by Finn, K. C.
“You can run, you know,” Lily told them. “There’s a passage under the theatre that leads right out of town. You don’t have to be endangered by these monsters.”
Lawrence gave a little laugh. “If the Monsieur thinks we haven’t all figured out about the catacombs by now, then he’s sorely mistaken.”
“In fact, I have a confession,” Dharma added with a half grimace. “I told Salem about them the other day. That’s how he got out.”
“He was probably more of a hindrance here anyway,” Poppa offered, though it was clear that the loss of their second most powerful ally was weighing heavy on his thoughts.
“Novel made this place into our home,” Zita said, in a much stronger tone than her usual airy whisper, “and we will defend it in his honour.”
Lily smiled at them all and thanked them before they slowly began to disperse and wait for Baptiste’s return. Lady Eva was the last to go, putting a hand on Lily’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze before she left and shut the door. Lily sat on the armrest beside Novel’s head and ran a hand through his bright white hair, feeling his strong body and its warm blue glow. She had no way to know how deep the injury to his soul was, or whether these stones alone would be enough to heal it, but she made a tiny wish that he would be awake before her when the sun began to rise. She settled down on the other sofa opposite him and curled up in a ball, watching his peaceful face and repeating her wish to herself, until she gently fell asleep.
Dealmaking
Lily awoke to a bright shaft of sunlight travelling across her face. Through the sitting room window the sun was low in the morning sky, and the first day of August was finally lit by a golden glow. For a moment, Lily forgot where and even who she was, thinking slowly about the comfortably furnished room she was laying in and the soft leather of the sofa under her head. But then she remembered everything at once, instantly panicked for Jazzy, and wondering if she had got to the hospital in time, and what there was that could be done for a person snapped in half by the darkest of all shades.
She sat up to ask Novel, horrified to find he was still fast asleep. The starlight stones no longer glowed around him, each one just an empty shaft of clear quartz, as it had been before he filled it with light. His blue glow too was missing and Lily half-crawled across the space between them to shake his shoulders and call out his name. He still did not respond, lost to the somnolent state and its cryptic curse. She kissed him again, as though it would make any difference, deeply on his warm lips, but he slept on.
The door gently opened and Baptiste put his sombre head in. He looked exhausted, but he did not pant for breath. Instead he gave Lily a sad, respectful nod, his words emerging in a hoarse whisper.
“They have formed a circle around the building. Maxime and Mother Novel are at the front doors, on the street.”
“He’s waiting for my answer,” Lily replied slowly. “He doesn’t know that Mother wants to kill me either way.”
“Perhaps this is to your advantage?” Baptiste suggested.
Lily nodded gently. “He might turn on her if I play things right,” she said. “Of course, that means going out there alone.”
“The other options are obvious,” soothed Baptiste. “We could all run, and take Novel with us into the catacombs, or we could stay inside and hope that the charms hold and protect the theatre.”
“No,” Lily answered. “I won’t do that to you all. It’s me they want.” She gulped down the lump in her throat. “So it’s me they’ll get.”
“What are you going to do?” Baptiste asked as Lily turned her head to look at Novel again.
“Stall for time I guess,” she answered with a hollow laugh. “See if he wakes up, or see if fate steps in to help.”
“Faith and love?” Baptiste replied. “That’s what you’re going with?”
Lily nodded. The elegant man gave her a wide smile.
“I can’t think of anything better to hold in your heart.”
“I’d better go before I lose it then,” Lily said sharply, getting to her feet.
She let herself have one last look at Novel before she left the room, slowly walking the dim corridor until she found that she was in the old foyer under the flickering chandelier. The whole thing had begun in that very place, from the moment she’d handed her ticket to Baptiste, and seen Novel shoot lightning from his hands. It was fitting that she should stand there for a moment, steeling herself as a forceful fist knocked the outer door.
When Lily stepped forward and out into Old Mill Lane, the air was warm with the echo of a summer morning. The fist that had pounded the door belonged to Maxime Schoonjans, and the man-mountain stepped back as his daughter approached him. He put his hands to his wide hips and smiled at her with vicious teeth.
“You have come.”
“I have,” Lily replied.
“So what is your answer?” Maxime asked.
Lily looked to Mother Novel, trying hard not to imagine the wicked, drawn-in face beneath her veil. She stood like a dark ballerina, perfectly poised with her feet just drifting a little above the grey tarmac, ready to attack.
“I accept you, Father,” Lily answered, looking back to the turncoat’s shining white eye as it observed her. “I will join your side of the fight.”
“Ha!” Maxime bellowed loudly. He turned a wide, sweeping hand in Mother Novel’s direction. “I told you she would! Because she is my daughter. Blood cannot deny blood.”
Lily felt sick as he clapped a large hand on her shoulder with pride, but she kept her gaze on his hideous face and gave him a smile. What her mother could ever have seen in him was no longer apparent, for he was a wild thing – half hunter, half shade – and completely consumed by his mission. Maxime guided Lily closer to Mother, and she instantly felt the rumble of power that told her the darksider was displeased.
“Well,” Maxime continued, oblivious to the rising tension, “we may move on and pursue that runaway lover of yours, Madame. Your son is the only shade left in this town, and I would not presume to hurt him, for your sake.”
“She’s lying to you,” Mother Novel spat, her veil flying up to reveal her horrific face.
Maxime flinched at the sight of her deep, pitted eyes, glowing and widening in her fury. Lily stared her down, fighting the urge to vomit at the very image of her.
“Nonsense,” Maxime answered. “She is a survivalist. She knows it is more sensible to be with us than against us.”
“That’s not it, you fool,” the darksider reeled with rage. “She’s protecting those puny beings within the theatre, and she’s conspiring to stay alive and be reunited with my son.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Maxime said with an earnest laugh.
Mother’s wicked mouth contorted.
“She is not worthy of him. No-one is.”
The turncoat took his hand off Lily’s shoulder and approached the other shade, his hands wide in a peaceful gesture.
“Madame, it would not be wise to cross me at this moment.” His words were quiet and gentle, but the threat sent a shiver up Lily’s spine. “Not when I have my band of brothers primed to attack any shade I choose.”
“You dare threaten me?” Mother hissed, the same growl in her voice that Lily had once heard in Novel’s. “Imbecile! You precious boys work for you at my request!”
“Ridiculous!” Maxime laughed. “With one word from me, they-”
Mother Novel clicked her fingers and Maxime Schoonjans fell to the ground, as his neck gave a twist, and then a snap.
“I’d like to see you give the word now,” she hissed.
Lily stared on with an open mouth as the body of her father lay lifelessly at her feet, his one almond coloured eye instantly devoid of light. The white eye in his other socket was turned to face her as the rest of his body grew limp and still. And Lily saw it then, that fragile line between living and not living, and she felt a deep pulse within her racing blood that told her all she needed to know of what life should be about. It was
wrong to die needlessly, as Maxime just had. If a person was going to die, then it had be worth something, or someone.
“You’ve caused me a lot of problems, little girl,” Mother said, forcing Lily to snap her gaze back to the horrific face before her. “I should like to make you suffer for it.”
Lily held up her hands ready to cast a shield, finding them shaking out of all control.
“If I die,” Lily said with a sob in her throat. “I’ll do everything in my power to take you with me.”
Mother Novel smiled, revealing small, black teeth.
“If you do, then Lemarick will never wake from his sleep.”
Lily let out one stunted breath.
“Now drop your defences like a good girl,” Mother crooned, “and accept your punishment.”
The choice was obvious, more obvious than anything had ever been in Lily’s once-quiet life. There would be no point in living on, torturing herself for hundreds of years that she had traded Novel’s life for her own. Edvard had told him that he had so much to live for, and that he would need Lily in order to carry on that life. This was surely what he had meant. She had promised to look after him, and she would keep her word.
Lily slowly lowered her hands and Mother Novel put her bony white fingertips together, and smiled her wicked smile once more. Lily swallowed hard and waited. An invisible blow, like she had been punched in the stomach, shocked her and she cried out, finding the air was being knocked right out of her lungs. Lily could hear Mother Novel laughing as she fell to her knees, gasping for breath. A sweep of gravity flipped her onto her back, and her airless chest begged for oxygen that just wouldn’t come.
“Wait!” yelled a faint male voice somewhere nearby. “It’s a trick! She’s lying to you!”
Lily tried to move but it was too late, and without her defences the senior shade had taken total control of her body. A shadowed figure came into view above her, but he wasn’t close enough for Lily to tell who he was. As she struggled to see him, praying breathlessly that it was Novel, a new sensation hit her from Mother’s attack.
A tidal wave of water manifested, and shot down her throat.
Sacrifice
Lily tried to resist the water flushing down her windpipe, choking against it as her nose regained the ability to take in air. She struggled and kicked, but it was like her mouth was being held to an invisible tap, and she could barely control what went into her stomach and what rushed past and invaded her half-empty chest. As she kicked and turned to battle the drowning sensation, her eyes found the figure who had called to her. He was kneeling by her side.
Salem?
The coward had returned at the crucial moment, and one of his hands hovered over Lily’s body as the other palm was held up against Mother Novel. He was trying to counter her with a continuing blast of air. Lily realised that the water in her lungs was gradually slowing down, then speeding up again as Salem and the darksider fought for control of her life. Salem was desperately trying to push Mother Novel away with his gale force gust, but she was slowly striding towards him, pushing through the air even as it whistled with deafening ferocity around them all.
Lily choked and gasped, clinging to life, and willing this moment to end so she could rise and force the water from her lungs. She tried to conjure the water that was threatening her with her own powers, but Mother had too strong a hold on it to make it change course. Her brain was slowly fading as it lost access to oxygen, making her eyes open and close of their own accord as she watched Salem fight. His handsome face was strained as he held out his broad arms, grimacing with a pain that looked as though it would rip him apart. His cobalt eyes found Lily’s as she drifted slowly in and out of consciousness. He gave her a remorseful smile.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “but I have to stop her. Not for us, but for everyone else.”
Salem let the hand helping Lily drop, and the water pressed hard against her lungs, filling them to capacity. Her last sight was Salem using that hand to blast another bright shaft, this one made of lightning, at Mother Novel. He rose to his feet out of her view, crying out in agony and fury.
The sound became tinny and weak as Lily closed her eyes and died.
The next moments were something of a haze, but Lily became gradually aware that she was looking down upon Old Mill Lane from some seven or eight feet in the air. Her father’s body lay sprawled on one side of the pavement, whilst her own soaked corpse lay on the other. Between them, the black figure of Mother Novel was lit with all elements, a wild storm of rage surrounding her as she put every ounce of power she had into beating back Salem Cross. For his part, Salem was shooting back with all he had, draining himself of every sap of energy to absorb and return her power against her.
From her peaceful omniscience, Lily knew that he too was about to die.
When Salem dropped to the ground, Lily forced her spirit closer to the scene, watching as the shade’s last breath escaped his tired face. The breath exploded into a flurry of pure, bright light and shot across the street, right at Mother Novel. The darksider screamed as though that final breath had burned her, and the light grew around her body to form a perfect sphere, imprisoning her within it like a gravity bubble. She thrashed against the sides of this new and beautiful cage, but the light bubble held her, shrinking and crushing her until she was barely visible within it.
Salem coughed, suddenly alive again. He looked up and grinned his wicked grin at his former lover.
“I didn’t know I had it in me,” he laughed and gasped.
“My God.”
Lily observed silently as Novel burst out of the theatre doors, stopping himself from a rapid sprint and dropping to the space between her body and Salem. He watched, his pale face illuminated by the sphere of light that was still shrinking on his mother. She screamed and wailed from within it, until the orb was no bigger than a tennis ball, at which point it vanished into thin air. Novel stared on in amazement until he shook from his reverie, turning to Lily’s wet corpse on the ground.
“NO!” he cried in a wild rage, taking her shoulders and watching helplessly as water poured from her limp mouth.
The Lily in the air wanted to tell him not to worry, but Salem was already putting an arm around his son as he panted and heaved every breath from his chest.
“It might not be too late,” Salem wheezed, “to take the water back from her lungs.”
“You,” Novel said, grabbing at his father. “You can-”
“No,” Salem answered with hardly any breath. “Didn’t you see what just happened? I have no power left.”
Lily understood, and as Salem spoke, a faint golden light began to glow around his heaving form. Novel watched him in awe and panic, turning back to Lily’s body and putting his hands into the patch of air over her unmoving chest. He shook his head a few times.
“I can’t do water,” he sobbed, “not on this scale. I’m not ready.”
“Yes you are!” Salem cried.
“How?” Novel demanded. “How can you know?”
“Because you love her Lemarick!” Salem pressed, “and love is freedom and fluidity and unpredictability and wild abandon and that’s water. That’s the spirit of the thing, and now you have it within you! Let yourself love her, and the elements will give you what you need!”
Novel’s pale eyes glistened with tears as he looked down at Lily’s peaceful, dead face. He steeled his hands above her, and closed his eyes tight-shut.
It was like it was happening in someone else’s body, but Lily was aware of it still. Those lungs that had become like a faint but heavy canister, sloshing about gently with liquid, slowly began to expand. Somewhere, both near and far from where Lily occupied the air, the water began to move. She watched it drain from her frail little body by her mouth, first in a trickle, then as a torrent. A stream exploded from her nose and lips, casting elegant arcs as it deserted her damp little frame.
And then there came air. A great gust of oxygen, which was swirling into the dept
hs of her very soul. Lily felt a strange pull, like the hand of gravity beckoning her down from her place in the sky. There was a sudden blackness and a whoosh, and Lily Coltrane was no longer gazing down upon her death bed. She spluttered back to life in terror and pain, her eyes open wide in amazement and gratitude. The world had flipped once more, and she could feel Novel’s hands grasping her shoulders, keeping her down as she scrambled to sit up and see and feel and think all at once.
His steady grip kept her level as her starved brain returned to most of its functions.
Get it together, Lily Coltrane.
You’re here, you’re alive and you’re fine.
It’s over now.
She gazed up into Novel’s face, too weak to reach up and trace his lips with her shaking hand. As he gazed back down, she slowly realised there was something totally different about the way he looked. It took her a moment to know what it was.
In a strangled whisper, she spoke and laughed.
“Lemarick, you’re smiling.”
EPILOGUE
“Surprise!” Lily said as she poked her head around the hospital room door.
“Balloons! No-one’s brought me balloons yet!”
Jazzy reached out from her bed eagerly to take the teddy-bear-shaped helium balloons that Lily was offering her. Her friend dumped a selection of chocolates onto her bedside table and observed the young girl where she was propped up in bed.