The Fandom

by Anna Day

  I feel sick thinking of Nate and Katie, their skin blistering in the heat. The flames climb higher, swallowing the church in reds and golds and smoke. You can’t lose Katie, too. Think, Violet, think. I recall that golden pelican plucking at its sacrificial breast, and the ink from Katie’s letter stirs inside me, those words appearing in my mind’s eye: All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. And suddenly, I know what role I must play to save her.

  “You’re right.” My voice gathers its strength from somewhere deep inside. “I did betray you. I told the Gems about the raid. I set the ambush in motion.”

  “No,” Ash shouts. “Violet, what are you doing? He’ll kill you.”

  I know Ash is right, but I push on regardless. “Katie didn’t know anything about it. I never told her because I was worried her allegiances had switched. I was worried she would tell you of my betrayal.”

  Thorn begins to laugh, tightening his grip on my face so I can barely breathe, forcing my eyes toward those reds and golds. “I knew it was you, Little Flower.” He yanks at my cheeks so they feel stretched and clawed and hurls me forward. I headbutt the tarmac. He looks at me for a moment, really looks at me. “You thought Katherine had switched allegiances?”

  I manage a nod, spitting up something salty and hot. “She’s rebel to the core.”

  He gazes into the flames for a moment, his face cast in amber, and then whispers something I don’t hear. And suddenly, his legs begin to move with the urgency of a man about to lose everything, pelting his body toward the church. I glance at Ash. I can’t lose Katie, too. He must see this in my face, because without a word, he grabs my hand and we follow.

  We burst through the wooden doors only moments after Thorn. The smoke hits me first—thick and dense, stinging my eyes and burning the inside of my nose—followed by a strange, pungent odor, like the Imp-bus when it backfires, or Dad’s whiskey, stagnant in a crystal glass. Thorn is already just a silhouette, his broad shoulders giving him the appearance of a tombstone rising from the mist.

  I tighten my grip on Ash’s hand and we wade through the smoke into the main body of the church. I see the desks and crucifix screen ripped apart by flames. The golden pelican and the circle of angels brought to their knees. But our path remains miraculously free from flames.

  Momentarily, I freeze.

  Nate.

  The thought of the flames devouring his tiny body threatens to immobilize me completely. But I focus on Katie—her soft Liverpudlian accent, her pea-green eyes—and I hold my breath and force my legs to move, following that tombstone and pulling Ash toward the tower.

  I look up the stairs toward Katie’s prison. Thorn already stands at the top, desperately trying to open the door. He sees me and shouts a single, bleak word: “Locked.” He clearly hasn’t got the key.

  Tears spring from my eyes, coaxed by hopelessness and particles of smoke. I consider just sinking to the ground and weeping, when a loud noise draws my attention. The door reverberates, bowing toward us, rattling in its frame. I imagine Katie, terrified and trapped, flinging her weight into the wooden panels. Thorn does the same, and for a short while, they’re caught in a strange call and answer song. But the door is sturdy and, without much of a run-up, Thorn’s unable to use his weight to his advantage.

  Ash pulls me up the stairs, two at a time. “Your knife,” he screams at Thorn. “Give me your knife!”

  The panic in Thorn’s face is replaced by suspicion. But Katie still hammers on the door, a sound that reminds him just what’s at stake. He pulls his dagger from his belt and passes it to Ash, handle first.

  Quickly, Ash works on the hinges on the door, using the tip of the knife as a screwdriver and removing the bolts.

  “Hurry,” Thorn shouts.

  Ash’s fingers remain nimble and precise, like he’s back at the estate picking apples or shelling peas. In less than a minute, he’s removed all six screws. Together, the three of us maneuver the heavy slab of wood, lifting it from its hinges and prizing it from its frame. I dash through the opening, nearly bowling Katie over with my embrace, and I take a second to hold her to my body, inhaling the smoke-free air of the sealed ocher room.

  “Violet! Thorn!” Her tears dampen my neck. “You came for me.”

  “We have to go,” I say.

  “Now,” Thorn says.

  Katie looks at Ash. “Who’s this?”

  “There’s no time, Katherine,” Thorn shouts.

  I guess she sees the urgency in his face, because for once she doesn’t argue. We bolt down the stairs, sinking into the choking fog. I didn’t think it possible, but the flames have intensified, transforming the building into a bell jar of smoke. Searing, blistering, and unyielding. We fly toward the door, mouths shielded with sleeves, skin aglow and tender with heat. My tongue and throat feel as though the blaze has singed them. I try to hold my breath, but this makes me cough, and the more I cough, the worse it burns and the harder my lungs seem to suck.

  We reach the exit and I take one last glance over my shoulder. Behind the wall of flames lies my little brother.

  “Good-bye,” I whisper into the fire.

  Good-bye, the fire replies.

  A MIGHTY CRASH shakes the building. I shelter my face as a shock wave of heat and dirt hammers into me. Of course. The rebels planted more explosives. The church is predominantly stone, so there would be little to feed the flames once they’d devoured the wooden furnishings. We stumble from the door, clinging to each other, hacking and spitting.

  And suddenly Saskia and Matthew are beside us, wrapping us in their arms and guiding us from the smoke. And when we’re far enough away that the air feels cool against our skin, we all slump for a moment, transfixed by the flames, as if watching a procession of cobras dancing to Eastern music, the orange reflected in our eyes. Rebel Headquarters, gone forever. Strange to think, after centuries upon centuries of worship and humanity and war and technology, something as primeval as fire should tear it to the ground. And it’s impossible to look away, like watching a lion take down a gazelle—in spite of the horror and the overriding sadness, you can’t help admiring the sheer strength of the beast.

  Finally, Ash leans into me. “We need to run.”

  But he’s too late. I’m too late. Thorn hasn’t forgotten my earlier confession, and as I try to stand, he’s already pounced on me, dragging me back to my knees. And I’m reminded again of the lion. But I feel no admiration now that I’m the gazelle; only pain and indignity and pure terror.

  “No!” Saskia screams. “She was just saying it to save her friend.”

  “Thorn, please,” Katie yells.

  Ash rams into him, but he makes little impact against Thorn’s heavy frame.

  Thorn turns to Matthew. “Keep a tight hold of her boyfriend. I want him to see this.”

  Matthew twists Ash’s arms behind his back, murmuring something directly into his ear. I don’t know what Matthew said, but it’s enough to drain away all of Ash’s fight.

  “Are you ready, Little Flower?” Thorn asks.

  Cold metal pushes into my temple. I can’t breathe. White spots gather in my vision. My lips go numb.

  Katie moves in front of us. Her body blocks out the church so it looks like she’s on fire, like she’s some terrifying demon. She shows us the white of her palms and fixes Thorn with that look. “You don’t have to do this. Please, for me, let her go.”

  I hear his voice, filled with anger and hate. “She betrayed us, Katherine. She told the Gems about the raid on the Meat House, they ambushed us at the Coliseum. She led them right to us—she must have worn some sort of tracking device. They killed dozens of us, captured the rest.”

  Katie’s voice remains measured yet firm, her hair merging into the red of the flames. “Violet would never betray the Imps.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know Violet.” Her gaze clicks somewhere else for a moment, and I see the slightest of cracks in her calm demeanor. “I had a lo
t of time to think about the things you told me when we were in the cell together,” she says, changing tack.

  He pushes the gun into my skin. “What things?”

  “The things you told me about Ruth.”

  “You leave her out of this, Katherine.”

  But Katie continues in her gentle manner. “At first, I thought I reminded you of her.”

  “You do.”

  “Yes, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? The clue’s in the timing—she hanged nearly twenty years ago.”

  He doesn’t reply, but the tremor of the pistol makes me think he may be crying.

  “You lost more than just Ruth that day, didn’t you, Thorn?” Again, her focus slips to a point just behind him, like she’s watching … waiting.

  “Stop it,” Thorn says. “Just stop it, Katherine, I warn you.”

  She takes a step forward. “You lost something—someone—just as important.” She’s dragging out her words, buying time.

  The nose of the gun rocks against my skull. My breath grows increasingly shallow, my vision increasingly hazy, and I find looking at Katie too hard, the flames burning my eyes. I let my gaze slip to Ash—his wonderful, irregular face—and I just wait for the peace and calm of nothingness. But something behind those winter eyes doesn’t meet my expectation. They don’t look scared or sad or angry. They look full of hope. Excitement.

  Katie takes another step toward us. “But the real clue was the way you looked at me,” she says.

  I force myself to look at her again. She looks so empowered, so in control, and I realize that the whole time I was at the manor, trying desperately to keep us safe, to send us home, she was back in that ocher room doing exactly the same thing. Buttering up the enemy, gathering information, looking for chinks in the armor. She takes another step forward so that she blocks out the flames entirely and I see only the smoke, gushing into the sky.

  She smiles a soft, kind smile. “Because you don’t look at me like a lover. You never did. You’ve always looked at me like a father.” She takes one final step, closing the gap between us, and reaches a steady hand out toward Thorn. “Ruth was pregnant when she died, wasn’t she?”

  But he never gets to answer. I hear a strangled scream. Something hot and wet and metallic-tasting sprays into my mouth. The gun falls away from my temple. I turn to see it bouncing off the tarmac. Then, I see Thorn. Both hands clasped to his throat, blood spurting between his fingers and streaming down his forearms. He collapses to his knees and stares at me, blinking in slow motion. I imagine I can hear the moist click as his upper lids finally connect with his lower rims—a pair of camera lenses shutting. Finally, he falls onto his side, blood pooling around my knees.

  He doesn’t blink again.

  Saskia stands in his place, bloodstained knife in her hands. And I finally understand that Katie was keeping him talking so Saskia could creep up on him. I inhale a huge lungful of air; a strange, shaky noise escaping into the night.

  Saskia raises an eyebrow. “Sweet Jesus, he’s a big bastard. I almost needed a ladder to reach that throat.” But the frantic rise and fall of her chest belies her nonchalant tone.

  Katie falls on me, squeezing my body against hers. “Are you OK, Vi? God, I thought he was going to kill you.”

  “Yeah,” I manage to squeak.

  Ash and Matthew help me up. Ash kisses my forehead and wraps his arms around me, his eyes wet with tears of relief. “I was sure you were a goner.”

  I wipe my mouth and my hand comes away scarlet.

  Saskia cleans her knife and sticks it back in her belt. “Gem blood, Imp blood—it all tastes the same.”

  I notice I can pick out every one of her features. The strong line of her nose, the sapphire of her eyes, the texture of her port wine stain, slightly rippled like crepe paper. Which means only one thing—the searchlights of the Gem helicopters are approaching. Thorn’s cost us precious time. We need to hurry.

  We look to the sky to see an army of helicopters arriving. Small, dark smudges fall toward us—a sheet of explosives that penetrate the blaze of the church and lift more stone and debris our way. A blast to my left sends chunks of pavement battering into my ribs. Another blast and the Humvee bursts into flames. We slide to a halt and watch as our escape route disappears beneath a blanket of fire.

  I can hear only the crackle and pop of the blaze, the whir of the helicopters—no explosions, no flying tarmac. At first, I think my eardrums must have ruptured, but when I look to the sky, I see the bombs have stopped falling.

  A series of cables spiral toward the ground.

  “Move, move!” Matthew shouts.

  We don’t wait to see the spiders falling down, nor do we wait for the shower of bullets to nip at our heels. We just turn and sprint—as fast as our damaged bodies will allow—into the winding side streets of the metropolis.

  WE RUN THROUGH the city, bending through alleys, squeezing our bodies through narrow passageways. The footsteps of the Gems and the thrash of the helicopter blades grow dull and tired, unable to navigate the city like the Imps. Perhaps we will make it to the river in time for my friends—all four of them—to reach safety.

  “Thanks for saving me.” I struggle to breathe and talk.

  “I was hardly going to let him shoot you,” Katie says.

  “How did you know Saskia would slit his throat?” I ask her.

  “She flashed her knife at me and I just knew. Thorn stabbed her once, he told me, and I’m guessing Saskia isn’t the forgiving type.”

  I smile, because it’s more than that—Thorn isn’t the only one with parental urges. And Saskia and Matthew’s loyalty plants a warm glow in my chest.

  We wriggle under a makeshift roof, a piece of corrugated iron slung low between two pillars of rock. The mud oozes between my fingers and slips beneath my knees.

  “So, what’s happening now?” Katie asks, emerging into the open air and scanning the skies for helicopters. “Is it the river bit?”

  “Yeah.” The others are far enough ahead not to hear, so I brief her as we run. “Willow and Rose tried to escape across the river in a rowboat, and that’s what you’re going to do, you and the others. You can hide in No-man’s-land until I hang tomorrow. It should be safe there.”

  “Didn’t Willow and Rose get captured on the river?” She stumbles on a mound of broken concrete.

  “Yeah, but I think you’ve got time to make it across before the soldiers arrive.”

  She steadies herself and sucks in a huge mouthful of air. “What about you?”

  “I’ll wait to meet the soldiers on my own.”

  “Sounds risky.”

  She’s got a point, so I don’t waste my breath arguing—I need it too much right now. My legs have started to ache and my throat feels hot and sore.

  “Where’s Alice? Still banging Willow?” she asks.

  I feel my mouth pull tight—it’s a question I don’t want to answer. “No. She screwed the lot of us, instead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She told the Gems about our movements—she’s trying to get me killed so I can’t complete the canon and take her away from Wonderland.”

  Katie loses her step again, mutters, “Pork sword” into the night, and grabs my hand in solidarity. “Are you sure? Alice can be a bit of an airhead, but surely that’s taking it a bit far.”

  “It’s the only explanation.”

  “Really? I just find that a little hard to believe. Something else must be going on.”

  I shake my head, a stubborn gesture.

  “And where’s Nate?” she asks.

  Now, this is the question I’ve really been dreading. “Dead.” The word expands to fill my head, knocking me off balance.

  “No!” It sounds more like a scream than a word, so loud the others turn to check we’re OK. “What—what happened?” Katie asks.

  “The Gems happened.” My voice sounds so angry, so full of hate, I’m reminded of Thorn. I run to the rhythm of her so
bs, unable to offer any comfort as I have only bitterness and regret in my heart. I look at the moon—fat and plump just a few days earlier, but now fading, soon to become no more than a sliver in the sky—and I vow to keep my friends safe, to get them to No-man’s-land before surrendering.

  I won’t let them die, too.

  Little ambient light spills from the sky, but Saskia and Matthew navigate the streets with ease. For the second time tonight, I feel hugely grateful for their help—I don’t think I’d have found my way to the boats on foot.

  The Gem bombs haven’t reached this far, and buildings sprout from nowhere, blocking our path, throwing us off course. We move around them, keeping the stench of fish close, and the occasional glint of the water even closer.

  “This way,” Saskia shouts.

  We exchange no words, but simultaneously begin to drop toward the water’s edge. It’s the same bay as in canon, an outcrop of stone concealing an area of silt. We find the tiny fleet of rowboats nestled in the mud beneath sheets of tarpaulin. The smell makes me think of camping trips with my parents and Nate. His face all ruddy and pink in the light of the campfire, a drizzle of hot marshmallow stuck to his chin. That black hole threatens to reappear, so I blink back my tears and focus on the task at hand—helping Saskia set flashlights in the empty rowboats.

  “Decoys,” Saskia says.

  We launch the boats into the river.

  “Thank you,” I manage to say, my breath heavy. “For what you did back at the church.”

  Saskia rubs her collarbone, the place where Thorn sliced her all those years ago. “He’s had it coming for a while. Nothing to do with helping you and your dopey mates, you know that, yeah?”

  “I didn’t set us up,” I say, watching the flashlights bob into the distance, like will-o’-the-wisps or jack-o’-lanterns.

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re useless.” Only one boat remains. “You guys ready?”

  “Yeah,” Ash says.

  I don’t tell them I’m staying on the shore, I don’t have time to explain or argue. And I just can’t stand the thought of saying good-bye to Ash. I’ve already had to say good-bye to Nate, and that’s quite enough for my lacerated heart. We splash through the shallow water. Saskia and Katie scramble into the boat, the wood creaking and slipping beneath their boots. Katie perches in the stern and manages to smile at me, even though the green of her eyes looks dull and tired.