The Beholder (20 page)

Why could he hear her so clearly? How did he remember the messages she had given in haste so long before? He couldn’t trace her with his Sight, yet her voice permeated his mind as if she were helping him. The vision of her, encouraging Pariah, her voice cold and commanding, kept coming back, sending a shudder through him. Why would she bother to help him? It made no sense. Using the Sight, he tried harder to find her, but it was as if she had simply disappeared. The same applied to Matt and Debbie.

He couldn’t wait any longer. From what she’d said, she thought he’d need the bike … but did he? With the force he now had at his disposal, Jason could easily travel without the Honda. But the Energy Threads led him to the bike, and he saw it in a new light. The chrome sparkled with rainbows of colors, and the fireball pattern on the gas tank burned with crimson flames against the black shining surface. The leather seat was inviting, and the wheels called for adventure. Yes, he would take one last ride.

The other reality spilled into Jason’s mind from all directions, bringing the world into a whole new focus. Emily’s Aurora Borealis reflected in his blue eyes when he looked up, and he wondered again: why would she have created this? If he had seen his most recent dream right, why would an aura this breathtaking now hover over New York? Someone with so much treacherous evil in her
couldn’t
have done it, couldn’t have created such pure beauty … or could they?

Maybe, just maybe, he had seen the dream wrong. Could it have been a horrible misunderstanding?

He mounted the Honda, bolstered by a presence he sensed coming from beyond the boundaries of the city. It warmed his insides, and he realized it came from the Energy of Light. William had said there were Lightsighted out there, too, and now mellow rays rolled with Energy, like mirrors directed at the sun and reflecting its radiance. Jason took more strength from knowing he wasn’t alone. Dozens of them existed, and their light was beautiful to behold.

The Light auras sighed, telling Jason they were in the process of something, and after a few moments of concentration Jason saw they were creating a subconscious whispering, calling for the Unsighted to leave the city. They were removing regular people from New York, encouraging all innocents to leave before the impending battle.

Jason started up the engine and rushed towards the truth.

Chapter 35

Large drops heralded the beginning of rain.
Hardly a surprise,
Jason thought. It had been raining forever, it seemed. But in the Sight even the rain looked beautiful. Drops fell from the sky in thin, golden threads, each one carrying minute charges of Energy. When they landed, tiny sparks of colors bounced into the air.

The jigsaw puzzle was coming together, yet some pieces still hadn’t fallen into place no matter how hard he tried to squeeze them into the picture. He had to discover what was missing, or at least why these pieces had incompatible contours. Before this moment, all he had wished was that the fusions would stop. Now he was about to make some of them real.

The roof, the rain, the skyscraper, and the abyss below. Was Pariah there, waiting for him? The astonishing intensity of his dream throbbed in his veins even now, pushing him forward. The Energy yearned for battle, filling him with a need to get onto the roof and seek out the one who wished him dead.

Dream and reality were about to become one and the same.

Jason wrenched at the handgrip, accelerating hard, and the back wheel screeched. As he roared down what Mr. McAlester had called the Guarded Road, a dark, hungry presence closed in around him, ahead and on both sides. Hunters lurked everywhere, no longer heeding any rules. The farther he rode into the midst of them, the more his insides rolled with revulsion. He hoped they felt the same way about him. The Sight helped him see where each particular hunter was located, and he watched every move. Clenching the accelerator, he sped faster still, advancing on a small group ahead. The hunters, standing close to each other, formed a barricade, but Jason never stopped. Blood pounded in his temples as he slowed time, triggering the act just before ramming into the throng of Dark Ones. With all the force he could muster he scattered them, and the ones closer to the epicenter of Jason’s blow were crushed like hard clay. The others writhed and hissed in agony, like snakes. A part of his mind and peripheral vision registered the hunters catching fire. But he felt nothing. As he collided with the small army, he was joined by a dozen or so Lightsighted, who appeared out of thin air to fight alongside him.

With the rampart destroyed, Jason braked sharply and turned the Honda to face the party who had helped him. They stood in a circle close by, and while most of them watched the hunters swirl above them, the tallest—a blond man with broad shoulders—stared in awe at Jason.

“So it’s true!” he exclaimed. “The Beholder has come!”

Jason regarded the group, a million questions racing through his mind. He grabbed the nearest of them. “Who are you?”

“I’m Dave,” the man said, and when he met Jason’s gaze his eyes reflected the red auras floating above. He stretched out his hands. “These are my companions. We came to take New Yorkers away from them.” He gave Jason a wide smile. “We felt your Energy, but we had to make sure it was really you.”

A nearby building exploded as it was attacked by another group of hunters.

“You have to go,” Dave screamed through the roar. “We’ll hold them back.”

Jason didn’t have to be told twice. He gripped the handgrips and made a U-turn on the spot, then sped into the rapidly worsening storm. Warm rain pelted his face while lightning flashed, exposing the world, but Jason never hesitated, only sped towards his final destination.

If he could trick time and space—and he had just proven he could by rushing the hunters—maybe physical laws could be nullified. The idea appealed. The skyline was getting higher, the tall downtown buildings looming closer with every second, and Jason stared up, wondering how he could get on top of it.
In the Sight I can do anything,
he assured himself.

When he arrived in the familiar area of the Evelyn & Laurens building, he scanned the area, expecting to find more Darksighted, but there was no one in the vicinity. He looked back up at the roof, shielding his face from the driving rain.

He needed to focus, to figure out how to break the laws of gravity. He slowed, then set his feet on the pavement on either side of the Honda, letting it purr quietly as he thought about what to do. Jason stared at the skyscrapers, waiting for something, some idea to come to him. What was the clue? How could he get on the roof?

Ask the Energy,
he heard.

It was all Jason had, so he needed to make the most of it. He wrenched at the handgrip, and the back wheel began to smoke. Energy Threads streamed out of Jason and glued to the ground, holding him steady. He released the motorcycle’s handlebars, and the front wheel rose in the air. As he approached the wall, the Energy Threads clung to both him and the motorcycle, moving both upwards. Gravity shifted with a jolt around Jason as he moved along the wall, now traveling rapidly towards the roof. The edge came closer, and when the lines of the building ended, Jason plummeted downwards. He panicked, unsure of how to change gravity back, but when he closed his eyes in concentration the Energy pulled him back to the rooftop. The wheels of the motorcycle crashed against the hard surface, and Jason braked sharply, coming to a halt right before the brink.

Here it was: the vision he had seen not long ago, when he had been with Pariah on top of this building. But there was no one here now except him.

New York glowed with the lights of the Sighted battle, surges of silver Energy crossing over and under layers of blood red in an incredible display. To the west, Jason saw more of his own dragging the citizens of New York away from danger, the mass of people shimmering with auras which were dim in comparison to the ones they couldn’t see.

Jason came out of the Sight, and the vision of the galaxy vanished, instantly fading to black. The world became more harsh, the weight of the motorcycle heavier.

With a sickening lurch, he realized it hadn’t been Pariah in his last vision. It had been him alone, in battle with himself. Jason, the Beholder.

With a sudden decisive movement, Jason pushed the Honda forward to the edge and over. He watched it fall, rolling over and over into the abyss, until it merged with the dark. With all his new strengths, he knew he didn’t need it anymore, but the machine would provide one final use.

Amidst the turmoil of everything around him, Jason stood on the skyscraper roof, feeling as insignificant as a speck of dust, rain trickling in tiny rivers down his face. Through Unsighted eyes he studied New York, as if to imprint its beauty onto his soul. The city was enveloped in a pall of darkness, interrupted only by tortuous forks of lightning scarring the inky canvas of the night sky. Beneath him, the abyss beckoned, sending a hypnotic pulsation that coincided with the pounding of his heart.

Pain burned in his throat, as if something invisible and unpleasant coiled up around his neck, but when he jerked his hand to check, there was nothing there.

He couldn’t wait any longer. It might already be too late. He took a step forward and leaped into the dark, engaging his Sight as he fell. With a thought he slowed—then stopped time, though he continued to plunge downwards. A web of Energy Threads spread its tendrils all around him, and he reached for the Honda, frozen far below him at what he estimated to be the twenty-fourth floor. Thrusting his right hand down, he let out a stream of destructive energy that reached the Honda, followed by a deafening explosion. The blast blinded those waiting for him, earning him an important couple of seconds.

A strange thought crept into Jason’s mind: he couldn’t feel anyone’s presence within the building. It was like a capsule sheltering the interior from his gaze. But the Energy pushed him to keep doing what he was doing.

Jason returned time to normal, and it ticked again at its regular pace. He fell faster and faster until his left hand created an Energy that drew and bound him to the wall of the building, slowing his speed. The Energy yanked at the building, making the wall snap and crumble, and pieces poured down—along with Jason—creating a violent hail and leaving a luminescent trail in his wake, like that of a comet.

Jason started counting down.

The 30th floor …

27th …

25th …

Releasing the crumbling wall, Jason leaped into the blinding light of the E&L office building.

Chapter 36

Jason hadn’t expected an immediate confrontation. He had planned for the Honda’s explosion to throw them off guard, but it hadn’t. Instead, a flash of malevolent light flew in his direction. Without thinking, he blocked it, and the blinding light died.

But the attack left him doubting his newly acquired sense of invincibility. Drained, Jason came out of the Sight, then looked across the office and discovered the deadly wave had been sent by Damien. Not only that, but the Dark One now gripped Debbie’s throat with his hand. Though her eyes were almost closed, her mouth showing no expression, he knew she was still alive … just sleeping somehow.

Jason tried to reenter the Sight, needing to equalize himself with Damien’s powers, but nothing happened. The world continued in its usual drab, normal condition.

Get a grip, everything’s fine,
he told himself, hoping it was just a lag in his Energy and he’d soon regain it, but try as he might, there was no improvement.

The office was a disaster, evidence of the building’s recent run-in with the Dark Ones. Paper, lamps, furniture … everything was scattered and covered by a thick layer of dust. Jason knew where their desks used to be, but now there wasn’t one piece of undamaged furniture in sight.

As he’d seen before, Matt lay on the floor a few paces away. His face was pale, and his twisted frame seemed too still for a living person. Jason gritted his teeth, trying to resist the urge to run towards Matt, because Damien and Catherine stood by his body, smug satisfaction on their faces. And the one he most feared to see, the one who had tricked him so skillfully, stood behind them.

Emily.

Damien’s hand coiled around Debbie’s neck, her face pale as the moon. She wouldn’t be able to resist his grip long; Jason needed to come up with something quickly.

He looked at Emily, shocked at the changes he saw in her beautiful face. Blue circles under her eyes seemed so out of place, and her skin was so pale she looked ashen. For the first time since they’d met, she looked haggard. He stared at her, pleading for her to make a sign—at least to wink or something, to let him know this was a trick and she had it all under control. But the amber eyes he’d loved had gone hollow, offered him no light.

If it had been possible, he would have pitied her, but this was not the time for comfort or sympathy for traitors. Suddenly sure of what she’d done, he realized he wanted her to feel the pain, the soul-splitting, agonizing pain he had endured during the last three and a half weeks. In that moment of hate, he thought that if he were able to enter the Sight, he would have turned them all to ashes and dust.

Behind Damien, Catherine, and Emily waited their imposing servants. Tall, broad-shouldered men stood alongside rough-looking women with tousled hair, all wearing scowls of distaste. No one moved. No one had uttered a word since his appearance.

Jason felt reality once again weighing him down with its stale pressure.

“De-Energization. No entrance into the Sight for a while,” came a dead voice, ripping the silence. Jason’s eyes went directly to the speaker: Emily, her voice faintly familiar, yet distorted.

From the look on Damien’s face, he wasn’t pleased about that at all. “Fine,” he growled. “We’ll wait. Besides, there are some things my friend Jason and I can talk about while we wait,” he said, using his other hand to grab Debbie even tighter around her waist. From what Jason could see, Debbie’s eyes were dull, her head lolled against the fist at her throat. In contrast, Damien looked complacent, triumph twisted on his face. Jason desired to crush the loathsome creature’s skull.

“Oh really? Like what?” Jason asked, trying to sound bored.

“Don’t you want to listen to the real story of what happened? How you got tricked so easily?” He shrugged lightly. “Unfortunately, it’s not as funny as I’d expected it would be.”

“The real story?” Jason asked, confused.

He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know what Damien meant, but if he was going to hear it, he’d like to find out the truth from Emily. And he wanted to look her in the eyes while she told him.

As if he read Jason’s mind, Damien turned to Emily. “Will you tell him, or shall I?”

Jason waited, but no one moved in the crowd. He wrestled with the truth, feeling overwhelmed by a violent gagging sensation and unable to find air. He was suffocating, the sensation uncomfortably familiar. It was the same fear he had experienced when his own slimy reflection from the dark passage had reached out and pulled his face towards itself. Jason burst out in icy beads of perspiration and steeled himself for what he knew was coming next.

Do you feel it? Do you feel the pain?

He did. His sickening reflection reached inside and sliced at his organs, burned his tissues with acid, drained him of blood. He’d felt it all before, too many times.

It will all be yours. It will be the essence of your existence. And you’ll like it. You’ll become pain. You’ll become me.
His own voice filled his head with exultant whispering, impossible to escape.

So it was the end. One second he’d had hope, in the next it was eradicated from his mind.

Damien smiled triumphantly. Emily was silent.

How? How
could
she? How was it possible?

Damien grinned. “How is it possible, you ask? It’s not all that difficult, actually. Roger and Rebecca Ethans knew way too much about us and our plans, as did Emily’s grandfather. Pariah wanted them dead.”

Emily didn’t move.

“An unfortunate car crash took care of that problem,” Damien went on, and Jason’s attention was drawn by the sudden hardening in Emily’s eyes. Eyes which were no longer an intoxicating shade of amber, but a pure, bottomless black. “No one got suspicious. Car crashes occur rather often, don’t they? We killed all the Ethans at once—except Emily.

“Pariah wanted her under control when she became Sighted, because her Energy was enormous and her talent undisputed. She could have become the darkest Sighted ever.” Anger flared in his narrowed eyes. “We had her for a while, but Emily had been born to the Lightsighted and it took a while before she returned. And when she did,” he said, a slow smile returning to his features, “she brought with her some precious secrets and was happy to share.”

Jason tried to remain calm on the outside, but rage, blind and fierce, was building in his aching chest.

“You killed the Ethans. All right. Why did you kill the other people?” he asked. “The Doomed Ones?”

“Oh, Jason. Sometimes I forget this is all so new to you.” He smiled complacently, as if Jason were just a little boy. “That was because of the Prophecy,” he said. “Emily’s Prophecy. It was so powerful that violent waves of Energy were released into the world. There they turned to vortices which hovered over the planet for a while, seeking refuge in people’s souls. Only one vortex belonged to the Beholder. Only one contained real power. The other eleven were exact copies protecting it. And only one really knew about it, because she was Sighted. That was Emily.”

Damien turned Debbie towards him and lifted her into the air by her neck. Debbie’s eyes bulged, but she still seemed unaware. “One of the vortices settled in Emily,” Damien explained, “and another in your girlfriend here.

“Of course we attempted to annihilate you first, but it didn’t work out. The Prophecy gave us some hints to work with: especially auras. So we knew we had to get rid of those protecting you. That’s when we started to track the others.” Damien was clearly enjoying this prelude to their fight.

“I saw Emily in a dream,” Jason said through gritted teeth. “Through Pariah’s eyes.”

“What are you talking about?” Damien raised his eyebrows, and his smile changed to a look of bewilderment. Jason liked the way the expression looked on him. “He blocked himself from you.”

“Pariah is a
coward
,” Jason hissed.

He shot a furious glance at Emily, who still avoided his gaze.
How could you betray us?

“Why didn’t you include Emily in your riddle?” Jason asked. “You’ve obviously killed the spirit she was.”

Damien frowned. “Riddle?”

“With the country names of the Doomed Ones you murdered.”

Light dawned in Damien’s eyes, and his smile returned. “Oh, the ‘Fear me Jason’ riddle. That was Pariah’s idea. You and your friends were getting on his nerves, so we decided to use them to our advantage.” He grinned at Debbie’s beautiful, oblivious face. “It was I who showed your lovely friend the articles with the news of people disappearing. Otherwise she wouldn’t have got them.” He glanced at Matt’s still body. “It was I who made him come up with ideas he never would have thought of by himself.”

Jason was getting fed up with his inability to do anything. He was tired of standing still, listening, waiting. His muscles burned, screaming for release. At least Damien’s revelations postponed the key moment during which he would be all alone.

“Once we’re able to come into the Sight again, we’ll finish you and your friends.” The Dark One promised. “And we will rise to an inconceivable power.”

Jason had to keep Damien talking, keep soaking in the answers to all his questions.

“Tyler is Sighted,” Jason said, tilting his head towards Emily. “Why didn’t he see she was a traitor?”

Emily raised her lifeless eyes and gazed sadly into his. Damien didn’t seem to notice the movement. “Guess he’s not as strong as he thinks he is.”

Again the smug smile, the evil lust for victory crackling in his eyes. Damien’s complacency and pride were so excessive it was impossible for Jason not to hate him.

The air around Jason quivered, like electricity flickering before it returned. It was time for the questions to end. Only one remained.

Jason turned to Emily, letting her see the hatred and pain in his eyes. “How could you betray us?”

Jason craved blackness and oblivion. He closed his eyes, and his mind filled with subtle patterns of lines and dots. These Energy lines and dots became Energy Traces, and he realized Energy Vision and the Sight had been restored. De-Energization had come to an end.

That was when he heard Damien’s voice, speaking in the Sight, “Emily, summon him.”

Jason opened his eyes and watched Emily’s parched lips move, remembering a better time, when those lips had been warm against his, when they’d spoken of … love. But now they spoke of something completely different. “Come forth, Pariah. Finish what you began centuries ago. Come and wreak havoc over the world.”

Her voice was chilling, but something worse slithered from behind her. Black vapors of smoke, sinewy as a snake, fluid as water, wound around Emily and Damien, then materialized in front of Jason, revealing the true form of Pariah.

He appeared to be older than all the others combined, and the sheer evil of his expression ran worlds deeper. His pitch black eyes bore neither pupils nor whites but shone with twin coronas of white light resembling lunar eclipses. They bored into Jason as if trying to hypnotize him, read all his thoughts, but Jason felt no fear.

Pariah thrust two lashes in Jason’s direction, but at that moment two Sighted flew into the office at blinding speed.

Tyler and William! Excellent timing,
Jason thought.

Pariah screamed to Damien, “Finish the girl!”

Dodging the lashes, Jason lunged towards Damien, striking the Darksighted’s right temple with all the force he had. Damien let go of Debbie’s heavily bruised neck, and she tumbled to the ground in a lump. Then Damien was gone, and all the Legates turned into whirling smoke as Jason had seen them in fusions, and he rushed onto them.

Tyler sent a bright ray of light into Emily and she stumbled back, looking too weak to defend herself. William sent a wave towards the first four ominous sentinels behind Pariah, then went after the others. Jason was fascinated to see that when McAlester’s Energy reached the hunters, the blackness swirling around them vanished. The smoke had evidently been their protection, and without it, the hunters were vulnerable. Jason helped William finish the foursome by sending Énergie Morte into them, then he moved Debbie and Matt as far away from the fight as possible.

Pariah’s lashes were the most dangerous threat. Jason studied the creature’s movements, watched how the relentless tendrils danced around him. Grabbing his one opportunity, Jason darted to Pariah and used an Energy wave to rip one of the lashes from its owner. In that moment everything was bleached with a flash of white, and Pariah screamed in both agony and rage. He whipped the remaining lash around him, and Jason had a hard time dodging a deadly charge of Energy as it rushed his way. He ducked to evade the lash, and it burned through the framework of the building, causing the entire place to shake violently. Dust rained down on them from the ceiling.

Jason had to act quickly, or else he and everyone else would be crushed under tons of concrete. He focused on the damage done, and his Energy went to work, weaving Threads around the ruined walls and welding them back together.

Tyler was battling one of the Legates who was blocking his numerous Energy strikes. Obviously frustrated, Tyler sent fiercer and fiercer blows, culminating in the most power Energy wave he could muster, and the Legate conjured up a reflecting shield to deflect it. The wave bounced off, but Tyler managed to escape the mortal light. Instead, it struck another one of the Legates in the back, and the reflected wave of deadly energy welded with William’s.