102 - A Message Made From Bones

Prologue

The sky... Is so pretty. And the clouds...

I never quite appreciated the beauty, the simplicity. The serenity of an overcast sky, the clouds floating across on a wind heavy with power.

Such peace. Even when my belly is filled with butterflies, my heart thrashing, desperate to abandon this body so it can keep living.

Everything feels right. Like all is meant to be.

A sound breaks through the air. It is everywhere yet nowhere, and I can't discern what it is. A bright slice of gold through the steely grey echoes it, making it... tangible.

Making everything tangible.

I sense the earth rushing up toward my back, my body plummeting to meet it, and that serenity is yanked out from under me. Another shout—one that takes me a second to realize is mine—jerks me out of that blissful paralysis. I'm hit with the horrific awareness that I have not escaped, have not avoided, feeling my death. That I have not been spared the impending splattering of my brains onto the London street below.

All that acceptance cleaves away as pure terror twines itself through every fiber of my being.

"No!" The word is entirely breath. My last breath—as the air rips from my lungs.

I claw at the space in front of me—all sky and wind and dim light. No buildings, no telephone wires, no posts, no awnings—nothing.

Nothing to grab onto, nothing to break my fall.

There is only the roaring of my blood in my ears, the wind whipping violently around me, and my throat—raw and dry and burning and...

Screaming.

I am screaming, but my voice is lost to the elements—so far, far away from me.

"Illyria." That sound, now a voice, like a bullet whispering past my ear, cutting through my panic, the din. But it isn't the sultry Boston drawl of Faith or the Midwestern twang of Moira, which is what I'd normally hear upon waking—it is a man's.

Deep. British. Familiar. Like a melody I can't quite place. It hums along my skin, eddying around my senses, like...

Spike?

"Try again." The voice is a bit rough. I didn't think I said his name out loud.

But indeed, the presence isn't the typical buzz I'd feel from Spike, from an average vampire.

It is a sister-Slayer—

No, no longer just a sister's—because it is the voice of Jay Whitlock, the boy with Slayer powers.

Here.

Somewhere to my left.

A quick, sleep-glazed sweep of the room reveals posters of death metal bands hiding the curved wooden panels, bowing and peeling with age, instead of the hand-drawn targets on the cracked walls of the abandoned hotel. Outside the sole window, a bright white blizzard quietly rages. And the mattress I'm lying on—his mattress—is just as hard as mine, only lacking the cozy, fluffy pillows I'd specifically chosen to add a touch of home to it all.

Looking over my shoulder, I find Jay sitting in a chair, elbows propped on the wooden armrests. A few slices of his platinum hair have slipped into his face, but the rest is raked back as if he has been constantly running a hand through it.

"Am I dead?" My own voice is but a mere rasp.

"No," Jay breathes, and the relief packed in that one word tightens something in my chest, making it that much harder to meet his eyes behind his thick, square-framed glasses.