Chosen

by Kiersten White

  “I still wish we could hit reset, though. Start over.”

  “Nah, not me. Then I’d be back in jail. Or worse, in Boston.”

  “Oh my gods.” My Watcher research finally clicks into place. I’ve been so distracted I didn’t put it together. “You’re Faith.”

  “In the flesh. Well, sort of. I guess not really, because, dream. But yeah. You know that I know what I’m talking about.” Faith leans forward, her dark eyes boring into mine. “You can’t handle the pain and anger inside you? Welcome to the club. You’re so much more than that, though. Maybe you messed up. You’ll mess up again. But you’re doing the best you can, and that’s not nothing, you know?”

  “But what do I do? I don’t know how to fix everything.”

  “You can’t. Not ever. Part of this job is recognizing that. There’s evil in the world, and suffering, and loss, and there’s nothing you can do to fix it all. So you do the best you can, and then you figure out how to live with it. Because you have to keep going, even on the days when it feels impossible, and it would be so much easier to just …” She trails off, looking to the side where the man is smiling warmly at her. She shakes her head and he flickers out of existence. “The darkness isn’t going anywhere. But there’s a difference between walking through it and becoming it. It doesn’t control you. You got more of it than you should? Good. Use it. Use it all.”

  She picks up the knife and tosses it to me. I catch it. In my hand, it’s shifted from a wicked tool of pain into a simple wooden stake. “Do the job,” I say.

  “Do the job. Save the world. Don’t lose what makes you you in the process. And, above all, look good doing it.” She winks at me. Then the desk disappears, along with the office. We’re in a cemetery, but it doesn’t feel menacing. It feels right.

  “Thank you.” I wrap my arms around her.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I am not a hugger. Okay. Fine. But do not tell the other Slayers. A girl’s got a reputation, you know.” She pats my back. “You got this. Five by five. And next time you’re in London, look me up, okay? We’ll go get drunk. Wait, how old are you?”

  “Oh my god, Faith,” a familiar voice says. “Are you hugging her?”

  “Dammit, B, now you show up?”

  I straighten as Faith shoves me away. Buffy is standing with her arms folded, amused. She nods at me. “World still ending?”

  “Yeah. Or ending again, I guess.”

  “It does that. You good?”

  I look at Faith. If she can do this, so can I. “Not yet. But I will be.”

  “Look at you, Faith, being all mentor-y.”

  “Shut up.” Faith rolls her eyes. Sineya appears behind her, glowering.

  “Go on,” Buffy says. “We got this. You’ve got places to be.” She turns and intercepts the First Slayer, and I open my eyes.

  * * *

  When I wake up, unstabbed but still unsettled, we’re nearly to the village. I wish I could have dragged Faith and Buffy out of the dream and into this car. They’d be able to fix this. They’d know exactly what to do.

  I want to laugh at this newfound confidence in the most notorious Slayers in history. A year ago I would have lectured myself about their unreliability, violence, poor decision making, and general bad apple–ness.

  I look out the window, wondering how they’ve survived this long. Not only facing the evils outside, but the ones inside, too. If they can do it, surely I can. Can’t I?

  The village appears like a growth of mushrooms in a lawn. This area of the countryside has loads of these small remnants of bygone eras. Most of them are barely clinging to life via farming and tourism. But the younger generations are abandoning them for the greater job opportunities of Dublin and other cities. This one’s not on the way to anywhere else, all by itself at the end of a long, wandering road.

  And, unlike the waning villages elsewhere, this one seems especially, aggressively abandoned. Overgrown dead weeds, chipped and faded paint, sidewalks and walkways eaten by plants. Cillian slows way down as we work our way deeper in. Nothing is boarded up. There are cars neatly parked, the wheels covered in cobwebs. There’s even a stroller on the sidewalk. It was like everyone up and walked away at the same time, leaving everything exactly as it was.

  “Pull over.” There are two children’s bicycles lying on the pavement. No kid would leave a bicycle like that. Back before my dad died, Artemis and I spent every summer day on our bikes. I can almost feel the sunshine, the wind, my tennis-shoed feet furiously pedaling to leave her behind and her shouting at me to wait up.

  I get out of the car and walk to the bikes. There’s nothing there. Except … I crouch, looking at the concrete. There are two scorch marks. And ashes.

  My stomach clenching, I look up at the store. It’s an ice cream shop. A bell chimes with rusty weariness to mark my entrance. The power is off, dust hanging in the air. There’s nothing and no one in here. The scent of spoiled milk is more a memory than anything else. I peer over the counter where someone would stand to serve the ice cream, and sure enough, there’s a scorch mark and some ashes.

  I back out.

  I don’t want to see anymore. The stroller haunts me as I climb back in the car. The second car of our convoy is idling behind us, waiting.

  “Something bad happened here,” I say. “Maybe ten or fifteen years ago.” I wonder if the news reported on it, or if everyone in this part of the country just sort of … knew. That sometimes people disappear. And sometimes towns do. Esther figured it out with her fairy-tale research; she’s probably not alone.

  “Is that why everyone left?” Cillian’s hands grip the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are bloodless and pale.

  “They didn’t leave.”

  Rhys’s eyes widen. He shudders once. “Maybe … maybe when he was free, he wasn’t so happy on his way out of our realm.”

  “We don’t want him coming back,” Doug says. “We really, really don’t. Right? I’m not alone in this.”

  I shake my head. “Not alone.”

  No one gets out to explore. Cillian continues steering us through town. It’s built like a wheel, all the lanes like spokes leading out from the central point. His mother had drawn a diagram of it. An ancient stone in the center of a grassy meadow. No one ever tried to take it down, or build there. They knew what it was, and they respected it. They were careful.

  And now they’re all gone.

  “Well, this is a problem.” Cillian brakes as several cloaked people detach from the shadows of abandoned buildings to step into the road and block our way. They all have shock sticks. Their hooded expressions are hidden from us. “What do I do?”

  A car comes screaming around a corner ahead of us. The cloakers aren’t so fanatical they’re willing to be bowling pins. The car squeals to a stop, and my mother and Cillian’s mother climb out. “We got this!” my mother shouts.

  Cillian’s mother is holding a canister of pepper spray in one hand and a club in the other. “Don’t let him come back, okay? Whatever his third form is, we don’t want to find out. The portal was the stone at the very center of town. Destroy it. And if that doesn’t work, well, break everything else until something does.”

  Cillian nods. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She beams at him, then shouts a battle cry as she chases after a few of the confused cloakers, followed by my mother.

  We make it all the way to the center of the town without any more foes. But once we’re there, a single figure is blocking our way, his back to us as he stares at the rock in the middle of the meadow.

  He doesn’t move. Cillian slams on the brakes and stops just shy of him. He’s white, wearing a pin-striped suit, his hair straight and dark, neatly trimmed. He turns around slowly, tilting his head as he takes us in.

  “Da?” Cillian says.

  “Oh god,” Rhys says, not inaccurately.

  28

  CILLIAN’S DAD LOOKS LIKE THE photo of him from Cillian’s shed. He’s an Orlando Bloom look-alike. Not long-flowing-blond-
locks Orlando Bloom, but normal dark-haired handsome Orlando Bloom.

  And when I say he looks like the photo, I mean he looks just like the decade-plus-old photo. Cillian’s dad has not aged a day. Perks of hellgodhood, I suppose. Cillian’s dad is looking at him with a puzzled, vague expression, like he can’t quite place where he knows him from.

  He sees me and gestures for us to follow, then turns and walks into the meadow. The earth swallows him. He disappears into it from one step to the next. We climb out of the car and hurry forward as one. It hadn’t been visible from our vantage point, but the whole meadow has been excavated. A subterranean series of tunnels greets us, with Cillian’s father already disappearing down a metal walkway.

  “What do we do?” Rhys asks.

  “It’s a trap, right? It has to be a trap.” Jade puts her fingers through the brass knuckle portion of a knife hilt. The members of the second car join us.

  I peer over the edge. The metal walkways I can see are all empty. “But why? He doesn’t need us for anything. He’s already here. We failed, I guess?” I can’t figure it out. He wanted us to follow him, and he certainly didn’t seem worried or alarmed that we were here. This whole plan is a moot point. The hellgod is already here, just … wandering around in a really nice suit. Does that mean Leo is dead? Or does that mean he isn’t?

  I shrug. “I have no idea what’s going on. But I want to find Leo, so I say we follow the god. Maricruz, Chao-Ahn, and Imogen, will you stay here? Guard our backs? Tsip, stay with them. You can pop in and out and warn us if anything goes down.”

  Chao-Ahn and Maricruz nod, gripping their weapons. But Imogen shakes her head. “No way. I’m coming with you.”

  “Me too,” Doug says.

  Jade pulls out a bag of what I assume are explosives. “GQ Hellgod might already be here, but someone should destroy the stone thing just in case. Keep Doug safe. If anyone hurts him, you’ll answer to me.”

  “Don’t you mean they’ll answer to you?” Rhys asks.

  “No, you will, because I’ll kill you if you let anyone hurt him.”

  Doug grins, black lips in the fullest smile I’ve seen since I told him about the concert tickets. He leans in to kiss her, but she pulls back. “Not right now! This is beatdown time, not happy time.”

  He laughs and jumps into the tunnels. Jade and I share a nod. “You have the training,” I say to her and the Slayers. “You all do. You got this. But if it comes to it, run. I won’t lose anyone else.”

  Maricruz grins, twirling her knife. “I forgot how much fun the waiting is. It’s like being at the top of a roller coaster. I want to puke and laugh at the same time.”

  Chao-Ahn rolls her eyes. “Americans,” she mutters. She gives me a worried look, but then shakes her head as though resolving something. “Watch out for the storm. It wants to swallow you. And the rest of us.”

  The storm. The one that’s been chasing me in my Slayer dreams. Thinking about Arcturius’s prophecy, I have to wonder: Is the storm coming for me, or am I the one bringing the storm to everyone else? I jump into the tunnel. Imogen, Cillian, Rhys, and Doug are all already there, waiting for me.

  “I feel like you should give us a pep talk,” Doug whispers as we stare down the dark tunnel waiting to swallow us.

  “All I can think of are really terrible puns about gods.”

  “All I can think is Oh god oh god oh god, so, about the same,” Doug says.

  Cillian grips a baseball bat with firmly violent intentions. “He’s just a predator from another dimension. Nothing special, right?”

  Rhys puts a hand on Cillian’s shoulder. “You’re okay with this? With whatever we might have to do?”

  “I cried myself to sleep for years because I thought he was dead. He left us. Left me. I’m fine with it.” He pauses. “I’m not fine. I don’t know when I’ll be fine again. But whatever he is, he’s hurt—he’s killed—a lot of people. Being my dad can’t outweigh that. We have to stop him.”

  “We have to stop anyone in there.” Rhys gives me a heavy look.

  I swallow and nod, then draw my sword. I can’t think about Artemis. I have to think about anything else. I’d rather face a hellgod than what I might have to do when I find Artemis. “Well, then. You know what Nietzsche said: God is dead. Let’s put his philosophy into action.”

  “I can’t decide which surprises me more,” Rhys says, loading his crossbow. “That we’re about to go fight a god, or that you actually paid enough attention in our one philosophy course to remember that Nietzsche quote.”

  “Come on.” Imogen rushes ahead of us, practically skipping. “It’s finally the end, and I can’t wait anymore!”

  Doug leans toward me. “She smells really, really off.”

  “We’ll look out for her.” But I’m sure none of us smell appetizing to him. Dread fills me as I contemplate the featureless tunnel leading into the dark. Will Artemis be there? Will Leo? And what will I do when I find them?

  Before I can be left behind, I jog to the front. I won’t let Imogen bear the brunt of an attack. Rhys brings up the rear, with Cillian and Doug protected in the middle. If it were up to me, we’d leave Cillian and Doug behind. But this is their fight too. It’s personal for all of us.

  The tunnel curves sharply. There are temporary lights strung too far apart, so all they do is create deeper, more disorienting shadows. Nothing jumps at us. No fangs or blades greet us. We walk unchallenged. At last the tunnel reaches what I assume is the center of the meadow above us. It opens into a huge, brightly-lit cavern.

  The first thing my eyes settle on is the triangle puzzle thing like Cillian’s. It’s suspended from the roof of the cavern. Only instead of being small enough for a child’s hands, it’s big enough for an adult to climb into. And instead of being empty, it’s filled with glowing, pulsing, quivering light. Next to it, on a catwalk connected to the doom triangle but not leading to our own catwalk, is Leo. He’s chained in place with his hand duct-taped to the point of one of the triangles. He’s also glowing.

  I glance down. At the bottom of the cavern, discarded like empty husks, are dozens of demon bodies.

  Leo looks across the cavern and sees us. “I’m sorry.” His face is anguished. “They said they’d kill you if I didn’t come with them. And then … they would have taken you next, just like my mother did. I had to choose.”

  “I thought you couldn’t drain energy on your own?” I shout across the echoing space, angry with him for trying to protect me yet again by leaving. And so devastated for him for what he’s been forced to do.

  “ ‘Can’t’ is very different from not wanting to.” Sean appears on the other side of the cavern from some other tunnel. He’s wearing a slick suit, his hair pulled back into a ponytail. He smiles. “Leo was perfectly happy to let his mother do the dirty work and survive off her. But my girls figured out the right motivation.”

  “They were bad demons,” Honora says from behind us. We turn as one, weapons raised, but she holds up her free hand. One arm is splinted. “The ones he drained. We only picked the ones you’d be obligated to kill as a Slayer. Or at least, if you were a real Slayer. And if Leo were a real Watcher. Some of us haven’t forgotten our jobs.”

  “Does your job include serving a hellgod?” I ask.

  Honora tries to give me a haughty, dismissive look, but there’s something shifty and—dare I say—uncomfortable behind her perfectly lined eyes. “I don’t have to defend myself.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” I swing my sword so she ducks. While she’s distracted, I kick her in the shoulder. She careens off the catwalk, unable to stop her momentum. She bounces against the side of the cavern, rolling a few times before managing to catch herself one-handed against a rocky outcrop.

  “What the hell?” she shouts. “I was trying to have a conversation.”

  “Are we ready?” a new voice asks. It’s Cillian’s dad. He’s on a catwalk across from us. Our catwalks aren’t connected. The one we’re on curves around and g
oes back into another tunnel. Leo’s isn’t connected to ours either, but it isn’t connected to Cillian’s dad’s catwalk. Sean is on the same catwalk as Cillian’s dad, and Leo is joined by—

  Artemis walks out to stand next to him. She looks down at Honora, and her face shifts in concern. “You okay?”

  “Grand.” Honora grunts, slowly pulling herself up the side of the cavern.

  There’s a muffled boom above us. Dirt and debris rain down. The cage swings and sways but doesn’t fall. We all hold our breaths, but the cavern ceiling holds. And, unfortunately, so does Cillian’s father’s body. So blowing up the stone didn’t make a difference. Sean gestures to a couple of goons, and they run off to see what happened. I hope Jade is ready.

  “Why did you let them in?” Sean asks the hellgod.

  He appears confused by the question. “She is yours.” He points to me. “But now there are two of her.” He thought I was Artemis, and that’s why he let us follow. Score one for being identical. “One of any human is still too many. Why did they make two of this one?”

  “When did you get back?” Cillian takes a step forward so he’s got a direct sight line to his father.

  His father tilts his head. He’s scratching idly at his arms, opening up welts that close almost as fast as they appear. “Who are you?”

  “Fecking hell, Da, it’s me. Cillian.”

  Still no recognition appears on the hellgod’s face.

  “I’m your son!” Cillian shouts.

  “No.” He holds a hand out so it’s level with his side. “The child is this tall. And he has longer hair than you.”

  Cillian’s laugh is harsh and angry. “Kids grow. Do you have any idea how long you’ve been gone?”