Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [109]
“Neal needs me,” he explained, his voice hollow, pointing toward his brother who now stood out amongst the spirits that made up the mist.
“That’s right, Brent.” Neal smiled with his mouth, but it never reached his brown eyes. “Come to me.” He extended his finger, motioning for Brent to move closer.
“I can’t leave her,” Brent explained, gesturing toward me.
Neal beckoned Brent closer. “That’s alright. You can bring her with you.”
Brent smiled at me like this was the obvious solution as he pulled me to him. My already racing pulse quickened when the memory of my nightmare flashed in my mind, another nightmare coming true. Struggling against his strong embrace did no good; he simply hoisted me off the ground, dragging me forward. Neal and Thomas smiled at Brent encouragingly the closer we got, Neal murmuring persuasively about how much he missed him, his deadly siren song luring him in.
“Brent, we need you to take her necklace off and give it to us,” Neal said in a cooing, honey-smooth voice.
Without hesitating, Brent reached out, yanking my necklace hard enough for the chain to snap, the broken pieces of it plinking onto the hard, dry earth. Something inside me splintered at Brent’s betrayal and I crumbled as my vision blurred.
Thomas was going to make me part of his mindless army. I was going to join ranks with the other souls he had captured. I lay prostrate on the unforgiving earth, my hands flat in front of me. I could feel a steady rhythmic pulsing against my palm and realized my hand had come to rest over one of the fallen beads. Several things clicked together in my mind as the warm bead beat against my skin. I remembered the floral plant buds inside the necklace were meant to protect pure spirits from evil ones and how contact with it had weakened Thomas. As I lay atop the scattered pieces, the seedling of an idea formed in my mind. I kept my head down, resting on my forearms, while my fingers began stealthily gathering up the broken bits of my necklace.
“Stand her up,” Thomas ordered Brent, who roughly set me on my feet.
Thomas’s look of triumph was more than I could bear and I dropped my chin in submission. There was a loud ringing in my ears, a pounding against my skull and goose pimples rising on my skin as the darkness of the mist pressed in on me. The tinny taste of fear coated my tongue and my sweat-soaked fingers trembled.
Thomas opened his mouth to speak and I dove at him, pushing him backward, with me on top of him. His jaw hung slack in surprise and I took my chance, shoving the necklace fragments into his mouth. With every ounce of strength I had, I forced his mouth shut while slapping my other hand over his lips, not allowing him to spit them out.
The smell of singed hair and flesh permeated the air as he sizzled from the inside out. Writhing under my weight, Thomas threw his head back and the green of his eyes rolled up, leaving an empty white space staring at me. His fist smacked across my jaw and my head swung to the side as hot pain seared my face. Brent was beside me in an instant, catching Thomas’s hands, pinning them above his head.
Thomas’s chest collapsed into a dark crater where souls erupted free with a wet slurping sound that made me cringe. Released spirits hovered around him, shapeless and lost, confused at their sudden freedom after decades of imprisonment. With blinding brilliance, the white light reappeared, its rays shimmering enticingly toward the newly freed souls.
“No!” Thomas screamed from between my fingers as one of his former minions took a step toward the light. He struggled in a desperate attempt to regain control, but he was too weakened by the pankurem plant concealed within the beads trapped in his mouth. One by one, the boys stepped into the light, and were tucked into its embrace, the light restoring their frame from vapor into the young men they had once been, the blank expressions replaced by looks of pure joy.
As each spirit