Rachel Stanton and The Darkest Night

CHAPTER 26: AWAKE

26. AWAKE

RACHEL STANTON

Every part of my body hurt—my arms, my legs, my neck, my back and my head. Especially my head. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew something bad happened to me. My memory about the things a while was fuzzy, blurred. I wasn’t really sure if that really happened or not.

“What happened?”

“Did you defeat Matilda?”

The voices came from around me. I could feel someone’s arms carrying me, supporting me from falling. My eyes were closed. I couldn’t feel a muscle in my body to move. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to tell them I was okay. But everything just felt numb.

“Unfortunately,” I recognized Daisy’s voice, “Matilda vanished. We don’t know where she’d gone and we don’t know what exactly happened. She’s still alive. And I guess she’s going to regain more power to get ready for the next fight.” She paused, and I counted my heartbeat to know how long it had taken before she finally spoke again. “Where’s Rachel? Did you save her?”

“We did,” Chris said. “She’s amazingly hard to fight.”

Hard to fight? I thought, curious. What did I do why I am so hard to fight?

“The curse.” It was Job’s deep voice. “The curse was too much.”

I wondered about the curse. What were they talking about? What was the curse that was too much?

Suddenly my heart skipped a beat when the next voice spoke. “What curse is this that you are talking about?”

It belonged to Jared.

“It’s the same curse Augustus has given you, Jared,” Katie told him. “Usually the giver shall only give a quarter of their power to someone, to a mortal. But Matilda gave Rachel the half of hers. So that means Matilda has really gotten stronger. You see her fight. . . . It’s like she has trained for eons. But she only killed some of our kind. Perhaps you’d known that.”

There was silence afterward. I counted my heartbeat to see how long it had taken before Jared spoke again. “What happened to the power now?”

Katie explained, “It’s gone back to Matilda. She has the power again.”

Silence fell again. And then the pain began to ache inside my body. My muscle twitched. I wanted to scream to ask for help. Inside I felt screaming already. But no one could hear me. Pain. Agony. It felt like my soul was burning, my body being pierced by millions of needles. I wanted to move. I struggled to move any part of my body. But no luck.

Jared! I screamed inside my head, hoping my boyfriend to hear me. He didn’t. Jared!

Finally the pain slowly drained from my body. The needles that were piercing me seemed to lose its point and never pierced me again. The fire that was burning my soul disappeared. Air started to fill my lungs. I felt relief coming.

I could already feel my muscles. When I did, I desperately wanted to move my body. I tried to shake my head. I struggled to move my hands and my fingers. But then . . . my eyes opened and I stared at my boyfriend’s glowing face.

“Rachel?” was the first word I heard from Jared. He smiled at me triumphantly. “Are you all right?”

I laughed at him. “Yes,” I murmured.

“I’m so glad you are. I love you, Rachel.” He leaned down to my face, putting his soft lips on mine.

“I love you, too,” I moaned, not disconnecting our lips.