Chapter 15
Tina floated in the liquid, the silver bubbles illuminating the space. Quite some time had passed since she had last visited Damon’s mind and she had been afraid that wouldn’t happen again, but here she was, waiting to appear in Damon’s garden.
In this moment she should have been more worried about how Muriel’s and Uriel’s investigations were progressing and whether Haniel, whose phone redirected all of her calls to voice mail, had already returned home. She didn’t know what was going on and even though she wished she could have accompanied Muriel as he followed the Deadeaters who had broken into their house, or helped Uriel with his work in the lab, despite her aversion to the place, they had stashed her in Nathanael and Gillian’s underground quarters. For a while she had kept Gillian company in her small study, with walls full of fashion drawings, watching as Gillian drew an outfit for her, pants and a jacket, which she would make as soon as Uriel found fabric resistant to Shadows.
The bubbles around her burst and she was about to swing her arm around to create new ones when she found herself in the garden.
Good.
She looked around, expecting to see Damon, expecting to hear the laughter of the child, flying his kite or playing with his toy boat in one of the ponds. But her eyes only encountered trees and bushes, and her ears, silence. It was different, the garden. Darker.
She gazed at the clouds that, like before, veiled most of the sun, but now they were almost black, not a white and light grey fluff like before. A chill crawled up her spine as something passed above her and blocked what little of the light seeped through the clouds, lengthening the shadows of trees and suffocating the garden in darkness.
She looked up and saw golden-yellow wisps wrapped in dark grey spreading over the sky. What was that?
Something wrapped around her wrist.
She flinched and tried to tear herself away from the grip, but then her eyes found green ones and she let Damon pull her through the liquid-like entrance, the same as the ones that had allowed her to access other Damon’s memories.
She stared at the wide back before her and something warm uncurled inside her. She missed him, she hadn’t known how much she missed him until she laid her eyes on him again.
They passed the images of vicious battles and ragged land scattered with dead until they stepped into a large hall. Tina looked left and right but she couldn't see any walls in the darkness, just the outlines of something in the distance. “What was that? Those threads in the sky?”
“That was Petsha.” Damon released her, lifted his arm and said something in a strange language as he snapped his fingers.
“Petsha?” Tina repeated. Was this the same situation as when Abbas had invaded her mind? “But how? Deadeaters don't have those kinds of abilities. Or at least they shouldn't.”
A soft light glowed above them and marked Damon’s path as he stepped over the smooth, golden floor.
“It seems that along with Angelica’s energy he also got a few of her powers. I guess he didn’t know how to use them before.”
“Is it dangerous for us?” Tina didn’t have that feeling as she stood in the garden; uncomfortable, yes, afraid, no. She darted behind him, marvelling at the lights in the shape of the stars, at the imprints that wove over the floor and at the golden crates, which stood on the black platforms. What was this place?
“For you probably not, for me... I’m not willing to try it out, not yet, anyway.” Damon stopped before the case; he caressed the smooth surface with engraved symbols, lines and circles before he sat on it.
Tina touched the crate, it looked like a sarcophagus; she could distinguish the rift that marked the lid. It was warm and it vibrated slightly. “What is this? A Sarniikzi?” But a Sarniikzi was an ordinary looking steel crate on the outside, it didn't look sophisticated and like a work of art.
“You would call it a coffin.”
“A coffin? What is this place? A cemetery?”
“No, not a cemetery, cemeteries are places for the dead, but the majority of the people here are still alive. This is the Resting Circle, a resting place for the Daughters and their offspring.”
“The Daughters?” She shouldn’t have been asking this and she shouldn’t have been interested in this place, instead she should have been working on finding a way to see through his eyes again.
“Abbas’s daughters, like Prva, Angelica and my foremother.”
She wanted to ask more about what being a Daughter meant and why they were special enough to have their own burial -- resting place, but a hushed sound of metal against metal drew her gaze up.
A large circle appeared above; when it descended three steps away from them, Tina could see the pole in the middle of it. Suddenly long spikes appeared from it, they shifted and widened, creating stairs around the pole.
At the sound of footsteps, more ‘stars’ appeared underneath a dark ceiling and spread, lighting the place and revealing that the crate on which Damon sat was part of a circle with twelve sarcophagi, one of them black, and that there were rows of smaller crates made of stone behind some of the golden ones.
Tina stepped behind the sarcophagus, her voice a whisper when she asked, “Who’s coming?”
“Me.”
“You?” She leaned her elbows on the surface of the crate beside Damon, assuming there was nothing to be afraid of, her eyes on the stairs. Soon she could see black boots, then black pants, silver armour, and then Damon’s youthful face and the long tail of black hair tied in high ponytail. The same teenager version of Damon she had encountered in that cottage with Trinity stepped down to the ground and passed her; a man -- was that Tristian? -- with a chest in his arms followed him..
“Yes, bringing my mother’s remains.” Damon leaned back on his hands. “It’s not one of my fondest memories. That’s why we should be safe here.”
“What are you planning to do? Hide?”
“Something like that.”
“This isn’t like you?”
He slid down the crate and faced her over it. “And what is like me?”
“I don’t know, but... not to wait passively, allowing things to happen to you...” She frowned. “You are a man of action.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” His jaw tensed, his voice became a little strained. “I’m stuck here.” He gave her a hard look before he pushed himself away from the sarcophagus. “Do you think that I would be here chatting with you if there was a way out? Do you think I would just calmly wait for death if I thought there was a way out?”
“But there is a way out.” She went around the crate and stopped beside him; she grabbed his hands when he faced her. “I can get you out. If you let me see through your eyes, I can use space distortion and transport Muriel and me to where you are being held and then he can transport us back.”
“Since when can you use space distortion?”
“Since two, three weeks ago.”
He raised his brows.
“I’m not bad at transporting myself. But yeah, I still have to work on having a passenger with me. But I will do it. I will.”
Damon smiled down on her, a gentle curve of lips, and squeezed her hands. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“I've said that I would save you.”
“Yes, you did,” he said. “But for that you need time, which I don’t have, and you want me to do something that I’m not able to.”
“How do you know? Have you tried it?”
He sighed. “Do you really want me to admit it?”
“Huh? Admit what?”
“That I’m weak.” He combed through his hair. “And helpless. That there isn’t anything that I can do.” A dry chuckle escaped his throat. “It’s even worse. I have been chased out of my favourite memories; I don’t hold any power even in my own mind.”
He was taking the whole situation pretty lightly. Tina tilted her head, scrutinizing his face, the lines around his eyes and mouth. No, he wasn’t taking this lightly, he just hid his frustration pretty well. Her gaze slid down to his curled hands and before she knew it, her body had closed the distance between them and she found her arms wrapped around his waist. She expected that he would push her away, but instead she could feel the weight of his arms around her shoulders.
She rested her cheek against his chest. Damon's warmth seeping into her made her feel at ease and it felt so natural to hear his heartbeat under her ear. It made her wish she could stay like that forever. “You are not weak,” she murmured.
“But I am helpless,” Damon leaned his chin on the top of her head. “I tried so hard not to call you here, but in the end, here you are.”
“I wanted to be here.” She tightened her hold around his waist and fought against the urge to nuzzle closer
“To tell me your idea?”
“Yes, and to ask you if we can pull it off.”
He sighed. “With each day Petsha is getting deeper and deeper into my mind and when he reaches me, he will gain complete control, not just over my body, but also over my mind. I might even cease to exist.” He cupped her neck and forced her to look up. “So I can’t give you a lot of time. And I cannot guarantee that when you are ready I will be able to ‘wake up’, as you called it. I’m not even sure if I have enough strength to do that in this moment.”
Tina, drowning in Damon's green eyes, covered his hands. “Please, don’t give up.” She despised her attraction to Damon, half of the time pretending that it wasn’t there. And no matter how strong the strings that pulled her toward him became, or that the urge to claim him and make him hers scared her, she would help him. Yes, it would be easier to just stand aside and watch him dwindle into nothingness. But she would help him. For the Dumes and for Trinity and even for herself. “Don’t give up, okay?”
“How can I when you won’t let me?”
#
“Again. I want to try it again.” Tina stubbornly stared at Michael, her fingers tightly wrapped around his arm. Since Uriel, Muriel and Haniel were still absent when she woke up, with Gillian’s help, she had asked the first available space-distortion expert, Michael in this case, to practise space transportation with her.
“Come on, Tina, you have been at this for four hours. You have to take a break,” Gillian said from the couch, where she sat among three white-haired young children, two girls and a boy.
“No, not until I succeed in transporting him with me.” She looked up at Michael. She needed to master space distortion as soon as possible. “Please.”
“It will cost you an additional week of babysitting.” Michael's blue eyes stared back at her, his face expressionless.
Tina nodded before her hand slid lower and she wrapped her fingers around his. She focused on the hallway she could see through the opened living room door and at the same time tried to concentrate on the man beside her, imagining them both standing on the wooden floor of the hallway.
She felt the now familiar tingle in her limbs; it spread over her body and this time because she held her eyes open she could see the strip of blackness through which she moved before she stood in the hallway. She could still feel Michael’s wrist under her fingers, but instead of his body, an outline of it shimmered beside her. She had failed, again. She bit her lip as she looked over her shoulder at the living room.
The twin of the shimmering form beside her, just slightly more solid, glared at her before the couch before it disappeared.
“This really isn’t your thing.” Michael appeared by her side. He rolled his shoulder as he shook off her hand and stepped away from her.
“No, please.” Tina grabbed the hem of Michael’s striped shirt. “Let’s try again.”
“I’ve had enough.”
“Just one more time, please.” She refused to let go of Michael’s shirt. Time was running out, Damon had made that clear, and she needed to learn this. She needed so badly to do this right, quickly. “Please.”
“No.” Michael faced her. “You are tired and you are getting worse at it, not better. We will continue this later.”
“A month of babysitting.”
Blue eyes scrutinised her and she thought that he would say yes, but he pulled the shirt out of her hand and turned away. “Children, we are leaving.” He gestured to the boy and the girls, who obediently stood up and came to him.
“Two months.”
“I’m tired, too. If we continue, next time I might not be able to solidify myself,” Michael said before he took the hand of the girl with pigtails and went down the hallway; the boy followed.
“Don’t be sad. We will be back. I promise.” Remiell, the girl with braids, tugged on Tina’s T-shirt.
“Don’t promise something you are not able to deliver.” Michael looked over his shoulder.
“But we will be back.” Remiell rushed after him and grabbed his free hand. “And you will help her, won’t you?”
Tina couldn’t hear Michael’s murmured answer, but the smile that Remiell flashed as she waved at her before they left through the door reassured her that Remiell would be able to keep her promise.
“You are lucky that the children like you. If not for them, I doubt that Michael would be so willing to help you,” Gillian said.
“He’s doing this in exchange for babysitting.”
“But he would never leave the children with somebody they don’t like, nor helped you as much as he did, if Remiell hadn’t nagged him. They, Anael, Nat and Uriel are the only ones who can influence him and make him do things.”
“Good for me, then.” Tina sat on the edge of the couch and leaned back. She glanced in Gillian’s direction. She would have liked to continue practising, but even if Gillian agreed, an amateur like her would jeopardize Gillian’s life since Gillian couldn’t solidify her body from between-space; only a few people who could withdraw into between-space could do that and Muriel, Uriel and Michael were among those few.
“What are you going to do now?” Gillian asked.
“I’ll continue to practise, only with objects,” Tina said. “I was thinking of using paper, if you are willing to give me some.”
“Sure.” Gillian stood up and brought a stack of paper from the study. She gave it to Tina and Tina started to practice with it. For some time Gillian watched her, then announced that she was going to see Nat.
Tina watched her leave the room before she returned to disappearing and reappearing in the living room and hallway, the stack of paper quickly thinning until only one remained. And even this one, after her last try, ended up half of its size.
She stared at it before she fell onto the couch, groaning. A dull pain started to pound in her head, but she didn’t know if it was from strain or frustration. She hung her head and cradled it in her hands. “How am I going to save Damon if I can’t even transfer a little thing like paper?”
She glided down the couch, rolled onto her stomach and stretched her body over the seat. She pressed her cheek against the velvet surface. Why was she so incompetent?
She had almost dozed off when a soft buzz came from the pocket of her pants. She pushed a hand under her body and pulled out the phone. She looked at the display and after she saw Haniel on the screen, she turned, accepted the call and pressed the phone against her ear. “Where have you been?”
“Hello to you, too,” Haniel’s voice travelled over the receiver.
“Where have you been? Muriel said that you would only be gone for a couple of hours and now it’s almost morning. And when I called you, you had your phone disconnected. I was really worried about you. What’s going on?”
“Nothing much, just...”
“Just, what?”
“Don’t get too excited, okay.”
Tina sat up. “What is it?”
“I stumbled over the hive.”
“Huh?”
“The hive. The hive. You know, the Deadeaters’ nest.”