Shades of Darkness (28 page)

We parted ways after coming down from the roof. The ceramics studio was empty and the whole of the arts building felt like a tomb. I think we were all reeling from the weight of our discovery; we needed to process. And we artsy types often processed best on our own.

Ethan left us outside the building to go wait for Oliver's practice to finish, and Chris walked me back to my dorm before giving me an awkward hug and returning to his. There was something so distanced about that parting, yet also heavy with closeness. We'd shared something big, and that both bound the three of us together and forced walls between the spaces. I knew, as I watched Chris walk down the road to Rembrandt, that things between us would never be the same again. And seeing as things with Chris had only just begun, I had no clue what that would spell for the rest of our . . . friendship.

But I knew one thing: These suicides weren't natural. They weren't human. And I knew precisely who to talk to to figure it out. It was time to talk to Munin.

“How was dinner?” Maria asked from behind the desk.

I had to intentionally keep myself from getting defensive or wondering if she somehow knew what I'd been up to.

“Pretty good,” I said. “Cookies for dessert.”

“As always,” she said. Then another girl came in from one of the halls and asked something about the Internet, so I took the opportunity to bail.

I wandered up to my room where Elisa was hard at work on calculus and, feeling guilty for not actually getting any work done, pulled out my own academic homework. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but getting wrapped up in essays meant I didn't have room to think about Jane or the circle or the strange correlation to Brad's death. Or what I was going to do about all of it.

I knew the risk. I knew what toying with the gods would do.

But if someone was meddling in things they shouldn't, I needed to figure out how to stop them. Before they made a few deaths look like mercy.

•  •  •

Elisa left around nine to go sleep over with Cassie. She kissed me on top of the head when she went and handed me the last cookie from our old package.

“For luck,” she said with a grin, then walked out, already in her panda pajamas.

I did work for a little while longer. A part of me considered calling Ethan, but I figured he'd be busy with Oliver. Then I considered calling Chris, which was stupid because I barely knew the guy. Still, the fact that I even considered it made me feel strange. I knew I couldn't fall for him, not without spelling disaster. But a part of me—the part of me that remembered how his hand felt brushing mine, or how his eyes looked past all my walls—wanted to. It wanted to very, very badly.

I pulled out my notebook and a pencil that wasn't charcoal and left it on the shelf. Just in case my dreaming mind decided to divulge any more information. My brain was a cesspool as I lay there in the dark, staring at the shadows stretching along the walls. Jane and Mandy were both dead, and there was no way any of this was a coincidence. But how it was related to me . . .

The gods require blood.

The thought flickered through my mind, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember where I'd heard it.

Brad deserved it and you know it,
hissed my inner voice.
He raped you. He would have done it again, too. Maybe to you, maybe to someone else.

“No one deserves to die,” I whispered to the darkness. Outside the window, a raven fluttered past.

But in your eyes, in that moment, he did.
Munin's voice rang in my head like a judge's gavel. I couldn't tell if he was mocking or praising me for it.

I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the bird, but the darkness behind my eyelids was home to a far worse scene. Munin was the bastard bird of memory; his magic was far more cruel than mine. He wouldn't let me forget. Ever. And as the darkness behind my eyes closed in, the memory of the night I'd lost myself filtered back.

I was curled on the tiles of the bathroom, orange light filtering through the window. Steam clung to my naked, raw skin, made my lungs rasp. I'd spent a good thirty minutes under the scalding water, trying to get clean, trying to burn away Brad's fingertips and kisses, the scent and taste and stick of him.

It hadn't worked.

So I rocked there against the cool, slick tiles, trying to find numbness. Trying to find a place outside of myself, a place Brad couldn't violate. A place I was safe.

But I knew—I would never be safe. I would never be whole or clean again. Brad was just another reminder that I was unloved and unworthy. My friends didn't give a shit. My real parents had given me up when I was born. Even though I had a new family, they couldn't put me back together; I was broken from the start. No one could love something that was broken.

The reality was a bell that pushed the shadows away: Nothing in my life would change. I would always be Kaira the outcast, the girl who never fit in and never felt safe. Nothing I did would change it. I was damned, marked from the very start.

The only thing I could do was end it.

As I grabbed the hair shears from the vanity, I cursed Brad under my breath.

“Who's weak now?”

He told me I'd never be strong enough to get rid of him, that I'd always come crawling back, that this was all my fault. So I would make sure I never got the chance to screw up again. I would never crawl back. And I would never let someone else hurt me.

I cut long and deep. I barely felt the blade pierce my wrist; steel slid through flesh, gentle almost, a stark contrast to how Brad had entered me. The only similarity was the tears. I couldn't stop crying. By the third slice my face was as wet as my forearms. But I didn't want to risk recovery. I didn't want to show that weakness, the hope that maybe someone would rescue me. No one would rescue me. I wasn't worth rescuing. Not after what he'd done.

My hands shook. I forced myself to stay standing. The room swam around the edges, shadows shifting, sinking, sucking me under.

“This is for you,” I hissed. I stared into my eyes in the mirror as I said it, unsure if I was talking to Brad or myself. I had been weak. I'd let him do this to me. And now I'd never be weak again.

The scissors dropped from my useless fingers after the sixth cut. I braced myself against the sink, let the blood swirl down the drain. I didn't want Mom and Dad to have to clean up too much.

I kept staring at myself as the room inked out. Watched my eyes as they shuddered, as my whole body trembled. And when I couldn't stand any longer, when I felt my knees collapse and the floor rush up to hold me, I kept watching the mirror. Because the mirror wasn't showing my eyes anymore. A girl reflected back. A girl with purple eyes and raven's hair, her pale flesh glowing like a moon.

The room churned with darkness and feathers, shadows seeping into everything.

“Are you Death?” I asked. The girl was no longer in the mirror, but beside me. A large raven with white eyes perched on her shoulder. Who was larger, the raven or the girl?

“Yes,” the girl replied. “But not yours.”

I laughed then, because I was dying. Or I was dead. And this was ridiculous because death was supposed to be scary, not a naked teenage girl with a bird on her shoulder.

“Why?” she asked.

She didn't need to say more. I knew everything she meant in that word.

“Because he hurt me,” I said. I still couldn't move. My blood pooled around me and my limbs were numb. Finally. Numbness felt like heaven. And still we talked there, on the tiles of the bathroom, as the world floated orange and red and black.

“This is your revenge?” she asked. “To give in?”

“What else could I do?”

She smiled.

“What would you do? If you could do anything? Be anything?”

“I'd kill him.” The words fell from my lips like bullets. I knew, the moment I said it, that the deed was as good as done.

“As you will, so shall it be,” she said. “His death will be in your honor.”

“What's it matter?” I muttered. The room was spinning now. I tumbled down the whirlpool, a stupid grin slashed on my face. “I don't have any honor; I'm already dead.”

“Your time has not yet come,” came a voice, deep and resonant like the movements of the shadows in the darkest depths of the ocean. It wasn't the girl. It was the bird. “Your death will serve a greater purpose than this. When the gods battle, you will be their sword and shield. You were born for greater things.”

I laughed. This was hilarious. I was dying, and these hallucinations were every dream of grandeur I'd ever had. Too bad they were lies. The girl leaned down and placed one hand on each of my wrists, right over the cuts. Her hands weren't cool like porcelain. They burned.

“Blood for blood,” she said, her smile widening. “An exchange. A gift.”

“Remember what we have done for you,” Munin said. I knew his name in a flash of insight. We all knew his name. We just never remembered. “When the time comes, when we come calling, remember this exchange. Remember this power.”

Her hands were fire. They burned into my skin, rode my bones and veins like an electric current, searing my heart, my lungs, my brain. It was ecstasy.

“Who are you?” I asked her.

She didn't answer.

She clenched tighter. My wrists shattered. Vision turned white. Everything burned white and black and I was there, floating above Brad as he wandered drunkenly through the school's football field. A light coat of snow frosted the ground, everything beautiful and pastoral and perfect. He was humming to himself. I felt inside his heart; he was ecstatic. He felt like a god.

He stopped when he saw the girl. The naked girl with skin white as snow, a raven on her shoulder.

“What's . . . what's a fine piece of ass like you doing out here?” he slurred, grinning. He shambled forward, already excited. She was naked and alone and he was on fire. He'd fucked one girl already. This was his night.

She didn't say anything. Instead, she sauntered toward him, and wait, hadn't there been a bird on her shoulder earlier? He shook his head and fell to his knees. She didn't turn away from his drunkenness. She walked right up to him and knelt down, forced him to sitting. She straddled him, and it was then he realized she wasn't fully naked. She had gloves. Red gloves. And they were dripping.

Her lips found his in an instant and his heart swelled with heat. She smelled like cinder and dirt and she leaned into him, pressed him to the ground with the sheer weight of her lips and torso. He closed his eyes. He couldn't think beyond the friction of their skin, the steady beat of his blood.

He didn't see her reach above his head to trace a thick, bloody line into the snow, arching her arms out to the sides like wings, dragging my blood in a halo around them both. So much blood. How had I lost so much blood?

She bit his lower lip and tugged, causing him to gasp.

“In humility I offer this sacrifice,” she whispered heavily into his ear. He squirmed, his eyes closed. Fuck, he wanted her. He wanted her more than anything he had ever wanted in his life. And he would have her. “May his soul nourish the great Yggdrasil. Through his suffering, may the Tree grow.”

She slid her hands to his chest and arched her back, looked straight up into the sky. Straight at me.

“May his life pave the way for the Great Battle. May his sacrifice give you strength.”

Then she plunged her bloodied hands into his chest. I felt her fingers claw around his heart, stop the blood in his veins. I felt the scream die short in his lungs as his soul was sucked down, down into the roots of the Underworld. His death was swift. Painless. But his death, I knew, was just the beginning of his punishment.

She stood smoothly. No wound in his chest. Her hands still bloody.

“For you, Kaira,” she said. “This is all for you.”

Then, from the shadows, the great raven Munin flew toward her, fast as an arrow. He pierced through her chest and pain pierced through mine as both she and the bird and the football field exploded in a torrent of feathers and smoke.

I opened my eyes and was back in my dorm room. The raven still sat on the windowsill. He didn't need to show me the rest; every day was a testament to the power Munin had wielded. I rubbed my wrists. The skin was smooth, never kissed by a blade. I'd woken the next morning in my bed—no blood in the bathroom, no cuts on my skin. A bad dream. Until Mom told me Brad had been found dead on the football field.

“Why is this happening?” I whispered to the bird. To Munin's messenger. I pushed myself to sitting. “Why is he back?”

The bird didn't answer, but it didn't fly off. It cocked its head toward the pillow.

And I knew then what it wanted. I reached under and grabbed the crystal Mom had sent me. It was hot to the touch, and the crow flapped its wings the moment it saw it.

I held it out to the bird.

“Is this what you want?” I asked. “You want me to dream again.”

The raven cawed.

“Can I stop it?” I asked. “From happening again?” I thought of Ethan and Elisa and Oliver. And Chris. “Can I keep them safe?”

The bird shuffled. I pushed myself to standing and walked over to the window, my legs unsteady with the memory of memory, the weight of my past dragging my heels. I didn't want to reclaim anything. If I did, I'd have to admit that I was the one who killed Brad, that I'd wielded some great and terrible power against him.

And I'd have to admit to myself that I hadn't felt bad about it. Not once. Terrified, maybe, but only of myself. I was just as cold and ruthless as the violet-eyed girl, and that's why no one could love me. I wasn't safe.

I opened the window and held out my hand, the raven only inches from my skin, its black beak poised over my wrist. I waited for it to strike, to lash open my flesh and take back the blood that shouldn't still be pumping through my veins.