pounded on him. Then I gripped something in my hands over my head. I slammed it down toward him. A sword pierced through his heart.
“No!” I screamed. “Tristan! No! Tristan!”
“Shh, shh,” Tristan whispered against my ear, bringing me back to the balcony, back to reality. I hadn’t noticed him sit down behind me, his legs on each side of mine, his arms around me. My throat felt raw and I realized I’d been screaming his name aloud until he quieted me. The cold began to subside as I allowed his love to rush in. “It’s okay, ma lykita. I’m right here.”
“He doesn’t really love you. It’s all a hoax. He wants to kill you. He hates you!”
I ignored that other voice, knowing it lied. Deception. The enemy’s most powerful weapon. Instead, I pulled on Tristan’s love harder and felt it boosting my Amadis power again. My body quaked with the change in energy, shaking the hell out of Tristan and me and I knew we would both have bruises everywhere our limbs collided. Sheree’s arm jerked like a whip as I pushed the positive energy into her. She groaned and flopped onto the ground, her body going into convulsions. She kept a firm hold on me as if I were her lifeline, not just on my hand, but on my energy. On my soul. She pulled on what little love and goodness I still had within me, draining me of all of it, leaving only evil for both of us.
“This has to stop!” Tristan said. “You’re killing her.”
A growl rumbled in my chest, underscoring his revelation. I didn’t know if he meant I was killing Sheree or she was killing me. It didn’t matter. He was right. If we continued, we would end up killing each other.
Tristan pried Sheree’s fingers back from mine, forcing her to loosen her grip. He yanked my hand away from hers and in one swift motion, had me in his lap in the far corner of the balcony, too far for her to reach. Owen tried to calm her, but her body still seized.
“I can take it, Alexis,” Tristan said and I felt another energy pull on my body. My blood frosted over and I shivered in his arms. I realized what he was doing.
“No, Tristan,” I whispered. “You’re not stable enough.”
“I can handle it.”
He continued pulling and his power was too strong for me to fight it. I fell limp in his arms as I felt the evil energy leaving my body. I no longer felt cold. I no longer felt anything. Numbness encircled my heart. I didn't even know if it continued beating. The feeling began to spread throughout my body and all I felt was overwhelming despair. Loss. Hopelessness.
“This is almost as good,” the evil voice hissed.
My mind clouded over and the balcony disappeared. I found myself standing in a meadow, mountains on each side of me, a lake reflecting more peaks lining its far shores. The waist-high grass made a muted whispering sound as it waved in a breeze I didn’t feel. I thought this place might have been beautiful, if there had been any color. Instead, everything was in different shades of steel-blue and gray, even the sunless sky and the wild flowers in the field. I noticed the flowers changing—wilting and shriveling. I smelled nothing but stale air, even with the breeze still stirring.
I realized the mountains were the same ones I’d sat on while watching the slideshow of images in my dreams. And I now stood in the same meadow I’d run through in my dream the other night, after Tristan saved me. But this world had been bright and warm then. It had made me happy. Now I felt nothing, no concern for where I was or how I got here.
Not even curiosity for the four bodies in front of me, lying under a gray tree whose leaves fell all around them. They were our bodies. They lay completely still with their eyes closed, but I could hear their heartbeats, very faint, very weak. I noticed how Tristan’s hand held mine. I stared at our hands clasped together, waiting for something to stir within me. But it never did. The scene meant nothing. I felt nothing for any of them. I just watched them, for lack of anything better to do.
I couldn’t tell if any time passed. The light didn’t change. Nothing at all changed. The clouds in the gray sky didn’t transform or even move, though the breeze continued. The scene remained constant, making me think of a computer screen-saver, with the waving grass and falling leaves the only action.
“Oh, dear God! Are they dying?” The voice came from all around me, yet from nowhere. It should have echoed off the mountains, but it just fell flat. The voice was a familiar one and I thought I should know it, but I didn’t look around for it. I didn’t feel a need or a desire to.
Dying? It seemed as though that word should mean something to me. But still I felt nothing. Nothing at all. I was completely numb.
“No, not dying, but they are not well,” said another familiar voice with a heavy accent. “They need us, Sophia. Quick!”
Sophia…another word that seemed like it should mean something. I still couldn’t grasp at what.
I stared at the bodies in front of me, the tree’s leaves still falling, though it appeared to be losing none. I didn’t know what this all meant. And I realized I didn’t care if it meant anything at all. I. Didn’t. Care.
But I did wonder….
What happens to a soul when all the goodness and badness are removed? Is anything left behind? Or does the soul die or disappear, leaving just a body with no humanity at all? No emotions. No feeling. Just…some kind of soulless existence. Even evil and hatred means you feel something. That you have passion within you. That you still have a soul. I didn’t even feel that. I felt absolutely nothing. Just an existence in this strange world that never changed.
The scene suddenly flashed yellow, as if the sun had decided to make an appearance in the gray world, colorizing everything for a split second, then vanishing again. I even felt its momentary warmth.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something changing. Color slowly started bleeding into the grayness. A warm yellow seeped into the sky, as it does when a storm cloud moves away, revealing the sun a little at a time. The tall grass started turning green. The flowers reversed their earlier actions and bloomed across the field. I felt the breeze now, whispering across my cheek. I sucked the air in, as if I hadn’t taken a breath since finding myself here. Perhaps I hadn’t.
“Alexis, darling,” said the accented voice. I could hear the relief in it. And I knew what relief was! An emotion. A feeling. It all meant something to me again!
A powerful wave of warmth entered through my heart and washed over me, like a splash of warm water. Something inside me instinctively pulled at the warmth, drank it in with large, thirsty gulps. My body reacted immediately. Goodness and strength began to refill every cell. I could feel my heart again. My limbs tingled as the numbness lifted away. But I felt cold. So cold. I blinked several times, grateful to leave the gray, meaningless world and to find a gorgeous face hovering over me.
“Rina?” I whispered as she pushed another wave of warmth into me.
“Do not worry. You are okay now.”
“D-did…did I…?” I swallowed what felt like a dagger wedged in my throat, its edges slicing all the way down with the thought. “Did I k-kill her?”
“No. She is very weak, but I think she will survive.”
“Tristan?”
Her eyes flitted behind me, then back to my face. The corners of her mouth turned down as her eyebrows pushed together and lifted. “I am afraid he is not doing well.”
Oh, no! I twisted around and his arms fell off me, to the balcony floor. His head lolled against his shoulder. Rina kept one hand on his arm, pushing more Amadis power into him, but we saw no signs of it doing him any good. I threw my arms around his chest.
Another onslaught of images filled my mind. Landing a blow to a stranger’s head with a powerful fist, looking and feeling as if it were mine. But it was too big. Then an eighteenth-century village blazed with fire, people running amuck, screaming with terror, and a hand held palm-out in front of me. I knew then Tristan’s memories swarmed through my head like another slideshow. Our blood-covered hands and a body slumped on the ground below us. Then faces, their hair or hats or bonnets indicating various eras and cultures, from traditional Japanese and Chinese to American hippies. Face after face after face. All of them twisted in agony or horror. And the screams. The blood-curdling screams of men, women and even children as they lost their lives to us.
My stomach rolled with nausea and my heart squeezed with sorrow.
“Tristan, stop it!” I was surprised at how forceful the command came out because I just wanted to curl into a ball and hide from the depravity and suffering.
