“Did you tell Tejus everything?” I asked Zerus.
“I did. My brother seems different now,” he mused.
“Which one?”
“Tejus,” he replied, looking at me like I was an idiot. “He is different. Kinder, perhaps. More in control of his temper and his rage…I wonder if in the past I judged him too harshly.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t that concerned with Zerus’s thoughts on his brother—more with whether or not Tejus was going to survive the battle, and my sister and family along with him.
“Have you heard anything from Jenus?” I pressed.
“No.” The sentry shook his head. “He has been silent, I’m afraid.”
“I’m going to see if Jenney’s with the villagers,” Julian said, walking away from us with his shoulders hunched. Not knowing what else to do, I ran after my friend, Yelena joining us.
“Julian, wait!” I called out.
He stopped, his brown eyes despondent.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t think we should give up hope,” I said. “I know the Oracle’s talking nonsense, but new beginnings sound good, right? I mean, she’s not saying we’re doomed or anything.”
“No,” Julian replied slowly, “but new beginnings can mean a lot of things. Not necessarily good. We’re standing in what’s basically a wasteland while everyone goes off to fight—despite the fact that the last battle failed. Has it occurred to you what will happen if GASP fails this time? If the entity gets back here before they do, or the shadow? We’ll all be dead. And in the meantime, we have nothing to do but wait, once again.”
Julian had a point.
I slumped down onto the sand, suddenly feeling dejected.
“Do you think we should go after them?” I asked. “We can probably get to Earth—maybe Aisha will take us to where the battle’s happening?”
“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” Julian replied, kicking a stone.
“Then we can only do the next right thing,” Yelena replied, her hands on her hips. “If we’re the last to stand against the entity, then we need to make sure we’re ready. There’s a bunch of old Viking weapons over by the water. There’s the three of us, Zerus, two powerful jinn and the only creature in the entire universe that’s defeated the entity in the past! Why are you being such wimps? We have an army!”
“Not to mention the villagers,” I added, my mind coming alive at her speech. Some of them were pretty fierce.
“Exactly!” Yelena cried.
Okay. This was good. I looked over at Julian, who smiled reluctantly.
“Let’s get some weapons then,” he agreed.
If the battle was going to come to us, we’d be ready.
Ash
The black tar-like liquid flew around the barrier. I raised my sword, hoping to cut it down in its tracks, but as I cried out to Ruby, telling her to stand back, the tar slid past my blade. The last thing I saw was a black emptiness shooting toward my face—too fast for me to do anything other than cry out.
I felt it enter me. Its cold thickness slid down my throat, drowning me, filling my lungs as on reflex I inhaled it urgently, desperate for air. It blinded me, my eyes wide open in horror but seeing a void of nothingness—as if the very thing that was attacking me was nothing.
The liquid flooded through my body, reaching every vein and nerve, restricting all my senses. From a distance, I could hear the screams of Ruby and Hazel, the bellow of rage from Tejus, but none of it seemed to matter. Their pain and shock were happening far, far away—too many dimensions away to mean anything to me.
Welcome me.
The voice purred inside me, its whisper curling inside my organs. I felt omnipotent, glimpsing a sense of power inside me that far outweighed anything I’d ever thought possible. I also felt a flicker of desire that was mine—reaching out for the entity, wanting it to take me, to show me a future where there was no pain, no death—just eternity and the infinite possibilities of every single species trembling in my presence.
“Don’t—Ash—don’t!”
I heard Ruby crying. It was still an abstract sound, something I could have dismissed like all the other voices of my friends, but there was something in the tone—the hitched cry, the desperation that it held—which reminded me of things that I sensed the entity wanted me to forget.
“You’ve got to fight it! Don’t leave me—you said that we weren’t done yet—you promised!”
The flicker of desire that had leapt up in me in response to the entity’s power was still there, but it had dimmed. I was reminded of Ruby, the girl I’d pulled from a cellar, whose bright blue eyes had glared at me in mistrust. Just one look at her had made me think that she was the most alive thing I’d ever witnessed. I remembered the night in the summer palace, the way her skin glowed, her voice, her soft laughter and the burning marks she’d left on my skin where she touched me.