Burned (House of Night #7)(84)

Seoras was standing above him, bending again and again over his body to slice his skin, but the Guardian's voice was a distant anchor, hardly discernible.

"Trust me . . ."

Stark had already made the choice. All he had to do was to follow through with it.

"I trust you," he heard himself whisper. The world turned gray, then scarlet, then black. All Stark was aware of was the heat of the pain and the liquid of his blood. The two merged, and he was suddenly outside his body, sinking into the stone, dripping down the carved sides, and washing into the horns.

Surrounded only by pain and darkness, Stark fought against panic, but strangely, after only a moment, the terror was replaced with a numb acceptance that was kinda comforting. On second thought, this darkness wasn't so bad. At least the pain was going away. Actually, the pain seemed almost a memory

"Do not f**king give up, moron! Zoey needs you!"

Aphrodite's voice? Goddess, it was irritating that even detached from his body, she could still bother him.

Detached from my body. He'd done it! The exhilaration that came with the realization was quickly followed by confusion.

He was out of his body.

He could see nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing. The blackness was absolute.

Stark had no idea where he was. His spirit fluttered and, like a trapped bird, it battered against nothingness.

What is it Seoras had said to him? What had been his advice?

. . . surrender is a powerful force.

Stark quit fighting and quieted his spirit, and a small memory shone through the blackness, that of his soul, pouring with his blood into two troughs shaped like horns.

Horns.

Stark focused on the only tangible idea in his mind, and he imagined himself grabbing hold of thosehorns.

The creature came out of the absolute darkness. He was a different kind of black than that which had engulfed Stark. He was the black of a new moon sky - deep, night-resting water - and half-forgotten midnight dreams.

I accept your blood sacrifice, Warrior. Face me and move on, if you dare.

I dare! Stark shouted, accepting the challenge.

The bull charged him. Acting purely on instinct, Stark didn't run. He didn't jump aside. Instead, he faced the bull, head-on. Screaming his anger and rage and fear, Stark ran at the bull. The creature lowered his massive head as if he would gore Stark.

No! Stark leaped at the bull, and with a motion that was dreamlike, grabbed his horns. At the same instant the creature threw up his head, and Stark vaulted over his body. He felt like he was ping from an impossibly high cliff as he hurled forward farther and farther, and somewhere, behind him in the black soullessness, he heard the bull's voice echoing three words: Well done, Guardian . . .

Then there was an explosion of light around him just before he tumbled onto a hard-packed piece of ground. Stark picked himself up slowly, thinking how weird it was that even though he was nothing but spirit, he still had the form and feeling of his body, and looked around.

In front of him was a grove, identical to the one that grew near Sgiach's castle. There was even a hanging tree before it, decorated with strips of cloth too numerous to count. As he watched, the cloth changed, taking on different colors and lengths and shimmering like Christmas tree tinsel.

The Otherworld - this had to be the entrance to Nyx's realm. Nothing else could look this magickal.

Before stepping forward, Stark glanced behind him, thinking it couldn't be this easy to get in and expecting the giant black bull to materialize and this time gore him for real.

All that was behind him was the black nothingness from where he'd come. If that wasn't creepy enough, the segment of ground he'd been dumped onto was a small, half circle patch of red dirt that reminded him unexpectedly of Oklahoma, and in the center of the patch a gleaming sword was stuck halfway up to the hilt. It took two hands to pull the sword free, and then, as Stark automatically wiped the otherwise spotless blade on his jeans to clean it, he realized that, like the Seol ne Gigh, the original color of the ground had been tainted by blood.

He finished wiping the blade hastily, for some reason not liking the thought of blood staining it, and then he turned his attention to what was in front of him. That was where he needed to go. His mind, heart, and spirit knew it.

"Zoey, I'm here. I'm coming to you," he said, and stepped forward, running into an invisible barrier hard as a brick wall. "What the hell?" he muttered, moving back and looking up to see that a stone archway had suddenly appeared.

There was an explosion of a cold white light that gave Stark the creepy image of a freezer door opening to expose dead flesh. Blinking, his eyes traveled down, and what he saw in front of him shocked him to his very core.

Stark was staring at himself.

At first he thought the archway must have a mirror in it, but there was no blackness reflected behind him, and his other self was grinning a familiar, cocky smile. Stark definitely wasn't smiling. Then he spoke, dispelling all thoughts of mirror images and rational explanations.

"Yeah, f**knuts, it's you. You're me. To get into this place, you're gonna have to kill me, which is not gonna happen 'cause I'm not so cool with dying. What is gonna happen is that I'm gonna kick your ass and kill you dead."

While Stark stood there, speechless and staring at himself, his mirror image lunged forward, slashing with a broadsword identical to the one Stark held, drawing a line of blood down his arm.