by Logan Keys
It’s everything we could have dreamed of. I’m no longer held by the minions, and so I come closer to Jeremy. “Untie me,” I say.
“Oh, yeah.” He pulls a knife and cuts through my binds. “Don’t you see… what? What is it? Crystal.”
I shake my head and put his face between my hands. Surrounded by obedient guards, I kiss Jeremy Writer as if my life depends on it. He saved us, but it’s not us who needs saving.
“What was that for?” Jeremy asks, drawing back. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“Jeremy. Since the time I met you this has been… well it’s been everything to me. I don’t know why we started this without even really talking about it at first. It was just… just… Sympatico.”
He smiles, and pushes at the tears under my eyes, confused. “You were so inspiring. My muse.”
“Was I?”
“Crystal, every word I wrote, it would never have meant a thing if it hadn’t had action behind it. That’s you. You’re the angel of Anthem swooping down to show them we mean what we say. Without you Anthem would be a shell.”
“So you say. And it’s now that I act once again, my friend.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I love you, you know that, right? But… and I know you love me---no don’t say it, just listen. But Jeremy you are going to leave. Order these to take me back. And you can climb to the top of this building and rest. I see it already, the fog is coming for you, and what then? You order them until you cannot and your mother finds us both and purges us.”
“But I can…”
“No. Jeremy. No. Anthem needs us far more than we need each other. And you can give her freedom. We know that now. Through it all we searched for a weapon, an army, but this, this is what will win. Finally, it can end. Don’t you see? It’s been there all along. Inside of you. I knew it before, but now I truly see that it ends with you, Jeremy. And we can’t waste such an opportunity with our impulsivity. We lost before because we were young, naïve. We have long since grown up. Haven’t we? Yes. I think that we have. So, you are going to leave me. And that’s not the easy thing that’s the hard thing.”
He searches my gaze, frustration, fear, and then finally acceptance. Jeremy knows I’m right.
“Find the Skulls,” I say. “Then go south.”
“To where?”
“I think you know where.” I sigh, hug him to me. “Give them the best chance we can. You will rule, but not like this. We can’t risk it.”
I wait for him to relax in my arms.
He pulls away. “Okay,” he says, rubbing a hand through his hair.
The fog crosses his features.
“Go! Jeremy, go now!”
He moves to the fire escape and pulls down the ladder.
“Take her back to the house,” he says, voice breaking. “Say nothing and remember nothing of me being here.”
They take me by the arms and Jeremy starts to climb. He pauses. “I guess this is goodbye.”
I can sense his hesitation, so I smile through the pain that’s slicing me right in half. “Maybe,” I reply. “But it’s the good kind of goodbye.”
Chapter 53
Dallas
The vampires are in place, but Simon arrives alone. Joelle allowed Shade to fetch him and offered a truce to speak. I’m wary of such a thing, but then again, it’s Simon who is at risk… I think. At the same time, I have this crazy image in my head, an impression from Joelle herself, of a man that is larger than life. Of an outline, tall, jacket long, fedora shading his eyes. I also see him using a power like none other.
He can stop time itself. So, what are we to the person who controls the day?
We follow Joelle outside, she must sense his arrival. The man in my mind matches somewhat the man outside. He’s normal looking, mostly. Nothing about him says special.
“We’ve come for the medusa and you can’t stop us,” he says.
Joelle laughs.
His face doesn’t show it, but I can sense through her, that he is tremendously surprised.
“I know who you are now, father.” Joelle walks down the steps to meet him.
I mean to follow but she stays us with a hand. Shade comes to my side, and he grips my hand. I must seem worried.
“Right back to your war then, right Simon?” Joelle asks. “Your forces must know that Anthem isn’t so easy to take. You can’t even control your own people, yet you think to go to war with the Authority?”
“For you,” Simon says, and the silence afterwards can be cut with a knife.
Joelle swallows, her eyes searching his. “Nothing either of you have ever done has been for me.”
“We thought we lost you,” he says. There’s little emotion to his voice, but it is there. “Anthem is a safe place where we could start over. It was for you. It was for all of you. Your mother as well. I wanted Anthem for you. I still do. We have the power now. With the specials, the vampires---”
“My vampires, you mean,” Joelle snaps.
“True. I didn’t see this before, Joelle. I didn’t realize. I sought a perfect special, when all along, it was my own daughter. You can create more specials without the machine. What is more perfect than that?”
Joelle smirks. “Daughter? You can’t just claim and unclaim me whenever you feel like it.”
“I never unclaimed you. Your mother thought that it was best if you didn’t know the truth. It would keep me impartial. It would keep you at a distance in case the war failed.”
“Lies,” Adrian hisses from behind us. She marches through where Shade, I, and the other vampires wait. “All lies. Your father was the one who said, ‘She can’t ever know, Adrian!’.”
“And your mother agreed.”
“Silence!” Joelle shouts.
Simon stands taller but waits.
“It matters little who did what. You wanted a war, you will have one. And you wanted a queen, well you are looking at her. Simon’s forces will join our side. The machine will be brought to me. You will give the men the opportunity to join. They have until dawn to decide.”
“Joelle,” Simon warns.
“I have given you our offer of peace, father. I suggest you make it clear to what’s left of your forces just how serious I am.”
“Daughter,” Simon’s voice rings many times over, and I feel my body vibrate before going deadly still.
Time itself slows. The world seems to pause. And then it goes back to normal.
Joelle smiles. “Stopping time will only pause the inevitable, Simon. Once it begins again, my vampires will rain down on your forces and demand they choose a side.”
“Joelle,” I say, fearful that if she pushes him, he will kill her.
Joelle turns to me. “I would be dead already if he planned as such. He’s too glad to have found his perfect special. He won’t hurt a hair on my head now.” She turns to her father again, eyeing him shrewdly. “And I can give him everything now, can’t I? The one he cast away, with a snap of her fingers, can make it all finally come true. The perfect special. The city. I can give him Anthem on a silver platter.”
“Bring me the machine,” she tells him and Shade. “Tell the men to find a red ribbon or a red piece of fabric. Tell them to tie it on their arms, necks, or hang it from their pockets. It will be a sign.”
“Of what?” Shade asks.
“Of unity. A pledge to follow me.”
“And if they don’t?” I ask
“Then we will make them.”
With that, she turns and enters the building.
The Queen has spoken.
Chapter 54
Dallas
“How long?” I ask, and Joelle doesn’t look at me.
“Not long,” she says. “Two hours tops.”
We’re alone inside a spare loft next to her mother’s.
Growing angry, I demand, “And then?”
Her dark eyes find me. Adrian’s waiting too, her breath held. I’m not sure which answer she hopes for.
&
nbsp; “We will cleanse them all.”
I flinch. “You can’t be serious, Joelle. I’ve followed you all this time but, this---this is madness. You don’t actually mean to turn loose the vampires on them, change these people without their agreement?”
Joelle crosses her arms. Her eyes have faded from their teen angst. The decided matriarch of our vampire army has grown so much in such a short time. “I do mean to change them. I mean to have them follow me or else. We’ve tried things their way. If they oppose my leadership, what then? Wars between us until we are too weak to take Anthem? We need one force. For once and for all, we shall have it, and Anthem will be ours. We must do what they could not, can’t you see?”
“What about Tommy? What about Simon killing him? He was fighting for peace. Does that mean nothing?”
“Tommy died for a good cause. But you said it yourself. If you long to die for a cause, the world will let you. I won’t die for a cause. I won’t have to. I will take Anthem and I will give millions of people like Tommy a new chance to live free again.”
“You think that makes this right?”
“No.” She turns away. “And that is regrettable. I think that makes this a hard wrong for an eventual right.”
“I won’t do it. You can go murder them, but I won’t do it. If they don’t choose to be vampires, I won’t force the dark gift on their souls.”
Joelle’s eyes search mine. “Our souls? Do you mean you would have rather died? That back there in the tent with Toby, I should have left you alone to be abused and raped? A slave? Is that better than your ‘dark soul’?”
“That’s not what I meant. Besides, I chose.”
“You mean like Shade chose?”
“What do you mean?”
I frown but she is a vault. Her mind is shut off to me. “See for yourself,” she says, looking out the window.
Dread sinks into my guts and I rush from the room. I take the stairs, or rather, I jump over the rail and fall down and down to land with a sickening crunch at the bottom.
My body knows something my brain refuses to believe. Legs healed before I take my first step, I rush toward the door, and barrel outside. I find him there, laying on the steps.
He’s not moving.
“Shade!” I rush to him, and grab his shoulders, gently rolling him onto his back. “Wake up, oh God, please wake up!”
His head lolls when I try to sit him up. He’s cold, but he’s always chilled to the touch.
“Shade!” I cry.
His laser eyes are dim.
Slowly, his shadow face transforms. It grows bone then skin. This has to be a dream. Am I stuck in a dream?
I feel for a pulse, but nothing registers. “Oh no, Shade, please…”
I turn to find Joelle behind me. The army of vampires too, have come to join her on her night of terror.
“What’s wrong with him? What’s happening!”
“One bite is all it takes. I wondered what would happen to a special that is bitten. He appeared fine when he arrived before.”
In our heads, Joelle is chiding me for judging her while having lost my own control before with Shade.
Where was his choice, Dallas?
“It’s not the same! I had no idea,” I snap at her. I touch Shade’s now fully visible face. He’s normal looking but still dying. “Wake up! Help him!”
But Joelle waits. She waits for me to make an offer.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” I moan. “I’ll help you with this… insanity. Just save him!”
“He needs my blood,” she says. “Or yours. Although, untested, I’m not sure if he will be like us or like Pike. My blood might be best.”
“Use yours,” I say, nodding my head. “Do it.”
Joelle leans over us, looking deeply into my eyes. My word will be my bond. “Are you sure?”
I sense the sarcasm at my hypocrisy. Am I sure I want her to force this choice on him, is what she means.
“Yes. I’m sure. Please. He’s so still.”
I cradle his golden head into my lap. Shade had fallen here on the steps… trying to get to me. Joelle rips her wrist open and puts it to his mouth. “It might be too late.”
“You knew?” I ask. “Earlier?”
She nods.
After Joelle finishes, I shake him, rocking him, trying to wake him up. “Please, work, please work.”
I look up at the sky. A drop of rain falls into my eye. I blink it away, and when I look down again, Shade’s eyes are open. The glowing red is gone, the irises normal, clear.
“How?” he asks, sitting up, realizing he’s become corporeal.
Then he folds over, hugging his stomach, groaning in pain.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, choking on the words. “It’s going to hurt. Probably for a while.”
Joelle puts a hand to my shoulder. I owe a debt now. “It’s time,” she says.
I shrug her off. “No,” I say, too worried to leave him while the change is this fragile.
“Yes,” Joelle says firmly, and she nods to other vampires, two of them, who come forward and help Shade rise.
“Take him to my rooms,” she orders, motioning for me to follow her.
I rise and move to stand by her side. “Shade,” I say. “Go inside. Just rest. I’ll be back.”
He seems so confused, but he lets them guide him away. And I follow Joelle out of this side of the divide, and into the men’s side. I walk as if I am in a fog. I find Lotte and relay the orders that I hear inside of my head.
Woodenly, I say, “Bite anyone without a red ribbon or red scrap of fabric.”
Lotte nods and races off to tell the others. The screams will fill the night like it had not long ago in Ironwood. Only, Lotte and I will be on the vampire’s side this time.
Chapter 55
Liza
Cory simply barges in. “Mind if we join you?”
The man lifts his shotgun at us in answer.
Cory waves a hand like he’s swatting a fly. “Put it down.”
The man hesitates but eventually listens. Interesting. Cory’s power is truly waning because there had been a definite pause. I plan my escape with quick thoughts, hoping he’s distracted, but he frowns across the fire at me. Not too distracted then.
The man warily rises. He doesn’t understand why he hasn’t shot at us yet, it’s apparent by the confused glare. “My daughters and I were just leaving.”
He goes with retreat.
Smart man.
He begins to douse the fire.
Cory drops a backpack from his shoulder. “We’ve got food.”
The pack’s spilled open, and out roll cans of vegetables, even a soda falls out.
Two girls aged from high to low teens, and one younger child who can’t be more than ten, lean forward, eyes wide, their mouths watering most likely, as mine has begun to. The littlest darts a glance at her father, but something in her gaze catches me sideways.
Instead of running, I find myself inching down to sit on the log across from them all.
Watching them.
Seeing things.
Cory nods to the girls. “Go ahead.”
But the father snags the pack away, and shoulders it himself.
Cory’s gaze narrows on the father. “Now that wasn’t polite. At least let them share the soda. How long has it been since you guys have had something like that?” He squats down, and I try to see beyond the seemingly kind eyes that take in each and every dirty face.
Then I try to see what they must. This is easier. Cory is charming, handsome, and his gaze is quite a copy of genuine concern.
But the father charges forward at Cory, only to get hung up on an invisible leash.
Cory rises and waits for the man to try again.
“Alright,” the man says, clearly befuddled. “I’ll let you get warm in trade for these goods, but then you two be on your way.”
Warm? I just now realize it’s cold. Freezing almost.
The girls are huddled ne
ar the fire, their sweaters threadbare, their faces pinched with chattering teeth. I’m in a tank top and a skirt, and I’m not even slightly cold.
Cory must have dressed me. The thought makes me shiver where the weather doesn’t.
“Your clothes were ruined and wet,” Cory supplies. “I found what I could. Don’t worry. One of the skulls changed you, a woman, not me.”
How kind of him to make sure my modesty stays intact physically while he’s rummaged through my mind. Does he think that this makes us even?
I take in my newly assigned apparel. My skirt is red, not too short, but not nearly long enough for the weather. A white tank top, that’s thin, short, above my navel, and tight.
“You’re like me now,” Cory says with a smile. “Can you feel it? We’re impervious. I think it’s Spirit. She gives us an extra oomph to our power and things like weather, food, drink, even the bathroom, haven’t they all just faded away?”
He’s right. When I’d been with Tommy, I’d been ravenous.
Since coming to remember myself, I’ve not even thought of food until now.
This whole time, the man has gaped at us in shock. Two people just stroll into their camp, and they discuss things that make no sense.
The girls too, they’re staring at me now.
Cory laughs. “This is what it feels like to be part god, right? Their world, none of that matters to ones such as us. You are like the goddess of war with that sword. I am like Hera perhaps. Ordering Heracles to kill his family.”
I shudder and look at the girls. Please, no.
“I almost forgot!” Cory strides over and yanks out an item from the pack the man has on his back now. “This is actually for you.”
It’s a leather strap with a few snaps.
“For Spirit," Cory says. “You can strap her onto your back with this. She’s already got a scabbard. Is that the word? Scabbard? I need to look up that one, but you can fit it to your size. Found it in some house that had a ton of old swords. None as nice as Spirit.”
“No,” I say, agreeing that there would be none as nice as Spirit in all the world.