Chapter Eight #3
Alaric didn’t speak, his eyes full of horror and what looked like worry as he gingerly pushed my sleeve up to see how much further the tattoo went.
He glanced to my right hand, pulling it up for him to inspect, a quick sigh of relief when he saw the ring still firmly in place.
But then his eyes grew dark, looking up to meet mine. Oh no. I was in trouble.
“Did you take this ring off, Mari?” His voice was pure venom, animalistic in the accusation.
My mouth dried at the intense way he was looking at me. I felt trapped, my limbs numb as he towered over me, his firm grip on my hand locking me in place.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered, afraid of what he would do in response. At that moment, I was scared of Alaric for the first time. He looked capable of anything.
His grip on me loosened slightly. “What do you mean you didn’t mean to?”
“There was a memorial service for Ashe Gilmore.” I rambled, the words pouring out quickly.
“It was at the Presbyterian church down the street. When I walked in, I started to feel really cold, and then there were voices, and my ring got really hot, like really painful, and I just wanted the pain to stop so I took the ring off. But then the voices got so much louder, and my head felt like it was going to explode, but I think I heard Ashe talking to me, specifically. But then I saw my ring on the floor, so I put it back on.”
My voice faded as I finished my explanation. His dark eyes never left mine; his expression was impossible to read.
“Did it ever occur to you that the ring was trying to warn you to leave?” His voice was sharp, biting.
I nodded. “Yeah, but I didn’t know for sure. I was just trying to be a good friend and be there for Sara-Kate.”
“I guess I have only myself to blame for not spelling this out for you,” he replied, the cold rage shimmering just below the surface.
“But when I said Bloodwrights are essentially a key to the veil between life and death, what made you think a centuries-old church, let alone a fucking funeral, would be a good idea for you to go to?”
I stood mute, my cheeks heating with embarrassment.
He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. “You are never to take this ring off without me present. Ever. Do you understand?”
I nodded silently. He took a step back, running his hand through his hair that hung around his shoulders instead of its usual bun at the nape of his neck. He pulled his hair back, and I fought the urge to reach over and run my fingers through it.
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind of completely stupid thoughts. He was pissed at me, and I did not like him. I just needed his knowledge. That’s it.
“What does it mean?” I finally found my voice as I pushed my sweater down, covering the gold tattoo that snaked down my arm.
He glanced over at me as he pulled out another ancient book and what looked like an obsidian stone amulet in the shape of an arrowhead, hanging from a leather necklace.
His voice echoed off the walls. “It’s the mark of death. When you allow a death echo to take control without a protective barrier, it will leave a mark. A mark designed to make it easier for the Stonebound to find you.”
“Is there a way to make it go away? Like a spell or something?”
His eyes narrowed. “No, Mari. Once you’ve been marked, there is nothing that can be done.”
My mouth fell open. “But it doesn’t mean I’m going to die, right? Not like Ashe and that man in the park?”
Alaric shook his head, confused. “What are you talking about? What about Ashe and what man in the park?”
After I explained that I had noticed the same golden sigils on both Ashe and the Bosnian man before they had died and how I was pretty sure they both must have been mentor-less emerging Bloodwrights, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
And to his credit, Alaric didn’t interrupt once, letting me explain everything before responding, his voice tight with apprehension.
“You’ve been emerging for two weeks and managed to stay out of the Stonebound's radar. Untrained and emerging Bloodwrights lose their minds, making it obvious for the Stonebound to find them, usually within days of the headaches starting.”
I nodded, trying to take in what this meant for me. “So, they definitely know who I am now, right? What do we do?”
“We train,” he said simply, moving to the edge of the pool and opening the book to a specific page, the obsidian arrowhead acting as a bookmark of sorts.
He sat on his knees, patting the ground next to him.
I sat near him, putting several inches between us.
He rolled his eyes as he pulled me close, our shoulders brushing and knees squeezing together.
“We’re going to need to power share for this to work,” he said as a form of explanation.
I nodded, keeping my eyes on the book versus risking a look into his face, my hands clenching into tight fists in my lap, as the ring thrummed happily, and the urge to reach out and touch Alaric threatened to overtake my common sense.
“Water is an excellent conduit for lingering energy, and seeing as the original building is only around 50 years old, there will not be as many death echoes to wade through. Plus, I’m here to bring you back if you go too far or too deep.
” His face, though serious, held kindness and understanding.
“You can do this. You just have to stay centered in your own body, your own presence. Don’t let the death echo take control of you; you stay in control of it. ”
He reached over, trying to tug my ring loose from my finger. I snatched my hand back before it could completely come off.
“Didn’t you just yell at me for taking this thing off before?” I yelped.
He pulled my hand back into his, his fingers gently taking the ring off, but the metal still touching my skin.
“I said never take it off without me present,” he corrected. “One day this ring will be just a decoration, and you will have to be able to keep control over your own mind and body. I’m right here and I will not let anything bad happen to you. I swear.”
I nodded, allowing him to take the ring and slip it into his pocket.
“Now close your eyes, and when the whispers come, visualize them as individual threads of light, something that you can easily manipulate in your hands, pushing them to the side.”
I did what he said, tight and anxious as the first few whispers brushed against my skin, a slow pressure building in the back of my head just as it had earlier in the church.
But Alaric was right. There were not nearly as many voices, and the pressure was only mildly unpleasant, not a sharp, intense pain.
I felt Alaric’s firm grip on my hand, an incandescent warmth flooding through me where our hands were intertwined.
I recognized this as his own magic, pushing through into me, filling me up with a kind of warmth not unlike the kind I felt when he kissed me in the library.
The voices and whispers became slightly clearer, and I concentrated on singling one voice out of the dissonance of the others, manifesting them as threads of light.
I opened my eyes, and suddenly I not only could hear the different voices but could see them as these ethereal threads of light, floating around us.
If I didn’t know how dangerous these death echoes were, I would almost think they were beautiful.
“Put your hand in the water and choose a whisper, a thread, to focus on,” Alaric encouraged. “Push the others to the side and focus on the one.”
I nodded, moving to dip my fingers into the water as one child-like voice began to break through the others, sounding angry and desperate.
He did it on purpose.
He knew it wasn’t a good idea.
He can’t be trusted.
I continued to push through, reaching for the voice, willing it to explain more. To tell me who this person was who couldn’t be trusted. As I continued to reach forward, a hand from beneath the water grabbed me, pulling me under in an instant.
I was in two places at once. In reality, I had been pulled under the water of the newly renovated pool, drifting towards the bottom at the deep end as my lungs burned for air. But I was also in between, within a vision the death echo had taken me into.
In the vision, I stood on the edge of the pool, light streaming in through the windows that wrapped around at the top of the ceiling.
The sounds of splashing and chatter filled the air.
I looked around, finding young kids taking swimming lessons in the shallow end while what looked like teenagers were practicing their dives with a coach nearby.
There were parents in the stands, chatting amongst themselves as they waved at their kids who were swimming in different parts of the pool.
Two little boys on the far side of the pool, where no adults were currently watching or nearby, caught my eye.
I walked towards them, feeling more like I was gliding rather than walking; the vision taking on a dreamlike haze.
As I got closer, I could make out the older boy, maybe 10 years old, softly encouraging his younger brother, most likely 7, to jump into the deep end.
“It’s okay, John,” the older brother continued. “It’s just like the shallow end. You’ll be fine.”
“I’m scared,” John mumbled, moving further away from the edge, looking around for someone to help. “I don’t wanna.”
“Are you a baby or what?” His older brother turned mean. “Just jump and swim to the other side with the ladder. It’s not hard.”
“I’m not a baby,” John quipped, his little face turning red with anger. “I just don’t want to.”
John turned to walk away, most likely to head back towards the shallow section where the other small kids were swimming.
But then suddenly, John’s brother grabbed his arm, and it felt like he was grabbing my arm.
Suddenly, I was no longer watching the scene unfold, but was in John’s perspective, his little arm burning as his older brother dragged him to the edge.
“No!” we both screamed, fighting with all our strength to get away.
Ice-cold fear washed through me as I realized how helpless we were to fight off this older, bigger kid.
Without another word, John’s older brother pushed him into the water, his dark green eyes wide with curiosity and fear.
We thrashed as we started to sink, screaming out our last breath of air as the panic set in.
Lungs filled with chlorine water, burning as we thrashed, trying to break the surface.
I felt another set of familiar arms pulling me up out of the water and as I broke the surface, once again back in my own body in the present with Alaric, I started to cry and shake, coughing up the water that I had inadvertently swallowed.
I had not only tapped into a death echo completely, but I watched as a child had been killed.
By his own brother. And re-lived the experience with him as if it had happened to me.
Alaric laid me down beside the pool, leaning over me as he brushed my hair from my face, his calloused hands firm yet gentle.
“Mari, look at me. Focus on me.”
I was hyperventilating, trying to get as much air into my lungs as possible. They had just been filled with water. I felt it.
“You’re okay,” he continued to whisper gently, taking my ring out of his pocket and slipping it back onto my finger.
My eyes finally locked on his dark green orbs, and a shiver rippled through me as an echo of what I had just experienced rushed through me.
John’s older brother’s eyes, the eyes of the one who had pushed him in the water, of the ones who had watched him die, were the exact same shade of dark green as Alaric’s.