Steadfast

by Claudia Gray

  The power of it rippled through Nadia, shaking her even more savagely than the quakes had. And yet it didn’t scare her; it didn’t hurt. This was white magic—stronger and more transformative than she’d ever worked before. It felt like celebration, like sunlight. It felt sweeter than anything she’d ever known except love.

  Nadia opened her eyes. Had it worked?

  Before she could even cast one of the spells that would allow her to learn the truth, her phone chimed with a text. With cold, numb hands, she fished her phone from her pocket, hoping for a message from Verlaine that everyone at the hospital had already begun to heal.

  Instead the text was from Faye. Gage is in Elizabeth’s thrall. He’s dangerous & can’t help it. He could be coming after any of us. I’m going to warn Mateo.

  Elizabeth had created a thrall? She’d done that to Gage? Nadia was torn between horror for Gage’s plight and an even greater fear for Mateo’s safety. And Verlaine—Gage might go after her, too. She had to get to them as fast as possible.

  Was it safe to take the rowboat back to shore? The storm hadn’t let up, but it might not right away. Yet the waters seemed to churn even stronger—the foam splashing up toward her feet—

  —no, not splashing, crawling—

  She cried out as the water swirled up into a column so dark it glinted like obsidian, until it splash-shattered into a human form. Elizabeth stood in front of her, chin high, expression mocking.

  Before it had seemed as though Elizabeth was getting more bedraggled and weak by the day. Now she was glorious. Light almost seemed to shine from her skin, and the scars and dirt of the world couldn’t even touch her.

  “Your interference is no longer amusing,” Elizabeth said.

  Nadia could hardly speak or think. “How did you do that?” Surely Elizabeth hadn’t always possessed that kind of power, the ability to move herself in supernatural ways. How had she broken the bonds of physical reality?

  “I grow stronger as my love comes closer. When He arrives, I will share in His power. And He is very close to arriving, try though you will to stop Him.” The wind caught Elizabeth’s curls, twisting them behind her like snakes. “Let us reckon, you and I.”

  26

  MATEO LAY IN HIS BED, TWISTING AND TURNING, HANDS clenched into fists hard enough to hurt. That helped keep him focused, but not enough.

  He pushed himself off the mattress—or was that a boat? A boat carrying him and Nadia, bobbing treacherously on the waves growing higher by the moment—and fell in a crouch on the floor. Breathing hard, he tried not to look at the visions in front of him. (Nadia by the lighthouse, falling to her knees in front of the triumphant Elizabeth.) Instead he tried to concentrate only on the feel of the floor beneath his hands and knees as he crawled toward the place where he knew his dresser must be.

  With one sweaty hand, he reached out and found the sharp corner of the wood. Mateo drew his arm back, then swung it as hard as he could.

  Crack! He sucked in a sharp breath, but with pain came clarity. By smashing his forearm against the dresser, he’d earned himself a throbbing, red mark that would soon be an ugly bruise, but that didn’t matter. The only important thing was making sense of the visions he was seeing, so that he could help protect Nadia.

  Panting, Mateo leaned back against the wall. Another dream surrounded him already, but the combination of Nadia’s spell and the ache from his arm allowed him to watch it as if from the outside—like he was watching a movie.

  Elizabeth lifted her hands high, and it was as though the enormous waves behind her rippled and crashed at her command. Yet he could sense the energy emanating from her, feel it curling and growing like the tendrils of vines, until they snaked around the throats of every sick person, stealing breath and life—

  And Nadia was there, powerless to stop her.

  Mateo emerged from the dream with a gasp. The storm, Nadia’s presence at the lighthouse: His dreams might be showing him the future, but it was the very near future. Maybe not even hours ahead—maybe only minutes.

  If he could reach Nadia before Elizabeth cast that spell, maybe it would give her a chance to prepare and save the people at the hospital. It might save Nadia, too.

  Where was his stupid phone? He swore as he realized his father had moved it, trying only to help his son to rest while he went to inspect the restaurant for quake-related damage. Mateo managed to get to his feet and start going through the house. Chances were Dad had put it in the kitchen, right by the door. . . .

  As he walked into the kitchen, someone rang the bell. Mateo went to answer it, figuring the only person who would come here now had to be Verlaine.

  Instead he opened the door to see Gage.

  In that first second, Mateo thought the strange reddish haze around Gage was only a remnant of the dream visions. After that, though, it hit him: that was his Steadfast power revealing magic at work.

  But that first second was all it took.

  Gage’s amiable expression melted from his face, and the guy who tackled Mateo to the floor—he wasn’t Gage any longer. Mateo landed hard on his back, but he managed to get his arms up just in time to keep Gage from wrapping his hands around Mateo’s throat.

  They fought there on the kitchen floor. Gage never spoke; Mateo never bothered. In movies, fights always had guys on their feet, trading ninja kicks and manful blows. In reality, it usually came down to this: wrestling, gouging, shoving, never quite knowing what was going on. He pulled his punches as much as he could, because he knew Gage wasn’t himself and he didn’t want to mess the guy up. But whatever had Gage in its grip wasn’t playing by the same rules.

  Mateo could think only of Nadia, in so much more danger, and he couldn’t even get to his damned phone to warn her.

  Then Gage slammed him down so hard that Mateo couldn’t breathe. It felt like his ribs might have cracked, or broken.

  He didn’t want to hurt Gage—but what if that was the only way he could get out of this alive?

  Gage grabbed the toaster and held it over Mateo’s head, obviously preparing to use it to bash Mateo’s head in. He tried to roll out of the way, holding one hand up to block as he thought, No, no, no—

  The red light around Gage pulsed, flickered, went out. And Mateo knew—just knew—that something from within him, something about his outstretched hand, had done this.

  Gage froze. For a long moment he just stood there. At first Mateo could only stare up at him, and then he thought, This might be a good time to dodge.

  As he scrambled back, Gage said, “What were we just doing?”

  “Uh—I—” Mateo couldn’t find words. Had he actually broken the spell on Gage by himself? Had he performed some kind of magic?

  Shaking his head as though to clear it, Gage stared down at the toaster in his hands. “Were we making toast?”

  “Yeah. You came by to check on me, and we wanted some toast. That’s it.” Mateo scrambled to his feet. To hell with the phone: He was getting in the boat and going to Nadia, now. If he had even a fraction of magical power, he was going to use it to help her. “Hey, can you hold down the fort here for a second? If my dad comes back home, tell him I’m fine. I’ll be right back. Okay?”

  Gage, clearly somewhat confused but determined to get through it, put down the toaster and went to get the bread. “Sure thing.”

  Mateo ran from the house, desperate to reach Nadia in time.

  Nadia shouted so that her voice would carry over the howling wind: “You can’t hurt them any longer! You’ve lost your pain, so you’ve lost your bridge.”

  Elizabeth only shook her head in what looked like fond exasperation. “You never understood the magic to begin with.”

  “The bridge is built on pain. I know that’s why you hurt all those people and put them in the hospital.” It worked; it has to have worked; Elizabeth just hasn’t realized it yet—

  “Yes, the bridge for the One Beneath is built on pain,” Elizabeth said. She stepped closer, so that they were nearly within a
rm’s reach of each other. “The better the pain, the better the bridge. Physical pain is nothing, really. Just a habit of the body.”

  Hearing her say that so carelessly after seeing the torment Uncle Gary and Riley and Mrs. Purdhy had been put through enraged Nadia almost past endurance. But then her mind focused in more sharply on what Elizabeth had said. Realization began to dawn, and Nadia saw it reflected in Elizabeth’s knowing smile.

  “To build a true bridge—a strong bridge, one capable of carrying the One Beneath to our world—I needed an agony far greater than the suffering of a thousand tormented bodies. I needed the pain of the soul, of so many souls.”

  “You didn’t build the bridge on the people in the hospital,” Nadia said. “You built it on their families. Their friends. You built it on the pain of every person who went through all this time not knowing if the people they loved would live or die.”

  On Mrs. Purdhy’s family. On Kendall. On Verlaine.

  Elizabeth said, “I knew you would see eventually. You’re bright enough for that. But I also knew you would see it too late.”

  Failing to understand Elizabeth’s magic was humiliating—but what did it matter now? Nadia lifted her chin. “The bridge isn’t complete, and those people are free. They’ll wake up any minute now, if they haven’t already. So all the families are going to be happy again.”

  “The bridge is almost complete,” Elizabeth replied, “and I need so little to finish it. Really, if you’d left me one more hour, I could have left it at that.”

  It sounded like an admission of defeat, but it clearly wasn’t. Nadia felt a new, dawning wave of fear. “You won’t get one more hour.”

  “No, I won’t. But I remain tied to the patients, still; a few threads linger. I’ll have to give the threads a pull. You’ve blunted my original spell, so this time I’ll have to act more decisively.” Elizabeth lifted her hands. “I’ll have to kill them all.”

  Verlaine tried to run past Asa, thinking that if she could just get to the stairwell, she might make it—but he grabbed her arm. She fell, swinging down to the ground at his feet, his hand still wrapped around her elbow too tightly for her to pull free.

  The betrayal stung even more than the fear. Even though the mob was closing in, she could only look up at him in utter despair.

  Then Asa straightened and shouted, “Get away from her!”

  Everyone stopped. They still looked angry, but the shock of seeing someone defend Verlaine had been enough to make them hesitate.

  “You idiots,” he snarled. “Every horrible thing that’s happening around you, and you blame one of the only people who cares enough to try to help. You go after someone you think doesn’t have anyone to defend her. Well, you thought wrong.” Asa let go of Verlaine’s arm so that he could step in front of her, between her and her would-be attackers. “Get back before I make you get back.”

  Verlaine felt a shiver go through her then, and knew the rest had felt it, too. Although there was no overt sign that Asa was someone besides Jeremy Prasad, something other than human, it had somehow become completely clear that he could stop them all if he had to—and make them sorry they’d even tried to get past him.

  “Later,” one man said, shooting a venomous look at Verlaine. But people shuffled out begrudgingly; their anger still simmered, but it was in check for now.

  The moment the last of them left the elevator bank, Asa towed her up to stand by his side. Verlaine’s legs trembled from adrenaline and exhaustion, but she managed to stay upright. His hands on her shoulders were comfortingly warm. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “As far from this place as possible. Now.”

  She shook her head. “I’m part of Nadia’s spell. That means I have to stay here.”

  “Of course,” Asa breathed. He understood now, and his expression shifted into horror. “You could die.”

  “Then I die.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Take me to Uncle Gary’s room.” The CDC people had shooed her out earlier, but by now maybe she could get back in. “I want to be with him, no matter what happens.”

  Asa’s dark eyes flashed with emotion she could no longer read. “I’ll come with you as far as I can.”

  Mateo dashed out onto the beach to see—a hellscape. That was the only word for it. He could hardly tell the smoky, snarled clouds overhead from the writhing ocean that stretched out to a dark horizon.

  And you’re going to go out on that in a boat? said the part of his brain that still wanted to think he lived in a normal world.

  But he ran for the nearest boat, untied the moorings, revved the motor.

  Together Verlaine and Asa ran up the stairs, which was faster by far than waiting for the glacially slow hospital elevators. As Verlaine’s Converse pounded the concrete steps, she noticed how lightly Asa ran, as though he had no weight at all. As if he could almost fly.

  She felt as if she had never understood Asa before this . . . no. That wasn’t right. She had always understood him, from the first moment she learned what a demon was and saw the desperate resignation within Asa. But she hadn’t dared to trust what she knew until now.

  They emerged onto the fourth floor, Verlaine breathless, Asa not even beginning to tire. When they burst through the doors, though, a small group of CDC doctors down the hall whirled around to look at them. “Hey,” one woman called. “You’re not allowed in here.”

  Asa brought his hands together—and like that, time stopped. She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back tentatively, as if he still couldn’t believe she trusted him. “Come on,” he said, and they hurried down the hall.

  Uncle Gary lay in his hospital bed. For a split second the stillness of the heart monitor gave her pause, but of course, time remained frozen. He was caught between heartbeats.

  Suddenly titanic, consuming pain lanced through her, coring her out, as surely as though she’d been impaled. Verlaine clutched at the locket around her neck—that was where the pain came from, and it had to stop, it had to stop!—but then she remembered and grabbed her hair instead.

  Warm arms closed around Verlaine, held her tightly. “Be strong, my beautiful girl,” Asa whispered. “It’s terrible but it won’t last long; I promise you it won’t last long.”

  It had to be a lie. There could be no living through pain like this, no surviving, no after. And yet she was Uncle Gary’s only chance, and Asa was here with her, helping her be strong. She just had to breathe—and again—and again—

  The pain ended as swiftly as it had begun. She gasped, almost unable to believe she was still in the world.

  “You did it,” Asa said. “Elizabeth’s spell will shatter my own small power soon. But at least—at least I was here for this.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Their eyes met—and he let go of her even as she stepped away.

  Quickly Verlaine pulled a chair next to Uncle Gary’s bed and took one of his hands in hers. Just being with him made her feel steadier. Then she glanced over her shoulder at Asa and repeated, “Thank you.”

  “It’s no less than you deserve,” he said. “About time you finally got some shred of what the world owes you.”

  “Will you stay with me? After time starts again?”

  He shook his head very slightly; already his gaze had turned inward, as if he were trying to listen for a distant sound. “Not for very long. I won’t be able to. You see, I can defy Elizabeth—but not the One Beneath. There’s a price to be paid now. I shall have to pay it.”

  Verlaine realized that Asa had defied the One Beneath by saving her. “What happens now?”

  “That’s not up to us. It never has been. One thing we have in common, you and I—the great and mighty plot their wars, and we shiver down in the trenches. We fight for others’ glory, or at best our own survival. Ours is not to question why.”

  Verlaine wanted to protest. She fought alongside Nadia and Mateo because she trusted them, and knew that their goals were worth fighting for. But she realized that wasn’
t a justification she could throw in Asa’s face. It was a luxury he had never been allowed, as a slave to the One Beneath.

  Asa brought his hands together again. The room remained still, but the heart monitors began beeping again. Verlaine sighed, reassured by the sound. “What about the doctors?” She gave the door to the room a meaningful glance. “They saw us in the hallway.”

  He backed a few halting steps away. “They’ll think they imagined it—or that you left—not that you magically—magically went right past them—”

  “Are you all right?” Verlaine stared; Asa had begun to shake. The lamp by Uncle Gary’s bedside shone toward him, highlighting his strained face, casting his shadows even blacker. “What’s happening?”

  “Time for me to pay.”

  Then his shadow changed.

  It tore.

  Asa winced as one sliver of his shadow, then another, was ripped away. The darkness didn’t just disappear; instead it fluttered away, as though it had turned into one of Elizabeth’s menacing crows. The slivers ripped from him faster and faster, until he cried out in pain.

  Verlaine dropped Uncle Gary’s hand and ran to Asa. In the moment before she would have reached him, he cried out and vanished.

  For a moment the remnants of his shadow fluttered in the corners, making soft, raspy sounds like wings, and then they, too, were gone. Nothing of Asa remained.

  “No!” Nadia cried, but Elizabeth didn’t listen. Her rings glinted on her fingers; her minerals were with her, and even now she must be summoning the ingredients for her murderous spell.

  A few protective spells flashed through Nadia’s mind, but none of them was strong enough. None of them was right. To hell with it, she thought, and threw herself bodily at Elizabeth.

  They fell together on the scrabble of seashells, and for a moment they grappled with each other. But then a hook seemed to arch around Nadia’s body and yank her away so sharply that she tumbled onto the steep slope that led to the water. She was only just able to grab at the gravel and shells enough to stop herself from falling in. A wave crashed high enough to soak her jeans with near-freezing water, and drag her another couple of inches down.