All the Wicked Things

Chapter 20

The darkness that I was falling into seemed never-ending. I wondered if this was what purgatory was like—a dark room filled with nothingness that would certainly drive any person mad. Maybe my soul had some unfinished business and my conscious would simply loom in this obscurity until that business was done. But the only unfinished business that came to mind was not having loved Elric enough, not having spent enough time with the kind disbeliever that brought me back from the edge of despair.

I struggled to open my eyes. I could hear muffled sounds all around me but I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't push the air out of my lungs to form words, to let whoever was out there know that I was in here.

Stuck.

A piercing pain persisted in my chest, and it felt as though someone had taken a soldering iron to my heart, melting away the flesh and bone and sinew until nothing remained. I certainly was dying—this, this certainly had to be what death felt like. And yet, there was a part of me that welcomed it. Thoughts of seeing my mother again flooded my mind and though I couldn't see my tears from the depth of the darkness, I felt their warm, salty presence on my cheek. A heaviness loomed over me and my thoughts drifted away.

v

When my consciousness found me again, the darkness seemed to be split in two by a penetrating bright light. I focused on that light—praying, hoping that it would lead me somewhere, anywhere besides this darkness.

At first, it was only a small halo of light, but it slowly expanded, giving way to a particular shape. I blinked, not moving my head, and tried to focus on that light, on the spaces around it. I could tell I was lying on a bed, but other than that I had no idea where I was—or when I was. Had I fallen through the portal?

A blurry figure moved into my line of sight, and I blink feverishly to make the image come into focus. A wave of relief washed over me as I saw Elric's worried face lean over. I winced as I leaned up to kiss him.

"I'm so sorry," he said, the look of despair still present on his face.

"For what?" I breathed, albeit a little raggedly.

"For—for this," he waved his hand at my body. "For exposing you to...to him."

"What happened?" I asked, propping myself up on a pillow against the headboard. I was back in Elric's room, and as far as I could tell, I didn't have any overtly obvious wounds—at least none that looked life threatening.

"I slit Leo's leg and he fell into the portal. It closed right after he fell."

"But," I gasped for air as I felt my throat close. "But he might still be alive. A-A-And in the future. With my family." I stared at a spot on the covers as my words sank in.

"There's no way he could have lived through that type of blow," Elric said, clasping my hand in his. "I've told you, it's fatal to Revenants."

The confidence in his tone should have given me relief, but the thought of that vile man in Blackstone made a chill run up my spine. I managed a half-hearted smile for Elric and said, "What happened to me? I-I blacked out."

"Your pendant saved you from the blow of his staff. His magic bounced off you and hit him, throwing him back into the portal. You should consider yourself very lucky," he said, looking solemn. "I've seen him destroy Mystics with that staff by barely placing it on the ground."

"I don't think luck had anything to do with it," I replied, clasping the pendant in my hand and pulling it back and forth on the chain. "On the day my mother gave it to me, she told me to never take it off—that it would protect me, allow me to see the evil in people when others could not. But she also said it would help me see the good in people too. I just thought it was another one of the silly antics she used to pull, like that time she told me Hitler had escaped to Argentina."