Fractured Souls(89)

“So what you’re saying,” Laylen says, looking up, and the lack of emotion on his face is frightening, “is that I was changed into a fucking monster on purpose—that Stephan had me turned?”
Pressing her lips together, my mom nods. “Stephan has been planning for years, ever since he found out the portal could be opened… He’s been looking for a way to free Malefiscus almost forever because of the mark. No one knew about his mark, though, because his parents cut it off and tried to keep it hidden. I didn’t even know he had it until it was too late.” She swallows hard. “Stephan is a descendent of Malefiscus, but I’m not sure how it’s possible.”
“Why have all the Keepers thought the mark died with Malefiscus?” Alex asks.
“Because there are no records saying he had any offspring to pass the mark to,” my mother replies gravely.
“Maybe it just appeared on him,” I say. “Like it did on Malefiscus. I mean, marks have to start from somewhere.”
“No, he has the bloodline,” my mother insists. “I heard him talking about it right before he… he threw me into the lake.”
“Well then, Demetrius is a descendant of him, too,” I tell her. “I saw it in a vision.”
“I know,” she says and I wonder just how much she does know, not to mention how she learned about it. How did she find all this out? “But the question is: how? We need to find out so we know what we’re going up against.” Her blue eyes momentarily flick to Alex. “And we need to find out how the marks surface without Stephan putting it on them.”
Alex slips his hand out of mine and starts anxiously tapping his foot against the floor. “I still don’t get it, though. You say all of us play a part in this, but play a part in what exactly? Opening the portal?”
My mom nods. “And freeing Malefiscus,” she explains. “He’s been trapped in the portal since the sentencing.”
“But I thought he died.” I scoot forward in the chair. “I thought he was hung.”
She shakes her head. “Not a lot of people know this, but during Malefiscus’s reign, it wasn’t just the Death Walkers who were terrorizing people. There were Witches, Vampires, Fey, and even a couple of Foreseers who had joined his reign of terror because Malefiscus has Fey, Witch, Vampire, and Foreseer blood in him,” she says, recapping most of what Nicholas has already told me. “When his brother, Hektor, finally captured Malefiscus, the Keepers had to come up with a way to make his followers surrender with him and be free of their Mark of Evil, so they put Malefiscus in a portal and sealed it with the blood of three individuals; a Keeper who also was a Vampire, a Keeper who was also a Witch, and a Keeper who was also a Faerie. That way the Fey, Witches, and Vampires who followed Malefiscus would be bound to the portal as well, without the Keepers having to track them all down.” She gazes up at the luminous moon. “The final step was to seal the portal with the energy of a fallen star.”
“So there was another fallen star once?” I ask, glancing at Alex. He meets my eyes and the electricity ignites between us before we can even take our next breath. There’s so much power in it—in us—and it frightens me how much I hate it and like it at the same time. “
My mother yanks her attention off the moon and forces it back onto us. “No. The star’s energy you and Alex carry is the same one as the Keepers used those hundreds of years ago. After they sealed the portal, they hid it because no one knew how to destroy it… The star was also never supposed to be put in any Keepers.” She pauses, considering something. “That’s one of the things that I’ve never have been able to figure out. Why Stephan split the star and put its energy in you two.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “But what I do know, is that in order for Stephan to be able to open the portal, he needs his Vampire, his Witch, and his Faerie that also have Keeper blood in them, so he created them—created you two.” She looks from Aislin to Laylen. “Then he got his hands on the star, and for some reason he put it in you and Alex.”
I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, my guts splattered all over the pavement, my body mangled. I’d never realized how easy it was to bear the burden of carrying the star in me, but now Alex, Aislin, and Laylen are carrying their own burdens and I realize that things just got a hell of a lot more complicated.
“So if he opens the portal, then what happens?” I ask, sounding strangled. “Malefiscus is freed, along with a shit load of Death Walkers and the whole damn world turns to ice?”#p#分页标题#e#