Page 82 of Avelina

“Don’t move, traitor!” Axel screamed at Aaron. He held me by my hair, squeezing so hard that I thought he would pull my scalp clean off. I cried out again as the blood streamed out of the wound in my neck, mingling with rain and blood from my ripped earlobe and spilling onto my wet clothing. I shook from the stress, the pain, and the cold sleet.

“I will kill her,” Axel said. “I swear it. I only need one of them and I already have the dog, so you’ll either watch me take her or you’ll watch her die. Your choice. Ellis, point your crossbow at the traitor.”

Ellis didn’t move. He blinked a few times, then lifted a hand to wipe mud off his face.

Spirit! What do I do?

“Ellis!” yelled Axel again, his voice cracking. His dagger shook when he spoke, digging deeper into my neck.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Spirit! Help me!

“You’ve already beaten him,” Spirit said calmly. Her voice cut through the storm as if it were directed into my ears through earbuds. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Axel’s eyebrows knit together, realizing he’d missed something. “Ellis, kill the traitor!” he shrieked.

Ellis no longer appeared confused. He lifted his eyes to meet Axel’s gaze, and they glowed brightly with that same beautiful amber color Ward’s had. That’s how I could see, even in the darkness, that Spirit was right. He had come back to himself, and he had only one thing on his mind: revenge.

Ellis lifted his crossbow to Axel’s chest and pulled the trigger twice.

The impact knocked Axel back a few feet and onto his back with a squish. The dagger flung away from my neck, slicing me again in the process.

“Lee!” Aaron yelled. He ran to me and held his hand to my neck to apply pressure. “Hang on, I’ve got you,” he said. I bled profusely and the whole world spun around me, but I could already feel Protection healing my wounds. Now that I had a sense of it, I could push it along to speed up the process.

“I’ll be okay,” I rasped. “Help me over to Axel before he dies and we lose our chance.” My teeth chattered and my words slurred.

“I’m more worried about losing you,” he said. “Your lips are blue.”

“I’ll be okay,” I insisted. I tasted blood in my mouth, but I would not be distracted. “Help me.”

Aaron picked me up and carried me over to Axel. He held me against his bare chest, and I soaked in his body heat like a sponge. The sleet, which had briefly fallen with a painful vengeance, had become a soft, quietly drifting snow.

Axel stared up at the sky, stunned. His reflective eyes blinked against the snowflakes that caught in his eyelashes. He held his hands up as we approached him, as if he could push us away. He was already weak, though, and his arms were floppy and uncoordinated. His beautiful golden dagger lay several feet away.

“Heal me,” he mumbled. “Heal me. I’ll help you fight her. I’ll help you.” He exhaled and closed his eyes as his arms dropped to the ground.

Aaron cautiously set me down next to Axel but stayed pressed up against my back for warmth. Blood, black in the dim light, spurted around one of the bolts in Axel’s chest in rhythmic pulses. It had hit him just above his heart, entering between the ribs. He’d be dead in seconds.

Must have been lesser Protection, I thought.

I stared down at him, watching his lifeblood drain from his body. I could have healed him then and saved his life. I could’ve said that I didn’t want to be like Eve and Seleca, that I wanted to do something different, to be a good person and not let someone die who I had the ability to save. But the truth is, Evilina isn’t some demon trapped inside of me.

She’s me.

I wrapped my trembling hand around Axel’s neck and delved into him, searching for his Teleportation reservoir. It was there, hovering around his solar plexus. I couldn’t see it, exactly, but I could feel the Absorption fragment within me trying to stick to it like Velcro.

I let it happen. His Protection reservoir was still there, too, but strained in trying to save him from death. I pushed Absorption past Axel’s weakened barrier and wrapped it around his reservoir like a mother swaddling a newborn.

I couldn’t see his soul leave his body. Perhaps, I speculated, it was because I hadn’t yet ascended my Conjuration. Or maybe I didn’t want to see the ghost of a man I’d let die so I could steal his reservoir.

I could feel it, though, the way you feel a change in air pressure. I couldn’t sense his soul with any of the five basic senses, but there was something in my brain that actively pinged like sonar. I shivered as his spirit fled, and I felt the Teleportation reservoir pull away from me. I hung on and visualized pulling that reservoir out of Axel’s chest into my own. It tugged, then came loose.

I had it.

Then, it had me. The instant the Teleportation reservoir snapped free from Axel, it surged into me just as I’d surged back into my body after drifting out, or maybe like Ward when his soul had rushed back into his body, pulling my Protection fragment with it. It felt like the Connection spike, but instead of pain, I was hit with extreme vertigo reminiscent of the feeling you get on a roller coaster rocketing downhill.

I gasped and almost fell, but Aaron caught me. I felt his warm embrace and let him support me entirely, closing my eyes against the dizzying sensation. The vertigo dissipated, only to be replaced by an exhaustion so heavy that it brought to mind my experience in the hospital when they’d pumped me full of drugs. I opened my eyes again, struggling to stay awake, but blackness crept into the corners of my vision.

“Aaron,” I muttered, “I’m so tired.”

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