Fire and Shadows (Ashes and Ice #2) (12 page)

“
Wait... Jade... where are you going?”

The word was strained. She didn
’t want to tell me.
“Hell.”

“
What?”

“
I have to go now. Connor, if you can, if there is any hope at all... free me”

I dropped my head in my hands.
“I will.” I felt her start to pull away and I want to drag her back to me.

“
But first...”
A flare of images bloomed into my mind.

“Do you love me?” I asked. I held my breath.

Her fingertips were still tracing lines along my chest. Her lips slowly edged their way up into
a smirk
,
and I wanted to kiss her again and forget the question, but then she started to speak “Oh, Connor...I—”

I felt the image start to flicker out and I groaned aloud. She really was a miserable tease. Then new images started to spill in.

“Oh, Connor.” Jade cupped her hands on my cheeks, looking deep into my eyes, staring at me and studying my face as if she would never see me again, as if this was goodbye. “I love you.” She kissed me.

That
’s when I felt the tear as Jade pulled away from my mind. She loved me. I dumped everything into the sink and called Matt. The phone rang once. “What’s up, man?”

“
Hey, Matt. Come over. We should get an early start today.”

There was a ring at the door. I held the phone to my ear as I thought I heard Matt grumble. I reached for the door and pulled it open to see Matt beyond the threshold, phone in one hand and a pile of books in the other. He snapped his phone closed and looked at me incredulous.
“No shit, Sherlock.”

He pushed past me.
“You think after what happened last night I would sit on my ass?”

I stared at him, suddenly feeling like maybe my dreams were on broadcast to the whole damn world. My expression must not have matched what Matt was expecting. His face skewed up.
“Didn’t you hear the news?”

I shook my head.
“Dude, you’ve got to see this.” He went to the TV and clicked it on. BREAKING NEWS was flashing on every single channel.

“
What the hell is going on?”

“
Sinkholes. Sinkholes on every goddamned continent.”

I blinked...
“But does that necessarily mean...”

“
Sinkholes on every continent that happened exactly at the same time. This isn’t a coincidence.”

“
Do you think...”

“
Dammit, man,” Matt dropped all his books on our couch, “it’s already starting.”

35

JADE

We were marching
through terrain that was so cold that it made my toes feel numb. Giovanni had not spoken to me again since the morning when he yelled at me and told me to get out of my head. Apparently, whenever I connect with Connor it required so much concentration that I became blank, and obviously far off and disengaged. “What is your problem?” I said to his back. The past two hours of watching the muscle tick at his jaw and his fists clench and unclench was too much.

He didn
’t answer. He heaved in a huge sigh and kept walking.

“
You know, brooding will only take you so far in life. I know it seems appealing in literature, but in real life, if really just makes you seem like an ass.”

He whirled on me, eyes blazing
. Raising an accusatory finger at me, he and roared, “You are Soul Tied!”

I could see the rage building in him and I stepped back.

“You have been here with me on this damned Earth, yet you end up Soul Tied to
him
!”

“
What does that matter?” I said, bewildered by his anger. “He did it to make sure I was okay. To make sure I was safe!”

“
He did it to make you his!”

“
I was his already!” My yell bellowed over his.

Giovanni stepped back as if slapped. Straightening, he took a deep breath and nodded.
“I—” He stopped short, nostrils flaring. “Do you feel that?”

“
Feel what?” But then I did. Something crisp and toxic in the air. My body snapped to attention, and then I started running.

“
Jade!”

I didn
’t stop. I fought my way over the peak and skidded to a stop.

36

CONNOR

“Jade!
”
I threw
my thoughts toward her, but her mind was closed to me. Distracted.

I looked at Matt.
“She isn’t responding. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

”
We have to figure out the Unbinding and the portal.”

Matt nodded and sprawled the pages on the table.

I called Nanan.

We kept the news on, waiting and hoping that we were wrong.

37

JADE

G
iovanni grunted as
we climbed over the peak of the mountain face. He pushed harder than I did, as if Hell was rejecting his presence and he had to push to get closer. There was no sun, but we could see Hell in the moonlight. A shimmer of glamour hung around it, covering up its gaping mouth and concealing it just as any other rock face. Giovanni sneered, “I told you. Humans are just a few steps away from Hell. They could practically trip into it.” I punched his arm and glared at him, heaving in deep breaths. So was Giovanni, but his looked labored and painful. I was breathing in deeply because every fiber of my being tugged me forward.

I reached to Connor with the scene and I felt his gasp.

“Did you find it?”
Connor’s voice asked hesitantly.

“
Yes.”
Giovanni tensed beside me, watching. It must be obvious when I turn inward to interact with Connor.

“
What—what is it like?” he asked.

I stared at the landscape before me. The narrow bridge
’s icy-blue stretched across the chasm. The black depths whispered threats. Breathing in, I felt the ice caress me, singing its sweet lullaby like a siren calling me in to drown. At the end of the narrow way, the white mountain opened up into a gaping mouth. The entrance to Hell was an elaborate twenty-foot face, with menacing eyes, its mouth in a snarl, the door within the mouth. Hell was waiting to swallow us whole. Yet still, I found it beautiful, the way the moon glistened off the cool blue ice, so blue in places it even reminded me of Giovanni’s eyes. Terrible and lovely—that’s what I would have called it. Instead, I trained my thoughts on something else.

“
Like something from a nightmare,”
I said to Connor.

My fingers twitched as I stepped forward. A hand
jutted out and braced me in place. I jerked my gaze to Giovanni. His contemplative expression silenced me. His eyes drifted down my face, my neck, to my arm where my rune blazed red-hot. I swallowed hard.

Free me, Connor.
I could hear the urgency of my whisper. I disconnected from him even as I heard him trying to say something back. I pushed his mind away. I couldn’t handle any more.

Giovanni
’s face was drawn in tight. The hollows of his cheeks sullen and his skin more ashen than pale. Even his arm bracing me back seemed less certain. Then I realized that we had walked nearly all night and he had spent his sun energy. We couldn’t march into Hell with one torn half-breed and a crippled angel. “Let’s rest here tonight.”

At first, Giovanni looked like he might protest, but then he nodded once and stepped back. Sunrise was in just a couple hours and we would get the sun
’s rays perfectly from this mountaintop.

Giovanni
stripped off his pack and loosened his weapons before practically collapsing on the ground. “Are you okay?” I asked, only to be met with a quick glare. “All right, never mind.” I rolled my eyes and found a place to sit. Cold crept its way in, digging deeper. I could feel a shiver—cool, delicious, and evil—tickle my spine.

Giovanni
removed all of his weapons and set them aside. He kept a single dagger in his palm as he settled down into a resting position, breathing in and out as if there was a truck on his chest.

“
Keep with the sword by you,” I said, getting up to move further away from him. Dark thoughts grazed my mind.

“
Why?”

“
You may need it.”
To save yourself from me.

38

CONNOR

When Jade’s soul
is weakened, it will reach for yours,
Nanan had said.

I stared into the mirror and blinked. Bluish skin smeared beneath my eyes. My eyes seemed deep set, into a hollow face. I even looked skinnier. I rubbed my hand over the stubble on my jaw, feeling the roughness of it. That felt familiar, but the face that stared back at me wasn
’t. My tan skin had taken on an ashen color. The skin around my rune on my wrist looked charred, and spidery black veins whispered from under the surface curling around my neck like a collar.

Jade had pushed me out of her mind because she didn
’t want me to see. I could feel it though... the war raging inside her. Wanting and not wanting to go home. I could sense her weakening and her need to pull from her own rune growing stronger. I could also feel her tugging at me... as if not even her rune was enough. She needed more.

This was all just hours... hours from my light steps and delicious dreams. I would offer it all to her. I studied my face. The grey under the surface, the drooping eyelids, the hard swallow of my
Adam’s apple. I just didn’t know if I could offer enough.

39

JADE

I screamed. It
was a terrible,
silent exhalation. My fingers were frosty, immobile, stinging. My eyes could move, but the rest of me couldn’t. The world around me was distorted and glassy, a frigid cage that held me suspended and frozen in place. I was reaching... reaching out and I could only think it was because I was reaching for someone, desperate and pleading to make the cold stop. It didn’t. I was frozen in a wall of ice like the damned, but mother told me... What had she told me? That this wasn’t punishment. It was protection. From what?

The cracking of the ice around me set
my nerves on edge. Someone was disturbing the silence, the immobility. There was a shattering, a hammering, a cracking in the world around me. I could feel the pressure; feel the movement.

Someone was breaking me free. I looked through the glassy haze, the tinge of grey-blue. A figure in white robes banged on my prison, chipping the ice away. I could feel the air coming closer
; I could sense that I was so close to being liberated. My hand felt the sensation of air first... the tremble and aliveness of it. My fingers were numb and tingling. I wiggled them. Wiggled them. I nearly erupted in laughter, in tears, but the ice kept it frozen out of me. I felt warm skin touch my own. Fingers curled around mine, and a kiss, a chaste, delicate kiss was placed on the back of my hand. The heat of it laced its way up my arm, into me. It was like a promise, a promise that soon the rest of me would be free too. The ice clattered in a tinkling sound to the crystalline floor and more of me emerged, more of me was free, more of me was newly born. As the ice fell away, a huge chuck of it fell, and for the first time in so long, the whole of me felt the world. My
chest spasmed for air, to suck it in, to feel it course through me because I was terrified I would be robbed of it again. I fell forward, weak and unable to feel my muscles. I fell into solid arms. I grabbed at his robes to pull myself upright.

He was warm
; he chased the coldness away. His wrinkled faced was tired, his silver white hair a mess around his face. He searched my eyes, holding me close. “I am Lynx. And I am here to save you.”

A weak laugh fell from my lips,
“Well, obviously.” My voice was a croaking sound. I fell back against his chest. In one swift motion, he picked me up, and just as I heard a roar from the entrance to the icy cavern, just as my eyes flicked up to see her familiar, angry grey eyes glaring at us, a wave of heat encircled us and sparks blurred my vision. We were falling, but Lynx held me. He didn’t let me go.

I woke up, gasping for air and trembling. I could feel the cold reaching for me... I could almost still feel the ice in my throat... but I wasn’t there. I was sitting upright by a campfire, with an angel just on the other side of it watching me with his blue cobalt eyes.

“
I—I had a bad dream”

“
I assumed that.”

“
Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“
Seeing as to how well received that was last time, I decided not to.”

I stared at him
; all the while, the images of the dream flitted into my head. “It—it actually wasn’t a bad dream.” I wanted to share it with someone, but didn’t want to ask.

Giovanni stared into the fire, seemingly uninterested. He didn
’t answer.

I blinked at him. Of course
, he wouldn’t ask. I shifted my focus towards the flame.

“
That’s good,” he said, surprising me.

I snapped my gaze to him.
“What?”

“
That’s good that it wasn’t a bad dream. It seems like you have had many bad dreams recently.”

“
Yes. That’s true.” I looked into the fire. “I dreamt I was frozen in a wall of ice.”

“
That isn’t a bad dream?”

“
Well, it started out bad, but then... someone came. Lynx came and rescued me.”

Giovanni sat up straight.
“How did he save you?”

“
He shattered the ice around me, pulled me out, and held me. And just as Lilith saw us, we disappeared into sparks and darkness.”

Giovanni
’s jaw looked unhinged. The entirety of him was uncertain and flustered.

“
Stupid, I know, but—”

“
No, no it isn’t stupid.” Giovanni stood up and lunged forward, tripping—tripping?—and falling in front of me. His jaw was set in a stern line; his eyes had turned serious. I flinched as he laced his fingers in mine.

I stuttered, confused and anxious about his intense expression.
“Wh—what do you mean?”

“
Jade. Jade—that is exactly what had happened. That is how Lynx saved you.” His eyes were so blue, so focused. On me.

I blinked at him
. “Are you saying...” My words trailed off, eaten up by the crickets and my thoughts.

He nodded once.
“It wasn’t a dream, Jade. It was a memory.” His expression turned urgent, almost excited. “Jade... Jade you are remembering.”

My thoughts scrambled. It couldn
’t be... I couldn’t be remembering. Not after searching for so long, so long for something to cling to and then grasping nothing. Then a memory, a clear and crisp memory, simply materializes in the night, in a dream? I almost denied it, almost told Giovanni not to be ridiculous, but then I noticed something within his eyes. The harsh intensity of them giving way to something softer, something more full and open.

“
I. Am. Remembering,” I said it as declaration to myself. I said it as something that we both could hope for.

And for the first time, Giovanni lips spread wide into a smile—every feature alight with some new thrumming energy—and I was surprised when a small part of me startled awake just to stare at it.