When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 218

“That is exactly what I am going to do,” I growl, lowering my voice as my hand tightens further around the flame, protective, if not wary. “I-”

A spark of light exudes from the flame that is clutched between us. Minute at first, barely visible, as though it is a trick of the light, then it flares once more, leaving no room for impossibility. The flame is moving on its own.

“Why is it doing that?” Kal asks, lowering his voice to a whisper, as though fearing something (or someone) might hear him. Warily, I reach out two fingers to skim over the crystal encased flame, my mind buzzing with questions that have seemingly no answers. Under my touch, the crystal hums against my skin, like a song, or a voice that sings through the wind on the darkened hours of twilight, a voice that cannot be places, or proven it is ever really there. And yet I hear it- that wordless song of power thrumming through my veins. I pull away my hand.

“It is calling out, the flame. I think it’s calling out to her.”

Her, my mind whispers.  Her.

I shake off the voice with a shuddering chill.

“The flame is directly tied to the angel’s lifeforce,” Ithuriel explains softly, kneeling beside me to survey it with a series of dubious glances. Silently, he beckons for me to hand it over. Wordlessly, I do so, seeing no reason to distrust the angel who is soon to be my strongest advocate for peace. Trust has to start somewhere, after all.

The shudder that courses through his body is as clear as day when he takes hold of the flame, and for a few seconds, his vision becomes blanketed with an unseeing fog, cold and visionless. Then he expels a deep breath, his hair glowing a bright, blinding white as he sinks back down onto his heels.

“I have never felt anything so charged with emotions,” he admits, passing it back to me with an unsteady wobble of his hands. As soon as the flame leaves his skin, a passive green shade washes over his hair. “I don’t understand how this came to pass. It was always inanimate and now…” he trails off, rubbing his temples slowly. Pacing forward a few steps, Kal glances over the flame, and then Ithuriel, twiddling his fingers with a nervous fervour.

“Well, it could have had something to do with Azrael murdering all those Folk. The souls had to go somewhere, right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kal,” Delina snarls with a roll of her eyes, jabbing a finger at the flame. “Why on earth would the souls be hosted in the flame? We are talking about high level possession here!”

With one raise of my hand, Delina falls silent.

“Kal has a point. It likely does hold some of the souls, but it is also attached to the lifeforce of the angels so-”

Then I feel something, tiny at first. A flicker of life, a secondary consciousness niggling inside my mind, whispering, murmuring, a faint chime of words that seemingly only I can hear. It is like a song, a musical melody without voice or lyrics, just a delicate hum, like the call of the wind across an ocean.

The bond inside me tugs into life.

“Help,” she calls, and I can hear her voice as clear as day, ringing like a bell through my mind. My vision blurs. “Where am I?”

The flame flares.

“Shit,” I mutter, resting my hand against the wall to steady myself, a nauseous feeling growing in my head. Ithuriel doesn’t look much better. Sinking to his knees, he clutches his head between his fingers, screwing his eyes swiftly shut.

“Here’s a thought,” he mutters through gritted teeth. “Naturally, the eternal flame has an attachment to the angels as it is a beacon for their lives. But I don’t think we anticipated how much of an attachment it would have on their Queen.”

“I think,” I murmur, biting the inside of my cheek. “That you might be right, Ithuriel. Which begs the question, what exactly is she doing? Do you think she knows?”

The room falls silent as the flame flickers down into darkness, leaving nothing but a faint amber glow coating our bodies in light.

A wisp of light dances in front of my vision, coiling and wavering against the dark of the room, catching the attention of the vampires and angels alike. Perplexed, Delina leans forward, attempting to prod at the array of scattered golden light, but I usher her back, my eyes trained on its motion.

For a moment she stares at me.

“I don’t understand. What is happening?” she whispers through her teeth, red eyes narrowed as she inspects this strange occurrence with a growing temptation to touch it. Inside my hand, the crystal enclosing the eternal flame grows warm, heating like the sun on my skin. It flicks back into life as the array of golden shards of light dance ever closer to it: closer, closer until in one fell swoop, they are engulfed by the flame.

“I think,” I murmur under my breath, lifting up the flame once more to gaze over it, noting that the light is brighter now, and a little vision spins in the middle, to blurred to see- a face? A body? A hand?

I cannot truly be certain of its form, only one thing, wavering against the back of my dark, bloodsoaked mind.

“She is alive,” I murmur softly, thumbing over the crystal that encases the flame, my face warming as I feel the beat of a heart play against it, soft and gentle, a pattern I am all too familiar with. “I believe she has awoken.”

“She has,” Ithuriel breathes, staring deeply into the vision that swirls in the flame, as though hoping to be sucked into it. His fingers gloss over the crystal shards lovingly.

“It would seem that the flame’s attachment to Serena lends us some sort of vision over her. We should be able to keep an eye on her, make sure she is safe. Even anticipate what Azrael is up to if we are lucky?” Ithuriel suggests, pacing the room now. Kal nods slowly in agreement.

“If we can stay one step ahead of Azrael, that is always a win in my books.”

“Agreed,” I nod, cupping my hands over the flame as the vision vanishes from sight.  She is safe. Is all I can think, over and over, spinning those words through the back of my mind.  She is alive. I can feel her.

And that is all the confirmation I need.

Slowly, I raise my head, staring past the hundreds of meters of earth and soil above our heads to where vampires tip toe anxiously around the court room, nerves playing the strings of their hearts for the first time in their immortal lives. The flame glows once more, the faint presence of a conscious being whispering in my mind like a long forgotten melody. “It is time.”

“Time?” Kal queries, sidling himself next to Ithuriel, who stands just a fraction taller than him. “Time for what?”

I bring my gaze back down to face him.

“Everybody,” I announce, my eyes flaring into a flaming red as I step into the centre of the room. Hoisting Dawn onto my back, I push my arms out, outstretched. “Grab on to me. I would rather not leave anyone behind.”

In a flurry to get themselves attached, several pairs of hands latch onto my arms, Delina on my torso, her face flushed but drawn tight into an unassuming gesture of ignorance. Dawn claws more tightly around my neck, her little wings beating against my back, irritating enough that I have to shift my own downwards to avoid collision.

“Everybody on? Good.” I state simply, leaving little time for protests even if there were any. After all, the world has little time now, merely waiting on the notion that Azrael will wreck havoc upon the world, or that someone will be there to stop it.

But here is the thing. Azrael needs the flame, else his plans for domination will shortly be crushed, after all, he cannot fuse any souls without the immense capabilities of its power. So now, it has become a waiting game. To see how long it will take for Serena will worm her way into his heart, his quarters, to prize information of him, and how long it will take for him, or us, to find the souls. But we have the flame, and our spy- it would seem the odds are very much in our favour.

The game has only just formulated, and yet it has already begun.

“Hold on tight everyone, you might not like this,” I grin, and before Kal can explain his existential fear over what I am about to do, my whole form recedes into the shadows. Dragging everyone with me in a series of screams as their bodies evaporate into shadow, I tug and pull us all to the surface of awaiting bloodsuckers, and a clan of angels expectantly awaiting news of their Queen.

After all, today is meant to be the last day of the coronation ceremony, today their Queen should have returned to them.

I wonder what they will make of the Scarlet King returning to them instead?