Celestial Read online

  "Remember, you're not going to hurt me," said Zander, his voice low and casual despite how serious the situation was.

  "I know." I stuck the needle into his arm and drew out the warm crimson liquid, trying to keep my trembling hands steady.

  He took the syringe from me then, his hand touching mine for an instant, filling them with warmth the same way that door had. He looked up at his sister. "I know you don't approve, but please. Take his feet. I'll owe you one."

  She said nothing, but crouched down and clasped Nim's calves, holding them in a vice-like grip.

  "Sally, you hold his head steady," he said. "Don't let him move."

  I clutched Nim’s head, my hands clammy against his bald scalp. Tiny hairs were growing there now, prickling my palms.

  Zander drove the syringe into Nim’s chest, but it was too late. He was dead. And it was my fault.

  The three of us knew it was over, but no one dared say a word. My hands trembled as they clasped Nim’s head. His skin was so pale, even under the torchlight. Nimien had stopped breathing, and by the look of it, he wasn't going to start again.

  "Nim?" I stammered, brushing the sweat from his brow.

  I knew he couldn’t answer, but I wanted to hear his voice again. I wanted to hear the excitement he had been bubbling with when we promised to take him away from that ship. The same excitement I’d had when I was invited to see the universe.

  But I would never hear it again.

  Nimien was dead. Until, out of nowhere, his back arched.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mortality sucks, and now we are here

  Nimen's mouth flew open, and he gasped for air. My hands tightened around his head, the sweaty skin sticky against my palms. My eyes flashed to Zander, but he said nothing, entirely focused on the boy, holding him tight.

  Nim was breathing. Where one second he had been dead, he was now shaking, snapping, breaking. I bit down on my lower lip to keep myself from screaming.

  Live, live, please let him live!

  "Hold his head!"

  I clutched my hands tighter around Nim's scalp, not sure where the voice was coming from. His back arched again and then fell, hitting the stone floor with a heavy thump. He began to shake, foam building at the corner of his mouth, his body electric.

  Zander forced Nim’s hands down, but even without the flailing it was damn near impossible to watch. Nim was choking again, the foam flying, his head trying to wrench from my hands. It took all my strength to keep the skull in place and from slamming against the hard granite floor.

  The muscles first, then the skin on his body, were beginning to stitch together. His face smoothed out, the skin spreading like spilled milk to cover the gashes in his cheeks. His torso went from having large red cuts to light pink stripes to just being skin again, as perfect as the day he was born. The hair on his once-bald head began to grow, pushing through my fingers until they were deep in a lush thicket of sticky, dark hair.

  It lasted mere seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. His muscles gave, and the body relaxed in a jolt. As suddenly as it had started, the ordeal was over, and it left Nimien still on the cold, hard ground with an expression of calm and serene sleep.

  I removed my hands from his scalp, which was now so thick with sweat it was as if it had been held under a faucet. I wiped the foam from his mouth with the edge of my bloody Alliance uniform, feeling the hot breath escape his lips.

  Nim was breathing. He was alive.

  Zander and Blayde removed their hands with the same reverence as attendants leaving their king. Neither of them said anything. Like me, they were waiting for Nim to be in the clear.

  His eyes fluttered open as delicately as butterfly's wings. He stared up at the ceiling, his breaths heavy. The pounding of his heart in his chest reverberated around and through us, echoing off the walls of the maze.

  He rolled to his side and purged his stomach of its contents, most of which were a crimson red. It was only then that he turned his head to look at me, his eyes wide and bright, a beautiful brown so vivid I scrambled back in shock.

  I had seen those eyes before.

  Now I was the one shaking. Zander put a hand on his shoulder, which made Nim cringe. But the moment was gone, and my heart began to still.

  "You're all right, Nimien," he said, calmly. "Your skin will be tender for a few days, but only because it's new. Now, follow my finger with your eyes ... please, Nimien. We need to make sure your brain isn't damaged."

  Nim did as he was asked, staring intently at Zander's finger as he paraded it back and forth in front of his line of vision. Zander nodded slowly to himself.

  "Good, the kid's alive," said Blayde, standing up and brushing the dust off her knees. "So now can we get cleaned up? Do some recon?"

  "The 'kid' just came back from the dead, Blayde. Chill, please," said Zander as he helped Nim to sit up then eventually stand. Nim teetered a little uneasily on his nearly regrown legs, but otherwise he stood fine.

  "What ..." Nim asked Zander, gripping onto him for support. He looked back at me, and his piercing brown eyes met mine. In an instant, I felt like I had recognized an old friend again, someone I had known and somehow lost, but I was shaking too much to say anything. Then, he looked away, and the familiarity vanished once again.

  I guess my eyes were playing tricks on me. After all, I was scared and emotional, projecting. His eyes were his eyes and no one else's.

  "Something pushed us in the jump," said Zander, calmly, though I could see his hands shaking in the gloom of the torchlight. "We ended up in this ... place."

  "And then you triggered this bad boy," said Blayde, patting the bloody gate of spikes appreciatively. "Only booby trap in this whole place, and you get hit by it. Now that's what I call tough luck."

  Zander shot her a look. "We're sorry this happened, but we did everything we could to help you."

  "You tried to help me," Nim repeated. "How? What exactly did you do?"

  I didn't know how to answer, and neither did Zander. Luckily, neither of us had to. Blayde, the eternal bearer of bad news, flew into the conversation with her magical words of wisdom.

  "Oh, we jammed some of Zander's magic blood into you, though we have no idea what it'll do. Glad you're alive, kiddo."

  "What? Please, don't call me that." Nim shuddered.

  "Hey, we saved your life," she said. "I think that gives me a pass. Now, let's get going before anything else tries to kill the mortals."

  "We're not going anywhere with Nim like this," said Zander.

  "Like what? At peak health? High on immortality juice?"

  "You're immortal?" asked Nim, looking up from his hands. He ran his fingers through his newly grown hair, pulling at the roots, his gaze sliding past the duo to land on me.

  "They're immortal," I said, thrusting my index at the siblings, "and they're space travelers. I thought we covered this in orientation. I'm just here for the ride."

  "Oh." He pulled away from Zander, standing alone now, and I realized that the hair wasn't the only thing that had changed in him. It was subtle but he looked stronger, sturdier. Ready to take on the world and anything it threw at him. He was even standing taller, almost as tall as Zander, and he radiated an air of confidence. It like he was emitting an aura that wanted to draw you in. I guess it was a byproduct of surviving death.

  "I'm not jumping again," said Zander. "I need to rest. We all do. Let's ask the locals for some food, maybe a place to sleep, then be on our way. Okay?"

  "If there are any locals. Hey, you owe me big time for this," said Blayde. "Veesh, it's as if you built a little army of mortals just so you could team up against me." She turned away, hiding her pout.

  "We should ... I don't know, leave?" Nim turned to Zander. "The temple at least, I mean. I have a bad feeling about this. Something feels familiar. But nothing out here could be familiar to me, so I would take that as a bad sign."

  "I don't want to jump anywhere until we're sure you're all right, Nimien."

  "Well, time's a-wastin'," said Blayde, rubbing her hands together. "Let's go figure a way out of this stupid labyrinth."

  "Wait, we're just going to walk out there?" asked Nim, his eyes opening wide. "Without knowing what we're walking into?"

  "He's right," said Zander. "Look what happened a few minutes ago. We should proceed with caution."

  "And this is why I didn't want you to bring the humans, Zander!" Blayde said, crossing her arms over her chest. "We can’t have any fun with these two getting in danger every five seconds."

  "That’s enough, Blayde. Come on, they don't want to be here any more than you want them here. You lead if you're so worried."

  "Right, and you can pick up the rear. We’ll keep the mortals from mortal danger. Is that all right with you, your royal highness?"

  "That sounds fine," Zander replied coolly. "Thank you."

  She harrumphed and spun on her heels, taking off down the dark corridor without a sound using the torch to light her way. Nimien didn't hesitate and followed like a bewildered puppy.

  I said nothing, just turned my iPod light back on. As exciting as it was to follow the siblings around and join in with their adventures, they were life-threatening, as Nim’s accident had just proved. I could die from pretty much anything, at any time, without ever going home. And while I had come face-to face with death a few times in the past few days, I hadn't actually died.

  As for Nim, while he was probably glad not to be working for the Alliance right now, he had been ripped from his home and wiped from the memory of his entire civilization. There was no home for him to go back to, and yet I was sure he would rather be there. Even so, he was walking so tall, so confidently. The image of him bleeding out on the floor was still fresh in my mind, superimposing itself over my
vision. But he was alive. And it was a miracle.

  His head jerked every time he looked around, like a stiff puppet following along. A small curl of hair on his forehead shifted from side to side as he walked, like a comic book Clark Kent. He pushed it away.

  "You know staring is rude in pretty much every culture, right?"

  The voice in my ear was so close I could feel the breath raise the hairs on my neck. Zander had spoken in such a quiet voice, I doubted even Blayde could pick it up. We walked faster to catch up with the other two.

  "How is this even possible?" I asked as Blayde led Nim down the corridor, checking around for traps. "How can he be alive? Nim was dead. I saw it."

  "He wasn't dead yet. That made all the difference."

  "You’re not answering anything here."

  "Let's just say I'm a universal donor and leave it at that."

  He sped up again, not as worried about my wellbeing and mortal danger as he had sounded when he’d argued with Blayde. I couldn't tell if he was joking, but the tone was jovial; he wasn't trying to push me away or stop me from prying.

  So, pry I would. "You're afraid, aren't you?"

  "What makes you think that? And afraid of what, for that matter?"

  "You’ve never done that before, have you? Brought a man back from the brink of death. You didn't turn him into a vampire, did you?"

  "What is this with you and vampires?"

  "Safe point of reference. And don't change the subject. If you need to talk, you know I'm here, right?"

  "Thanks, Sally." He reached down to take my hand. I had forgotten how soft his skin was, pure baby new skin devoid of any scars and calluses he should have had from his line of work.

  "So, you think this is Earth?" he asked, pulling his hand away.

  "I doubt it. I’ve never heard of any temple mazes before, outside of Indiana Jones movies, that is. I think need my meds." The thought occurred to me as I forced the anxiety back down into my gut. I had been getting rather good at controlling my attacks, keeping them at bay—at least until I had time to process the anxiety and panic in a healthy way, which was a massive breakthrough for me. A combination of proper medication and an opportunity to confront my fears, perhaps. Extreme exposure therapy?

  But when I pulled the tiny orange bottle out of the bag, I realized, to my heartbreak and dismay, that it was empty.

  How had I not noticed? Somewhere between running for my life and falling out of the edge of space, it must have slipped my mind. My heart plunged into my stomach as I realized all my amazing progress was about to go down the drain. Not to mention I would have to go through withdrawal again. The last time I had gone through that I thought I was going to die.

  "Everything all right?" asked Zander.

  All I could do was nod. Twenty-four hours had passed since my last dose, and already, I could feel a trickle of electricity at the back of my brain, the feeling of being zapped by a small current. The withdrawal had begun.

  The breeze sweeping through the hallway hit Blayde's torch, and the flame died out. We all froze, the surprise of it taking us off guard.

  "We're getting close," said Blayde, relighting the torch and studying the new direction of the flame. "The exit must be near."

  I experienced a sudden urge to walk forward, like I was caught in a trance. My feet ached as they took steps on their own, pulling me toward the torchlight. I wasn’t the only one: All four of us stepped forward, curiosity piqued, caution already thrown to the wind. A surprisingly hot wind.

  "Anybody else starting to get a little ... sticky?" asked Nim, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

  But it was a dead end.

  "Well, it's been a fun ride," said Blayde, "but I guess we don't deserve a way out of here."

  "Why is Sally's name carved in the stone?" asked Nim.

  I followed where his finger was pointing, and my heart dropped. Just like in the first chamber, a message was scrawled on the wall, left, apparently, for me. This way out, Sally Webber.

  "Spooky," Zander agreed, gazing down at me, and I shuddered, saying nothing.

  Out of instinct I didn't know I had, and still in the same trance-like state as before, I ran my hand down the cold wall, feeling tears of heat trickling down my face as I did. Only, there was a portion of the wall that wasn't cool. The heat came as a shock, and I yanked my hand away. Where my hand had been, a light glowed blue then faded away.

  A light. Coming from inside the stone.

  I put my hand back on the spot again. The heat grew, warming my palm, and the light spread from my hand and up the wall until an entire doorframe was surrounded with a soft blue glow.

  Speak, friend, and enter, I thought wryly. But no words appeared. Instead, the thick slab of stone disappeared without a sound, and before I had time to think about how this was acting exactly like an Alliance doorway, I was hit by the smell of rotten eggs.

  I had assumed it was coming from one of us, gross and tired from our experience on the Traveler, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the brightness, I saw the world in front of me wavering. The heat from something far below made the air outside shimmer, which would have been worrying in and of itself even if there weren't flecks of sparks and ash rising too.

  "Place your bets now, people," said Blayde, dashing through the exit before any of us could stop her. She stopped, turned, and flashed us a sly grin. "Too late. I'm going to tell you. We're on top of a fucking volcano. Now, who guessed volcano?"

  A volcano was probably the furthest thing from my mind. But now I was standing above the crater of boiling, bubbling lava and wishing I had a really good pair of shoes. Also, checking to see if Gollum had followed us here, as I certainly didn't want to get in a fight.

  But well, yup, that's a volcano all right.

  The smell of sulfur was overwhelming, and I threw my arm over my nose. The air seemed like it was on fire. With my eyes tearing up from the heat and the fumes, I turned back to the trio. Blayde didn't seem shocked about any of this. Per usual, she took everything in stride, as if it were an everyday occurrence to appear in a sealed room above a volcano. She looked gleeful as she stared into the pit.

  "Right, well, this is pretty awesome," she said, indicating the lava. Her face lit up red from the heat. "Haven't been in a volcano in ages. So, Sally?"

  "Um, what?" I snapped my gaze from the bubbling pit below.

  "Is this Earth? Can we leave you here?"

  "Earth or not, I would just love it if you left me on the side of a volcano," I replied, my sentence punctuated with a cough.

  "But is it an Earth volcano?"

  "How should I know? I've never been inside a volcano before!"

  "Dammit, Sally, didn’t you do anything interesting before meeting us?" she scoffed, glaring at me. Two of her favorite pastimes—dismissing and judging others—wrapped into one. "Can't recognize her own volcanoes. I guess that means we keep going. I want to find a civilization that has invented the steam bath."

  "If there are people around," Zander muttered, not to anyone in particular and certainly not to his sister, "then it would be logical that they live near this place. The ground is more fertile, and if they are able to avoid the eruptions ..."

  The only person who wasn't digesting this information with any kind of calm was Nim, who appeared to be having a minor anxiety attack. His mouth kept opening and closing, like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words, while at the same time doing a great impression of a fish out of water. His hands had gone up to his scalp, clutching at the short tendrils of hair there, grabbing at the new growth. A new habit was already forming to calm his ever-growing nerves.

  "Should we be ... doing something?" I asked, edging closer to Nim. "I mean, we can't stay here, right? It's not safe."

  "Party pooper," said Blayde, who shrugged and made her way away from the edge of the crater. There was already ash on the bottom of her new dress. "Suit yourself. Let's get out of here and get some food. You doing all right there, kiddo?"

  "Don't ..." the boy rasped, clutching a large rock for support, "don't call me that."

  It was then that we heard the scream.

  CHAPTER THREE