I was in the Chapel sitting against the wall. Limbs made of flesh and blood again. Hackman held his blade to Josh’s neck and watched me, expectant. “What did the Chapel show you?”
I felt sick but said nothing.
“You saw your destiny, didn’t you? You saw the Final Day.”
I didn’t meet his gaze.
“No matter. You have seen what you needed to. There is no way to stop the oncoming night.” Falling silent, he sniffed the air. He looked at me, eyes widening. Then he grinned. “Clever girl. Started a fire, did we? My son is probably on his way now to come and find you.”
He dropped Josh but kept hold of the knife and walked to the door to try and spot the flames. I ran to Josh and put my arms around him. He was cold but sweating. That was a bad sign.
“The wind has changed,” Hackman said. “The fire is coming this way. It’s time to move. Step away from your friend, Ari. He has served his purpose and will be too slow to run. It is better to bleed to death than burn.”
He stepped towards Josh, knife extended. I stood in his way. He wouldn’t hurt me, not badly; I was too important to his plans.
“You won’t touch him!” I screamed. “You’ll have to go through me!”
He dove forward and tried to push me out of the way. I kicked him hard in the stomach, and he aimed the knife away from me as he fell. I was right. He wasn’t going to kill me.
He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me down, his knife dropping end-first into the dirt.
I scratched at his eyes, and he yelled, but he flipped me onto my back and sat on my chest, holding my arms against the dirt floor. He grinned, blood pouring from his left eye, which was now half closed from my attack. I kicked hard, trying to knee him in the back. One shot connected, and he arched forward, falling on top of me. I bit his shoulder, and his blood filled my mouth. He rolled off me, picking up the knife and lunging at Josh instead.
In that moment, the world slowed down. I called for him to stop, for Josh to run, but Josh was in too much shock to hear me. I was about to lose him forever, and my stomach turned and my mind broke and a tiny point of light formed between Josh and Hackman, right in front of his face. It grew, and glowed, and points of fire sparked from the ball of flame that was building, and then for the first time in a long time, I really let go.
All the terror, all the fear, all the rage that had been building inside me was channelled into the flare. It felt like an hour but was only a second. Hackman saw it but had no time to run.
The flare expanded and hit his face. His flesh burned, and his eyes blistered over as his hair caught fire and his nose melted closed. His mouth opened, and he screamed as the knife hit the floor instead of Josh, and Hackman, writhing, joined it on the floor soon after.
The flare was still building, and it was going to hit Josh. I had to get it under control before I killed us both. But I couldn’t stop it expanding.
Josh yelled at me to stop, but I couldn’t. He backed into the corner of the Chapel, as far away from the flames as possible. Still, it grew.
The row of corpses caught fire as the flare grew and grew, driven by my furious heart that was pouring fuel on an already enormous flame. I was out of control. I screamed.
Noah’s hands wrapped around my waist, his cheek against my neck. He whispered that I was safe, that everything was going to be all right. It didn’t work, so I thought of Skye, and how she would need me now that Mum was dead, and of the life we were going to have to make together, and I cried for Mum and for Rachel and Elijah and Adam and the nameless body in the bath, and the anger and fear subsided and, with it, the flare, shrinking slowly and quietly until there was nothing left but a tiny glow, like a firefly dancing in the night. Then the firefly went too, and everything was still, save the smouldering corpses and the crack of the flames outside.
Josh stared at me like he had at Hackman. He was scared of me.
I looked away and watched Noah instead. He’d seen the smoke as we had planned and followed it here. There was no time to be thankful, though.
“The wind is too strong,” he said. “We’re going to be caught if we don’t move now. We need to run.”
I nodded. Noah took Josh’s arm, and I held the other to carry him out, letting my broken wrist hang limply.
Outside, the world was chaos. Birds and insects and snakes and bats filled the ground and the air, fleeing the fire raging toward us. Smoke burned my throat, and I gagged. There was no way we could outrun this. We had to get to water. The heat was almost unbearable, and if we didn’t get out now, it was over.
We staggered through the bush. The world was bright as day from the flames, so it wasn’t hard to find our way, although the smoke stung my eyes and made everything blurry. There was a shout behind me, and I turned. Hackman was standing upright at the door of the Chapel, face burned, eyes empty, but somehow still able to talk.
“Run, Ari! It was my destiny to show you the way, to show you what you’re meant to be. No matter what you do, no matter how you feel, you will be the Bringer, you will hasten the Final Day, and you will birth the Seed of Night you carry within you!”
Noah had stopped too. “Dad! Come with us! If you stay there, you’ll die.” He wasn’t a hero anymore. In this moment, he was a little boy who wanted his daddy to be all right. “Please!”
Hackman stopped yelling and looked straight at his son through melted eyes. “Son. Stay with her. Keep her safe. She is bigger than the Unseen. Bigger than the Kindred, too. It is your destiny to be with her at the End of Days.”
He closed his eyes and smiled, a big, toothy, open-mouthed smile that I’d never seen on him before. He stretched out his arms in surrender and disappeared into the flames.
This, I had seen before. The melting figure in the Chapel. It was him.
The first of my visions had come true.
EPILOGUE
Everything after that is a blur. We ran to the creek where Rachel and Skye were waiting for us and hid in the creek while the fire raged. They’d had to leave Mum where she was and hope the fire didn’t burn her body. After the fire burned out, we were found by some Unseen operatives who were sent in to clean up the remainder of the Kindred while they were in chaos. Hud came through for us after all.
The bush was still smouldering around us as they led us to a main road, where we were treated in a converted semi-trailer, the Unseen’s moving base of operations. Josh and Rachel were unconscious for almost a full day, but awoke in body, if not in spirit. Skye was physically all right, but not exactly all there, either. We all went through a lot.
The Unseen have told me the Kindred in our town were all but wiped out. So many people died that it was difficult for anyone to cover it up. Turned out nearly a tenth of the town were part of the Kindred, and the powers that be had to invent some story about a suicide cult to keep the truth quiet. Ettney will never be the same after that. Neither will I.
I keep dreaming that my body has turned to shadow and my soul to darkness, and when I close my eyes I see Hackman’s face, so certain of his victory, even in death.
Living in the city is taking some adjusting. The people, the crowds, the smell … But with Mum and our house gone, the only place for us to live is Dad’s apartment. It’s nice enough. Stewie managed to escape the house fire, too. One of the neighbours found him down by the creek, trying to catch beetles, of course. He came with us, although apartment living isn’t exactly his style.
Skye wakes at night a lot, screaming at the nightmare figures in her head. Dad thinks Mum died in our house when it burned down. He has no idea what really happened, and it’s best things stay that way for now. The less he knows, the safer he’ll be. Plus, it’s already awkward enough between us; I can’t imagine he’d know how to relate to me if he knew what I had been through. So, when Skye wakes up, I try to get there first, and if I don’t, I tell him it’s trauma from the fire. She’s seeing a counsellor; the Unseen provided one who operates out of a local clinic as a cover. It’s he
lped, I think, although sometimes I catch Skye staring at me with this look in her eyes, and I know she thinks all this is my fault. Maybe it is.
The headspace has helped, getting distance from the town and the people and the awful memories. Sometimes, I sneak out at night and just walk, wandering down cold streets, past empty shop windows with their blue security lights, watching the homeless try to sleep, and looking in the windows into another family’s world, like I’ve always done. It’s probably not safe being out there at night, but after the danger I’ve been through, I don’t feel so scared any more. I’m not as frightened of dying.
To be honest, I don’t feel much right now. I’ve been seeing the Unseen’s counsellor too, and she says it’s my way of coping with the new reality, that I’ll come out of it eventually. In some ways, I hope I don’t. I’m not really sure I want to feel again.
Sometimes, I get caught off guard, though. I’ll be looking for this or that and realise it’s gone, with the rest of my possessions and memories. Snuggy, my stuffed bear I got when I was four. A letter Caitlyn wrote me in year six about how we’d stay best friends for life. The necklace Josh bought me for my fifteenth. It all sort of hits me, and I break down for a moment and shudder, like a spanner thrown into a gearbox. But then I swallow hard and pull myself together and keep going. I have to.
It’s worst when I go to tell Mum something. I’ll come home from my new school and call out to her, wanting to debrief about my day, wanting to hear her voice, and after the word mum has finished echoing around the empty apartment, I remember that she’s gone, and the echoes of her life are all that’s left. For all her flaws, for all her problems, she was still my mother, and she still loved me. I loved her too. I wish I’d said that to her before she died.
I haven’t found Adam’s family yet. Hopefully one day I’ll get a chance to see them.
Noah moved to the city as well. He’s living in an Unseen safe house a few suburbs over, so we see each other heaps. He gets angry a lot, about really little things, but I think he’s mostly angry about his dad. He talked about it once, when we were down at the docks. He hasn’t decided what to feel yet, like he’s sad and angry and empty and full all at once, and a lot of it is at himself. I held him for a while as he cried, but he hasn’t talked about it since. I think he’s a bit embarrassed about it.
Josh is here a lot, too. He and Caitlyn hop a train and come visit almost every weekend. Or they used to. Recently, Caitlyn’s been here less frequently. I hope she’s not going to forget about me. Every time Skye sees Josh, she goes gaga, like she’s in love or something. I get a bit jealous at how much attention he gives her, which is ridiculous because I know he’s just like a big brother trying to help her forget what she’s been through, what they went through together. And, after all, it’s my fault she went through it. But it’s nice when it’s just me and Josh, if a bit confusing. I still don’t know how I feel, and after everything he did for me, everything he lost, I’m not sure if what I feel is affection or guilt. He still seems a bit scared of me, but he kissed me the other day, and I let him. I didn’t tell Noah. I’m still not sure what to do with that.
I officially joined the Unseen, although I still don’t really know what that means. They’re far less centralised than the Kindred, so it’s harder to communicate. There’s meant to be a mission coming up in a few nights’ time, and I haven’t heard much about it. That makes me nervous. There are rumours the Kindred have increased their activity, that things are heating up right across the country, maybe even the world. Everyone I’ve talked to says something big is coming. I can feel it, too, lurking somewhere over the horizon.
Trust is hard. I’m on edge all the time, wondering if this person or that person is who they say they are, if this shop owner or girl at school or teacher or busker on the street is secretly part of the Kindred, just waiting for the chance to kill me. From what I’ve learned, some of them probably are.
Suspicion might be a lonely way to live, but it might also keep me alive. I trusted far too easily once before, and it won’t happen again, not even with the Unseen. On the bright side, we’re under the radar at Dad’s place for now. Apparently he bought it under a fake name so he could keep the asset hidden from the court in the impending divorce. I should be mad, but it’s keeping us safe for now.
I haven’t seen Rachel since that night in the mountains. She was moved to some secret Unseen facility, but I heard she had complications from injuries she got during the torture, internal bleeding and things like that. The mental trauma was worse, though, and the guy I talked to said it was going to be a long time before she would be able to live in any kind of normal way. It sounds selfish, but I’m almost glad I haven’t seen her. I’m not sure I could cope with it, knowing everything she’s been through is my fault. I want to forget that, but another part of me knows I have to remember.
The darkness still lives inside me, but the black mark hasn’t changed. I feel like that’s a good sign, like maybe I’m keeping it at bay. After Hackman’s prophecy, I’m not sure what I’m meant to do. I want to be good. I want to be on the right side, and by joining the Unseen I feel like I am, like I’ve proved that all his words were just the ranting of a madman and not a prediction of things to come. But a little part of me is scared, terrified actually, that the darkness inside me will take over, that it will win and I’ll become the destroyer the prophecy spoke of. That, more than anything else, keeps me up at night.
I’ll do my best to prove him wrong. I’ll do my best to fight. This war is far from over, and I’m doing everything I can to stay on the right side of the line. The more I see of this secret world, the harder that is, and I have to decide every day to not let it change me. I won’t stop. I won’t give up. I won’t back down. After everything I’ve been through, all the awful things I’ve done, I’m going to claw my way back into redemption. I hope that’s how it works, anyway.
At least now I’m fighting for the light.
Ari will return in The City Unseen,
Book Two of the Unseen Series (out 2018)
Thank you for reading The Fire Unseen, the first book in the Unseen series. If you enjoyed this, it would mean so much to me if you would leave a review on Amazon or your favourite review site. Reviews are crucial for an author, and even a line or two can make a big difference!
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ALSO IN
THE DARK UNSEEN
THE OFFICIAL PREQUEL
TO THE UNSEEN SERIES
The Shadows are coming, and they know my name.
Hud and his friends are camping in the mountains to celebrate finally finishing school. Tonight, he can finally make his move on the girl he’s been in love with for four long years. But something lurks in the darkness, something Hud has encountered before and can't quite remember. When tragedy strikes the night turns to chaos, and Hud makes a terrifying and world-shattering discovery. As the teens run for their lives, old memories resurface, and an impossible evil will reveal itself.
"Tense and unnerving. Incredibly eerie." - Sarah Campbell, bookhookednook
"Thanks for the nightmares!" - Shanna
"If you adore on the edge of your seat suspense, you will love this." - Linda
"I am a HUGE Dean Koontz fan and I'm always looking for someone who may do something similar... I'm a fan!" - Christine
Available FREE at andrewjaxson.com
THE CITY UNSEEN
BOOK TWO OF THE UNSEEN
(Coming 2018)
Trust no one. Not even yourself.
Ari’s new life in the city is starting to unravel. Skye’s not coping, Noah’s different, and hiding her Unseen missions from Dad is proving more difficult than she thought. Plus, there’s a little girl who keeps trying to kill her. Ari’s new friend Hud has issues of his own, and a strange connection to the Shadows. As chaos builds, Hud leads them underneath the streets, where Ari
finds a horrifying secret, and the next, terrible stage of the Kindred Agenda.
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About the Author
Andrew C. Jaxson writes stories that scare, intrigue and (hopefully) move his readers. He works across genres, although his novels may be best described as Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy Thrillers (phew!). He's worked a litany of jobs, from wedding DJ to teacher to youth worker and even a very brief and horrifying stint as a street salesman. He hates referring to himself in the third person, because it makes him sound pretentious.
To Jase and Ollie, my true superheroes.
The Fire Unseen
Copyright © 2017 Andrew C. Jaxson
All rights reserved.
Newcastle, NSW, Australia
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
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