Burned

Chapter Twenty-Four

Stark
"I know it could kill me to enter the Otherworld, but I don't want to live in this world without her." Stark kept himself from shouting, but he couldn't keep his frustration from boiling over into his voice. "So just show me what I need to do to get to where Zoey is, and I'll take it from there."
"Why do you want Zoey back?" Sgiach asked him.
Stark ran his hand through his hair. The exhaustion that came with daylight pulled at him, fraying his nerves and jumbling his thoughts, and he blurted the only answer his tired mind could form, "Because I
love her."
The queen seemed not to react at all to his declaration; instead, she was studying him with a considering expression. "I sense that Darkness has touched you."
"Yeah," Stark nodded, though her statement confused him. "But when I chose to be with Zoey, I chose Light."
"Aye, but would yie still choose it if it meant losin' what yie love most?" said Seoras.
"Wait, the whole point of Stark going to the Otherworld is so that he can protect Zoey. Then she'll be able to pull her shattered soul together and come back to her body. Right?" Aphrodite said.
"Aye, she can choose to return if her soul's whole again."
"Then I don't understand your question. If Z comes back, he doesn't lose her," she said.
"My Guardian is explaining that Zoey will be changed if she returns from the Otherworld," Sgiach said.
"What if the change takes her on a path that leads away from Stark?"
"I'm her Warrior. That won't change, and it means I stay with her," Stark said.
"Aye, laddie, as her Warrior fer sure, but perhaps not as her love," Seoras said.
Stark felt a dagger turn in his stomach. Still, without hesitation, he said, "I'd die to get her back. No matter what."
"Our deepest emotions are sometimes separated only by the type of human beings we are at our cores,"
the queen said. "Lust and compassion, generosity and obsession, love and hate. They are often all very close to one another. You say you love your queen enough to die for that emotion; but if she no longer loved you in return, what color would your world be then?"
Dark. The word came instantly to Stark's mind, but he knew he shouldn't say it.
Thankfully, Aphrodite's big mouth saved him.
"If Z didn't want to be with him, as in a guy with a girl, it would suck for Stark. That's a no-brainer. That doesn't mean he'd go over to the Dark Side, and I know you know what that means 'cause your guy gets Star Trek, and one dork goes hand in hand with another. Anyway, isn't it the truth that what Stark would or wouldn't do in some not-happened, made-up, Zoey-dumps-him scenario is really between Stark and Zoey and Nyx? Seriously. Goddess knows I don't mean to sound like a bitch, but you're a queen, not a Goddess. There's some shit you just can't control."
Stark held his breath, waiting for Sgiach to use Star Trek or Star Wars or what the hell ever and blast Aphrodite into a zillion little pieces. Instead, the queen laughed, which made her look unexpectedly girlish.
"I'm glad I am not a Goddess, young Prophetess. The small piece of the world I control is far more than enough for me."
"Why do you care so much about what Stark might or might not do?" Aphrodite asked the queen even
though Darius was giving her what Stark thought of as "Stop talking now" looks.
Sgiach and her Guardian shared a long look, and Stark saw the Warrior nod slightly, as if the two of them had just come to an agreement.
Queen Sgiach said, "The balance of Light and Darkness in the world can shift because of a single act.
Though Stark is only one Warrior, his actions have the potential to affect many."
"And this world doesnae need another powerful Warrior who fights on the side of Darkness."
"I know that, and I'll never fight for Darkness again," Stark said grimly. "I watched Zoey's soul shatter because of a single act, so I understand about that, too."
"Then weigh your actions carefully," the queen told him. "In the Otherworld and in this world. And consider this - the young and na?ve believe love to be the strongest force in the universe. Those of us who are more, let us say, realistic know that a single person's will, strengthened by integrity and purpose, can be more powerful than a score of lovestruck romantics.
"I'll remember. I promise." Stark barely heard his own words. He would have sworn to cut off his arm if that had been what Sgiach needed to hear to get the damn ball rolling and get him to the Other-world.
As if she could read his mind, the queen shook her head sadly, and said, "Very well, then. Let your quest begin." Then she lifted her hand and commanded, "Raise the Seol ne Gigh."
There was a whooshing and a series of clicking sounds. The floor in front of the queen's dais, just beyond where Zoey rested, opened, and a slab of rust-colored stone rose from beneath the floor. It was as tall as his waist, wide and long enough for a grown vampyre to lie on its flat surface. He saw the rock was covered with intricate knotwork, and on either side of the floor surrounding it were two grooves that were curved almost like a bow. They were thicker at one end than the other, and the narrow part formed sharp points. Studying it, Stark suddenly realized two things.
The grooves looked like massive horns.
The rock wasn't really rust-colored. It was white marble. The rust color was stain. Bloodstain.
"This is the Seol ne Gigh, the Seat of the Spirit," Sgiach said. "It is an ancient place of sacrifice and worship. For longer than we have memories, it has been the conduit to Darkness and Light - to the white and black bulls that form the basis of the power of the Guardians."
"Sacrifice and worship," Aphrodite said, moving closer to the stone. "What kind of sacrifice do you mean?"
"Aye, well, that depends on yer quest, does it not?" Seoras said.
"That's not an answer," Aphrodite said.
"Sure and it is, lass," the Guardian said, smiling grimly at her. "And yie know it, whether yie will be of a mind tae admit it or no."
"Sacrifice is okay with me," Stark said, brushing a hand across his brow wearily. "Tell me what, or who" - he shot a sideways glance at Aphrodite, not caring that it made Darius bristle - "I need to grab
and use for the sacrifice, and I'll do it."
"It'll be you that'll be the sacrifice, laddie," Seoras said.
"I think it will help that he's in a weakened state during the daylight hours. It should make it easier for his spirit to slip from his body." Sgiach spoke to her Guardian almost as if Stark weren't in the room.
"Aye, you have a point. Most Warriors fight the leavin' of the body. Bein' weak might make that part easier," Seoras agreed.
"So what do I have to do? Find a virgin or something?" He didn't look at Aphrodite then, 'cause, well, she obviously didn't fit in that category.
"It's you who's the sacrifice, Warrior. The blood of another will not do. This is your quest, from beginning to end. Are you still willing to begin, Stark?" Sgiach said.
"Yes." Stark didn't hesitate.
"Then lie on the Seol ne Gigh, young MacUallis Guardian. Your Chieftain will draw your blood, take you to a place between life and death. The stone will take your offering. The white bull has spoken, and you will be accepted. He will guide your spirit to the Otherworld gate. It is up to you to gain entry from there, and may the Goddess have mercy on your soul," the queen said.
"All right. Good. Let's get this thing done." But Stark didn't go straight to the Seol ne Gigh. Instead, he knelt beside Zoey. Ignoring the fact that everyone in the room was watching, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently, whispering against her lips, "I'm coming for you. This time I won't let you down." Then he stood, drew his shoulders back, and went over to the massive stone.
Seoras had moved from his queen's side and was standing in front of the head of the stone. Meeting Stark's gaze steadily, he unsheathed a wickedly sharp dirk that had been resting in a worn leather scabbard at his waist.
"Hang on, hang on!" Unbelievably, Aphrodite was pawing around in the abnormally large metallic leather bag she'd lugged all the way from Venice.
Stark had seriously had it with her. "Aphrodite, now is not the time."
"Oh, for shit's sake, finally. I knew I couldn't lose anything this big and smelly." She pulled out a quart-sized baggie filled with brown twigs and needles, and gestured at one of the Warriors standing around the perimeter of the room, snapping her fingers and looking more regal than Stark would ever admit aloud. She had the burly-looking guy practically running to take the thing from her while she said,
"Before you start what I'm sure is going to be some very unattractive blood-letting, someone needs to burn these, like incense, over here by Stark."
"What the hell?" Stark said, shaking his head at Aphrodite and wondering, not for the first time, if the girl really was mentally damaged.
She rolled her eyes at him. "Grandma Redbird told Stevie Rae, who told me, that burning cedar is some kind of big, powerful, Cherokee mojo in the spirit world."
"Cedar?" Stark said.
"Yes. Breathe it in and take it with you while you go to the Other-world. And, please, close your mouth and get ready to bleed," Aphrodite said. She shifted her attention to Sgiach. "I think you'd consider Grandma Redbird a Shaman. She's wise and definitely hooked into the whole earth-has-a-soul thing.
She said cedar would help Stark."
The Warrior she'd given the baggie to glanced at his queen. She shrugged and nodded, saying, "It cannot hurt." After a metal brazier had been lit and a few needles added, Aphrodite smiled, bowed her head slightly to Seoras, and said, "Okay, now let's get this thing done."
Stark bit back the words he wanted to yell at annoying Aphrodite. He needed to focus. He'd remember to breathe in cedar because Grandma Redbird knew her stuff, and the bottom line was he needed to get to Zoey and protect her. Stark wiped his hand across his forehead, wishing he could wipe away the tired fog that settled with daylight over his brain.
"Dinnae struggle against it. Yie need tae be feelin' out of sorts tae slip from yer body. It isnae a natural thing for a Warrior to be doin'." Seoras used his dirk to point at the flat surface of the huge stone. "Bare yer chest and lie here."
Stark pulled off his sweatshirt, and the T-shirt under it, and then he lay on the stone.
"I see yie have already been marked," Seoras said, pointing at the pink burn scar of a broken arrow that covered the left side of his chest.
"Yeah. For Zoey."
"Aye, well, then 'tis only right that yie are marked again for her."
Stark braced himself, lying stiff against the bloodstained stone. It should have been cold and dead, but the instant his skin touched the marble surface, the heat in it began to build beneath him. Warmth radiated rhythmically from within it, like a beating pulse.
"Ach, aye, yie can feel it," said the ancient Guardian.
"It's hot," Stark said, looking up at him.
"For those of us who are Guardians, it lives. Do yie trust me, lad?"
Stark blinked, surprised by Seoras's question, but his answer was unhesitant. "Yes."
"I'll be takin' yie to the place afore death. Yie need to be trustin' in me to take yie there."
"I trust you." Stark did. There was something about the Warrior that resonated deeply within him.
Trusting him felt like the right thing to do.
"This willnae be pleasant fer either of us, but 'tis necessary. The body must release to allow the spirit the freedom to depart. Only the pain and the blood can be doin' that. Are yie ready?"
Stark nodded. Pressing his hands against the hot skin of the stone, he sucked in a deep breath that smelled of cedar.
"Wait! Before you cut him, tell him something that'll help. Don't just let his soul flail about moronically in the Otherworld. You're a Shaman, so Shaman him," Aphrodite said.
Seoras looked at Aphrodite and then glanced from her to his queen. Stark couldn't see Sgiach, but whatever passed between the two of them made her Guardian's lips curl up in the slightest hint of a smile when his eyes went back to Aphrodite.
"Well, ma wee queen. I'll be telling yer friend this: when a soul wants to truly know what it is to be good, and I do mean purely good for unselfish reasons, that is when the basest of our nature gives in to the desire fer love and peace and harmony. That surrender is a powerful force."
"That's too poetic for me, but Stark's a reader. Maybe he'll have a clue what you're talking about,"
Aphrodite said.
"Aphrodite, would you do me a favor?" Stark asked.
"Maybe."
"Stop. Talking." He looked up at Seoras. "Thanks for the advice. I'll remember it."
Seoras met his gaze. "You must do this on yer own, laddie. I cannae even hold yie down. If you cannae bear it, you willnae make it through the gate anyway, and best to be puttin' this tae an end now, before yie think tae begin."
"I'm not going to move," Stark said.
"The heartbeat of the Seol ne Gigh will lead you to the Otherworld. Getting back, ach, well, that'll be a path yie must be findin' fer yur-self."
Stark nodded and spread his hands against the surface of the marble, trying to absorb its heat into his suddenly chilled body.
Seoras lifted the dagger and struck Stark so fast the movement of the Guardian's hand was a blur. The initial pain of the wound that slashed from his waist to the top of the right side of his rib cage was little more than a hot line in his skin.
The second cut was almost identical to the first, only it made a weeping red line across his left ribs.
And that was when the pain began. Its heat seared him. His blood felt like lava as it poured from his sides, pooling on the top of the stone. Seoras worked the razor-edged dirk methodically from one side of Stark's body to the other, until Stark's blood crested the edge of the rock as if at the corner of a giant's eyes. It hesitated there and finally poured over and down, weeping scarlet tears in the intricate knot-work and then dripping to fill the horn-shaped trenches.
Stark had never felt such pain.
Not when he'd died.
Not when he'd un-died and thought only of thirst and violence.
Not when he'd almost died from his own arrow.
The pain the Guardian made him feel was more than physical. It burned his body, but it also seared his soul. The agony was liquid and interminable. It was a wave he couldn't escape, which battered him over and over. He was drowning in it.
Stark automatically fought. He knew he couldn't move, but still he struggled to retain hold on his consciousness. If I let go I'm dead.
"Trust me, laddie. Let go."
Seoras was standing above him, bending again and again over his body to slice his skin, but the Guardian's voice was a distant anchor, hardly discernible.
"Trust me . . ."
Stark had already made the choice. All he had to do was to follow through with it.
"I trust you," he heard himself whisper. The world turned gray, then scarlet, then black. All Stark was aware of was the heat of the pain and the liquid of his blood. The two merged, and he was suddenly outside his body, sinking into the stone, dripping down the carved sides, and washing into the horns.
Surrounded only by pain and darkness, Stark fought against panic, but strangely, after only a moment, the terror was replaced with a numb acceptance that was kinda comforting. On second thought, this darkness wasn't so bad. At least the pain was going away. Actually, the pain seemed almost a memory
"Do not fucking give up, moron! Zoey needs you!"
Aphrodite's voice? Goddess, it was irritating that even detached from his body, she could still bother him.
Detached from my body. He'd done it! The exhilaration that came with the realization was quickly followed by confusion.
He was out of his body.
He could see nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing. The blackness was absolute.
Stark had no idea where he was. His spirit fluttered and, like a trapped bird, it battered against nothingness.
What is it Seoras had said to him? What had been his advice?
. . . surrender is a powerful force.
Stark quit fighting and quieted his spirit, and a small memory shone through the blackness, that of his soul, pouring with his blood into two troughs shaped like horns.
Horns.
Stark focused on the only tangible idea in his mind, and he imagined himself grabbing hold of thosehorns.
The creature came out of the absolute darkness. He was a different kind of black than that which had engulfed Stark. He was the black of a new moon sky - deep, night-resting water - and half-forgotten midnight dreams.
I accept your blood sacrifice, Warrior. Face me and move on, if you dare.
I dare! Stark shouted, accepting the challenge.
The bull charged him. Acting purely on instinct, Stark didn't run. He didn't jump aside. Instead, he faced the bull, head-on. Screaming his anger and rage and fear, Stark ran at the bull. The creature lowered his massive head as if he would gore Stark.
No! Stark leaped at the bull, and with a motion that was dreamlike, grabbed his horns. At the same instant the creature threw up his head, and Stark vaulted over his body. He felt like he was ping from an impossibly high cliff as he hurled forward farther and farther, and somewhere, behind him in the black soullessness, he heard the bull's voice echoing three words: Well done, Guardian . . .
Then there was an explosion of light around him just before he tumbled onto a hard-packed piece of ground. Stark picked himself up slowly, thinking how weird it was that even though he was nothing but spirit, he still had the form and feeling of his body, and looked around.
In front of him was a grove, identical to the one that grew near Sgiach's castle. There was even a hanging tree before it, decorated with strips of cloth too numerous to count. As he watched, the cloth changed, taking on different colors and lengths and shimmering like Christmas tree tinsel.
The Otherworld - this had to be the entrance to Nyx's realm. Nothing else could look this magickal.
Before stepping forward, Stark glanced behind him, thinking it couldn't be this easy to get in and expecting the giant black bull to materialize and this time gore him for real.
All that was behind him was the black nothingness from where he'd come. If that wasn't creepy enough, the segment of ground he'd been dumped onto was a small, half circle patch of red dirt that reminded him unexpectedly of Oklahoma, and in the center of the patch a gleaming sword was stuck halfway up to the hilt. It took two hands to pull the sword free, and then, as Stark automatically wiped the otherwise spotless blade on his jeans to clean it, he realized that, like the Seol ne Gigh, the original color of the ground had been tainted by blood.
He finished wiping the blade hastily, for some reason not liking the thought of blood staining it, and then he turned his attention to what was in front of him. That was where he needed to go. His mind, heart, and spirit knew it.
"Zoey, I'm here. I'm coming to you," he said, and stepped forward, running into an invisible barrier hard as a brick wall. "What the hell?" he muttered, moving back and looking up to see that a stone archway had suddenly appeared.
There was an explosion of a cold white light that gave Stark the creepy image of a freezer door opening to expose dead flesh. Blinking, his eyes traveled down, and what he saw in front of him shocked him to his very core.
Stark was staring at himself.
At first he thought the archway must have a mirror in it, but there was no blackness reflected behind him, and his other self was grinning a familiar, cocky smile. Stark definitely wasn't smiling. Then he spoke, dispelling all thoughts of mirror images and rational explanations.
"Yeah, fucknuts, it's you. You're me. To get into this place, you're gonna have to kill me, which is not gonna happen 'cause I'm not so cool with dying. What is gonna happen is that I'm gonna kick your ass and kill you dead."
While Stark stood there, speechless and staring at himself, his mirror image lunged forward, slashing with a broadsword identical to the one Stark held, drawing a line of blood down his arm.
"Yep, this is gonna be as easy as I thought," his other self said, and lunged at Stark again.