Afterglow

by Karsten Knight

  “Uh-huh,” Ash replied without interest. “Well, Epona, I can totally respect the fact that you’re . . .” Ash paused because she was really tempted to complete the sentence with just another psycho who needs to let go of the past and learn to be an independent woman. Instead she opted for the more diplomatic approach. “ . . . a hopeless romantic. And I’d love nothing better than to let you and Colt ride off into the sunset together, if it meant I’d never have to hear from either of you again. Unfortunately, your boyfriend is like an annoying boomerang—no matter how hard I throw him away, he just keeps coming back, and someone always ends up hurt.”

  For a moment Epona’s face relaxed, and Ash thought she might actually listen to reason. Ash had been through her fair share of fights over teenage romance before, and it had always ended poorly. Lily, the disturbed blossom goddess, had killed Rolfe out of envy and died at Ash’s hands for that same boiling hatred. Ash had needed to kill Rey, the Incan sun god, too, when he tried to avenge the death of his winter-goddess girlfriend. And who could forget what happened to field-hockey captain Lizzie Jacobs, Ash’s old rival back in New York and the girl who stole her asshole ex-boyfriend. . . . Ash realized that the teenage years were when people were expected to be reckless and stupid, but couldn’t any of these people stand on their own two feet without making their universe revolve around a boyfriend or girlfriend? “Look, I’ve found myself in sticky situations because of guys who didn’t treat me right before. But believe me when I say that the ones you want to fight over are never worth it.”

  Just like that Epona’s expression rebounded right back into wrath. “If you won’t die for someone—if you won’t kill for them—then it’s not love. You don’t deserve Colt. He and I had been perfectly happy together for years this time around before I discovered that he was trying to track the three of you down again. To put you back together. He was confused and had forgotten who he really loved. Me,” she added, as if Ash were a moron and hadn’t caught the drift. “I knew Colt couldn’t put your filthy soul back together without all the pieces, so I decided to send a piece of you away where I figured he’d never find you.” She glanced back in the direction of the half-destroyed house with a knowing smile.

  “You?” Ash whispered. “You’re the one that convinced that Central American junta to kidnap Rose from the good life she was probably leading here?” Ash felt her own temper returning. “She’s a six-year-old girl—not just some roadblock to your happiness, you stupid bitch.”

  Epona’s smile fell. “Clearly it didn’t work. I sent that mute little toddler halfway across the hemisphere, and Colt still found a way to bring her back. And he picked up you and your twisted older sister along the way.” Epona ran her tongue over the top row of her immaculately white teeth. “Without all three Wildes, he can’t put Pele back together. I tried to be humane. But even if I send you to the ends of the earth, Colt is too brilliant and resourceful not to find you. So if I can’t hide one of the three puzzle pieces from him . . . then I guess I’ll just have to destroy one.”

  Ash’s incendiary rage continued to bubble up, a rage that she’d tried—but more often failed—to suppress since it got Lizzie Jacobs killed a year ago. She’d wanted so badly to leave the “old Ashline” behind when she left New York, but even when she thought she’d finally become a temperate and forgiving person, she could still feel her volcanic, impetuous instincts lurking under the surface. It was times like these when she realized that she still contained remnants of Pele, the destructive, earth-rending goddess whom the Cloak had deemed too dangerous to walk the planet.

  Ash wanted to hurt Epona, really hurt her, for upturning Rose’s life like she had.

  But even as she pictured herself throwing down with this dangerous stranger, she remembered the terrible cold she’d felt when she killed Bleak, the Norse winter goddess. And Rey, the crazy Incan sun god. And even the wretched blossom goddess Lily, who deserved it most of all. They were all killers, yet Ash had felt no thrill of justice or vengeance as she’d stood over their bodies. A corpse was a corpse.

  “Epona,” Ash said, trying one last chance to reason with her. “Let me take a wild guess as to how this all played out. Colt came to you when you still had no memories of your previous lives. Wormed his way back into your heart, then used that persuasive voice of his to reconnect you with some of those old memories . . . but just the ones that he wanted you to see. Just the ones that would make you loyal to him again, make you love him again. Enough that you’d do anything for him.” Ash swallowed. “I know, because that almost became my story too, before I saw through the illusion. Before I realized that there are most certainly memories he didn’t let me see that would reveal him to be the monster that he really is. The truth is that you and I have both had the misfortune of falling for the world’s most gifted liar. If you kill me now, then, yes, you’d rob Colt of the patchwork bride that he’s so desperately after. Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind either. But whether you like it or not, I’m going to survive long enough to stop Colt Halliday. Because, with or without Pele, as long as he walks the earth, good people will keep dying.” As she said that, she pictured her friend Aurora, the winged goddess of the dawn, being devoured and entombed by a weeping willow tree. She pictured Raja falling off the edge of the skyscraper and Rolfe taking a spear through his heart.

  So many dead bodies, and that was only the result of two months of Colt’s deadly scheming. Who knew what the bastard could accomplish in ten, or twenty, or forty years?

  “You know what the difference is between a nightmare and me?” the Celtic goddess asked. “You get to wake up from a nightmare.”

  Ash had been so busy keeping her eyes fixed on Epona that she’d forgotten all about the horse. With a whinny it crashed through the gate, out of its pen. Ash twirled around only to see it rear back on two legs and then punish her with a hard kick to her chest. Her lungs instantly deflated, and she went flying back into another enclosure.

  Before she could even pick herself up out of the hay, the horse was on her again. Ash never thought that a horse was the kind of animal that could look fierce, but this one came at her with its lips curled back, its big yellowed teeth exposed. It bucked up onto its hind legs again, and then attempted to bring its front hooves down on her ribs.

  Ash rolled away as the hooves speared the stable ground where she’d been just a moment before. The horse reared up, ready to try for another killing blow, and Ash’s first instinct was not to harm the creature. The beast was just doing Epona’s telepathic bidding after all, but every second that Ash wasted here getting nearly trampled by a horse was one she could use to get her sister back.

  So with that in mind she drew in a quick breath, aimed her finger at the horse’s exposed tail, and fired a quick line of sparks at it.

  The embers ignited the tip of the tail, and the horse let out a bellowing whinny. The “oh shit, my tail’s on fire” realization must have severed whatever mind control Epona had over it. It hastily backed away from the stall and took off at a gallop out of the stables.

  Ash started to rise to her feet. “That’s what happens when you send Mr. Ed to do a crazy girl’s job,” she started to say, brushing the hay off her jeans, but a fierce scream interrupted her. Epona seized her by her shirt. The girl was tall and wiry, to be sure, but she was surprisingly strong, and of course had the gift of insanity on her side. She heaved Ash with all her might.

  A hard pain shot up Ash’s back as she connected with one of the wooden beams. The impact was enough to shake even the heavy bales of hay stored in the rafters overhead.

  Epona sauntered over to her, wringing her hands. The girl’s killer instincts had gone into full force. Whereas Ash had thought before that Epona wouldn’t follow through when push came to murder, now it looked like the Celtic goddess was just trying to decide which method she’d use to kill her.

  While Ash writhed against the support beam, still rattled, Epona pressed one of her equestrian boots into Ash’s chest
. “With you out of the picture, Colt will finally see that I’m the true love of his life, the strong, devoted survivor. And you . . .” She shook her head. “You’re just some soon-to-be-forgotten old flame.”

  Even though Ash’s back was racked with pain, she managed a smile. “You should be more careful about using fire metaphors around a volcano goddess.”

  Ash let her arm harden into volcanic rock, with just the faintest flicker of fire throbbing between the plates. Then she snapped her elbow back into the wooden support beam with all her might.

  The beam cracked in half, and the loft overhead caved in. Ash crab-walked backward, but Epona only had time to look up before the heavy bales of hay cascaded down on her.

  When Ash finally pulled herself to her feet, Epona lay fully buried under hundreds of pounds of hay, with only her hand protruding from beneath the mountain. Ash leaned down and touched the girl’s wrist. She still had a pulse, and just moments later she heard a frantic murmur from beneath one of the bales.

  “I could easily torch this pile of hay,” Ash said to the buried goddess. “One spark, one little ember, and I’d make a bonfire so big out of you that all the local kids would come running with marshmallows, sticks, and graham crackers.” She took a deep breath. A dark voice was telling her, even then, to go through with it, that she needed to be sure that she was rid of Colt’s mistress. But at the end of the day, Epona’s warped mind had been Colt’s doing. Even the healthiest brain couldn’t process a thousand years’ worth of complicated memories, not to mention Colt’s mental manipulations, and still come away unscathed. In this the reincarnated gods and goddesses were more human than anything. “Fortunately for you,” Ash continued. “I’m not Pele. Not anymore at least. And I’m going to make sure that she never comes back . . . even if that means killing Colt Halliday. Don’t come looking for me again.” She kicked at one of the bales and then started for the entrance to the stable, saying over her shoulder, “Oh, and if you really have to take this stupid vendetta out on someone, introduce yourself to my older sister instead.”

  Outside, Ash only made it a few feet into the yard before a splash of color caught her eye. Next to the stable doors lay a small ornamental box—a music box, she discovered as she opened it. It had been mostly hidden by the unkempt grass. Chillingly, there was a tiny bloody handprint on the mahogany and the gold crank on the outside. Ash could almost picture the scene: Rose, fleeing the house where she’d just detonated and killed some of her pursuers, running for the stables—a place of comfort for her—with her most prized possession still cradled in her hands. They must have caught her here, maybe sedated her before she could blow up anyone else.

  But even if this little music box meant a lot to Rose, Ash wondered as she returned to the car, would it be enough to draw her away from Colt? Master manipulator that Colt was, he’d somehow already lured Rose into a sense of belonging, one that Ash, her own blood, had failed to establish with her.

  Ash climbed into the driver’s seat, and before she shifted the car into drive, she cast one last look at the music box, which she’d buckled in on the passenger side. “You better play one hell of a song,” she said to it, then roared out of the long driveway.

  On the drive back to Boston on the MassPike, Ash called the hotel room. Modo had been cooped up in there all day, so she was going to sweeten the deal by bringing him whatever takeout his heart desired.

  The metallurgy god never picked up. Not on the first try. Nor on the fourth. Either he was taking the world’s longest shower, or something was seriously wrong.

  She made it back to the Hyatt in record time. When she found the hotel room—as she had feared—completely empty, her mind immediately went to a dark place. Of Eve kicking down the door, throwing Modo to the floor, sending a million volts through his body. Maybe she dragged him out onto the hotel balcony and held him up by the neck to let a real lightning strike finish him off, the bolt forking out of his mouth and into the heavens just as it had with Lizzie Jacobs that awful night a year ago.

  No, Ash told herself. They would have left his body. And that much she believed—why kill him and transport his body somewhere else, when they could leave it here as a warning to her?

  That’s when Ash’s eyes turned to the computer. There was a single yellow sticky note on the corner of the monitor. In a nearly illegible, predictably masculine scrawl, Modo had written only three words:

  I HAD TO.

  Ash frantically tapped the enter key until the laptop emerged from sleep mode, and the answer was sitting right on the screen. Modo had left his e-mail account logged in, with two messages still open, as though he wanted Ashline to find them. The first was an invitation to a frat party—thrown by Modo’s fraternity—in Cambridge, not far from the MIT campus. The theme was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the invite encouraged the fraternity brothers to “bring lots of chicks so it doesn’t turn into a sausagefest like last time.”

  When Ash closed that window to look at the e-mail behind it, her breath caught. It was a picture of a very beautiful girl, whose flaxen hair and penetratingly blue eyes would have given her an almost fairy-tale quality . . . that is, if there hadn’t been tears carving channels through her mascara.

  If there hadn’t been a gag threaded into her mouth.

  If she hadn’t worn a terrified and resigned look in her eyes that said: The person taking this picture is going to kill me.

  Below the picture a brief message addressed to Modo said: “Come to the party tonight, alone, or there will be one less ‘chick’ in attendance.”

  Ash’s fist tightened around Modo’s sticky note, crushing it in her palm. She could already feel it starting to catch fire, and small wisps of smoke drifted up between her fingers. Colt and the others had kidnapped a girl she assumed was Modo’s girlfriend to lure him out into the open. Now he was potentially walking into a death trap, without Ash or the police to help him, in a futile attempt to save her. Why such a public place, though? If they were just going to off Modo, why not lure him to a secluded location instead of a bustling frat party in the middle of a residential college neighborhood?

  And the lingering question: What did the death of some random blacksmith god have anything to do with Colt putting Pele back together?

  Ash angrily flung the charred remains of the sticky note at the laptop screen and double-timed it back to the parking garage.

  Ash arrived at the address just after dusk, parking Modo’s car around the corner, out of sight. She didn’t have to use her phone’s GPS to find the house—even from the end of the street it was pretty obvious which of the old colonial homes housed the Delta Psi Omega fraternity. The music echoed out onto the road, and the porch was overflowing with so many people that it was a structural miracle that the railing hadn’t snapped. As far as she could tell, there was just one underclassman guarding the front door, but he only smiled at her goofily as she climbed the front steps and crossed the threshold into the house.

  The inside of the fraternity had been transformed into a forest, to match the Midsummer Night’s Dream theme. Under any other circumstances Ash might have been impressed with how long it must have taken to cover the walls and ceiling with faux leaves and ivy. All the fraternity brothers were bare from the waist up, with fake horns on their heads and fur pants on their legs—satyrs, she guessed. The girls were swaddled in togas, some more revealing and risqué than others. Ash, in her jeans and T-shirt, earned looks that ranged from amused to disdainful as she cut through the crowd. Some of these party animals took the dress code more seriously than others apparently.

  The good news: From the atmosphere of frivolity and fun, Ash was going to guess that Modo hadn’t been publicly executed in front of everyone.

  She found him in the kitchen, almost hidden by a jumbled line of partygoers who were armed with plastic cups and waiting for the keg. Modo had his own cup gripped tightly in his hand and was staring forlornly into space, even as Tom—the guy Ash had met at the belfry yesterday—jabber
ed on animatedly.

  Modo snapped back to reality the moment he realized Ash was standing there. With the same blank expression on his face, he just walked away from Tom while his friend was mid-sentence and crossed the kitchen to Ash.

  “I had to,” he said, hollowly repeating what he’d written on the sticky note.

  “I know,” Ash said, finding it hard to be infuriated with him for putting himself in danger. After all, how often had she thrown herself into perilous situations in the last few months to save someone she loved? She took his hand and pulled him back into the living room, so that they’d tactically have a better view of the entrance. She found them a dimly lit corner, where their only immediate company was a couple making out in the privacy of the green foliage dangling from the walls. “Modo,” she said sharply, because he still looked dazed. She couldn’t blame him, since his life had transformed overnight from that of a normal engineering student to a god whose life was in grave danger at the hands of a murderous pantheon. She waved her hands in front of his face until he snapped to attention. “I know you didn’t think any of this was in the cards when you woke up yesterday morning, I know this has all blindsided you . . . but I need you to stay alert. I promised I would protect you.”

  “And Jenna?” he asked, and she figured he was referring to his girlfriend. His voice, which had sounded hollow before, grew inflamed with anger. “Those bastards took her while you were protecting me. I could have been there for her. Instead of her. We were safe and happy until you and your sister rolled into town.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, because in some ways what he’d just said was unfair . . . but in other ways he was just echoing her own dark thoughts. Colt was doing all this because of her. Because of who she used to be. There was a trail of bodies from California to Miami because of his crazed infatuation with Pele. And while some of them invited their deaths upon themselves, others—Rolfe, Raja, Aurora—might have lived full, rewarding lives if they hadn’t crossed paths with Ash.