Echoes (Book 1): Echoes

by Caplan, A. M.

  “Not so fast.” Amara clamped her hand across Hannah’s mouth and pressed the muzzle of the gun against her temple. “I know it’s you out there. Enough throwing things around, Asher. Show yourself. I have her and I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in her.”

  Hannah had seen Asher in all the ways she thought possible, but this was a giant raging demon of a man. Streaked with gore, seething with anger, he stepped on the body of the man he had just thrown through the door with an audible crunch and came into the room.

  “Stop right there,” Amara said.

  She squeezed the hand covering Hannah’s mouth and nose. He didn’t look at Hannah, didn’t meet her terrified face. His eyes were fixed on his sister. Amara’s hand was closing off Hannah’s air, the metal of the barrel cutting into her head.

  “Let her go, you evil witch. How many years will you play your vile games, torturing these creatures?” Asher boomed, his voice like the gunshots that had echoed across the stone moments ago. He was a fearsome being.

  “I said stop.”

  Asher had twitched in their direction but froze again. Amara pressed the gun harder, grinding the barrel against Hannah’s skull.

  “I will shoot her. Don’t even doubt it. And I’ll be careful to paralyze her. I can do it, you know how good I am. She can be my juice box for the rest of her short life.”

  That was an option that hadn’t occurred to Hannah.

  Asher dared to take a step.

  “Oh, very good. Very nice. Pretending you don’t care if I torture and maim another one of your women, that this is all about you. You even gave this one the necklace. Christ, brother, can’t you just get a dog or a goldfish or something? They’d last you just as long.”

  Asher’s expression was severe, his eyes hard gray stones. If he felt anything it didn’t show. He continued to stare down at his sister without blinking.

  Gone was the girlish sweet tone in Amara’s voice. “She’s mine,” she hissed. “You think you can take the power from me, you giant waste of flesh? I will end you now, brother. You’ll be the beginning—well, after Gabriel—but now I’ll have time to enjoy killing you for good. I’m going to take my time cutting you into little tiny pieces one last time, and you’ll die knowing I’m going to pump her dry until I’m the last of our kind.”

  The pressure of the barrel let up slightly, the angle shifting. Hannah looked up at Asher. Finally, he looked at her.

  “That’s better, brother. Now what you’re going to do is—”

  Hannah bit down on her tongue, the pain bringing tears to her eyes, her mouth filling with blood. A tear must have reached Amara’s hand where it was clamped over Hannah’s mouth, because she stopped and looked down at Hannah.

  “Oh no, it’s crying. Poor little—”

  Hannah bit her. She sank her bloody teeth into her hand, incisors closing down on the fingers against her lip. The hand jerked away, ripping itself from her teeth, and Hannah spat away blood and bits of flesh.

  “Kill her!” Hannah screamed at Asher.

  The room froze for a second, but before Asher could reach her, Amara launched herself out the window and ran.

  They watched the fire begin to take, turning the black empty windows bright orange with flames. Inside, two people who hadn’t thought about their death in a very long time were being turned to ashes. For better or worse—worse, definitely worse, Hannah thought, one of them had been her father.

  Hannah told Asher what she knew, what had happened, filling in the gaps she could while they watched the fire grow.

  “Are you sorry, about Gabe?” she asked quietly.

  Asher shook his head. “No, I am not sorry about Gabriel. Even if he had not betrayed me, he has had innumerable lives. He made a farce of death, used it as a tool, and never thought he would truly experience his own end. I only regret he chose to live this last life so poorly.” He looked at the flames flowing out the window frames, licking at the roof like red waters flowing upside down. “I am sorry about the others, deceived by my sister. They chose the wrong employ, just normal people who made a poor choice. That did not mean they deserved death.”

  They stepped back from the heat that pushed outward, scorching the ground around them. When the roof began to buckle he turned and she followed him up a long, overgrown drive that curved away from the burning house until it was out of sight, except for the plume of smoke that rose up above the trees.

  “How did you find me?”

  He stopped abruptly at her question, reaching out a hand behind to steady her when she nearly collided with him, immediately snatching it away.

  “I could not. The car pulled away and you were gone.”

  Asher looked at her for a moment. Then she understood.

  He started walking again, still without turning, and as she trailed behind him she turned the thought over in her head. He had ended his life to find her. Asher must have killed himself, taking the chance that once again it would bring him to her, taking the chance that when he did it, it might be for the last time. He couldn’t have know that his end—his true, permanent end—was more possible than either of them had believed. The thought made her shudder.

  Finally they reached the top of the drive, a long empty road in front of them. They paused at the edge of the pavement, nothing visible in either direction.

  “She will be back, you know. One way or another,” Asher said to the empty air.

  Hannah did know. There was no way of telling if Amara was finally vulnerable, or if she was as immortal as she’d always been, just way more pissed off. There was so much that was still pure conjecture.

  There were a great many questions left unanswered, but at least there was a modicum of safety for the present. Yes, Amara would come for her, but it was possible it would be as a human. She would bide her time, not rushing in blindly and risking what might turn out to be the rest of her relatively short remaining time. And if Amara wasn’t human, well maybe that was something Hannah could change.

  33

  Driving away from the house in Savannah, Hannah could see in the rearview mirror the sky beginning its nightly show of summer color over the crown of trees. The day was beginning to give way to the humid heat of evening, and she put down the window and let the breeze blow her hair around her face. She’d cut it, snipping away the uneven, burned ends, trimming away the evidence of what had happened before. In the weeks since, the patterns on the sides of her legs had faded to mere shadows, and there was only the slightest limp if she overdid it. The permanent deep divot in her arm was the only visible mark of the painful past.

  When Asher turned off the road and parked the car at a trailhead, it was dusk, the sky beginning to darken, showing off a palest blue sky with hazy purple clouds, their underbellies tipped in peach and lavender.

  The trail Asher was on was difficult to follow in the ebbing light, and she lost sight of the sky when they passed under the trees. A root grown up into a loop reached for her foot and she stumbled, but his hand steadied her by the elbow, immediately withdrawing. She walked more carefully now, slowing him down, but making sure to keep her footing so he wouldn’t have to help her again.

  Hannah picked her way over the rough ground until all at once it shifted into soft grass tenuously rooted in sandy soil. In the minutes she’d been beneath the cover of the forest, the sky had darkened more, the pale undersides of the clouds now solid swathes of striking purple, the last streaks of turquoise in the sky setting off their color.

  She followed him to the center of this hidden field, uneven in shape and humped like an overturned bowl. He spread out the blanket he was carrying and sat down, motioning for her to sit beside him. Neither spoke for a time, and they sat there silently, side by side, close but not touching, while the sky finished its display, now dove and heather, the tree tops a circle in silhouette around them.

  There was a flicker, a small flash, just to the right of her that made Hannah jerk her head. There was another near her knee. All at once, everywhere a
round them legions of fireflies began their dance, and they were in the midst of a galaxy of stars that orbited them only, blinking into new constellations with every pulse of light.

  They landed on her arms, and she could see the outline of Asher’s face in the flashes, see the shape of him in the changing light. She laughed, startled by a green glow on her nose that made her eyes cross.

  For a long time they sat watching the intricate and unchoreographed ballet, until a pair of fireflies alighted on her knee and she coaxed them onto her finger. Drawing them close to her face, she tried to predict the timing of their lights, but they danced to a tune only they knew.

  Holding her hand skyward, she let them drift away, back into orbit.

  “Fireflies are becoming extinct, did you know?” His voice sounded out in the dark. “It is because of all the manmade light. It interferes with their courtship rituals. They cannot find each other. Generation by generation they fade in the artificial light until the day comes when they will cast no glow, no longer exist.”

  She felt him sit up straighter, leaning toward her but not touching, though she could feel the change in temperature from the nearness; it prickled the hairs on her arms.

  “I have come here many times, but I will live to see a time when there will only be darkness. This gift of nature will be extinguished, and I will watch it die, when the last light fades.”

  For the first time since his very first life Asher needed to fear a permanent death. But he also had the option of human life. Yet he intended to go forward through time. He intended to see the world die, watch the lights blink out one by one.

  She understood then; he’d made his choice. Hannah couldn’t pretend she blamed him, but she couldn’t deny she’d thought things might go differently, that maybe he would choose one last life, one last span of years to count for something different because of its finality. And she had hoped he would choose it with her.

  Silent tears threatened to spill down her face, but she refused to let them, because she was stronger than that. It was silly anyway. If truly faced with death, why would he want to die, or if he had to, spend his final time on Earth with her? She wouldn’t argue her case because he wasn’t wrong. Why risk giving up an eternity to instead wink out of existence? She wouldn’t want it for him, even if he did.

  If the stars aligned and luck let her survive to old age, the most she could hope for was the chance to grow old and wither and die. Being near her might accidentally bring him down with her. It was a miracle it hadn’t already, when he tended her wounds or touched her in the days they spent together.

  She understood why he wouldn’t come close to her now, since he’d learned the truth. Where they’d been drawing closer, there was now a thin but impenetrable wall. He’d put it up. Because she was poison to him.

  They didn’t speak, the dark walk back, the drive down the empty road and to the end of the crushed shell driveway. Hannah had slipped up to bed with only a nod, closing the door behind her and leaning against it, listening to his footsteps fade away.

  Late that night, when the house was silent, dark and still, and the only light came from the moon through a veil of clouds, Hannah slipped through the shapeless shadows in the courtyard. She fingered the pendant for a moment before she left it lying on the edge of the fountain and then she walked out, into the darkness.

  Epilogue

  Hannah carefully pulled the frame from the hive. A single wakeful bee wobbled drunkenly around its edge, and she picked it up gently with her thumb and finger and set it back in the hive. Placing the frame in the tub beside her, she reached for another frame, repeating the process until the tub was full, then lugged it up the hill to the house. She let it slide, heavy with honey, to the floor of the porch with a thud.

  Flopping down into the lone chair next to its tiny table, she took a sip from her lukewarm tea and looked past the hives, across a field of clover to where it rolled down and out of sight into Seneca Lake. In the sun, the blue-black water sparkled with diamond flashes, and sailboats tiny as toys skated across the surface like water bugs.

  Another bee, a sneaky worker who had hitched a ride up the hill, buzzed out of the tub and landed on her arm. She let this one sit, watching it fidget its minuscule front legs.

  “You’re allergic to bees, you know.”

  “Don’t tell the bees that.” Hannah had drawn the gun before she finished speaking, aiming in the direction the voice had come from. There was a figure standing at the far end of the porch, blurred by the reflection from the tall bank of windows.

  “You stay right there.” She leveled the gun and scanned the tree line around her, making sure she wasn’t being hemmed in on all sides. Her phone had only signaled this one intruder, with nothing else showing up on the perimeter sensor. She didn’t see anything to make her question its accuracy.

  “Han,” the man’s voice said, “there’s no way you’re going to shoot me. Put the gun down.”

  That voice.

  She stood slowly, knees bent, weight shifting forward, hands steady on the gun’s grip. The figure took a step forward from the shade into daylight.

  It just wasn’t possible.

  Hannah didn’t twitch, bead locked on the slowly moving target.

  “Now, Han, that’s no way to be,” he said.

  No one else ever called her Han, because she hated it. Except for him. But it couldn’t be him—because he was dead.

  The gun started to wobble and she lowered it slowly as he came out of the blinding reflection. “Uncle Joel,” she said, her voice choked off to a whisper. It wasn’t possible.

  “You need to come with me,” he said. “I’ll explain everything, but we need to go. She’s headed this way.”

  He was dead.

  How was he here?

  Alive.

  Perfect.

  Too perfect.

  He was one of them.

  What will Joel’s return mean for Hannah?

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for reading Echoes. This book is a work of fiction…I think. There are things in this world we haven’t discovered, and possibly, people who have been walking amongst us for longer than we can imagine, unaffected by time.

  No so much for the rest of us, for whom time is of the essence. Thank you for spending some of yours to read Echoes. I would be grateful if you would spend a little more and kindly leave a review here.

  See what Joel’s return means for Hannah in Reverberation, the action-packed second book in the Echoes Trilogy, available on Amazon.

  P.S. Sign up for my email list at amcaplan.com for a personal heads up when the third book in the trilogy Dead Quiet is released.

  Turn the page for a sneak peak at Reverberation!

  1

  Hannah carefully pulled the frame from the hive. A single wakeful bee wobbled drunkenly around its edge, and she picked it up gently with her thumb and finger and set it back in the hive. Placing the frame in the tub beside her, she reached for another frame, repeating the process until the tub was full, then lugged it up the hill to the house. She let it slide, heavy with honey, to the floor of the porch with a thud.

  Flopping down into the lone chair next to its tiny table, she took a sip from her lukewarm tea and looked past the hives, across a field of clover to where it rolled down and out of sight into Seneca Lake. In the sun, the blue-black water sparkled with diamond flashes, and sailboats tiny as toys skated across the surface like water bugs.

  Another bee, a sneaky worker who had hitched a ride up the hill, buzzed out of the tub and landed on her arm. She let this one sit, watching it fidget its minuscule front legs.

  “You’re allergic to bees, you know.”

  “Don’t tell the bees that.” Hannah had drawn the gun before she finished speaking, aiming in the direction the voice had come from. There was a figure standing at the far end of the porch, blurred by the reflection from the tall bank of windows.

  “You stay right there.” She leveled the gun and scanned th
e tree line around her, making sure she wasn’t being hemmed in on all sides. Her phone had only signaled this one intruder, with nothing else showing up on the perimeter sensor. She didn’t see anything to make her question its accuracy.

  “Han,” the man’s voice said, “there’s no way you’re gonna shoot me. Put the gun down.”

  That voice.

  She stood slowly, knees bent, weight shifting forward, hands steady on the gun’s grip. The figure took a step forward from the shade into daylight.

  It just wasn’t possible.

  Hannah didn’t twitch, bead locked on the slowly moving target.

  “Now, Han, that’s no way to be,” he said.

  No one else ever called her Han, because she hated it. Except for him. But it couldn’t be him—because he was dead.

  The gun started to wobble and she lowered it slowly as he came out of the blinding reflection. “Uncle Joel,” she said, her voice choked off to a whisper. It wasn’t possible.

  “You need to come with me,” he said. “I’ll explain everything, but we need to go. She’s headed this way.”

  He was dead.

  How was he here?

  Alive.

  Perfect.

  Too perfect.

  He was one of them.

  Her gun dropped to the porch with a thud. Boneless with shock, Hannah started to wilt into her chair, but Joel caught her up in a bear hug, hauling her back to her feet. Being crushed by arms that were absolutely real was enough to convince her she wasn’t hallucinating. The feeling was so familiar, all flannel and wiry muscles and the smell of coffee and beat-up leather.