Time Thief, page 14
It ripped through the man’s chest at an impossible distance.
Leif, Wren, and Nash all ran out in different directions, blades clashing with those of the mountain guard. I had to count on them to take out the ones behind me. The woods before me teemed with guards preparing to fight.
I felt the wind hit my cheek a second before the enemy arrow would’ve split my face. I caught it midair, one hand wrapped around the thin wood. The power of the shot ripped my shoulder back. I steadied myself, clasping the arrow against my heart.
Too close. Where had it come from?
I listened for the heartbeats. Reinforcements had come from a cliff beyond the thin stretch of woods. Snipers I couldn’t see. Closing my eyes, I listened, honing my senses, until I heard the patter of hearts. The whistle of breath. There they were. I whipped my bow up and returned their arrow. I didn’t need to listen to know I’d no longer hear the pattering or the whistling, only the rush of a dying breath.
Two lines of guards sprinted across the field for us, twenty in all. I couldn’t let them get closer.
This was the real reason the instructors didn’t want me returning to the mountain. There was something different about this place. They couldn’t suppress me or control me here. I had to remember that so I could break myself free. I had to have total faith that I could take the power I needed, a power that was mine and mine alone.
I focused on the burning within me, the flame inside, and breathed life into it. My eyes shot up to the men sprinting for us. I reached my hands out into claws, visualizing the power erupting from me.
One man’s neck snapped. Another down the line. Three more after that.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Their bodies slammed into the ground in an awful rhythm.
Snap.
Within seconds, I’d killed them all without even breaking a sweat. Wren took on one remaining on the right side of me, out in the field alone. Leif turned, his face serious, three bodies on the ground behind him.
The mountain fueled me. The cracks in the dam inside me widened, the walls beginning to crumble. There was still more untapped, but I hadn’t felt this in years. The shock of it, the exhilaration, froze me for a moment.
Wren slayed the last man. And everyone went silent. Everyone, including Nash. I couldn’t bring myself to turn and see the look on his face.
The grass rustled behind me.
Wheeling around, I met the wide eyes of a guard as he stumbled back a step, his mouth opened, ready to form the words. Demon.
It wasn’t like Nash to leave him alive for this long. Three of the guard’s comrades lay on the ground, their blood staining Nash’s sword that now hung in a limp grip. Yet this man was still alive. Alive and looking into my eyes just like the woman I’d killed yesterday.
Anger rippled down my spine. With a snap of my bow, I silenced the fear in my enemy’s eyes. Still, my own coursed through me, because I couldn’t deny to Nash what he had seen with his own eyes. Even if he’d suspected that I had power, witnessing it would change everything. Now he’d see the demon living inside me. I trained my eyes on the ground, unable to meet Nash’s stare.
What if it changed things for Leif and Wren to see it, too?
Wind ripped through the silent field, stealing away the last of the guards’ breath and the screams they never had time to unleash.
Until finally Nash’s cracking voice broke the quiet.
“Demon. That was the last word he tried to say.”
I flinched at the name and squeezed my eyes shut, not ready to see what I’d done and what Nash would think of me.
Nash’s voice sounded small. “You’re a demon.”
Pain swept through me. I’d been a fool to hope Nash could be different. Why would he be? He would hate and fear me like so many others. He’d called himself an outcast as a boy, but he had no idea what outcast meant.
“Shut your mouth!” Leif shouted at him from his place on the field, veins popping in his neck.
The blood caught my eye. The still bodies. The judgment within me screamed above Nash’s so I had no choice but to look at the destruction I’d wrought. I raised my hand to silence Leif. I could no longer hide from Nash, or from Leif and Wren. I could no longer hide from myself. I lifted my head and faced them, faced the judgment I’d tried so hard to escape.
“All this time you accused me of lying and hiding things. You could have told me. Maybe I could have trusted you then.” Nash’s voice was solemn, as if the Max he thought he knew had died right before his very eyes. “What’s your name?”
I tensed. “You know my name.”
“The name the people know you by. Your demon name.”
I bit my cheek.
“That’s enough,” Wren said, walking closer. “Her name is Max. That’s all, just Max.”
“I took you to my daughter. Who are you really?” Nash’s voice blared. “I accepted your silence to my questions about all these mysteries before, but how can I do that now? You lied.”
Pain pounded with my heart. “Eclipse. My name is Eclipse.”
Nash’s expression tightened after I uttered the name Eclipse. Wren stopped walking, face looking stricken. Even Leif stared like I’d taken off a mask and showed him who I was for the first time. I’d thought nothing could ever come between us, but I’d known this could. Right? I’d always known. Who could accept me after what I’d done?
I lifted my hand toward Nash and then looked to Wren and Leif. “Let me explain.”
“Eclipse? You’re Eclipse?” Nash’s shocked stare shifted to the dead littering the field.
I covered my mouth, my eyes burning with unshed tears. My voice cracked when I spoke. “I should have told you all.”
“It changes nothing.” Leif’s voice shook. His eyes were red, but he said the words with enough conviction to make me believe he meant them.
Sorrow flooded Nash’s face, and this time when he looked at me, it felt as if he actually saw me again. “I trusted you, really trusted you. I want to believe you. So, tell me everything I’ve heard about you since I was a boy isn’t true.”
He’d told me things that put his family in danger. In the morning, he’d held me so I could sleep. If I had trusted him, too, and told him the truth myself, I could have explained without the suspicion. The feeling of his kiss filled me with shame. He’d meant it, hadn’t he? He’d really opened himself up to me and I’d stayed hidden.
“Max,” Nash said. “Tell me the stories of the Slaughter of Dark Noon are a lie and that you didn’t kill those people.”
Leif and Wren were watching, too. They would stand with me, but they wanted to know. The problem was I couldn’t say it wasn’t true, only that I hadn’t meant to do it. When I opened my mouth, echoes of necks snapping all over this field filled my mind. Did I even deserve to defend myself?
The world called me Eclipse, the Soul Eater, the demon who would stop at nothing to finally consume even the sun. That wasn’t true, but I’d earned the name with something unimaginable I really had done.
The horror I’d felt since that day slashed through my chest like a battle-ax. My eyelids fluttered. Leif started for me, but he wouldn’t make it in time. Couldn’t help me anyway.
I focused on my black boots to ground myself, but they fractured into the little red shoes I’d worn the day my father died. I slipped into two different times at once, before Nash and my friends on the mountain, and with my father in my childhood village.
No, no, no! Not now.
Tears filled my eyes. I counted the seconds and focused on my feet, on staying in my black boots in the present and not those red shoes in the past. Only a few moments passed, but time drew me in and tried to swallow me whole.
The field dimmed, and our time with it, hovering beneath the skin of this world, harder and harder to see.
Nash stepped back toward the jagged wall of the cliff that had materialized behind him and looked up into the darkening sky. Wren and Leif were nowhere to be seen.
“No!” I wheeled around to see the last of the sun disappear behind the dark moon. I wouldn’t go back to this time. I refused.
“Max?”
“Stay still!” I barely choked out the words.
I stumbled backward toward Nash until I could cover him with my body, closing my eyes, channeling myself into the scratchy grass at my ankles in the field. The heat baking the sweat into my neck.
The sun pierced the ring of the dark moon.
Villagers whispered below.
“The light …” my young voice said. “Look, Dad! The light …”
His voice blared, deep and knowing. “Your strength is greater than even an eclipse. Release it. Release it from within. It’ll be beautiful, child. I promise. It’s okay.” A warm whisper fell against my ear my ear now. “Show them the light. Free them.”
The heat of the flame swelled out of control, even though I tried to hold it in, tried to push Dad’s voice away. Power erupted from my body. The Prophet wasn’t here to stop me this time. Dad’s body jerked and froze in the air, his fingers popping first, and then his arms, his legs. I clenched my eyes shut.
Shrieks ripped through the air. Shrieks from Dad, from me, from the villagers below.
Shrieks echoed and grew until they all snapped to silence, and I was the only one left screaming.
I gasped when I blinked to the field and the field alone. I stood in a single spot in a single point in time, back in the present. The wild scent of weeds and woods mixing with the blood of the guards I’d slain grounded me.
“What was that?” Nash asked, turning in a circle to look at our surroundings.
I stumbled forward.
The world started to spin. I lurched and vomited hard. Leif caught me and held me up by my middle.
Nash dropped down beside me and placed his hand on my back. “Can you hear me?”
I nodded, my stomach roiling so much I couldn’t speak.
“Hold on to us,” Nash said. “Don’t go back to that place.”
Leif shoved him back with his forearm. “You’re the one who upset her and made this happen. Get away from her.”
I stumbled away, putting distance between us. “I didn’t know you could slip with me. Stay away. All of you stay far away from me.” I lifted a shaky hand. “It isn’t safe. I can’t control it.”
What was I doing trying to regain this power that had slaughtered sixty-seven innocent people? Children had died. My stomach heaved again as I remembered clearly what I’d tried so hard to forget. It felt more real than it had since it first happened. No longer did I feel like I was in my body, but like I was trapped in the past on that day.
There was no time for me to break now. More guards would come. And if I lost control of myself, I’d lose my hold on time, on space, on the only thing grounding me in the present.
Even so, Nash’s voice haunted my mind. I couldn’t shake it.
Demon.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We had wasted too much time on the fallout from the battle. We stole across the field, scaled a cliff, and entered the next passageway without any other guards pursuing us. They hadn’t given up, that much was certain. Now they knew their enemy. They’d be preparing for a battle that could take down a powerful demon rather than throwing away lives haphazardly. The higher up the mountain we journeyed, the fewer routes we’d have. There would be no escape.
Leif tried to help me as we traveled up the steep stairs. I was nauseous from the slip. I refused to let anyone near me, though. Refused to even look at them and have to face them.
“Max,” Nash said gently. When he moved close to me, I jolted away, terrified I’d drag him through time with me again.
“I told you it’s not safe,” I said.
“I—”
Leif rammed his thick forearm into Nash’s chest and plastered him against the rock wall. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away?” Another shove. “If you upset her again and she has a spell, who knows what will happen. She said she can’t control it.”
Wren turned around from higher up the stairs and sighed. “Let’s all stay quiet and give Max time. Let him go, Leif.”
Nash had not tried to push Leif away. He just held the other man’s stare. Another tense moment, and Leif backed away. I turned my stare to the ground, struggling to keep my mind in the present. I could hear the screams of the guards I’d killed echoing off the walls of the stairs and through my mind.
We traveled quietly after that and slept only a few hours before we left the safety of the passageway for the inevitable battle that awaited.
A burst of icy wind cut through the opening of the passageway and scattered snow at my feet. I squeezed outside, sank into knee-deep snow, and focused on listening for the guards. It was pointless to even try counting. There were too many.
We waded together through the snow, the icy coldness eating through our clothes, making us heavy and wet. No guards approached but they were there. I could hear them assembling more soldiers out there in the white, hear them gathering supplies, whispering in clashes of sound I struggled to isolate.
Up here there was no such thing as flatland. Rolling white clearings would suddenly crash into cliffs or stretch into precarious outcroppings, steepening with every foot closer to the peak. I couldn’t see anything.
We were easy targets out here.
Whizzing pierced my ears.
I tuned in so acutely that it hurt, and attempted to create a barrier around us to shield us. The power within me felt like it spurted through the cracks in the dam, most of it trapped within me still, while what could escape rushed out at an incredible speed. Though the barrier wasn’t visible to the eye, I could feel it and imagine the edges of it. It was uneven and fading. Come on!
Was all this for nothing? Would I really fail now? Enraged with myself, power burst from me and strengthened the barrier.
Sunlight glinted from hundreds of arrows, all raining down in the sky, glittering in the haze of snow-dusted air. I planted my hands on the ground for support and thought of how helpless I’d felt as the past stole me and Nash away. Or when he’d called me demon. When the people I killed looked at me in fear. Then I imagined little Rune waiting for us to come back to save him. Everything I felt hardened inside me, and I used it to destroy the limitations of my power, not caring if I destroyed myself in the process.
With a scream, I unleashed a wave that knocked away all the arrows.
Shrieking blared in the distance, just like when I’d killed those people during the eclipse. Some of the arrows broke and fell to the ground, but dozens arched back toward where they’d come from. I breathed deeply as they thudded into bodies.
I rushed forward to put distance between myself and the others and sank into knee-deep snow. Focusing on listening for the guards, I gave up in the end. It was pointless to even try counting. There were too many.
No break. Hundreds more arrows came. I created a shield around my friends much more easily now. At the same time, I knocked the arrows away. My eyelids flickered. My body trembled. Hands burned with heat. Even now, I was not as powerful as I had been when I trained at the Sacred School, and the fury of that beat at the crumbling walls around my power.
Flames bit into the sky. This time, I didn’t get them all. Some sank into the snow. The fire would move underground beneath the snow if it got hot enough and there was anything to burn. I couldn’t risk letting the flaming arrows hit.
“Run!” I motioned at the others.
The next bout of arrows came. How many people did they have? They must have been using some kind of machine. I stumbled as I knocked them away. More fire hit the ground, melting pockets of snow where they disappeared.
Nothing was going as it should have. That awful landslide had set us on this collision course from the start. Grief panged in my chest.
Men rushed for us in the clearing. I’d missed them in all the commotion. I flattened five of them to the ground with a sweep of my hand, but more continued for us.
Nash met one with a powerful swing of his blade, cutting into his chest. Wren and Leif weren’t far behind, flawlessly battling against the guards launching their attack. I struggled to defend us from the onslaught while also keeping a barrier around my friends as they fought.
Something cut the air to my right. I snapped it in half and it fell to the ground. A spear. Heads popped up in the snow as dozens of men threw more spears at us.
Even with how the mountain energized me, the struggle to unleash my power overwhelmed my body. It felt as if my skin would melt off. I clenched every muscle, struggling against the agonizing fire burning over me.
This time I destroyed every single arrow. Every spear. They splintered and rained down over us.
The ground beneath me trembled with my power.
I had to find all the men and kill them. They were splitting my focus with this onslaught. I didn’t want to spill so much blood, but they wouldn’t stop. These people had devoted their lives to protecting this mountain. Killing them was the only way.
Searching the clearing beyond what I could see, I snapped the neck of every person I found. My muscles twitched with the burst of power that broke fragile neck bones. Two, five, eight people. Ten. More. So many more. Pops and cracks every few seconds, my own spine-curling war drums.
All the while, waves of arrows darkened the sky over us. Spears flew; guards rushed for us.
I searched for more to kill, but I couldn’t juggle all of this at once. A swath of arrows hit the ground. Sharp pain crackled through my arms in a jolt of electricity from my power.
My father’s voice slithered through the past and the whistling wind, tugging at the seams of my control, drawing the deep power hidden inside myself. Fear tangled my limbs, my thoughts. If I lost control, I could kill Leif, or Wren, or Nash. I needed more power, but terror froze my body, colder than the frozen mountain peak.
“Stop it!” I screamed and swiped my hand through the air, throwing the spears into the hearts I heard nearby. “I don’t want to kill you!”
More arrows darkened the sky. My body hurt so badly I could hardly stand. How many more were there? I reached within myself for more power, begging myself to open up a door I’d kept closed for so long.
