The horrified look on Laylen’s face caused goose bumps to sprout on my skin even though it was nowhere near cold. “Demetrius and Stephan were talking and they—”
“Wait a minute.” Laylen cut me off. “They were there—both of them were there.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I was in Vegas, only it didn’t look like Vegas anymore. There was ice covering everything and there was no one in sight. Well, no one except a few Death Walkers and Stephan and Demetrius. They were talking to each other and Demetrius said something about Stephan’s scar once being the Mark of Malefiscus, but his parents cut it off when…” The look on Laylen’s face made me trail off. “What’s wrong?”
Laylen looked utterly shocked. “So what you’re saying is that the scar on Stephan’s face used to be the Mark of Malefiscus?”
“Yeah, but what’s the mark for?” I asked. “I mean, who gets it?”
The fear in Laylen’s eyes had me worried. Well, more worried than I already was after seeing the world frozen at its end. “It’s the mark of evil.”
Why did that revelation not surprise me? “So Stephan has the mark of evil. No wonder he’s probably trying to make the world end.”
Laylen shook his head. “No, Gemma. The Mark of Malefiscus isn’t just the mark of evil. It stands for so much more. Malefiscus is also a man.” He shifted uncomfortably on the bed, and then leaned in so we were huddled together and dropped his voice. “There’s this story that’s told among the Keepers, kind of like a bedtime story.”
“A bedtime story,” I repeated, dumbfounded. “The Keepers tell bedtime stories about a man who’s evil?”
“An evil man the Keepers destroyed,” he explained. “But anyway, the story goes that Altamium, the very first Keeper to ever be born, fathered two sons—twin sons, Hektor and Nikon. Apparently right before they were born, a Foreseer told a vision about these sons. He said that one of the sons would grow up to be a great warrior, and the other would grow up to be jealous of the other one. And that jealousy would become so great that it would turn into hatred. Eventually, that hatred would bare a mark no one had ever seen before. The mark of evil. Or the Mark of Malefiscus as Nikon would later name it after he changed his name to Malefiscus, which means evil in Latin.”
“So the vision came true?”
“Yes, the vision came true.” Laylen took a deep breath, loud enough that I could hear the shakiness it held. “And if what you saw is true, then it means Stephan bares the Mark of Malefiscus, which isn’t good at all.”
“Yeah, that is bad, but I think we already knew he was evil without the mark, didn’t we?”
“No, it’s a lot worse than him just being evil.” Laylen leaned in even closer to me, his weight sinking the bed in, causing Laylen’s leg to bump into mine. “After Nikon—or Malefiscus got the mark, he began causing havoc all over the place. He joined forces with the Death Walkers, who up until then had been living in hiding for hundreds and hundreds of years.” Laylen shook his head. “And things continued to get worse. The number of Death Walkers seemed to be multiplying and taking to the streets. It would have probably ended up being the ice age all over again if it wasn’t for Hektor.”
“Malefiscus’s brother?” I asked, checking to make sure that I was keeping up.
Laylen nodded. “Hektor eventually defeated Malefiscus, but couldn’t bring himself to kill him so the Keepers sentenced him to a place…I’m not really sure where it was. In fact, I think no one knows, which was part of the point…so no one can find him and set him free again.”
“Can’t find him? But what would it matter if anyone found him—he’d be dead by now, right?”
Laylen leaned in more, his knee pressing against mine. “Right before Malefiscus was sentenced, he found a way to become immortal, at least that’s what people say.”
“How did he make himself immortal?” I asked, fully involved in his story.
Laylen slowly shook his head. “As far as anyone knows, becoming immortal isn’t possible unless someone becomes like a Black Angel or a Death Walker or a…vampire.”
I glanced down at Laylen’s forearm where the black symbols of his mark of immortality were tattooed. “Did he actual get the mark of immortality?”
“I don’t know…I’m not sure if my parents left out parts of the story to sugar-coat it for me, or if there