“High realms!” I push closer to Xerxes, my hands clenched on his jacket, while he keeps a hand on my hip, protecting me. He’s still holding a hunting dagger, its blunt side touching my thigh, holding the other in such a way that he can strike as swiftly as a snake.
As the creatures crawl their way out of their graves and limp into the moonlight, I want to scream, but I can’t. They’re in such a state of decay that I can’t tell their rags from their flesh. One makes a gurgling sound too close, and my eyes dart to it. It’s a bald creature with an open mouth, thick black blood moving inside it instead of a tongue. The shock is so strong that I can’t make a sound, let alone remember what I was supposed to do when we encountered these creatures. Especially when I see something that chills me to the bones.
The intelligence I read in the creature’s eyes sends needles through my chest—there is someone in there, looking at me, a person, a soul that is in pain. It reaches out to me, trying to grab me with putrid fingers that reek of decay and feces. Nazarean hisses, and just before the living corpse can touch me, a blade flashes before my eyes, luscious in the moonlight.
The creature releases a sharp scream that pierces the night, its hand falling to the ground. I jump back as the hand still tries to reach me.
“Drain it, Cerys,” Xerxes urges. My eyes dart back up to see him behind the creature, his forearm pressing to its throat, strangling it.
But those eyes, they won’t let me do it. They’re the eyes of a desperate soul.
“Now, Cerys.” Xerxes raises his hunting dagger with his other hand, ready to pierce the creature.
High realms, the poison is ravaging him on the inside. There are dark circles around his eyes, giving him a vampire-like appearance, a sheen of sweat coating his golden-bronze skin. He bares his teeth, hissing at more creatures closing in on us. I suddenly realize many are emerging from the darkness, from their earthen graves and behind their crosses, from their tombs and the mist surrounding them.
I return my attention to the creature that’s choking behind Xerxes’ arm and, for a moment there, I think it’s actually begging me to do it. To free it from this terrible fate. I have no choice, I have to pull myself together and act now, before we all perish in this place.
I step close to the creature, and place my hands gently on its chest. My upper lip curls over my teeth as I touch wet rags caked with gooey body fluids, but I manage to push it out of my mind. I take a deep breath, inhaling its smell, my eyes rolling back.
I sink into its energy, following the essence of life that fuels its body. I find its soul like a shimmering core of darkness, and pain twists my heart. I grimace, and bow my head, pushing through this. This is a tortured, struggling soul that thrashes for its existence. I would try to calm it down, to give it respite, soothe it, but how do I do it? All I’ve ever done was channel energy, connecting supernatural beings to sources that would replenish them. It’s what I do, I’m a conductor, not a redeemer.
I manage to tap into the creature’s soul like I did into the volcano that fueled Xerxes when he came after me, but where do I deviate it? I need to conduct it into something.
“Use me,” Xerxes’ voice reaches me as if through a dream. I open my eyes a little, but my sight is still blurry. His face swims in front of me.
“We don’t know what it would do to you, Xerxes.”
“Just do it,” he pleads. Nazarean mewls, and my eyes open wide. I gasp as I get a full view of the scene unfolding in front of me.
More creatures have grabbed Xerxes, pulling at him, one opening its shark-like jaws to bite into his flesh. He’s fighting all of them with one hand while holding the creature I’m working on upright for me, slashing the throat of the shark-like man attacking him, and punching the next one in the same fluid movement. He’s still got his god-like physical strength that shatters a creature’s facial bones as it crashes into its twisted face, his fist curled over the dagger’s hilt, but physical strength won’t be enough. The poison is weakening him, and the shadows he emits are fainter, like a grey, dissipating mist.
Only when I try to move forward and help him do I realize the creatures are holding me back as well. Panic rises in my throat. With a cry I manage to rip myself away from them, and push my hands firmly on the creature’s chest. I close my eyes, connect to its soul, and suck it dry like a leech.
I rise and touch Xerxes on the gash that the snake left. He hisses in pain, his iron muscles twitching under my touch, but he stills when he realizes what’s happening. Through the gash, I can direct the energy right into his bloodstream. Before I do it, we lock eyes one last time.
We don’t know what effect this is going to have on him. For all we know, it might kill him. As he stares into my eyes, both of us caving under the weight of the undead tugging at us, barely able to fight their snapping teeth and their desire to send us to Samael, a feeling washes over me like a great wave of light. It fills my heart.
It’s love. I’m in love with Xerxes Blazeborn, the King of Flames, and I’m ready to die here and now with him. Without a second thought I lean down and press my lips on his, molding them. His body relaxes, and he opens his mouth to mine.
“Thank you,” he breathes as I peel my lips off of his. “For making my existence worth it.” He places his big hand on my heart, still curled over the hilt of his dagger. “I want you to know—if we survive this, it will be only because of you.”
Both our bodies will give in to the creatures’ pressure any moment. I can’t delay any longer, I must do it now.
I drive the rest of the creature’s soul into Xerxes. The darkness pours into him, and some of the creatures step back, their intelligent eyes watching the process and trying to make sense of it.
Xerxes leans his head back, his eyes closed, his arms open, taking it in. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it feels like liberation to him. But before the process is finished one of the creatures takes advantage of the moment to throw itself at him, sinking its teeth into the wound on his shoulder, now that its peers have torn the leather jacket off of him, exposing his skin.
I scream, throwing myself at the creature and strangling it from behind, but it won’t let go—or so I think, until I realize it’s Xerxes that’s keeping it. The creature crumples in my grasp like a mummy disintegrating and turning to dust.
The entire Cemetery goes silent as Xerxes howls, the dead drawing back in fear. Did he just suck the creature’s soul out of its dead body without my intervention?
He stands, slowly, rising to his full height like a god among mortals. Rivulets of fire start to ripple along his skin, but also veins with something black like tar. The dark circles around his eyes look compelling, attractive in a twisted way, and the red of his eyes turns purple.
Xerxes the King of Fire now resembles a god of death, and he looks ready to take on Samael himself. He emits shadow, but differently than before. Now he looks like there’s a black sun behind him that threatens to swallow the world.
He turns around, his purple gaze sweeping over the living corpses in the moonlight, the creatures pulling away from him in fear. Their bones snap and their entrails make squelching sounds as they stumble over each other. Completely taken with what’s going on I forget that I am not out of danger. A creature grabs me from behind, its claws sinking into my shoulders. But I don’t even get to scream or register the pain before Xerxes grabs the creature by its throat.