Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (9 page)

             
Then maybe he really didn’t know what my question had been about, and the runes were trying to protect me from him with such an open straightforward message?...

             
“Will I die?” I went on directly and an almost imperceptible smile appeared on Cardew’s lips before he mercilessly extinguished it.

             
This made all my blood freeze, and I shivered with the penetrating cold it suddenly filled me with.

             
“All mortals tend to die at some point,” he started philosophically as though to calm me down, but – because of the warning or simply my mistrust, I sensed some hidden demonic satisfaction in his intonation. “Just that fulfilling the desire from your question can make your fatal moment come much earlier.”

             
I stared insistently at him, but his face was composed and inexpressive – the perfect mask of calmness – and I couldn’t suppose what emotions he was covering up.

             
If there existed such at all...

             
“You’re joking!” I forced out a naturally sounding giggle and got to my feet while he was gathering the obsidian stones back in the satin pouch.

             
“I’m not,” Cardew sounded terrifyingly earnest again, as he got up and the two of us started walking back towards the car. “I had to warn you as you are in some kind of danger.”

             
‘You are the danger!’ I bit my lips not to shout.

             
“So be careful when you’re alone,” he went on seriously, his dark gray eyes elusively content with an unknown fact. “When I’m here you’re safe but –”

             
“But you’re my enemy, after all,” I reminded and got into the car as he gentlemanly held the door opened. “I can’t rely on an enemy to keep me safe.”

             
Already sitting behind the steering wheel, Cardew smiled mysteriously while starting the engine.

             
“Enemies like me and you, lovely, make the best of friends,” he repeated and his attractive but somehow frightening smile flashed into the thickening darkness to which the overcast heavens were giving the faint shade of obscurity.

             
‘But the worst of lovers,’ I secretly added in my mind while we were returning to the town without speaking too much.

             
And a single repeating word wouldn’t let go of my mind, even when I got home and did my best to relax and finally liberate myself from its obsessive presence.

             
Destruction, destruction...

                                          The dull annoying ache and its sudden appearance made me wake up completely and chased all sleepiness away from my mind at once, urging me to open my eyes widely and have a look around: I had most probably tossed aside in my dream, as I had fallen off my bed and was lying on the cold hostile floor, my whole back pulsating in unpleasantly warm pain.

             
I had had a nightmare again – but recalling it would have made me cheer if I wasn’t so exhausted – because it hadn’t been one of those mysterious suspense-filled visions of ancient rites of offerings, not the repetitive dreams of the victim in white and the ominous black executioner, but something far more standard, and – more importantly – something far less appalling.

             
In this dream, I had been ceaselessly wandering around in some ghostly moonlit ruins that suspiciously resembled the place where Cardew had taken me, just that my imagination had generously spread them on far vaster an area, and had reinforced the effect of utter isolation with the total darkness ruling the landscape, just like in the last agonizing hours before the outburst of a new dawn, and the fact that I was completely alone there, in the spooky deserted place.

             
Why was it so distinctly reminding me of a graveyard?...

             
Hundreds and hundreds of ill-boding dead ancient stones were spread unevenly around me in confusing, irrational shapes in which I could see no pure limpid meaning, and nothing was moving at all, frozen in icy stiffness – there was not even wind – as though everything was benumbed...

             
Or deadened.

             
Directed by the unexplained desperate need to look for something which was nowhere around to be found, I was not giving up my mission I didn’t know anything about, and this alive ardent craving was keeping me walking forward tirelessly, on and on, through the almost-ultimate darkness, and even though I was feeling safe, that unidentified longing burning inside me wasn’t letting me relax even for a moment.

             
Then, a bluish-silver moonbeam had darted upon me from the graphite-gray heavens, and it had been just then when I realized I was wearing a long frost-white dress...

             
Just like the sacrificed girl!

             
It had been this sudden realization that had startled me and urged me to impulsively fling myself aside, and thus end up onto the floor, but, as I was already awake and rationally thinking about it, I was seeing no clear connection between it and the threatening nightmare anymore. White was simply a colour – there were millions of objects and clothes in it, and not everyone wearing them was becoming the innocent helpless victim of a strange offering in a probably past century – I was almost completely sure that its appearance in my dream had been no more than a coincidence.

             
But only almost sure...

             
Trying to concentrate on something else and forget about those unfounded fears, I let my thoughts roam freely in whichever direction they happened to drift, but that resulted in Cardew’s face appearing brightly in my eager imagination, his passionate ash-gray eyes flashing with dark satisfaction like heated steel ready to attack.

             
Ashes… The only trace which the unstoppably fierce outburst of mighty fire would leave behind…

             
‘Don’t think about this person!’ I ordered to myself and folded my arms on my chest as if to demonstrate decisiveness, although that was a purely defensive gesture. ‘He means your death, didn’t you see the rune?! –’

             
‘Besides, you’re over-reacting,’ I went on with the tirade against myself and got up to get dressed, as the alarm clock had mercilessly started ringing. ‘Cardew is just a normal boy – yeah, he may think himself of a god or anything else he wishes – but he is simply an ordinary boy and no supernatural powers help him – it’s all a game of your own imagination!’

             
The lecture in my favourite subject distracted me a bit, and I felt far calmer after it, when I was leaving the hall together with the other students from my course; in the merry splash of sunlight breaking through the pale fragile clouds, all nightmares felt so distant that I could swear they didn’t exist at all.

             
And – when I noticed Cardew who was negligently leaning against a low iron fence as though he was just enjoying the pleasantly azure weather – I didn’t feel menaced or intimidated in any way, so I calmly walked towards him and smiled not without demonstrative mistrust.

             
“Don’t tell me that it’s not me who you’re waiting for,” I jokingly threatened him with my forefinger as I stopped in front of him with silent tempting chuckle. “This will get me furious.”

             
“I’ll try to find you another thing to go berserk at if you’d enjoy it so much, lovely,” Cardew smiled mysteriously and gave me a misleadingly innocent wink; was it because the daylight and the many people around were giving me the deceptive feeling of security, or just as his presence was triggering the powerful desire for rivalry inside me, but I was irrepressibly eager to stay beside him for much more time than an average negligent talk would acceptably take.

             
“Do you fancy going out for a drink tonight?” he suggested with a maddening but disarmingly charming, self-confident tone, as though I had already accepted willingly. “Something strong?”

             
“No way!” I grinned evilly, immensely content to see mild surprise in his eyes, and gave a tint of mock-cruelty to my fast glimpse at him. “I don’t drink alcohol and I hate compromising.”

             
Cardew’s eyes narrowed with joking threat, “And you don’t trust me enough to let yourself relax and partially lessen your self-control while I’m around.”

             
“How perfectly right you are!” I laughed and tossed my hair behind my shoulder with a gesture full of proud independence; widened in the light, his irises looked lighter than usual, and their misleadingly angelic, alluring tenderness was strongly dragging me closer, but I didn’t yield and my tone remained adamant, “Can’t we have coffee instead?”

             
Cardew didn’t hesitate at all whether to grab the opportunity or not, “We can have the world if you wish for it,” he smiled leniently but the serious penetrating black that flashed in his steely eyes was confirming his words in such a convincing way that it couldn’t be neglected light-heartedly as merely a part of the joke. “Let it be coffee then.”

             
“Oh, you will compromise for me?” my eyes grinned with the playful desire to tease him out of his perfect frosted control or make him leave a long awkward pause in the talk if he didn’t have a ready reply, but he proved to be an equal rival of mine in such verbal duels.

             
“Let us call it mutual agreement,” the boy winked at me patronizingly, the quiet timbre of his voice reinforcing the intoxication in the softly tense atmosphere.

             
Gods, could anyone refuse anything to him!?...

             
Pleased, I giggled lightly and fixed my stare unbendingly on his in a real fight to test his strength for real, secretly hoping that he would prove himself powerful enough to be my equal. “You don’t like backing down, do you?”

             
“Just as little as you do,” Cardew chuckled lightly, his eagerness to defeat me in the game of dominance clearly reflected in his dark-gray eyes.

             
To defeat me… or just to relish every single moment of our battle…

             
“Be careful,” I bent dangerously close to him and lowered my tone to quiet purring; I myself was surprised by the extent to which I was enjoying this playing. “A conflict between strong characters is possible.”

             
“More than possible – it’s simply inevitable,” he calmly added with an appreciative smirk and his fingers almost imperceptibly ran from my elbow to the shoulder in such an amazingly thrilling caress that I had to urge myself to cover up the slight but unstoppable shiver it flashed through me; delicately catching a single long curl from my hair, he slowly and gently twisted it around his fingers, and allowed himself to move his hypnotizing gaze away from me for a moment so as to enjoy the joyful dance of the light in the dark intense shades of the ringlet. “Tonight at five?”

             
“Six,” I protested just for the sake of the argument itself.

             
“Six thirty?” he offered unexpectedly and I blinked, surprised by his inconsistent suggestion.

             
“I expected to hear five thirty,” I remarked the obvious, and he grinned, glad that he had managed to escape the stereotypes. “Do you have any other plans?”

             
“No, that was simple logic,” Cardew chuckled with contentment and I shrugged innocently. “You can’t have expected to be home thirty minutes after we go out, so if you’re fine with six, six thirty would be alright, too – I’m just checking if you’re really busy or simply stubborn.”

             
“Simply stubborn. Six o’clock.”