by David Estes
And, finally, she knows what she has to do.
She can only hope her next life will come swiftly, before Laney is dead and gone.
~~~
Rhett
There will be no second chance for Laney this time. Maybe for any of us. The ropes that are keeping her alive are twisting and snapping and fraying, the magic being sucked out of them by the president or Charles Gordon.
Trish is in the grip of the giant, who apparently wasn’t as easily killed by the red Changeling as I thought. And I can’t move, petrified like a statue, cursed only with the ability to watch as the world ends.
A dark shadow dances across the edge of my vision. Internally I flinch when the familiar voice hisses in my ear.
“Stuck, are we?” Flora whispers. “The powerful witch hunter can’t move?”
As if things couldn’t get any worse, now I’ve got the Shifter who wants to lick my toes purring and rubbing up against me.
I hope you rot in hell, I try to say.
As if sensing my anger, or maybe fear, she says, “Don’t worry. I won’t bite off any of yowr toes. At least not just yet.” How comforting. “I’m here to help yow.”
Help me how? I wonder, watching as Laney bounces again, her body dipping precariously close to the flames pouring from the tear in the earth. Beneath her, Trish’s face is turning red and puffing out, as if she desperately needs to take a breath and can’t because of Samsa’s hand over her mouth and nose. The tiny Claire’s eyes find mine and time seems to slow and then stop. Her eyes seem to grow bigger and bigger, like ever-expanding black holes, swirling with gray and white mist. I feel the faint sense of falling, and then everything goes black.
Time seems to stretch out before me, like a never ending nighttime highway. I can’t tell seconds from minutes, minutes from hours, hours from days. Life and death seem to blur together in a lightless vacuum. Trish’s voice rings out from above, echoing slightly, as if she’s speaking from a great distance or in a cave.
“I won’t be there for the end, but you will,” she says. If any of her childish innocence remains, it’s hidden behind a voice that’s as confident as a god’s.
I try to speak, to tell her I don’t understand why she’s telling me this, but it’s as if my mouth has been stitched shut. I can only listen.
“Watch and remember,” she says, her voice fading away.
A match is struck, a single glowing ember of clarity in an ocean of darkness. The tiny point of light becomes two and then four and then many more, sprouting up like stars in the night sky. That’s when I realize:
They’re not matches or stars, but torches, illuminating an approaching menace. An army of stalwart warriors, moving robotically with stiff arms and legs, swords and knives blood red under the glow of their lanterns. Somehow, perhaps because of Trish’s influence, I understand their one and only purpose.
To destroy.
With a cold suddenness I’m aware of men and women and children fleeing across a great unbroken expanse toward the lights. Toward the army. If they’re running toward an army, then surely they’re running from something even more fearsome.
Jaws snap. Teeth clash. Growls and barks and far more sinister animal sounds shatter the night, drawing shrieks and screams from the human prey.
I want to move, to draw my sword, to stand and fight for the thousands of souls, but my feet are as frozen as my lips. All I can do is watch. Watch and remember, as Trish instructed.
A panther bounds into view, leaping atop a straggling human—a child.
The moment she screams the darkness returns, swirling away in reverse, as if unwriting itself.
And as I return to reality, I know.
I know.
Trish showed me the future. Although it felt like time had passed, I know it has not. Trish’s magic transcends time. She showed me everything I needed in an instant.
“You,” I say to Flora. “You’re evil.” I’m pointing out something I’ve known from the moment I met the Shifter, but it’s all I can say, all I can think. This witch gets so much pleasure from killing, from destroying.
“I want to tell yow the truth,” Flora says, lowering her purring voice even further. “About how President Washington made a quick stop at another house before she came to yowrs.” I get a sinking feeling in my gut, like it’s me who’s about to be pulled to the bottom of the pit and not Laney. Is this the truth or another of Flora’s lies? “About how she relished squeezing the life out of Beth. Pity she wasn’t able to kill Xavier, too, before the Necros arrived to save him.”
No. Anger burns deep inside me. Petrified like this, it doesn’t have an outlet. President Washington killed Beth. It all makes sense now. Kill Beth. Kill Xave. Kill my foster family. Kill me. She only got two out of four. Plus murdering my mother and cutting out my father’s tongue, not to mention the curse she gave him. It takes this surprising bit of truth from Flora for me to realize a broader truth. Something I should have realized much earlier.
President Washington’s vendetta against me and my family isn’t just business, a way to give her the power she desires. No, it runs much deeper than that. It’s personal.
I don’t have time to think about it though, because the ropes are on the verge of breaking and Laney is about to fall and my world is about to implode all over again and I can’t let it happen, I can’t, I have to force my mind against whatever spell I’m under and—
Flora licks my face. Her tongue is rough and wet, and then she’s gone, bolting through a gap in the White House rubble. Gone.
What. The. Hell. Was. That? I think, wiping the sliminess off my cheek. Blech.
Wait. I wiped the sliminess off my cheek? I moved! I’m free from the spell! And although I want to believe it was the strength of my will and that I was more powerful than the president, I know it was the witch-panther’s tongue that freed me. For whatever reason, Flora, the evil murderer, helped me.
There’s a twangy snapping sound, and even as I push to my feet and charge for Laney I know I’m too late.
She falls into the fiery chasm.
~~~
Laney
The breath leaves my lungs and I feel my stomach drop. My arms flail as I try to grab onto something, anything, but there’s nothing except the severed magical rope, which falls with me in a glowing tangle.
Everything is wrong.
And then I see Trish, her face masked by the giant’s monstrous hand. For a moment, time seems to stop as our eyes meet. I know mine are wide with fear and desperation, but hers are…
Not. They are knowing, certain, as if she’s in complete control, as she has been since the moment Rhett stumbled into our restaurant hideaway.
And she blinks.
There’s a burst of bright white light, which is quickly smothered by a plume of smoke that covers all that’s left of my world.
I expect to be falling for hours, or at least minutes, all the way to the center of the earth, where my body will smash into a thousand pieces, soon to be melted by the heat of the earth’s core. Instead I splash down in mere seconds. Like literally, splash down, into a dark liquid that fills my vision with deep crimson.
I splutter and gag and wave my arms, trying to push myself to the surface of whatever strange, red river I’ve managed to fall into, all the while wondering how I’m still alive.
My lungs heave and I gasp as I break the surface, somewhat surprised when the sun instantly warms my face. I blink rapidly, trying to clear my vision, which is still seeing red spots. All around me is red, as if it’s Valentine’s Day and someone thought it would be clever to dye everything the color of love.
I see the president and the wizard first, who are smiling at me as I swim to the edge of the chasm. Weird. They almost look happy I’m alive.
Then I spot Rhett, who’s somehow able to move again, running over, reaching his hand as far as he can, grabbing my hand, and pulling me onto dry land, where I splutter and cough and take in the strangeness of being covered in red li
quid that almost looks like watered-down ketchup or maybe—
My heart stops. I swear it does.
Because the liquid looks like blood.
It all comes flashing back. The giant’s hand over my sister’s mouth, preventing her from screaming. The confident look in her eyes. The way she blinked, almost deliberately, as if giving me a sign. The bright light, which I now realize was Trish’s body being destroyed from the inside out, by her own force of will. And then the eternally deep canyon was filled with liquid to halt my fall. Red liquid that looks like blood, much more than could ever have run through a single little girl’s veins. And yet it’s exactly how much blood she contained, somehow, as if she represented generations of people sacrificing their lives.
“No!” I scream, whirling around, frantically trying to find her golden locks, her piercing blue eyes, her angel-white dress. Anything to prove to me that I’m wrong, that she’s still there.
Rhett’s arms are around me but I’m fighting him, trying to pull him off, trying to scramble to my feet. “Trish!” I scream. “Trish!”
“Laney,” Rhett says, clamping his arms around me harder, pulling me into his chest, spreading the red on me to his clothes. “I’m sorry, Laney. She’s gone. She saved you. I’m sorry.”
A sob chokes me for a second as I let myself be held, pretending I’m not here, that I’m dead and that I’m the one who saved my sister, not the other way around. And then I hear a voice.
“Bravo,” the president says. The sound of her slow, mocking applause cuts into me like the tip of a hot knife. “A good show, don’t you think?”
I peel my wet face off of Rhett’s chest, realizing why the president was smiling at me when I didn’t die. Because my sister died instead, which was exactly what she wanted in the first place.
“I knew she would sacrifice herself to save you,” the president says. “So predictable. And now I’m free of her for a while, until fate decides to shove her pretty little soul into another body. But that might not be in my lifetime. And even if it is, I’ll just find a way to kill her again.”
Even as I strain against him, Rhett holds me back. “No,” he whispers. “This is my fight.”
“No,” I say. “This is my fight now.” With a surge of energy I twist away from Rhett, slipping through his wet fingers. My Glock is gone, lost somewhere along the way, but I don’t need it because there’s fury in my bones. I charge toward the president, closing in, her smile fading as she raises a hand, pointing a single finger in my direction.
Out of nowhere, Hex bolts past me, leaping high into the air just as a red dart shoots from her fingertip. The dart zips into Hex’s neck and he yelps, slumping to the side. My momentum and renewed anger carrying me forward, I slam into the witch, toppling her over and landing astride her.
With unexpected quickness and strength, she kicks out with both legs, like a kangaroo, forcing me off of her. I tumble away, hitting my head on a stone, stars bursting in front of my eyes and a shockwave of pain rolling though my skull.
I open my eyes and the witch says, “Time to join your sister.”
~~~
Rhett
As Hex lies motionless on the ground, the president’s red—likely poisoned—dart embedded in his fur, and Laney about to be murdered, too, I feel nothing but rage at the woman who’s destroyed so much of what I love in this world, and who still isn’t satisfied—who wants to destroy even more.
And then I can see it. My fury. No longer an intangible feeling stuck inside me, it roars from my mouth in a stream of sound and…a shield? The broad black shield flies from my mouth to Laney, deflecting whatever nasty spell President Washington cast. And though I’m willing it to bounce back and hit the president, instead its angle is such that it flies into Charles Gordon.
The wizard’s eyes go wide and his mouth opens as he clutches at his chest.
That’s when his heart explodes, bursting from his skin in a shower of red grossness that splatters all over President Washington. She turns on me, her expression a mask of rage equal to my own. Looking past me she yells, “Get him!”
I spin to find what’s left of her magic-born army finishing off the last of the Reanimates and Changelings and bounding up the steps toward me. Bil Nez slides in from the side, raising his crossbow even as I grip my sword.
But before the witches and warlocks reach us, Laney appears beside me. There’s a huge lump on her forehead, trickling blood from the center. “Rhett,” she says. “We’ve got this.”
She looks at Bil Nez and he nods, handing her a familiar-looking gun. “Lose something?” he says.
“Thanks,” she says to Bil. Turning to me, she says, “We’ve got you covered. End this.”
Slightly in shock, I hesitate, even as Laney and Bil rush forward, simultaneously firing their weapons into the oncoming magic-born, who lead with a flurry of spells. Bil’s Resistance and Laney’s magical bullets seem to block the spells, cutting through the enemy like a knife through water.
As they collide, Laney’s like a hurricane, tearing through the witches and warlocks, a guttural cry coming from somewhere deep within her. I know I have to trust her and Bil. I have my own part to play.
Sensing her behind me, I turn to face the president.
She’s blood-speckled and narrow-eyed and stalking toward me. Gone is her smile. Gone is her arrogance. All that remains is her evil. She stops just before me, seeming to gaze over my shoulder at the carnage beyond. “You’re coming with me,” she says.
I shake my head. “I’m done listening to you,” I say.
She cocks her head, surprised. “You will listen to me or I’ll kill your girlfriend.”
“You already did that,” I say, fighting off a swell of emotion as Beth’s face fills my memory.
She arches her eyebrows, surprised again. “Who told you?”
“Does it matter?”
“I won’t remove the curse from your father,” she says.
“You wouldn’t anyway,” I say. “Even if I help you get everything you want, you still won’t help my father. You hate him. You hate me. This has always been personal for you, hasn’t it?”
Her expression twists into one that’s bug-eyed and red-faced and not in the least presidential. “You don’t understand anything. This is a game of power. He tried to take away everything from me, tried to turn the Council against me, tried to steal votes, tried to make me look weak and foolish. He was relentless in his efforts to sabotage my plans, to undermine my authority. He would’ve ruined me if I didn’t do something to stop him.”
Enough. I’ve had enough. This pathetic excuse for a woman has caused too much heartache in my life. “I’m sorry, Father,” I whisper under my breath, gripping my sword and my nerve together in a tight spiral.
“What? What did you say?”
I’m done with words. I step forward, my sword arcing for her neck. She raises a hand, which is suddenly encased in a blue sphere, blocking my attack. My arm vibrates at the impact, sending a bolt of pain down my arm. But I’m only getting started, swinging again and again, pushing her back as sparks fly from her blue hand.
At the same time, she mutters spells and curses, flinging them at me with her other hand. I raise a mental shield and throw each attack back. She manages to dodge them, but barely. And then one hits her in the face and she’s thrown back, landing hard and skidding on her back. I push forward, jamming my forearm into her throat, my blade just above it.
She tries to speak, but the words come out garbled. “Your father’s curse,” she says.
I want to believe that this woman could be forced to do what I need her to do, that, with the right amount of pressure or torture or whatever, she’d lift my father’s curse. But I now know she never will and that it’s been a lie from the start.
“This is for my mom and Beth and my foster family. And for Hex, too,” I say, drawing my sword across her throat. I pull away quickly as her mouth fills with blood, pouring from her lips and flowing down to meet th
e line of blood on her neck.
I turn away from what I’ve done, staggering under the weight of it.
Laney and Bil are still fighting, but there’s only a warlock for her and a witch for him. All the rest on both sides are dead, their carcasses basking in the sun. The witch joins them when Bil stabs her in the eye with one of his crossbow bolts. The warlock follows shortly after when Laney shoves the muzzle under his chin and pulls the trigger.
She turns rapidly, her eyes flickering around her, searching for her next victim. Her Glock points at everything and nothing. Finding no one, her eyes meet mine, a shadow falling over them. Her arm falls and she crumples to the ground, like a small broken thing and not the powerful warrior I just witnessed. “She’s dead,” she says, and I know she doesn’t mean President Washington.
“Yes,” I say, meaning both Trish and the president.
Somehow my legs carry me forward, but then they give out and I fold beside her, every bit as broken. “She’s always been there,” Laney says, her eyes wet. “I’m not ready for life after.”
I reach for her and she reaches for me, and though neither of us has any strength left, we offer strength to each other, clinging together in a shattered embrace.
“She’s a Claire,” I say. “She’ll come back eventually.”
“I know,” she says. “But she won’t be my sister again. Someone else’s sister, but not mine.”
I shake my head, press my cheek to hers. “No,” I say. “You’re wrong. She’ll always be your sister.”
“I’m sorry about Hex,” she says suddenly, as if just remembering.
Emotion brims in my eyes, blurring my vision. “Me, too,” I say. “He was the best.”
As she buries her face against my chest and cries and cries and cries, I hold her the way I will forever, my own tears rolling fast and hot down my cheeks.
For the second time today, a wet tongue laps at my face. But this one isn’t rough like Flora’s and is much more slobbery.