Authors: David James
“You said you knew!”
“No I didn’t!” She shook her head. “I only know that the Order thinks you’re the one from the prophecy.
They
want you. I said Marcus knows what you are. He has answers. Which is why we need to hurry.”
I glared. “Fine. Lead the way.”
But she didn’t move.
Instead she said, “You need to care, Calum.”
“Why? It’s not like I have anything to care about.”
Kate’s eyes slanted down, the purple in them fading to familiar black shadows beneath her long lashes. Her voice ran at me, hard and fast and, when it found me, was as though acid had merged with breath. “
You don’t know that!
You don’t know where your Mom is or that Tyler guy you keep talking about, and you sure as hell don’t know what the future will bring, so
don’t
say you have nothing. Don’t you
dare
lose sight of what you could have if you did care!”
Cold.
I do care,
I thought, the cold realization of it unleashing itself in my blood until it was all I could feel, all I could think.
What Kate didn’t realize was that I
did
care.
About Mom and Tyler.
Me.
Her.
I cared
too
much.
I sighed. “I care. Okay? I do.”
I just didn’t know why, or when it had started. When Kate had become someone more. Maybe because she was broken and I understood that. I saw it in her eyes; the way she lived and breathed for her sisters; the way she moved toward them without knowing where to go; the way she needed them more than even she could know. Maybe it wasn’t that I understood it, but that I wanted it. I lived to find it just like she did: A place to belong, family.
I remembered again that first time I saw her. Her dark brown curls fell in loose waves past a face riddled with anger, though now it was luminous in the light from the lake beside us. I saw those freckles that looked liked stars dancing on her dark, golden face, just above where her lips pursed like two slashes of blood. She stood tall, her shoulders high and back, the veins in her neck popping and, with flakes of silver falling in her hair and on her skin so she seemed to glow with light, she looked like an angel of death.
I wanted to smile-
to laugh-
to touch-
to kiss.
No
, I thought.
That wouldn’t be good. And if it is, it will just be good and gone like always. Like Tyler. Nothing stays good for long.
I can’t let it be good for long.
She doesn’t care about me anyway.
She took me from my life.
I wanted to run.
I remembered Kate saying,
“Funny, I feel like I saved your life.”
I wanted to run from her, but I could feel in my heart that I was something more than the person I had been in Lakewood Hollow.
Sometimes you can only go forward.
Sometimes it’s impossible to look back.
Maybe she did save me.
Words fell from my mouth before I could stop them. “Is that the only reason you kidnapped me? Your family?”
She gasped. “What?” Her mouth opened and closed, and then she said, she
shouted
, “
Yes!
What other reason would I have?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I took one step back. “Do you... Do you...”
“Do I what, Calum?” she snapped, but her voice was softer than before. She tilted her head to the side. She ran a hand through her hair and, for a moment, her
leviti
was gone. Her eyes searched me up and down. They were taut with irritation, but beneath those shadows I saw the girl that missed her family. The girl that told me a story. Beneath it all she was just Kate. A girl.
For some reason, that made it worse.
Do you care?
I wanted to say.
Why do you look at me like that?
I looked down and felt the unsaid words stick in my throat. “Do you know what all this is?” I looked up and pointed to the falling specks of silver. “Looks like diamonds floating in the air. Like glass rain.”
I turned, my eyes locked with hers, and I had to look away. I had to, but I couldn’t, and one hundred moments happened in one beat of my heart. One look between us and my heart didn’t know what to do: Beat, boom, stop, stop, beat, stop, stop, beat.
Beat.
She smiled. “Glass rain. I’ve never heard that before.”
Boom
.
Kate’s chest moved up and down in jagged breaths. I could feel my own lungs struggling for air.
I whispered, “What is it then?”
“They say every fallen Warrior leaves a trace of his or her power when they die,” she breathed. She was so quiet, her voice nothing more than air, and I wondered if it would blow away before I heard it.
I stepped closer, just one foot forward.
She blinked but didn’t step back. “Marcus told it to me like this: These are the tears of those fallen Warriors that have become angels, the Heaven’s Guard, who proved themselves in the name of the Order. These are the tears of the group of Warriors that still protect the Order from where they rest in the sky. When a Warrior sacrifices himself in the name of the Order, they find a place in the afterlife always helping a Warrior or Order member in need.” Her voice grew quiet, fading to only a shiver in the air before dying away completely.
“Do you believe that?” I asked.
“I always thought I did. I want to. I believe the Order is truth so I’ve never questioned Marcus about the story, and it’s nice to believe in a happy ending, you know? I like the idea of Heaven’s Guard, a group of powerful angel Warriors that fight eternally to save the world. I’m a Warrior. It’s what I should believe in. Even if it doesn’t exist, it’s nice to hope it might.” She looked at me. “Do you believe in happy endings?”
“I don’t know.” My head felt heavy. I cracked my knuckles, then my neck. “I really don’t know. I mean, my Dad is the Bloodletter. My Mom is basically an alcoholic, and my best friend could be dead. I have no one in the world to make me believe in happy endings, but I want to.
I want to
.”
Her eyes agreed with me.
I moved closer to her until we were almost touching. The two of us stood still, our shoulders nearly together and heads lifted up, while the rain of angel tears kissed our faces. I opened my mouth, pretended I was a child wanting to catch snowflakes, and stuck my tongue out. I felt a tingle where a tear landed. Warmth spread from my head to my toes.
I felt like flying.
And then, “We need to go. Now!” Kate backed away from me, and then turned to run. Her eyes were wide, darting left and right as if she were scared of someone I couldn’t see. She snapped, “Move, Calum! Why are you so slow? Idiot. Follow me. Let’s go!”
She ran, but all I wanted to do was stay-
in that moment-
in time standing still-
and just for a second, keep something good.
But time wasn’t stopping, and so I ran as fast as I could to catch up to Kate, and as soon as I was close enough to feel the brush of her long hair blowing back against my face, I slowed enough to pretend I was standing still.
I couldn’t fool myself, though.
My heart, beating faster than I ran, gave me away.
All around us the men and woman gave us curious looks as we passed, though I had a feeling their eyes only saw me. The stranger. The one that didn’t belong. The ones in gray shirts looked especially angry, their eyes slanted down, lips curled in my direction. I could feel sweat dripping down my face already, while everyone else seemed to move so gracefully swift like Kate.
I saw a woman in red, her hair like embers burning, touch her hand to a cold lantern and light the flame with a snap of her fingers.
Closer now, I could see that their skin seemed iridescent, the same glow I had noticed in Kate that first day, almost lit from the inside out.
I wanted to ask about it, but I couldn’t find my breath.
Part of me felt I might be dreaming.
The other part of me knew I wasn’t.
Kate and I ran further into the cave, straddling the edge of the great lake. I noticed, as we sidestepped the runners in gray, that there weren’t many children around.
The only ones I could see were circled near the lake. They were dressed in the same gray shirts as the runners. Three of the children were playing, two of them twirling the ends of a rope while another bounced up and down in the twine vortex, singing a song to the beat: “Drums, drums all around...”
I stumbled, tripping on the point of a lone rock that was peaking out of the otherwise smooth ground.
Tyler and I had played jump rope with Kendra in Birdsong Park many times before. Every day, actually, for an entire summer when Tyler was Kendra’s babysitter while Mrs. Little finished classes for her Master’s degree. Tyler and I had made up different versions of songs for Kendra to jump to, but we’d never sung one so haunting.
The eerie song sent shivers down my spine. One of the children, an older boy about twelve or so, seemed to be bossing the others around as if they were playing house and he was the father. He was shouting and screaming at the others. I saw him point to his eyes and then at theirs, shaking his head back and forth and back again as if the world depended on it.
Run,
I told myself. I focused on the curled brown hair in front of me, flying back like a hundred sparrows flocking together.
Just keep running forward and don’t look back.
That thought was brilliant in my mind:
Just keep running forward.
Don’t look back.
Don’t ever look back.
But as the memories of Tyler and Kendra, Mom and Dad, chased behind me like shadows, I knew not looking back would be impossible. Even now I could feel those memories closing in, and soon they would find me, break me, and I would be helpless to ignore them.
How did I last so long by ignoring so much?
Kate pushed me into a building near the back of the cave, built underneath the largest waterfall. The water gushed down over the top of the building making the stone smooth and shiny. Inside, the building was dark and the air was damp, tasting dank and wicked as if death was visiting.
The room felt wrong.
“Kate, what
is
this place?” I asked.
“Shh,” she hissed, throwing her hand up to silence me. “Be quiet!”
“Kate,” I said, “you can’t leave me in the dark.”
“Shut up! You’ll get us-”
Boom.
At first, I thought it was my heart breaking.
Boom.
Steps. Footsteps sounded in the distance, growing ever closer, as if gravity were stomping down in metal boots.
Boom!
The door on the opposite side of the room opened with a bang, splintering on the floor in a thousand pieces. It became nothing in the blink of an eye, destroyed in a
boom
. And, as the broken bits of door fell to the floor, the air in the room seemed to flow towards the shadow of a man in the dark void of shadow and dust.
“Katherine,” the man said in a deep, coarse rumble of a voice that made my blood slow. Made it burn. “You have returned. And with company. Good.”
“Yes, sir,” was all Kate said, her head and shoulders slouched forward. She was as quiet as the dead. Her body set like stone.
As the man moved closer to us, gliding into focus, I saw his ancient face was wrinkled and his gray hair was long, coming down almost to his waist. On his forehead, the stone spell Kate mentioned earlier reflected what muted light was in the room. It sparkled like a garnet diamond without needing any movement to shine. Surrounding the blood-red jewel were intricate twines of red tattoos, spiraling tribal swirls that circled his black eyes like a mask. And, although they were slanted in a deep smile, his eyes did not feel warm or kind but black and cold and dark.
“You are Calum Wade,” he said without question as he studied me. A low hiss sounded from his mouth. “The son of the Devil.”
I was frozen.
I am not my father. I am not.
He continued, “You are a mystery, Calum. A dangerous mystery.”
My mouth shook with words I knew I should have said:
I am no one but myself.
Questions I should have asked:
What am I, really? Who are you? What do you want with me?
I opened and closed my mouth, but nothing came.
I was nothing but silent.
The man smiled with his lips closed and, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes, he looked like he was enjoying my misery. “My name is Marcus, though you may not address me at all. I am the leader of this coven.”
He did not blink. He moved closer, lowering his face so that it was in line with mine, and narrowed his eyes.
“We will have to hold a trial for you,” he said slowly, his breath like fire. His teeth were so pointed they looked like fangs. “I am unsure as to whether you are truly the Dreamer, the one who will save us all, or if you are the Destroyer who will side with the Orieno. Or, simply, if you should die and be gone with. As of right now, you know too much to live freely regardless.”
Cold sweat ran down my back.
Die?
Then, as if what he had said was as common as hello, he jumped up and walked back toward the shattered door.
“Katherine,” he said, turning to leave the room. “The trial for him will begin in one hour. No more and no less. You were late bringing the boy here, and I have forgiven you, but do not be late for this. You know what will happen if you are.”
A trial?
I thought. What had I done wrong?
In my head I felt like screaming.
-Kate-
I was supposed to kill Calum.
I remembered that night, four years ago, as though the cold winter darkness had seeped into that cut in my palm, leaving vivid memories in my veins as the blood spilled out.