Craving (48 page)

I’m dying, Eva. Don’t jump. One of us should survive. Your revolution failed.

She shook her head.

You don’t need me to be strong,
I insisted.
You are strong enough on your own!

“Lily.” She reached out as if for me and I came closer, pulled to her by love. “I’m not afraid. I’m not sad. I’m not giving up. Just trust me like I trust you.”

I wanted to, but when that meant losing her, I wasn’t sure I could.

I need you to stay.

“No you don’t. You are in the place with no roads, Lily. This is the time to become what you must be. I haven’t done anything. It is all up to you. You are the architect of this mutiny.”

If that were true, I wouldn’t be where I am now.

“Everything means something. There is a reason you are here, were here, and will be here again, in this moment.”

Her toes wiggled in the air and she was already sighing happily.

Please . . . I love you. Don’t do this.

“I was your weakness, and you were mine. Let go of me, Lily. I am letting go of you.”

I can’t! I don’t know what to do now. All the time you’ve shown me the way, but what do I do now?

“You’ve always known the way. It is a part of what you are.”

I’m just a human.

“Human isn’t good enough. Live better or die as nothing more than this.”

I extended myself toward her, but it was a futile gesture. Her arms wide, she tilted forward, and fell right through me.

Chapter 28

I hovered, refusing to look for her broken body. Around the rooftop, the city I had come to hate glittered in the sunlight, never knowing an angel had just plummeted to earth.

It was the same scene as the one from my memory. Nothing I had done could stop her. I
was
useless.

I looked at the place on the rooftop where I had been in my vision, when I had watched passively as she tipped herself over the side. Was I still there? Was
that
me still sitting at my kitchen table with my mind floating beside an air conditioning unit?

This was the Crossroads of my life, where all paths intersected. As Eva had said, it would be the scar on my thoughts that might fade, but never disappear completely. I would come back to it in my dreams, flit through time to return and visit that moment, the point at which my new life began. It was just too painful to ignore. I had made her a victim, a prophetess, a villain, but were any of those real? If she had never been what she seemed, was she really responsible for any of it?

As I looked past the finite at my own reflection, I came to understand, and my soul was still.

Arthur, you sly old . . . whatever you are.

Time now seemed so malleable to me, so utterly illusory. With my abilities, it was possible to imagine whole lifetimes condensing down to a few moments, all acquired knowledge echoing back to this point, where Past Me and Future Me met and compared notes. Perhaps this had already happened several times. I could have been lifting myself up by own bootstraps through the folds of time, learning new abilities with each repetition. Perhaps this was the ability Eva had passed to me.

“The Sam I know is kind.

The visions were not visions at all, but echoes of things that might have happened, but now never would. In some dimensions, I might have only Ursula’s power, while in another I possessed both Ursula’s and Moksha’s. Now I was complete and this was the final time, the
only
time that would ever resonate, the
only
ripple that would not rebound upon itself.

This was the moment, the only moment.

Of myself.

I flickered from my place near the “Old River Motel” sign to the position where the past me should have been, vulnerable and sick with grief. As I aligned my two selves, the world around me shifted. It seemed I had found a snag in reality and tugged upon it, and my vantage point was tossed about. In an instant, Lilith Pierce knew all she needed to know to put her on a plane and her futuristic counterpart awoke in a chair, her arm numb and cold and prickling around the spike of insensate metal.

The ground was shaking violently. Glass shattered around me and blew past my face. I could hear moans from all sides and finally there was a terrified scream. My addled brain retreated for a moment, convinced it had been hurled into a fiery lake, but the room was cold and dark, and when no demons came to torment me, I knew I was alive.

Somewhere at my right, there was a thud, as what sounded like a soft, breakable body rammed into something more concrete and was then dragged across the shards. To my left there was the sickening slurp of sticky fluids being trod upon. Dull, secondary lighting flooded the room as, apparently, a backup generator kicked on.

The scene was chaos. It seemed everything that could have been broken, had been. Spattered and smeared over the whole sorry mess of crushed wood and busted televisions were the thick contents of the pump, which lay on its side, empty. Bare footprints tracked through the sludge, and as I followed them with my veiled eyes, I found where they led.

The security staff and lab technicians had been corralled in the corner by a horde of incoherently groaning walking dead, somehow loosed from their cells. Karl had vanished and been replaced with the pleasant face of my tree-climbing friend and his ninja cohort.

“Are you alright?” William hissed. His hands fumbled urgently with the tape that adhered my IV to the skin of my forearm. As if propelled by my body, the needle slid out and the wound closed. He leaned over me and punched a few keys on a numbered keypad. The metal locks popped open. “Lilith?”

I blinked up at him, not sure what was real anymore. If I dared to believe in it, the pain of disappointment would be so much worse. Ananda was smiling at me, and like a drowning rat, I clung to that promise of safety.

“I’m not dead?”

“Do you feel dead?” he asked with a chuckle.

“What does dead feel like?”

“That is an excellent question that I fear will never be answered. Perhaps the
only
question like it.”

I couldn’t help it; the absurdity and emotional shock were too much. I laughed, but my face was moist with loosed tears.

William put a hand on my shoulder. “I would love to let you sit here and collect yourself, but we have a problem.”

“What?” I looked to the corner of the room where my horde was holding my enemies at bay. “What’s happened? Where’s Moksha?”

William glanced at Ananda, but the Arhat was busy staring at the blood as if he were looking for fluffy animal shapes in the clouds. His sandals and feet were red with it, but he did not seem to mind.

“We don’t know.”

“And Karl?”

“He’s the problem.” He reached out and took hold of my wrist, pulling me to my feet, though my legs were shaky. “I fully intended to do what you asked me to, but . . .”

“We are not finished yet,” Ananda whispered airily, “and neither is he.”

William frowned and turned back to me, with a wave at Ananda. “He refused to leave. Then he said we should come to you, that you were in need of our help. I’m not sure how he knew, when even I couldn’t see it.”

“Why couldn’t you see it?”

“I can’t see you,” he revealed with a guilt-riddled blink. “Not anymore. I tried.”

Ananda reached up and smoothed his long skein of dark hair. “You could not see her, because she is unknowable.”

“Then how did
you
know?”

“The earth spoke.”

His companion frowned, but I understood. Those of us beyond the Crossroads were no longer a part of this reality. Neither alive, nor dead, we were as silent as the hum of electrical energy to human ears.

Parinirvana.

That was the secret of Arthur’s invisibility. “Are you unknowable too, Ananda?”

He closed his eyes and seemed to be listening to the strains of faraway music that no one else could hear. “I have never wished to be, but desire is the cause of suffering.”

William turned to the door. It clanged as he opened it and an unconscious body tipped toward him through the opening. “We have to get out of here. If what he saw is real, then we’re running late.”

I stepped around the machinery, trying to ignore the tangy smell of my own blood staining the ground. “What did you see, Ananda?”

“A storm.”

Without warning, the ground lurched again. My foot slipped and I collided with William’s squared back. The walls shivered under the strain, dust shook free from the concrete ceiling, and one of the large monitors fell from its mount and smashed to pieces. I threw myself into the doorway where William was bracing himself, but Ananda and the assembly of hostage-takers seemed to be completely unmoved.

“Ananda, it’s not safe!” William shouted over the rumble of the angry ground, but even as he said it, I realized how silly he was to do so. With our strength, insight, and longevity, we were indestructible. There was nothing to fear.

I relaxed and as if the tectonic plate had ears, its thunderous voice fell silent. I leaned away from the jamb. “Where is Karl?”

William looked around hesitantly, his steps careful and light. “I don’t know! The whole system is down. All their cell doors were already open, and the elevator wasn’t working.”

A loose piece of the ceiling broke free suddenly, and crashed to the floor in front of us, announcing that even if the ground was safe, the danger had not vanished.  I turned to find that Ananda was immediately behind me, still hearing commands I could not. At his heels were a few eyeless monsters, wandering after him like sheep.

I don’t know why, but I reached for his hand and was calmed by the feel of his fingers twisting through mine. “How did you get them out?”

“We didn’t,” William grunted as he stepped over the giant chunk of concrete. “They were climbing out of the elevator shaft when we got to it. When they saw him, they just sort of stopped and followed after us.”

Ahead of us, I heard a shout and instantly, William had flattened himself to the wall and was inching toward the corner. There was no way of knowing what sorts of people were left inside the compound, but I was finished with them. I wanted out safely. My friends depended on it.

Suddenly, in a loud roar, an aftershock jerked the building’s foundation to the left viciously. Ananda’s fingers squeezed mine gently.

“What the hell is going on?” I whispered. “This part of the country never gets earthquakes.”

“Nature itself rises up in defense of him,” Ananda quoted in my ear. “You must calm yourself.”

I spun to face him. “How can I? Karl knew about Jinx. He’s probably on his way there now!”

“Do not be afraid,” he replied. “Your friends are in good hands.”

I wanted to believe him, but knowing the cryptic Arhat as I did, I could not trust that those hands were not my own. I freed myself from him and without regard for consequences, walked around the corner at top speed.

Two men lay crushed beneath slabs of concrete. One was dead, nothing more than a pulp leaking from the roughened edges. The other was pinned at the legs, leaving red finger strokes on the ground where he clawed to pull himself free.

It would have been easy to leave him there to bleed out, but it was also easy to save him. I squatted down, a woman possessed, and grasped the edge of the slab. I cannot imagine how it must have looked, my tiny, feminine frame hoisting hundreds of pounds in the air, but I did it casually, and without another thought, left the man to heal among the rubble. I could think of only one thing and that was getting to Jinx before Karl could punish him for his own flaws.

As we ran through the labyrinthine halls toward our escape, it seemed as if the entire complex had been deserted just before it was picked up in the air and smashed to the ground. We encountered only a few souls, all of whom were trapped inside rooms, buried in debris, or injured in some way. By the time we reached the entrance, we had nearly ten people in tow, ten people I might have considered enemies. In dire circumstances, however, I could now clearly see that there were no differences between us.

William slid across the hood of a four-door sedan, unlocking it with the touch of a button on his keychain. I didn’t want to leave the others there, but when I turned and saw them looking after each other, I reluctantly got into the car.

Adjusting the mirror, William shot Ananda a speculative look in it. “Where to?”

“Head south.”

The tires kicked up dust and pebbles as he tore out of the long drive. The security gates stood stubbornly closed, and as he gunned the engine, I made sure to buckle my seatbelt. Immortal or not, I didn’t relish the thought of anymore physical trauma. Behind me, Ananda did the same, though he seemed almost amused by the cloth strap meant to protect him from metal.

We slammed into the gate going top speed. One panel flew outward from us, but the other twisted itself over the hood of the car, tearing metal and paint as it scraped away.

I watched the Vihara shrink away in the mirror and when it was gone, sank back into my seat with a relieved sigh.

At the crown of my head, Ananda placed his hand, warming my soul. “It is a shame our vehicle was not large enough for them.”

My mind went back to Moksha. I was surprised to find that I felt almost guilty.

“He is free,” Ananda said quietly in my ear.

I turned and caught his eye. “Dead?”

He said nothing, but I could see the truth. I turned back to the road, and wiped a hand across my face.

“He murdered your family,” William said in wonder. “I’m stunned you’re not more vengeful.”

“Nothing lasts forever,” Ananda replied, “and the end is always soon enough. There is no need to hurry anyone.”

My T-shirt was covered with several weeks’ worth of gore. It stank of earth, blood, and whatever wastes my body had secreted on its way to perfection. I pulled it off over my head and leaned back against the cool leather in my bra.

“I promised him I’d save him.”

“You promised you would free him,” Ananda corrected, “and you did.”