by A. R. Kahler
Sand burned beneath my feet, sharp and acrid and infinitely more hellish than the landscape I’d escaped. There was no sun in the sky, just an angry, reddish ochre hue that radiated through my veins, made my blood boil. No hellfire, though.
No Chris, either.
Or Freyja.
I turned on the spot, stared out at the landscape. I smelled seawater, farther out. The promise of coolness, of moisture. Just the thought made sweat break out over my skin. Made my throat turn to cotton. I needed to find water. The desert stretched, but the promise of water pulled me toward the horizon. Why had I come here? To a land that wanted to kill me. A land that wanted to turn me into a husk. Water called. I had to find it. Had to find . . .
Focus.
The word rippled through my mind like a mirage. The horizon rippled as well. A spot in the sand. A fleck of gold and flesh.
“Chris!” I yelled, and the moment the word left my lips, the sand around me shifted, fell and rose.
Walls of sand erupted around me, blocking Chris from view. I struggled to my feet, the sand suddenly thick, viscous, wet. My hands came up red.
Vomit rose in the back of my throat, but I didn’t try to wipe the blood and granules off on my pajamas, didn’t let out a yelp. He was out there. Down here. Focus, I thought.
I didn’t think anymore. I ran.
Sand churned thick beneath my feet, every step labored, every footfall slurping into the grit and blood. I kept my eyes forward, darting in the direction I thought Chris had been, though it was impossible to tell where I was, where I was going. No sun to guide my way, no sound, save for the sand. I ran. Gargoyles of the same young girl topped the walls, her eyes crying seawater and blood, rivulets streaming down the walls, swirling at my feet. She was familiar. I’d seen her. How had I seen her? Her hair, swirling in the seawater, her skin paler than moonlight. “Her life for yours, Endbringer.”
And I gasped as the sand collapsed around me, as air flooded to water, and I was swirling, sinking, drowning. It was cold, so cold, ice dripping through my veins. The only warmth was in my chest. My lungs burned. I had to breathe, had to breathe.
“Just let go,” she whispered. The drowning girl. She floated before me, her short hair a halo, her eyes as white as pearls. “Let go, and the pain will go away.”
I knew her then. Bri. Her name twisted through my mind as seaweed tangled around my ankles. How did I know her name when she didn’t say it? For some reason, her presence made me calm. It was okay. It was okay to die. She was dead, and she was okay.
The water was cool, but it was no longer uncomfortable. Only my chest hurt. Only my breath.
It only hurt to try to stay alive.
She knew. She knew the truth. She had died to save someone. I would die to save someone. But who? Who?
Her brother.
Chris.
Focus.
“It isn’t worth it,” she said, her voice suddenly older, angrier. Bri was close to me now, her hands on my neck. “There’s no point in trying to save him. I tried to save him, and look where it got me. Look where it got him. He still ended up here. He’s still hurting. Because of you.”
She squeezed, and the last of my air burst from my lips in a torrent of bubbles.
“Let go. Let go. You’re only going to hurt him.”
“You deserve this. You deserve to stay down here, to suffer, as you’ve made him suffer. You’ll only make him suffer. You are doomed to destroy each other. Even if not, you could never love him, and that would destroy him just as assuredly.”
No. No, I was going to save him. We had both done too much hurting.
We didn’t deserve this pain. No one deserved this pain.
Water flooded away, a wave that dropped me to the cold stone floor in a heartbeat, leaving me gasping and shuddering. My neck ached and my lungs burned, but Bri was no longer there. No one was there.
Just a circle of ink on the tile floor of the classroom. A stool at the ink’s edge, beside an easel, beside a painting of ravens and blood.
I scrambled to my feet and stood in the center of the circle. Blink, and there he was, sitting at the easel, his hand holding a brush of bone. Chris.
He sat there, rocking, and muttering something I couldn’t hear but that I fully understood. The pain. The fear. I knew it like the shadows of my own heart.
I took a step forward. I had to get him out of here before his nightmares could catch hold again. I had to get us both out of here before I forgot what I was doing in the first place.
Another step forward.
“Chris,” I whispered. He didn’t move or flinch, just kept rocking back and forth. Had he heard me? And what was that noise, that growing wail? It sent chills down my spine. We have to get out of here. Now. “Chris,” I said again.
And then I heard his laughter.
Chris turned from the stool, and as he did so, light peeled from his body, curled out into golden threads and wings. I stepped back, but he was faster. The glowing god grabbed my arm before I could take a second step. His name burned from the back of my throat, a hatred older than the blood in my veins boiling to the surface.
“Heru,” I whispered. Had I heard the name before? Or was it part of me, like Freyja? A rivalry not even the gray of the Underworld could diminish.
He smiled. Even though he’d worn Chris’s skin only moments before, there was no sign of the mortal boy in that look. That was a smile of razors and blood. I knew then that he was nothing like Freyja. There was no mortality there, no soft side to play to. He wanted to be a tool of the gods. He wanted to make the world worship him.
He would want me to beg.
I reached for the knife in my jacket, but his other hand caught my wrist before I could manage.
“You really think it could be that easy?” he asked. His touch burned. I held in the pain, though. I wouldn’t let him see me hurt. I wouldn’t let him know I was scared. “You, a mortal? Killing a god?”
“You’re no god,” I replied.
“Perhaps not yet,” he replied. “But I will be.”
He flung me to the ground. It hurt. The pain of it reverberated through my bones. I heard someone whimper. I looked over.
Chris. Sitting just outside the circle of ink, hands pressed to his ears as he watched in terrified silence. Had he been there the whole time?
“You think you can kill me,” Heru said, drawing my attention back to him. But part of me stayed focus on Chris. On what I hoped was the real Chris. I had to get him out of here. Above all things, I had to get him out. “You think you have a chance. I would have hoped for more from the vessel of the Vanir. But they have always been cowering, worthless beings. I suppose that was a vain hope at best.”
“If you kill me down here, you fail,” I said. I had already pulled the dagger from my coat while he talked. I brandished it at him weakly, just like my threat.
He actually laughed.
“That’s not how this works, Shadechild,” he said. “The gods created us for bloodshed. I can still take the mortal plane without you there. The war will happen, with or without you as an adversary. Your blood only sweetens the deal.”
He struck. So fast, I didn’t see him move, just the flare of light, and then my blade was gone, skittered across the floor.
“I will kill you down here,” he said. “I will bleed you dry until you are only a shell, until your bones are brittle and your skin snaps. And then, when you are almost gone, when your life has drained to the very last, I will make him burn you alive.” He pointed to Chris as he said it. Chris flinched back. Closed his eyes.
Chris, come on, Chris. Don’t hide from me. Don’t hide.
I opened my mouth. Called out for him to help.
If he heard me, he didn’t register. Heru just laughed again and stepped forward.
How was he here, when Freyja couldn’t be? How could this be the end? I had come so far. So far.
Heru kicked me in the ribs. Hard. I grunted and curled over. Another kick landed on my
back, right against my kidney. I couldn’t help it this time; I screamed.
“Oh, I forgot how good this feels,” Heru said. He leaned in, put one burning hand on the side of my face, forced me to look up at him. “That is what makes us different, you and me. We were both born for bloodshed. But I revel in it. I delight in the gifts I was given. The gifts I can take.”
He flung my head back. It ricocheted on the tile, made stars dance across my vision. My fading vision. I struggled to my feet. I couldn’t end down here. Wouldn’t . . .
Another kick. I screamed again. Screamed Chris’s name.
I couldn’t find the dagger. It didn’t matter. But I couldn’t find it.
“Your lover won’t save you,” Heru said. “He has already been broken. By what he has done. By what you have done.”
He kicked. I flinched, rolled over, tried to roll away, but he was before me now, his golden body piercing through my tears like the unforgiving rays of Heaven.
“I must admit,” he said, “Yggdrasil chose you well. You are both broken. You are both worthless. You deserve each other.”
There was a scream then, though not my own. Not one I’d heard. And before Heru could react, Chris was there, and my dagger was in Chris’s hand, and the blade in Heru’s back.
Heru yelled. Light spilled from behind his shoulder blades. I didn’t have time to watch. Chris grabbed my arm. Grabbed me and pulled, and I tried to push myself. To run with him. To leave here.
In the depth of all the pain, relief sparked in my chest as I watched Heru fall to the floor.
We ran toward the door. Chris flung it open. Flung us both through.
But we didn’t step out into the land of skulls. Freyja wasn’t waiting for us by the River Styx.
We were in a circle of light. A circle of light surrounded by heaving blackness. A circle of light broken only by a hospital bed, half in, half out.
“What—” I managed with a gasp. Right before Chris pushed me. The motion so quick, I didn’t have time to register. One moment I stood there, and the next, I was on the bed, and he was strapping my arms and legs to it.
His eyes were rimmed red and his hands shook. But his grip was strong; he pulled the straps tight on my wrists, even as he looked to the shadows of the room. Even as the wails grew louder and his shaking grew stronger. As a metallic tang filled the air. Why was this happening? We’d defeated Heru. We had won. We should be back.
I struggled. Tried to struggle. But my arms and torso were already strapped to the bed—how? How?—and he had moved down to my ankles. I kicked. He caught my foot and slammed it to the bed, yanking a strap over it in one fluid motion. Like he’d done this before.
Fear laced through my chest like poison. I forced away Brad’s face, his laughter. I forced it away, but I didn’t have much force left. Brad laughed in the shadows, and I felt vulnerable in a way that I hadn’t since he’d last touched me.
Focus, I thought, trying to keep the room from shifting back into the school bathroom, the night of homecoming.
“Chris, what—”
“Not again,” he muttered to himself. “Not again.”
He looked at me then, as he tightened my ankles.
“I’m not letting you do this,” he said. “I won’t let you make me hurt her.”
He leaned in closer. “Change back,” he seethed. “Change. Back.”
“Change back,” I grunted. I hadn’t even realized my hand was on her neck until she started to choke. But it didn’t matter, did it? It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her.
It was just a trick. Just another trick.
He thought I would give in. I would be weak. He thought I could be tricked again. That I’d think that it was her I was rescuing, and not another illusion. Another lie. He would make me think I was safe. That I had fled. I had gotten away. But that couldn’t be true, when we were still here. Still here together, so it couldn’t be her. It was him. In disguise. He would trick me. Make my guard ease. And then he would strike. He would peel from her flesh or whisper in my ear, and I would kill her, the shell of her, the memory of her, and he would make me watch. He would make me laugh. He would make me delight in it.
Again. And again.
As he had.
As I had.
Every time, I delighted in it.
He had to be the reason I delighted in it.
“Chris,” Kaira said, gasping. And there was something in her voice. Something that made me flinch back.
Something warm.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no, no.”
I stepped away, toward the center of the light. To get away. It couldn’t be her. Not really. This was a trick. It had all been another trick, and the moment I believed it was real, Heru would come back. He would always come back. He wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be down here. I shouldn’t be down here.
I should. I should.
My foot clanked against metal. I jerked around. Another bed.
“No,” I said again.
My mother was on this table, my father at her side, and she was moaning, and the wailing was growing louder, like somewhere far away the hordes of the damned were screaming out my name. Like Hell itself was after me. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my hands to my ears because I didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to hear it. But it didn’t help. I still heard my true mother begin to scream. Still smelled her blood. Still saw her face constrict in agony as the wails grew louder. I couldn’t hide from them.
Shouldn’t hide from them.
This was your doing. The godchild is born in blood. You were born in blood. Death is the only life you know.
I deserved it. All of it. To remember. They deserved to be remembered. What they did. How they died. For me. From me.
“Chris,” she said, but it wasn’t my mother. It was Kaira. The phantasm of her.
I flinched back again from my name. I wouldn’t fall for this. I wouldn’t let myself believe things were safe. It would only hurt worse.
I’d only hurt her worse. That was why I had to keep her there. On the bed. So I couldn’t hurt her. So she couldn’t escape. If she escaped, I’d forget. I’d hurt her again.
“Damn it, Chris, I’m trying to save you.”
Behind me, my mother began to wail. But she wasn’t alone. I heard my sister crying out from beneath the waves, her words undulating like tides.
Tears formed, but I kept my hands to my ears, stared at the face of my sister in the darkness. Help me, Chris. Why didn’t you try to help me?
“Go away,” I said. I wanted to sob. “You’re not real.”
“I’m real, Chris.” There was a note of fear in Kaira’s voice. I heard her struggle against the bonds. But I didn’t open my eyes. If I looked at her, I couldn’t trust what I’d do. I could never trust what I’d do.
Even without Heru in my head, I couldn’t trust myself. Even if I thought he was actually gone, that I’d managed to escape. I couldn’t trust myself in his absence.
That made it worse.
That made it so much worse.
That was why I had to stay down here. Because I didn’t need him urging me to kill. I was born in blood. I had already found my power there. I would use it again.
“You have to believe me, Chris,” Kaira said. No, not Kaira—the memory of Kaira. Her demon. She’s not real. She’s not real. “I came to save you.”
No, no, I can’t be saved. Nothing can save me.
“I can’t go free,” I told her, told my sister. “For what I’ve done. For what I’ll do.”
“You can,” she said. “I can help—”
“No!” I yelled, my eyes flashing open. I took a step forward, toward her, even as my mother screamed behind me and my dad called out for help. I pushed them away, pushed them down. My veins were filled with rage. For this. For all this. For myself. “I know what you are. What will you make me do this time? Kill you with my bare hands? How about I fall in love with you and then you rip out my heart while my sister watches? Is that it?
Is that what you want? To make me believe it’s okay, so you can hurt me?”
I was near her again. She hadn’t moved from the bed. Hadn’t transformed into anyone else.
Just her.
Just her, and my sister at the edge of the light, and my mother’s muted screams behind us. What a group we were. Here for eternity. Here because I deserved nothing better than misery.
The girl pretending to be Kaira struggled again. She even smelled like Kaira—and what was wrong with me, that I could realize that? That I knew her down to her smell?
“Please, Chris. I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to get you out of here. We have to leave before Heru finds us.”
“There is no out of here!” I yelled, and my hand was on her wrist now. How did that happen? When had I moved? When had the anger overcome? “Don’t you get it? I can’t escape. This isn’t a place. It’s all right here.” I pointed to my head with my free hand. “I’m never getting away from it. I figured it out. I figured it out, you know that? This is what I’ve done. This is what I deserve.”
She shook her head, made the bed shake. Or maybe the nightmare was shifting again. What would it be this time? My sister and I playing in the toy room while it flooded? My mother—my real mother—and my father on their wedding day, her stomach ripe and ready to burst? Or perhaps it would be more of this—Kaira, right in front of me, trying to save me, only to end up dead at my hands.
“Chris—”
“No!” I yelled. “I loved her, damn it. I won’t let you use that against me. I won’t.”
I looked at her, tears in my eyes. I hated her for this moment of clarity. I hated myself for earning it.
“Do you know how many times I’ve watched you die? How many times I’ve killed you?”
She shook her head. Her own eyes were wide. Like she was scared. She should be scared.
“A thousand times,” I whispered. Tentatively, I brushed my fingers over her forehead, slid her hair behind an ear. “A thousand times. And every time, before the shock, there was such happiness. Don’t you get it, Kaira? I want you dead. Some part of me. Every time I killed you, I felt power. And now you’re just going to make me do it again.”