“Where are you going?” I yelled to her. “We’ve got to work on a plan to fix this and get Fanny back.”
“Correction. You need to come up with a plan,” she called back. “I need to go back to my life and try to forget this whole thing.” She quickly disappeared down the hill and into the darkness.
Jake and I stood alone, the silence between us – like the night – dark and engulfing.
“Jake? You’ve always been the brains – the idea guy. I need you,” I pled. Stinging salty tears sprang to my tired eyes.
“You’ve always needed me,” he said. “But maybe I’m tired of being your life raft. Maybe I deserve more than that.”
“Of course you do.”
“It’s too late, Emily. Maybe … maybe I’m just tired of you.”
“Jake,” I cried. “How can I do this without you? Fanny’s gone. Don’t you care about Fanny? Don’t you care about what happens to the world? Don’t you care about me?”
“God, Emily, I used to care about you so much. I cared about you more than myself. You were everything to me. You were all I thought about. But when push comes to shove – when you had a choice – you chose him over me.”
“Jake, you have to understand. All of us were under Ciardha’s spell. His Dark Energy infected us – all of us. He created a devious game. He set me up, Jake. An impossible choice. But my decision to go after Owen first, it was based on logic and reason, just like you did when we first got there.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s true.”
“I saw the way you cried over him – saw the way you pined for him. That decision – it came from your heart.”
“No, it didn’t. That’s just it. If I had chosen with my heart …”
“Talk to the hand,” he said as he held up his hand to me.
He began to walk down the hill and away from me. I thought that once we got out of the Umbra Perdita, things would go back to normal – that Ciardha’s Dark Energy would stop pelting down on us and Jake would hear me. But I could still see Jake’s aura, and it was filled with dark spots and smudges. Even though we were no longer in the Umbra Perdita, Jake was still acting as if he was. His soul was still infected with the Dark Energy. I knew then that my first order of business was to find out how to cleanse ourselves of Ciardha’s Dark Energy infection.
I had to at least try to get Jake to listen. I pulled on his arm, jerking him around to face me.
“If you’d only listen. If you don’t help me, then all this will …”
“Oh, I’ll be working on the problem because, unlike you, I care about others.”
“Unfair, Jake.”
“Whatever. I’ll work the problem on my own. The world doesn’t need to be saved by a prima donna novice. Techno savvy geek boys have super powers too, you know.”
I’d never considered Jake’s abilities as super or extraordinary. But he was the one who could shut out my mind reading. He was the one who figured out – who knew – that opening a portal in the cemetery was a lousy idea. Jake did have extraordinary abilities. I’d just been so caught up in my own, I hadn’t noticed the specialness in the ones around me.
“Yes, of course you do. I’ve never doubted you. Don’t you see, that’s why I went to save Owen first? I knew …”
“What? What did you know?”
“That you could save yourself. That between the two of you, you were more likely to get yourself out. Owen didn’t stand a chance, but I knew that you did.”
The memory of Owen’s body lying in my arms, his eyes lifeless, brought fresh tears to my eyes. And the knowledge that I’d caused the death of an innocent person – and that I could not undo that mistake, no matter what – made the tears spill over. At the sight of my tears, Jake’s face went from softening toward me to hardened in an instant.
“You’re so full of crap. You loved him, and you chose him over me. Just admit it. For God’s sake, at least tell me the truth.”
“But I am telling you the truth. I never loved Owen. But you can’t expect me to be happy about the guy dying, can you?”
“Those aren’t the tears of a girl crying over a fallen school mate.”
“They’re about more than him. I’ve lost everything. Everything that I ever gave a damn about.”
“You should have thought about that before you gave up on me.”
“Look, I can’t change the past, okay? I can’t take it back. I wish so much that I could.”
“You may not be able to change the past, but I have a trick. I can change the future. Good-bye, Emily Adams.” He turned from me and began to walk down the hill and into the night.
“Jake!” I screamed. “You can’t leave me to do this on my own. I need you! I love you.”
“But I don’t need you – not anymore,” he called back. Within a few more seconds, he vanished into the blackness.
I stood on that little hill and cried. I cried so hard my eyes hurt. I cried because Owen was dead and Fanny was lost in the Umbra Perdita. I cried because Greta was right – it was all my fault. I cried because I’d finally found my love for Jake, then lost him.
And I cried because I was scared. Scared beyond reason as to what was in store for me – for us. Because of me, Ciardha was unleashed. Dark had bested light. That couldn’t be a good thing, for any of us. I was so tired, I couldn’t at that time imagine what Dark Energy run amok meant for our world. Perhaps that was a blessing.
Finally, my tears spent, I began to walk home. I passed Owen’s car parked on the street at the bottom of the hill. How am I going to explain to everyone what happened to Owen? Will anyone believe me if I tell the truth? I doubted it.
As I walked up the sidewalk to my house, I felt enormous relief. My house. A sidewalk that I used to walk with dread when Aunt Muriel lived with us. But since she’d left, my house had become a sanctuary.
Home.
I needed sleep – we all did. With rest and food and time away from that chode Ciardha, we’d all feel better – feel ourselves. And Jake would come around, I knew he would. He’d be back to his old self, and he’d listen to me and understand. I’ll be able to make things right with him.
I opened the door, excited to see my dad, relieved that he was here and hadn’t been with us in the Umbra Perdita – hadn’t been subjected to the constant infusion of Ciardha’s Dark Energy like we had.
Dad. He loved me. He’d take care of me. He’d help me figure out a way out of the mess I’d made. The one person I could count on not to abandon me in my time of need.
I tiptoed across the wood floor, trying not to make it creak. He was probably asleep in his chair in the family room like he usually was if I was out at night.
I crept down the hallway and to the right. There he was, fast asleep in his chair, his mouth open in a snore, the newspaper in a heap on his lap, the TV blaring. He looked like he always did – except for one thing.
I stood in the doorway staring at him, the blood in my veins suddenly felt cold. I could see my dad’s aura. I’d never seen auras before I went to the Umbra Perdita, and when I saw Jake’s and Greta’s in the cemetery, I thought that it was some kind of carryover from all of us being in the Umbra Perdita. But I could see my dad’s too. I wasn’t sure why, but for some reason I had this new ability.
I saw a halo of vibrant, emerald green light all around my dad.
And it was marked all over with dark spots. Lots and lots of black spots and smudges.
My dad’s aura was filled with darkness.
And if my dad was experiencing the effects of Ciardha’s Dark Energy, it could mean only one thing. The Dark Energy had been released, and it was already here – already spreading itself – already influencing.
“Emily, what’ll happen if Brighid loses and she gets trapped here?” Fanny had asked.
“Our world – the entire universe – would be without Lucent Energy,” I had replied.
“Also known as the Apocalypse,” Greta had said.
The Apoca
lypse. It was coming. And it was all my fault. I’d let the genie out of the bottle. It was my job to find a way to put it back in again.
Ciardha had taken Fanny from me. And Jake. I couldn’t let him take my dad too.
I promise you, Dad, I won’t let him take you.
I thought that I’d cried all of the tears that I had in me to cry. But my eyes once again stung with a fresh crop, ready to spill over.
I don’t know what will happen with Fanny and Jake. I don’t know how I’ll go on one more minute without them. I only know that I have to try and that I can’t let some little brat – even if he is a god – take away from me everyone that I love, even if they no longer love me back.
I stand now in this house of my own making, wondering how I’m going to set things right.
Emily’s Heart
Natalie Wright
PART ONE
Welcome to the Apocalypse
You shut the door
and dare not look.
You hide from the shadow
that lurks there.
Galloping wildly
in the crevasses of your mind,
it takes up residence
in your grey matter,
content to live
amongst your fears.
Did you see it there,
skulking behind the door?
Did you feel it stalk as
you step into the obsidian night?
Try as you might
to resist its call,
it pulls at you,
both night and day,
like the tide
eating the shore.
Your hope,
like grains of sand.
Pulled inexorably
into the dark sea.
Prologue
Ciardha became a black wisp and escaped the shadow prison that had been his home since before the Earth was born. He rode the wave of Dark Energy he’d used to send Brighid’s whelp back to Earth. His sister’s energy was so diminished, she had not the strength to contain him any longer. The door to Ciardha’s prison was thrown wide open. After countless millennia of imprisonment in the Umbra Perdita, his Dark Energy was at long last without bounds.
Ciardha pulled Dorcha into the wave of energy with him. They traveled, unnoticed, in wisp form to the human world. They arrived in the graveyard that Brighid’s brat had used to create a portal that she and her friends rode to Ciardha’s world of terrors. Ciardha hovered in the graveyard, a dark pulse of energy that blended into the inky night. He watched, unnoticed, as his sister’s chosen one argued with the two other humans Ciardha had sent back as was required by his accord with his sister.
He reveled in the argument that ensued amongst the humans.
“He lied, Freak Girl. Your little friend isn’t coming back, thanks to you.” The blonde girl spat the words at Brighid’s whelp. Ciardha felt his energy soar as the hurtful words and guilt brought a fresh wave of anguish on the flame-haired girl.
“You’d already lost her,” the boy said. Ciardha could sense her sadness rise as the boy said the words to her.
The blonde one huffed off down the hill and left Brighid’s so-called warrior alone with the boy. Ciardha could feel the girl reach out to him with her longing, and he watched as the boy rejected her.
“It’s too late, Emily. I’m tired of you. Good-bye, Emily Adams,” the boy said. Ciardha watched as the boy walked down the dark hill and away from her. Emily Adams stood alone on the hill and cried.
As her suffering grew, Ciardha’s Dark Energy expanded. She feeds me still, he thought. Ciardha also fed on the sorrow that resonated in the ground, trees and air around him. The cemetery had seen years of loss. It was buried with the bodies of dead humans and in the dried tears of grief spilled by years of mourners. Ciardha pulled the residual anguish from the Earth beneath him and fed well on it.
I will grow strong on your beloved world, sister, Ciardha thought. I shall feed on the dark feelings of your precious humans. I will devour every last drop of their Lucent Energy, the energy you so diligently worked to create for so many of their years. The Universe will at last quake with the power of my Dark Energy.
Ciardha rolled like a tiny black tumbleweed out of the graveyard, and Dorcha followed close behind. The wisp of Dark Energy silently stalked the land of humans in search of Lucent Energy on which to feast.
1. When Pigs Fly
Emily
The pounding in my skull wouldn’t stop. I pulled the blanket up and buried my head under the pillow as if that could drown out the sound of guilt that rattled around inside me.
BANG, BANG, BANG.
I bolted upright in bed. That wasn’t the sound of guilt. Someone was at the door.
BANG, BANG.
I glanced at the clock. 7:30 a.m. I’m going to be late for school again. Not that it mattered much.
My dad wasn’t the only one whose aura was riddled with black spots. A year after we’d been upchucked out of the Umbra Perdita, most people had auras peppered with dark smudges. The pockmarked auras revealed the inner battle people fought against the Dark Energy that pelted down on them like black rain made of pure evil.
A black rain that I had caused. Every day, as I watched the auras around me turn ever darker, I was reminded of my part in unleashing this Apocalypse of darkness. Every day I tried to find a way to put the genie back in the bottle and get Brighid, the Goddess of Lucent Energy, out of Ciardha’s Dark Energy prison.
BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.
Most of the teachers at Wheaton High sported auras riddled with black spots. Some even had eyes that had turned black and were devoid of light. Eyes a lot like Ciardha’s. The black-eyed teachers were as likely to reward bad behavior as punish it. Maybe being tardy was the best thing I could do to fly below the radar.
BANG, BANG, BANG.
Who’s at my door at this hour? My dad left for work by 7:00, so I was alone in the house. Before our horrifying journey to the Umbra Perdita, Fanny would come over and we’d walk to school together. But Fanny was gone, still trapped in that awful dimension of acrid air and nightmares. Still lost to me. And since we’d come back from the Umbra Perdita, Jake had made himself disappear. I hadn’t spoken to him in almost a year.
BANG, BANG.
If it were someone looking to loot the house – or worse – they wouldn’t knock. Whoever it was, they weren’t going to go away. Who would come to see me? I was curious, but my heart pounded fast in my chest, and I felt sweat in my pits. There was no such thing as a social call anymore.
BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.
“I’m coming, I’m coming! Stop beating my door down already!”
I rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans that lie on the floor (semi-clean), and stuffed my head through a sweatshirt (sniff test – barely passed) over my tank.
I tiptoed down the creaky, wood stairs. I walked as quietly as I could across the foyer and grabbed the baseball bat I kept by the front door. Just in case.
I tried to catch a glimpse of who was outside through the glass at the top of the door. But the glass was that bubbly, worthless, decorative glass. All I could see was a human-shaped blob. It could be anybody.
Why don’t we have a peephole?
“Who is it?” I yelled.
“Greta.”
Greta? What the hell is Greta Hoffman doing at my door? If Greta had lowered herself enough to make a trip to my house, chances were she hadn’t come over for a friendly girl-to-girl chat.
I gripped the bat tightly and took up a fighting stance, evenly balanced between both feet. I unlocked the dead bolts, then the chain. I flung the door open as I stood back, ready to swing if it wasn’t really Greta or if she’d decided to come kick my ass.
The door creaked as it swung open, and there, on my porch, stood Greta. Blue-eyed, blonde-haired, beautiful Greta.
At a time when most people looked like something the cat dragged in, Greta looked as good as she ever had. While most people’s eyes wer
e dull and vacant, Greta’s were bright and twinkly. I didn’t see a single split end in her long, perfectly smooth hair. Her outfit was tidy, though more modest than her usual designer clothes. She wore simple jeans and a T-shirt with a grey hoodie. Smart of her to tone it down a bit. If she had worn her usual expensive clothes, she would have been a walking target.
“You look like shit,” she said.
“Thanks. Nice to see you too.”
I knew I looked like a cat turd scraped out of the litter box, but she didn’t have to say it. She looked gorgeous, especially for the times we were in, but I wasn’t going to say it.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Are you going to continue to insult me?”
A pause, then, “I’ll try not to.”
Fair enough. That was probably the most I could hope for from Greta. I moved aside to let her in.
After she crossed the threshold, I quickly bolted and chained the door. Greta stood in the entryway and took in my house. She looked into the living room, her eyes sweeping across the floors in need of refinishing and then resting on the on the worn upholstery of our couch.
“Nice … wood,” she said.
“What?”
“The wood floor – it’s lovely. I like old, worn things. Makes it cozy.”
I think she was trying to compliment me. If Greta was trying to butter me up, she wanted something. What could Greta possibly want from me?
I walked to the formal living room. Greta followed and made herself at home. She sat in an antique wingback chair covered in faded blue damask. It had been my mom’s favorite chair. A wave of anger surged through me when I saw Greta sprawled like a comfortable feline in my mom’s seat.
I continued to stand in the entry to the room, my bat still clutched in my hand.
“For God’s sake, put down the bat. I didn’t come here to fight you.”
“No? Then why are you here?”
She sat still and silently looked at me.
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 45