by S. C. Green
“What, Alain? What does this mean?”
“She used the Mimir.” Alain gathered May up in his arms and stood.
Her head flopped limply over his arm, her hood falling back to reveal her face. The scorch marks across her pale skin shone in the grey light. Several of the Reapers gasped.
“Let me.” Malcolm rushed forward and tried to take May from his arms. “I can take—”
“No!” Alain screamed, lashing out his foot. He connected with Malcolm’s shin, and the old Reaper grabbed his leg, wincing and cursing. “I’ll do it.”
“Alain.” Dorien stepped beside him, a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “If May used the Mimir, her only hope now is to go with Malcolm. You don’t have the power to control the energy, but he does. He can draw it out of her.”
Alain’s eyes remained ringed with fire, but he dropped May’s body into Malcolm’s arms. The gathered Reapers stepped aside as Malcolm strode from the courtyard and disappeared into one of the adjoining rooms, followed by two of the other old Reapers. The door slammed behind them, and several of the gathered Reapers winced.
“Don’t you all just stand here!” Dorien yelled at the gathered brothers. “Go about your business. We have a city to protect.”
“But our weapons—”
“I said go!”
A great wind whipped up as every Reaper in the courtyard spun around, their cloaks flapping around them as their bodies shrunk and snapped and contorted. Feathers grew from their faces, their arms bent at impossible angles, and great wings unfurled from their bodies. They took off, fanning out over the courtyard walls, and in a few moments, Alain, Dorien, and I were alone.
Alain’s shoulders sagged, and he looked down at me on the ground as though realising I was there for the first time.
“Sydney.” Emotion choked his voice.
“Hey.” I waved up at him, not trusting my legs to hold my weight.
He reached down and grabbed me under the shoulders, hoisting me to my feet. As predicted, my legs wobbled, and I slumped against him. I had to hold on to him to keep myself from falling over.
“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered out. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep her safe. I didn’t know what I was doing. The wraith—”
Alain’s lips touched mine. The sensation blazed across my mind, blocking out all thought. He pulled away, his gaze tentative. I leaned against him ever so slightly, inviting him to resume.
He kissed me again. This time, he threw the full force of his emotion behind it. His lips parted mine, and his tongue fought for purchase, dragging across mine, devouring me. This kiss burned through my body like fire, ripping apart my limbs, yanking open my ribcage, exposing my racing heart.
I revelled in the heat of his hands under my shoulder, wrapping around my back, entwined in my hair. I’d wanted him so badly from the day I met him … I didn’t want him to be sad any longer ...
“Thank you,” Alain whispered against my lips.
I pressed myself against his body, wanting to imprint his shape upon myself. But instead of devouring me further, he pulled back, his eyes growing wide with fear … Or was that disgust, revulsion?
No.
My body ached for him. Now that’d I’d tasted him, I wanted more. But he was staring at me as though I were a stranger, a monster.
“What’s wrong?” I reached out to him, but he lurched away, turning on his heel and running from the courtyard.
What had I done? How had I fucked things up so quickly? I shouldn’t have kissed him back, not with May on the brink of death. Alain needed comfort, and I was ready to take advantage of him.
My vision swam. The pain in my limbs threatened to overwhelm me, but it was nothing compared to the pain in my heart. Rough hands grabbed me from behind.
“Geez, talk about the kiss of death.” The last words I heard were Dorien’s before I passed out again.
THIS TIME WHEN I AWOKE, I was in Alain’s bed, the covers pulled high around my chin. Outside the window, the city was a deep black. When I’d arrived back in the Compound, it had still been daylight. Where had the time gone? Had I been asleep? What happened to May? To Alain? I still hadn’t told anyone what the Mayor had said, about the wraith going into the city to hunt, about how every last one of them would be husking people tonight to top up their energy stores. Through the window, I heard a scream rising up from the city below. Had the great husking already begun? Or was that merely the vestige of the city’s own tenuous grip on life?
Diana and Dorien sat on the end of the bed, talking to each other in hushed voices. Dorien clasped Diana’s hand. She looked better than I’d seen her in a long time. Her skin glowed with colour once more, and her blue eyes shone with mischief.
Memories of the Citadel flooded back to me, of the Mayor’s wild grin as he riled up his followers. I had to tell someone what the wraith intended to do. I opened my mouth to pour it all out, but all that came out was a strangled croak.
Diana and Dorien spun around, their faces lighting up to see me.
“You’re awake.” Diana scooted forward and wrapped her tiny body around mine. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
“Hey, I promised I wouldn’t leave you alone here.” I tried to lift my hands to hug her back, but my body seemed sluggish, my fingers unmoving. Finally, I managed to lift one arm and pat her on the back at the same tempo my headache throbbed inside my skull.
“We’ve given you some medicine and a sedative to help you sleep,” Dorien said. “You’ll be a bit slow, but otherwise, you’re fine.”
“I helped Dorien patch up your knees,” Diana said. “You scraped them up pretty badly.”
“I did, huh?” I remembered slicing my jeans open at the mouth of the conduit, and then landing hard on the path when I launched the grenade. Had that all really happened? Here in the warmth of Alain’s room, it felt like a vivid dream.
“You saved May,” Dorien said. “Malcolm managed to draw out the energy she’d taken in from the Mimir. She’s pretty weak and still unconscious, but she may yet make a full recovery. Alain is eternally grateful to you.”
“That so?” I remembered the horrible look he’d given me after we’d kissed, a look of such terrible loathing. “Then where is he? Organising my parade?”
“He’s in with May. She has to be monitored carefully, as she may have some permanent brain damage.”
I cringed. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Poor May. “The Mimir did that to her?”
“From what you said, I believe May knew she couldn’t use her own power, so instead she channelled the Mimir’s power in order to defeat those wraith. She’s much too young to use the Mimir. Not even Alain or I have the strength to use it yet. But May must’ve felt she had no choice. That power can do horrible things to one’s body and mind, especially given May’s already fragile state.”
“I couldn’t get it back,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut against my pounding headache that threatened to cave in my head. “The Mimir … I left it there. I’ve doomed you all.”
“You got May back, and that’s what matters most to Alain. And to me.” Dorien stroked my hand. “He’ll come to see you shortly.”
“I have to speak to Malcolm. I heard … I know what the wraith are planning. You have to stop them.”
“Malcolm’s not here. There are hundreds of wraith in the streets tonight. I sent him out to deal with them, along with everyone else. There’s only me and Alain left in the Compound.”
“They won’t be able to do much good.”
“You need to tell me exactly what you saw and what you heard.”
“Shouldn’t I be telling this to Malcolm?”
“Not any longer. While you were inside, we’ve had a little uprising in our ranks.”
“We were only gone a couple of hours!”
“This has been in the works for some time. Some of the Reapers didn’t like how Malcolm was dealing with the May situation, and the theft of the Mimir was the last straw. Malcolm is no longer t
he head of our Order.”
“Then who is?”
Dorien grinned. “That would be me.”
I stared at him with new eyes. In the few hours I’d been gone, he had seized power of the only group who might be able to stop the wraith now. But with everything I’d seen inside the Citadel, I knew more about Dorien’s enemy than he did. And as I stared into those sparkling, earnest eyes, I wondered if he had any idea what he’d got himself into.
10
Dorien was waiting for me to say something, to offer him congratulations. But after the day I’d had, I didn’t have any congratulations in me. I had a lot of questions, though. “But you just told me you’re not even powerful enough to use the Mimir.”
“There’s more to being a leader than wielding power, a fact that Malcolm had long since forgotten.” Dorien patted my foot. “Don’t look so stricken. I didn’t lobby for the job.”
“It’s just a surprise, is all. This place seems so … static. I can’t believe such a drastic change occurred so quickly.”
“This has been a long time coming, Sydney. There’s been unrest among our ranks for many years. For too long, those in power have clung to old ways in the belief our traditions will save us. But what good is tradition in a city of chaos? You don’t need a Reaper history lesson right now. What you need is to tell me everything you saw and heard so you can rest.”
So I did. As clearly as I could, I described the Citadel and the glowing orbs and the bright light and the wraith being somewhat corporeal and every word The Mayor spoke. When I finished, Dorien’s face was grave.
“And you’re certain this Mayor is John Webster?”
“There’s no doubt.”
“I believe you. What I don’t understand is why they’re doing this now,” Dorien said. “For years the wraith’ve been content with the status quo. Why suddenly are they so anxious to grab all this power?”
“You don’t understand. The wraith have been planning this for some time. They’re more intelligent than you could even guess.” Cold terror crept over me once more. “They have been starving themselves, taking most of the energy they collect from huskings back to the Citadel to power up those giant orbs. I think … I think their rationing of energy is what has made them vulnerable to your weapons in the past. But now they’re so close, and they’re growing stronger, and supping more of that energy for themselves. Now we’re fighting them at full-power, and I don’t like our chances.”
“We have one advantage they don’t yet comprehend,” a voice said.
I whirled around. Alain was standing in the doorway, his head resting on the doorframe.
“You, Sydney,” Alain said, his words flat. “You are our last hope.”
I turned away from him, not wanting to look at him. I feared my face betrayed the hurt of his disgust after our kiss.
“Don’t burden her with that right now,” Dorien told Alain. “She’s been through enough already.”
Burden me with what? With the knowledge that my actions led directly to May having permanent brain damage? With the idea that the fate of everyone in the dome somehow rested on my head? With the total sense of hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm me at any moment?
“We all have.” Alain’s voice cut deep with its rough edges. “Dorien, Diana … could you leave Sydney and me alone?”
“But—” Diana must’ve seen something on Alain’s face because she didn’t finish her protest. Instead, she slid off me and slipped out of the room with Dorien, leaving me alone with Alain.
Alain’s boots echoed on the wooden floor as he crossed the room. The silence between us felt like a gulf. Alain sat on the end of the bed, his hand resting on top of my leg, and his eyes fixed on a spot out the window.
“I’m sorry for my behaviour in the courtyard,” he said, his voice flat, emotionless. “I was in shock, but that doesn’t excuse what I did.”
“It’s fine,” I said, keeping my voice equally dry, hoping he couldn’t hear my heart thudding.
“It’s not fine. Sydney, I—”
“You don’t have to explain. Really. You were emotional. You needed comfort, but I took it too far. If anything, I should be apologising to you.”
I didn’t want to admit to myself that what I really wanted him to say was that he needed me.
He shook his head vigorously, his long, dark hair flicking across his stubbled chin. “That’s not it, Syd. I have to get this all out so you understand. It’s hard for me, so shut up for a second and let me do it.”
“Okay.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Fine. I’m listening.”
He took a deep breath. His gaze didn’t leave the window.
“I loved a woman once,” he said. “Her name was Raine. She was one of the few female Reapers left in our local order that hadn’t gone off to more illustrious positions or marriages in other cities. I think I told you Raine worked for the government, as some Reapers do. She was never one for the insular society and strict rules of the Order.”
He paused. I wondered if I was supposed to say anything—perhaps a snippy remark about government work not being the place for people who disliked rules—but then he sucked in a breath and continued.
“Of course, Raine’s job required total secrecy. Most humans do not know we exist, and we need it to stay that way. Her department regulated Reaper activity—making sure the right number of Reapers were allocated to each state, that we received our government subsidies in exchange for the work we do, that we had a voice for advocacy in policy decisions affecting us. It was long hours and thankless work much of the time, but she loved making a difference. When the wraith came, she worked around the clock with her team. It was she who first figured out the Reapers could attack the wraith, that we had some ability to drag them back to the underworld where they came from, even though we couldn’t keep them there.”
“She sounds clever,” I said lamely.
“She was.” He laughed bitterly. “And brilliant. And beautiful. The day before the dome came down, Raine left the Compound early. She said she had an important meeting outside of the city. She was excited, telling me they were close to a breakthrough—a way to banish the wraith once and for all. One of the government vehicles was outside the house to pick her up. She waved goodbye to May and me through the window as she drove off.”
“And she just never came home.” He’d already told me how this story ended. But now I knew enough to begin to understand the bitter, guarded man who sat before me.
“At first I believed she was dead, that she hadn’t got out of the city in time. But some questions in the Rim revealed her car had made it outside the city boundaries at least an hour before the dome came down. For years, I assumed Raine knew nothing about the dome and had been trapped outside, unable to get to us. She could’ve been coerced by people higher than her to work outside the city that day in order to secure her intelligence for their own purposes.”
“But something changed your mind?”
He nodded. “Five years ago, Dorien and I busted a gang house in the Rim. We were looking for a don who had recently stolen an artefact from the Compound. What we expected was the usual den of depravity—prostitutes, drugs, a huge stash of booze. But what we found was completely different. This guy had been collecting paraphernalia to do with the wraith and Reapers for years. He had a whole room set up in the back of his house with newspaper articles, photographs, maps, and scrawled notes taped to every wall. He screamed at me that he was close to figuring out how to stop the wraith, that it was all a conspiracy … I put it all down to dome sickness at the time.
“This guy had stacks of classified government files, all of them to do with the wraith or with Reapers. He even had some of our beam weapons. We confiscated the lot, threw him in prison, and Malcolm gave me the job of sorting through it all.”
“And you found something incriminating?”
Alain nodded. “The department Raine worked for … they’d known about the wraith for years. They’d cropped
up before in other places where certain chemical compounds came into contact with the dead. The government even had a few in containment in an institute in Arizona, trapped behind force fields made of the same material as the dome.”
The government knew about the wraith? That was huge. “But they still didn’t know how to stop them?”
“Not hundreds of them at once. They’d never dealt with more than one or two at a time before. The Reaper Affairs Department were conducting experiments, trying to find a way to harness the Reapers’ unique abilities to create a weapon. And there were other experiments, too, on humans with ESP and with other strange abilities. It was Reaper Affairs that came up with the idea for the dome. Containment was the government’s top priority.”
“Raine still might not have known all this,” I said. “You said those files were classified? She might not have had security clearance. She might not have known what would happen when she left.”
“I thought so, too, at first. But as the years go by, the doubt creeps in. You analyse every conversation, every action leading up to her disappearance. And you start to wonder … and that wonder turns to certainty … and the certainty turns to bitterness. And your heart turns to stone along with the city.”
I wanted to reach out to him, comfort him in some way, but I didn’t want to scare him off before he told me everything. “You said I’m our last hope. Why?”
“Our ancient legends speak of a race of energy workers—human women who had abilities well beyond what the Reapers possess. A powerful sorceress who could see into the heart of all things, and who could pass into the underworld at will.”
“And this is what you’re going on? A myth?”
“It’s more than that, Sydney. The papers talked about another person who had your powers. A young girl they’d found through one of their ESP studies. She didn’t exhibit any of the usual traits of people with ESP, but she could see inside objects when she touched them, and she could fiddle with the molecular structure of things. It was as if she could move atoms with her mind. They put her in a cage with a wraith. It tried to husk her, but she grabbed it and it disintegrated.”