Cold Fire: A Paranormal Novel

by Shaye Easton

  I don’t call for Caden again. I don’t call for anyone. I turn towards the light and follow it, climbing up the slabs of concrete and keeping my coughs as quiet as possible. It’s hard work, especially with only one working arm. I have to test each rock’s stability by pressing down with my hand, and shards of glass get lodged in my palm. A few times, I place my weight in the wrong spots and slip, slapping into brick and cement, bruising bones and splitting skin.

  Once, after testing a long, vaguely rectangular slab, I take a step only for it to give way beneath me anyway. My foot slides into a gap and I topple down with it. Desperately, I reach for anything stable to grip, and shred my hand on the rough surrounding concrete. Other, smaller rocks shift around me, colliding with my broken arm and side. Not for the first time, I’m grateful that I barely feel pain.

  My forearms and chest slam into cement and I stop moving. One of my legs is dangling down a hole, but I know I’m lucky. The shifting rubble could have crushed any one of my limbs and they didn’t. I ease out a rattling breath. For few minutes, I just stay there, exhausted and weak. I know I’ve lost a fair amount of blood, and my muscles are barely working properly. If that wasn’t enough, I’m sure I’ve got smoke inhalation. My lungs and throat feel raw, and every new mouthful of air grates like sandpaper.

  Somehow I find the energy to keep going, slowly easing myself up and out of the hole, my arm shaking as it bears my weight. Once I’m free, I continue up the pile of ruins. It occurs to me that I could have checked for another exit possibly a back door that wasn’t blown in by the explosion. But if there really are underwalkers everywhere, then I definitely would have run into one scrambling around for an exit. Besides, it’d be foolish to turn back now that I’ve come this far.

  I reach the crest of the wreckage and a sigh of relief shudders from my throat. I’m directly in the mouth of the hole created by Elodie, and up here there’s enough breeze to somewhat clear the dust and smoke. As it turns out, the light I’d been following hadn’t been daylight but instead the artificial white glow of a streetlamp. It’s not as bright, all of a sudden; barely enough to light my way down the other side of the rubble. I feel my way in the dark, the night and all its monsters pressing up against me on all sides. I quell every cough, conceal every breath, and slowly edge out into the darkness.

  At the bottom, I take slow, hesitant steps forward. I’m scared to make any noise, but I can’t see anything. And Kathryn told me Caden would be out here.

  “Caden,” I whisper. I get no response. I call for him again, as loud as I dare. Nothing. For the first time, my brain really thinks over what Kathryn told me. She said he was already outside. But how is that possible? It took me ages to get out here. Why would he leave us like that? Why would he leave everyone to fend for themselves amongst the wreckage and underwalkers?

  With a jolt, I realise Kathryn must have lied. She wanted me out of there, and she knew I wouldn’t go if I thought Caden was still inside.

  The reality sinks in. He’s not here.

  I’m alone.

  But no. I hear movement behind me, shifting rubble, glass crunching under boot. My heart starts pounding. I take hesitant, stumbling steps backwards as I flick my eyes back and forth across the darkness.

  “Hello?”

  My voice bounds out into the night, way too loud. I regret it immediately. I may as well hold up a neon sign that says, The Final Prophet is here, with a large, ostentatious arrow flashing down at me.

  There’s a clatter in the near distance. Something rattles towards me, rolling over the rocky ground much like an empty beer bottle. The object knocks against my shoe and stops. Silence.

  Out of nowhere, something hard collides with my head. Bright sparks explode across my vision as I go down, ramming into the pavement. Dust is kicked into my lungs and I cough. I flop onto my back and the stars pinwheel across the sky.

  Then they’re eclipsed by a dark, moving shadow. There’s a hand on my arm. I screech, swatting, clawing and kicking. I think I get in a punch, because my fist connects with something soft and there’s an audible groan.

  “Melissa,” reaching for me again. I slap frantically, terrified. “Melissa, stop. Stop!” hands around my upper arms, pinning them to my sides. “It’s me. It’s Kathryn.”

  She draws back a hand and a small orb of light ignites in her palm, coating the two of us in a white, almost silvery glow. Her face comes into view, dirty and half veiled in shadow. My heart is still stuttering in my chest but I force myself to breathe, to relax. It’s Kathryn. I’m safe.

  But it doesn’t feel right. Who knocked me down? Where did that person go? And why is Kathryn out here while all of her people are still lost or injured in the wreckage?

  My eyes flick to the orb in her palm. It’s not that it emits light; it is light or what I imagine light would look like if you managed to capture it and bundle it up into a ball. Somehow, it strikes me as out-of-place in her palm, like it doesn’t belong there.

  I wrack my mind for an explanation, for a reason, explaining the bizarreness of this light against the pallor of Kathryn’s skin. What is her power again? I think all the way back to when I first met Rand and sat down in his living room for the conversation that changed my world. Someone mentioned Kathryn’s ability, I know they did.

  And aerokinetic, like her mother.

  Of course. Aerokinesis. The power I inherited from her.

  It sinks in. She can control the air. Not the light.

  “You’re not Kathryn.” The words leave my raw throat no louder than a whisper, but they fill the night like a boom of a gun.

  “No,” she says, smiling, and it seems to me that she’s amused it took so long, “I’m not.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Before my eyes, her face dissolves, the flesh almost melting off her bones. It curls away and then new tissue rises up from the dark skeletal depths, rougher and thinner than before. This happens all over; the hand grasping my arm sheds its skin, turns to bone, and then rebuilds, muscles growing, blood bubbling, skin sprouting like moss over it all. I watch on in horror as Kathryn’s face becomes someone else’s, becomes a man’s, complete with stubble and thick brows. At first, all I see is the resemblance—he could be her male doppelgänger—but a second later, as the transformation is completed, I realise who I’m really looking at.

  Her brother.

  My jaw has flopped open wide in a mixture of disgust and terror. I can’t do anything but stare.

  Davion smiles. “Neat trick, don’t you think? It’s a new one of mine.”

  Like a switch has been flipped in my brain, I shove him away and scramble back. Davion simply laughs, dusting his hands on his pants as he stands. For the target of Elodie’s golden bomb, he’s criminally clean; while everyone else was buried in rubble and smoke, he got off scot-free. It makes my blood boil.

  I sweep my eyes over the surrounding dark, lit only by the intermittent streetlamps and the light still burning in Davion’s palm. I half-expect Newman, Davion’s disfigured and ever-present mutt, to emerge from the shadows and grab me. But we’re alone.

  “What do you want from me?” I ask, doing my best to keep my voice from shaking.

  “I want to help you,” he replies smoothly. He doesn’t move, even as I wait for him to start for me.

  “That’s what you call whacking me in the head? Helping me?”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Like hell!”

  Davion raises his hands in acquiescence. “Fine. You don’t have to believe me about that. But believe me about this: I’m here to help. This whole time, I’ve only been trying to protect you.”

  I don’t believe it. I can’t. He’s a liar. He’s trying to win me over again. I just don’t understand why.

  “So sending Newman to kill me, threatening me, taking my powers—that was protection?”

  “It was necessary.”

  I laugh in spite of myself. “You’re crazy.”

  “I’m your uncle.”
/>   “You’re just the monster who swapped me.”

  “Melissa,” he placates, “you’re on the wrong side. You’re not like those people.”

  “This again? Really?”

  “How do you know you can trust them?”

  “Because their idea of protection isn’t to send a mercenary to snuff me out.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re right. Their idea of protection is to lie.”

  “This is ridiculous. What do you want from me?!”

  “I want you alive! And you won’t survive the war fighting on their side.”

  The depth of his emotion pulls me up short. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “They call you the Final Prophet for a reason. Because you’re the last of the many.”

  I stare. “How many?”

  “More than your overwalker friends have told you about. This war wasn’t foreseen a half-century ago. It’s been eons in the making. The first prophet was the son of an Original Spirit. And like me, you’re his descendant.”

  “So you did know who I was when you swapped me.”

  “I knew who you were, and more. I knew how this would all end for you if I didn’t get you away from the spectre world. Every century a new prophet arises with a new prophecy. They’re always different. In some, you survive, in others you don’t. You always end the war, but it happens differently each time.

  “Melissa, by swapping you, I saved you. That path you were on would have ended in your death. It was key that you didn’t grow up as a spectre. At least now you have the choice to—”

  “To join you,” I finish, the words sour on my tongue.

  “To save yourself.”

  “And why do you care?”

  “Because you’re my blood,” he answers simply, like it’s obvious.

  “That’s never meant anything to you before.” Both our heads turn at the new voice. Like a spirit, Kathryn—the real Kathryn—rises out of the gloom and into the dim light, gun hanging from her hand. “Don’t listen to him, Melissa. Everything he’s told you is a lie.”

  Davion laughs, not at all startled by the spectre who has silently and suddenly manifested before us. “You’d like that to be the case, wouldn’t you?”

  Kathryn ignores him, dark eyes pinning me down. They have the same stare, I notice—fierce and unblinking and next to impossible to turn away from. Seeing them side by side like this, it’s difficult not to feel unnerved. They have the same dirty blonde hair, the same sharply angled cheekbones, the same posture: feet shoulder width apart, hands hanging still by their sides, chest up, chin tilted down. One’s an overwalker and one’s an underwalker. One is supposedly good and another supposedly bad. But now, here, in this dark, quiet street, outside the still-smoking ruins of a dilapidated building, I suddenly couldn’t tell which is which.

  “He doesn’t care about you, Melissa. He knows if you join the underwalkers, you’ll win them the war, and he doesn’t give a shit if it kills you. He doesn’t know if it will, either; there’s only ever been one prophecy.”

  “You’ve been eavesdropping,” Davion remarks. “That’s a little creepy.”

  “Oh, please. I could hear you yammering from a mile away.”

  “Well,” he says, shrugging, “I suppose it doesn’t matter, anyway.” He focuses his gaze on me again. “She’s lying to you.”

  At this point, I’m confused as hell. Both tell me the other is lying, and while I’m inclined to believe Kathryn, I can’t say I trust either of them right now. I’m caught under the gaze of the two Eller siblings, my biological mother and uncle, and there’s an unspoken expectation that I’m to choose a side.

  This is the turning point; I can feel it. Until now, I’ve been the ship in international waters, floating around, drifting close to different territories but never actually reaching them. Now I’m supposed to plant my feet on some soil, and it’s going to cause an earthquake. Caden was right, after all—I’m not just going to end the war, I’m going to start it as well.

  “What will it be, Melissa Croft?” Davion asks, speaking my false name with a whisper of a smile.

  They’re both dangerous. They’re both murderers. I’m related to them, but they terrify me. There’s only one side I can pick.

  “I will never join you,” I tell Davion.

  Kathryn says, “You’ve made the right choice.”

  I look at her sharply. “Go to hell.”

  And now Davion laughs. “This is wonderful. You’re exactly who I hoped you’d be.”

  Kathryn appears to be shocked into silence. Her eyes flick uneasily between Davion and I.

  “But I’m going to do you a favour,” he continues, “and make this choice real easy for you.”

  Kathryn stiffens.

  I eye him warily, fearfully. Slowly, I ask, “And how are you going to do that?”

  “You’ll see.” His hand has drifted to his waistband, behind the flap of his coat. I’m barely paying attention to the movement, but Kathryn has focused on it, eyes round with alarm.

  “I would never—”

  Kathryn raises her gun and shoots. For a half-second, the crackling blue bullet lights up the street, a flash as brilliant as the sun. But before it can reach Davion’s chest, he winks out of existence.

  I’m staring at the spot he was meant to be, my mind slow to comprehend. Then I look at Kathryn. Her eyes are wide and they slowly, shakily turn to meet mine, her lips parting in what I can only call shock.

  “It’s okay, he’s—,” I begin, and then stop. She’s staring at me so intently, almost as if her life depends on it. “What is it?”

  Her body jerks once, sharply, and she topples to the ground. Behind her, Davion has moved out of the shadow, the glittering scarlet knife he stabbed into and then tore from her back still poised in his hand.

  “Kathryn,” I breathe, and the night is silent as I run to her side, ignoring the man above us. I roll her body over so I can see her face.

  A small bead of crimson has emerged from the corner of her lips. As she speaks, it runs down her cheek. “Sara,” she chokes, fumbling for my hand. I resist, but even in death, she’s stronger than me. She takes it, squeezes it tightly, and it burns her flesh, but she doesn’t let go. She’s a stranger to me, and a moment ago I was even afraid of her. Now I give her what she needs.

  “I’m here. Sara’s here.”

  She half smiles. And her eyes roll up to the clouded night sky and go still. She’s gone.

  Gingerly, I remove my hand from hers and lay it across her chest.

  “You killed her,” I say softly, and look up. At Davion, standing over us, practically indifferent to her passing. “She’s your sister and you killed her.”

  He lifts his eyes to mine but he doesn’t defend himself. “You can’t love what doesn’t exist,” he says sombrely. “Get away from this world, Melissa, before I have to kill you too.”

  And he disappears.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Sometime later, Caden and Rand find me kneeling by Kathryn’s body. The horizon has turned a dark blue; dawn is coming. I hadn’t noticed, but sounds have started echoing from the wreckage—banging and clattering, talking and shouting. The ruins of the underwalker hollow are coming to life. Soon its people will come for revenge.

  Caden and Rand stop dead in their tracks as they see Kathryn’s lifeless body. “Oh my god,” Caden says.

  Rand’s jaw hangs open. He pulls himself together and swallows. “What happened?”

  “It was Davion.”

  “But he’s her broth—,” Caden’s face darkens in anger, “—that bastard,” he growls. “I’m going to kill him. Where is he?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “We have to find him. We have to make him pay for what he’s done. What have to—”

  “Caden, stop.” Rand has a hand on his upper arm. He doesn’t have to say anything more. A mutual understanding passes between them and Caden relaxes. “We have to go.”

  “What about Kathryn?�
� I ask. “She’s Sara’s mother . . . she’s my… We can’t just leave her here.”

  “We’ll take care of it.” Elodie comes up behind Caden and Rand with a handful of overwalkers. I vaguely recognise a couple of them as her fellow Ring members.

  Caden stares at her with distrust and it’s the first time I’ve seen him show anything but reverence towards his overwalker superior. “By take care of it, you mean…?”

  “We’ll transport her body out of here. She’ll get a proper burial, don’t worry. But you all need to go.”

  “What about the underwalkers?” Rand asks. “Won’t you need help with that?”

  “They suffered heavy blows in the blast. Some have even fled. We’ll do quite alright without you.” Two of the overwalkers grab Kathryn’s body and lift her up. I watch as they carry her away until the dark swallows them up and I can’t anymore. “Now go. It’s essential that Melissa makes it out of here.”

  Rand nods and Caden helps me to my feet. We turn for the road. But I only make it a few steps before something materialises before me and I run headlong into a darkly clothed figure. My heart pangs with fright, and I stumble back. Lit only by the dim glow at the horizon, the man’s face is a blurry, disfigured mess. The handprint-shaped burns look even uglier like his skin is some kid’s Play-Doh and in anger, they’ve mushed it with their fists.

  “Newman,” I say. It’s the one time I wasn’t expecting him, so of course, he crops up.

  “Get out of our way.” Rand snarls.

  Newman smiles, and his teeth shine like pearls. He lifts his gun and—

  “Get down!” Someone shoves me and I hit the ground, landing—thankfully—on my good arm. The blast is a boom of thunder ripping apart the early morning.

  Before Newman can do anything more, Caden charges, barrelling into him. They fall to the ground. Caden draws back his fist and punches with so much strength that I can hear the crack as more than on bone breaks in Newman’s face. When he goes in for a second blow, Newman catches the fist and twists. He pushes Caden away with more strength than one man should possess. He’s blown back several metres and lands heavily on his back.