Ava was sweet. She was probably the sweetest girl in their school. Right up until Kyra removed sweet Ava’s head from her shoulders. It hadn’t taken much to get her out onto the lake. All Kyra had to do was dangle a pair of ice skates from her petite, alabaster fingers with a smirk. Ava couldn’t resist something so sweet. She couldn’t resist a moon-lit dance on the iced over forest lake, surrounded by ancient sentinels and song of the whispering winds and mutterings of the shifting branches and their trunks, full of secrets. The cold was almost punishing, the way it bit deep into her skin. But Kyra had the kind of warmth resting in her belly that pushed the adrenaline in her veins, that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Despite a closed, thick coat of white lined with grey fur, she still felt the bite of the forest’s breath. Even her hair, sunlight made physical, glimpses of the early morning spun into threads that reached her shoulders were cold to the touch. Hands in the pockets of the coat, Kyra glided over the ice, hair rippling in the wink of the moonlight. Ava however, distracted herself with a leaf. It was one of splendid colours, frozen under a thin coat of ice. Its beauty had been suspended in a single moment of its life, a single dot of colour on the stretch of nothingness that was the lake. The small girl, her curly mousey brown hair tied up into a half-hearted bun, slowed and lowered herself down to her knees. With a tug of her woollen, white sweater, Ava revealed her mark. It was a small, simple one, at her wrist. Two diagonal lines pointed to her palm, between both another two straight lines running parallel. Ava gave small flick of her hand and the markings glowed a flawless white, then drew itself a few centimetres above into a dagger. It was small, but a beautiful one. A jade blade, a topaz heart in the silver, spiral hilt. With her Marks weapon, dainty and painted as she was, Ava pried into the ice in an attempt to reach the leaf.
Crouched down like that, Ava had exposed her own neck. Her mark was small. Weak. Her soul was weaker, Kyra supposed. She had supposed a great many things, things that led her to that moment, that decision. That decision to reach behind to her nape where the tattoo that wound its way around her body, right down to her ankle. From a black vine trickled with leaves that spun its way around her back, stomach, thigh and to her ankle – Kyra drew a metal weapon capable of slicing clean through one of the sentinels. Or through flesh and bone. All it took was a simple flick of Kyra’s wrist, and Ava’s head rolled. Her beauty, forever suspended, forever trapped in that single moment of childlike awe. Her dagger clattered to the ice, then folded itself away, reducing down to nothing but lines. And those white lines too, erased themselves into nothingness. She was gone. But her boyfriend had just arrived. He stood atop a cleft. Watching, motionless. Saul’s glasses hid any emotion that might’ve poured from them at any moment. But like the leaf Ava had scraped at so desperately, Saul was frozen, a prisoner in that single moment of loss. Yet, he’d been prisoner of much more for the longest time.
“Why?” He asked, not moving a muscle. He didn’t step forward. Didn’t move his arms to hug himself in despair or try to draw his own Mark weapon. Saul just stood there, skates dangling in his stiff fingers. Kyra still held her weapon, warm, crimson droplets racing from the razor leaves. With a flick upwards, the weapon whipped upward and reduced back to lines and then to nothing. The blood on her hands, gone with a single motion.
“She was a problem, Saul. Torus and I took care of it,” Kyra said stated with a sickly, thin smile. Torus and its thick lines on her spine twitched in reply.
“I – I love her,” He said, a croak in his voice that refused to acknowledge that she’d passed.
Liar.
Kyra looked up to the bird sitting atop a sentinels branch. It watched them both with an odd sense of interested and focus.
“If you say shit, you know what’ll happen,” Kyra reminded him with a bite of her lip. Almost innocent like. There was a moment of silence that stretched on for all known eternity. Saul dropped the skates.
“What’re we supposed to do with the body?” He said, ice creeping back into his tone.
Kyra glanced back up at the bird, its feather the same soft white as the snow Saul’s boots crunched upon.
“I’ve made a deal to have that taken care of,” She said, meeting the blue eyes of the small bird.
“A deal?” He hissed. Yet before he could rant and rave and yell in that furious whisper of his, there was a rumble below the ice. What…was that?
Kyra froze in place, leg muscles frozen and refusing to move. Using every inch of her strength, she forced herself to look down. Below the ice, at her feet, there was a beast of shadows and darkness looking up at her. It’s giant fingers splayed, as if eager to escape its prison.
“Kyra. Move. Now,” Saul said, unnervingly calm. All her confidence, her entire mask melted away to be replaced with a stab of fear right to the gut. Its formless eyes locked onto Kyra and opened its jaws in a soundless roar. At that, she ran and scrambled up the hill, throwing her skates off before following Saul through the forest. They ran, ice, stone and roots crunching underfoot as the creature slammed against the ice, Ava’s decapitated body jerking slightly at every hit. Kyra heard the hiss and groan as the lakes surface began to crack. Faster. The high of killing Ava had washed away. The focus, the drive had shattered and now she fumbled for the keys when they reached the road, Saul’s Chevy parked to the side.
“C’mon!” Saul snapped, wrenching at the handle.
With shaking hands, Kyra unlocked the car and they tumbled inside. Slamming the door close, the sound of cracking and crashing waves filled the silent, pressing air of the forest.
“C’mon!” She snapped in turn, urging him to get the car started. Taking in shallow gasps of air, Saul woke the engine and slammed on the accelerator, the tires skidded on the iced dirt for a moment before finding their grip and propelling them forward. Kyra held the sides of her seat until her knuckles turned white. Looking to the side-mirror, she took in a sharp intake of breath as she found the shadow creature crawling towards them at an alarming speed. Its empty eyes were locked on the car, wisps of shadow pouring from the sockets, claws digging deep into the dirt as it dragged itself forward on its belly. Holy shit.
“Kyra, what is that thing?” Saul asked almost calmly, changing gears as they went around a bend.
“I have no fucking clue, I swear,” She said, staring down at her feet. They were freezing, soaking now that the ice that had clung to the socks had begun to melt. Kyra drew her legs up onto the seat, her hugging her knees to her chest. She met his eyes. Saul glared at her for a few moments more, then looked ahead to press the pedal right to the floor. What is that thing…I make a deal with a dove and that thing crawls out of the ice instead? Maybe it had nothing to do with the deal at all. Maybe I just chose the wrong lake to spill blood on.
Kyra yet again dared to looked to the side-mirror. She gripped her knees tighter.
“It’s gone.” She said, her words small and without a lick of triumph. Saul glanced to the side-mirror on the driver’s side and after a moment, dared to release his death grip on the steering wheel.
They continued on in silence for ten minutes. Ten minutes of the hum of the engine, occasional jolt of the Chevy as it passed over a rock or into a pothole. They were going fast, but too fast for this type of road. Kyra didn’t care. It wasn’t cold inside the car, not in the least. But she took in a deep breath, and felt her insides go a deathly cold. This is all I’ve got. This cold. And him. Before Kyra could so much as open her lips to speak, Saul slammed the breaks. She was thrown forward, almost smashing her head into the dashboard, the car skidding to a halt. Wordless, Saul undid his seat belt and then hers as she tried to recover some sense of focus. He jumped out into the cold and went around to open hers. The freezing air poured in to wash over her face and neck, biting at her, pulling her. Yet it didn’t pull her as hard as Saul did. He took her by the shirt, yanking her violently out of the seat and onto the dirt road. Kyra’s shirt was torn, buttons scattering to the ground.
“Saul – please – stop!” She whimpered. He didn’t bother with his Mark Weapon. With one hand he pinned her shoulder to the ground and with the other, balled it into a fist and sent straight into her jaw. Blood dribbled from Kyra’s lips, bubbling as she tried to breathe in and out. He took her jaw and crushed it in his hand, forcing her to look him in the eye.
“Fuck. You,” Saul growled. He swung again. And again.
“Saul,” She rasped at a momentary pause. He took her hair in his hands and raised her head up.
“What is it, Kyra?” he asked, head titled slightly to the side.
“Fuck…you…too,” She managed to croak. He dropped her. Let her crumple to the ground.
He couldn’t kill her. He could beat her senseless, break every bone in her god damn body but he could never kill her. Despite it all. So he picked her up, cradling her gently and placed her back in the car, then pulled the seat belt back over.
Breath came in ragged, greedy gulps. With a shaking hand, Kyra tried to wipe away the blood from her lips, chin and neck. It was everywhere. Sticky. Red. Leaking into every crevice. Staining her flawless skin. The car engine rattled back to life and they kept on moving.
“We’ll go to the Church. They’ll know what to do, keep us safe at least. No one can touch us there, not even the academy,” Saul reasoned. He splayed his fingers, the knuckles red and raw.
The Church. It makes them sound almost holy. Funny that. No holy men tread on that ground anymore, only spirit hunters. But that’s…what we need right now. They won’t find her body, at least, now it’s lost in the long, dark depths of that lake. Maybe whatever spirit that just chased us will end up eating what’s left of her, if we’re lucky. The rest of the class will wonder where Saul Haynes, Kyra Mont and Ava Green went. Maybe they’ll think we all sunk to the bottom of that lake. Three friends, going to ice skate under the moon together, the ice simply cracked and we drowned.
They wound through the mountain roads, down and down. Past Saul, Kyra looked to the valley below and the city lying at its heart. Even at night, it was beautiful. Skyscrapers reached up high, only the Titan Birch trees rivalling their height and width. Some skyscrapers were even intertwined from some of the Titan Birches, their branches twirling through the buildings many floors and offices. Spirits of the night fly and crawled about the red leaves and rooftops. Even from here, she could make out the people on the rooftops flying their giant paper kites alongside the spirits. Some resembled animals, like giant hawks or hummingbirds, their brilliant colours illuminated against the dark sky. Kyra sat back, trying to keep her throbbing face as still as possible. This is gonna hurt to high hell in the morning. Lucky Ava, doesn’t have to feel a thing now. The city was beautiful from afar at night. She couldn’t wait to see it again, awash in the light of day.
“Not long now,” Saul said with a click of his tongue. He seemed almost relaxed. It was a façade, that much was obvious but to any onlooking stranger, it would almost seem as though he hadn’t just had his heart ripped out. No, that evidence lay on Kyra’s broken, bleeding face. They continued down the mountain road, the constant winding sending her right to sleep. Even asleep, she could steel feel the throb. Yet through the gentle unconscious blanket now wrapped around her, Kyra felt the soothing clasp of the silver thread of her Mark. It cradled her swollen, bloodied face, slipped down her throat and like a cold wash of midnight, calming the irate flesh. It was the sudden slow that woke her, eventually. Saul pulled up the handbrake and rested his head against the seat. Kyra dared to look him in the eye. The swelling, the soreness had more or less gone done. But the blood remained, caked against her fair skin.
“What’re we supposed to tell them?” Saul questioned, staring straight ahead into the forest surrounding the half-collapsed Church. Kyra looked forward. Only the half- crumbled stone wall surrounding the Church was illuminated by the faint gaze of the moon.
“The truth. The important parts anyway,” She reasoned, flicking up her wrist so that a single, razor leaf formed into solidity winking even in the faint moonlight.
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