Ted Dekker - Mortal

“Can you tell?”

“I don’t know what I’m looking for…”

Rom saw the wheels begin their slow turn in the man’s head.

Within minutes, he had laid the stent on a simple white cloth and announced that the seal on all the jars was intact; the blood hadn’t congealed. But then he seemed to hesitate.

“This could be blasphemy,” the Keeper said, pushing his white hair back from his head in a way that only made it seem more disheveled than before. “Centuries of guarding the secret of this blood, and now to open the sacred vessels…”

Rom had already rolled up his sleeve. “Then you owe it to the centuries and to those who came before you to learn the truth.”

“You’re quite sure you’re willing to risk this?” the Keeper said.

“When did following Jonathan not involve risk?”

Jordin’s hand came to rest on his forearm. “No. I go first.”

“It was I who was destined to find Jonathan as a boy,” Rom said.

She frowned. “Yes, but-”

“Who brought Jonathan to this valley?”

“You did.”

“And who did Jonathan embrace as leader of the Keepers?”

“Fine. But know that whether you live or die, I will take the blood.”

There was something wild in her eyes and he knew with certainty she would sooner be dead than without Jonathan, that the prospect of death to her now was, in itself, a gain. He couldn’t blame her.

He nodded. And then he pulled his sleeve up over the crook of his right arm, perched on the edge of the altar, and lay back.

“You’re sure about this?” the Keeper asked, picking up the steel stent.

“Would you do this?”

The old Keeper considered the question for only a moment, then dipped his head. “I would.”

“Then do.”

“How much?”

“As much as it takes.”

Rom closed his eyes and waited for the swab of cool disinfectant on his skin. The sting of the needle. A chill passed down his neck when it came, like the bite of a scorpion, cold in his veins. His heart rate surged, expectant.

Then nothing but the steady draw and push of his own breath.

He didn’t know what he had anticipated-perhaps a bolt of energy or gut-wrenching cramps similar to the first time he’d taken the ancient blood so many years ago.

“Anything?” Jordin whispered.

He kept his eyes shut and shook his head.

“Stay still,” the old Keeper said.

Rom lay unmoving, waiting for some unexpected sign that the blood flowing into his veins held power.

Nothing.

“Enough,” the Keeper said, withdrawing the stent and pressing a swab to the puncture wound. “Any more and-”

“I need more.”

“I’ve already given you twice the amount Jonathan gave to bring Corpses to life.”

“Give me more.”

“Rom, we don’t know what effect-”

“More! Do it!”

The old man finally shook his head and then reinserted the stent. A moment later cold flooded his veins once more.

Rom gripped his hand to a fist and closed his eyes again. His mind drifted behind the darkness of his closed eyes, a sea of darkness studded with pinpricks of light. The memory of stars in the sky as they had exhumed the grave. But nothing else. He felt no surge of power, no swell of emotion, no pain, no wonder, not even the slightest tingle beyond the cooler temperature of the blood itself.

Nothing.

A great sorrow settled over him like a suffocating blanket. Jordin was wrong. Jonathan’s blood was powerless. His sovereign realm didn’t exist any more than he himself did now. No hope lived beyond the grave in a world still imprisoned by death.

All that Rom had lived to protect was gone.

The tiny dots of light floated through the darkness, falling to a black horizon like falling stars, winking out.

He was being fed the blood of a corpse. What if that blood undid the power of Jonathan’s living blood within him? What if, in his desperate quest for the dream of a Mortal Sovereign, he had given up the very life in his veins and converted from Mortal to Corpse as surely as Jonathan had?

A sudden panic swept through his body, pushed sweat from his pores. Stop! Rip the stent out before it’s too late!

He wanted to. In his mind’s eye he was already reaching across his body, clawing at the stent, tearing it out with a cry of outrage.

His body began to tremble.

Images of Jonathan dancing with the children skipped through his mind. Of the little girl he’d rescued from the Authority of Passing-Kaya-grinning as she had lifted her arms to him. Of a thousand Mortals leaping up and down as their roar washed over their Sovereign to-be, standing with arms spread wide on the ruin steps.

Images of Jonathan’s blade effortlessly slashing through the line of Dark Bloods, of his finger pointed at the Mortals as he hurled words of accusation. Of blood splashing over his naked body as though to cleanse him.

The last winks of light faded. Darkness, deeper than any he’d known, edged into his psyche like a heavy black fog. He felt his breathing thicken, his pulse slow, his body cool.

You’re dying, Rom.

When the realization hit him, it was already too late. He tried to open his mouth and cry out, but his muscles didn’t respond. His arms remained at his side, quivering with the last vestiges of life.

Voices sounded urgently from the far reaches of his consciousness. Voices, but he couldn’t make out their words.

Another image crawled into his waning thoughts, of the Dark Blood they’d injected with Jonathan’s blood, foaming at the mouth before slumping without pulse. Rom had desecrated Jonathan’s grave, taken his blood, and now he would pay the same price.

He felt the stent being torn free. Hands on his body, shaking him. Words of horror rasped by the old man.

And then he felt nothing.

Only perfect peace.

Darkness.

Silence.

Death.

Jordin stood over Rom’s dormant body, filled with icy dread. The sweat on his face and arms glistened in the candlelight-a baptism of death. His eyes, twittering beneath his eyelids only a moment earlier, had stopped moving. His nostrils had pulled in a last, long breath and then his chest settled, stilled.

Maker. Was it possible?

Jonathan’s blood had taken Rom’s life.

For a long moment she stared at his waxen face. It was pale as though drained of blood. The old Keeper was frantically searching for Rom’s pulse.

“He’s dead!” the old man whispered, eyes darting up.

No! He couldn’t be dead.

“Blessed Maker. We’ve killed him!” the Keeper said, clapping his hands to his head.

Jordin’s breath quickened, her pulse a heavy thud, as though the life-robbing power that had spread through Rom in his dying moments had leaked in through her pores.

Jonathan had abandoned her. He’d loved her and chosen her, only to be washed away by madness, by a belief that by his death he could save them all. For two days she’d clung to that dying love, refusing to believe that Jonathan could invite his own death and leave her bereft, never to know love again. Because there would be no other after Jonathan. He’d taken her heart with him to the grave.

And now Rom had joined him.

She stumbled back a step, mind numb, breathing in quick, frantic pants that echoed throughout the inner chamber. Panic overtook her like an arctic wind, cutting her to the bone.

What Jordin did next did not come from any place of sound reasoning, but from the intuitive despair of a woman summarily thrown into darkness to die without a parting word from her master.

She leapt forward with a grunt and slammed her fist down on Rom’s lifeless chest.

“No!”

Like a beast clawing to escape the pit, she dug her fingers into his clothing and jerked him back and forth.