Frankengoon stopped his car and told me to get out.
"Good, good," Knacke said when he saw us. "All together again. Now we can finish this up. All's well that ends well." He hawked up a gob of blue fire.
Frankengoon took me by one arm and Scratch took me by the other. They dragged me forward and threw me at Knacke's feet.
Knacke made a broad gesture and a ring of flame licked around me, there on the sidewalk. It burned at my legs. I choked on the foul, oily fumes.
Only then did Relly break his mimic trance. With a sweeping motion of his arm, he seemed to gather up the flame, take it into himself. In a second it was gone. Only the faint wisps of smoke remained. And they were soon swept over the river gorge and were gone.
Knacke laughed, the way a grownup might laugh at a little kid's cute trick. "Didn't I tell you, Zee? He's nothing compared to me." A jet of flame roared out of Knacke's outstretched hands. He aimed over my head. This was all for show. He was still trying to convince me that I should join him and his tetrad.
"He's a pitiful little cigarette lighter. And I am the sun!" As though he'd flicked a switch, his face lit up brilliant as a car's headlight. "He's a little crumb of rust and I am a globe of burning gold."
Now Scratch and Frankengoon had Relly by the arms, dragging him to the edge of the bridge.
"He has promise. I don't deny that. He has the power," Knacke said. "But I have a thousand times more. And when you've linked yourself to us, Zee, then we shall defeat death itself."
Relly seemed to give up. No more fire from him. No more resistance.
"Dearly beloved," Knacke said, like he was a preacher and this was some evil wedding. "We are gathered as gods to welcome our fourth. We have come here to complete our tetrad. We have our offering and we have our newest, truest, youngest power."
I was in a daze, I guess. I listened and I watched. But this was all so unreal. I think part of my brain just shut down. Knacke's plan was clear now. They were going to toss Relly into the gorge as a human sacrifice. Right here where the ghost of the canal crossed the shadowy river. One was gone and the other was in darkness, though I heard the rushing black water. Right here at this place of power in the middle of the city.
Here the four directions crossed. North and south—the river. East and west—the canal.
Here was the perfect place to sacrifice one young god and welcome another.
The snow blew above our heads, parting and closing like gauzy curtains. I looked across the river. And as the whiteouts faded for a moment, there was the statue in the sky. A Mercury made of copper. A heavy metal god floating in the blizzardy air.
Frankengoon and Scratch had Relly up on the stone ledge now, ready to push him into nowhere. The river surged on below, secret and inky black. The sound was beautiful and horrible too. So much power, an endless north-rushing flood.
"We offer up this boy. We offer up his fire as a sacrifice." Knacke was yelling now, though his voice was swallowed up quickly by the wind. "We offer him up to open the way for our fourth. As he is taken by the river, so shall our Zee be taken by us. Welcome, Zee." He reached for my hand.
Four
"YOU PROMISED," I WHISPERED. "You said if I joined you, then Relly would be safe. You promised."
He clapped his hands to shut me up. Sparks blew out from his fingertips. Again, I tried to argue. And he yelled me down, his awful growls turning to flame in midair.
Knacke made a claw of one hand and dragged it downward. He left four glowing marks that hung like luminous ribbons. He snarled and I thought he would turn into a beast right there. A mad dog with fiery breath.
"Now?" Frankengoon asked.
"Now?" Scratch repeated, pressing Relly backward over the abyss.
"Now," Knacke said.
The squeal of tires and the drumming of a powerful motor broke the ritual moment. There, coming at us down Broad Street was the Buttmobile, like a black hammer slamming through the white veils of snow.
Butt aimed his van straight at us, like he wanted to smash us all, throw us plummeting into the gorge.
Knacke screamed, Scratch howled, Frankengoon groaned the word No like a foghorn blast.
Butt pounded his brake pedal and threw open the side door. He leaned out, grabbed Relly, and yanked him into the van. I heard Jerod's voice too, yelling for me to follow.
I guess the fever came back to me in a burning wave. Because what I saw next seemed so unreal, and what I did was impossible. Fearless now, or maybe so crazy that fear didn't even count, I grabbed the four quivering ribbons of light out of the air and whipped them across Knacke's face. I felt pain, real and intense, going deep. But it was like my hand was not connected to my brain. It just grabbed. I lashed Knacke with those four burning whips and he fell back, snarling like a wild animal.
When my blurred daze fell away, I was in the Buttmobile, speeding with my three friends away from the bridge.
Relly was in bad shape, real bad shape. He'd looked at death and death had looked back at him. The abyss had been ready to take him. And he'd been ready to go. Now he was safe again, at least for a little while. Only it was like that black emptiness was still looming before him.
Butt had his foot to the floor. The van was shaking and tires whined as we took the snow-slicked corners. I was with Relly in the back, holding him, trying to get him all the way back to us. He shook. And this made me hold on tighter, like maybe I could draw some of the fear and the fire into myself.
"We're in big trouble!" Jerod yelled. "They're right behind us."
Relly's shakes started in again, worse than before. "There's no way," he whispered. "We're dead. We'll never get away from them."
Through the van's muddy rear window came two powerful streams of light. There was Knacke's car, with all three of our enemies in it. Their faces looked like white rubber masks, bulging and twisting in rage.
Five
"RELLY!" BUTT YELLED BACK. "Do something. Now! He's cooking the engine." Butt pointed to a dial on the dashboard. The little orange needle was tapping all the way to the right. "We'll burn up in about two minutes."
Relly crawlad to the front. Already the smell of roasted rubber and scorched metal filled the van.
Wisps of poisonous green steam floated from under the dashboard.
"Do something!"
Relly tried to concentrate on the van's motor, drawing out the excess heat. He started to sweat and shake again. I put my arm around him, but drew back quickly. "Stop it! This isn't going to work. It'll kill you," I said. His fever cooked right through his coat. It hurt, bad. And it scared me. But I went back and hugged him again. Fever came out of him like venom from a snakebite. Out of him and into me.
Now smoke was billowing from under the hood. I could hear the heat gauge ticking like a bomb. Relly let out a breath that stunk of car exhaust.
"We're dead," he said. "We'll never escape them."
A sudden bloom of red light filled the windshield.
"It's on fire!" Butt yelled and slammed on the brakes. "Out! Out! Get out now!"
He lunged from the driver's seat. I yanked crazily at the door handle. "Come on!" Butt was shouting. Flames shot from the van's front end. I stood there looking stupidly at the broken lever in my hand.
Relly finally came all the way out of his trance. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me from the van.
We hadn't run far when the whole van was swept into a ball of flame. "Let's go!" Jerod yelled, shielding his eyes.
The van had come to rest right at the front gate of Mount Hope Cemetery. The hills, the bare trees, the endless ranks of white stones faded in and out of the snowstorm.
Mount Hope was locked up for the night. Relly, me, and Jerod were skinny enough to squeeze between the iron gates and flee inside. Butt, being a lot bigger, couldn't get through. He rattled the bars frantically, spitting curses.
Now Knacke's car had pulled up right behind the van. As the headlights died, the fire suddenly stopped, like it had been sucked into a gaspin
g hole in the earth.
All three of us were yanking on the gate now from the inside. "Under. Under!" I yelled. Butt threw himself to the ground and crawled beneath the rusty bars. His coat caught and ripped. But he made it through.
We were in Mount Hope, and for a few minutes at least, the spiked iron fence would protect us from Knacke and the others.
"Come on!" I shouted, and we ran up the cobblestone roadway into the graveyard.
Six
WE REACHED THE TOP of the first hill. Below us, Knacke struggled to break through the gate. Flames seethed from his hands. Even from a distance, the groan of old melting iron was sickening.
In the olden days, Mount Hope was called the Beautiful City of the Dead. But that night, it seemed more like an entire country. There were hundreds of little hills, roadways that led everywhere and nowhere. Below, in the first valley, a few dozen tombs were laid out like an ancient stone village. In the other direction stood arches of stone, pyramids of stone, eight-sided shafts, and tiny stone churches.
"We can't win," Relly panted. "There's no point in running." No matter where we fled, our tracks would be perfectly clear to Knacke.
I paused a minute, turning inside myself. I was a god of water. Underground streams, yeah. The river, yeah. But also snow and ice. I let myself feel the water pouring through me. And I let myself feel the icy wind. Soon the snow was ten times thicker in the air. And our tracks were blotted out.
We ran on, into the hills where two hundred thousand people lay in eternal sleep.
I saw a tree stump full of water, like a rotted black cauldron. I saw a carved angel whose arms had fallen off and whose face had dissolved. Still, I could tell she was looking heavenward. I saw rank after rank of stones like soldiers hunched over in the drifting snow.
Knacke got through the gate and aimed his car up the first rattling brick roadway. I heard him somewhere behind us. Then I saw the bright jets of his headlights poking through the empty branches above us.
"We're dead, we're dead," Relly moaned. "We can't outrun a car."
"No, but we can hide far from the road."
He stopped, blowing on his fingers and stamping his feet. "We'll die of the cold or they'll get us. What difference does it make?"
"I don't get it," I said. "Why, after everything we went through, why are you giving up?"
"Because you did."
"What are you talking about?"
"You sold us out! You agreed to join up with Knacke."
"That was to save you!" I yelled. "I thought if I went with them—"
Relly tripped and went headlong into the snow. I grabbed for his hand, but he slapped it away. "You gave up on us," he hissed at me.
"I did not! I was trying to save your life."
We looked down at the marker that had caught his foot. It was a dissolving white lamb, a gravestone for a little child. "Just one year old," I said. "Didn't even have a name. 'Our Baby.'" For a hundred and fifty winters, the lamb had stood guard over this spot.
"We should just give up," Relly said. "I'm freezing to death. I can't keep going all night." He rolled onto the grave and rested his head on the lamb like it was a pillow.
I'd read somewhere about people freezing to death, how they get warm first and sleepy. "You got to keep moving," I said. "Come on. It's not much farther."
"What's not much farther? More graves, more snow?"
"Shhh!" Butt said.
The wind died suddenly, as though commanded to lie down. Footsteps were approaching. Three men, three old killer gods, coming at us from three directions.
Seven
WHITE SPECTERS LOOMED AROUND US. Winged angels, weeping angels, angels in triumph, and angels overwhelmed with sadness.
I peered into the snowy gloom and saw Frankengoon. He reached out, as though his arm might stretch over a hundred graves and grab me. I caught Jerod's eye. For a second, our minds locked and we pulled down more snow from the sky, a sudden howling blast. Then a force from the darkness fought back and made the winds quiet again.
"Jerod!" I shouted. I looked around frantically for him. But he'd fled, driven off by Frankengoon's far greater power. So it was just him against me, young water against ancient air. If anyone had been watching, all they would've seen was a kid cranked down inside herself and a huge hulking old man. He was grabbing at the sky like he could command the winds to do his will. I was hunched over, drawing up the water of the earth.
Up and down, it didn't make any difference now. A river seemed to flow in the sky. Snow and sleet seemed to rise from the ground. God or girl? Man or monster? Fever cooked my brain, set my blood simmering. Icy wind and burning breath—I couldn't tell the difference.
Knacke emerged from the blowing darkness. Both his hands were full of flame. And his eyes too, like two tiny suns. He yelled at us, only it wasn't words. The sound came out as a fiery viper's tongue. Snowflakes pelted the tongue, hissing into dots of steam.
I went toward Knacke, ready to fight even if it meant dying. "Zee!" Relly yelled. "Back off!" He was himself again, calling up a last flicker of inner flame to protect me.
Knacke met him, old fire struggling against new. The last battle of the burning gods. It was beautiful, like the dance of two creatures made of rushing flame. And at the same time, it was awful to see, each one fighting to draw the life, the light, the heart's fire, out of the other.
Where they fought, the snow ran away in dark streams.
"Water plus earth," I whispered. Then louder, to Butt. "Water plus earth equals mud." I grabbed him, yelling, "Do it. Now!"
He understood. We'd done it before. Now together we melted the side of the hill. I mean it got soft, oozy, unstable. A sick groaning came from below us, as though the hill itself was in pain. Trees started to tilt over. Gravestones tipped and slid. Great slabs and shoulders of mud began to collapse downward. Shouts and curses. Fire and smoke. Rivers of mud like the blood of the earth poured out. A huge grave marker leaned, then fell and took a few trees with it.
Now coffins were poking out of their holes. Dripping webs of tree roots grabbed at the empty air. A chunk of iron picket fence slid down the muddy hill like a sled with no rider.
Falling, I grabbed for Butt. Only he was already gone, pulled into the muck. Knacke and Relly, Scratch and Frankengoon, too. I was the last one standing.
Right below me, a coffin slid from its ancient hiding place. The lid caught on a huge root and was thrown aside. I saw a pale gray dress, like something woven out of spider thread. I saw a bony white face and long hair.
Then I lost my footing and was gone, like the others. Down, down, down.
Eight
THE FEVER SAVED ME, I guess. The poison heat I'd drawn out of Relly's body kept me alive while I lay there in the rising drift.
Snow was falling again. Not snow called by battling gods. But regular, real, normal snow.
I went in and out of feverish dreams. I'm dead, I thought. This is what it means to be dead. Perfect silence. Cold and hot at the same time. Lost, alone, nowhere.
Did I escape from that snowy grave like a ghost? I don't know. But I did rise and walk. I'm sure I left that place at the foot of the hill. Maybe my spirit came out from my body. Maybe some part of me split away. Or maybe the fever and the fight had made me completely crazy.
Whatever it was, however you explain it, I started moving in the snowstorm after my body came to rest.
A grave lay open. The coffin was empty.
I looked at myself and saw a long dress from the olden days. Gray tatters. My hands were thin as bone. I took a deep breath and heard an empty rattle.
Before me was a stone that read SILENCE LOUD. Before me was her grave, a gaping hole.
Now deep in earth, this bed of sighs
I wait till I, like fire, shall rise.
The poem was true. She'd risen, and I'd risen, like fire. Not leaping flames, but a slow, powerful glow.
I was alive and I was her. I was me, Zee, the girl who never talked. And I was Sil
ence too, awakened from her long sleep.
The air, swirling with snow, seemed to glow. All was peace and stillness. A beautiful silence had fallen on Mount Hope.
I was both dead and alive. Me, Zee, and she.
For a minute, or maybe an hour, I stood in the falling snow. Or maybe it was forever. Or only a second. I don't know now. It's all a brilliant blur, my memory cooked with fever and frozen by the winter air.
I stood there, we stood there. Surprised to rise. Me and she. The girl dead over a hundred years and the girl dead for five minutes.
There in the swirling snow was a black carriage and two black horses. People with black streamers on their hats and sleeves stood in a little circle. Mourners, I thought. They've come to see their Silence buried.
Mother and father, brothers and one sister. A preacher. Friends and distant relations. All there to see Silence Loud lowered into the grave.
"Wait," I said, but no one heard me. "Wait for me. I will be back someday."
Then something shifted. A deeper glow was burning in the blizzard. The people and the hearse flickered out of sight and I knew these were just Silence's last memories. Her spirit had hovered there in Mount Hope and seen her people lay her to rest.
The glow grew stronger, like a searchlight burning through heavy fog.
This brilliant fire was no memory. It was real. And it found me out.
"You," came Knacke's knife-edge whisper. He paused between every word. "You ... will ... pay ... with ... your ... life."
That almost made me laugh. What was he going to do? Kill somebody who was already dead?
I went toward him. Silence and me, together, we went bravely to meet Knacke's last eruption of fire.
Straight at him. A rickety body that had been in the ground for almost two hundred years. We swayed and tottered. But we did not fear him anymore.
He was yelling now, I suppose. Curses and threats that had no power. He had gathered his flame for one final, awful blast. It came and it hurt worse than anything I'd ever felt. But it didn't stop us, me and Silence.
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