Desolate (Desolation) (21 page)

“Mama,” Miri cried, taking a step forward, then stopping.

Mrs. Carr stopped with her back to Miri, staring straight ahead. I could hear the kids in the school squealing and shouting “Zombie!” behind the windows.

“Margaret!” Mr. Carr shouted as he jumped from his car. I hadn’t even noticed him pull his silver BMW over the curb near the walkway. He left his car running, the door hanging open while he ran across the yard.

“Stay back!” The officer who seemed to be in charge hurried forward in an effort to halt Mr. Carr.

“She’s my wife, you idiot!” Mr. Carr shouted back, shoving the policeman aside. “Margaret!”

Mrs. Carr turned around at the sound of her husband’s voice and even though I knew differently, knew she wasn’t truly capable of rational thought, of conscious thought, I still felt my heart leap, like she would be okay, like she could be alive.

Without warning she jumped forward, her arms wildly reaching for Mr. Carr.

Pop! Pop-pop-pop! Pop!

Jagged soot-colored holes littered the front of Mrs. Carr’s jacket. Her body shook and she took a step backward, stumbled and fell. I sought the source of the gunfire and identified a young officer, his gun hanging limp in trembling hands, tears coursing down his face.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he kept saying.

Sorrow weighed me down. Too many sorrows to count. When I looked for Mrs. Carr, I saw her lying on her back, utterly still.

I expected screams, cries . . . But there was nothing. Silence hung around us as if Loki had sucked the sound from this world, too. I reached out, my hand finding Desi’s. She clasped onto me, let me pull her to my side. We clung to each other as we watched our friend stand next to her father, neither of them touching, neither of them saying a word; their loved one laying on the ground.

A demon’s shadow-self whisked across the lawn and pounced on Mrs. Carr. I felt a thrust of guilt to my gut that left me as breathless as any physical blow.
This is my fault. This pain. This evil. All my fault.

She lurched upward into a sitting position. The kids in the school squealed and shouted, “She’s moving!”

Miri covered her face with her hands.

I felt my love’s yearning resonate through her spirit. She longed to do something, to help, to heal. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing while Miri hurt so. And almost as suddenly as the urge to help had washed over her, I felt the cold, dead, breath of Hell crush her desire for good. She pulled away from my embrace.

Miri stood helpless, her spirit crushed in the face of such heartache.

Desi shuddered against the building storm I sensed in her—a darkness that came faster and faster and I knew—I
knew
—what she faced. I recognized that storm. Was intimately familiar with the turmoil that boiled within her.

Anger bubbled up inside me. Righteous, burning anger until I felt I couldn’t contain it any longer.

“Now,” I said, turning my back on the ongoing tragedy playing out on the lawn. “We need to fix this.” I stormed away, not caring who followed, not caring if anyone helped me at all. I would fix this, restore the order between the worlds. And I would make Loki pay.

chapter thirty-two

Desi

I watched the scene as if from a very great distance. I felt nothing. I thought nothing.

Part of me knew, on some level, that Miri’s heart was being torn from her body and ripped into a zillion pieces. I knew it, but I couldn’t rally the appropriate response. It was like the pain had become so great, the sorrow so deep that it was either lose myself in it or . . . Not.

I chose not.

I pulled away from Michael. Cloaked myself in impenetrable cold. Removed myself from caring.

I watched Mrs. Carr turn away from Miri.

Watched Mr. Carr call out to her, reach for her.

Saw the demons who crouched around Mrs. Carr, hungry for her spirit—a rare treat, a delicacy in the extreme. I saw Eleon, Taige and the other vamp-kids huddled by one of the windows. Heard Eleon tell them he would have some fun.

Saw Eleon melt away into Shadow and force himself into Mrs. Carr’s body. With ravenous desire he claimed her body, and when he jerked her body upward he laughed while the officers riddled her body with more bullets.

I watched it all and I did nothing.

But when Michael drew himself up to his full height and his Halo nearly burst from him in righteous indignation, his golden warmth brushed against my Shadow. It pressed against my darkness, my resolve. He turned and stormed away, and I found myself following. Around the the cathedral, away from the drama unfolding at the school. Toward the cemetery and the spot where I had always felt closest to him, closest to the warmth that huddled like a small, frightened child in the center of my darkening soul.

We walked without speaking until we came to the part of the path where a stone bench hid in the embrace of a weeping willow. He sat and I joined him, both of us looking up to the little stone angel praying over us.

“I came here every day,” I said, when the silence stretched between us like pulled taffy. “I used to hope you could hear me. Or feel me.” I bit my lip, shook my head.
Stupid
. “I knew you couldn’t, it’s just . . . I had to do something.”

My words fell like snow between us. Meaningless, empty. They left no mark, melting away into the cement. I tried to pull back my hand—who was I kidding? He couldn’t still love me. I should have done more, when all I did was talk to a stupid stone angel.

“I could,” he said, gripping my hand tighter. “I did hear you. Or feel you. Somewhere inside me, I knew.”

No one knew better than me how completely Hell cuts you off from the other worlds. All you had were memories, and sometimes even they faded if enough time, or enough pain, filled the spots between then and now.

We fell into silence again, but this time I felt uneasy, like something big lurked behind me, a demon, a threat—the truth. I wasn’t ready, or prepared, to face any of them. Not for the first time I wished I was a regular teenage girl who’d skipped school to hang out with her boyfriend.

Wished the only thing he had to forgive me for was being so cute other boys wanted to hang out with me.

Wished the only thing I’d ever done was cheated on a science exam.

Instead, I was the devil’s daughter. I was the girl who’d sent Michael, my love, to Hell where he suffered an eternity of torture and brainwashing—and other things I didn’t want to think about—before being sent on Satan’s errand.

Sent to destroy.

“Michael, what—”

“I don’t think I—”

We laughed, self-conscious as our words tripped over each other’s.

“You go,” I said. I didn’t really want to know the answer to my question anyway. I didn’t really want to know if he knew what he was doing, what he’d been sent to Earth to do.

His eyes looked tight, strained, and it didn’t take any more convincing to get him to speak first.

“I don’t think we can wait for the others. And besides, I don’t think they’ll be able to help at all.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Looking for Heimdall—I think only you and I can do it. And look what’s happening back there—” He gestured toward the school, but I knew what he meant. Miri’s mom—all the moms and dads, sons and daughters out there who should be quietly slipped into their graves but must be, even as Miri’s mom, trying to walk back into their lives. People everywhere would be living a nightmare soon enough—if they weren’t already.

I said nothing, only tightened my lips into a thin line. Hate filled me to the core. Hate for Eleon who’d taken Mrs. Carr’s body and made an already terrible situation worse. Hate for Father who not only allowed him to do it, but who orchestrated this whole thing. Suddenly the thought of going back to Hell filled me with a kind of cold joy. I’d make Father pay for all this suffering—for everything.

“The only thing is—should we get Knowles?” Michael asked, his voice hitching a little. He cleared his throat and looked away.

“No,” I said a little more sharply than necessary.

Michael sighed and dropped my hand, raking both hands over his brush cut instead. “I think Loki would be quick to guess what he was up to, if we sent Knowles in.”

“Well, he’s not going to think I’m there to resume my role as dearest daughter.”

“He might—he wants to believe it, you know. If he catches us, it probably wouldn’t be difficult to convince him.”

He looked at me with such intensity, almost madness, and I leaned away, taken aback by this new Michael. “I don’t know. I’ve been pretty clear about where I stand.” But Father had visited me recently. Twice.

He seemed to think I’d returned to him. And the mark over my heart . . . I tucked that truth away, unable or unwilling to look at it too closely.

“He tells me you have changed your mind.”

Ice flooded my veins in an instant and my eyes whipped to his, searching, demanding the truth. “He
tells
you? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, told me. Before you . . .” He fingered the whale-tale charm I’d put on him. “He-he was still giving me orders, still telling me what to do—I don’t know how it’s possible, but he doesn’t seem to know that I’ve regained my memories.”

“Regained your memories,” I said, my voice low, hard, flat. “Regained them—but not forsaken your mission.”

He squirmed under my gaze and reached out for my hand. I stood up and took a step away.

He stared at me for a moment, as if still hoping I would drop my questions and go along with him. But I stood my ground; arms crossed over my chest, chin down, eyes burning into him. I felt my shadow-self stretch inside, felt the cold tingling as it lingered on my right arm. There was no spark now—the ice made no room for it.

Finally his shoulders drooped and he dropped his gaze to the ground. “I
feel
like me. I Remember . . . everything, I think. I know who I am, who you are. I remember that I love you.” He glanced up at me, but my expression hadn’t changed so he returned his gaze to the cement. “But I can also feel . . . him. Like a whisper, like an uncomfortable feeling under my skin. Like I can’t quite breathe, like I can’t quite feel . . . happy. And even now, wherever I go, whatever I do, whatever I think—I can feel him, watching, listening, whispering. I’m sorry Desi. I should have told you—I just . . . . couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

My whole body trembled. Fear and something weird like relief warred in my mind. Fear of what this meant for Michael, and relief that he wasn’t as perfect as he once was. He was more like me now. I hated myself for thinking that.

But maybe now, I wouldn’t feel quite as unworthy of him.

I sighed and sat on the bench beside him, close enough that our shoulders grazed each other, but wide enough that our hips and legs didn’t touch. “If we go in, how are you going to avoid his call?”

It was a fair question. The last time Father had called for me, the crypt had crumbled to the ground from the force of it. I’d surely have returned to Hell then if it hadn’t been for Michael bracing me against the maelstrom of Father’s command.

“That’s why I can’t go in—at least, not yet. But I’m hoping we won’t need to.”

“Well, are you going to tell me the plan?”

He swiveled so he could face me. “I’ll tell you, but I think we should hurry, do it before the kids get out of school, before any more of our friends are put in harm’s way.”

He was different. More demanding, less like himself. I recognized the confidence of Hell stamped on him like a brand.

chapter thirty-three

Michael