“Except that death isn’t always the end.” Titus gave her a meaningful look, then circled around to the far side of the pit. From a peg on the wall, he took down a caged light bulb attached to a coiled-up length of grimy cord.
Dru swallowed, not liking where this conversation was headed. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Allow me to demonstrate.” Titus switched on the bulb, the click oddly loud in the silence of the cold tunnel. It cast harsh shadows up at his face, reflecting off his sharp cheeks and prominent eyebrows, and throwing his eyes into darkness. For a moment he seemed to have the grinning face of a skull.
Then he lowered the light into the pit, unspooling the power cord hand over hand, and as the light faded, his skull-like grin once more became a reassuring smile.
But it didn’t reassure her at all. A wave of fear rippled through her as she added everything up.
Undead. Mountain fortress. Collection of Harbingers lore.
No matter what Titus implied, the two of them were not on the same page.
Slowly, she edged away from him. “What’s down there in the pit?” she asked, although she already suspected the truth.
He shrugged in a self-deprecating way. “I have a confession to make. All those years ago, you kept asking me what my power was, and I always said I had a good reason for not telling you.”
“I tried to treat you, find a crystal to cure you. That’s why you came to me, Titus. To help you get rid of your power. That’s what you wanted. You hated your power.” She quietly added, “Almost like you were afraid of it.”
“I was,” he admitted softly, still unwinding the cord. “But that was because I didn’t understand. But now, my power has been accelerating far beyond what I ever hoped for. Every day, it grows. Look.”
As he lowered the bulb, Dru finally crept forward to see. The descending pool of light revealed an arched tunnel below theirs, running perpendicular.
In the darkness, something glittered. Dru glanced back at the Jeep, verifying that the keys were still in the ignition. Then she cautiously stepped closer to the edge of the pit.
She feared it would be full of undead. But she was completely wrong.
It was water, she thought at first. An underground river flowed through the tunnel beneath them. But as she watched the waves reflecting in the light, she realized that the liquid was much too viscous to be ordinary water. And it had an unpleasant sickly sweet smell.
Titus unspooled the cable until the light hung mere inches over the surface. The thick liquid seemed to react to the presence of the light, rippling away from it at first, and then dimpling to form a depression. The liquid actually appeared to be moving as far away as it could from the light.
It was only when he lowered the bulb another inch and the liquid let out a goose bump–raising squeal that Dru finally figured out what it really was.
“Scourge.” She backed away from the pit in horror.
As she backtracked past the dead spider, it stirred. Its flattened body swelled back into shape. Its crooked legs straightened, and it lifted itself up and scuttled away into the shadows.
Just like the dead moths in her shop. Something about Titus’s presence brought them back to life.
That, or the river of inky blackness running beneath them.
“Undead scourge,” she breathed. “A river of it. Oh, my God.”
Titus looked pleasantly surprised. “Oh, good, you’re already familiar with the scourge. That’s a relief. All my life, I’ve been able to summon up this stuff, but it took me years to figure out what it actually is. I didn’t know there was even a name for it until I discovered the Harbingers’ books.” He pulled the light up, winding the extension cord around his forearm. When he was done, he hung the light on the wall. “In retrospect, I should have just come and asked you. I would’ve saved both of us an inordinate amount of trouble.”
Dru kept backing away until she bumped against the old Jeep. “Why did you invite all those people here tonight, really? It’s not a sorcery contest after all. Is it?”
Titus just folded his arms and frowned, keeping the open pit between them.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Dru said, “but that stuff could kill everyone in here, including me and you. It’s deadly.”
“Only to someone who can’t control it.”
His words seemed to hang in the air.
It took a moment for the implications of what he was saying to sink in. Even then, Dru didn’t want to believe it. “Are you turning people into undead? Turning sorcerers into undead?”
“Not the living. Not yet.” Titus unfolded his arms and circled around the pit, an eager look on his face. With every step closer, the heels of his polished boots echoed off the stone. “For years, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you about this. About my power. To raise the dead. To give motion and purpose to otherwise lifeless bones. To make them servants of the human race. First, to rebuild this bunker. Then to rebuild the world.”
She backed up a little more, along the length of the Jeep. “You know, you’re right. You should’ve told me all this a lot sooner.”
As if sensing the panic rising inside her, he stopped and held out his empty hands in a placating gesture. “It’s all right, Drusy. I promise, it’s all right. Believe me. I would never allow you to come to harm.” He smiled. “Will you trust me?”
Absolutely not, she thought.
But she slowly nodded her head yes. “Sure.”
He smiled again, looking not the least bit convinced. “You’ll see. Just remember, they won’t hurt you.”
Her breath hitched in her throat. “Who?”
He looked over her shoulder at something behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Whispers of movement echoed through the tunnel. Though she couldn’t tell what it was, she knew there were a lot of them.
Heart pounding, she turned to look.
The dark tunnel behind them was full of slow, shuffling silhouettes. Gradually, as they approached the light, she could make out the outlines of heads, arms, legs. A silent crowd flowed out of the tunnel, surrounding her.
And every single one of them was a skeleton shrouded in scourge-speckled webs.
27
EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD
Dammit, Dru thought. Never leave a party with a sorcerer.
Despite how angry she was at herself for getting caught in this situation, most of her was actually terrified out of her mind. But if she gave in to that fear, she was as good as dead.
She decided to go with being mad instead.
She had her spectrolite dagger and a handful of other crystals in her evening bag, but she was outnumbered at least twenty to one, not counting Titus.
No matter what, this was a fight she couldn’t win. Instead, she’d have to talk her way out.
She pointed an accusatory finger at Titus. “You told me you wanted to save the world.”
He looked incredulous. “I do, Drusy. Absolutely. Why do you think I gathered everyone together here tonight, secure inside this bunker? I’m doing everything I can to save the very best parts of the world. Including you.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like we’re talking about the same thing.”
“No, you don’t understand. I used to hate my power. Hate it. I used to think I was some kind of . . . freak, for lack of a better word.” The anguish was plain in his voice. “Summoning up this tarry black oil from the depths of the earth to animate the dead? What good could possibly come of that? When I first met you, I was desperate to get rid of my power. I didn’t embrace it. I thought it was pure evil.”
Dru nodded. “You’re not wrong about that.”
“But I was wrong. Don’t you see? I wasted so many years of my life trying to fight against it, not realizing the entire time that it is a precious gift. The most precious of all.” He paced back and forth between the rectangular pit and the crowd of lifeless, web-shrouded creatures. “I s
pent all of my life up until now feeling like a pariah. Feeling like the universe had punished me for some crime I never committed. I tried so many ways to become ‘normal’ again. I fought so hard it nearly killed me. Do you have any idea what that’s like, how heartbreaking that is?”
“I do, a little bit,” she admitted, trying to ignore the twinge of sympathy she had for him. At his pleading look, she felt compelled to explain. “I had this boyfriend. He was a dentist. Drove a Prius. I was thinking about buying a house in Highlands Ranch. It was all so normal.”
Titus gave her a puzzled look. “You? Living in Highlands Ranch?”
She threw up her hands. “It was a sensible plan B, if the crystal shop kept losing money. And then, I don’t know, we could’ve found a safe, quiet neighborhood and—”
“No. There’s no place safe.” He cocked his head slightly, his dark gaze piercing her. “You had to know that after you found out about the Harbingers, and doomsday. And then everything changed for you.”
And I met Greyson, she thought, and then I changed.
She shook her head. “How long have you been studying the Harbingers? How much do you really know about them and their plans?”
“At first, I imagined they were tilting at windmills. Ask any of the older sorcerers, and they will tell you the Harbingers’ experiment was a mad lark. An unqualified failure.” He pointed at the rectangular pit over the river of scourge. “But when I saw how much of that I could summon, just with my thoughts, how I can make it flow into the bones of the dead to give them function again, that’s when I knew this was bigger than just me. That’s when I knew the Harbingers must have truly broken the fifth seal on the apocalypse scroll.”
Slowly, Dru shook her head, trying to keep her voice level. “I don’t think you understand. The fifth seal allows the dead to rise from the grave.”
“Precisely.” A manic grin split his face, revealing white teeth.
“This is different, Titus. These are monsters. Not people rising from the grave. These are undead creatures.”
“But they have risen.” He threw his arms wide. “Look around you! What do you see? The dead, risen from the grave, each one shrouded in white, just as it’s written. And it’s all because of me.”
Pulse pounding, Dru slowly looked around at the horde of undead that surrounded them. The creatures all stood hunched somewhat asymmetrically, skulls and ribs wrapped in black-speckled webs that seemed to tremble and writhe with a life of their own.
Strictly speaking, he did have a point. These dead had risen. In a way.
“The moths,” Dru realized out loud. “There were dead moths in my shop. After you left, they came back to life. Just up and flew away. That was you, wasn’t it? You made that happen just by walking past them.”
“An accident, of course. But just imagine what I can do intentionally.” His bright smile was seductive, almost infectious. His presence felt like a physical force, a hot, invisible light bathing her. She shrank back.
Titus followed, stepping closer. “The first four seals of the apocalypse scroll released the Four Horsemen,” he said. “And the fifth seal raises the dead from the grave. And thus it has multiplied my powers a thousand-fold. Like a force of fate, spread out through the atmosphere of our entire world. It will change everything.” His smile widened until she could see the outlines of the skull beneath his skin. “Don’t you see? My power, it’s not just some random chance. I’m here for a reason. My entire life makes sense now.”
Dru quirked an eyebrow at him. “So you’re actually trying to tell me that this whole thing about the dead rising from the grave—you think this is all about you personally?”
His chest seemed to puff up, straining the brass buttons of his red double-breasted coat. “Why else would I be cursed with such a dark power? This horrifying reversal of life and death, upending the natural order of things? If it’s a curse, I never did anything to deserve it. Never.” He made a violent sweeping-away motion with his hand. “But it’s not a curse. That’s what it took me years to realize. This power isn’t a burden. It’s a key. The key to life itself. The key to the continuance of the human race. The key that unlocks a new world after doomsday. One that will rise from the grave of the old.”
She watched him as he turned in a semicircle, gazing out at his horde of gurgling undead with something like fatherly pride.
Clearly, Titus was insane.
“But now, everything has changed. I’m not afraid. I’m not ashamed. I’m a savior.” He strode toward her, his gloved hands balling into fists at his sides. “At this very moment, I am the most important sorcerer in the world.”
“I know a few people who might disagree with you about that.” She stood her ground, but his looming height meant she had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
His baritone voice dropped to a menacing growl. “The world is dying, Drusy. No one can stop that. But after doomsday, I can bring it back.”
“Or, and this is just an idea, maybe we could stop doomsday from happening in the first place. Ever think about that?”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “You and I, together, we can remake the world, even more so than the Harbingers intended. We can raise it up from the ashes into something newer. Something brighter. Something better.”
She couldn’t hide her disgust. “You mean to create a world full of monsters?”
“No, no. Not monsters. Servants. An army of labor to rebuild the world into something beautiful and lasting. The Harbingers intended to make a new world for themselves. But I will make it for all the sorcerers. For everyone. For you.” He lifted one cold, gloved hand and cupped her cheek. “Especially you.”
It took all her willpower not to flinch away. “Titus—”
“Shh.” He leaned closer. “I know. It’s hard to let go. I’ve loved so many things in this world. There’s been so much beauty, and truth, and wonderful things to celebrate. But none of that matters anymore. They’re all going to go away.” His dark gaze bored into hers. “The world will come to an end, Drusy. All things must. This is just its time. So we must say our good-byes and let it all go. A new world awaits us. Together, we will create a new Garden of Eden.” He was so close she could feel his breath on her lips. “And you will be my Eve.”
She knew the kiss was coming, and every fiber of her being rejected it. Rejected him. Rejected everything he was trying to accomplish.
Even as she tried to think of some stinging retort, some brilliant escape plan, a little voice inside her warned her that talking wasn’t enough anymore.
She had to do something.
Her hand darted into her evening bag and pulled out her short spectrolite dagger. The crystal blade flared to life, fueled by her adrenaline and fear, bathing them in a swirling rainbow of light. The creatures nearest them backed away with a gurgling hiss.
Titus pulled back to arm’s length and looked down. Much to her own surprise, she had the crystal pointed at his solar plexus. It seemed so cruel, so crude, to threaten stabbing him. It was so unlike her. But she was panicked. She didn’t know what else to do.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you’re completely freaking me out. You need to back off. Right now.”
“You despise me.” He looked crushed. “All along, I thought you were better than that.”
“No. No, I don’t despise you, Titus.” That much was true. If anything, she felt sorry for him. “Look, see it through my eyes, all right? It’s all kind of terrifying.”
His gaze burned with an inner fire. “No, it all makes sense. Don’t you see?”
“I see that you’ve somehow worked out this entire doomsday scenario to revolve around you. And it doesn’t. I’m sorry.” She regretted the words the moment she spoke them, but she couldn’t stop. “Your power is freaking creepy, and you need to count me out.”
He looked wounded. “Drusy . . .”
“And stop calling me that, for Pete’s sake! It’s just Dru now.” She backed along the length of the old
rusty Jeep, shaking with adrenaline. “We can talk later.” Or not, she thought.
He looked genuinely sorry. “Don’t go just yet. Not until you hear me out.”
“Already did. Not buying it.” Still holding out the glowing spectrolite like a knife, she circled around the back of the Jeep, putting it between them.
“Drusy . . . Dru. I had to show you, in person. Would you have come here, had I told you everything before? Would you have trusted me, had you known the reality about my power?”
She couldn’t bring herself to answer that question out loud. They both knew the truth.
His expression turned hard then. “I can’t let you leave. I can’t let you go back out into the world, knowing you won’t be safe there.”
“Something tells me we don’t share the same definition of the word safe.” She reached the driver’s side of the Jeep, and silently hoped she could remember how to drive a stick shift. Slowly, she lowered the knife. “I’m sorry, Titus.”
“No, you aren’t.” With a fierce scowl, he motioned toward her with both hands. Behind him, the undead creatures raised their black-clawed hands. Strands of webbing whirled into existence in their skeletal palms.
“Oh, fudge buckets,” Dru muttered. She dropped to all fours beside the Jeep, instantly ruining her dress on the dirty stone floor.
Strands of webbing streaked through the air all around her, striking the Jeep and the stone wall with wet smacking sounds.
Titus had parked just a couple of feet from the wall, giving Dru barely enough cover to keep from being surrounded by the undead. She reached into the Jeep and fumbled with the controls, pumping the spindly gas pedal with her palm and twisting the key until she got the Jeep started.
But without windows or even doors, the Jeep provided little cover from the barrage of webbing. She was forced to crouch down next to the tire to avoid getting caught.
She yanked at the grinding controls until the Jeep started to roll backward. Hunched over, she scrambled to stay alongside the Jeep, using its bulk as cover.
A rope of webbing shot beneath the Jeep and caught her knee. A knobby black tire rolled over the long strand of web, yanking her to the floor.
A Kiss Before Doomsday Page 22