Nya's POV
The moment I awaken I know something is wrong.

I'm cold. When I fell asleep I was warm and safe but not anymore. Now there is just a sick sense of dread, a dropping feeling in my stomach, my throat closing up with anxiety.

This is the feeling I get when Jay is in danger.

Where is he?

I sit up abruptly and am hit with a wave of dizziness-apparently I haven't returned to full strength from the spell. I don't care. Shaking it away, I survey the room and something catches my eye in the dim light from the lamp.

On the blue bedcovers is a wilted, shriveled, reddish thing. It's a dead rose petal.

A trail of them start at the bed and make their way to the door, leading somewhere.

On the wall is painted a scarlet red arrow, pointing out of the room in the same direction as the petals. The arrow isn't solid, in fact, some of the red is still oozing down the wall like it was just made.

It's drawn in blood.

My heart almost stops.

No, no, no, no.

I fling the covers back and flip to my feet. There's an unsteady moment where I have to catch my balance, placing my hand against the wall. Unwittingly I touch some of the blood. It's still warm.

Putting one foot in front of the other, I follow the trail of rose petals out into the hall and am met with a horrible sight.

It's as if the walls are bleeding. They're coated with red. It drips down, pooling on the hardwood floor, trickling in rivulets between the boards. The blood isn't just there. It's spelling out words. Of course.

Better come quick!

Birdie's in trouble.

I missed you.

One last chance.

I did it for us.

You want my black heart.

I am not a monster.

Jay deserved it.

And everywhere, the same phrase. The one thing that makes me feel so sick I can't look at it. The thing I hear over and over and wonder why it's so disturbing.

Love, Cole Love, Cole Love, Cole Love, Cole Love, Cole

Love, Cole

The rose petals lead me farther into the nightmare but I can't help but follow them. What lies in wait for me at the end of this line? Whose blood is staining the walls?

Where is Jay?

I see the end of the petals. They lead me to a door, the door of the training room, the only thing in the hall unstained with blood. Instead, scratched deep into the wood is a heart with an arrow through it. In it are the initials CB + NS.

I stare at the carving for a second. I feel nauseous.

Time seems to stretch as I reach out my hand and slowly, creakily turn the doorknob. I don't know what I'll find in here but it isn't something I want to see.

I watch as the door swings open, almost by itself. The dark varnish glints in the flickering lights.

This isn't real. I am dreaming. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

In a way, it's picture perfect. Everyone is here, everyone dead. They all stare at me accusingly with lifeless eyes, but their corpses look freshly killed. Like each one of them died only a few minutes before, the warmth just leaving their bodies, the intelligence draining from their eyes. Each of the bodies has its own place, meticulously organized, and together, laid down, they form a large shape on the floor.

My friends form the outline of a perfectly symmetrical heart.

Some of them are twisted, others snapped in half to form corners, but nothing has been forgotten.

In the center is a person drenched with blood. Their clothes used to be blue.

I'm aware of every second as I run towards Jay, every footstep making a loud pounding noise in my brain, breaths nonexistent. He can't be dead, he can't be dead, he can't be dead.

I drop down next to him, almost falling. He's curled up into a little ball as if trying to hide. I lay one hand on Jay and he's stiff, tense, but through it I can feel little tremors of terror. A small whimper comes from somewhere inside the cocoon of fear.

He's not dead.

"Jay! Say something!" I say, shaking his small form. "Look at me!"

More blood stains my hand but I don't care because Jay agonizingly uncurls from his fetal position, looking up at me with an intense expression of pain twisting his features.

The blood is everywhere. I don't know where the cuts start or end, they're deep, digging into Jay's arms, legs, torso. But they didn't kill him.

"Nya..." Jay says. He sounds different. Sad. Broken. "You have to leave..."

"I'm not leaving you! We're going to find a way to fix this!" I insist. I'm trying to find something to help. How do I stop the pain? How do I get the spark back into Jay's eyes? I've never noticed it but now the absence is apparent.

"Cole wants this...'

"Jay, be quiet. When you talk it makes you bleed faster! I'm trying to save you here!" I snap. My hands are shaking. Jay can't bleed to death like Kai did.

"You don't understand...you can't save me..."

"You aren't dying on me. I need your help, okay?" Why can't he just shut up and let me figure out a way to stop this?

"Nya..." Jay moans with more insistence. "You have to listen to me!"

"I need you!" I shout,

"Nya, it's a trap!" Jay screams.

All of a sudden, the door slams shut with a loud BANG! I freeze. A rose petal floats down. I follow it with my eyes as it twists gracefully through the air right in front of my face and lands in the space between Jay and I.

There's something behind me.

Something alive.

"I've been expecting you." Demon Cole hisses.

Every muscle in my body tenses. My head slowly turns, my neck making small jerking movements.

A bouquet of dead roses, once red but now faded, are held tightly in Cole's fist. As I watch, another petal escapes and falls to the floor, dancing in small circles before finding its final resting place.

My legs somehow push me up into standing, but I feel like I might fall over at any moment.

"Do you like how I set everything up? I know how much you dislike clichés-thought this was the more original option." Cole smiles, sending shivers of fear rippling through me.

"Don't you dare talk to me about this like it's a game." I bite.

"I'm completely serious. This took a while to complete. At least Jay was cooperative." His smirk deepens. "Gave up and then donated blood like it was a drive."

"Leave Jay out of it. This is our problem, Cole. Murder me if you want, but not Jay!" On the inside I just want to curl up like Jay in a ball and hide, but somebody has to confront Cole. I may have promised not to try and kill the demon, but that doesn't mean I can be passive.

"But Jay is the problem." Cole says. In a second he's gone, leaving only the bouquet of roses in front of me.  I hear another squeak of pain, Jay's squeak of pain, behind me. I spin around and Cole is dangling Jay by his neck like a puppet on a string.

"Everything has been leading up to this moment, Nya. You know it. I know it. Hell, even Jay could figure it out with his puny little brain." Cole's eyes burn with a deep desire. The ground beneath us quakes a bit, causing me to lose my balance. "I've given you so many chances to surrender, to prevent it, but you are so stubborn and stupid that you wouldn't give in."

I don't know what to do. I'm unarmed and powerless against what's about to happen.

"There are consequences when you don't listen."

"Cole, I'm warning you! Drop Jay now or you will regret it!" I threaten, but my voice quavers.

"Empty words. You need to stop lying, sweetheart." Cole winks.

I can only look at Jay, defeated in Demon Cole's grasp. He gave up hope. There has to be some way out of this! The power of positive thinking!

Is useless.

"Don't kill him!" I say, more desperate. I can't be hysterical. I have to fight, I can't just stand here and yell. I need a plan. And fast.

Think, think, think, think, think.

"Since you're insistent on stalling, I guess I won't kill Jay just yet. I was planning on waiting until after he was dead for this, but if you insist..." Cole shrugs, as if conceding in one of our old arguments, the ones we had for fun.

Demon Cole runs his claws across Jay's hand until they rest on his finger. His left ring finger. Jay's eyes widen just when he realizes what Cole is about to do. Instead of fighting he just squeezes his eyes shut like he's bracing himself for what's to come.

Talons shoot into Jay's finger. More blood. More pain. I see bone, white, reflected in the lights. There are cracking and breaking noises.

Cole draws the bones out from Jay's finger.

Jay screams in total agony. Bloodcurdling, the kind of scream you want to join in with, harmonize. The kind of scream that tells a story, shrill, choked, so full of pain and sadness and fear. My heart shatters every second the scream continues. His voice breaks and he isn't making noise anymore, but the horror is still there.

Cole looks at the bone for a few seconds, surveying it with interest. He wipes it off on Jay's sleeve and puts it in his pocket. Save it for later.

"Now, I can kill Jay." Cole says with satisfaction.

Tears stream down Jay's face. He's stopped screaming but I can tell that every particle in his body is shaking.

How can anyone experience so much pain?

My hands are pressed over my mouth, trying to hold something in. Vomit? Words? Screams? I don't know.

The whole world is still.

"Any last words?" Cole turns Jay in my direction. His face is completely white and I notice just how much Jay has changed. His cheeks are hollow, eyes already dead.

Jay blinks, breathes a few times in and out very fast. Our eyes meet for a split-second that feels like a century and I can't think and all I can see is the blue, the startling electric blue, and then Jay is saying something with all the strength left in him. The same thing I've been afraid to say for all this time.

"Alright, that's enough of that." Cole says, almost whining. "I'm tired of waiting. I'm normally patient, and yet, today I feel so...antsy."

It happens so fast that one could miss it.
I don't.
I see everything.

His hand plunges into Jay's chest. No skin, no bones, not anything stops as the hand reaches in and pulls out a heart that used to beat rapidly. Now it's not beating at all.

Cole examines the heart, giving it a once-over. Then he drops it.

And stomps down hard.

Jay joins his heart on the floor, limp and lifeless.

I stare into the wide open blue eyes, looking for a sign of life, an indication that there's anything left.

Nothing.

Jay is dead.

Jay's last words are replaying over and over. I can't listen but they won't stop taunting me.

They're just words.

Words I was never able to say.

"I love you."