Page 96 of Divine Oaths

“What are you doing?” I shouted, trying to pull him away from Kasem. The Sigma struck me, the blow so powerful that I fell to the ground. My vision went white and I tasted blood on the inside of my cheek.

“Sianna!” Kasem shouted, wrestling with the figure and nearly succeeding in throwing him off. But then the figure thrust a blow to Kasem’s abdomen, right where he’d been stabbed months before. It was as if he’d known Kasem’s weakness.

Kasem crumpled to the ground, mere inches away from me. In the distance, the creature was getting closer.

Vivian emerged, trying to grab the figure by the arms, but her body, suddenly made intangible, went right through him.

“Be gone, ghost,” the figure hissed. “Or I will summon him.”

Vivian recoiled. Even the gator-like creature seemed to fear the figure’s words.

“Kasem,” I whispered, inching toward him from where I lay. I reached for him and our fingers brushed. But then something yanked me from the ground and threw me against one of the trees. Kasem screamed my name, and the last thing I saw before everything went dark, before the air was sucked from the world, were his brown eyes pooling with silver and gold.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I will deny thee nothing

THE AIR WAS THIN HERE, like even nature was holding its breath. Pain cut through my body, making me numb and faint. When I opened my eyes, it was to the inside of a small shack. One of the veiled members of Theta was tied up next to me, while Kasem was bound on my other side. I tried to reach for him and suddenly, pain tore through my wrists.

I’d been bound too. Someone had secured my hands behind my back, roping them together, and tied my ankles to keep me from running. The silver rope cut into my skin, and when I fought it, friction flamed against my flesh, cutting, painful.

“Kasem,” I whispered. “Open your eyes. Please.”

But he didn’t move, didn’t seem to breathe. His body was deathly still, like a corpse. A cool light emanated from him, tendrils of gold and silver shimmering around his form like an icy flame. Like fractals of light. All around us, the flutter of moths silenced my beating heart.

I drew toward him. I couldn’t use my hands, so I nuzzled his neck, brushed my cheeks against his, let the warmth of my touch find him. His lashes, long as they were, brushed my lips, and when our noses touched, slowly his eyes opened.

My spirit, however broken it had been moments before, was soldering itself together. My heart ached for this man before me, beat along with the shallow rhythm of his breath as if without him, my own would falter.

Just a little longer, I told myself. If we could survive this, I would stay with him until Westfield and he were free from the curse, and my powers became mine again.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

“I know,” he whispered. He nodded toward the ropes tying our hands and our feet. “Do you have anything that can help us out of this?”

On the other side of me, the veiled Theta shifted in her sleep. But she hadn’t been unconscious at all.

She had a knife between her hands, and she’d been slowly working her way through the rope.

This was our way out. This was our chance.

She stopped abruptly when the door to the shack burst open. The figure in the vulture mask emerged again. He tore the mask away, revealing his face.

The buzz cut, the seething brown eyes.

Pete. The first of Kasem’s two attempted murderers.

“I don’t want to kill you, Kasem. You know that,” Pete said. “It’s just the curse. He beckons me with it.”

Kasem leaned forward, shielding me from Pete.

“Pretend you’re unconscious,” he whispered, his lips brushing my ear.

I pressed my eyes shut and Kasem shifted away from me, his voice booming in the shed.

“I never asked any of you to save me in the woodshop.”

“Tell that to Nathan,” Pete said. “He died first. You know I saw his ghost in the basement of the university? He’s lurking there now. Trapped on this campus. Just like everyone else who’s died at Westfield. Yet you get to live as if others haven’t died because of you, as if we haven’t given our lives in place of the death the curse always meant to be yours.”