by S. L. Stacy
“Beast,” I repeat, realizing that’s a fitting term as well. What was it Madam Moira had said?
The beast is coming.
“Okay, we saw it,” Alec yells impatiently. “Now close it back up, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I’m the one who gives the orders around here, Alec,” Brian snaps, voice shaking slightly. Nevertheless, he starts chanting again, the murmured words drawing the top of the enclosure back down. Just as it’s about to seal shut, the monster slams its head upward, sending the lid flying off its hinges. Giving one last, determined tug, the creature breaks free, the chains falling away like they’re nothing more than strips of cloth. It leaps over the side of the crate, landing unsteadily on four elephant-like feet.
“Surround it!” their president shouts, reaching inside the crate and pulling out one of the broken chains. “Don’t let it get away!” He swings it like a lasso, whipping it toward one of the creature’s legs. The chain wraps around several times, snapping easily when the monster lunges forward, kicking its leg out. Its foot collides with one of the brothers standing idly nearby, knocking him to the ground.
“Hey!” Someone else jumps in front of the beast, waving his arms back and forth through the air. “Over here, you big, ugly, piece of sh—” Snarling, the beast takes off running, one of its long horns smacking the young man in the shoulder. He lets out an agonizing scream as the impact sends him flying through the air.
Then, something strange happens. One moment, he’s starting to fall back toward the ground, clutching his injured arm.
The next moment, the screams abruptly stop, and he’s disappeared. Vanished, as they say, into thin air.
It all happened so fast that, for a moment, I’m not even sure that it did. I blink a few times, staring at the spot where he was just a second ago. Now, there’s no one there.
“What the hell happened to Reed?” someone cries out, and it’s then that I know I didn’t imagine it. “Where’d he—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brian talks over him. “We’ll come back and look for him later. Right now, we have to go after the creature. It got away.”
Looking around, I realize he’s right. While everyone was distracted by Reed’s sudden disappearance, the monster managed to slip away, unnoticed, into the night.
“And who’s fault is that?” Alec asks sarcastically.
“All of yours for standing around like a bunch of idiots!”
“You shouldn’t have opened the damn thing in the first place!” Taking a deep breath, Alec composes himself before continuing, “We should split up. Half of us will go after the creature, half of us will stay here and look for Reed.”
Brian shakes his head. “No. I need you two”—he points to two of the more rattled-looking brothers—“to take these weapons back to the house.” They obediently go over and pick up the first crate, walking it carefully out of the clearing. “The rest of us are going after the animal.”
“Not all of us have to go,” Alec insists. “We need to find out what happened to our brother!”
“I decide what needs to be done!” Brian throws his arms out, pushing Alec to the ground with so much force that he skids several feet before coming to a stop. Then, he stalks over and grabs Alec’s coat collar, forcing him to make eye contact. “If I were you, I’d pick your battles wisely. You’re already on thin ice. We know you were with Carly tonight.”
“Yeah, I was,” Alec admits. “We were breaking up. Again.”
“You have to pick a side. So who’s it gonna be—her, or your brothers?” Brian’s grip on Alec tightens as he waits for his reply. My ex’s gaze seems to give a helpless sweep of the clearing before returning to his big brother.
“My brothers,” he finally says. “Of course.”
Brian smiles. “That’s what I like to hear.” He releases Alec, offering a hand to help him up. Alec stares at it a moment before taking it, getting slowly to his feet.
“I’m just as worried about Reed as you are,” Brian adds. “But Eric is expecting us to come back with that animal. We have to go after it.”
“Fine,” Alec agrees. “But we’re coming back to look for him later.”
His big brother nods. “Of course. Let’s go,” he says to the others, motioning with his arm. “Don’t forget the cage.” Together, they head out into the forest, the darkness quickly swallowing them up. Suddenly, the clearing is empty and quiet, except for the sound of the wind whistling through the trees. Victoria and I sit in silence for a few minutes, both trying to absorb everything we just witnessed.
“What do you think happened to Reed?” I finally ask, looking over at her. Even though her face is placid, I can see the wheels turning in her head. “Did it have something to do with the monster?”
Victoria shakes her head. “I think we have a problem.”
“You mean besides a runaway alien creature?”
Straightening up, Victoria spreads her wings to their fullest extent. “Let’s go down and investigate. Then we’ll go home.” Dropping from the tree, she lands steadily on her feet. I’m not far behind her, although my landing is somewhat less graceful.
“He disappeared somewhere around…” I scan the clearing, trying to pinpoint the exact place where Reed vanished, but one section looks pretty much the same as any other.
Then, I see it, catching the light from the moon: an unnatural shimmer in the air, rippling like a diaphanous curtain stretching from the ground to a height of about six feet. “I see something,” I tell Victoria, pointing. “See that place where the air seems to…glitter?”
She nods. “That’s close to where the portal opened.”
“You’re right,” I realize. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that.” I watch as she walks up to the anomaly, stopping a few measly feet away. “Maybe you shouldn’t stand so close to it.”
Instead of heeding my advice, she takes yet another step toward it, motioning me over. “Come take a look at this thing.”
I shake my head. “That’s okay. I’m good over here.” She shrugs in reply, silently inspecting it for a few minutes. Extending a tentative hand, she runs it through the shimmering air.
“What the heck are you doing” I run over, intending to grab her arm and pull her back. “Don’t touch it! We have no idea what…” I lose the rest of what I was about to say as part of her hand disappears into the anomaly.
Victoria stops when it’s about partway through—her hand looks like it just stops at the knuckles—then yanks it back quickly, all five fingers still intact.
“This is the spot,” she confirms, double-checking her hand for damage. “It’s like a…a tear. Shit. Lou was right.”
“A tear in what?” I ask her. “And who’s Lou? What does this mean?”
Victoria looks at me, mouth drawn in a thin, solemn line. “It means that the walls are already breaking down.”
Chapter 4
I’m facing a line of tall, old trees, naked branches reaching like wizened hands toward the night sky. Beyond them, the wood runs dark and thick, miles wide and infinitely deep. There are voices, jumbled and distorted, calling to me from somewhere deep inside the maze of trees.
“Hello?” I call out, inching forward. “Is someone there?” A faint reply comes, but the words are about as easy to catch as the wind. “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand you. I…” I trail off, noticing an odd shimmer beyond the tree line, a gossamer curtain rippling in midair. After a moment’s hesitation, I walk up to it, realizing the cries aren’t coming from the forest after all, but from inside this strange veil.
“Hello?” I shout again, skimming it with the tips of my fingers. It’s composed of a silvery mist that doesn’t seem to have any real substance. “Who’s there?”
“Help us.”
I jump, dropping my hand as a chorus of child-like voices rises out of the mist. “Help us. Help us,” they chant over and over. The melancholy sound of it reaches deep inside of me, a cold sword twisting in my gut.
Suddenly, two hands shoot out of the mist, grabbing me by the shirt and yanking me across. It feels like breaking the surface of a frozen lake: a shock of cold, the air being squeezed out of my lungs. It’s all over in an instant, and I find myself on the other side, looking into Alec’s obsidian eyes. We’re in a large, candle-lit chamber, surrounded by a wide circle of his fraternity brothers. In the center is a man wearing a hooded cloak.
“I’m sorry, Carly,” Alec says, voice anguished, “but we need a gift. A gift for our master.” He lets me go, unceremoniously pushing me toward the middle of the circle. I stumble, falling to my knees at the stranger’s feet. He appraises me silently for a few moments then, after a nod of approval, reaches up and throws back the hood…
“Jeffrey,” I cry out, waking with a start. Breathing hard, I sit up quickly, squinting at first as I adjust to the sunlight trickling through the curtains. I kick the covers away from me, feeling sweaty and shaken from the nightmare. I look over to Victoria’s side of the room, worried I might have woken her up, but the bed is empty, the dark green comforter already tucked neatly over the pillow.
For a while, I just sit in bed, waiting for the dream to leave me, but every chilling detail has etched itself into my memory: the endless forest, the chorus of miserable voices, Alec’s strong hands pulling me across the icy mist. It’s been a long time since I’ve had such a vivid dream—longer still since I’ve had one about my stepfather. Jeffrey died a few years ago, but even death couldn’t pry away his parasitic grip on me. Only time healed the wounds he left, a bandage shrinking them until all that remained was a scar no one but me knew was there. Eventually, I was able to build a wall around his memory—maybe I couldn’t eradicate it completely, but I could block it out.
But right now, he won’t stay buried, and I can picture him just as clearly as if I were looking at a photograph: crisp, white dress shirt and dark gray suit, chestnut brown hair streaked with gray, steel blue eyes watching me through a pair of wire-framed glasses. I remember the smell of his aftershave, so thick and pungent it made me sick to my stomach.
Feeling queasy, I lie down and close my eyes again, receding inside myself, searching for the one place in my mind even Jeffrey can’t touch.
Instead of the bed, I pretend I’m lying in my grandparents’ garden, the grass soft and dewy underneath me. The air here is cool and sweet with traces of mint and lavender. All around me are flowers of every color, from blood-red roses to blue hydrangeas, and everything in between. Even as a child, the garden was my safe haven, where I’d go to escape the rest of the world. Sometimes, I’d help my grandmother plant some of the herbs or pick fresh flowers for the house. I remember almost every word of the stories Nana used to tell me as we walked along the cobblestone path, pausing now and then to tend to the plants.
“Every flower has a meaning,” she would say, bending to inspect a cluster of white lilies, “and a story.” She wore pastel slacks and loose-fitting blouses, white hair always permed and cut short. Her hugs smelled like White Shoulders and the blueberry waffles she made us for breakfast, from scratch. “Lilies for purity. Peonies for prosperity. Irises for wisdom.” She pointed to each flower in turn as she recited their names and significance. “Heliotrope for eternal love,” she added, gesturing to a fragrant plant with clusters of tiny purple flowers. I didn’t know what “eternal” meant, so I asked her.
“A love that lasts forever,” she explained. “The story goes that a princess fell in love with the god of the sun, but he loved another and didn’t return her affection. She wasted away pining for him, refusing to eat or drink. The only thing she wanted to do was sit on the ground and watch his chariot ride across the sky each day. After nine days, she was turned into the heliotrope, its flowers always turned longingly toward the sun.”
“That’s really sad,” I remember telling her. The story left me with an empty feeling and pity for the girl.
“It’s just a story,” Nana reassured me. “But it teaches a valuable lesson. If you fall in love and it doesn’t work out, it’s okay to be sad for a while, but you have to get back on your feet. Don’t waste your life longing for something that isn’t meant to be.” At this point, I think I said something to the effect of I was never going to fall in love because boys had cooties, which made my grandmother laugh.
I open my eyes, leaving the comfort and magic of the garden behind. I’m not sure the particular memories it’s brought back have made me feel any better, but at least I’m not thinking about Jeffrey or the dream anymore.
After a soothing shower and a change of clothes, I go downstairs to find Victoria sprinkling birdseed into the feeding bowl in one of the cages, cell phone cradled between her shoulder and ear.
“I just thought you and Athena would want to know,” she says, closing the cage door. She must be reporting in to Farrah. “They’re planning something big.” She pauses, listening intently to Farrah’s response.
“They were bringing in supplies,” she explains. “Weapons. I think it’s pretty obvious what they’re going to do. Our defenses are down—it’s the perfect time for them to strike.”
In the kitchen, I start a pot of coffee, getting out the milk and a box of cereal while it’s heating up. I miss part of what Victoria’s saying, but then I hear, “I just feel like every possible thing that could go wrong is happening all at once. And I have no idea what we should do about the rift…uh-huh. Yeah.
“Farrah!” Victoria’s sudden exclamation makes me dribble some milk onto the kitchen counter. “Come on. Don’t say that,” she says, lowering her voice. I go over to the doorway to listen, keeping just out of sight. “We can’t do that! We can’t—don’t—” She sighs in aggravation. “Fine. We’ll talk about it then. But hurry back. We need you here.” She ends the call. I let a few seconds pass before coming out of the kitchen. Tucking her phone away, Victoria looks over at me.
“Good morning.” She gives me a tight smile. “I was just talking to Farrah. They got to Seattle okay last night.”
“That’s good.” Finding a small, birdcage-free spot, I set the bowl of cereal on the table and sit down. “You told her about what we saw?” Victoria nods. “What did she say?”
My roommate shrugs. “She didn’t seem as worried about it as I thought she would be. She just said not to do anything stupid—to sit tight and wait for them to get back. They’ll only be gone a few days.”
“And the rift?” I ask through a mouthful of cereal.
“That will have to wait, too,” Victoria says, studying one of her fingernails. “Did you sleep well? You were tossing and turning a lot. I know I couldn’t sleep after all that.” She’s just trying to change the topic, but I answer her anyway.
“I slept okay, I guess.” I absently stir my cereal. “I had a bad dream. But I don’t really remember it,” I add quickly, not sure if I feel like talking about it.
“I see.” Victoria watches me eat for a few seconds before giving up and heading for the kitchen.
“Victoria—wait.” She pauses, turning back around. “That’s not entirely true. It was kind of about last night, only it wasn’t. It was different.”
“Different how?” She sits down across from me. “Was it about Siobhan? I’ve been having bad dreams about that lately.” I shake my head, then tell her about the dream, leaving out the part where the visitor lifted his hood. Victoria listens intently and, when I’m finished, leans back in the chair with a huge sigh. “This is all my fault.”
“It was just a bad dream. That’s not your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have made you come with me last night,” she insists.
“You didn’t make me do anything! I wanted to go.”
“But it wasn’t a good idea. Carly, what happened to you at the Sigma Iota party a few weeks ago…and then seeing them all together again, performing another ritual…” She trails off, waiting for me to put t
he pieces together.
“You’re right,” I realize, feeling stupid for not having made those connections in the first place. “I guess I hadn’t thought seeing them again would affect me like that.” But it obviously had, taking me back to the night of the party, when they forced me through the portal to Pandora. “Jeffrey being there kind of makes more sense now, too.” It was my unconscious mind’s twisted way of tying old and new traumas together.
I hadn’t noticed I’d said that last thought out loud until Victoria asks, “Who’s Jeffrey?”
“Oh, he’s…well, he’s um…” I fumble, lowering my gaze to the table. I prod my cereal with the spoon, but it’s already getting mushy.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, I want to.” I drop the spoon, meeting her gaze head on. “I want to.” Taking a deep breath, I continue, “I never told you this—well, I’ve never told anyone outside of my family. I try not to think about it most of the time. You see, my father left when my little sister and I were very young, and my mother got remarried to this guy Jeffrey. He used to…” My throat goes dry, the words getting stuck in it. “He hurt me,” I manage to finish. I feel my cheeks heat up and look away from her again.
“Oh. Oh,” Victoria says, realization in her tone. “I’m so sorry, Carly. Oh, my God, I…I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to tell someone. Finally. I should have confided in you a long time ago. To all of you,” I add, looking around the room at our feathery companions. Most of them are ignoring us, heads buried in their wings or in their own breakfast. “You’re my sisters.”
“I know how hard that must have been for you to tell me,” my roommate says, leaning into the table. “Thank you for trusting me with that. And if you ever need to talk about it, don’t hesitate. Even if you just need someone to listen.”
“Thanks. I’ll be fine. I am—most of the time. I’ve become pretty good at repressing the bad stuff, but you’re right—something about last night must have triggered it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for breakfast to get so serious.” I shove a spoonful of soggy cereal into my mouth to stop myself from babbling any further.