Lumen (27 page)

“Please,” Enek begged. “Don’t do it, Daniel. Don’t.”

“I’m—I’m—what is this?” Daniel asked, shaking his head.

Reuben shot Daniel a sideways glance and a smile broke out of the side of his mouth. “You want someone else?”

“No!”

“Daniel,” Reuben said, resting a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “You’re going to give us it. Your essence, your being, and we can do this the hard way, or the increasingly hard way.” Reuben’s hold on Daniel’s shoulder tightened as he dug his fingers into the blades.

There was a shared gasp among the students, but they quickly quieted. Daniel gritted his teeth under the pain, but his face remained stern as he looked around at all the eyes on him, the eyes shaded beneath the dark of the room.

“Take it?”

“
Get out of there, now!
” Jac shouted, making Daniel wince towards his left ear. “
Okay, I’m coming down there and I’m getting you out! Just don’t give him anything!
”

“You want my power?” Daniel mumbled.

“Yes! I want it. You 
don’t 
deserve it, and you know why? Because you’re scum, you’re a scummy Lowerlands being, and you don’t 
deserve 
it.” Reuben said, his fingers becoming numb in Daniel’s shoulder blades.

The room stayed completely silent. If only eyes could talk, they’d have a thousand words, and pictures to paint. Nobody was enjoying this, well; nobody was enjoying this more than Reuben.

“No.” Daniel shrugged Reuben’s hand off his shoulder and it fell limp by his side.

Reuben sniggered, and then a couple of pupils laughed along. “We’ll see about that, shall we?” he said, and then snapped his fingers. “Chey.”

Enek was pulled backed through the ring to make room for Chey, she had something in her hand, it was a piece of rope. She was pulling at it, and then the light hit it, the something that was kicking and punching to stay put. It had a gag in its mouth, and its hair was all over the place like a rabid animal.

“Mia,” Daniel said, looking from the girl being dragged into the centre of the ring, and up to Chey, and then back to Reuben’s snarling face.

“She’ll be fine,” Reuben said, “as long as you do one little favour for me.”

Mia stopped wriggling and writhing, trying to attack the people who were pushing her, and she let it happen. She let herself go into the ring, there she made eye contact with Daniel, and they exchanged watery-eyed glances.

“Okay,” Daniel said. “What do you want?” the feeling of having power, and having never used it settled with Daniel, not only did he regret not doing anything with his power, but now he’d never be able to do anything. He gulped down hard in his throat and a warm tear washed down his cheek.

“
I summon you! Help us! You can’t let this go through. I know you can’t. I know!
” Jac shouted at the top of his lungs, but it was true, somewhere in the abyss of his brain he’d figured it out, no Luminary could be left without the protection of another Luminary.

Daniel fell to the ground from the force of Jac’s voice, he yelped and threw his hands over his ears.

“Drama? Everyone loves a bit of drama.” Reuben laughed.

“Stop!” Jac blasted the door off with a bolt of flames. The door was charred and in a pile of ash as he walked in. “You have to deal with this, before you dare to take from Daniel,” Jac said, pointing to himself.

“Got yourself a protective guardian there,” Reuben sniggered. “But I’ve dealt with this little shit before.”

“That was before,” Jac said.

“Before what… you became mister high and mighty?” Reuben laughed, and the students sniggered out of nervousness.

Jac glanced from Reuben and then to Daniel on the floor, cradling over Mia. “Daniel, you don’t have to do anything that he says. Mia will be fine.”

“Will she now?” Reuben said.

Chey pounced out of the crowd and snatched Mia up off the ground, wielding a golden knife up at her neck. “Do as Mr Croft has instructed, and she lives.”

“How?” Daniel asked, sitting up on the heels of his feet. “How do I give you it?”

“Open your raw power up, and just will it over,” Reuben replied, grinning.

The room felt like it was about to drop a thousand feet below the ground. Stomachs knotted, faces scrunched up, and teeth clenched together. One by one people left the alcove under the school, but nobody noticed, not even when there were only a few people left.

“He can’t!” a sharp roar broke through, and a tall man fell from the ceiling, hitting the ground with his fist. “Now, Reuben, you know he can’t just do it, right. You need to have some of his blood.”

Reuben’s grin broadened. “Two Luminaries, and a guardian, what do I owe this pleasure?” he glanced up at the man, his face hidden by a thin purple hood from his robe, and then he looked at Daniel. “I have that. Right here.” He picked a small vial of Daniel’s blood from his chest pocket.

“You’re prepared,” he said.

“And you’re not.” He nodded to Chey and she let go of Mia, and manoeuvred over to the man, holding the knife to his neck.

Jac watched in awe as the man took Chey’s arm and flipped her over his shoulder into the wall behind Jac. They all turned to watch as her back cracked as it hit the wall.

Another attack flew at the man’s face, and he grabbed the wrist and pulled the boy closer, it was Jasper. “Getting boys to fight for you. You’re a weak man, Reuben. Weak.” He said, pushed Jasper away by the fist.

“Would a weak man do this?” Reuben asked, holding a knife to Mia’s stomach. The man took a step towards him, and the knife went in.

Daniel’s eyes phased in and out, looking at Mia’s body fall into Reuben’s arms. She tried to grab at the knife, but her arms fell limp at her side. There were no vocal chords available to voice what had just happened.

“There’s the incentive, Daniel, now, give me it!” Daniel watched as Reuben’s lips moved, and ended in a slack-jawed snigger.

Daniel shook his head and stood, glaring at Reuben as his eyes turned red. “No,” he said, and closed his eyes. A tear dropped from his eyelashes. “You better leave, I was going to… really! You can forget it now.”

Reuben stood, letting Mia’s body flop to the floor.

The man looked at Daniel, and took a step back; he rested a hand on his shoulder, and nudged him forward. “You can take him.”

“Stay away from my—” Jasper started, and Jac punched him in his face, letting him settle into a slumber.

“I have this,” Reuben said, wiggling the blood in front of Daniel. “One drip on my tongue, and I’m untouchable.”

“Shut up!”

“It’s true. Ask your little guardian friend, and big scary Luminary, they’ll tell you it’s true.”

“We can’t intervene if he takes it,” the man said. “You need to become what you are. As I should not… I cannot intervene either way.” He pushed a card into Daniel’s pocket before his figure glimmered out of the room.

“No, you can’t leave,” Jac said, reaching out to him and falling in his wake.

Reuben uncapped the vial, the pop shook Daniel from his core.

“I’ll do it, you know,” he said.

A dark figure propped up from behind Reuben and whacked him on his head. It was Enek, his hands still tied together, and the dirty towel now around his neck. He tried to stand, and fell into a limp.

“Always knew you were special,” he said.

To one side there was Reuben with the vial, still clutched between his fingers, and to the other, Mia. He looked at her lifeless body, the knife still inside her stomach.

“You can save her,” Enek said, “my lord—my Luminary.”

“Take her to your mum!” Jac said, rushing around Daniel to get to Mia.

“I can deal with Reuben,” Enek said.

“I can’t…” Daniel said, shrugging at Jac’s grasp. “She’s dead.”

“Daniel!” Jac grabbed a hold of his arm. “She’s not.”

Enek nodded, looking over the bodies, groaning on the floor. “You best be off, they’ll wake, and he’s in no form to fight now,” he said, nodding at Jac.

“I’ll take this before we go. I don’t want anything to happen now,” Jac said, snatching the vial out of Reuben’s hands.

“Safe journey.”

Daniel glanced up at the bruised mess Enek had become, and then back down to Mia’s white body. He closed his eyes, and thought of home, so much so that he could smell the meat cooking on the stove, and the warmth of his bed; the feeling that he never wanted to be roused from.

Chapter Thirty-Three

He was home. Standing in the middle of the living room, standing over Jac and Mia, just like it had been when he left the alcove, except the living was much brighter, and Mia looked almost white as the clouds.

“Daniel!” his mother shouted, running up to her son and wrapping her arms around him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he said, crying into his mum’s arms.

“Why, what’s going on?” she asked, taking a step back from her son. “She has a knife in her.” She gulped.

“It’s my fault.”

Jac shook his head. “Roan. It isn’t. Really. Reuben did this.”

“Does he know then?” she asked, biting the inside of her lip.

Jac nodded. “I told him, it didn’t go all that well.”

“I just froze. I could have stopped him. I know I could,” Daniel said, wiping at his eyes. “Can you help her?”

“Of course I can, son. You just go and lie down, get some rest.”

Daniel nodded and dawdled up the stairs to his room.

When they heard his bedroom door shut, Roan rushed into the kitchen and she pulled out her blue box.

“Should I take the knife out?”

“No, not yet,” she said, kneeling down beside Mia. “I’m going to cut myself, and when I say, that’s when you pull the knife out.” She picked a small knife from her box and held it to her palm.

“No. I have some of Daniel’s blood. There’s more chance of that healing her than your blood. Isn’t there?”

Roan smiled, her hands shaking as she put the knife away. “Yeah. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s my fault all of this, isn’t it? You wanted to teach him, and I wanted him to have better… even though now that you would have been the better teacher.”

“No, Roan. It’s fine. She’s dying, so we need to save her.” Jac opened his hand up from around the vial he’d been pressing so hard inside his palm. Jac looked down at Mia, she was turning blue at the lips, and her open eyes looked like they were about to roll into the back of her head.

Jac nodded at Roan. “Now?” she asked, and then pulled the knife from Mia’s stomach.

Mia twitched inwardly, but Jac straightened her out and poured half of the vial of blood inside the open cut, and then he parted her lips and let the rest of it drop down her throat.

“What will happen to her?” Roan asked, shaking with the knife in her hand.

“She’ll heal, her memory will be foggy. But she’ll be attached to Daniel,” Jac gulped. “Well, at least she still lives, right?” he looked up at Roan and she nodded in agreement.

“Should I stitch her up?”

“She should heal on her own.”

Daniel peered around the corner from the bottom of the stairwell. “Is she going to live?” he asked, taking a seat on the bottom step.

“She’s breathing,” his mother said.

“And she twitched when we removed the knife, so that’s a positive sign.”

“I’m going to have to take her home before she wakes up,” Daniel said, throwing his hands up to his head.

“Where does she live?”

“I don’t know the name, but I know it’s huge. It’s not like any city on the island.”

“You best take her soon, son, before she wakes. I’ll pack you a bag of food and stuff; I don’t want you dying out there, especially not from starvation.”

Daniel almost smiled. “I’m a Luminary,” he said. “I think I have to start my journey now.”

Daniel had only ever seen the inside of Mia’s room once, and that was in a dream. He glanced at Jac, surprised at how Jac got all three of them safely from Templar Island and into her room in the space of a minute.

“Help me put her in bed,” Jac said, as Daniel glanced around the room, staring at the posters on her walls.

“Yeah sure,” he said.

They knelt beside her; one at either side, Jac shoved his hands under her back and lifted from her chest to her head. Daniel carried the rest. They placed her on her bed, precariously, trying not to tear at the new skin which had started to form over her wound.

“No going back,” Daniel sighed. “No home, or anything.”

“We do have some stuff, like that kingdom, castle thing I was telling you about. You have that. And I’m sure that with a little practice we can learn how to survive of our energies.”

“Well, your optimism sure hasn’t died out.”

“And I can see that yours has.”

“I nearly died today!” Daniel said, gritting his teeth

“But you didn’t, and if it wasn’t for me… you would have died, or worse, given your Luminary energy to Reuben.”

“To save her. It’s my fault she ended up there in the first place, so I had to do something. I couldn’t just let her die.”

Jac rolled his eyes. “Well you kind of did,” he said. “You froze.”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he said, feeling his hands warm up, and then he punched Jac, and a fistful of fear pounded into the side of Jac’s face.

Jac stumbled, he rubbed the side of his jaw and then smiled. “But you didn’t freeze then. You know you can do it.”

“Jac, you piss me off sometimes!”

“Sometimes I need to, and if you’d have done that to Reuben you could have cemented your place among some hard-core Luminary figures. It’s not often people see them, let alone get to meet them, so you needed to tell them that you’re a Luminary not to be messed with.”

“There are others, right?”

“Yeah, others that we’ll have to find, I almost doubted that any of them would answer my plea to save you. Luckily one of them stepped up, it means they know about you, and they’ll probably know more about it than I do.”

“We can start looking for them tomorrow.”

Epilogue

Mia sobbed into her pillow, clutching at her stomach and muffling her cries inside the cocoon of her duvet. The faint glimpses of what had happened the night before were burnt behind her eyes, and nothing could unsee or feel what she’d been through.