Give the Dark My Love(83)

I ran to the top of the spiral staircase that led into the foyer, hoping the air would clear my head. At its base, the bodies of the other plague victims lay haphazardly. And above and around them all, the same golden glow that had clung to Ernesta before pouring into the crucible.

“No,” I whispered.

I cupped the crucible in my palm. The truth settled on my shoulders like rain.

I had thought my arm was the price I paid for the power, but I was wrong. Ernesta’s soul had been the sacrifice. These other dead bodies—their souls were still there. Still intact. But Ernesta’s had been ripped from her, imbued into the iron, forced into the crucible.

I ran back to her side.

“Nessie,” I said, my voice cracking. “Come back to me.”

I knew what to do instinctively. I cradled the crucible in the palm of my hand. I saw—now that I knew what to look for, I saw. The golden glow of my sister’s soul bound to the crucible, not her body.

“Come back,” I ordered, and there was power resonating in my voice.

Ernesta’s body did not move.

“COME. BACK.” I ordered again, channeling everything inside of me through the crucible.

Her eyes opened.





FIFTY-FOUR


    Nedra



“Nessie!” I cried joyously.

Her flesh was cool, like the iron bead in my hand. She had no heartbeat.

I pulled back.

No life in her eyes.

“Nessie?” I asked, leaning back and looking into her expressionless face.

She blinked.

There was nothing of my sister in this shell of a body. Was this what necromancy was? Raising the bodies but losing the souls? What point was there in that?

Unblinking, she watched me.

I couldn’t stand to look at her expressionless eyes. I had to get out. I ran across the metal landing, heading straight to the spiral staircase. But when I reached the top of the steps, I was stopped short by a wave of power, the sheer force of which hit me like a gust of wind in a hurricane.

From my vantage point, I could see almost all of the abandoned bodies in the hospital. But I could also see the golden glow that clung to them, much like the glow that had enveloped Ernesta when I first raised her. Souls.

But unlike with Ernesta, I could hear these souls. Not with my ears, but in my mind—I could hear every last one of them. And they were crying out.

Help me.

Time. Give me more time.

Bring me back.

Can you hear me?

There’s more I want to do.

Each voice was distinct, each imbued with its own sense of longing. And each voice was directed at me. Just as I could sense the dead, they could sense me.

I remember you, one voice said, and my eyes drifted to the body of the boy on the floor, Ronan.

What do you see? I thought the words, but I knew he understood.

Darkness, he said. And light.

Do you see my sister? My internal voice was urgent, begging. She looks like me.

Nothing looks like anything here.

Ernesta? I called loudly in my mind. Can you hear me?

But as I tried to reach through the veil that seemed to separate me from the voices, I couldn’t get any sense of my sister. I could not find her cries among the others. Now that I’d made my presence known, they called to me even louder, screaming, begging, a long, low moan that sliced through my brain with the finesse of a sledgehammer.

I took a deep, shaking breath, trying to make sense of it all. And in the sound of my exhale, I could feel others, ones I’d not noticed before. Silent ones. They shrank away from me, pulling deeper past the veil.

In the palm of my hand, the crucible pulsed like a heartbeat.

A glimmer of silver caught my eye. I looked to the left, to where my other arm should be. Extending from the remaining bit of my shoulder was a pale, ghostly limb, transparent but bright. I flexed my fingers. Nothing I had read had hinted that my flesh and blood would be taken and replaced with a spirit arm. But I had also never read of someone using a crucible cage they had not made themselves. Perhaps this was payment for not sacrificing enough, or perhaps there was some dark magic Bennum Wellebourne had placed on the burned bones of his own hand. Trembling, I tried to touch this shadow arm with my real right hand. I felt nothing—my fingers slipped through the air—until the ghost arm touched the iron crucible.

That I felt.

I let go of the crucible with my real right hand. It rested in the shadow hand as if that pale mist was solid.

Help us, the voices cried. They were weaker now.

They didn’t have much time.

I held my shadow hand out, the crucible in it small and insignificant looking, and in my mind, I called back to the voices that called to me. I saw the golden mists rise up from the bodies—most, but not all. They swarmed to me, to the crucible, and the light poured inside, swirling like a black hole eating a star.

I felt their souls. I knew each of them in a way I had known no other person—bare and true. My ghostly fingers clenched the crucible—it was both hot and cold at the same time, the temperature so extreme it felt as if it would burn me, and yet I couldn’t let go, even if the hand that clutched it was not real.

In a brilliant supernova of light, the souls shot out of the crucible and back into the bodies of the people they belonged to. They each took a huge breath of air in, their backs arching, then exhaled, sinking back down. None of them breathed again.