Chapter 19
Ihad been here before.
This was the same clearing. The same forest, sunken so deeply into the past that the very trees themselves had a primitive look. The same sky with strange stars shining down.
And the same man, kneeling in the grass, frantically scratching a Circle into the hard earth with the jagged end of a stick.
Ambrose.
The name rose to my memory like a bubble up through still water. Even as I thought it, his body shuddered, like the name had skittered over his skin. He lifted his head, and I caught a glimpse of his face.
It was Ambrose, and yet it wasn’t Ambrose.
He had changed subtly. I found myself drifting forward, trying to understand exactly what was different.
His features were the same—I recognized the aquiline nose, the heavy eyebrows, the high cheekbones.
But it was when I saw his eyes that I realized what was different.
They were still wide and heavily lashed, but something inside them was just…
gone. It was as though there had been a light before, a spark, but now it had been extinguished.
I realized his eyes looked empty—flat. I knew that, if I looked into those eyes, I would feel cold and afraid.
I would know that I was looking into the face of something at once human and somehow not human.
And I understood. This was a later memory. This Ambrose had already bartered away the piece of his soul. The difference in his appearance was just that—a reflection of the fact that he no longer had a full human soul. And I could see it. I could see the wrongness in his eyes.
I was so focused on this change in Ambrose that I didn’t fully pay attention to what it was he was actually doing, so that the sudden appearance of a second being within the confines of the Circle startled me, so much so that I reeled backward.
If this had been a real place, I’m sure I would have tripped over a tree root or something, but instead I simply seemed to float back, creating instant space between myself and the appalling creature now looming over Ambrose.
It was Abaddon. The very same demon who had maimed Ambrose’s soul in the first place.
This time, however, Ambrose did not cower.
He did not beg or cry. Instead, he rose to his feet and stood, square-shouldered, looking at the demon without a trace of fear.
No, it was another emotion altogether that hardened the planes of his face, and stretched the line of his mouth into a grimace: pure, unadulterated fury.
“You seek me again,” Abaddon’s abomination of a voice echoed inside my head, making me wish I could turn myself inside out just to rid myself of it. Ambrose had no visible reaction.
“I do,” he replied. His voice was flat. Calm. Dangerous.
“Bold. I could almost applaud your audacity if I did not pity your foolishness,” Abaddon said, voice dripping with cruel amusement.
“It is not foolishness, I assure you,” Ambrose said.
“We shall see. What is it you seek?”
“You lied to me.”
“Did I? You begged for the life of your mortal lover. You traded a piece of your soul for it.”
“I did.”
“And the fever spared her, did it not?”
“It did.”
“Then I fail to see the lie.”
“She is dead! She is dead anyway, and all of this was for nothing!”
The words echoed around the clearing, tearing up his throat and into the night. It was different than the last time he had shouted—there was pain, yes, but more than anything, it was anger that crackled through the sound.
“She is dead, you say? But the fever spared her. That was our arrangement. I kept my part of the bargain, mortal, you cannot deny that.”
“She didn’t die of the fever. She…” Ambrose swallowed convulsively, reaching up into his hair and tugging at it in a manic sort of way, like he was trying to pull his own thoughts up by the roots.
“What happened to her?” Abaddon asked, but it was not a question the creature needed answered.
I could tell from the poorly repressed amusement in its tone that it already knew the answer.
It merely wanted to put Ambrose through the pain of having to say it all out loud, to hear the words spoken to the night, where he could not take them back again.
“I returned to her that night. By morning, the fever broke. She healed slowly, but steadily. She started to come back to herself. But then she… she saw that I was different.”
“Different?”
“You did not tell me that the part of my soul that you took… that it would… change me.”
Abaddon’s mouthless face still managed to approximate an amused smile. “How could you think it would not? To maim the soul, to chip away at the essence—you thought this would leave no mark?”
“I didn’t…” Ambrose’s face flushed with something like shame. “I could not… I didn’t care what happened to me. Only what happened to her.”
“A miscalculation on your part, mortal, and one for which the blame can surely not be laid at my feet. You say she saw that you were different. Different how?”
“I couldn't… I began to… to lash out. Lose my temper. I never… I used to think that… that she could do no wrong. That everything she said and did was perfect. But now she… she began to grate at me. Tire me.”
“Is that so?”
“I love her. I love her more than…” Again, he tore at his hair. “But this anger would come out of me. I couldn’t control it. I began to… to scare her. To hurt her.”
Abaddon made a sound, a strange kind of crooning. “You killed this love of yours?”
“Yes,” Ambrose said in a cracked voice. “Not with my own hands. But I… I broke her heart and she… she…” He swallowed hard, choking on a sob that wouldn't come.
“She said she could not recognize me anymore. She could not find the… the light in my eyes. She said I did not love her anymore, and that she… she could not live without my… my love…” His voice climbed and climbed to a climax of wild hysteria, and he began to beat at his chest, like he could beat his broken heart right out of himself.
“Aaaaaaahhh,” Abaddon said, the sound dripping with satisfaction as the realization set in. “Your love left you by her own hand.”
Ambrose couldn’t speak. He nodded his head violently, still pounding at his chest with such violence that I could see the bruises appearing in real time.
Then, just as suddenly as he started, he stopped.
He dropped his hands to his sides, and his head drooped on his neck, as all the fight had simply gone out of him at once.
When he answered, his voice was hollow and monotone.
“She waited for me to fall asleep. Then she filled her pockets with stones and walked into the sea.”
The words felt like a blow as the realization hit me.
Of course. The woman I had seen in my last vision.
It was Isabel, the woman Ambrose had destroyed his soul to save.
How had I not realized it? I wished I could erase the picture now flickering in my mind: a tall, slender woman, her dark hair streaming out behind her like a banner, water swirling around her ankles, waves crashing over her as she walked inexorably forward.
And the injury to her face, he had done it with his own hand, had lost his temper and struck her.
And in that moment, she realized that, while she had lived, the man she had loved was gone.
Every flicker of emotion that had crossed her face made perfect sense now as my mind played it back.
The decision she made, how calm and deliberate and easy it had seemed.
Part of me was glad to finally understand, but another part of me wished I could unknow it.
It was so inexpressibly sad, so heavy with tragedy, like those pockets filled with stones.
“And what do you wish for me to do about it?” Abaddon asked. “Your plight, while pitiable, is none of my concern. She made a choice. I had no hand in it.”
“You made me this… this thing she could not face,” Ambrose growled.
“I did not steal that piece of your soul, Ambrose Wright. You gave it willingly. Another choice.”
“I did not choose this. I did not… did not understand.”
“You did not care to understand. You let your hysteria master you. You would heed no warning, no advice. You did not stop to consider what interfering with the hands of fate might bring forth. You thought only of your own wants. Your own comforts.”
“That’s not true. I thought of hers.”
“Another lie. If she had died, as she ought, of that fever, her pain would have ended. It was your pain that would have continued, your suffering that would be prolonged. That was what you could not face: your own pain. Your own loneliness. It was only selfishness that drove you into this clearing to summon me, to make a bargain which you could not possibly understand. And now the natural consequences of that bargain have come to pass, and still, you do not own your choice. This was the manifestation of your own will.”
“I did not want this.”
“No. But you do deserve it. And you cannot change it.”
Ambrose lifted his head and stared into Abaddon’s bulbous, glowing eyes.
“That is not true.”
“It is.”
“Oh I may deserve it. I can concede that. You could not despise me more than I despise myself. But I will not concede the other. There must be something that can be done to change it.”
“There is not, mortal, I assure you. There is nothing you can do.”
“But there is something you can do.”
“I cannot bring her back.”
Ambrose laughed, an empty awful sound. “You are so weak, then? I summoned you because you are meant to be one of the most powerful of your kind. You mean to say you cannot manipulate a single human soul? Do not lie to me, Abaddon. You could bring her back.”
“Oh, a shade of her, yes, I will grant you that. A piece. A pale imitation. But it will be only that, just enough of her to drive you to madness with longing for the rest.”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that is all you can do.”