by E. J. Mellow
A smile inches across his lips. “Clever invention, isn’t it?” He raises his arm, showcasing the band more clearly. “And it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ll make sure to tell Dev good-bye for you. And for what it’s worth, I truly am sorry you only turned out to be a means to an end, but we all have our roles to play, don’t we? This just turned out to be yours.” Without another word, he lunges forward, but I spin away before he can grab me, and buy some time by manifesting a large rock. It thwaks him in the side of his torso, throwing him off balance. I can’t affect his body directly with my powers, but another object will do just fine. He grunts with the impact but rights himself quickly. Readying my stance, I prepare to imagine whatever is needed for that knife to stay very, very far away from me. He takes a step forward again, but just a quickly stills as he glances beyond me.
“Molly? What’s going—”
Stupidly, I turn to the sound of Dev’s voice, and in that instant lose everything. In my second of averted attention, Dr. Marshall grabs me in his vise grip and swings me in front of his body, my back to his front. With one hand wrapping around my neck, he angles the knife with the other just below my fourth rib—directly at my heart.
With my breath coming out in panicked gasps, I take in the man before us. Dev stands, face leeched of all color, looking as if he’s staring at a ghost. “Aaron?”
And there it is, the last puzzle piece I knew would fit but was too terrified of what would be created if I allowed myself to place it.
Dr. Marshall is Aaron, Anebel’s Aaron, the supposedly dead Aaron. The world tilts, and my body begins to shake with the adrenaline rushing through it. If I weren’t connected to the machines back home, I would definitely have woken up by now. The clusterfuck of this moment mixes rage into my terror.
The surprise in Dev’s face quickly evaporates as he takes in the situation. His gaze becomes a storm cloud of fury as it focuses on the threat positioned at my chest. “Let her go.” His voice is low, a warning.
“Long time, Devlin.” Aaron’s grip tightens around my throat, and I hold back a squeak. “It seems I found something of yours that you care about very much. Isn’t that rather amusing, how quickly you’ve moved on to the next pretty little thing. And she is pretty, isn’t she?” His hot breath grates along my cheek. “Do you think she’s as pretty as Anebel? Hmm, do you?” He shakes me by the neck, and I grow momentarily dizzy. His crazy is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, and I’m still in shock that this is the same man I met in the hospital. If I wasn’t presently scared out of my mind, I might actually feel sorry for him. But there’s no room for sympathy when you’re being held by knifepoint, especially by a Conscious knifepoint.
Dev’s eyes remain calculating. “If you have an issue with me, then fight me. Leave Molly out of this.”
“But don’t you see? This is fighting you, my friend. She’s the perfect weapon. A heart for a heart.”
Dev frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play stupid! Anebel should have been mine. She should have been with me.”
Icy eyes penetrate the man whose nails have begun to cut into my skin. “If I remember correctly, she was with you that night.”
Aaron gasps, his hold momentarily loosening before— “It’s your fault she’s gone!” A spray of his spittle dashes along my neck, and I squeeze my eyes shut, tears of terror beginning to run down my cheeks, his claws once more digging in. “She always wanted to impress you. I told her we shouldn’t go there. Not alone, but she was cocky, like you taught her to be. She risked us running into all those Metus because of the stupid way you two competed. She would still be here! Right here!” A sob mixes with his fury.
There’s a flash of pain in Dev’s features followed by regret, as if he’s already drawn this conclusion on his own, has already gone through that stage of blame and grief. “I miss her too,” he says softly, “but I’m not the enemy here, and you shouldn’t make yourself one either. We’re in the middle of a war. We need the Dreamer now more than ever, and if you truly loved Anebel, you would know she’d want you to help put an end to it with us.”
“You have no idea what she would have wanted! She told me things only she and I understood, only she and I shared. You never loved her like I did, never!”
The expression of pity in Dev’s gaze quickly transfers to rage. “Do you think she would have wanted you to grow mad? Look at yourself. What have you been doing all this time? Hiding away and brooding over what could have been? She’s gone, Aaron. Gone! You must accept it, like we all have.”
“Dev.” I hiccup in warning as Aaron’s grip begins to smother my windpipe. Reel it in, I plead with my eyes.
“Why must I accept it?” he hisses. “Why are we forced to never mourn our dead? Humans do! The very humans we live to protect and fashion our lives after. Why is this custom then lost on us? No! I will not accept her death. She deserves better than that. She deserves to be avenged.”
Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart pounds in my ears as I desperately try to affect him with my powers, but it’s like trying to mix water and oil—everything slips away from him. And with the knife pinched into my ribs, my mind is too rattled to manifest a third-party object without the threat of harming myself in the process.
“You forget that I loved her too,” Dev says, and I glance to him, but he keeps his attention on Aaron. “And felt her loss just as deeply. We both left the city of Terra that day, remember? You can’t blame me that I eventually returned.”
“But that doesn’t mean you deserve a second chance at love. Neither of us does!” With the prick of his knife, I whimper. I actually fucking whimper.
Dev grows panicked. “Aaron.” He raises his hands as if trying to appease a rabid dog. “You don’t need to do this.” He takes a slow step forward. “The Metus are the ones who took her from us.” Another step. “She would want us to avenge her with their deaths. They are the monsters. They are the ones who need to be punished.”
The hardness of Aaron’s grip eases slightly, and I’m able to take in a large breath of air, but my eyes still stay wide as I watch Dev’s careful approach. He glances to me, and we hold each other’s gaze, a silent conversation passing. Please, I say.
I’ll get you out of this, he returns.
“You weren’t there.” Aaron continues to babble on, his mind seeming to slip further and further away with each word. “You didn’t see…her screams…I couldn’t do anything to—” His words cut off, finally noticing Dev’s gradual advance, and on a hiss, he pulls me tighter against him. I cry out as the blade penetrates through my layers of clothing, its cold titanium precariously stopping on my bare skin. “You don’t know what it was like. You didn’t see!” An unhinged laugh bubbles out of him. “Oh, but you will! You will! Watch, Devlin, watch as you lose everything just as I did.”
Time momentarily stops, my eyes collide with Dev’s terror-filled ones, and then it kicks forward on a jab as the knife cuts into my flesh. There’s a scream of pain—my scream, as the most agonizing splinters of energy crackle through my body, zooming across every vein. I barely make out the howl of another as Aaron is suddenly knocked away from me, the blade ripping out in the process with a sickening wet pop.
I stand there, oscillating between shock and horror as I glance down to the area where the weapon was momentarily lodged. A dark spot slowly blossoms across my shirt, blood marking a black hole. But I feel nothing now, too locked into watching the cavity of my chest quickly fill with bright blue-white. It moves like a storm cloud, flashing as it expands from the center of my wound. It crackles as it devours, snaps like a whip as it evaporates every one of my cells, the colors churning, pulsing, and swirling. It would almost be beautiful if it weren’t representing my death.
“MOLLY!” Dev is in front of me, grabbing my shoulders. He begins to shake me, as if that will dispel what’s happening. “Molly! NO, NO!” Wide, desperate, and panicked blue eyes hold on to mine, and I open my mouth to say somethin
g, anything, but nothing comes out. “DON’T GO!” he pleads as the light filling me basks his face in white. “Make it stop! Please, make it stop!”
But this time I can’t. This time I know I truly can do nothing as my body becomes weightless with each section’s dissolve, my form fading, bits carried away into the night. My mind grows fuzzy, distant, along with the world around me, and on a last heart-shattered sob, I grasp Dev’s hands in mine. “I love you,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
And then like ash in the wind, I disappear.
— 46 —
SIRENS, BLARINGLY LOUD, penetrate the darkness where I float. They yell for me to go, to move, that I no longer belong in this space. I can feel the blackness squeezing me out, forcing me back, and on a kick I’m pushed through.
My eyes open on a tear-filled gasp, and I jolt forward. My skin burns like coals in a fire, my clothes are covered in sweat, and my stomach rolls with vertigo. Quickly, I lean over the side of the bed I find myself in and vomit. Bile grates along my throat as I dispel everything until it’s nothing but dry heaves. I rest my forehead on the plush material surrounding me and take in shaky breaths, trying to catch my bearings. Where am I? What happened?
All I know is something isn’t right. Something went horribly wrong. Sweeping a frantic gaze around the bright space, I take in the flashing red lights in the corners, their pulse in rhythm to the alarms. My legs are stuck in a cushioned bed, and strange lettering runs like hacked code on screens inlaid into the walls. For a second I think I’m in the Dreamer Containment Center. So much of this looking like so much of that, but then with a crawling chill, I realize I’m awake—back in the Village Portal Bookstore. A stuttering inhale clicks down my diaphragm, and my nails dig into the material around me for purchase, my strength momentarily sucked away. This can’t be right. But then the images of my last moments in Terra swim before me like a torturing phantom—Dr. Marshall, Aaron, his knife plunging into me, Dev’s pleading words, my body disappearing from the center of my wound. My wound!
On a cry, I grab for my chest, but it’s whole, not filled with light and burning away. I curl my fingers into the work clothes I had on a day ago, wanting to rip them off. They don’t belong on me. I should be in black, should be wearing my unifor—
Oh God. I remember! I still remember all of it, all of Terra! The Conscious knife didn’t take it away from me. A drop of relief mixes into my panic but is quickly diluted by all my other fears, one in particular that I can feel the validity of deep within my bones. Gripping the plush material surrounding me, I choke on a sob as I climb out, my heart tripping in its racing pace.
Stumbling to one of the screens, I knock into apparatuses and wires that hang around my bed, forcing them out of my path. My joints ache from being torn out of their comatose state too soon, but I ignore the pain. I ignore all of it as I press a sweaty palm against a monitor. It slides down the screen as I try to make sense of the symbols dancing across. It looks like one sentence repeated over and over, but none of it makes sense.
“Why can’t I read you?!” I smack the glass. Turning back to the room, I search for anything else that could possibly help, but there’s nothing. Nothing! Just like the emptiness that’s expanding in my veins since the moment I awoke here. It’s the one sensation I’ve been trying to suppress, trying to pretend doesn’t exist, for I know what it means. I know exactly what it means, but no—no, I won’t accept that. I can’t. Digging my fingers into my hair, I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the sirens and continuous flashing lights that are screaming at me to listen to them. It’s gone! It’s gone! It’s gone! They won’t stop yelling.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut uuup!”
A sudden high-pitched whirl invades, and the portal in the corner of the room flashes bright just as Rae bursts through. “Molly!?” Frenzied eyes find mine. “Oh thank Terra.” He takes three large strides and brings me into his arms.
His hold tightens as I bury my face into his chest, allowing his presence to momentarily silence the surrounding noise, but then I smell the scent of Terra that still clings to his clothes, and I have to push myself away. He frowns, a quick hesitancy in his gaze. “You remember me, don’t you? You remember I’m Rae?”
I nod, my lower lip wobbling. “Yes, yes, I remember.”
His shoulders slump in relief, but his features remain pained. “I came as quickly as I could. Dev he—we had to deal with Aaron. He’s being held in one of our security cells.”
I shake my head, not caring about that. There’s only one thing that matters right now. My stomach rolls again, and I take in a deep breath, gathering my strength—what little remains. “You have to tell me.” I clutch his shirt. “Is it gone? My connection to Terra, did he take it from me?”
His brows pinch in as his gaze sweeps across the monitors in the room. When it lands back on me, the truth is written everywhere. “I’m—I’m so sorry.”
And there it is—my destiny cemented in an apology. My breath is leeched from me, my soul being torn away as the world momentarily turns red with my rage, blurring out of focus with disbelief before it quickly desaturates to black and white, to emptiness, to pointlessness, to normal, and on that last thought is when I finally break. With the loss all consuming, I collapse to the ground. Rae is quick to try to help, but I shove him away, my gaze falling to my open palms in my lap, the creases that run through them—my lifeline splitting in two and ending short. Gone.
I’m so sorry.
It’s gone.
Curling my hands into fists, I cover what’s written, and then I tip my head back, and I scream.
Epilogue
THE PORTAL PULSED in the dark, an angora fish tentacle enticing its prey. So much held on the other side of its light, so much within an arm’s reach of an impassable path. The man’s eyes began to water from the endless hold it had on him. People rushed past on the street, unaware of the figure in the alley’s shadows, oblivious to the suffocating pain wrapping around every one of his cells.
It shouldn’t have taken this long.
His body quaked with another bout of barely contained fury, and he’d let it out if he hadn’t already a few moments ago. Nothing seemed to give him reprieve. Nothing doused the overwhelming terror from knowing he’d spend another day without seeing her face, without running his hands through her thick midnight hair, or without watching as the edge of her mouth tipped up in amusement when she thought he couldn’t see. The city hadn’t stopped whispering of the girl who could fly, who held the power of Navitas in her palms—her story quickly becoming myth with each passing day she didn’t return. Elena had yet to address her presence, and he was unsure now if she ever would.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were meant to have more time. They were meant to figure it all out. The ever-present pit in his stomach curled around itself like a snake, the injustice making him sick—the déjà vu. How much was he meant to suffer and why in such the same way?
He growled and pushed off from the wall he was leaning against, beginning to pace. Every bone in his body screamed with revenge, and he licked his lips from the memory of his fist crunching against Aaron’s eye socket. Endlessly it connected with a satisfying punch until he was forced to stop. Until crimson blood mixed, neither one nor the other’s—just theirs. He still had no idea who pulled him off, and he wasn’t one ounce thankful. His next move was meant to be fatal.
They thought Aaron was safe from his wrath by being held in an undisclosed location. Safe until he could undergo a fair trial. Fair. The thought almost made him laugh, if it didn’t make him sick in the process. No, in Dev’s mind, Aaron forfeited being properly treated by the law the night…the night— He let out a forced breath, unable to bring himself to think about it again. This was when he wished he could sleep. Then he could try and convince himself it was all a nightmare, one he could wake up from. But no, he knew in this world that nightmares and bogeymen didn’t go away when your eyes opened. Instead they stood right where they were, s
miling back. Dev’s grip on the strap across his chest tightened. He’d find a way to get to Aaron, and when he did, he was going to take his time.
A silhouette filled the entrance of the alley he hid in, and by the form’s curved frame and haloed strawberry hair, he didn’t need to see her face to know who it was.
“I heard I could find you here.” She stepped into the shadows, Dev’s night vision easily picking up the nervousness set in her feline eyes.
“Aurora.”
“Waiting for Rae?”
He didn’t answer.
She sighed, and now that she was closer, he could see the tiredness in her features, the heaviness of her lids. Her usual strength and prowess reduced to a barely glowing ember. Her brother’s return had not been the celebration it should have been. Dev frowned, forgetting that he was not the only one suffering.
“Have you been to see him?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together as though to keep them from wobbling. “I can’t believe what he’s done.” She shook her head. “He was never so…this isn’t who he is, Dev.”
“It isn’t who he was.”
She swallowed. “He’s still my brother.”
His eyes met hers. “Are you sure about that?”
An awkward silence followed. They never had awkward silences. Dev glanced beyond her as the portal across the street blazed. His chest lifted, but only a woman popped out to meet an awaiting friend. “Did you need something?” He looked back to Aurora, trying to control another bout of frustration he felt coming on. Why was it taking him so long?
Her chin tipped up. “I know you. I know you must be planning something for what Aaron…” Her gaze cut away for a moment. “But please, please think before you do anything rash. Remember who he was—who he is to me. I just got him—” Her lips pressed together. “Just please, let the law take care of it. That’s all I ask.”