The Tree

  He watched Erik get swallowed by the earth and a primal scream ripped through his body. He watched Daniel—the darkness that had pretended to be Daniel—smirk as Matthias leapt over the rubble in front of him.

  Matthias called on every gift Artemis-Agrotera had gifted him with. His body went light and transparent and he ran. He tore through the creatures that got in the way. He pulled weapons from his cargo pants and used them until they ran out of ammo or got stuck inside some monster or another. He went from handguns to knives to a mace to a sawed-off shotgun. The armor of the creatures was bulletproof or as near as possible, but their eyes were not.

  He heard a scream and turned to see Tassi speared through her stomach by a spike of one of the Maasu.

  Yonas yelled for her partner and flew to her. Her touch burned through the arm holding Tassi aloft and Yonas caught her before she hit the ground.

  Matthias was a pack rat; a collector who used the things he gathered sparingly, but there was no room in his mind for that kind of deliberation today. He pulled things from his pockets and used them immediately after he identified them.

  Gems that held moments of frozen time, coins that seared with light, bits of string that came alive and grew to tangle his enemies. When something did not work on a Maasu he just reached into his pocket for another. Finally, he reached Daniel and pulled another penny of the underworld from his pocket, preparing to throw it.

  Matthias’s body stopped, and the penny fell from his fingers to the ground. He floated in the air and could feel every muscle in his body straining against the power that held him.

  Daniel smirked at his struggles. “As amusing as this whole thing has been, it must end. I would devour you, but I have no need of your thoughts inside of me. Take care of him.”

  There were only a fraction of Maasu left from the initial amount, but they converged on Matthias. The power that held him still released him right before the first one struck. Matthias did not know if it was Daniel deciding to make it interesting or if Artemis was answering his prayers. Either way, he had no intention of letting the opportunity go by. He dropped, letting the first strike go over his head.

  Matthias reached into his pockets. Depleted as they were, he still came up with two large wooden sticks lacquered black. Blessed by a friend of Mahrem’s line, they cracked across the shells of the Maasu, breaking them open. He ducked and wove his way through the crush of creatures trying to rip him to shreds. Eventually he lost first one and then the second stick. Matthias had no more tricks and so he reached deep inside to the well of his power and pulled more deeply, moving faster and faster.

  His skin was burning as he fought them off. His hands were moving faster than they ever had before and glowing a soft silver. His blows, though empty handed, were shattering armor and sending them flying off to die.

  “Now we can’t have that.”

  The same power as before tried to take hold of his body but it slipped off as if he were covered in oil.

  He smiled up at Daniel, who had a confused look on his face.

  On instinct, he held one arm stretched in front of himself and the other bent and pulled back. When he released the fingers of the bent hand an arrow of silver light exploded from his hands. It zeroed in on the first creature and struck, blazing through its body and continuing on to slice through three more before it faded away. He stared at his hands in wonder before doing it again and again. One struck Daniel and the hole it made in his form did not close right away. Matthias’s head snapped back and he laughed up into the sky. There were three moons in Corpiliu and all of them were full right now. It seemed like a sign.

  You are burning through, my child.

  He heard her. He heard Artemis.

  “Please, I have to punish him,” he whispered.

  This is not a fight you can win.

  “But it is one I can help others win.”

  My child. Stop. Please.

  Matthias did not. He knew what it meant that he was speaking to his dead goddess directly. He knew that his power levels were so low that he was near death. He did not care. The silver faded from his hands and still he fought, but now he was slower, and weaker. His blows did nothing and he could not block or dodge many of the incoming ones.

  They buried him. He saw the others still trying to reach him. Elana flying as quickly as possible. Daya tossing attackers to and fro, Elliot going invisible to try and sneak to him. Yonas had even reemerged from the Athenaeum and had monsters falling like wheat under her death-touch. They were all trying and in that moment, he loved them for it.

  The ground exploded somewhere near him and a voice he knew screamed out his name. He felt them ripping into his body; there was a tearing from his stomach, and he found himself tossed into the air. The last thing Matthias saw as he flew through the air was Erik glowing bright as the sun, and he smiled, glad to have seen the man he loved lighting up the night sky.

  ERIK

  Erik had never felt such rage burn through him. He had lost too many—Daniel, Tae, and now Matthias. It was too much. It was too far. He blazed across the space between them and struck Daniel in the stomach.

  They kept going, higher and higher as Daniel clawed at his hands, trying to push Erik away, but Erik would not stop, taking him into the space between the sky where the whiteness was cracking open. Finally, Daniel managed to slip off his fists and Erik turned to face the monster who had been his first love.

  “What are you?” Erik whispered.

  “I am what is left of your Daniel, and I am more as well. I am your beginning, the beginning of everything, and so shall I be your end.”

  “Everyone was right. Matthias was right.”

  “Deep down, you knew they were,” Daniel sneered. “You knew it was too convenient.”

  Erik said nothing because he could say nothing. He did not know if what the monster was saying was true or if his guilt made him think so. All he could see was Matthias’s face, the pain on it as he was ripped in half, the joy on it as he saw Erik and the light dimmed from his eyes.

  “It’s interesting to . . . interact with you lower lifeforms, instead of just eating you. I haven’t shrunken myself down enough to do it since the universe was new.”

  Erik said nothing, but he felt inside of him for where all this new power bubbled and frothed. He touched Bia inside of him, everything she had gifted him with. He didn’t know what to do with it yet, but instinct had served him well so far.

  “There is enough of Daniel in me that I do care for you,” said the thing in Daniel’s shape.

  “I doubt that,” Erik managed to say, even as he let small tendrils of power out to sew up the cracks around them. He could trap them both in this neverending white. Forever in this space between would mean both safety for those he loved and punishment for himself. The spirit of the darkness must have sensed something, because it began to glance around.

  “What are you doing?” Daniel asked as he finally saw that the slice of night sky that showed the Athenaeum was shrinking. He shot for it but Erik went after him, grabbing him by the ankle and pulling him back.

  The thing shaped like Daniel swung around and slammed his fists onto the back of Erik’s neck. Erik lost his grip and floated for a moment as everything went fuzzy. It was over, though, they were sealed in. Forever.

  “Now, I’ve got to reopen the way,” it said in Daniel’s voice, sounding like it was pouting. Erik’s stomach sank.

  “Did you think you would strand me here? This is the nothing between the spaces; this is the place I was born. If there is any place that is home to me, it is this one.”

  Erik shook off some of his dizziness and managed to move right side up again.

  There were pinpricks of black in the white all around them now and some of those widened large enough to be windows. Still fewer widened into doors. He saw Kandake through one of these.

  The darkness wearing Daniel stalked closer to him. “You still don’t understand. I am everything. I am the father and the
mother. I am the god and the goddess. I am the fount from which everything sprang.”

  “Those people in the mall?” Erik choked out.

  “I needed to know of this iteration of your world. I have been gone a long time, waiting for it to grow ripe. I ate my fill but did not want to alert all to my intentions. Some I simply stripped of their knowledge. They did not remember it later. Others I found more long-term uses for.”

  The darkness touched his face and Erik let some of the power burst out of him and spin him away from the hand. The expression on its face tightened, then relaxed.

  “I have touched your father while you are here,” the darkness said as it stepped closer.

  Erik lunged forward but it was already gone, already behind him.

  “I learned from him.”

  Erik whirled but it was gone again. Daniel’s voice sounded in the whiteness, echoed, made Erik feel dizzy and nauseous.

  “Don’t you want the truth. Erik? Don’t you want to know how your mother protected Robert all these years? How she knew what he had done?”

  “Shut up,” Erik growled and spun.

  “Don’t you want to know how your father put away your lover? How your mother kept his secrets?”

  “Shut up!” Erik cried out as he swung at a shadow. He knew this creature would lie, was probably lying, but the possibility nagged at him and made him sloppy. He had always wondered that Daniel had been convicted at all and then that he was sentenced to jail time instead of probation was also odd. It had seemed harsh, but he was sixteen and heartbroken and didn’t look as deeply as he should have.

  The punch in his back caught him off guard and he flew forward onto his knees. The next punch came from above him, slamming him down. He tried to stand and the next hit caught him on the chin. Erik tasted blood. The force that drove him down next made him cry out, and he simply kept falling.

  He tried to concentrate to bring his powers to bear, but he was in too much pain. Then a hand in his hair stopped him. He screamed as many were pulled from his scalp and he felt blood begin to slip down onto his face. They were back above the Athenaeum. Almost no time seemed to have passed. Everyone looked at the place they had disappeared rather than where they now were for a moment. The hand threaded through Erik’s hair and pulled his head back so he could see all the people below him.

  “They will all die here, as shall you. As shall this world and then your own.”

  His world.

  He remembered his ancestor’s words; his goddess’s words. This place is yours now. Everything that is left in it.

  Erik thought of the ways his powers had grown while here, the way that the earth had shaken around him, and the way that doors and passages seemed to welcome him with no conscious thought on their owners’ part. Because it was not the owners’ doing, but that of the building, the world. He let his consciousness reach back toward the place where they had met. The room deep in the heart of Kandake. When he touched it he touched Lil’s mind. He dove deeper into the room and felt it spread out across the land. Every Athenaeum on the surface of Corpiliu, they held a piece of Bia’s heart, a piece of his heart.

  He found all the pieces of her heart, scattered. So much knowledge stored inside each one; each was a small version of the goddess, but made completely unique and individual after so many years separated. He opened his arms to them all and asked.

  Come home?

  Erik hissed as the power flooded through his body, and shredded his mind, stretching it in millions of directions.

  Somewhere he was screaming. Somewhere the man he could have loved lay dead because of him. Somewhere his friends and allies fought. But none of that mattered to him at the moment, as dozens of women who had been one but were no longer took up residence in his mind. They fought and tore at one another. They loved each other and melted in ecstasy. They were wind and sleet, and the desert sun and the lightning. They came together and flew apart a dozen times in different combinations. They settled in a rough approximation of peace and Erik set to work.

  First he made sure his people were safe, pulling those still outside into Kandake. Then he took hold of all the Athenaeums Corpiliu and yanked them from one world to another, slotting them into place as if they had always been on Earth, and in some ways, they had been. Then he took the edges of the world of Corpiliu; of the body that had been his so long ago, and pulled it in on itself.

  “What are you doing?” The echoing words came from all around.

  He could see the mockery of Daniel, still in Corpiliu, in front of the empty space where Kandake had been. Erik was there as well but he was also elsewhere. Daniel had gathered too much of himself together to devour Corpiliu. Erik could close the edges of this world because unlike the white nothingness this world was his. He could seal Corpiliu and it would hold most of the darkness for a short time. Until it ate its way free.

  But it would also mean trapping all those others in Corpiliu, the Antes and ‘dants who had not crossed over in time. Who had not sought shelter in any of the Athenaeums or who had tried to escape to other places. He would be closing all of them in with the darkness, all as a stopgap measure. They would die. Be devoured.

  He took a breath and made the only choice he could make.

  Erik shrunk Corpiliu around Daniel’s screaming figure, around all their screaming figures, and stitched the edges of it closed. It would not hold the darkness for long. Even now he could feel it eating away, but by shrinking the world he had made it more dense. It would take time for it to chew a big enough hole to escape and come to Earth. Even as he folded Corpiliu down again he felt as if something of the darkness reached inside of him and tried to stop his heart. It was far too late for that, though.

  Erik didn’t need his heart anymore; it was vestigial, and its death changed nothing.

  LIL

  It was a new world outside those doors. Lil did not need to look outside to know it. She could feel it in the air; in the power that drifted through the world in rivers and streams. The magic here felt fuller, riper. It was as if what she had been dining on all her life was lacking something vital she now had but could still not name. Was it because she now held the Athenaeum in her hand or was it the new world? Lil had been outside, continuing to fight, when something had taken hold of her body and moved her into Kandake. Then she felt that force take hold of Kandake as well and rip it from Corpiliu.

  She looked down at Min and Davi who looked back at her with wide eyes. She patted them on the back and rose. They stood with her and followed. The crowd of people parted for her, many of them bowing their heads and holding their hands reverently over their hearts. She saw a crowd of Doors that she hadn’t noticed before. Many were dirty but they still shone like colorful birds in their fine colors and sparkles. They saw her and lowered their heads toward her.

  Lil wanted to correct them all, but she was too tired. All she wanted now was to curl up in bed with her sibs and sleep; to inhale the scent of family that had been missing from her life for too long now. Instead she let the branch float off her arm and into the air above her.

  EveryoneMoveBackFromTheDoors.

  To everyone’s surprise a voice rang through the air. Everyone move back from the doors.

  Lil looked up at the branch in surprise. She tried it again.

  CanEveryoneHearThat?

  Can everyone hear that?

  There were murmurs of agreement behind her. Lil continued to stare at the wood floating near her head. It looked no different, but it was possible, even likely, that whatever made the magic of this world feel different had given the branch a new aspect as well. The voice it spoke in was not hers. It was stiff and did not emphasize words the way she would have, and contained an odd echo. But it was there.

  Lil looked at the branch and forced her will on it. It started to fold in on itself, tighter and tighter, until it was a small tangle of wood no bigger than the palm of her hand. She placed it in her pocket and tried to channel through it. She could feel the wood shift
ing in her pocket and the voice still rang out.

  I will go out and find out what is happening, she announced, glancing around.

  She saw Kima and Uchel huddled around an unconscious Assan and a sobbing Hlani shaking a Quinn who was bandaged but might never wake up. She knew Kima would come with her if she asked, but that didn’t seem fair. She could ask Arel and Jagi to come as well, but she did not know how the ‘dants in this world would react to the Antes. She turned to her sibs.

  You two will stay here with Arel and Jagi, okay?

  They both opened their mouths to argue, but Lil kept on.

  I do not know what is out there. I can promise you I will be safe, but not if I have to look out for you two as well. I promise I shall return shortly.

  She knew it was unfair to call on their own guilt, but she needed to get out there fast. She knew things like this often resulted in violence. Lil was Holder now. She had protected these people as they had squeezed through the place between worlds, and she would continue to do so.

  Min and Davi nodded and transferred their hands to Arel and Jagi.

  I love you both.

  They both smiled up at her and returned the sentiment.

  This was her duty, and hers alone. She stepped out of the door of the Athenaeum.

  Guns, many of them. All aimed at her.

  Lil did not like that. She felt through the power floating in the air and found the one that resonated with metal. She pulled on it and their guns flew into the air.

  We mean you no harm, but neither will we tolerate having weapons pointed at us without cause.

  A woman stepped forward from the crowd of people. “Understood. If you will return my people’s weapons I shall have them holster them.” She was dressed in pants and thick shoes like the ones that had appeared on Lil’s feet. Her shirt was dark purple and her hair was covered in fabrica in the same shade. She was older than she looked. Her eyes looked as old as Uchel, but her skin was almost wrinkle free and she moved without pain.

  Another woman walked forward from behind the first and climbed the stairs until she stood one step below Lil but equal to her in height. Lil had rarely met a ‘dant that much taller than herself.