P.C. Cast - Burned

I accept your blood sacrifice, Warrior. Face me and move on, if you dare.

I dare! Stark shouted, accepting the challenge.

The bull charged him. Acting purely on instinct, Stark didn’t run. He didn’t jump aside. Instead, he faced the bull, head-on. Screaming his anger and rage and fear, Stark ran at the bull. The creature lowered his massive head as if he would gore Stark.

No! Stark leaped at the bull, and with a motion that was dreamlike, grabbed his horns. At the same instant the creature threw up his head, and Stark vaulted over his body. He felt like he was diving from an impossibly high cliff as he hurled forward farther and farther, and somewhere, behind him in the black soullessness, he heard the bull’s voice echoing three words: Well done, Guardian . . .

Then there was an explosion of light around him just before he tumbled onto a hard-packed piece of ground. Stark picked himself up slowly, thinking how weird it was that even though he was nothing but spirit, he still had the form and feeling of his body, and looked around.

In front of him was a grove, identical to the one that grew near Sgiach’s castle. There was even a hanging tree before it, decorated with strips of cloth too numerous to count. As he watched, the cloth changed, taking on different colors and lengths and shimmering like Christmas tree tinsel.

The Otherworld—this had to be the entrance to Nyx’s realm. Nothing else could look this magickal.

Before stepping forward, Stark glanced behind him, thinking it couldn’t be this easy to get in and expecting the giant black bull to materialize and this time gore him for real.

All that was behind him was the black nothingness from where he’d come. If that wasn’t creepy enough, the segment of ground he’d been dumped onto was a small, half circle patch of red dirt that reminded him unexpectedly of Oklahoma, and in the center of the patch a gleaming sword was stuck halfway up to the hilt. It took two hands to pull the sword free, and then, as Stark automatically wiped the otherwise spotless blade on his jeans to clean it, he realized that, like the Seol ne Gigh, the original color of the ground had been tainted by blood.

He finished wiping the blade hastily, for some reason not liking the thought of blood staining it, and then he turned his attention to what was in front of him. That was where he needed to go. His mind, heart, and spirit knew it.

“Zoey, I’m here. I’m coming to you,” he said, and stepped forward, running into an invisible barrier hard as a brick wall. “What the hell?” he muttered, moving back and looking up to see that a stone archway had suddenly appeared.

There was an explosion of a cold white light that gave Stark the creepy image of a freezer door opening to expose dead flesh. Blinking, his eyes traveled down, and what he saw in front of him shocked him to his very core.

Stark was staring at himself.

At first he thought the archway must have a mirror in it, but there was no blackness reflected behind him, and his other self was grinning a familiar, cocky smile. Stark definitely wasn’t smiling. Then he spoke, dispelling all thoughts of mirror images and rational explanations.

“Yeah, fucknuts, it’s you. You’re me. To get into this place, you’re gonna have to kill me, which is not gonna happen ’cause I’m not so cool with dying. What is gonna happen is that I’m gonna kick your ass and kill you dead.”

While Stark stood there, speechless and staring at himself, his mirror image lunged forward, slashing with a broadsword identical to the one Stark held, drawing a line of blood down his arm.

“Yep, this is gonna be as easy as I thought,” his other self said, and lunged at Stark again.

“Yeah, light’s on, but there’s definitely no one home.” Aphrodite waved her hand in front of Stark’s open but unseeing eyes. Then she had to snatch her hand out of the way as Seoras, ignoring that he came close to cutting her, too, made another knife wound down Stark’s blood-drenched side.

“He already looks like hamburger. Do you have to keep doing that?” Aphrodite asked the Guardian. There was no love lost between her and Stark, but that didn’t mean she was cool with watching him get sliced to pieces.

Seoras appeared not to hear her. He was utterly focused on the boy who lay before him.

“They are bonded by this quest,” Sgiach said. She’d left her throne to stand beside Aphrodite.

“But your Guardian is conscious and present in his own body,” Darius said, studying Seoras.

“Yes. His consciousness is here. It is also so completely attuned with the boy that he can hear his heartbeat—feel his breathing. Seoras knows exactly how close Stark is to physical death. It is on the cusp between life and death that my Guardian must keep him. Too much one way, his soul will return to his body, and he will awaken. Too much the other, his soul will never return at all.”

“How will he know when to end this?” Aphrodite asked, involuntarily flinching as Seoras’s dirk sliced Stark’s flesh again.

“Stark will awaken, or he will die. Either way, it will be Stark’s doing and not my Guardian’s. What Seoras does now enables the boy to make his own choices.” Sgiach spoke to Aphrodite, but her eyes never left Seoras. “You should do the same.”

“Cut him?” Aphrodite frowned at the queen, who smiled, but continued to watch her Guardian.

“You said that you’re a Prophetess of Nyx, did you not?”

“I am her Prophetess.”

“Then consider wielding your gift to help the boy, too.”

“I would if I had one damn clue how to do that.”

“Aphrodite, perhaps you should—” Darius began, taking Aphrodite’s arm and pulling her away from Sgiach, obviously worried that she’d pushed the queen too far.

“No, Warrior. You need not draw her away. One thing you will find about being bound to a strong woman is that often her words will get her into trouble from which you cannot protect her. But they are her own words, and thus her own consequences.” Sgiach finally looked at Aphrodite. “Use some of the strength that makes your words like daggers and seek your own answers. A true Prophetess gets very little guidance in this world, except through her gift; but strength, tempered by wisdom and patience, must teach you how to use it properly.” The queen lifted her hand and gestured elegantly to one of the vampyres in the shadows. “Show the Prophetess and her Guardian to their chamber. Give them refreshment and privacy.” Without another word, Sgiach returned to her throne, her gaze once again focused solely on her Guardian.

Aphrodite pressed her lips together and followed the ginger-haired giant whose tattoos were a series of intricate spirals that appeared to be made of tiny sapphire dots. They retraced their path back to the double staircase and then went up to a hallway where the walls were decorated with jeweled swords that glittered in the torchlight. A smaller, single staircase finally led them up to an arched wooden door, which the warrior opened and gestured for them to enter the room.

“Would you be sure someone gets me right away if Stark changes at all?” Aphrodite asked before he closed the door.

“Aye,” the warrior said in a surprisingly gentle voice before leaving them alone.

Aphrodite turned to Darius. “Do you think my mouth gets me into trouble?”

Her Warrior’s brows went up. “Of course I do.”

She frowned at him. “Okay, look, I’m not kidding.”

“Neither am I.”

“Why? Because I say what I mean?”

“No, my beauty, because you do use your words like a dagger, and a drawn dagger often causes trouble.”