Dark Star (24 page)

“What changed?”

“I can’t say for certain. It may simply have been a matter of timing.” She took a long breath, closing her eyes. “We knew by then that some danger was approaching. For years, we’d been watching for signs of a Harrowing, but we weren’t aware of Verrick until he showed himself. He was cunning. It took us far too long to realize his true intent.”

“He wanted the Remnant.” When Esther nodded, I said, “But she wouldn’t have even been born. Not if the demons are bleeding sixteen-year-olds. I thought they wanted her power, not to stop her existence.”

“Verrick had information we didn’t. His Knowing was strong, stronger than that of any Kin. He knew when and where the Remnant would be born—perhaps even her identity. He wanted us fragmented, the Astral Circle destroyed, so nothing would remain to impede him.”

“Mom stopped him,” I said. “She killed him. But why were my father’s powers sealed?”

She turned back to me. Her face was blank, but she couldn’t hide the grief in her tone. “Your mother battled Verrick many times before she defeated him. She was strong, but so was he. And though she wounded him, he always managed to escape. He recovered. He grew in power. And we sensed that this was worse than what had come before. That he was waiting for something. That he was planning.”

“So … your basic apocalypse,” I said, shifting uncomfortably.

Esther threw me a look that meant she was not amused. “We lost a third of our numbers. Many of our people fled the Cities, seeking what little safety they could find elsewhere, among other Kin. Those of us who remained had little hope of survival. He was hunting down Guardians, one by one. Slaughtering them. And gathering his strength in the most brutal way imaginable. Whether it was something he learned or something inherent to him, I couldn’t say, but Verrick had an ability other Harrowers do not. He wasn’t just killing the Guardians—he was taking their power, their life forces into himself. And he grew stronger with each Guardian he drained. Eventually, he caught your father.”

At her words, an image shot through me: a young man’s body bent, unmoving. From far off, I caught my mother’s voice, a harsh, screamingsob—Adrian!

But he wasn’t dead. They’d told me that. His heart was sleeping. “Mom saved him,” I said.

Esther inclined her head. “Lucy fought Verrick off before he could finish draining your father. She brought him back here, to me.” Her eyes clouded. She looked past me, into the dark distance beyond the windows. “We feared the worst, but Adrian surprised us. He recovered on his own. And then … then he began to grow stronger.”

A tingling began on the back of my neck. “Stronger how?”

She lowered her eyes, trailing her fingers down the upholstered arm of her chair. “It was little things at first. His Knowing increased. He could tell Lucy where Verrick would attack next, and when. That was when we realized what had happened. Adrian was an Amplifier; he could share the powers of others. When Verrick began draining him, Adrian attempted to reverse the process, to drain him back. A link had formed between them. A connection that wasn’t severed.”

“A connection,” I repeated. Dread pooled in my stomach. I knew where this was headed.

“It was Adrian who told us of the Remnant—that she would be born here, and soon, and that Verrick was preparing. Adrian’s abilities as a Guardian grew, as well. In time it’s possible he would have become powerful enough to defeat Verrick on his own terms. But we didn’t have time. Too many lives had been lost already. An entire generation of Guardians—gone.”

Like Leon’s parents. I felt another tremor of grief from Esther, the weight of guilt. Not just for my father, but for all the others who had been lost.

“By then it had become clear to us that the connection went both ways,” she continued. “Verrick had made an error when he drained an Amplifier. And that was when we discovered the solution. To wound one was to wound the other. The way to weaken Verrick was to use the link: to seal both of their life forces. Permanently.”

A ritual, Iris had said. Blood from the five sacred spaces. Life spilling out.

“So you sealed his powers, and then he just left?” I asked. I might not have a clear sense of my father, but I knew what he had left behind. I had felt it a thousand times behind my mother’s eyes: a keen but quiet longing, fierce and hidden.

Esther shook her head slowly. “There was no other choice. It was for his own safety. Who we are as humans can’t be separated from who we are as Kin. Sealing his life force meant sealing away that part of him forever. His knowledge.” She paused, her voice unsteady. “His memories. He couldn’t stay with us.”

The sleeping heart.

Both living and dead.

Not quite what Iris had made it seem.

“He agreed to that?” I looked down at the cards in my hands. I’d been shuffling them absently, but the Inverted Crescent remained flipped up. His card, too, Esther had said. But no longer. Whatever ties he had to the Kin had been severed.

“He went to it willingly, though Lucy objected.”

She would have. I knew my mother.

Esther’s tone grew hesitant. “I can’t tell you everything you want to know. But it’s possible you can see it for yourself.” She drew back in her chair, sighing faintly. In the dim light, she seemed less severe than I was accustomed to, almost vulnerable. “It’s something that is rarely done, but you have the ability. You have to move past Knowing, into echo and reverie.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I whispered.

Except I did. She meant using my Knowing to see into the past, and I didn’t know if I could. I’d had glimpses, flickers now and then—but those were things I felt rather than saw, like the northern lights that lingered at the edges of every memory in Mickey Wyle’s boyhood, or Iris’s black shoes at her parents’ funeral. I had never done anything like what Esther was suggesting.

“It’s about focus and control,” she continued. “Like when you use your Nav cards. The significance is in the act. You clear everything else away.”

“It’s not that simple,” I protested. “If I want to see the past —Mom’s past—I’d need to have her here. My Knowings aren’t nearly as strong when I don’t have the subject with me.”

Esther merely shrugged. “Perhaps usually. But this is your mother. She is a part of you. She carried you. Her blood lives in your blood.”

“Her blood. Not her memories.”

“That is why you use your Knowing.”

I began to shuffle, and Esther rose from her chair, moving in front of me. Her hands settled on mine, halting their motion. I looked up at her questioningly.

She chuckled softly. “Use your Knowing—and my help. Did Iris mention that I’m also an Amplifier?”

I nodded mutely.

“We will do this together. Focus.” Her fingers closed over mine. Tightened. Her hands were cool and her veins lightly stained, ribbons of color that threaded down her left wrist. I could imagine a pale glow there, her knuckles bent. She was a Guardian, too, I remembered.

“Focus, Audrey.”

“I am,” I muttered.

Echo and reverie, I thought. Gram had never had me do anything like this. Once, she had sat before me and placed her hands over mine, a sort of connection, she said—the space where Knowing met Knowing—but that had been to help me clear my thoughts, so that I could see the pattern.

This wasn’t just a pattern. This was a history. Heritage. All the words my mother couldn’t speak. Esther’s Amplification was powerful, I could sense that, could feel my Knowing strengthening, but I still wasn’t certain I could do this. I couldn’t quite focus. I couldn’t quite think—

Can’t you ever be serious?

I jerked suddenly, searching Esther’s face. She hadn’t spoken. But—

It’s like arguing with the weather, with you.

My mother’s voice. A sound of laughter bubbling. And then, again, her piercing cry, all the strength of her powerful lungs within it. Adrian!

I closed my eyes. Opened them.

And for the first time in my life, I saw my father’s face.

It wasn’t like dreaming.

I saw everything with a strange, sharp clarity. The dark, storm-battered sky. Picnic tables and tree branches glistening with rain. The light that grazed my parents’ faces didn’t come from above, it came from below. Fireflies in the grass. They stood near a lake.

My mother said his name, but I knew him before she spoke. He had St. Croix eyes. Even in the semidarkness I could see them, dusty gold, their steady focus on my mother as she stood before him. His curly hair was a rich brown, tousled by the wind that stirred up through the pines. He was tall and lean and had a crooked smile that was meant for mischief—except that now there was something a little sad about it, and the hand he rested on my mother’s shoulder tightened when she said his name.

I looked at my mother. Her cheeks were red. It looked as though she’d been crying. She looked so young and lost, her pregnancy—me—a swell not quite concealed by her baggy shirt.

“There’s another way, I know there is,” she said, staring up at him as clouds covered the moon. “We just have to find it. Give me time, Adrian. I’ll find it, I swear I’ll find it.”

“We don’t have time. We’ve been over this. Verrick is growing stronger with every Guardian he drains. This is our only chance, and we have to take it. We agreed—”

“No, you agreed,” my mother snapped, jerking out of his grip. Her hair, down about her shoulders, flapped in the breeze. “You and Esther. You haven’t let me find another solution.”

“There is no other solution. You can’t handle Verrick.”

“I can handle anything.” Her eyes caught a sliver of moonlight. She stood straight, her hands balled into fists at her side.

My father’s voice was gentle. “You know I’m right.”

She turned away from him, toward the lake, where the water was motionless and void of color. “I’ll come to you after I defeat Verrick. I’ll go with you. We’ll start over. Leave all of this.”

“You can’t give up being Kin, being a Guardian. It’s who you are.”

“It’s who you are, too!” She paused, relaxing her hands. She looked tired. “I’ll have them seal my blood, too. And we’ll leave together. I can’t do this alone.”

He came up behind her, pulling her backward against him. One arm wrapped around her shoulders, closing the space between them. His hand rested near her belly.

“Lucy, I promise you. You won’t be alone.”

The vision—I didn’t know what else to call it—sped forward.

My mother was farther away this time, standing in a hallway, her face half-turned. She spoke to someone I couldn’t see, though I recognized the voice. And I knew that hall, the pristine carpet, the walls painted in neutral colors.

“Verrick will be weakened, but so will you. Some strength will remain in him, and without Adrian, you’re at a disadvantage.”

“I understand.” Mom’s voice was flat. “I can do this, Esther.”

“Timing is crucial. If Verrick realizes what has happened—”

“He’ll go after Adrian. I know.”

There was a pause, long enough that my mother turned to leave. Then Esther’s voice, clear and cutting through the thick silence. “You really mean to go with him?”

“I do.”

A blur of light. My mother strode down the hall, her face grim and determined—then she faded. A wind rushed up. The bright, vacant light of the hall became the muted light of stars and the dizzy yellow of headlights, streetlamps, office buildings. It was night, and she stood above the city, on the roof of a building. She wore a dark coat instead of a hoodie, and her long hair flowed free, but she was still Morning Star. She was there with a purpose. She took two large steps forward, then hopped onto the ledge, staring down at the city below. Traffic rushed past. Detached though I was, I felt a surge of panic as I watched her. She lifted her arms, spreading them outward, the wind billowing around her.

You could fall! I wanted to shout at her. I wanted to pull her backward, into safety, where a sudden gust was less likely to send her hurtling into oblivion.

A voice came from behind her. “You think you’re clever, do you?”

Mom didn’t turn. She didn’t even seem to react, except for a certain tension along her arms, and the fact that her fingertips— both hands, not just the left—gained a faint glow.

“A noble sacrifice. He won’t even remember you. But I wouldn’t worry. You’ll be dead soon enough, and I’ll be sure to send him to you.”

My mother finally turned, leaping off her perch onto the smooth tar of the roof. She bent slightly, her arms held in front of her, the glow spreading through her fingers, down to her wrists. At her throat, a third light began to pulse. “Seems like I’ve heard that line before,” she said. “And yet, here I am, still living.”

“A temporary circumstance.”

“I’m ready, Verrick. I’m ready.”

She was. I saw it in her eyes, the set of her mouth, the way she held herself. There was no hesitancy in her. No trace of fear or uncertainty. She would end this. Tonight. She stepped forward, and for the first time, I saw the Harrower she faced.

He looked like a man. I’d known that, I should have expected it, but seeing him there, his arms slack at his sides, his hair slightly rumpled, it felt incongruous that all of my mother’s rage and hate should be directed at someone so benign in appearance.

She attacked. Faster than I could see or think, she sped across the roof, the shine at her fingers a sudden blurred arc. One of her hands shot toward his throat, burning the air behind her. Verrick deflected her, catching her wrist, tossing her backward. She caught his other arm and the two of them lurched forward, falling hard against the tar. I felt the wind rush out of her lungs.

But my mother was strong. She was fierce, and frightening, and something I had never seen. She kicked outward, away from Verrick, and crouched low. I heard her panting. The glow of her veins beat with her heart, colors churning at her wrists and jugular.

“Your powers are sealed,” she said, her voice clear and carrying. “You really think you have the strength left to kill me?”

“You have no idea what my strength is,” he said.

Beneath his feet, a ring of light began to pool, thick and bright and smelling faintly of blood. It rose around him, spreading outward until it surrounded them both—great waves of light, like a miniature aurora borealis. Its colors shimmered in the darkness, soft blues fading into greens, yellows, pale orange, the hint of violet, and a clear white light, warm and vibrant and strangely beautiful.