“Daniel?” The truth choked out of him. It carried the taste of bile and grief and anger.
The orange appeared in front of his face. Daniel kept himself mostly inside the rock wall from a lack of space, but his face and chest gently pushed out a few centimeters. Looking at the gray rock through his skin made him look even more sallow, less human, less like Daniel.
“What—who?” He did not want to ask it, did not want to find out who killed Daniel because then it wasn’t a hallucination. It couldn’t be an illusion or a shapeshifter. It could not be any of those things if he watched how the figure tilted its head like Daniel, how it pursed its lips like Daniel, when he was tired of some bullshit, or slow-blinked like Daniel when he was being stubborn and would wait forever for Erik to say the first thing.
It was Daniel, now a ghost like Elana. Erik hadn’t realized non-Blooded could become ghosts, but the evidence was still waiting for him to speak.
“Byron.” It was a cheat, a shortcut to saying the word dead or killed, but Daniel smiled sadly anyway and gave a brisk nod. Erik flicked his eyes up and down over the bits of Daniel he could see and immediately wished he hadn’t. His chest was a mess of meat and gristle and bone, cracked and shattered and shredded—that was the fringe he had seen. Little bits of the orange fabric had embedded into the wound and it looked all the more horrible for the way it faded from sight. Its transparency made it seem old and faint even though he knew it had been recent.
“What happened?”
“He threw me. Onto a tree stump.”
Erik flinched and tried to back away but there was no space; he simply scratched his back up in the attempt.
“Where is everyone else?”
“I don’t exactly know. I was too busy dying to pay attention to the other things happening around me.”
Erik flinched at the words scraping a divot in his right cheek.
“I’m sorry.” He did not mean just for his callous words but for everything, for Robert and for the pain Daniel endured, for the refusal to leave him alone even as Daniel made it clear he wanted to stop contact, for being the reason the last year of his life had been so hard. He’d tried to say these words a number of times and now his first chance to say it face-to-face was after Daniel’s death.
“Being dead isn’t really that bad.”
Erik wanted to look away and put his hands over his ears. The most painful part was that Daniel wasn’t saying this to punish or to grind salt in his wounds. His voice was matter-of-fact. The way it got when he was just musing out loud.
“All the limits of your body are gone. Not the physical limits, though those are gone too, but the emotional ones. The fears we use to limit ourselves and to shrink ourselves down for fear of others’ attention or just because the world wants us too. It’s all gone.”
“I . . .” There wasn’t a response that Erik could give to that, at least not one that he understood himself. How do you speak to someone you love who is talking about the pros of being dead?
“You see things differently as well.”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
Erik was silent, hoping that would end the conversation.
“You’re more than what they tell you.”
Erik froze. There was no way for Daniel to know what he’d been told unless he was reading Erik’s mind. Did this have something to do with the limits he’d mentioned? He didn’t doubt it was Daniel, but a far creepier version, more what he had thought ghosts would be like before he met Elana. He shook his head and closed his eyes. Daniel was always the supportive one, the one who told him he could be more than an ATM for Robert. He thought it was one of the reasons Robert was so harsh on Daniel, which was not really a conversation that he wanted to have . . . ever. He knew Daniel but he also felt a shiver of apprehension as he stared into translucent eyes that saw entirely too much.
“Hello!” His voice echoed up the oubliette but there was no response that he could hear, no returning call, no scuffle of feet, no face blocking the light to peer down at him through the bars up top.
He had to get out of here, now.
He called his power up slowly, let it burn under his skin until the pain of his scrapes was background noise. He braced his back against the wall, then his hands and feet, and began to inch up to the top. Every move strained his muscles and every inch cost him bits of skin and blood left on the rock. A penance.
The back of his shirt was ripped to shreds by the time he was halfway up. Daniel was silent but Erik could feel him, sometimes right above him, sometimes directly below, and sometimes in the very rock he pressed bloody palms to, an unintended benediction.
Daniel was silent, though, only the sound of their twinned breathing filling the narrow shaft. Erik closed his eyes and climbed quickly until his head bumped against the metal bars. Bracing his legs, he raised his hands and took hold of the bars. They creaked as he pushed against them and rock dust showered him as the bolts began to shake loose. With a screech of metal and a shower of shrapnel, the grate came free. He heaved it over and grasped the ragged edge of the hole to drag himself out.
Once free, he lay panting next to the hole with the grate somewhere behind him. He could feel his power still sparking over the surface of his skin.
“Look out.”
Erik rolled over onto his back to look up into Daniel’s face. In the brighter light, he was even more faint, a whisper of shadow without any fine details. He was not looking down at Erik but across the hole, and as Erik followed his gaze he saw one of the things from before. The Pillar of Sand. Previously the sand that made it up had been all golden, roiling and bubbling over itself in the air. Now the crescent that had been burned out of it was patched with many different colors, black and white and rose sand. There were even some sun-bleached pebbles churning in that space.
It looked like it had been slumped on the ground, but even as he watched the sands began turning faster, the mass becoming a pillar, rising higher in the air and sparking on fire.
Wind blasted him in the face. His skin went tight and dry, and his eyes burned from the lack moisture.
He reached behind himself and his hand closed on the broken grate that had kept him in his prison. Throwing his body forward, almost back into the hole, he used the momentum to fling the grate like a discus. It flew true but the granules of sand blew apart to avoid the projectile. The spinning disc sank into the stone wall behind the Angelic. The sand came back together, a little smaller, a little more wary.
Erik was already on his feet. There was no longer any wind. His skin stung and burned but he could move. He leapt over the hole in the floor and immediately rushed into the body of the creature. Winds began to rip at his face and hands and stripped them raw in seconds. The sands and rocks battered him so that every touch was salt and blood and pain but he did not care. He kept his eyes closed but grasped with his hands, sifting through the scorching sands. The thing was making noises, low whistles and chirps of pain but also high notes of rage and anger. A higher heat rose around him, one that made him gasp for air even as it seared his throat. It made his stomach roil and before he knew it, bile was pushing its way up through his body. He didn’t fight it and allowed the vomit to leave his mouth.
Then his hands closed on what he was looking for, something different from the dry touch of sand, something warm and pulsing, damp and sticky, as only the most important things were. Erik grabbed it with both hands as it tried to pull away, tried to yank his arms out of their sockets. He pulled back, sinking his fingers into the tough flesh. He had spotted it when the grate had cut through the main body of the creature, a misshapen bit of red floating in the middle of it. It looked unlike any other part of the Angelic, which he had guessed meant it was important in some way.
With a final pop his fingers pushed through the hard outer shell and sank into something soft and gelatinous. The screams on the wind reached a fever pitch and he could feel his right eardrum burst from the heat, but blood drippe
d freely from both ears. He pulled his hands apart quickly and the organ ripped apart.
Everything stopped. The wind. The heat. Everything.
Meat slipped through his fingers and coated his palms.
He opened his eyes. It looked like he stood in the middle of a beach. The ground around him was covered in sand. Some of the grains rippled as if they were trying to reform but then simply fell apart. Two halves of something lay at the floor around and on his feet. It looked as if a heart had mated with a brain and then called a bunch of intestines to join the orgy. The inside alternated between empty chambers and twisted roads that looked like brain meat. His hands were raw as if he had started to bleed from his pores, a thousand pinpoints of red.
“Well, that was messy.” Erik turned and looked at Daniel, who stared at him from his beginning position across the hole. “And you are covered in . . . gore.”
Erik smiled, even though the movement allowed some of the vile white-gray fluid that had exploded from the creature to slip into his mouth. He turned his head to the side and spat.
“Sorry about that.” Even though he tried to make it light, it still came out too heavy. Too much like truth.
There was a pause and Erik racked his brain for something else to say, anything to change the atmosphere back from the tense, waiting thing it had become with three little words.
“Me too.”
His head snapped back up. Daniel was smiling at him, lightly, the way he used to in Erik’s trailer between takes. Right before he would lean forward and kiss him. Right before he would hold Erik close and pretend everything would be all right. How could he fear Daniel, no matter how death had changed him? Who wouldn’t be changed?
“There is a lot to talk about, but not here or now. Let’s find your friends, right?”
Erik smiled in the near dark. “Yeah.” He looked around the room. There was only one door leading out. Before he left, he walked to the wall and pulled the grate from it, an unwieldy weapon compared to his bracelets, which they hadn’t removed, but he needed a distance weapon. As he exited the room the cold and distinct lack of presence at his back was a sure sign that Daniel was following.
MATTHIAS
“Is that all you got?” Blood dripped from his lips but he was not broken, wouldn’t allow himself to be. His face and chest were already a mess of bruises.
“Honestly, you are only hurting yourself.”
Byron wasn’t wrong but Matthias was too angry right now to care. He’d woken up as they were trying to cram him into some hole in the ground and fought his way out of the holds of Byron and Brady. Brady was not especially strong, but Matthias had taken a couple of hits before he realized that the Suit wasn’t just lucky but could see him, even with his power burning full-tilt-boogie. The Suit was fast and Matthias was barely able to avoid his fists, let alone land any blows himself, so he was wearing down.
Byron wasn’t participating. He watched from the edge of the room, taunting Matthias occasionally.
“We only want to help the world.”
Matthias snorted and did not deign to respond. His strength was fading and every minute they continued to circle was another chance for reinforcements to arrive. He maneuvered under a punch and rolled to the side, despite the way it made his ribs scream in pain. Already Brady was coming for him again. He managed to avoid the punch aimed at his face and smiled when he heard a satisfying crunch from where Brady’s knuckles slammed into the stone floor.
Brady grunted in pain and Matthias managed to hook his feet behind the Suit’s ankles and pull, knocking him off balance and toward the hole. As Brady stumbled to regain his balance, Matthias could tell it wasn’t enough. Then there was the sound of running footsteps and the whirl of something flying through the air over his head and a sickening crunch.
Matthias had caused enough death to know the sounds of it, whether it was the quiet last gasp of the final exhale or the crunch of several crushed bones, as this was. He looked at Brady, whose chest was shattered. Some sort of grate stuck out of it and he looked down at it in surprise, as blood dripped from his lips. Matthias craned his neck to see Erik in the doorway.
Erik’s face was a mix of rage and devastation that Matthias did not understand. He looked at Brady’s wound as if he were seeing something else. The anger was pushed off to the edges of his face by the gray that was filling it. He had blood dripping from dozens of cuts on his hands and face. There was dried brown-red in a thin stream from his ears down to his chin. His skin was flushed and peeling as if he had a sunburn.
Matthias glanced at Byron and saw him staring at Erik in horror.
No, not directly at Erik, at the empty space over Erik’s shoulder. The Suit had gone pale, the freckles on his face and arms standing out starkly.
“Erik?” His aspirant glanced at him and Matthias was nervous about the blankness in his eyes. “Erik.” He said it again, hard, a tone that was meant to be obeyed.
Erik seemed to shake himself a little. He drew his eyes away from Brady.
“Come over here and help me up.”
Erik moved slowly at first, as if remembering how. Color was coming back to his skin, and by the time he crouched down beside Matthias he was moving almost smoothly enough for it to be normal. He kept his eyes averted from Brady’s body, but Matthias glanced over as Erik helped him back to his feet. The body had fallen oddly. One leg had slipped into the hole while the rest of his body slumped, stuck outside by a combination of gangly limbs and the grate catching on the rim of the hole.
He glanced at the side of Erik’s face and realized with some surprise that blood was still sluggishly leaking from his ears. He already felt a little better simply being close to Erik, within the space of his healing energy. He couldn’t imagine why Erik wasn’t healed himself.
Looking at the corner where Byron had lurked, he now found it empty, the man taking their distraction to escape. A flash of anger moved through him that whatever thing was wearing his friend’s body was still running around. Erik was staring at him, expectation lighting his features. Matthias stared at his aspirant for a second, then looked around the room.
“Are you okay?”
Erik’s mouth fell open, shock registering on his face. Finally he shook his head quickly back and forth before calming and answering, “I’m okay. I had to kill one of the Angelics, the one made of sand.”
It explained the burns that littered his skin and were very slowly healing “Are you okay with that? And this?” Erik had killed an Angelic before, but that was on the day of his awakening, when instinct was in the driver’s seat. He hadn’t seemed to care or he’d written it off as something he didn’t have much control over. These two, however, had been choices. Someone in control of their powers choosing to kill. He had known stronger people than Erik that had been broken by such a choice.
“Yeah, I’m fine with it.”
Something was off in the way Erik stood and spoke. Matthias would have worried, but his next words broke and crackled, each one heavy with unreleased tears.
“They—they killed Daniel.”
A tear slipped down his drawn face before it firmed up.
“I’m sorry.”
Erik simply nodded and they started for the door. Every step, Matthias felt a little bit better. It became easier to breathe as his ribs went from broken to cracked and the strain on his ankle slowly faded away.
“How do you know?”
Erik simply shook his head again and his lips thinned and almost disappeared as they firmed in annoyance. Then he tilted his head to the side as if listening to something.
“We should go. Byron will have let someone know we’ve gotten away now. We need to get to the others and get the fuck out of here.”
Matthias nodded but continued to worry. Especially because Erik tilted his head every few feet of their journey, as if listening to something Matthias couldn’t hear.
ERIK
He was confused and worried by the fact that Matthias couldn’t see Dan
iel. He had assumed that Daniel was like Elana and all the other Blooded would be able to see him. That obviously wasn’t the case . . . but Byron had been able to see Daniel.
Or rather, whatever was wearing Byron’s body had been able to see Daniel. Had that pillar Angelic been able to? Erik tried to think back on the fight. Had he at any point noticed the sand reacting to or attacking Daniel?
He couldn’t remember.
“Turn left at this juncture,” Erik repeated automatically after Daniel. He saw the way Matthias watched him out of the corner of his eye. He needed to be more circumspect until he figured this out.
They moved through damp stone hallways, some of which carried the scent of sewage. They were underneath the city somewhere. All the passages were narrow, just tall enough for Erik to walk unbent. Matthias, who followed behind since there wasn’t room enough for them to walk side by side, was not so lucky and crouch-walked to keep from hitting his head.
The pain was catching up to his body. Erik’s right ear throbbed and the cuts on his skin stung in the cold air that blew past them. His skin still burned like a fever, which made him somewhat grateful for the chilled wind. Matthias was slowly walking straighter, his posture growing more stable. The slow drag of a foot that would not cooperate was disappearing.
They came to a dead end. The tunnel simply widened into a stretch of blank wall. Matthias took advantage of the increased space to come up alongside Erik. They both stared at the dead end. Matthias turned his stare to Erik, a question in his gaze. Erik tried to catch a glimpse of Daniel out of the corner of his eyes, but his dead love had nothing more to say.
The Root Page 36