, that same indecipherable expression in his eyes. “The
truth
.”

I eye him. Just because he swore not to lie doesn’t mean he has to tell me the whole truth.

The shrewd look in my eye only makes him smile. “Because it’s what
I
want.” He’s jeering at me, and, somehow, jeering at himself.

“Why?” I ask again. I don’t understand. I’m too emotionally raw from my flight among the stars, from the bond I still feel throbbing between us, to work out why he would do this. Why he would give away this valuable weapon that he wields so well.

“Because my dishonesty is a barrier between us. I would have it removed.”

Somehow his answer makes me feel better. The rationality of it. The cool calculation that’s so Armand, puts the earth back under my feet.

Before I can think of some response, the Crusaders push Armand the rest of the way to the ground.

Crusader Puchard kneels next to him, and I’m jostled as the Crusaders fight for a better view. Puchard places his hands on Armand, and the other Crusaders lean in, putting all their weight into keep him pinned. Then Puchard starts muttering the spell and Armand seizes as pain shoots through his nerve endings.

The Crusader Inheritance spell consists of six parts. The first lasts eight minutes and was the most agonizing eight minutes of my life. Each portion hurts half as much and lasts half as long. The sight of Armand writhing causes the memory to crawl along my own flesh and I find goose bumps rising in remembered pain. Judging by the way the other Crusaders shift uneasily, they, too, share the not-so-pleasant memory. A few even wince in sympathy.

Puchard releases his grip at the end of the first segment and Armand pants, gasping for air. He takes a few deep, quavering breaths, then he grits his teeth. He looks at Puchard. “Again.”

Puchard doesn’t need to be asked twice. His withered, old-man hands press against Armand’s chest. Armand bites back a scream.

The process repeats again and again, winding itself down. But as Armand’s pain lessens, the tension in the room heightens. Jo’s grip on my arm tightens as we near the end. This is it. This is when we find out if the lunatic plan works, if my sacrifice was worth it.

If we still have a chance to save the world.

As Puchard winds down to the last few seconds not a single person in the room draws breath. We lean in, a single organism with one burning question.

Did it work?

BOOM. The room explodes into golden light. I’m rocked back, tossed from my feet. Blinded, deafened, ears ringing. I push to my knees. Jo is next to me, as are the other Crusaders, the look on their faces answering my question. This is
not
normal. The boom of the explosion is replaced by horrific screams. I blink, squinting into the golden glow, looking for the source.

And find Armand.

Writhing, screaming, patches of gold expanding and shrinking across his skin. The edges of each growth glow a brilliant red. Super-heated. He screams again and arches off the floor as another patch explodes across his skin, blinding me again. The scent of burning flesh fills the air. The veins stand out in his neck and forehead, and he stares unseeing at the ceiling, too caught in his pain to pay attention to what’s happening around him.

Crusader Puchard hovers over him, squinting in the bright light, his hands fluttering uselessly. The Sarge, shading her eyes with her forearm, gestures at Arman’s writhing form and asks Puchard something I can’t hear over the inhuman screams. I fight my way to my feet and into the circle, I’m about to fling myself to Armand’s side, when he looks up and sees me. There’s something there, under his mask of agony, and I know what it is.

And even now I won’t let him have his victory. So I stop. I stop deliberately out of reach, and look at Puchard.

“It appears,” Puchard shouts over Armand, “that there’s some conflict between the demonic connection and the Inheritance.”

I see the Sarge’s mouth form something that looks suspiciously like, “No shit, Sherlock,” but, again, the sound is drowned out by Armand’s screams. She asks Puchard something else I can’t make out, but the helpless way Puchard lifts his hands says it all.

Through all of this Graff looks down at Armand with an expression of fury, as if Armand’s to blame for his disappointment. He turns suddenly. “We need to get what we can from him . . . while we can.” His voice is loud in the sudden silence as Armand takes a gasp of air.

Apparently my empty wedding vows are also to be short-lived ones.

“Let’s get him to the hospital wing, at least. Maybe they have something…” The Sarge waves hopelessly at Armand’s rigid, jerking form. She points at two Crusaders, clearly ordering them to carry him, and they start toward the door. My feet stay rooted to the ground.

I love screams. All screams. Bloodcurdling, terrified screams. Squealing, pained screams. Harsh, moaning screams ripped from raw throats that thought they could scream no more. The trailing scream that crumbles into a death rattle. I love the way they ring in my ears, the way they vibrate in the points of my teeth. The way the Hunger roars in harmony. If I were a musician, my instrument would be the highest pitches of the human voice box. I’d line up my victims and pluck their vocal cords like a street musician stroking the lip of a dozen water glasses.

But I find I don’t care for the sound of Armand’s screams.

A weakness that reiterates that the damned spot is not nearly as out as I’d like.

I should go with them. I should demand to be present as they pump him, screaming, for information about the demons, but the thought fills me with distaste. A better person would probably overcome her Achilles’s heel to do what needs to be done. But I’ve never aspired to better-personhood and, anyway, I don’t recall it working out so well for Achilles. Besides I’d already decided to avoid him. What better time to start than the present?