The Devil's Poetry

by Louise Cole

  He eventually set me down in a doorway. A road sign pointed to Covent Garden. Everything sounded hollow, and my head throbbed. My legs felt weak, and I slid down the wall. The ground stank of urine. Jace put his back against the bricks, panting hard. When he could breathe easily, he shook his head.

  “Do you ever do what you’re told?” he said.

  I couldn’t tell if he was really cross or trying to deflect me from the horror of what I had witnessed.

  “It was my fault, Jace. Ella’s dead. And all those people. It’s my fault.”

  He sighed and pulled me to my feet. “It happened partly because you read. That doesn’t make it your fault. You didn’t intend this. You couldn’t have known.”

  “She didn’t tell me it could do that. She didn’t tell me.” A shrill note of hysteria edged my voice.

  “We didn’t know it could do that, Callie,” snapped Jace.

  “What?” I became very still.

  Jace rubbed his face with his hands. “For God’s sake, I’m a couple of years older than you. Ella was twenty-five. We were in school the last time this thing was used.”

  He was scared. They had always talked with such confidence about the book, about the reading. Why had it never occurred to me that they were way too young to have ever seen a reading in action? A sudden flare of anger burned inside me at whoever sent these people out to fight their battles without a clue as to what they were doing.

  Jace pulled me against his side, arm wrapped tight around me, and we shuffled along to the first hotel we saw. The manager looked scared when we staggered in, he and his one doorman standing in a fearful huddle by the entrance. He quickly warmed to Jace’s platinum credit card.

  We collapsed onto the bed, and I snuggled against him for comfort. For the first time since I had known him, he seemed panicked. His heart banged erratically against my cheek, and, when he thought I was sleeping, he shook with silent tears. My hand crept out and lifted his close to me. I kissed it and held it against my wet face.

  ***

  When I woke, Jace was already up, swaying through some martial arts exercise in the small space outside the bathroom. I slipped past him and stood under a hot shower. The water stung my skin, but I didn’t move. I cried for Ella and for Gavin. I cried for my mother. I cried for me.

  When I finally shut off the water, I felt clean and empty, inside and out. I still had a searing headache, though. I downed two painkillers from Jace’s pack and pulled on a shirt and pants, my skin still damp and my hair dripping down my back.

  Jace lay on the bed, sipping coffee. He handed me the cup, and I drank a little then handed it back.

  “Don’t judge Ella too harshly,” he said suddenly. “She did care about you. She just cared about the world more. She believed what she was doing was right.”

  “I didn’t like her,” I replied. “But I didn’t want her to die.”

  He caught my hand and kissed the palm. Sorrow snagged in my chest.

  “Who do you think he is?” I asked.

  “Who who is?”

  I quirked an eyebrow at the clumsy construction. “The sniper. He’s not Cadaveri, is he? So where does he come into this?”

  Jace shrugged. “I guess we have to assume the Order has more enemies than we knew.”

  “It makes no sense.” My voice was so small. How could it have unleashed havoc when it could barely carry across a room? “Jace?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do I do now?”

  “We leave. We get as far away from the fighting as possible.”

  I swallowed. I supposed I could leave now that Ella was dead. It was such a horrible thought that her death had in some way released me from this burden. “And when I’m safe? What will you do then?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Will you go home?”

  He shook his head. “I was at college. Stanford. Seems a lifetime ago.”

  “I thought you were a soldier.”

  “I was.” He swirled the coffee in the mug. “Miles and I left the Marines to join the Order together. When there isn’t a world crisis”—he gave a twisted smile—“I study.”

  “You won’t go back there?”

  He shook his head.

  I couldn’t frame the words. In the end, I just asked, “Why?”

  He looked at me for the first time. “Because you’ll never be safe.”

  My legs folded beneath me.

  “Are you scared?” he asked. “Because you shouldn’t be. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not scared. I’m lost, Jace. I’ve been lost for so long.”

  “Not with me,” he whispered. “With me, you’re found.” And he held me so tightly, like he was never going to let go.

  ***

  I woke to find all our stuff packed. Jace held out my jeans.

  “We need to go.”

  I pulled them on. “How long did I sleep?”

  “An hour. Maybe a little more.”

  Jace flicked the remote to switch on the TV. The newsreader seemed impossibly calm as he spoke.

  “The India-Pakistan peace talks suffered a massive setback last night as some of the delegates came to blows. Troops are massing on the India-Pakistan border in anticipation of the talks failing to produce an agreement. Chris McCowan has more.”

  “Thank you, Ravi. The peace talks seemed doomed last night after fights broke out, and the Indian delegation left Canada House vowing not to return. UK diplomats say they are using all possible measures to bring the delegates back to the table, but violence is already erupting on the Asian borders. As you know, politicians fear this region will polarize everything. Soon, we may not have specific regional wars but a global conflagration.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. That was me.”

  “Callie, calm down.” Jace was off the bed, trying to hold me, but I whirled out of his arms.

  “I did that. I wrecked the talks.” I looked at him, the true horror breaking over me like a rainstorm. “Jace, I think I’ve started the apocalypse.”

  Chapter 25

  Jace took out his phone. “The Order has ties into the political community, connections with diplomats and statesmen. Maybe someone can help.”

  I wasn’t listening. “I have to read again.”

  “No.” Jace’s eyes grew wide. “Callie, you tried. It didn’t work. You could make it worse.”

  “No,” I said. I thought fast. “No, I don’t think I will.”

  “Why would it be different this time?”

  “I feel differently now. Emptier. Less . . . confused.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Well, gee, we can all breathe a sigh of relief then. A little less confusion should just about do it.”

  I bristled. “I know why it went wrong. Ella tried to explain to me that the text comes alive when the Reader feels it. Really feels it. Like you pour all of your own feelings and experience into the words.” I gave a slightly hysterical laugh. “Last night, what I was feeling . . . I think all my pain twisted it, made it dangerous.”

  “Why would that not happen again?”

  I sought the words. “I walked through it all last night. The darkness. The pain. I don’t need to again. I’m done with it. There’s more to me than just sadness and grief.” I took his hand in mine. “I can do this.”

  “I don’t want you to do it.”

  “I know,” I said softly. I didn’t want to lose him, either.

  “Stay with me, Callie. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  It was so unfair. Life was so unfair. I knew that now. There’s beauty and glory and love in this world but very little justice. If there were, my mother and Ella would be alive, my father would have had a lifetime of love, and Jace and I . . . maybe we would have had a chance.

  “Do you want to die?” he hissed at me.

  “Of course I don’t. I want you!” I yelled. The words shocked me, but there was no point in secrets and silence anymore. Jace said nothing.

 
“I want you,” I said. “But that’s not going to happen, is it? Because we aren’t going to have a life, or get to know each other the way people do. We would always be running. If I wasn’t in danger, you wouldn’t even be here. Besides,” I said, rubbing my aching head, “I think I have to do it again. It hurts, Jace.”

  He frowned. “What does?”

  “The book. I opened myself to it, and now it’s like I can’t close it again. It’s there in my head, pushing.” I dropped down onto the bed. “If the reading isn’t finished . . .” I shrugged. “I don’t know what that will do to me.”

  “Well, reading to the end will kill you. So not reading has to be better than that.”

  We sat in tense silence. Finally, Jace got up and watched the street through the window.

  “How does it kill you? Exactly?” I asked in a small voice. I felt like I should know.

  Jace shook his head. “I don’t know, Callie. I think it’s about how much energy one person can handle. You’re tapping into a primal source. It’s just too powerful.”

  Like electrocution. Or being hit by lightning. But slow. Slow enough for you to read before your synapses burned out and your heart stopped beating. “So not something a doctor could fix? Even today?”

  He shook his head. “I think the energies released by the book are too great for one mind, one body to bear. Maybe if there were an army of Readers sharing the burden . . .”

  I took a breath and reached out to him, taking his hand. “God, I can’t believe we’re talking about this.”

  “We shouldn’t be. We should walk away.”

  “You know that’s not right.”

  “Don’t talk to me about what’s right,” he snarled. “My job is to protect you. Yours is to protect the world. We can’t both do what’s right.”

  “Your job is to protect me until I read.” I pushed in front of him and made him look at me. “You have to stop thinking of me as some child, Jace. I’m not. I’m not powerless. You have to do your job and let me do mine.”

  He raised a hand to my face but let it fall away before he touched me. “I don’t think of you as a child,” he said, turning away.

  I took a deep breath. “It won’t be as simple as affecting the people around me this time. I need to reach as many people as I can.” I reached out a hand. “Will you help me?”

  “I can’t.” Jace pulled on his jacket. “I’m sorry, I really can’t.” And he left.

  I missed him the minute he was out the door. I rubbed the tears out of my eyes with an angry hand. I had no time to feel sorry for myself.

  I took out the book and stroked its cover. Help me. Tell me what to do. I pored over the pages. I already knew it by heart, each serif letter, every self-important capital. Even the images glistened in my mind, every golden apple, snarling lion and curling snake sliding through the grass. It was a mosaic of life, and all that went with life, all the harsh truths that made it possible. Evolution and extinction, hunger and prey, power and terror, consciousness, and the terrible loneliness that walks at its heel.

  I tried to remember everything Ella had said to me. The Reader holds the balance. The book must be poured through the mind of a person from that generation. From that time. So it made sense to people.

  It wasn’t hard to see where I had gone wrong. There had been no balance in me last night. I remembered the cemetery and the tomb door banging in the night. A cold sweat broke on the back of my neck. No. I could choose differently. I would never go there again. My world, my rules.

  But I still didn’t know how to project any of it to others.

  I paused to watch the news unfolding on TV. “Reports of racial violence and rioting are coming in from major cities across the UK,” read the reporter. “We go now to Salim Makir, in Birmingham. Salim, what’s happening?”

  I flicked channels. The same thing was happening all over: Manchester, Liverpool, London—at this rate, the country would tear itself apart.

  Jace reckoned my riot hadn’t extended more than a mile past Trafalgar Square, so these fights weren’t down to me. Shame. If I’d had the juice to start them, maybe I could have fixed them, too.

  I wondered if the Cadaveri were at these places, filling people with their rage and despair. The thought was like a crushing weight against my lungs. All the people I loved, all the people who didn’t even know they depended on me, could have their lives ruined by this. I thought of Joe holding his MoD letter, remembered them all in uniform, saying goodbye to their families. How many would come home again? One in three? One in two? And those who did come home would never be boys again. I thought of Miles’s and Jace’s expressions when they’d carried Richie into the house. Grief was too small a word for what they’d felt.

  Or would there just be bombs that leveled cities and poisoned the air for generations?

  The newsfeed had switched to the first wave of the national service recruits. A platoon of young men and women were standing on the concrete of some air base, a fighter jet in the background. They had new uniforms that didn’t quite fit and nervous expressions. Some of the boys were standing to attention, trying to look like men, but most just looked scared. I didn’t recognize any of them, and yet, I realized, I knew them all. They were Joe and Alec. They were us.

  I bit my tears back so hard it felt like my eyes had teeth. They stung, but the tears refused to be stayed.

  I sobbed in the chair as the morning gave way to afternoon. I missed Jace. I missed my life. And if I didn’t sort myself out soon, I’d miss my one opportunity to put anything right.

  Breaking news reported the talks would have one more session. The world was holding its breath.

  I heard the door open. Jace pulled me up out of the chair. “I’m sorry I bailed. I didn’t go far.” He gave a rueful smile. “I can’t. I won’t leave you.”

  “I’ve made a decision,” I told him. “According to the news, the talks will last until midnight. If I haven’t come up with a better plan before 9:00 p.m., I’m doing it here. I’m reading the damn thing straight off and seeing if it works.”

  Chapter 26

  “I need to make a call,” Jace said and slipped out of the room.

  On the TV, some talking head was assessing the likelihood of nuclear war. I picked up the book. I had no idea how to reach enough people to stop this all from tumbling down around us. Maybe I should go up high somewhere and pour it all out into the wind, into the ether. It would feel like scattering my own ashes.

  My gaze fell on Jace’s laptop, sticking out the top of his holdall. I wondered how I could not have thought of it before. It was so obvious. I could use the Internet to reach people. Use social media somehow. Amber’s voice echoed in my head: “You’ve never used Facebook, Callie You’ve never been that normal.”. Well, I could try.

  The pain in my head spiked, and, for a moment, I was flying over a canyon. A metallic voice in my ear said, “Target acquired. Locked on.”

  I gripped the edge of the table hard enough to hurt and pulled myself back to the room. “Not yet,” I told the book. “You can’t have me yet.”

  I tugged the laptop from the bag and placed it on the empty desk. Cautiously, I turned it on. The screen flickered and froze. I smacked the keyboard. It was no good. Cyberspace had shut me out.

  ***

  Jace was to the point. “She’s going to try again. I need to know if there’s any way to save her.”

  “It’s too late, Jace. Your little girlfriend has driven us all to the edge of hell.” The senator’s voice lashed like a whip. “What in God’s name were you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking we have one more chance,” snapped Jace. “But I don’t want her to die.”

  “Saving the Reader is not our priority. Her life is the price for ours. It’s always been that way.” Senator Pierce blew out heavily. Jace thought he could smell the cigar smoke wafting through the phone.

  “Ella’s dead.”

  There was a small silence. “Have Miles fetch the body. Let’s finish
this thing.”

  “I have to try to save her,” said Jace.

  “No. You don’t,” the senator replied. “The reading happens, the girl dies, our assets come home. Are we clear?”

  Jace disconnected the call. Whatever happened today, he wasn’t going home.

  ***

  It was no good. I rebooted, turned the power on and off, hit the arrow keys like a frantic gamer. The laptop simply sat there, immobilized by my electrostatic charms. I picked up the book and smashed it onto the keyboard.

  “Hey, why are you beating up my laptop?” Jace shut the door quietly behind him.

  “Because it isn’t bloody working, that’s why. I can’t work anything.”

  “Let me see.” He reached around me to the keyboard and tried to reboot it.

  “I’ve already done that.” I stood up and turned around. The laptop could wait. “Jace, I-I know this isn’t fair. It’s not the time. But I need to know.” I took a ragged breath. “Would you have loved me . . . if things were different?”

  His eyes were so deeply green, like pine in shadow. I slid up onto the table to reach his mouth and kissed him, softly. I ignored the laptop and the book beneath me and focused on the roughness of his skin, the softness of his lips. He pulled back.

  “You need to see this,” he said.

  “What?” I spun around, but there was only a blue screen. Jace put his arms around me and kissed my hair. And I saw it: his image, all green eyes and crooked smile, burned into the monitor. I sprang down, unsure what this meant. The screen went blank. I carefully put my hand on the keyboard and another on the book. Nothing.

  “I don’t know how to make it work,” I whispered.

  He bent his face to mine and kissed me again, the tip of his tongue running just inside my mouth.

  There it was. His image burned into the screen. “Now do you know?” he asked.

  “It’s picking up what I’m thinking. But only when I have contact with the book.” The implications tumbled through my mind. “I’m projecting, like Ella said, but into the computer. No wonder they’ve always fried near me.”