by L.H. Cosway
My amazement was cut short when the bright morning sky began to darken. I glanced overhead and into the distance to see a black chaos cloud approaching. Everyone in the crowds had their eyes shut, so they had no clue what was coming their way.
I reminded myself that Roman’s string was going to protect them all from dying. They’d go to sleep and wake up at the next sunrise. Turning my head to the stage I saw that Theodore was no longer closing his eyes and faking like he was observing a minute of silence. Now he was staring at the people before him with a sick, twisted smile on his face.
His entire body practically hummed with anticipation. He was getting a kick out of this. He wanted to watch the chaos kill all these people. Soon the mist had blocked out all the light, and I could barely see a thing. It might as well have been the middle of the night. The only way I could see anything at all was because of the glow from the string and the magical veins that connected each person to the one standing next to them.
Just like when I’d been inside Alora’s vision, the chaos descended from the sky and invaded the bodies of the humans, slipping into any opening—mouths, ears, eyes. Seconds later, there was a sound I hoped to never hear again. The sound of thousands of bodies dropping lifelessly to the ground.
The black cloud started to abate and drift away, the silence broken only by Theodore’s ridiculous cackling. Then I heard someone struggling for breathe close by. Turning my head, I spotted Emilia still holding the string with one hand, she clutched her chest with the other.
Oh, crap. I knew a heart attack when I saw one.
She didn’t have the strength left to hold the string any longer. Weakly, she fell to the ground on her hands and knees. Immediately, I felt the magic sail right out of my body, and with it, the glamour that had been hiding us all from view. The line had been broken. I rushed to Emilia and started CPR, while at the same time Theodore wailed in outrage.
“What trickery is this?!”
I looked up from where I was pumping my hands into Emilia’s chest and saw Roman advancing on Theodore with a sword. I tried to focus on Emilia, but my gut sank when it became evident that there was nothing more I could do. She was dead. Roman’s magic must’ve been too much for her body to handle.
I brushed some hair away from her aged but still beautiful face and closed her eyelids. That was all the goodbyes I had time for because the others needed me now. Cristescu used his ultra-vampire speed to flash to Rita, pinning her arms behind her back as she struggled and kicked at him to let her go. She even tried to bite him, snapping her teeth like a feral dog.
“You need to let go of me! You need to let me go!” she screamed, but Cristescu didn’t budge an inch.
Gabriel was holding a can of petrol nearby, waiting for Roman to gain the upper hand with Theodore. Unfortunately, it looked like our hero was failing in that department. Theodore was throwing bolts of magic at him, easily keeping him far enough away so that there was no chance of him using the sword.
Pulling my bow from off my back, I shot an arrow at Theodore, clocking him right in the stomach. It didn’t even make him bleed. The arrow simply popped right out, and I got a blast of magic thrown my way in retaliation. It burned like acid seeping under my skin. The skin on my hand bubbled and spit, and I swore profusely with the pain.
Ira, who had shifted into his canine form, approached Theodore, who was distracted by Roman, from behind and clamped his fangs down into Theodore’s shin. The sorcerer showed minimal signs of discomfort when he winced at the bite. A moment later, he easily kicked Ira away and continued battling Roman.
What a fuckup this was turning out to be.
Theodore raised both his hands in front of him and purple light streamed out, blasting Roman full force and knocking him entirely unconscious. Then he pulled a vial of blood from his pocket and popped open the cork. Bringing it to his mouth, he downed the entire thing in one go.
Oh, gross.
He reached up into the sky, his magic still streaming from his hands. A loud tearing sound erupted as a hole was torn in the clouds. A gigantic, fiery rip was created, and I swore I almost pissed my pants when I saw dark, winged shapes hovering around the outskirts, waiting to come through.
I was willing to bet that was Rebecca’s blood he just drank, and the hole was a portal from hell. This time, though, nobody was being banished there. No, this time whatever was over there was coming here.
“Let. Me. Go!” Rita screeched before finally managing to free one of her hands from Cristescu’s hold. She smacked him hard in the face with magic, and he reeled back long enough for her to get away. I hadn’t noticed before, but she actually had a sword strapped across her shoulders underneath a plain black backpack. She whipped off the sword and went charging to the other side of the stage.
Roman had just now regained his consciousness and was advancing on Theodore, whose satisfied attention was on the ugly tear he created in the sky.
“Come on, my pretties, don’t be shy. There’s a whole world for you to feast on down here,” he sang to the shadowy creatures. I could almost feel them pushing against the thin membrane between our dimension and theirs.
I started to run, thinking I might be able to stop Rita before she got the chance to saw off Roman’s head. I wasn’t fast enough though, and she rushed easily by me. The sorcerer was our final hope and now he might as well be done for. The little witch leapt up into the air, the sword held high above her head. I could hardly look as the blade came within inches of Roman, but instead of swinging it his way, she changed direction and sliced right through Theodore’s neck.
We all froze, staring at Rita in shock and awe. Rita cut her father’s head clean off, and for a second, or maybe even a minute, my brain was too discombobulated to figure out what just happened.
Rita decapitated her father.
The second his head hit the stage floor, the tear in the sky closed, and the creatures that had almost broken through completely disappeared. White fluffy clouds filled the sky once more.
We all gaped at Rita, dumbfounded, as she let her sword fall to the ground and pulled off the backpack. She didn’t look at a single one of us as she zipped it open, took out a can of petrol, and began dousing Theodore’s head and body.
I heard the shake of a box of matches just before she whipped one out, struck it alight, and flung it at her father’s corpse. It caught fire instantly and went up in a mesmerising display of purple and black flames.
Tegan
Three hours earlier
I blinked my eyes, knowing I felt way too shitty to be dead—unless by some sick twist of fate I’d ended up in hell. I peered around myself and discovered that no, I wasn’t in hell. I was still lying flat down in the mud, my neck sore and swollen from almost being choked to death.
I heard sobbing coming from nearby. Weakly, I pulled myself up to a sitting position and spotted Rita a few feet away, her arms around her knees as she cradled them to her chest. She was quietly weeping, tears running down her face. The last thing I remembered was that same face looking at me with pure hatred. Now there was nothing left but sadness.
I shifted my body a fraction, and her eyes whipped to mine.
“Not another move, Tegan.”
“Rita … I …”
“I said, not another move.”
“Okay, I won’t move.”
She looked away from me then and wiped her eyes with the long sleeves of her dress. Both our clothes were completely destroyed with grass and dirt. I felt like I’d simultaneously been punched in the throat and swallowed a bag of sand.
“Why didn’t you finish me off?” I asked in a sore, raspy voice.
She didn’t answer me for a very long time, then all I got was, “I don’t know.”
“You must know. What made you stop?”
“I said I don’t fucking know. Now will you please just shut up?”
I reached up and rubbed at my bruised neck, which was when I noticed there was something wrong with my hand. The i
ndex finger was hanging limply, and I couldn’t seem to move it. My body must have gone into shock and blocked out the pain for a time because now my entire hand was screaming in agony. I sucked in a sharp, hissing breath and tried to focus through the pain.
“You broke my finger.”
“You got lucky then.”
“Rita, I know why you stopped. You stopped because you couldn’t bear to kill someone who’s your friend. No matter how much you try to convince yourself you’re evil, you know it’s not true. You know that Theodore is a madman, and I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but even though he’s your biological parent, you’re nothing like him.”
Talking seemed to be distracting me from my effed-up finger, so I kept going.
“Even now when I look at you, I see Noreen. I see her in your eyes and your hair. I see her in your face. She will always be a part of you, a far bigger part because she’s the one who brought you into this world and she’s the one who raised you. Theodore is no better than a passing sperm donor, and you know it.”
I didn’t feel like I’d gotten through to her, and I didn’t know what else to say. But then, Rita spoke quietly, “If that’s true, then how come every time I look in the mirror all I see is him? All I see is a lost cause.”
“If you were a lost cause, you would have killed me, but you didn’t. The good in you stopped you from following through with it.”
“I can’t find the good.”
Summoning my courage, I got up on my hands and knees and crawled to her. She didn’t tell me not to move like before. Instead, she waited patiently for me to get to her.
“I can help you find it,” I whispered, kneeling before her now. Her eyes lifted to mine, and there was a trickle of hope within their watery, tear reddened depths.
“Okay, then. Help me,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“First you need to kill the darkness.”
“How?”
“By killing the person you think put it there. You have to kill Theodore.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “I can’t do that. You don’t understand how powerful he is. I’ve spent time with him. The magic he possesses is unfathomable.”
“That doesn’t matter. Everybody has a weak spot, and I think you just might be his. He’ll never expect you to be the one who kills him. You have the element of surprise on your side.”
“Element of surprise or not. I don’t know how to kill him, Tegan.”
“Ah, but I do,” I said, pulling off my backpack and Ethan’s sword. “I have everything you need right here.”
It took only a minute or so to explain to her what I needed her to do. We both rose to our feet, and I took her into my arms, hugging her tightly. This might be a tentative arrangement, but I allowed myself a small measure of hope.
The second we broke the hug she disappeared and I cursed. Theodore must have shown her how to magically transport herself, while I was left here in the middle of nowhere.
Shoving my hand in my pocket, I retrieved my phone only to find the screen had been cracked in several places from our earlier scuffle.
Great.
I stared out at the long stretch of empty field ahead of me and knew I had a long walk back to Ethan’s. Fingers crossed I didn’t pass out before I got there.
19.
Finn
Stunned, the silence went on for forever as we watched Rita do away with Theodore’s remains.
The silence was broken, however, when Cristescu asked incredulously, “Is that my sword?”
I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Then Gabriel and Alvie joined in. Soon enough, we were all cracking up. Our relief at having escaped a full-scale apocalypse by the skin of our teeth came out in uncontrollable laughter.
Once the flames died down and there was nothing left of Theodore but a pile of ash, Rita looked to Cristescu and answered, “The sword is probably yours, yes. Tegan gave it to me.”
“Hold on a second. Tegan was in on this?” I questioned. That crafty little mare.
Rita nodded and sat down on the edge of the stage. “We fought. I was going to kill her, but I realised I couldn’t do it. That’s when we made a deal. She said she’d help me find the old me, but first I had to kill Theodore because he was the one pulling me into the dark.”
I walked over and tentatively sat down beside her, throwing my arm around her shoulders. She tensed for a moment but soon relaxed into it. “I don’t think you need any help. I think the old you was there all along, you just didn’t know it.”
Her nod was almost imperceptible. A minute or two later, Alvie approached and sat down on the other side of Rita.
“Reet,” he choked out, and she turned her head to him.
I wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but she pulled away from me and wrapped her arms around Alvie’s small frame, squeezing him tight. They both started crying. The others joined us to sit on the edge of the stage, a sea of bodies before us.
“There are going to be many changes in this city,” Cristescu said, a solemn but determined sound to his voice.
Nobody replied, but we all knew it was true.
***
It was certainly a surreal feeling to look down and see thousands of people lying prone on the ground, a charade of death. When we were kids, my sister’s favourite fairytale was Sleeping Beauty. Right now, I was looking at thousands of sleeping beauties. I hoped that, just like the princess, they were all going to wake up soon.
It was a few minutes before sunrise. I’d brought Alora with me up onto the roof of a department store on Campion Row, so we could watch and wait for everyone to come back to life.
Apparently, I’d been right about Emilia’s heart giving out because of the magic from Roman’s spell. Now that she was dead, her barrier around the city had also been lifted.
Ira wore a strange expression when he heard what had happened to her. It was more like sadness than the relief I’d expected. I guessed that, despite what she’d done to him, he’d started to feel sorry for the lonely old woman she’d become in the end.
Tegan also seemed a little taken aback by the news of Emilia’s death. Her eyes grew watery and she left the room when we told her. Later on, Rita put together one of her special healing salves for my hand, which Theodore had burned with his magic. Now it was already good as new.
I looked down at Roman as he walked through the bodies, a delicate silver light streaming out of his hand and touching off each person in turn. This was to ensure that they forgot everything that had happened in Tribane over the last few weeks. The memory cleanse would pass from person to person, until at last there would be no human left in the city who remembered the horrors of recent weeks. Well, except for me and Alvie. Roman had given us both an antidote to the memory cleanse so that we could remember.
I’d use the memories to fuel me to help bring about peace. I never wanted anything like this to take hold of Tribane ever again.
A year ago, I never would have condoned the act of keeping people in the dark, but now I knew there was no other way. If they knew the truth, they’d all go crazy and start following some other cult leader in much the same way they’d started to follow Theodore.
I wrapped my arms around Alora’s soft, curvy waist and rested my chin on her shoulder. The dark started to ebb away as the sun rose over the skyscrapers of the city. There was a sweet, musical sound from Roman’s magic as the people started to wake up.
Getting to their feet, they yawned, rubbed at their eyes, scratched their heads, and completely ignored the bizarre fact that they’d all been asleep right there in the middle of the street. As Alora’s eyes were scanning the people below, she tensed in my arms.
“Finn, I think I just spotted my parents. Come on, I have to go to them.”
My heart stuttered as she pulled away from me. “Wait, Goldy. They haven’t seen you in over two years. Perhaps this isn’t the right time.”
“I’m not waiting,” she answered before hurrying to the stairway tha
t led back down onto the street. I followed her, trying to figure out why I felt so dejected. Was it because deep down I worried she wouldn’t need me anymore once she got her family back?
Maybe.
Down on the street, I stayed far behind as she raced to her parents. Her mother was blonde just like her, but her father was a tall, brown-haired man. I stood back and watched her, my heart sinking further until I thought it might just plunk down into my boots.
Her mother started to cry when she saw her, and she pulled her daughter into her arms. I looked at her dad and saw that there were tears in his eyes, too. He put his arms around his wife and daughter both. A bittersweet family reunion.
Alora hadn’t once looked back to see if I was still here. I turned around, thinking I’d leave her with them. There was no danger to her anymore now that Ridley was dead, and Theodore, too. Just as I was about to start walking away though, I heard her call my name.
“Finn, come and meet my parents.”
Taking in a deep breath, I turned back around. Perhaps she did still need me after all.
***
As it turned out, Alora’s parents had fled their home and were staying with friends because they got frightened when the vampire attacks started happening.
Their names were Tom and Beena, and I started to become uncomfortable at how profusely they thanked me for keeping their daughter safe. Beena was a full elf and Tom was human. When we got back to their house and they saw how trashed the place was, they assumed it had been broken into, and Tom started making calls to their insurance company.
Alora came and sat down on my lap in the living room while her mother tried to salvage what she could from the kitchen to make us all a cup of tea.
“So, I guess this means I’m losing you,” I said in a low voice as I caressed her thigh. I’d never get tired of touching her.
She startled when I said it and turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve got your folks back. Ridley’s dead. You’re safe. You don’t need me anymore.”
