Harbinger

by Sara Etienne

  Dr. Mordoch tried to sit up. I could smell her from here, the sour stink of alcohol and panic. Looking at her slumped against the bookshelf, I felt sorry for her. The screaming memory receded and, with it, the heady sense of power. The glow around my hands dimmed and I was just Faye again. Weak and insignificant. A freak.

  But I’m supposed to be the hero.

  Then I understood. I’d thought the Harbinger needed to be stopped. But I’d been looking at it all wrong. I was still the hero, but when I was finished, there wouldn’t be a ticker-tape parade. There wouldn’t even be anyone left to cheer.

  Not Dr. Mordoch. Not Kel. Not even me.

  But at least there would be something left.

  Power surfaced inside of me, like a shipwreck hidden for years under the waves. And now I could feel the sickness too, strangling the Earth.

  “Show her who you are.” Rita was excited. “She hurt you. Locked you in the dark. Even now, she wants to take you away from your Path.”

  I growled, still feeling the sting of Dr. Mordoch’s hand on my cheek. How dare Dr. Mordoch touch me. Me, the strongest of the Family.

  I would show Dr. Mordoch what real authority was. This was what I was meant for. I was here to wash the world clean.

  “You are nothing.” I thought about being chained up in Solitary. I could almost feel the cuffs still cutting into my wrists and ankles.

  The marble floor under my feet started to vibrate, and I braced myself in the doorway.

  Dr. Mordoch huddled on the shaking floor. “Listen to me, Faye . . . Buddha says—”

  “You’re just a bug, trying to find smaller bugs to eat.” The taunts from the cafeteria rang in my ears. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Deep in the stone, I felt all those years of pressure beneath the ground. Limestone bullied into becoming marble.

  “Please, Faye. I never wanted to hurt you,” Dr. Mordoch whispered.

  Distant drums pounded in my ears and the fire of transformation rushed into me.

  “Do it!” Rita’s cry sounded like the baying of wolves.

  A thick crack shot across the floor between me and Dr. Mordoch, shattering and scorching the stone under her. I screamed as the heat burned through me. The wooden joists warped and the floor buckled.

  Nails melted. Long millennia seeped from the marble into the wood, and it disintegrated into sawdust. With an earsplitting crash, the floor caved in under Dr. Mordoch. She grabbed at the empty air, her eyes pleading with me before she plummeted through the gaping hole.

  “Yes!” Rita grinned. “This is how we shall answer their arrogance.”

  I stared at Rita, standing on the other side of the rift. After a hundred years, she was weak, used up. No more substantial than a shadow. “There is no we. You may be one of the Family. But I am the Harbinger. I say what will be done.”

  Rage crossed Rita’s face and her mouth opened. Without a word, I struck her with the full strength of my newfound power. Rita blinked at me in disbelief, our eyes locking. Then in a blaze of light, she flew apart, vanishing in a million little pieces. Dots on a canvas.

  The house let out a fatal groan, sending the library ceiling crashing down. Rita’s legacy swallowed up in an explosion of shingles and splinters.

  I buckled to the floor. Tremors of pain ran through me as the room collapsed in on itself. I threw myself into the hallway and ran down the spiral steps.

  The stairs moaned, boards smashing as my feet pounded out the beat. Hurry, Hurry. It’s time.

  The arrows carved into the dark passageway sang a song of power. Cracks split across my skin, mirroring the ones spiderwebbing across the black stone walls. I cried out as the passage caved in behind me.

  The secret doorway fell away in a shower of sawdust and plaster. And there in front of me, tiled into the floor, was the compass. Still pristine.

  Rita had been clever. Leaving this house for me to find, the trail of arrows, the diary, the tarot cards. But I was glad she was gone. She was a reminder that something in my plan had gone very wrong. Her and this off-center house. Even now, the corner of the back porch stuck irritatingly over the cliff.

  The Compass Rose. As the walls crumbled into dust and gypsum around me, I suddenly understood how truly genius Rita had been. The name didn’t just refer to the design in the floor. Or the arrows carved into the walls. This whole house was a compass.

  Shouts were coming from outside now, barely audible over the destruction. Running to the back door, I twisted the knob, forgetting the door was nailed shut. I reached out to the trees all around me, felled and butchered. To the roots creeping beneath the house. With the lightest touch, the door splintered away.

  The same splintering pain shot through my bones. But it was lost in the aching chaos.

  Stepping out onto the porch, I blocked out the yelling and running footsteps. Wind blew off the sea, carrying its stench with it. I clutched the railing and peered straight down into a transformed ocean. In the dark, the toxic tide shimmered blue, lighting up as the waves crashed against the night beach.

  I remembered Aunt saying that the algae glowed in the dark, but I hadn’t imagined it would be so beautiful. The phosphorescent water swirled and spun with turquoise light. As if dancing to the same terrible power that was inside me. I focused on it, trying to find the final clue Rita had left.

  Behind me, windows exploded and the back wall of the Compass Rose crumpled, glass shards and slate shingles raining past me. I was untouched, the cliffs beneath the porch holding it steady. Then the house roared, the entire back half sliding past me and plunging into the sea.

  I looked back. Flashlight beams raked across the rubble. It felt right that the house was gone. Like Dr. Mordoch, like Rita, it’d served its purpose.

  A dull pain still throbbed through me, and that felt right too. The ache of metamorphosis.

  Standing on the porch, I heard the boulder and the mountain calling to me from across the years. Waiting for me to take vengeance for the Earth. This rectangular frame was the only piece left of Rita’s compass. It angled out over the edge of a cliff, pointing out across the dazzling, putrid sea. Pointing the way.

  I walked to the very corner of the porch and there it was. The crisscrossed iron railings made a perfect window. Framed in the middle of barren islands and bright oil rigs was my destination. The biggest island. And I finally understood what I was looking at.

  Slinging my legs over the railing, I set my feet on the edge of the cliff. Behind me, Takers clambered through the wreckage of the Compass Rose. I didn’t have time to deal with them. I needed to gather my Family. One last time.

  Running through the forest, following the path, my heart pounded out a drumbeat as I climbed the hill. Hurry, Hurry. Wind howled through the trees. They knew the Harbinger had come.

  As the woods opened up, I looked out across the water. The night flickered like an old filmstrip playing across the dark sea. I could see an ancient mountain, superimposed across the island. A green valley dipping down where the ocean was now, connecting Holbrook’s cliffs with the mountainside.

  I remembered climbing that mountain hundreds of times. To collect visions from storms out at sea. To listen to the rocks rumbling beneath the earth. To create the talismans.

  Professor Warren had written that the coast had been slowly sinking into the ocean, destroying all traces of the mysterious people. Years of shifting land, of melting ice caps and storms swamping the coast, had flooded the valley that’d once connected the mountain to Holbrook. Where there was once a tall peak, now there was only an island.

  I’d seen the end of the world from that mountain. The sea had been thick with blood and oil. There had been nothing but bloated bodies and thick smoke billowing across the horizon. In the vision, I’d reached down and thrust my hand into the waves. There’d been no fish. No seaweed. Even the rocks hundreds of feet below the icy water had been silenced.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing. My world had become a graveyard. I’d wept then, understanding what I would have to do.


  Now, I banished the same tears from my eyes. There was no time for mourning. No time for hesitation. The full moon was already making its way across the sky.

  Tonight, I had this one chance to keep my vision from coming true. If I failed, nothing would survive. Humans would annihilate everything. Billions of hands stripping the bones bare until there was nothing left. They’d already started.

  “Murderers!”

  With the luminous, deadly sea as my witness, I renewed my vow to safeguard this world.

  And to save what I loved, I had to destroy them all.

  32

  LEGS PUMPING, pulse hammering, I ran along the cliff toward the Screamers. Hurry, Hurry. Adrenaline streamed through my veins as I played chicken with the drop-off. For years I’d been afraid of the strangeness inside me, but not anymore.

  It was like a new part of my brain was awake, and now the ground was familiar under my feet. Night after night, I’d been following this path. Singing, calling to the rest of the Holbrook Family as I climbed the hill. And night after night, they had followed me as the song awakened the power in the buried talismans. Pulling in Maya, Nami, Damion, Zach, and even Kel. Gradually transforming them into the Family that I needed.

  I’d begun this ritual four thousand years ago, but I didn’t do it alone. The Harbinger could crush stone and see visions, but the Family could reach beyond the impossible. Tonight we would walk The Path together and change the future.

  I came over the rise of the hill, and it was as if I could see across the millennia. Back to the night when this had begun. A vast bonfire leapt at the star-studded sky. People crowded onto the bluff, flocking to the fire. Chanting and singing. My people.

  All those years ago, thousands of my people had converged here. Their rich voices had throbbed with power, lending it to me, to The Path, as they’d danced around six fresh graves carved out of the earth.

  I will save you, I promised them. I will save this world for you.

  I sprinted toward them, the rhythm of their chant urging me on. They looked so solid. So real. I would be with them again. I would be home.

  It wasn’t until I reached them that I noticed the blur of orange and green jumpsuits, bright in the firelight. These were not my people. Everywhere around me were the faces of students who had ridiculed and rejected me.

  The Holbrook students swarmed around the Screamers, pulled into the spell of this night. Stand-ins for those who had helped me during the first half of this ritual. Their possessed faces turned up to the stars. Their feet stomped in rhythm to the Song of Balance. A parody of power.

  The throng of students parted as I walked through them. I knew some of them from the cafeteria incident—a girl with a long nose, a geeky-looking guy—but there was no spark of the people they’d been. They didn’t even look at me as they shuffled backward to form a great ring around the Screamers, their unfocused eyes in some sort of trance.

  Then I stood alone in the circle of statues. A bonfire blazed in the center of the deep pit, casting its flickering light into the night. And for the first time, I recognized each one of the terrified metal faces. They were the people I’d buried last night in my vision. My Family from the past. I lifted my face to the sky. Letting my voice soar up into the night. Calling the others to me one more time.

  “Faye.” Kel’s voice cut through my song and he stepped into the circle of light. He stood straighter, no longer stiff with lupus. The rusted talisman gripped in his hand. One of the Family.

  I ran to him, my heart thudding. Of course he was already here. Now that he actually saw this damaged world, he’d come to help. A fierce joy leapt inside me, knowing he’d be with me tonight.

  Kel’s eyes were not the cold black of last night, or the hazel green of before. Instead it was like being underwater, hints of deepest emerald lingering in the fathomless dark. I let myself get lost in them. Our fingers weaving together. His lips pressing against mine.

  I was enveloped by waves of heat, like stepping into a fire. Kel’s new power surged through me, calling out my own. Tongues of flame shivered over me, and I wanted to stay there forever in this delicious agony. But Kel’s mind shifted, showing me something else. Hesitation. Fear. Anger.

  I pulled away. “What is it?”

  “I can’t be a part of this.” He laid his talisman in my palm and gently folded my fingers over it. His hand covering mine. “You have to stop.”

  I’d thought the heart of the Harbinger was hard. Hard enough to purge the Earth. But now it shuddered and cracked. How did I forget about the tarot cards?

  The upside-down Lovers. Two quarrel. Kel was still my enemy.

  “Or what? You’ll stop me?” Sparks spit from the tips of my fingers and sizzled across my skin. The wind pulled its fingers through my hair, egging me on. “I’m the Harbinger.”

  “I have to try.” Kel’s words were tinged with regret, longing filling his eyes. Then I saw the stone dagger gripped in his other hand. “We have to find another way.”

  “No!” The wind blasted my angry words at him, throwing him up into the air and slamming him down into the pit below me. Knocking the dagger out of his hand. “You don’t get it. Either I flood the world, save the Earth, and everybody dies. Or”—I laughed, my voice sounding crazy, even to myself—“we stand around doing nothing, people destroy the world for us, and everybody and everything dies. Which would you choose?”

  I leapt down after him, landing inches from where Kel lay, sprawled in the mud. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You don’t get to choose.”

  I kicked the stone dagger into the fire. “You remember that night, don’t you, Kel? It was exactly like tonight. It was the equinox. The moon full and as close to the Earth as it would ever get. The sun was in perfect symmetry. Everything was the same. Except last time I had the dagger.”

  Kel pulled himself to his hands and knees. Firelight flickered across his face and he held my eyes, not flinching. The air between us crackled, and memories from a lifetime ago poured into my mind. That first consuming kiss. Racing him up the mountain. The power that joined us both. I gasped, struggling for breath, as four thousand years of yearning tore into me.

  And tangled up in the storm of memories was Kel. The spicy scent of him intoxicating me. The burn of his lips against mine. Everything that’d happened between us at Holbrook was still sharp and strong in his thoughts.

  Fighting not to be overwhelmed by his memories, I cleared my mind with words. “You certainly had me fooled. ‘The Harbinger is shielded from the glare of day.’ And you with your hoodie and gloves and sunglasses. You were the one with lupus.”

  “‘But the moon will know them.’” Kel stood up, his voice a low growl as he finished the prophecy. “You were fooling yourself, Faye. You spent your days hiding who you were, but you can’t do that anymore. Look at yourself.”

  He grabbed my hand and held it up against the sky. My fingers glowed with the same silver shimmer as the moon.

  I ripped my hand out of his grip. “What about the last part? The tarot cards said that the Harbinger would ‘carry pain with them through the lonely places of the Earth.’”

  “There’s more than one kind of pain.” His eyes paralyzed me, his face inches from mine. “You didn’t know it, but you radiated power. Even before. Didn’t you see the way people looked at you? They couldn’t even meet your eyes.”

  “But I thought—”

  “No, Faye.” His voice was sharp, commanding me to listen to what he was saying. And I gravitated toward his words. “I know what you thought . . . but there was never anything wrong with you. Nothing missing. You are the Harbinger, and I’m the one who is supposed to stop you. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t? Then why did you have the dagger?” I backed away from him, adrenaline surging through me. How did I let him draw me in? “You are nothing next to me.”

  “You’re right, Faye. You are stronger than me. That’s why I couldn’t keep you from burying
the talismans or starting down this Path. But are you stronger than all of us?”

  The statues ringing the hole seem to come alive as Zach, Maya, Damion, and Nami stepped out from behind them. Each of them gripped their talisman. They jumped down into the wide pit, forming a circle around me and Kel and the fire.

  Fear stabbed my belly as they closed in on me. Am I stronger than all of them together? I didn’t know. My mind spun out into my surroundings, searching for a new advantage. In the distance, I heard a shift in the ocean roar. The tide was changing. Rising. Hurry. Hurry.

  Knowing what I had to do, I yanked a burning branch out of the flames. The end I held was hot, but unburnt. I focused my mind, picturing mossy, damp logs and green wood. I shivered and the bonfire guttered and went out, plunging us all into the dark. In the sudden blackness, I crouched down and grabbed the dagger out of the ashes. Hiding it in my sleeve.

  “We’re not your puppets, Faye.” Nami’s voice rang out in the darkness, and as my eyes adjusted to the paler light of the full moon, I saw that the Family had used the moment to close in on me and Kel.

  Nami’s face was fearless. Her cockiness had metamorphosized into true power. “We’re not about to let you play Noah-without-the-ark.”

  “We made this plan together.” The sharp stone of the dagger pressed into my palm, and I saw how badly things had gone. Yes, my Family had survived the long years inside the talismans. But, when the time had come, when I’d chosen new bodies for them to inhabit, the Family was supposed to have reemerged unchanged. Ready to rid the world of humanity.

  “That was a different time,” Damion said, and they all stepped closer. Tightening their circle. Damion radiated the same strength he always had, only more so. But his face was alive with emotion now as he took Nami’s hand. “And a different us.”

  Like Kel, touching the talismans had changed the rest of the Family. Made them stronger. Given them new memories. But they were still the same people who’d arrived at Holbrook a week ago. They were still rooted in this modern world. By giving them the talismans, I’d created my own enemy. Now I would have to get rid of them.