by Gregory Ashe
Lightning webbed the sky, snapped out against the darkness like a bullwhip and clipped that tiny iron needle that was holding Kyle in place. How long? The thought hammered inside my head in time with my steps. How long could Sharrika keep the lightning going, even with a lightning rod to make it easier? How long could Kaden keep the iron armature suspended and tight? How long could Emmett and Austin and Becca hold out against a kid who could only be hurt when you weren’t looking at him? How long could Temple Mae lob grenades back at a psycho teenager with an unlimited supply?
Not long. They were all tough and strong and brave, but we were outmatched. Eventually, they would tire. And Leo only had to land one of his homemade explosives to turn out the lights on Jake and Temple Mae. The Crow boy only had to get close enough to slide a knife into Austin or Emmett or Becca. Sharrika just had to miss one lightning bolt, and Kyle would pull the mountains down on our heads.
So I ran. And the slate mirror smoothed out beside me, and my shadow ran along the water, and then I reached the cabin.
My shadow veered left.
And I realized it wasn’t my shadow.
WITH ALL THAT POWER running through me, with all the energy that my friends had channeled into me, opening my second sight was like breathing, and on my next inhale, the other side spiderwebbed to life in front of me. And then I saw that it wasn’t my shadow lounging against the door. It was my half-brother. It was River.
Or it was his ghost, or whatever haunted the other side after a person had died from supernatural trauma. He leaned against the cabin, hands buried in his pockets, and shook out his long, curly hair. In the hypersaturated colors of the other side, he almost looked alive again; his smile, directed at me in full force, was very much alive.
“You made it.”
“I made it.”
I reached out with my mind, brushing against River, testing. Urho’s presence on the other side enhanced whatever abilities he must have had while he was alive, and one of those powers included controlling the dead. That’s why the dead, even when I could find them on the other side, were never able to tell me who killed them. Urho had silenced them. That’s why they had only been able to give me indirect guidance, clues, hints. And even then, Urho had made them pay for every crumb they dropped in my path.
But unlike all the other times I had encountered River on the other side, there was no shadow of the cord reaching off from him into a nowhere place. That, in the past, had been Urho’s power binding River. And now it was gone.
“He’s too focused on crossing over,” River said. “He can’t spare the energy to keep me under control. And he’s vulnerable, Vie. Right now, if he makes a mistake, you could get him.”
Letting out a relieved breath, I grabbed the doorknob. The swirl of colors coming off River brightened, and he dropped an arm in my path—an insubstantial arm, true, but I still stopped and glanced at him.
“I’ve got to get Tyler and Hannah. I don’t have time to talk, and I don’t want to hear whatever last warning Urho told you to give me.”
River shook his head. “No messages. No warnings. No threats. At least, nothing from Urho.” He paused, and his hair drifted in some unseen current of energy flowing through the other side as though he were floating in water. “I do have something to tell you, though. You knew that.”
“I guessed that.”
“Then you’re really, really going to be pissed when I tell you what it is.”
“I’m going in there, River. Whatever you think you need to tell me, spit it out and get out of my way. It’s not going to stop me. It’s not going to make me turn back. I’m not scared of them.”
“Then you’re pretty fucking stupid.” The arm blocking my passage bent, and he placed a hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t feel it, and at the same time, I could: not his touch, but a cool tingle that blew into heat. “He’s vulnerable. But she’s not. She’s hungry, Vie. She’s so goddamn hungry she . . . she’ll eat you. She’s been careful for a long time, just bites here and there, leaving most of them alive so she can remain undetected. She slips every now and then. Like someone popping open a bag of chips and pigging out instead of just one or two like they tell themselves. But when Urho comes back, she won’t have to be careful. She’ll devour you, and she’ll leave your shell, your body, for Urho.”
“Is that all? Just a vague threat about how dangerous she is? Move, River.”
“I’m going to tell you something you aren’t going to like.”
“Did you and Emmett go to some kind of fucking remedial class? How to break bad news or something?”
River’s lips twitched, and those long, loose blond curls spun out in that invisible current. I was starting to realize what that current was: Tyler’s ability, dragging things on this plane of existence toward him. As I got closer to Tyler, the effect would grow stronger, and I remembered my dream, and a chill ran through me again. What did kids do with the things they caught? What did kids with all the kindness burned out of them, what did they do when they caught a stray? And I thought of Francis Valentino and the M80 and the dog’s bloody stump of a tail.
“You aren’t going to like it,” River’s voice stayed even, “but it’s the only way you can walk in there and walk back out with those kids.”
Behind us, another explosion chased the length of the valley, and it rapped between my shoulder blades like a dead man’s hand. “Faster. A lot fucking faster because people I love are out there fighting. Maybe dying.”
River nodded. “Somebody you love betrayed you. And you’re going to have to kill him to get those kids back.”
“Austin.” I pictured him disappearing into the night, the rifle over his shoulder, his lie about finding Emmett still on the air. I had trusted him. No, fuck that, I had loved him. And he had—
River was laughing. “Jesus, you little fucktard. You are so fucking stupid sometimes. ‘Austin.’” He mimicked my voice, fluttered his eyes, pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. “You’re just so fucking inside-assward when it comes to him it’s kind of unbelievable.”
“Emmett?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Well, just tell me then. You don’t have to play this sick game, or whatever you think you’re doing.”
Something ironed the laugh lines out of River’s face, and his hand tightened around my shoulder, and that prickle of heat dug into the muscle so that I could almost imagine his grip. “I didn’t get to do big brother things for you. I wish I could do this. Big brothers are supposed to turn on the lights and show you there’s no monster in the closet. And if there is a monster, well, big bros are supposed to lie and make those lies stretch as long as they can.” He tried to smile; it fizzed off like a factory-second bottle rocket. “But you and me, we got to a place where lies don’t work anymore. The monster is about to walk himself out of the closet and flip the lights on his own goddamn self. You know who I’m talking about.”
“Dad.”
The monster walks himself out of the closet. Walks himself right out. Flips the lights on his own goddamn self. The doorknob rattled in my hand.
I forced the fear to one side. “Big bro? You sound like a shitty afternoon special.” I shrugged, trying to throw off his touch, and the gesture was purely symbolic because my shoulder passed through his hand. Then I twisted and threw open the door. “If there are any monsters in there, I’ll flip on the lights myself and drag them out of the closet by their balls.”
“Vie, a true psychic can touch both sides. And remember: we’re blood. I’m here if you need me.”
“Take care of yourself, River.”
I stepped into the cabin’s front room, which was about the size of Sara’s whole house, and paused. I recognized this room with its fireplace and its spatter of drying wax on the floor and the elk-antler chandelier with real candles. The sofas were still in the same configuration; on one side, Hannah’s physical body lay still—like a corpse, the voice at the back of my head com
mented—and on the other sat Tyler, his little face fixed in a mask of such hatred and contempt that I barely recognized him. It was like they had ripped out the essence of the boy I had known and sutured in a twisted, ancient horror. For a moment, I thought I was too late.
“Vie?” It was Hannah’s voice, and her technicolor spirit slunk out from behind the sofa, her eyes darting from side to side. “Vie, you shouldn’t be here. Vie, you need to go. Now. They’re going to hurt you, Vie. They’re going to—”
Urho’s power clamped down on her so hard that I felt the shockwaves, and Hannah’s tiny features twisted into an expression of agony. He was here. Urho. Not manifested in that ferocious, rabid beast that stalked the other side. But he was here, his power was here, and he was waiting.
The thought gave me pause. The thought made my heel scuff the threshold. The thought made my breath hitch.
Waiting for what?
Before I could consider the question, the crack of hard steps brought my attention to an arched doorway on the far side of the room, and then my dad stepped through.
“Come here,” he said.
Tyler hopped off the couch and ran, pressing his head against my dad’s legs, his features still fixed on me with so much hatred and fury that I knew that if the boy had a weapon of any kind, I’d be dead.
My dad stroked Tyler’s hair and made a noise I remembered from childhood: a gravelly, shushing sound from deep in his throat. When his fingers curled at the base of Tyler’s neck, he set the muzzle of a pistol against the crown of the boy’s head. And then he looked up at me and smiled.
DAD HELD THE GUN steady against Tyler’s head, and if Tyler felt any fear or pain, they didn’t shadow his face.
“Hello, son.”
Dad looked like he’d been beat to shit not too long ago, with the bruises still purple and the scabs still fresh. But the hand holding the gun was rock solid. And he didn’t have any trouble meeting my eyes.
You’re going to have to kill someone you love. That’s what River had told me. I wanted to laugh because River had been so totally, completely wrong. Kill my dad? For the love of God, I’d dreamed of about a hundred ways to kill him. I’d dreamed of so many ways to hurt him that, if anybody had found out about them, they would have shut me in a padded room and bricked over the door. This motherfucker had hurt me more ways than I could count. He had humiliated me. He had left me with her, he had fucking left me, and that was worse than all the rest of it combined.
But my dad, I could deal with in a moment. If I had to kill him, I’d kill him. If I could get out of here otherwise—well, fuck. Maybe I’d kill him anyway.
I focused on Tyler, reaching out, my mind brushing his. It was like running my fingers over barbed wire. I hissed a breath between my teeth and yanked back my mind. Whatever they’d done to him, they’d shattered his mind and planted all the broken pieces in cement, sharp edges pointed out to catch whoever came for him. The splintered-glass feel of touching him, even for that brief moment, ached in me, and if I hadn’t been channeling a much larger power than my own, it might have put a stop to everything right there.
As I panted in pained breaths, Tyler’s eyes came up, and he smiled like he’d ripped the wings off a fly.
That smile. That decided it. No matter what happened, no matter what it meant for me, I was going to kill Urho and the Lady. I was going to destroy them so that no ability or power or psychic could ever find a trace of them, not even a shred, not even a mote. For doing this to Tyler, they would be erased.
“Vie,” Hannah whispered, her voice unsteady as it came across the ether of the other side. “Vie, something’s wrong with me. Something’s wrong with me like it’s wrong with Tyler. Vie, they want me to do something and I—I think I’m going to do it.”
I reached out again, more tentatively, and brushed against my dad’s mind. Nothing. Silence. Like running my hands over cold concrete. That was Urho’s power, blocking me from reaching my dad, making sure this all played out the way they wanted.
“It’s ok,” I said to Hannah. “Everything’s going to be ok.”
Dad nodded slowly. His eyes never left me; the gun never left the crown of Tyler’s head. “I like that. I like the way you say that.” Dad’s lips curled, and the smile looked like River’s. It looked like mine. “You’ve got a lot of practice gobbling that particular mouthful of shit. But saying it doesn’t make it true.” He cocked his head. “It never did, did it?”
My attack came without my even realizing it. It unfolded from me. It was like watching a thrower uncoil taut muscles and launch a javelin. It came from me with seventeen years of tension finally released. Psychic energy lanced into Bob Eliot’s brain, driving through the barriers Urho had put in place as though they were straw or paper or smoke. And I followed that spear of psychic force, the weight of my power and all the power I channeled coming down on his mind like I was pinching a burning wick.
Darkness.
I floated inside his mind. With this much power running through me, I could do what I’d done to Krystal: I could rip every stitch out of his soul and drag his spirit to the other side, where a psychic wind would tear him into fluttering, burning tatters. I could do worse. I could shut down his access to the outside world, leave him trapped in here. I could turn on the lights, shine kliegs on the dark corners so that no matter where he turned, he saw every worry, every hurt, every fear. The rest of his life would be an eternity trapped in the nightmare of his own mind.
River’s words throbbed in time with the pulse of my anger. The monster walks out. The monster walks himself out of the closet, flips the lights on his own goddamn self.
I shut out that thought. Death was too good for Bob Eliot. After what he’d done to Tyler—but really, the voice in my head was saying, to me, after what he’d done to me—death was just too good for him. Even that kind of final psychic destruction, his soul flaking away like paper borne aloft on fire, even that was too good for him. My dad deserved his own private hell.
After all, that’s where he’d put me.
I gathered myself, gathered all that power, and it was like making a fist. A fist that held nothing. The conduit from my friends had narrowed. The raging river of power had thinned to a trickle. I thought of Ginny’s words: The minute you try to attack, the minute you let anger and hate and fear sharpen your mind, become your weapons, that precious lacework is going to burn away, and it’ll be you facing Urho alone. No friends. No love. No power.
It would be enough. That dark, vicious part of myself lunged against the last restraints I had in place. I needed to hurt him. I needed to do it now, here, when he had the muzzle of a gun biting into Tyler’s scalp. Whatever I did to my dad now, it would be justice. It would be more than justice. It would be me trying to save a kid, and nothing was going to stand between me and saving a kid. A trickle of power was still flowing through the bond, and that trickle would be enough for me to do what I had to. It would be enough to drop the bar on every door and window inside his mind, turn up the lights, and let the monster walk himself out of the closet. Even if that monster was me. For Tyler’s sake.
I almost believed it. Almost. Gripping that cord of power was like gripping sand, now—it sifted out of my hold no matter how tightly I clutched at it, weaker and thinner and shallower by the heartbeat. If I was going to do it, I needed to do it now.
What do we do when we’re the ones with the power? What are we willing to do to other people? And what aren’t we willing to do? The rest of it, those are just excuses.
They were my own words, and they rushed back at me through the smoke and the hate and fear. I had been here before. I had done this to my dad once before. Not to the same degree. Not even intentionally—not completely, anyway. And every day since, I had been happy that I’d done it. And every day since, I had hated myself for doing it. It swam up at me out of dreams. It slunk behind me in mirrors. I had been here before, and with a clarity that extinguished everything inside me, I r
ealized I wouldn’t do it again. I couldn’t. I had my own monsters in the closet, to borrow River’s metaphor, but unlike my dad, I could put a chain on the door. I could keep those nasty fuckers locked up. For today, at least. For this moment. And maybe for the next. And maybe the one after that, too.
I snapped back to my body. Sensation filtered in: the heat from the fireplace, the unsteadiness in my legs—exhaustion, part of my brain noted—even an old-lady smell like lavender and mothballs. My dad still stood with the pistol buried in Tyler’s downy hair. Dad was cocking his head, as though waiting for something. Then a smile greased his face.
“You look like me. You talk like me, sometimes. But shit if you’ve got my balls, kid.” Then the barrel of the gun swung up and toward me, and I stared into a black hole.
Yes, I thought. This is right. Things implode, and then all they can do is collapse, falling in on themselves. So it made sense that it would end this way, with the whole world disappearing down a gun barrel.
“No, Mr. Eliot.” Babria, Lady Buckhardt, stepped through the archway, hands prim at her waist, her long hair pinned into a mound on top of her head. She looked grotesquely Victorian; with my second sight, I could see clearly the ravenous, shriveled soul inside that shell. It gnawed on old bones. It clawed and scrabbled, mad, desperate to get out. “Not like that. You remember our agreement.”
I reached for the golden channel of power that had flowed into me, but I caught only cold wind and the taste of char. That precious lacework is going to burn away, Ginny had said. And she’d been right. Maybe Urho and the Lady had known what seeing my dad would do to me. Maybe they had simply hoped it would throw me off, and this was an unexpected bonus. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It’ll be you facing Urho alone, Ginny had said. No friends. No love. No power.