She stopped near a department store and patted the tube of lipstick she’d rolled into the hem of her undergarments. It might be the last reminder of Jared and she didn’t want to lose it; she wanted to keep it until the very end. Too many thoughts filled her mind and she leaned against the building, with hopes it retained its structure while she rested.
The previous week had brought many deaths. She alone made the call for over one hundred thousand and seventy-three. Some she’d followed since their birth and some were assignments other banshees had no energy for. Banch had suppressed her feelings for so long she didn’t think anything could break her, but learning about Jared becoming the Gift and experiencing that long last week of calling deaths had made a permanent mark on her. Oh, that week. How beaten down she’d felt—it lasted forever. She could remember some of the faces easily.
Alice Henning, a seven year old who was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend since the age of four. He beat her to death when she tried to escape the makeshift prison he’d created. Dumped her body in a storm drain culvert. Pissed on her.
Joseph Delphy, a twenty-eight-year-old mechanic, had acquired stage four stomach cancer. His friends at the auto shop rallied around him, pitching in everything they could and being an unexpected support group. For three years he battled the chemo and radiation and at last went into remission. He went back to work for about a week. Things were going well until the hydraulics on a lift failed and F-350 truck crushed him. That was the day before his coworkers would hold a giant Welcome Back Party. He had no family, just his clan of devoted grease monkeys. They were with him while he bled out in the shop’s trench drains.
Jessica Bunsing, twenty-eight and just married. She thought no other man would have her after she’d been raped by a high school student and embroiled in a legal battle where the defense tried to turn it around on her. Many had sided with the teen. Many had called her a cradle-robbing whore. Winning the case cost her. Close to bankruptcy from legal fees and nearing severe depression, she turned to crystal meth for several years. When she finally got help she met a wonderful therapist, a brilliant, wonderfully nice man who had just opened his own practice. He asked her to be his wife after a year of dating. After they married she planned to go back to school, mostly because he convinced her she was smart enough. They had a gorgeous wedding ceremony on the beach with his family. During their first dance, a large blood clot traveled into her lungs. Several hours later, she met Banch at the hospital and walked into the light.
Those were just a few lives among many, but then Banch’s work week rounded off with a drone strike in northwest Pakistan that ended twenty-five people, all under forty years of age and, save for one individual, all non-terrorist affiliated.
These people lived and loved and died. The common thing to all of these circumstances: there wasn’t meaning to any of it. Her sisters would warn her not to look for meaning in a chaotic universe, but Banch couldn’t help herself. She loved her duty like any other banshee, but what about that light? Did it love? Did it hate? If that’s where everything ended up, why not stop living now, right?
She sighed through her teeth. Yes, what is the point? Love dies as easily as flesh, except it disintegrates faster than decay.
No matter what, Jared would leave. He would die. Everybody would. They would become the light and Banch would always be left on the outside looking in. Perhaps she was flawed to worry over this. None of her sisters had expressed a need to end their life, even the most psychologically disturbed. They always had that greater need to serve the Deeper Unseen. Banch remembered what that was like, but now it held so little value for her. Maybe if two of her favorite assignments hadn’t been made Gifts, she might have remained honored and bound by duty, but in some way she was grateful for having her eyes opened. She wasn’t depressed. She didn’t hate life. She loved it. But she had a resolve to close the book. It couldn’t last forever. The pain was getting to be too much for her; she couldn’t be numb anymore. It had to stop. That’s what would make her finally content.
Even if Jared thought otherwise. This was the only way it could be.
Relief washed over her. After the hotel she’d really speculated if she could go through with the Paled Ocean, but now it was clearer than before. She couldn’t go on. It was too much and she’d rather be the sheep than the shepherd for a change. The beautiful thing she had with Jared wouldn’t endure for a millennia. It wouldn’t even endure for a few months. Love planted a seed that sprouted, grew tall and unique, shared its pollen with the world, and then returned to the ground, as though it never had existed.
So fatalistic you’ve become…
Fear latched its frozen fingers around her mind. What if Jared died out there? What if another banshee led him to the light?
Jealousy grew inside her, but she tried to tramp it down. Stop being silly. Remember you had a renewed resolve. You need to end this at the beach. It would actually be good right now if Jared died before schedule; the Assembly is too busy to capture him and he could walk into the light.
But with someone else.
She imagined any number of her sisters making the call and Jared looking at them longingly, in bliss, hand-in-hand, led deep into that burning white.
She shook her head, stomach queasy.
Your job is to keep him from getting caught by the Assembly. And you’ve done that. Don’t freak now. You will get to the ocean and break this endless cycle that has been your life.
She moved away from the wall and hurried along the sagging sidewalk. At the precipice, she didn’t want another banshee with him. She really didn’t like the thought of that. It had to be her there with him.
So you aren’t ending this, foolish Utumm Resona? You’ve changed your mind yet again? Out of jealousy? Out of fear? What will convince you about what must be done?
Banch really didn’t know what she needed anymore. What she did know was that she had to get to Jared. And soon.
Chapter 27
Jared
Jared’s first slide down the windows took him halfway to the edge of the building. One more like that and he’d go right over the side. He’d managed to stop his body and plant the soles of his shoes against the glass. The expanse of pure, cold blue sky faced him. He still couldn’t see the world beneath and he really didn’t want to. The instinct to survive still fired on every cylinder. He didn’t want to believe death really waited for him at that office desk, but it might be much less terrifying than dropping off a Mount Everest sized skyscraper. Either way. He wanted to live.
Banch, on the other hand, wished to die. He understood this; she came by that wish honestly, and it wasn’t that she wanted to commit suicide out of despair, but rather to stop the weariness in her soul. She saw so much, knew so much, experienced life through countless people. It was debilitating. Disheartening, disillusionment and exhaustion didn’t even cover it. And yet it was still a mistake. It was a mistake to give up.
Jared’s forearms burned. He dared not readjust his position. It was so lonely up here. There had been so many lonely moments in his life, and he hadn’t needed to feel that way at all. His banshee had been with him much of that time. For all he knew, she might be watching him again. Maybe his note, followed by the Disturbance Paradigm, had been enough to change her mind.
“Banch,” he whispered. “If you’re watching, like you once did, that means you took a corridor to the Free Zone. Hopefully, if you got through all this stuff. I don’t know, I mean, I hope that happened. Maybe things are as messed up there as they are here. I want to believe you got away, that you’re safe. I want to believe one good thing came of my screw-up. I know now why you wanted to help me. The need to care for someone was our connection. You’d never felt such a powerful need before. I could have been another number amongst the sad stories. You wanted to cradle someone and tell them the universe does sometimes care. Every banshee hopes for the same thing, but you wanted to collect.”
Jared gri
nned at the strong wind blowing in and daydreamed it might be her presence. “You wanted the universe to put its money where its mouth was. I love you for that… and I wish I could have been more worthy to take a chance on, and to show you how great your job really is.”
He closed his eyes as they burned. He tried again not to move. The wind dried tears to his cheeks almost immediately.
“You show us a way through our fear. You make it possible to finally care, no matter what happens, because there is beauty, such beauty in the end.”
Silence. The blue void before him smiled back as though to say, Care for some of this?
Jared, feeling crazed, answered the void: “No, I want to have as much time as I can, but I’m not afraid of you anymore. Not of you. Not of a damn thing. I will go on.”
With a loud squeak under his soles, he slid down the windows. His hands went out but there was nothing to grasp. The edge rushed toward him. He’d thought of this moment for a solid hour now but couldn’t ponder it anymore, not like he’d imagined. It happened so quickly—he twisted his body, threw out his hands, and slapped at the slick surface like an animal begging to be let inside its home, and that’s how he felt, so wanting and desperate. He wasn’t afraid anymore, but he still had wants.
Oh god, how he wanted.
To just.
Get hold.
Then his body fell off the side of the building. The sky vaulted overhead. He sensed the space around him, dangling over the open mouth of a ravenous divinity. His hands locked on the edge. His fingers pinched it so fiercely it sent pain into his elbows.
The word PLEASE ran through his mind. But it wasn’t a prayer; he wasn’t a believer in a higher power. With all he understood about the Deeper Unseen it appeared other dimensions didn’t know for sure either. There were powerful entities like the Silent Kings, but that didn’t mean they were Gods. In the end, there might still be nothing inside that beautiful white light. Living might ultimately be better.
Of course it was. It was all he knew, all he could—
His fingers dragged closer to the edge.
—hold onto and cherish. Life made his love for Banch exist and even if it meant three more months, it was three damn months more.
He growled and pulled himself up.
His right hand released.
His focus intensified. He needed to swing his arm over but didn’t want to overdo the motion. His left arm pulsed. A drop-beat thumped in his chest, different than it had in the past, but though it didn’t feel as strange, it alarmed him his heart might give before his left shoulder did.
Avoiding it until now, his eyes traveled down. The street, so far beneath, looked two inches wide. He couldn’t even distinguish the cars as more than smudges of color. The building had some narrow outcroppings. The closest had to be about fifteen or twenty feet down. It would be impossible to swing his body to drop the right way without two arms for leverage.
Impulsively, to his shock and dismay, he risked everything and swung his right arm to catch the ledge. His adrenaline warmed him top to bottom. The stress his left arm had taken became clear right away and it almost turned numb and useless. He needed to get closer to the building, and quickly. Or he’d be down to one arm again. Then no arms.
Jared pumped his legs. He planned on getting into a good swaying motion, but that didn’t happen. Both of his hands came off the edge.
And he fell.
His feet struck the outcropping, knees buckled with the impact, and body sank back. For a split second he sensed the wind behind him and he flung his arms forward to get hold of something. His fingers brushed against a crack in the concrete and got caught inside. He pulled himself flush to the wall, so close his cheek pressed against the burning stone surface. Delirious and dizzy, he sucked air into his lungs and tried sidling even closer, though it was impossible.
His heels hung off the ledge, but other than that he’d secured a safer position. He almost wanted to cry for joy, but he wasn’t exactly back on the ground either, so celebrating was definitely premature.
He promised himself he wouldn’t look down again and took a second step. Seeing the distance below would only freak him out, if it didn’t make this dizziness worse, so he soon went back to waiting. Time proved to be excruciating right away. Birds flapped around and he hoped they didn’t investigate the out-of-place human. The shallow cracks in the concrete seemed to give less area to grip with every passing minute.
Then, piercing through the wailing wind, his cell phone rang. It startled him and his heart leapt into his throat. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down. A laugh, so dry it might have been a cackle, came from the depths of his chest. “Lettin’ that one go to voicemail.” He tittered for a minute more, feeling desperation shroud his mind. What if the call had been Kaitlin again?
Don’t risk it. You’ll do her more good unsplattered.
The building hummed beneath his hands, tickling his flesh. It was almost as if it wanted him to fall, but then the humming turned to quivering and trembling and shaking. Large blocks of concrete and rebar pushed out, surrounding him. He thought to grab one of these wide platforms but he feared the structures might be too tentative—here he was on this little ledge and the building around him rearranged itself like a backwards game of Tetris—a disassembling Transformer—a live action version of an oscillating sound graph.
From above, the sky warped in and out. Jared clenched his eyes. He didn’t want to look at it—he didn’t want to think that the atmosphere might pop and something unimaginable would rain down on him, washing him off the side of this Rubik’s Cube Mount Everest he’d found himself trapped on.
The crack in the concrete slowly started to seal. He pulled his fingers out with a curse. Large portions of the building glided back inside. A falling sensation bloomed in his stomach. The building lowered itself, steadily. This brought little relief, however, because the tiny ledge under his feet began to retreat inside the building as well. He searched around for something else to climb on, but everything had tucked inside the face of the building.
“No,” he breathed.
He stood on his tiptoes and hugged the flat surface with all his strength. Wind rushed around him. The ledge vanished from under his feet and he dropped at once—
Four feet into the planter of island bush poppies below.
He screamed and sat there, wild-eyed for a moment. He thought for sure he still had hundreds of feet to fall. Through the office window he could see a balding dentist, drill in hand, staring at him, along with his patient in the chair, open-mouthed and confused.
Jared scooted out onto the planter’s brick border. He surveyed the surrounding area. The building was no longer in the dead center of the street. All the cars sat in the parking lot rather than parked in a circle. Nothing moved. Nothing reshaped. Nothing appeared and then vanished.
The Disturbance Paradigm had ended.
He swung his legs off the planter and hopped down. There wasn’t any time to lose. If he could get a cab to the beach he’d maybe get there in time.
Before they showed up.
He took out his phone. MISSED CALL.
There was a voicemail. He didn’t recognize the number but the area code was local.
“Banch?” he whispered. She knew everything about him, so it would stand to reason she memorized his cell number. She must have found a phone somewhere.
He went to the voicemail and selected the message. It started loading. The streets were still quiet—people probably trying to get their heads sorted out.
Why was this phone taking so long to load the message? What if Banch was in trouble?
You’re the one in trouble, dummy. She’s immortal. She’s fine.
The cruel possibilities dominoed through his head. There could be all kinds of things happening to her—things he’d caused—and he had no way to know.
“Stupid shitty service!” He smacked the phone’s screen. “Load, damn you!”
He aimed his phone to the s
ky, to the ground, left and right—he got another reception bar. He followed it, moving with his phone extended like some divining rod.
The bandwidth wasn’t improving. He walked faster, phone wagging back and forth, trying to catch that sweet nectar of signal. He passed a parked gray Audi with a man sitting there, staring ahead, stunned. An upset disc jockey on the radio stammered, “For all these events which are being called… spatial… is that… hold on folks. Yes, a spatial interruption, says NASA, anyway. There haven’t been many reported deaths. Plenty of injuries, but few deaths reported so far. This thing seems to have only ended fifteen minutes ago, so it’s way too early to say for sure. Let’s pray its over for good. No other reports have come in yet. But as stated, if you’re just joining us, these spatial events have—”
Jared lowered himself and looked at the man in the car. “You okay?”
The man, sandy-haired and sunburned, dragged his beaten eyes over to Jared. “I was inside a pyramid made of tinfoil. The sun was in there with me.”
“Whoa,” said Jared, unsure how else to respond.
“The sun!” The man smacked his steering wheel. “The frigging sun!”
The man twisted the key and stabbed at the window button, sealing Jared off from him.
After the car peeled away, Jared checked his phone again. Only two bars but he decided to check the voice message once more.
It came on.
“Jared this i—”
He waited, but nothing else was said. The recording indicated a message almost a minute long. The voice sounded familiar but he couldn’t place it. An older man though, not Banch.
He shook his head in disgust, watching the message struggling to load. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Really?”
He attempted to call Kaitlin back. It rang five times before going to her message.
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