Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)

This can’t be happening.

“But it is,” the voice is back, and before I look, I know who it is.

The hooded boy.

“What is your name?” I demand, and my fingers are shaking.

“I don’t have one. I was sacrificed without one.”

“Sacrificed by who?”

My breath is coming in pants.

“By my mother. I was sacrificed for my brother, and you shouldn’t have given him the ring. I could’ve prevented all of this.”

The world stops and spins and stops again.

“Your brother? You’re Dare’s brother?”

He nods and he’s sad, and he pulls down the hood and he’s Dare’s identical image.

“It should be Dare,” he tells me. “It needs to be Dare. Do not choose your brother.”

He tries to pull me to him, to kiss him, but his lips are cold and they feel dead and I yank away in a panic, because touching him takes my energy. It makes my eyes want to close and stay closed.

“You’re as cold as death,” I manage to say, and he smiles and it chills me.

“I am death,” he answers and he’s calm. “I’m descended from the Daughter of Death, and it will always be. I’m a son of Salome.”

This isn’t happening.

His eyes flash black, and I reach for the phone, and I call Dare’s number.

“Hello,” he says quietly, and he knows that I know.

“Your brother is here,” I tell him, and my words are stilted and stiff.

“Run away, Calla,” Dare tells me and he is urgent. “Run away.”

“I can’t,” I blurt, and the hooded boy is grabbing me, and I hear my mother shrieking at Dare.

“Good bye, Calla,” Dare says, and his voice is soft and it’s gentle and it’s firm. “Run. Tell him to come get me.” Then he’s gone, and my phone is dead and I’m desperate so I call my mother, and I know she’s in the car with Dare.

“Yes,” she sighs into the phone, already knowing that it’s me.

“Mom, we have to talk about this,” I tell her urgently. “It doesn’t make sense. This isn’t real.”

“Calla, I will do anything for you, and I have. This is a Savage matter, and we don’t need to speak of it. What has been put into place will be put into motion and you will be safe.”

“But…” my voice is limp and she interrupts me.

“No buts. We’ve said everything we need to say. I need to go. The rain is bad, and the time is right…” She interrupts her own sentence with a scream.

A shrill, loud, high-pitched shriek. It almost punctures my ear-drums with its intensity and before I can make heads or tails of it, it breaks off mid-way through. And I realize that I heard something else in the background.

The sound of metal and glass being crunched and broken.

Then nothing.