Released (Eternal Balance) Page 16

  There was no slowing of time. Things didn’t take on a surreal, watery, slow-motion effect. In fact, it all happened almost too fast for me to follow. Chase reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and stepped forward. That’s it. There was no sound. No scream. The only indication that something was wrong was the look on Jax’s face—eyes wide, face pale, and lips slightly parted.

  Something fell to the dirt between them, a long, thin object that glinted in the oddly lit cave. The reflective surface was coated in something dark. Something black. No… Not black.

  Red.

  Jax stumbled back, then fell to his knees. His eyes met mine, and I could see it—the life slipping away. The light dimming in his eyes. His lips moved. No sound came, but I heard him as though he’d screamed the words in my ear.

  “I love you.”

  He closed his eyes and took one last shuttering breath before collapsing to the dirt at Chase’s feet. With a hoot, his brother spread his arms and threw back his head—and waited. Of course, when nothing happened, he whirled on me. “What the fuck, Samantha?”

  Chase stalked across the cave floor, a volatile predator deprived of his prize. He flicked the now-whole Brim Stone in my direction, and the vines around my neck and mouth receded.

  “What did you do?” My gaze fell back to Jax, lying still on the floor next to a growing pool of blood. My heart thundered in my chest. “He was telling you the truth. Azirak is gone! Do something. Call someone!”

  Chase sighed. He turned back to his brother and tilted his head. “Call someone for what, exactly?” When he turned back to face me, there was a wicked grin on his face, one that screamed of smug satisfaction. It left me cold. “He’s gone, Samantha. Jax is dead.”

  Jax…is dead.

  Jax is…dead.

  Jax is dead…

  Something inside me snapped, a force so primal, so incomprehensible in terms of simple human thought that I let go of a scream that rocked me to my core. The hairs on the back of my neck snapped to attention. The black smoke was back. It hovered all around me, the wispy tendrils extending in loving caresses. The vines that bound me were gone. A pair of eyes blinked out at me from the smoke, and then it vanished again.

  Van wasn’t crying anymore. Chase wasn’t speaking. My gaze fell to Jax. He was on the floor, still. There was nothing except for a pain so profound, so all-encompassing, that it gnawed at every fiber of my being. There was no breath in my lungs, no ground beneath my feet. All that existed was the pain. The loss. It centered in my chest, and the weight of it crushed all that I was for what felt like an eternity before it spilled outward and leeched into every one of my limbs.

  These things—these demons—had stolen everything from me. From my parents, to my freedom and identity. And Jax… They’d taken my lifeline, and there was nothing left. No chip with which to bargain.

  Chase let out a roar and stooped to retrieve the knife. In a blurring move, it was in his hand and he was flying at me—weapon in one hand, stone in the other. There was no time to move.

  Except, there was…

  In the mere seconds it would have taken for him to cross to me, the blade should be buried deep beneath my skin.

  It wasn’t.

  The smoke had formed again, taking the vague shape of a man, and wrapped itself around Chase like chains. I grabbed the stone from Chase—it was easier than stealing from a blind man—and wrapped my other hand around his neck.

  His skin sizzled, and he fought against my grip, but with Azi essentially holding him in place, Chase was trapped. His agonized screams and pleas for mercy were the most wonderful music to my ears. I only wished they could have lasted longer.

  I felt the moment it all let go. I was able to take a deep breath as some of the red haze cleared. Heat surrounded me, a force so much bigger than myself, yet smaller, simpler, than the air that flowed through my lungs. An explosion sent me rocketing back, into the cave wall and to the ground. Hard. When it all cleared, Chase was lying on the other side of the cave, opposite where Jax lay and just as still.

  There was a haze around me. I lifted my hand and turned it over several times in awe. A miasma, every color of the rainbow pulsating to the beat of my heart, surrounded me. I stared, transfixed for a moment as it detached from my skin and lifted away. It lingered above for several seconds before slowly dissolving into the air.

  “Sam?” Van’s voice cut through my haze. “Sam, are you all right?”

  I turned to see her approaching slowly, freed from the vines.

  All right…?

  No. Jax.

  Sore, and convinced I had more than a couple cracked ribs, I dragged myself through the dirt to where Jax lay. A finger at his neck, at his wrist, my ear laid to his still-warm chest… There was nothing. No vibrant thump. I lost it then, as the pain I’d felt moments ago came back to consume me with a vengeance.

  “Sam,” Van tried again. I was vaguely aware that she’d come up beside me and knelt in the dirt. “You did it. You kept your promise to me, and you got rid of Azirak.”

  That got my attention. I lifted my head from Jax’s chest, my vision blurry and throat thick. The demon appeared to be gone again, probably for good this time. After all, how long could it maintain a presence without its host? But it’d been here to help with Chase. That made twice today that it’d saved me. Twice it’d intervened in order to make sure I was… Jax was gone, and I realized it wasn’t the demon I blamed, but me. “I got rid of nothing,” I snapped. “The demon left on its own—because of me—and that left Jax vulnerable. That got him killed.”

  “You kept your word to me. The stone is gone. Destroyed. But… I wanna make sure I keep my word to you. I told you I would help you get Jax back, but…”

  She stood, hefted me off the ground, and nudged me back a few feet. Looking at her closer now, I saw the difference. There was more color in her face. More vibrancy in her eyes. A light that hadn’t been there before emanated from every pore. When I’d destroyed the stone—however the hell I’d managed it—it must have released her magic.

  Released her magic…

  Hope swelled inside my chest, and I took another step back as she held her hand in the air above Jax’s body. Was this how he felt that night when I’d stabbed myself? Pushed to the edge of madness and craving any small bit of hope he could grab?

  “I could bring him back, Sam. I could—”

  “Do it.” It came out much harsher than I’d intended. She was, after all, offering to save his life. But something in her tone screamed of hesitation. She could do it, but she didn’t want to.

  “It’s so much more complicated than a single spell.” She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she made a fist and held it up. “I believe I could do it, that my specialty lies in life magic, like my mother’s, but Jax isn’t a plant. He’s not a tree or an animal. He’s a human. And humans have souls.”

  “So?”

  “A soul is not something that magic can restore. I can bring him back, yes. Restore his body and his mind. But without a soul to fuse it together, he wouldn’t last an hour.”

  The small bit of hope that had flourished only moments ago exploded and took the last bits of my heart with it. An hour? Fine. I’d take it. I’d find a way to make it stick. Make a deal with the devil himself if that’s what it took. “I don’t care. Do it. Do it anyway.”

  If I weren’t so absorbed in my own grief, I might have paid more attention to the fact that Van was horrified by my request. I might have wondered why she’d taken a step back, away from Jax and me.

  I might have questioned where Heckle, now standing over us, had come from.

  “You two have made quite a mess of things,” he said, frowning. “Never in all my time on this earth have I seen two humans cause so many ripples.”

  At the sound of his voice, the sorrow that filled me overflowed and turned to rage. “You,” I said, pushing to my feet. I pointed back to Jax. “Fix this. Make it right. It’s your damn fault. All of this
!”

  His gaze fell to Jax and he sighed. “On the contrary, Sam, this is all his fault.”

  “His—”

  All-powerful being or not, my mind broke. I threw myself at him. There was no plan of attack, no one goal. All I saw in that moment was red.

  He peeled me off him like I was nothing more than paper flapping in the wind. “I’m not going to hold that against you,” he said, a warning buried beneath his calming tone. “But I do have to ask that you not try it again.”

  Livid, all I could do was stand there.

  “As I told you once before, humans have, for the most part, free will. The caveat, though, is that some, the special ones, generally have a small nudge from the higher powers to keep things in check.”

  “And Jax is one of those special ones?”

  “No. You are.” He frowned again. “You’re not supposed to be here, Sam. Everything that’s happened since Jax came back to town—it was never supposed to be.”

  “What do—”

  “The day Jax came back to Harlow… You were never supposed to come out of the water. I marked you to die that day.”

  All the air rushed from my lungs and left me numb. I wanted to say something, to ask questions, but the words just wouldn’t form.

  “I can see it in your eyes. You feel betrayed.”

  Damn right I felt betrayed. I found my voice. “You tried to kill me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And no… It is, like all other things in my line of work, more complicated than that. Your death would have corrected a pending imbalance. I would have been there to collect your soul as you passed, safely expelling the Pure energy and allowing you to rest peacefully for eternity.”

  “A pending imbalance?” My voice cracked and everything came snapping back in a painful blow. I was sore and freezing. And angry. Very angry. “You tried to kill me for something I hadn’t done yet?”

  “No. Not you. The imbalance dealt with someone else.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, really. Heckle was, well, Heckle. But for some reason, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “That’s a hundred times worse!”

  “I’ve explained this all to you. Several times.” He sighed. “Anyway, obviously you didn’t die. You lived—and Jax stayed in Harlow. It caused a ripple, a fairly large one that couldn’t be ignored. But I had a plan. I marked you again. When Chase took you from the Viking that night in order to get Jax’s attention, you were supposed to die. Again he saved you, and the ripple continued, growing even bigger.”

  “If this is all true, then why not let me die when Jax and Chase first faced off in the woods? All you had to do was not bring me back.” I couldn’t believe I was saying it, but this whole thing was giving me a headache.

  He flashed me a grin. “After the second time, I learned my lesson. I hadn’t realized in the beginning that you and Jax were fragments. It was a foolish oversight on my part—one not easily remedied.”

  “Fragments?”

  “A split soul. It happens every once in a while. A soul will fragment over the centuries, split off and form two halves that are irrevocably drawn to each other.” He leaned forward and winked. “I believe you humans call it ‘soul mates.’”

  I’d forgotten she was there, but Van came up beside me, watching Heckle with awe.

  “I could have kept trying to mark you,” he said, “but I’ll admit it—I’ve always been a sucker for love—not to mention the ripple would probably just have continued to get bigger and bigger. Jax wasn’t going to let you die. It’s ingrained, literally, in his soul. So I had to get creative to fix the imbalance—which of course caused more problems.”

  “So activating me wasn’t your intention?”

  “Of course not. I truly believed the energy would reset.”

  “Then why make the deal you did with Jax? Making us stay apart?”

  A look of shame crossed his expression. “Because it was the worst possible thing I could have done to him. To keep fragments apart… Let’s just say it’s a terrible thing to do and I felt truly horrible about it. But by then the ripple was huge, and it needed a drastic fix. Except I didn’t fix it. I made it a hundred times worse by allowing Pure energy to walk the earth in human form.”

  The explanation was all well and good, but he hadn’t answered the most important question. I glanced back at Jax. “And now? Is your precious balance restored?”

  Heckle stepped up beside me. “His death fixed most of it.”

  “Then that’s it?” I choked back a sob. “You can’t—you won’t—help him?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” he said, his frown deepening. “Even my abilities have limits. I was able to restore your body and soul because we made a deal. They were never truly gone, only tucked away in a safe place for a short time.” Heckle glanced down at Jax. “His soul has moved on already.”

  Van cleared her throat. “I can…I can wake him. You’ll have time to say good-bye.” Her eyes glistened. “I’m so sorry, Sam. That’s all I can do.”

  I nodded. It was the most I could manage. Anything more and I’d likely fall apart.

  Van spoke in a hushed whisper and moved her hand in a slow, wide circle, first over his heart, then over his head. It was wholly anticlimactic as far as resurrections went—not that I had a whole lot to go on—but when Jax opened his eyes, the world snapped back on its axis—even if only for a few moments.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jax

  Someone had turned on the air conditioning. That, or I’d gone swimming in an ice bath.

  Wait. I had gone swimming in an ice bath. The cave. The stone. Sam… It all rushed back to me, and I forced my eyes open. They were standing around me, towering over me like vultures. “What the fuck?”

  Sam sank to her knees. I didn’t like the look on her face. The pain in her eyes. “Van was able to—” Her breath hitched. “We can at least say good-bye.”

  Good-bye?

  And then it all truly came back to me. Like a freight train, the memories hit me. I looked down and pulled back my shirt. There was a hole in it, covered in blood. “Sam…”

  “Shh.” She grabbed my face and pulled me to her. “Chase is dead. Zenak is dead. The stone is gone. We did it, Jax. We finished it.”

  “And it killed me,” I said. I knew it had. I could feel death like an axe hanging over my head.

  Her only answer was a single tear. And that was it. All I could see. The cloud of color I’d seen around every human on Earth my entire life was gone. The weight of their emotions, the sting of inevitable hunger that came with it, was—almost painfully—absent. Azi was gone, and I was truly alone.

  “But you’re okay, right?” Because, really, that was the most important thing. She would go on to live her life. I glanced up and realized for the first time that Heckle was here.

  He nodded a silent greeting, then rested a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I hate to do this now, but we have a deal to wrap up. You don’t have to do anything, just give me consent to take what we agreed on.”

  Sam nodded without taking her eyes from me. “Take it. Take the whole thing. I don’t care. I don’t need it anymore.”

  Without saying a word, Heckle closed his eyes and made an odd gesture with his hand. Something vaguely blue seeped from Sam’s shoulders, swirling for a moment around his fingers before sinking beneath his skin. “It is done. There is only one thing left then the balance will be completely restored.”

  The moment Heckle’s hand touched my skin, it felt like someone had lit me on fire—and not the good kind. I roared in pain, and my body went ridged as the invisible flames licked at every inch of me. A rush of images flashed—dizzying and vague. The only thing I could make out was that they were all Sam. From the time she was a baby to the moments before I woke. It passed so quickly, but I retained it all. How saving her had caused a ripple, how Heckle had tried to fix the mistake, the fact that we were cut from the same soul—literally.

  And then I understood
.

  Everything.

  As Heckle pulled away, the haze cleared. I filled my lungs with air and fought back a shiver. We were going to get pneumonia if we didn’t get out of these wet clothes. The best part though? I could get pneumonia. Why? Because the living got sick.

  Live. People. I was alive, and I was just me. For the first time in my life, there was total silence in my head.

  Heckle helped me to my feet as Sam stood by with wide eyes. “You—did you—”

  “The balance is restored, and the ripple is smooth.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get it. His death fixed most of the balance, but his life fixes the rest?”

  I took her hand and pulled her close, and the moment I had her tucked against me, nothing else mattered. A sense of peace, unparalleled by anything I’d ever felt, rushed over me.

  “I owed you for destroying the stone. If I didn’t give something back, it would have left things lopsided. You’re just lucky I was able to do it. You can’t go dropping pieces of other people’s souls into other bodies. The only reason this worked is because—”

  “We were already part of the same whole,” I finished for him.

  Heckle smiled. “Exactly.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Now if you’ll excuse me—it’s been a long month.” And just like that, he vanished from sight.

  Movement behind Sam caught my attention. A small tuft of black smoke seemed to seep from the cave walls. It grew bigger and bigger until it was tall like me and had roughly the same shape. Azi drifted toward us.

  “You saved me,” Sam said. Her voice shook. “You used the last of your energy to do it, didn’t you?”

  The shadowy image took on my face and smiled. “Do not be sad, Samantha Merrick. I have died a thousand deaths. I will die a thousand more.” A wispy arm reached toward her, tendrils licking at her face before retreating inward. “This is the one I shall always remember. The one that mattered.” Turning to me, it said, “Be well, my human. My Jax Flynn.”