21. Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-one
A melia closed her eyes. There was too much going on with Stacey playing with her switchblade and Amelia, knowing she couldn’t move to escape it. Instead, she focused on intent and her soul. Conversations with Zylar intruded on her thoughts as she made shields, and he directed her. If she had the time, she would have become the best empath in the history of empaths. That made her feel good. Sometimes you were just cut down before the prime of your life. Everything that could have been done to help save the world is cut off at the ankles, and those who could have lived because of what you would do, die. That made her sad, but it felt true in the way things do when your time is running out and lying to yourself is useless.
She felt her soul. It might be described as a shift in her metaphorical chest since she couldn’t ever remember feeling her soul in all her years. This was a momentous occasion. It was worth tuning in for. Amelia pulled her mind away from thoughts of Zylar and what they would do in the ever-after and paid attention to her soul.
A wall was being built. Please don’t ask her how she knew it was a wall and not a shield. She just knew. Not that the wall would do her any good. It was flimsy at best and a three-year-old could climb over it.
Still, it was hers, and she’d use it to the best of her ability.
“Glad you’re on board.”
Was it her or did the voice in her head sound snarky?
s’il te pla?t, aide cette femme. The voice in her head said.
“Wait, did you just speak in French?”
“We learned the language in high school.”
Okay, she was going to have to give Amelia 2.0 props for that. She had taken French in high school but assumed after so many years that she had forgotten it.
“Wait, did you just ask someone to help you with me?”
“It was a general plea sent to the universe. Maybe one of the deities will feel charitable and help. Back to the shield. It is being forged from the material at the center of the universe. Think of it as the place of life emerged from. Some may call it heaven, others will call it something else. But allow me to confirm that all life came from one place. Please don’t ask me where the life came from that made that place. It’s above my pay grade.”
“You’re so funny.”
Amelia’s mini-me had all of her attention. Her shield, which was now a wall, wasn’t coming from inside of her but from where her soul touched the source of all that was and would ever be. That was a heady thought to think she was connected to that kind of power. It made her feel like someone and not like ‘the nothing’ she had been feeling for the past few months.
Amelia Astor was someone special, and it only mattered because she wanted to present Zylar Astor with the best mate possible. She wanted to be worthy of him.
Her mind was preoccupied, but her ears were working just fine. Amelia heard Stacey as she crossed the floor, the opening and closing of her blade getting closer. Amelia was putting her life on the line that this shield worked, and she communicated that with the source when it relinquished the wall into her highly untrained hands.
That swishing sound, the one you sometimes hear, the blade cutting through the air as it comes at the victim who might be the bad guy. The sound that takes you out of the movie as your brain goes that’s impossible. That sound. Amelia heard it and her brain was apologizing for all the times it called her an idiot for believing that she could hear that particular sound.
Amelia rolled, and every bone in her body protested.
A rib bone hit against her lung, causing pain to start. It was mild enough to tell her there was a problem, but it was incessant. The pain was going nowhere. One of her legs might be broken from one too many kicks. The rest of her body, as well as her head, was an enormous bruise. A groan of pain came out of her as she turned over and flung the wall that was doubling as a shield in front of her.
Before she could get it up, Stacey stabbed her with the knife. It went through her back and nicked a lung. She wasn’t completely sure. The wall did its job. When it was up, it repelled Stacey and her knife. The knife being forced out might not be good for not being unalive.
A roar of pure rage came from Stacey as she picked herself up. “Bitch!”
Amelia had been called worse. She tried to shrug it off, but her shoulders weren’t down for the movement.
“What kind of shield is that?” Stacey asked as she moved her head from side to side, cracking her neck.
Amelia wasn’t fooled. Stacey’s brown eyes were no longer placid fields of Mother Earth, ready to give birth to a spring crop. Amelia could see the calculations happening behind them.
“I’m going to kill you. Can we both agree with that? It might be harder with your new shield, but it’s going to happen.”
The problem Amelia was having was that she agreed with Stacey. Someone, her or Stacey, was going to die in the room. Right now, Amelia was looking like she’d volunteered to be the sacrifice.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. You did your job. You can go back to your master and say I kicked her ass and lived to fight another day.”
Stacey gave a belly laugh before she took off her pointed high heels. “It doesn’t work like that. You kill what you target, or you go home in a body bag.” Stacey threw one of her heels at Amelia, testing for a weak spot. When it bounced off without hitting Amelia, Stacey didn’t respond.
“Go to your real home, where you were loved.” Amelia was clutching at straws, not everyone was loved. She thought of her cousins with their father.
“Would I be here if I knew the loving embrace of a family? Maybe or maybe not. I might have hated them the way I do now. Well, the way I did. I unalived them the first chance I got. There’s nothing to go back to. Nothing except rotting corpses sitting around the dining room table. The last I heard, they still hadn’t been found. It’s a powerful look-away spell that He taught me.”
Amelia was having trouble breathing. It was something she should have honed into immediately, but with so many other aches and pains, she didn’t notice it until her hand went to her throat. Her lungs were filling with fluid. It could be blood or water she didn’t know. It was making it hard to breathe.
Why was she about to offer sanctuary to a killer?” Because that’s who she was.
“We could put you up, protect you.” Even as Amelia said those words, made that promise, the blackness of Stacey’s soul was being revealed.
There would be no redemption or second chances for Stacey. When a soul was that dark, it couldn’t find its way to the light.
Stacey laughed. “I’d rather die than accept help from the likes of you.”
“Challenge accepted.” Amelia didn’t feel smug or good about what was to happen, but she wanted to live. There was a male around here somewhere she wanted to kiss until their lips fell off and cousins whose shoulders she needed to cry on.
Amelia had never killed before, although she came close to being part of Jenna’s death. Stacey, on the other hand, had killed more than her family. If she were a betting woman and she wasn’t, she’d say that Stacey had killed more than one empath. Was she looking for Amelia or just clearing the playing field?
Stacey threw the second shoe that was still clutched in her hand, along with her knife. It hit Amelia on the side. This time, it didn’t bounce off. Instead, it caused Amelia to gasp. It hadn’t hurt in the traditional thought of pain, but she had felt something unknown. Whatever it was, she didn’t think it was good for her or Stacey.
The smile on Stacey’s face made her think of the Cheshire Cat from ‘Alice in Wonderland.’
“Don’t do it, Stacey, I’m begging you.”
“ He’ll be happy to know you begged.” She took her time to look around the room. “I want to commit the place you died to memory to share it over wine and the best orgasm of my life.”
A woman had to have dreams, Amelia thought. She’d like a glass of wine and an orgasm with Zylar. She and Stacey weren’t that different from each other. One mate killed, the other healed. She was getting loopy from blood loss and the pain in her side.
“Let’s finish this.” Stacey stood over Amelia every inch the serial killer she grew up to be.
“Then we’ll regret it together.” Stacey held the blade high, charging it.
Amelia didn’t know what else to call it since this was her first time seeing it done. It looked like Stacey was sending every negative emotion that lived within her to the blade while giving it the order to kill.
Amelia desperately tried to move, to wiggle out of the way. She couldn’t get a toe to move. Her body was done. It had thrown in the towel and was demanding rest, not death, but a long recuperative sleep. When the silver of the blade turned black, Stacey was ready. She took a step closer to Amelia and aimed the blade at the weakness in her wall. Stacey brought the blade down with all the strength she had.
It pierced the wall, stabbing Amelia in her side, but it didn’t stop there. The blade shot out of Amelia’s side and stabbed Stacey in the same place.
“Kill her.” Amelia’s mini-me was back.
“With what? My good looks?” How did she expect Amelia to move?
“Figure it out. One of us dies, and one lives.”
Amelia wanted to scoff at that, but one look at Stacey said that she was changing into something that wasn’t human and Amelia didn’t want to wait around for that to happen. Where was her mate when she needed him?
She rocked, using her hips like she was on a boat, swaying from side to side. Heck, she might be experiencing motion sickness. She threw a hip over and landed on her stomach, it wasn’t a pretty move and every nerve on her body was screaming foul play. She imitated an inchworm and sent up several heartfelt prayers that she wasn’t born an inchworm and pleaded that she never came back as one. Getting across the room took longer than it should have. When she got there, she strained every muscle in her arm to reach out and pull the knife out of Stacey’s side.
“I’m going to kill you,” Stacey whispered, trying to make her fingers move.
“It’s all over but the hurrah,” Amelia said. “Want to tell me why, before it’s too late?” She needed to keep Stacey talking until the last minute. Her fingers, which seemed mostly nerveless were trying hard to palm the knife.
“Why? Because he heard me when no one else did. Is that reason enough? Is he a cold-blooded killer? Yes, but who doesn’t love the bad boy?” Amelia shivered as Stacey spoke of her enemy and the enemy of all humans with such love and devotion.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t find the right kind of bad boy because you deserved that much out of life.” Amelia poured the last of her life force into her body, giving herself a dose of adrenaline as she reared up and plunged the knife into Stacey’s heart. The impact destroyed Stacey’s heart and then doubled back to the knife and then through Amelia’s arm, going for her heart. There was a scream of pain and anguish that painfully swept over anyone listening.
Amelia died.