by eden Hudson
For a moment, Leif’s eyebrows drew down toward the bridge of his nose. “What the…? Tempie?”
We traced his fender. The truck’s metal body melted under our fingers, welding the doors closed. Leif and the high school girl screamed. Black smoke filled the interior. The girl clawed at the dripping glass of the windows, breaking her painted nails, but unable to escape. Leif roasted alive inside his beloved truck.
A screaming wind fanned the fires of the ruined town and set the prairie ablaze.
A moment later, on the riverfront of Hannibal, the waters of the Mississippi turned to blood. The river rose, flowing over the levy for miles in every direction, and washing through the floodgates before the city could shut them.
The businesses and apartment buildings downtown were battered and broken under the weight of the river of blood. Dad died alone in his little one-room efficiency, buried in the rubble of his new life.
Aunt Arie and the other CNAs and nurses at the nursing home tried to help their patients to safety, but the bloody water swept them down the halls into inescapable nooks and crannies, breaking bones, stealing away pockets of air, and drowning them all.
Mom didn’t even open her eyes when the river smashed out the windows and filled the house we’d grown up in. She died in her bed with no one trying to save her, just like she wanted.
The floodwaters continued to rise. Gianna, Leif’s friends and family, our teachers, bosses from summer and high school jobs, everybody we had grown up with—every soul in and around our hometown was crushed under the flood.
There were so many like them left. People who used and abused the innocents of the world. People who knew and did nothing.
We turned our focus outward, projecting ourself outside of time and place. It was effortless.
With nothing but a thought and a raised hand, we spread holocausts across the surface of the Earth, smothering souls in black smoke and searing heat. Tsunamis of blood swallowed islands and coastal cities. Great winds, rains, and hail ripped trees from the ground and battered the man-made structures flat, tearing life away.
Kathan and his legions remained in Halo. They regrouped at the mansion that had been our prison. The fallen angels prepared to defend their territory from the human army, while waiting out our destruction.
Kathan wasn’t afraid of us. We were inextricably linked to his mind and could feel his thoughts. He could taste victory. He was certain that we would destroy the Creator, and that he would rise to power on the ashes and muddy water of the world.
Tough
The only sounds in the front room of the tattoo parlor were gritting teeth, groaning, and gauze and med tape unrolling. The primals and humans who hadn’t gone on the attack were helping treat injuries, but no one was talking.
Clarion had taken another count on the way inside. Out of thirty humans, forty-one coyotes, and twenty-six crows, only seven humans, thirty-three coyotes, and twelve crows had made it back. Lonely headed back out right away to do a flyover and look for any survivors that we’d missed in our retreat, but no one thought he was going to find any.
Sometime tonight I was going to have to take Scout’s body to Harper. Then I needed to stop by Owen’s and tell him I’d gotten Dodge and Willow killed. And when Lonely got back, ask him what the hell had happened with keeping Willow away from the Dark Mansion.
But for now, we just sat.
I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes and made myself breathe. Breathe and think. It took time to kill a crow. Time and work. You had to pin it to the ground with some kind of wood, cut out its split tongue, cut off its wings, and then burn it. Coyotes were about the same—behead, cut out the tongue and heart, weigh it all down with stone, and throw it into the deepest part of a river or creek. Primals didn’t die easy. Whatever that huge explosion had been, it’d killed fourteen crows and eight coyotes in a matter of seconds.
Apparently, somebody else was thinking along the same lines as I was, because Clarion’s girlfriend finally asked, “What was it?”
We all looked at her, but nobody asked what she meant.
“The Destroyer,” Bailey said from over in the corner.
“Destroyer?”
Bailey stood up. “I don’t have Jax here anymore. He could give you the word-for-word on the prophecy. What it amounts to is this—a being capable of destroying the world has been unleashed. It’s the beginning of the end. The last battle has begun. Now she’s out there, destroying the world.”
“She?” Drake asked. “It’s a girl?”
“In this case,” Bailey said. “There have been others before—male, female, hermaphrodite, various races. This one—” She nodded at me. “—happens to be your girlfriend and her identical twin, bound as one, unleashing ultimate destruction upon the Earth. I believe Kathan was trying to bind her to him. If he succeeded, he’ll have a shot at killing God and ruling the universe in His place.”
“Killing God?” Clarion’s girlfriend said at the same time as a crow-boy asked, “How can there have been others? The world still exists.”
“The others were stopped before they destroyed the whole planet,” Bailey said. “And like anything else, they possessed varying levels of power and they were directed at different targets. Atlantis, Pangaea, Easter Island, outer worlds, peoples and races of NPs we have no name for because they were wiped from the face of the Earth before recorded history.”
“How do we stop it—her?” Clarion asked. “How do we stop her?”
“That is a good question.” Bailey shrugged. “If this one is the final Destroyer, the Godkiller, as Kathan believes her to be, then we can’t. Not without the Sword of Judgment.”
“How do we know if Kathan’s right and she is the Godkiller?”
Bailey gave him a wry smile. “I’ll let you know after she kills God and ends the world.”
A couple of the crows laughed.
“So, what do we do now?” Drake asked.
“We wait for backup,” Clarion said.
This horseshit again. I stood up.
Clarion eyed me, but didn’t stop talking “The messengers should be back tomorrow night or the night after. If they’re bringing any reinforcements, we can…”
He trailed off when I went to Scout’s body. I’d laid her out on the glass piercing counter and washed her face off as good as I could when we got there. The piece of black stained glass was still sticking out of her chest. I hadn’t been able to pull it out without breaking it, so I’d left it.
I picked her up. Her skin was as cold as mine. It was going to be a long walk to Harper’s house. But that was fine. It was fine. I could carry her. I was a vampire. I was strong enough to carry her twice that distance, no problem. I’d carry the girl who had been like a little sister to me ever since I could remember back to my last living friend and show Harper how I’d killed the only thing she had left in the world.
No way Scout would grow up to be like me now. Maybe that was a good thing.
Jim held the door open for me and I nodded thanks at him.
I swallowed. Scout not getting the chance to grow up wasn’t a good thing. Anything else in the world was better than that. Anything else in the world would be better than carrying the seventeen-and-three-quarters-year-old who I’d gotten killed back to her big sister.
But I had to do it. So I did.
Colt
“You’re different,” Tiffani said once.
I couldn’t carry her and talk at the same time, so I just nodded.
“Whole,” she said. “Healed.”
I smiled. It felt like the necks of broken beer bottles were twisting in my chest and arms where I was touching her, and someone was holding a cigarette to every square inch of my skin. Did I really used to wonder what it would feel like to be burned like this?
Tiffani saw me smiling. She didn’t roll her eyes, but I knew she wanted to.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Inside.”
“Yeah.”
She starte
d crying. “You shouldn’t be here. You were supposed to be there. Safe. Happy. Why are you here?”
“You know why.” The words grated across my throat, just barely enough air to force them out of my mouth, but I knew she heard them.
She didn’t say anything else for a really long time. I tried to keep track of how many cells we’d passed, but I couldn’t focus on that. Putting one foot in front of the other was all I could handle. It was too dark to see far ahead, but I thought we were making progress.
After a while, Tiff said, “Can’t get out. Not with me.”
But I was pretty sure I could.
“If—” I choked on a wave of acid vomit, but managed not to throw up on her. “He sent me after you. If He sent me, it’s possible.”
Tough
When I got home, I laid Scout down on the couch, sat on the coffee table, and waited for Harper. I could hear her upstairs, breathing. Her heart wasn’t beating right. It wouldn’t keep a rhythm. Maybe because it was broken. Or maybe because she was blacked out.
The sun came up, but the darkness stayed. It looked like the eclipse I’d seen when I was in kindergarten, with a weird half-light like someone had poured blood over the surface of the sun. I waited for the weird light to go away, but it didn’t, even when the sun was full up.
That’s it? The question I had asked Sissy in the last dream I would ever have.
Yep, that was it.
Harper’s feet hit heavy in the upstairs hallway, like she was still drunk and trying to stay upright. She made it to the bathroom without falling down.
That’d been me not that long ago. Three days ago? Four? It felt like a million years.
The toilet flushed and then the shower came on. The shower shut off. I could hear Harper drying herself off and getting dressed. Then she went back down the hall to her room. Her mattress springs creaked. A few minutes later, she started sobbing.
It was late afternoon by the time Harper got back out of bed. She stopped off at the bathroom again, then started downstairs. I hadn’t moved off the coffee table all day. When I heard Harper on the stairs, I put Scout’s hands together on her stomach and brushed some hair off her face.
Then I stood up and got out of the way so Harper could see.
Harper stopped halfway down the stairs. She sat down, hard.
“She’s asleep.”
I didn’t bother trying to argue. Harper knew.
“Dammit, Tough, Scout is asleep.”
I went over to the stairs and started up. Harper met me on the second step. Threw her arms around my shoulders and buried her face in my neck. Her body bucked with the sobs.
“Tough,” Harper said. It almost sounded like she was asking me a question. Asking me to fix it, asking me why, what happened, what do we do now, how could me and her still be alive with everyone we loved dead? “She was my baby sister, Tough.”
I squeezed her tighter. I was crying, too.
“I should’ve protected her. I should’ve got her out of this fucking town.”
I shook my head, but Harper kept talking about all the things she should’ve done. I let her run herself out. After a while, she stopped talking and just cried.
When she was done with the worst of it, she let go of me, went to the coffee table, and sat facing her sister’s body.
It occurred to me that I’d sat in that spot plenty of times before—Mom, Dad, Sissy, Ryder, Colt—and waited for someone to tell me what to do next. The thing you eventually figure out is nobody knows what to do next.
Harper bowed her head and folded her hands.
I couldn’t watch this. It didn’t feel right going upstairs like I still lived here, though, so I went into the kitchen.
“Oh, God, I don’t want to be a part of this.” Harper’s broken whisper made it all the way to where I was standing.
I went to the window and pressed my forehead to the glass, staring out at our junky little backyard. Hearing His name didn’t knock me on my ass anymore, but it sure as hell still tore my soul up.
It’ll get easier, Tiffani had said.
Yeah, well, it’s not right now, so don’t say it.
You think you’re cold now?
Well, now I was. All the way through.
I hoped whatever Scout had traded for the crow magic wasn’t eternal. She’d fucked up on Earth, been on her way to becoming just as shitty as me, but I hoped she hadn’t got all the way there before she died.
The linoleum in the hallway crackled under Harper’s feet. She stopped in the kitchen doorway.
“All I ever wanted was to marry Jax and live happily ever after. I just wanted to be left alone so we could be happy.”
I didn’t think I could look at her, so I didn’t turn around.
“If we’d had to live here forever and he’d had to work for the Council for the rest of his life and I had to let Logan drink off me until I was too old and gross for him, I would’ve been okay with that as long as me and Jax could’ve been together. I would’ve been happy.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tight.
“Do you know what Scout said to me when she brought me home from the hospital?”
I shook my head, even though I knew Harper wasn’t looking for an answer.
“She said none of us was ever going to get a happily ever after living here, that it wasn’t possible, and that surely I could see that now.” Harper made a choking sound that flashed video clips of Scout laying on the ground with her hand fluttering around that piece of glass through my head.
Harper sniffed. “She told me that before, back after I found out Jax was waiting to propose until he had enough money or a plan or whatever he thought the perfect future was and I thought it was so stupid, but Scout said he was right to want to get away from here because there weren’t any happy endings in Halo. But when she said it the other night—you know how she talks, like she knows every fucking thing in the world— So when she said it the other night, I screamed at her. Told her to get out, that she didn’t understand, and I hated her. So she went. Then you showed up and I hated you, too. But she was right. If it hadn’t been you killing Jax, it would’ve been him killing you. Or me killing him. Or Scout. Or something awful. Something even worse. Because that’s what it’s like here.”
That’s for damn sure.
“I know she was annoying and screwed up sometimes, Tough. But I loved her.”
I turned around and faced Harper. She was leaning against the doorway, staring down at the floor. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were red and dry like all the tears had given her a sunburn. She took a shuddering breath and let it out.
“I don’t have her anymore. I don’t have him anymore.” She laughed this broken laugh. “All I’ve got left is you and Jesus, preacher boy, and to be honest, I’m not really that big a fan of you anymore.”
I laughed, probably a lot harder than I should have. I laughed until my eyes were watering. You can only get so low before everything starts to look hilarious.
Harper made a face that was probably supposed to be a smile. “I guess the point is I can’t stay out of this fight anymore. We’re stuck with each other. So now what do we do?”
I didn’t know what to tell her. Not very many days ago I’d thought Harper was hot, but that she would never know how to get up and keep going once life knocked her down. Now I could see how wrong I’d been about that.
“I guess we start with the small questions,” she said. “Have you fed yet today?”
I shook my head, not sure what she was getting at.
“Well, you should. Here.” She swiped her hair off her neck and waited.
I shook my head, hard. I would rather find out firsthand whether vampires could starve to death.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” she said. “You kill me? Trust me, these days that sounds like the best possible thing that could happen to me.”
I’d like to say I didn’t drink off her, but you know the story by now.
We didn’t have sex, a
t least. Harper was my friend. Had been my friend. I couldn’t ruin what was left of that.
I tried to pay attention while I was drinking because I wasn’t sure she was going to fake-collapse—part of me was still pretty sure that she wanted to commit suicide by vamp—but she must’ve been too used to doing it the right way. Her knees gave out and I had to break the suction on her neck so I could catch her.
The vampire side of my brain latched onto that, psyched as shit to have brought down a living creature. I took a couple steps back, wiping blood off my mouth.
The kill-instinct was satisfied, but something else inside me wasn’t. My brain needed more. It needed to be blackout drunk so it wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to listen to that faulty wiring in my head running through everything wrong I’d ever done, everything I could never atone for.
Now there was a word I hadn’t thought I even knew the meaning of anymore—atone.
Consider this my only shot at that, I thought. Not getting to drink enough anymore. That can be my punishment.
Maybe if I’d never tried Scout’s crow-magic blood trick, the separation between how much normal blood affected me and how much more I needed it to affect me wouldn’t have been so far apart. Maybe it would’ve been easier to live with.
Or maybe it was Desty’s blood. Finn had said he couldn’t get enough to be satisfied anymore—that he’d drained three groupies since drinking off her and even that wasn’t enough.
Destroyer blood, like Rian had said. Took it out of your girlfriend’s hide.
But it ended up being Tiffani and Jax’s voice yelling the loudest in my head: Alkie. The way you die is the way you stay.
It was just me again. It was always me. Why I ever bothered trying to find something else to blame my shit on, I don’t know.
Harper found some gauze and rubbing alcohol, but by the time she was done wiping her neck down, the blood charm on her bellybutton ring had already healed up the bite wounds. She tossed the bloody gauze in the trash.