Then she stumbled to the living room and switched on a soap opera. I went to my room numb. My mother was devastatingly eloquent when she was drunk. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, making patterns in the light from the lampshade and wondering if she was right. I determined several hours later that she wasn’t, and that the world was okay, even if my little part of it wasn’t exactly a dream come true. I would be strong, and I would remember for Skye and me and even Mum. Sometimes I felt more like the parent than the child, but I would remember.
Now, wandering through the bush with my wrist on fire, I had to wonder if she was right. Were we really all just running from reality, standing with a spray bottle, trying to douse the flames of our existence? That was why people joined the Kindred. It gave them a way to forget. Even with the evil and the Shadows and the pain and the death, they felt a part of something. I had, even amongst the chaos. I’d been given purpose.
Was it easier to forget? Maybe. But it wasn’t right, and neither was Mum all those years ago. No, there was good in the world. I had seen it. I saw it in Skye, and in Josh, and in Rachel, and in Noah. I saw a tiny little bit even in myself. I had to hold on to that. I had to keep that scrap of hope alive. I strengthened my resolve, steadied my step, and scanned the river ahead for signs of the people I loved. I wouldn’t forget. I couldn’t. At the end of everything, hope remains.
Around a turn in the river, there they were. My family. My reason for remembering. Josh, who had now become a kind of family, confusing as our relationship was, sat cross-legged on the ground, leaning against a stump. Skye huddled on his lap to keep warm, clearly shaken but alive. Mum stood next to them, staring blankly into space as was her new default. Noah stood, scanning the trees like a guardian angel. Rachel sat on a log next to him, hugging herself to drown out the pain that had probably begun to creep around the edges of the morphine.
Noah and Rachel were whispering to each other but stopped when they saw me. So did Josh, and Skye, and Mum, all at once. They called out and they cried and they ran towards me and I was covered in hugs and tears and joy for a moment.
Just for a moment.
Mum stopped. Breathed smoke from her nostrils. Fell.
Her eyes glazed over, and she whispered my name.
She was gone, and Skye was crying and Josh was running at the man who had taken her life.
The man whose tiny and misplaced smile had irritated me for so very long had been hiding in the undergrowth, watching, waiting for an opportunity. Noah froze as he saw his father for the first time in a month. Josh reached Hackman, hands out, but Hackman sidestepped and grabbed him by the neck, holding a knife to his throat.
A second before everything had been fine, but now Josh was a hostage and Mum was dead. I’d thought the night was over, but it wasn’t finished yet.
Tonight, Mum wouldn’t be the last to die.
FORTY-THREE
“Everyone stop,” Hackman said.
We already had. Everyone was frozen except Skye, who had run to Mum and was holding her tightly. I wanted to join her, to fall apart and scream and cry and rip open the earth and hide inside it, but there would be time for that later. Right now, I had to keep Josh alive.
The wind picked up again.
Hackman’s knife was pressed into Josh’s throat, not enough to draw blood, but if any of us tried to take Hackman out, Josh would be dead in seconds. I once heard a story of an old shearer who tripped into some barbed wire and pierced the big artery in his neck. It was a tiny puncture, but he was alone and died in a few minutes. If Hackman flicked his wrist, we would have no time to get Josh help before he bled out. There was no sound, save Skye’s muffled sobbing.
“Dad, let him go.”
“Noah, shut up. This doesn’t concern you, and I’ll kill you if I have to.”
“You’d kill your own son?”
“You’re a filthy traitor and a coward. You betrayed the Kindred and betrayed me. As far as I’m concerned, you died the night of the attack.”
Hackman had dropped his smile. Finally. I’d always felt like his pleasant, patient demeanour was put on for effect, like someone wearing way too much makeup. There was something horribly fake about him, and now I saw who he really was. I couldn’t believe I had ever listened to him. Worked with him. The man who’d just murdered my mother had put his arm around me when I cried. I wanted to take a knife and cut out the skin he had touched, sandpaper my shoulders down to bone to remove all microscopic traces of his contact.
“If any of you move,” he continued, “I’ll kill Josh here and now. If I get even a hint you’re trying to flare he’ll be dead in seconds.”
It wouldn’t be much good anyway. I never really nailed flaring, and Rachel was still too drugged to focus. Noah was the only one with enough ability to pull it off, and there was no way he would murder his own father, even after all the awful things he had done. I didn’t want him to have to do that, either. There had to be another way.
“Noah, sit over there with the others,” Hackman said.
Noah stood defiant, and Josh cried out as the blade sank a little into his throat.
“Sit. Down.”
Consenting, Noah joined Rachel, Skye, and Mum’s body on the forest floor.
“Now turn around. If any of you even move your heads as I leave, Josh is dead. Not you, Ari. You’ll follow me.”
“No way!” Noah and Josh protested in unison, although Josh’s protest was cut short by another gasp as Hackman pressed his blade deeper.
Noah’s eyes were blazing.
“Noah, it’s all right,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”
“Ari ...”
I walked towards him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed him. It was long, and slow, and sent tingles running up and down the whole length of my body and out through my arms like I had been sleeping on them too long. I tried to stay focused on my mission, though, and whispered my plan into his ear as I pulled away.
As I turned to follow Hackman, the look on Josh’s face nearly knocked me out. The kiss had hurt him far more than the knife had. There was no time to dwell on that, though. I could explain later.
There were too many thoughts in my head all fighting for attention, too many emotions trying to drill their way out of my chest. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other as Hackman walked slowly backwards, watching me as he dragged Josh with him. The night had been so clear and so full of promise just a few minutes ago, but now it held nothing but death. They say it’s always darkest before the dawn, but we were nowhere near sunrise. There was still so much that could go wrong.
After the others had disappeared into the distance I tried to keep Hackman talking, to fill the silence as well as keep him distracted. “How did you find us?”
“That was simple.” He wasn’t even puffing as he dragged Josh along the leaf litter that was whipped up by the wind now tearing through the trees. He still had a cop’s fitness after all. “I saw them go through the training ground doors and followed at a distance. I could have taken them all earlier, but the only way to keep my leverage over you was to leave them alive for now.”
“So it’s me you’re after.”
“Of course, Ari. It’s always been you.” There was a sweetness in his voice that made me gag.
“Why me?”
“I’ve told you, my dear. You’re special. Your abilities, they are unique. Very few have had the kind of power that you have so early in their training.”
“Noah said you knew about me before the hospital.”
“I knew about you even before the accident. The accident was a way to confirm our suspicions.”
My heart dropped. “You caused the accident.”
His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Very clever. You finally got it. I first heard about you from an Unseen spy that had the misfortune of trying to smuggle information out of the complex. He took some convincing but eventually let slip that there was some stirring in their ranks about a girl they had noti
ced. A girl whose reverb was extraordinary.”
“I’ve heard that word before. In the café.”
“Reverb? It’s the amount your ability echoes off the world around you. Someone with the latent ability to tune causes micro-shimmers in the objects they look at, touch, love ... Very few people are trained enough to recognise these shimmers, and they normally only appear during periods of intense emotion, but you cause the whole world around you to shimmer if someone knows what they’re looking for. You cause it all the time. You have a kind of gravity.”
That wasn’t the first time I had heard that word used to describe me. “So the Unseen saw me, knew I was powerful, and you caused the accident because ...”
“We wanted to know for sure. You survived, and you shouldn’t have. You should have died that day, but you didn’t. That café barricade should have killed you on impact, but your natural reverb slowed it down. As it flew towards you, your subconscious mind deflected some of the energy.”
“So if I didn’t have this ability, I’d be dead?”
“Yes. Oh, don’t give me that face. It may seem a cruel way to discover if someone has abilities, but it’s remarkably effective. More people have been discovered and recruited through accidents and tragedy than almost any other means. We don’t always cause them, but when there’s a miracle survival, someone who should have died but didn’t ... That’s as good an indication as any that they have a natural reverb.”
All those people were dead because I had an ability the Kindred wanted to find. The shimmer around me had caused their death. Hackman was responsible, sure, but if I hadn’t been there everyone would still be alive. They said I had gravity. No kidding. Everyone around me was sucked spiralling to their deaths just because I was alive.
“So what now?” I asked bitterly. “You know I’m not going to join you. You’re not that stupid.”
“I think you’ll do whatever it takes to protect the people you love.” He knew me well, and I hated him for it. I had to call his bluff. Maybe the only way to save Josh was to pretend I didn’t care.
I sat down on a tree stump. “I won’t join you. No matter what you do. Kill him if you want, I don’t care.”
Josh’s eyes were hurt for a moment, then softened as he realised what I was trying to do. Hackman grinned, spun Josh around, held his hand against a tree, and brought the knife down hard. Josh screamed, a bloody stump where his right index finger had been.
I wanted to run at Hackman, to knock him down and bash his head against the ground until his skull snapped and his brain bled, and I wanted to watch him burn, and scream, and die a thousand times over for everything he had done to me and the people I loved. Instead, I stood, quietly and continued following as Josh clutched his hand, blood spilling down his front and onto the leaves below. He was back in the headlock, knife at his throat. My bluff had failed, and Josh had paid for it.
“Didn’t think so,” Hackman said dryly. “Don’t play games again. There’s only so many fingers and toes Josh has left before I have to get more creative.”
There was one small victory though: deep within the scrub to my left, a tiny spark began to smoulder through layers of dead leaves and twigs. It had taken all my focus in the split second Hackman was distracted, but in these conditions, if the wind held up, it wouldn’t be long before fire raced through the mountains. Hopefully, Noah would see the flames and pick up our trail. It was dangerous, and crazy, but it might work. There was a hint of smoke in the air, but Hackman didn’t notice.
The chapel appeared in the distance through the trees, a monolith glowing in the moonlight against the deep black of the trunks and undergrowth.
“I thought we were coming here,” I said.
Hackman stopped. “You’ve been here before?”
“We came through this afternoon. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it, either. I call it the chapel.”
He looked puzzled and then deeply satisfied. “The Chapel? It’s never had a name before, but I like it. I’m surprised the Chapel let you find it. It’s rare that anyone but an Elder is permitted to see this place.”
He spoke about it as if it was alive.
“It’s kind of hard to miss,” I replied.
“Only if it wants to be found. What did it show you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what did you see? If the Chapel let you find it, you must have seen something. A vision, a dream, a picture. What did it show you?”
I didn’t want to tell him I saw my own dead body strung up on a pillar. I didn’t want to mention the first time, either—the melting body reaching out for me. “I didn’t see anything. Just a few bodies and some creepy writing.”
Josh gave me a look. He always knew when I was lying. He had the sense to stay quiet, though, or was busy trying to manage the pain in his hand.
“Don’t want to tell me?” Hackman said. “Never mind. What the Chapel chooses to show us is a matter between it and the individual it speaks to.”
“So why are we going there?” I was fishing, trying to get some advance warning, to work out if I could get an advantage in the next few minutes before the fire burned out of control. Hopefully Noah was heading our way. We were upwind of it right now, so Hackman still had no idea what I had done. He didn’t answer.
We reached the Chapel only a few moments later. It was bigger than I remembered, but that wasn’t possible. Was it? Hackman had acted like it was alive. It wasn’t just an ordinary building, I knew that much.
Nothing had changed inside, although it was definitely larger. Six bodies, dirt floor, creepy inscription, but a lot more free space around them, like someone had done an upgrade.
“What now?” I asked.
“We wait.”
We sat in silence for several minutes, Josh breathing heavily to get his pain under control. Hopefully he wouldn’t pass out. We would need to run pretty soon if my plan worked.
I broke the silence. “So, what did the Chapel show you?”
“Many years ago, I was brought here, upon my initiation into Elder. All new Elders come here to reveal their destiny, and I saw mine. It was my responsibility, my purpose, to discover the child who would hasten the Final Day. She is spoken about in the Agenda, the catalyst for the Great Darkness and everything that comes before. She carries within her the Seed of the Night. Do you know what she is called in the prophecies? The Girl with Dual Sight.”
It felt like the floor had opened up. “You think it’s me.”
“As soon as I saw your eyes in the hospital—those beautiful, two-toned eyes—I knew. You are the child. You will hasten the Final Day. The Arch Elders sought the wisdom of the Chapel, and they too discerned my revelation. They saw it was my destiny to be assigned to you. To train you. To prepare you for the days ahead. To love you as I would love my own daughter.”
His words were like a slug crawling down my throat, and I wanted to vomit them out and stamp all over what he’d said. The look in his eyes was worse.
“Your mother’s death was a necessary part of the plan. It was spoken about in the prophecies. I am truly, deeply sorry that she had to die, but there was no other way.”
“And Josh? What about him? Anything in there about cutting off his finger?” I spoke with as much venom as I could, and the poison spitting out of my mouth was practically visible.
“No, he is not spoken about. But I’m willing to do anything to fulfill my destiny.”
“Shut up about destiny! I’m not going to be some part of your Final Grand Plan or your Day of Darkness or whatever the hell you call it! You are never going to change me! I am never going to join you! So take all your prophecies, all your destinies, and shove them into whatever dark cavities you have, because I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to do it soon, and I’m going to enjoy it!”
He stopped, thought, and smiled. “You can feel it, can’t you? The Seed. I can sense it; it’s been planted deep inside you. The darkness within. It’s growing.”
I said nothing, but he knew.
“We don’t get to choose our destinies, my dear Ari. They choose us.”
I closed my eyes, and opened them in a street covered with the dead.
FORTY-FOUR
It was quiet save for the distant echo of thunder and the click of my feet sticking to the blood that soaked the road. I touched my hand to my face to see if I could; I heard somewhere that you can’t do that in a dream. But my hand touched my face, and it came away red. I looked down. My whole body was covered in blood. Somehow, I knew none of it was my own.
The city rose around me like a graveyard, and bodies littered the street. Cars, trucks, buses were burned out husks. Whatever had happened here, it happened fast. The buildings smoked, but they had stopped burning a long time ago. Ash fell like snow, drifting in the wind. This was the image carved in the floor, the Final Day, except I was standing in it. Living it.
The sky was dark. I had been under this sky before, in the cafe, after the accident. There was a field of blood, and a Shadow creature, and a face … A face that swallowed the world.
A voice groaned behind me. I turned. Noah lay under a slab of concrete, pinned by a piece of twisted metal that speared through his side.
I ran towards him and knelt in the pool of sticky blood surrounding his body. His eyes widened. “Get away from me!”
“Noah, it’s me.”
“Get away! Go! You’ve done enough!” He tried to move but couldn’t pull himself off the metal spike. He cried out in pain.
“Noah, what happened? Please tell me what happened!”
He stopped, eyes dark.
“What happened here?” I pleaded again.
“You,” he said. “You did.”
I felt my body fade and looked down. My legs had turned to shadows; my arms dissolved into black tendrils. I knew what I was. I began to scream and closed my eyes to block out what I had become.
The Fire Unseen Page 26
