Krymzyn (The Journals of Krymzyn Book 1) (12 page)

“The neuroectodermal tumor is in about the same spot as before,” Dr. Baskin said, pointing to the image of my brain on a computer monitor. “What concerns me more is the growth here.” He slid his finger to a dark mass higher up, just above the center of my brain. “We need to do a SPECT scan to determine if it’s malignant, but it appears to be a glioblastoma.”

“Brain cancer,” I said.

“We don’t know that for sure yet, Chase.”

“That’s what killed Davis, isn’t it?” I asked. “Glioblastoma multiforme?”

“I know how close you were to him. I remember seeing you in the hospital almost every day with Davis, so I’m sure you knew the details of his cancer. Every case is different. I’ve known you for eleven years, and you’re a fighter, a survivor. You’re in tremendous physical condition and, mentally, as strong as any patient I’ve ever had. If anyone can beat this, you can.”

I thought back to when I was seventeen, when part of me wanted a new tumor so I could be taken to Krymzyn, to Sash. I’d never considered the ramifications of a new tumor being cancerous. Fate was playing the cruelest practical joke on me I could imagine.

“If it’s malignant,” I asked, “what are the survival rates?”

“If it proves to be malignant, about fifteen percent for full recovery in your age group. Two years to five years, with treatments, is the average. It really depends on how aggressive it is.”

“Not very good odds,” I said.

“The odds of you making the state cross-country championship ten months after brain surgery were astronomical,” he replied, smiling at me.

My entire body was numb, and I barely heard his words. “When can we do the biopsy?”

“As soon as possible. Tomorrow, if you can. The sooner we act on this type of tumor, the better the chances are for successful eradication.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” I said. “Dr. Baskin, please don’t tell my parents yet. I want to have all the facts first.”

“You’re an adult now, Chase. Legally, I can’t inform them without your consent, and I understand if you want to be the one to tell them. But you’re going to need their love and support.”

“I know, and I couldn’t ask for more than what they give me. I’m very lucky to have my family. I just don’t want to upset anyone until we know exactly what I’m up against.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Did you have a hallucination during the seizure?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No hallucination.”

Two days later, I was back in his office. Phrases you don’t want to hear after a biopsy are “extremely aggressive” and “rapidly spreading”—but those were the words spoken to me. Survival rates were suddenly cut by more than half.

“The tumor needs to come out immediately,” Dr. Baskin said. “We should start radiation and chemo as soon as we can, so I’d like to schedule the surgery for early next week.”

“Let’s do it the week after next,” I said. “We can do it on that Monday, but it has to be the week after next.”

“It’s in your best interest to do it sooner,” he replied.

“Ally will be home for spring break next week.” I paused for a moment then spoke softly but firmly. “I just want to have a normal week with my family. It might be the last one I ever have.”

He stared at me silently for several seconds. “Week after next, Chase. That’ll be fine. I’ll get you on the schedule for first thing that Monday.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for everything.”

He stood from his chair, walked to the seat beside me, and rested a hand on my shoulder as he sat down. “I’m so sorry, Chase, but you need to stay positive. We’re going to do everything we can to beat this.”

“I know we will,” I said.

I left his office and rode the elevator to the lobby. I’d taken a cab to the hospital, not wanting to risk a seizure while driving. It never even crossed my mind to take the anti-seizure meds I was prescribed after the initial diagnosis. I looked through the glass entrance doors for a moment, saw the row of taxis in front of the hospital, but turned the other way.

I walked to a courtyard where I used to sit with Davis, sometimes talking for hours about his hopes and dreams for the future—the life he never had. I sat on a bench, distracting myself by examining the different colors of flowers in the garden. The stress of the day was almost too much to handle, and I wasn’t at all surprised to feel the throbbing spread through my skull. I gripped the edge of the bench seat with my hands when the first convulsion struck me.

*             *             *

Full Darkness has already descended. Glaring crimson branches slash the air in front of me as rain batters my skin. I instantly spot Sash at the edge of the meadow. She’s locked in a savage fight with two hideous creatures, her spear a flurry in her hands.

Blood red eyes target Sash. One Murkovin lunges his spear at her, but she twists and dodges the point. Shards of light explode from his head when Sash plunges her spear through his skull. The other Murkovin jabs at her from behind. Sash ducks the stab and spins to face the brute.

I jerk my face to a blur of white on my left. A Murkovin races through the valley straight towards Sash. The clash of metal rings through the hills as Sash battles the other creature.

“Sash!” I scream at her.

Focused on the fight in front of her, she’s deaf to my call. She has no idea the other Murkovin is rushing towards her from behind.

I charge down the hill and aim at a spot in front of him, hoping that I’m fast enough to intercept before he reaches Sash. I drive my feet into the ground, sprinting with everything I have inside. When I reach the bottom of the hill, the Murkovin slides to a stop and whirls in my direction. I launch into him.

My shoulder slams into his gut. I clamp both of my arms around his thighs, tackle him to the wet grass, and get one crushing blow from my fist into his nose. Black blood spews from his nostrils, but his hands clutch my shirt. The beast heaves me above his body and hammers me into the ground.

He rolls on top of me and jolts upright, so I smash my palm under his chin. I feel claws sink into my shoulder as a fist thunders into the side of my head. Sharpened, white teeth glisten through black lips above me. His eyes suddenly dart to a flash of green above our heads.

Light glints from a point of steel inches above my face. The spear tip skewers the creature’s stomach, releasing a spray of Murkovin blood onto my chest.

Another shape soars in from my side. A steel point rips into the skull of the swine, driving him off me and into the ground. I look up to see Sash, both of her hands ramming her spear through the head of the Murkovin. My eyes find the Watcher who reached me first—Balt, the same man who stared at me before the Ritual of Purpose.

“How did so many Murkovin enter the Delta?” I hear Tork’s voice yell. He sprints to us, muscles flexed, anger seething in his eyes.

“We don’t know,” Balt replies.

“Are there more?” Sash calls out.

Two more green-haired Watchers, a man and a woman, run to us from behind Balt.

“No more!” the woman shouts.

Sash glances down at me. “Are you badly injured?”

“I’m fine, Sash,” I reply. “Go do your thing.”

She grabs a stake from the pack on her back, leaps into the wildly swinging branches, and sprints to the trunk. I raise my head off the ground to watch Sash, but everything starts spinning and my head falls back to the grass. Tork leans over me, reaches one hand behind my head, and gently lifts it off the ground.

“Drink,” he says, holding his flask to my lips.

I gulp the sap, my vision clears, and he rests my head on the grass. Tork pours sap from the flask into his hand and rubs it across the gashes in my neck, shoulders, and arms. I feel the wounds instantly heal as a soothing calm spreads through my body.

“Return to the wall and dispose of the Murkovin bodies,” Tork says loudly, looking up at the Watchers. “I’ll meet you at the gate when light returns.”

I sit up, and Tork stands. The three Watchers each grab a dead Murkovin by their black-and-white hair. Spears in one hand, corpses held in the other, they drag the bodies to the east.

“Balt,” I call to him.

When the man looks back, his dark amber eyes shoot straight through me.

“Thank you for helping me,” I say.

He doesn’t nod or acknowledge my thanks in any way. He just holds my stare for a split second before he turns and walks away. It’s not contempt I saw at the Ritual. Those eyes clearly hate me.

I glance up to see the churning clouds slow, the rainfall thin, and light pierce through the clouds. Tork reaches a hand down to me. I take it in my grasp, and he helps me to my feet.

“You honored Krymzyn with your actions,” he says, bowing his head solemnly. “For that, we are grateful.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I say to him. “I just got in the way.”

“You put your own life at risk to stop a Murkovin.”

“It’s my honor to serve Krymzyn in any way I can,” I reply.

“That appears to be true,” Tork says.

We both turn to watch Sash. She pulls the last stake from the tree, slips it into the cylinder on her back, presses her cheek to the bark, and rests one palm against the trunk. After several seconds of standing silently, her lips move, whispering something to the tree. She picks her spear up from the ground and returns to where we’re waiting.

“I need to consult with the Watchers to find out how this intrusion occurred,” Tork says to Sash. “Never have so many Murkovin entered the Delta during Darkness.”

“I’ll take care of Chase,” Sash replies. “Contaminated blood has spilled on him.”

Tork turns to me. “Will you forgive me if I leave you in the care of Sash?”

“Of course,” I answer. “Thank you for helping me, Tork. I really appreciate what you did.”

“It was my honor,” he says sincerely.

Tork bows and sprints away to the east. I step to Sash, smiling at her.

“I’d kiss you,” I say, “if I didn’t have Murkovin blood all over me.”

She reaches a hand to my face and rests it against my cheek. “You risked your life to stop the Murkovin.”

“I did it for you, Sash. I’d do anything for you.”

“I know you would,” she says warmly.

“Thanks for killing the Murkovin. I didn’t realize how strong they are.”

She rises to the tips of her toes and gently kisses my lips. “Thank you for stopping him.”

“You probably didn’t need my help, but I couldn’t just let him run up behind you.”

“I need to teach you to use a spear,” she replies with a faint smile. “Are your wounds healing?”

“I’ll be fine,” I answer.

She takes my hand, and we walk in the direction of her habitat.

“I don’t think Balt cares much for me,” I say as we walk.

Sash turns her head to me. “Why do you say that?”

“Just the way he looks at me.”

“We grew together as children in Home,” Sash says after a moment of thought. “He was well focused on his education and sometimes helped the smaller children, like Tela, practice with spears. He’s very skilled with a weapon. Most of the time, he was quiet and distant. As a Watcher, he’s angered by the intrusion of Murkovin. But I’ve seen strange expressions on his face before. It’s just the way he is.”

“I’ll try not to worry about it,” I say.

I’m not at all surprised that Sash would defend someone in Krymzyn. She’s the most loyal person I’ve ever met. But there was concern in her voice, in her explanation, and I know what I saw in his eyes.

“Awaken,” Sash says as she closes the door behind us.

We walk through the tunnel until we reach the softly lit cavern. The soothing sound of falling water echoes from the other cave. I immediately turn my head to the drawing of Sash, now hanging by two hooks over her bed.

“I look at the drawing before I sleep,” she says while hanging the cylinder of stakes on the wall. “It always makes me smile.”

When Sash talks and when we spoke in the meadow, instead of delaying, words that never translated before now flow with the rest of our words. It’s as though the words that didn’t exist here, words that Sash learned from me, have been permanently added to the dictionary of Krymzyn—or maybe just to Sash’s vocabulary.

“It means a lot to me that you like it,” I reply.

“Sit over here,” she says, crossing the quartz floor to the small table and pulling the stool out from underneath. “You need sap to finish healing.”

The sap Tork applied to my cuts has already stopped the bleeding and sealed my wounds, but my back and shoulders are definitely still sore from the Murkovin slamming me into the ground. I’ve never felt anything that strong. My body was nothing more than a rag doll in his hands.

I walk to the stool and sit, instantly reminded of the same sequence of events happening when I was seventeen. Sash fills two cups with sap, keeping one and handing me the other. As I slowly sip the contents, euphoria sweeps through my mind.

When we finish drinking, we both set our cups on the table. I raise my arms as Sash pulls my V-neck over my head. She lays my shirt beside the cups, picks up the pitcher, and pours sap into her hands. Rejuvenation seeps into my muscles as she massages my shoulders, neck, and arms.

“I missed you,” I say. “I thought about you every moment I was in my world.”

“I thought about you, too,” she replies, gently rubbing her hands across my back. “I felt so happy while we were together. When you left, I grew angry with myself for wanting to be with you. I know you can’t come here without feeling pain in your world.”

“Don’t ever feel like that, Sash. I’ll put up with anything I have to if it means I can keep seeing you.”

“It shouldn’t have to be that way,” she says, “and I can’t control my reaction sometimes.”

I’ve seen her struggle to keep her anger in check. But for the first time, I realize how overwhelming it must be for her to understand the emotions she feels from my world. The range of feelings I experience on a daily basis are considered “irrational and extreme” in Krymzyn.

“Why do you think you’re able to feel the things you do?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” Her hands stop on my shoulders. “I’ve discussed it with Eval. She believes the purpose will be revealed at some point in the future. I think about it often, but I have no answer.”

“I’m sorry you have to go through that alone. I know how tough it can be.”

“Those emotions allow me to feel the way I do about you,” she replies. “I would never give that up.” She reaches around me to lift my shirt from the table. “Come with me. We need to cleanse.”

I follow her across the main cavern to the head of her bed. After unbuckling the rope from around her waist, she loops it over a hook in the wall. When she takes off her shirt, my eyes fall to the subtle curves of her breasts.

“Finish undressing,” Sash says.

She unbuttons her pants and slides them down her legs. Feeling a natural sense of comfort around her, and none of the embarrassment I felt when we were younger, I do the same. She takes my pants from me, drapes our clothing over one arm, and leads me by the hand into the glistening cave. We walk through the shallow stream, soothing to my feet, until we stop under the fall. Raising our clothes up one piece at a time, Sash lets the flow of water rinse the fabric clean.

“Do you need help?” I ask.

“No, but thank you for offering,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”

While she returns our clothing to the other room, I wash the dried blood from my neck, shoulders, and arms. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, letting the invigorating sensation splash over my skin.

Fingertips touch my forehead. Standing behind me, Sash combs her fingers through my hair. After kissing the back of my neck, she steps into the fall by my side.

Turning to Sash, I’m entranced by the sensual curves of her body. Aware of my gaze, she smiles to me, and I lean to her lips. As we kiss, her hands reach around my waist. She embraces me tightly, pressing her chest firmly against mine.
I’m having the same reaction I had when I was seventeen, but I don’t try to hide it from her. I know she feels me against her stomach, but she doesn’t pull away or say anything about it.

“I love you, Sash,” I whisper in her ear, holding her close.

“I love you,” she replies.

“I’d like to make love with you,” I say.

“What’s ‘make love’?” she asks, leaning her head back to study my eyes.

“It’s something two people do in my world when they feel the way we feel about each other. It’s like what goes on in the Ritual of Balance—mating—but it’s done because we love each other, to feel close, not to reproduce. But I only want us to do it if you’re sure you feel that way.”

We stare silently at each other as several seconds pass.

“I want to experience with you what you would do in your world,” Sash finally says. “That’s how I feel about you.”

“The only problem is,” I reply, “I don’t have protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“Protection from getting you pregnant.”

“I’m not fertile. Only when a woman has the sign of fertility can she become pregnant.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” I mumble.

Since there’s no disease here, and I know we’re both virgins, I decide that we don’t have to worry about STDs.

“You’ve done this in your world?” she asks.

I glance down at the water flowing over my feet, knowing with every part of me that I made the right decision to wait for this moment with Sash. I’m asking her to share an experience that’s never existed this way in Krymzyn. She needs to know that it’s as new and meaningful to me as it must be to her. I look up to her eyes.

“No, I’ve never done it,” I say. “You’re the only person I’ve ever felt this way about.”

She peers inside me before replying. “You’re the only person I want to feel this with.”

I rest my forehead against hers, suddenly worrying that she has no idea what’s involved. “Sash, I think it really hurts a woman the first time.”

“I know what to expect,” she replies. “When we’re children, the mating process is explained to us by the Keepers.”

“If it makes you uncomfortable or doesn’t feel right, just say so, and we can stop. I don’t want to do anything—”

She presses a finger against my lips. “I told you,” she says, “I want to feel what you feel in your world. I want to feel it with you.”

I take Sash’s hand in mine. As we cross from the waterfall to the other room, my skin and hair instantly feel dry. When we reach her bed, we both kneel on the mattress. I watch as she stretches out on her back, knowing deep inside that she’s the only person I could ever be with this way.

Lying down beside her, I prop myself up on one arm, my face inches over hers. I try to think of the perfect words to say, wanting her know how much I feel for her. She reaches a hand to the back of my head. While I hesitate, she seems to read my mind.

“You don’t need to say anything,” she says. “I feel what’s inside you.”

“I just want this to be perfect,” I say.

“It already is,” she quietly replies.

I lean down to kiss her lips. As our mouths open, her tongue searches for mine. They gently swirl together, sending a quiver through my spine.

Lifting my face over hers, I’m enchanted by her eyes. I lower one hand from her shoulder to her chest. My fingers trace the outline of her breast, gradually circling inward to her small, firm nipple.

Sash raises her head from the bed and kisses me. Her fingertips glide up and down my back. When her head sinks into the pillow again, I kiss her neck, her cheek, and softly nuzzle her ear.

My hand wanders over her stomach until I reach the soft, narrow line of fine hair. I lightly brush my palm down the top of her thigh. As I slide it back up the inside of her leg, she spreads her knees. Her smooth, moist folds reach my touch. I run my fingertips over her before tenderly slipping one finger inside. She’s soft, wet, and for the first time, I feel warmth in Krymzyn.

Her fingertips graze around my side and across my chest. We nervously smile at one another as she reaches lower. Taking me in her hand with a delicate grasp, she strokes up and down.

I roll on top of her body, our eyes never parting. Still holding me in one hand, Sash presses her other against my back as she guides me inside. I enter as slowly as I can, but there’s a slight look of pain on her face.

“Am I hurting you?” I whisper.

Sash shakes her head, her eyes deep inside mine. “No. You feel right to me.”

“You feel right to me, too,” I say.

Both of her hands clench my hips and she pushes me deeper. She tenses as I ease completely inside. With a deep breath and a slow exhale, she gradually relaxes. Bathed in an amber glow from overhead, we lie perfectly still, hugging each other as tight as we can.

When I start to move, her body falls in sync with mine. She breathes out and I breathe in, inhaling her, absorbing her in every way I can. We kiss each other’s necks, ears, and lips. She raises her hips to my thrusts as they become faster while her hands tightly grasp the flexed muscles in my rear.

Sash throws her head back. Brilliant black and scarlet strands wisp through the air in front of me and spread across the pillow. I feel every muscle in our bodies flex together. As her stomach spasms against mine, I can’t control my release inside her. We clutch each other as our bodies convulse again and again, our faces buried in each other’s necks.

After our muscles calm, I lie on top of her, still inside. Her heart beats against my chest, and I feel her breath in my ear. I raise my head, look at the amber below my face, and fall further into the splendor of her eyes.

“I can’t be away from you anymore, Sash,” I say.

“We belong together,” she whispers.