Here's the climactic chapter! Can we make it to 100 reviews?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cameron watched in horror as around him, the plan fell apart. Somehow the rescuers had made it inside.
He did not want to do this. He did not want to do this at all. He never had, never, but he hadn't had a choice. There was no choice in this bloody business, no choice other than death, for either oneself or others.
Cameron had always known that. He had been raised knowing that. But it didn't make him feel any better in the face of murder and sacrifice in cold blood. The kidnapping had been bad enough.
Now he had learned the real purpose of his life. His parents had been planning this moment, biding their time and preparing, for sixteen years. He had been born for one specific purpose: to perform the sacrifice. To raise the spirit of Dashwind.
Until that day, he had not even known the spirit's name. He still did not know why Dashwind's spirit needed raising, or what he had done to make him so evil. His parents refused to tell him. Dan Green had slapped him when he asked, while Silena looked on scornfully and called him names.
He hated this. He hated them. But there was nothing he could do to stop them. He was trapped into his parents' will.
"Cameron!" Silena called out. He flinched. She had started calling him by his name instead of just "boy". He was not used to this change. He knew she was just trying to get on his good side, to be nice to him, but he didn't think she even knew what the proper definition of "nice" was.
"Cameron, keep going!" she cried out again. "Your father and I will take care of this!"
He frowned and gritted his teeth, his brows furrowing anxiously. Slowly, he picked up the knife he had dropped on the floor.
"Don't do this," the middle girl warned him. He shivered at her words. She unnerved him. The ginger, the angry one, had glared at him and swore in some archaic, animal-like speech, and the small one cowered away from him with hate, but the middle one showed no fear. She defied him easily, and he was spooked.
"I have to," he mumbled in response. "They'll kill me if I don't."
"It must happen," Dashwind's voice whispered. "Raise me a body, Cameron Green, and you will be justly rewarded."
Cameron's hand, the one holding the blade, trembled. He really didn't want to do this. He had never wanted to hurt or kill anybody. All he wanted was to be safe, and if possible, loved. Living with Dan and Silena, aiding Dashwind's bloody endeavors, he had never had that. And if he continued to live like this, he never would.
He took a step back. Dan and Silena and a few of their bully boys under Jackie's command were fighting with the rescuers. The girls cowered in front of him. The two children huddled in fear in the corner.
"Is it peace you want, Cameron?" Dashwind asked softly. "Love? A warm embrace? I know you hate your parents. They hate you, too. They would be happy if you died. I can fake your death, whisk you away to a new life. No one will know the difference. I have power, Cameron, but only a body will let me use that power. Kill the girls. Let me rise. I will reward you."
Cameron was sorely tempted. To live away from Dan and Silena? To be happy? To be loved? He wanted that badly. He really did. But was killing these innocent girls worth it? And would Dashwind keep his promises?
"What else will you do, if you rise? Aside from rewarding your followers?" he asked, clutching the knife with sweaty hands.
"I will gain power and leadership in this world, then in another, until all is under my command. I will bring peace to all lands. Is that not what you want?"
"Peace," Cameron whispered. "But why does your spirit need raising in the first place?"
Dashwind's voice turned dark. "I was in love, once. But I was denied. I wandered for seasons."
Seasons? Cameron thought. Doesn't he mean years?
"I fell in love again," the spirit growled. "This time I was happier. But we were divided, our one son taken from me." His voice cracked. "Then she died. I had been lonely for so long, but now I was entirely alone. I had no hope, no happiness. I began a war to avenge her, but our son was killed in that war."
Cameron was confused. How old was this spirit? Or was he speaking about one of these other worlds he had mentioned? He couldn't recall any wars like that which had taken place even in the last fifty years.
"I died as well," Dashwind continued, and now Cameron was even more befuddled. "I fled back to this world, but when I tried to find peace, there was none."
The heartache and sadness in his voice was obviously real. Cameron felt sympathy for him amidst his confusion. But still there was more for him to tell.
"My second death was a tragic accident to the outside world," Dashwind said, and now his tone turned from aching grief to malicious. "But I refused to bow to the will of the powerfully fortunate, and became a power all my own. I must rise, then bring the worlds together, so all will be peace and no harm will come to any ever again."
Cameron's head spun. He barely understood any of this, besides the deep emotion the voice portrayed. He did realize one thing, though. "You're crazy." Even if he had been hurt, he was nuts.
"That's what they all say," Dashwind snarled. "But I am powerful. Obey me, and be happy! Defy me, and fall."
"Don't listen to him," the middle girl said.
Cameron looked at the knife in his hands. Then he looked at the girls, and his parents. Something hardened within him.
"I will do what I must do," he said quietly.
"No!" the girl protested, but Cameron turned aside. He saw Silena in the fray and snuck up behind her.
"Mother," he growled, and he stabbed her in the back with his knife.
"No!" Dashwind's voice screamed.
Silena gasped in shock and pain and turned around. The knife was long, and she was skinny, and thus Cameron could see the blade sticking out through her front. Cameron yanked it out and let the blood flow.
She smiled at him weakly, a smile full of malice and hate, then drove her own dagger into Cameron's belly.
Fire erupted in his midriff. Together, he and his mother crumpled to the floor. He knew he was as good as dead. Blood pounded in his ears, and he was deaf to the world.
"Traitor...son...Cameron..." Silena croaked, and then she died. He thought it was rather fitting that his name, a title she had avoided saying for sixteen years, was her last word.
Cameron smiled. He could see someone—two someones—above him. One, a gloriously beautiful woman, reached out her hand.
"Come with us," Cameron, she said gently.
"Your suffering is over," the equally divine man beside her added.
"Will I be loved?" he whispered, his vision blurring until they were the only things he saw in the blackness surrounding him.
"For all time," the woman answered.
He sighed in relief, a smile still spread across his lips, then went still. He was gone.
A/N: What Dashwind says is kind of confusing, and it doesn't make any sense to anyone but himself (and me), so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll try to answer them in the last chapter :)