Fire Fall

by Bethany Frenette

  “Our last one didn’t go so well,” I pointed out.

  “I’ve learned a few things since then.”

  “And forgotten about hygiene, apparently,” I said. I crossed my arms. “You’ve been sending demons after me. Not really the sort of gesture that says you want to kiss and make up.”

  “You have your own personal bodyguard. I figured you’d survive. And, oh look, you did.”

  “So, what happened? You decided the Beneath isn’t such a pleasant vacation spot?”

  “Patrick saved me,” she whispered, her smile faltering and her eyes going vague.

  “Yeah, you mentioned that before. And that was why the two of you went on your romantic yearlong murder spree. Next time you’re on the hunt for a boyfriend, maybe you should try one without scales.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “Be careful with glass houses, Audrey. Yours is already showing cracks.”

  Meaning my friendship with Gideon, I assumed. My own gaze narrowed. “Thanks to you.”

  “We’re getting off track. What I meant was that Patrick saved me again.” She grazed a finger across the ring on her thumb, turning it slowly. “He wanted me to live. So I did. So I have.”

  “And you just woke up one day and decided to come home?”

  All trace of her smile vanished. “I was thinking I might like your mother dead.”

  “Okay. We’re done here,” I said.

  I unlocked my phone to call Leon, but Iris stopped me once more. “Wait.”

  I shouldn’t have. I knew that. But I wanted to keep our conversation private as long as possible. “If you have a point, make it.”

  She let out another short, croaking laugh. “You have a problem, Audrey.”

  “I have a couple, and one of them is standing in front of me. Care to remove it?”

  “Pay attention. This is important. It was you who began it. You have to be the one to end it.”

  “If you want me to pay attention, try making sense,” I said.

  “The Beneath, Audrey. Can’t you feel it?”

  “Sorry. Unlike you, I’m not plugged in.”

  “But you Know it,” she said. “You met it. I know you did. You must have sensed it when you were there. It must have spoken to you. It’s there, always, watching. You feel it in every Harrower who steps out into this world. Their corruption. The beast they carry. Patrick used to tell me about it. It tormented him. I tried to help, but he said he could feel it slipping through, whispering into his thoughts. But it was sleeping then. It was dormant. Whispering was all it could do.”

  As she spoke, a memory stirred: the day we had fallen Beneath. I recalled a world made up of gray, the blank horizon, the colorless sand under my feet. For hours, I’d wandered aimless, alone. But not alone. Everywhere, the nothingness had seemed to breathe. Slowly, awareness had crept over me. I had sensed something there in the void, something cold and ancient that dwelled within the endless empty. Some presence slinking nearer, closing in, hungry, hating. With each step I took, I had felt its anger, its eager gaze. It had Known me. Known my blood. And it had spoken to me. It had told me—

  You are going to die here.

  The words resounded. Another voice echoed, a taunt that rang loud in my ears. It became a chant, repeating again and again. You are going to die, Kin-child.

  My heart picked up speed. I stared at Iris. “What is it you’re trying to say?”

  “We didn’t just wake Verrick that night on Harlow Tower. We woke the Beneath.”

  The universe came to a sudden stop. For an instant, I didn’t breathe. Distantly, I was aware of the sun glaring down hot against my face, and the sweat beading on my forehead; I was aware of the staccato chug of a sprinkler system nearby, and the groan of an engine from down the block. But the details were mere information. They didn’t connect. I was back in Sonja’s house, feeling again that icy sense of dread that swept over me. I shivered beneath my sweat. I saw the smashed shards of the teacup, thin porcelain slivers painted lilac. In the corner: Sonja’s crumpled body, the twist of her neck. I saw Shane’s torn shirt, his unkempt hair. The bloody footprints and his bare feet. His blank, dead eyes as he looked at me. How he had smiled, showing red teeth.

  “We woke the Beneath,” I repeated dully. “That’s what killed Sonja and the other elders. It wasn’t Shane.”

  The Beneath.

  Impossible, I wanted to say. But Iris was right. I had felt it. I had Known it, just as it had Known me.

  We’ve met before, it had told me in Shane’s body, with Shane’s voice.

  Iris tilted her head, her gray hair rustling against her. The triple knot swayed on its chain. “At the moment, it’s choosing to inhabit him,” she said. Her voice had lost some of its hoarseness, as though she was slowly remembering how to speak. “But it’s not going to stop with him, either. It’s gaining in power. Gathering strength.”

  “And we woke it?” This was so far beyond my comprehension, I couldn’t even begin to process it. I just kept staring.

  “You have to put it back to sleep,” Iris said.

  “With what? A lullaby?”

  Her eyes were hard. There was no smile on her face now. “Kill Gideon.”

  “Right. You know, for a second there I forgot I was talking to a murdering psychopath. Thanks for the reminder.”

  “You need to listen to me,” she said, almost hissing again. She took half a step toward me, and then seemed to think better of it. “Gideon is the problem, Audrey. He’s connected to the Astral Circle, just like you are. But he’s a Harrower. That means he’s also connected to the Beneath. When you released the Circle’s power, the Beneath woke up. And since then it’s been feeding. Drawing on the Circle’s energy. That power is what’s keeping it awake. Sever his connection to the Circle, and it goes back to sleep.”

  “Why should I believe a word you’ve said? You don’t care about the Kin. You’ve been Beneath all this time, and now you just pop up out of nowhere and tell me to kill my best friend? For all I know, you’re still trying to get me to unseal him.”

  Her face twisted into a sneer. “You’re wrong. You don’t know anything. If it were just you and your mother, I’d say let the world burn. But I won’t let it have my family. I won’t let it have my sister.”

  “What is it going to do to Elspeth?” I asked, recalling Sonja’s body being dragged Beneath. We are being Harrowed, I heard Esther say.

  “What it’s going to do to everyone if it isn’t stopped. You remember Valerie. Her vision. The end of the Kin. She saw what was coming. She knew it would happen here. But that Harrower you killed got it wrong. It was never about the Remnant. It was about now. It was about this.”

  Valerie’s vision of the Kin’s destruction was what had begun Susannah’s search for the Remnant. It was the reason she’d come to the Cities, the reason she had gathered an army Beneath.

  But Val hadn’t just seen the future, Daniel had told me.

  She’d seen two.

  Two futures.

  The Remnant was never the one who decides it, he’d said. You are.

  My mind raced, stray thoughts that reached toward understanding, and then skidded away. Memories surfaced. You set something in motion that night on Harlow Tower, Susannah had told me. That was the night Valerie had had her first vision, she’d claimed. The night she saw the doom of your Kin.

  “No,” I said. I shook my head. “You’re crazy if you think I’m killing Gideon.”

  “It has to be you. You’re connected to the Circle. To him. You have to do it. You’re the only one who can.” She turned her head, listening to something beyond my hearing. In the street behind her, a blackbird stalked back and forth and then suddenly took to flight. A feather floated down on the air beneath it, blown upward by the breeze. Iris closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were white as a Harrower’s. “And you have to hurry. You have to go. You have to do it now.”

  Alarm surged through me. A familiar chill crept over my skin. “What’s happening?”<
br />
  “The Beneath. It’s near. Gideon is part human now—it can’t inhabit him. It’s going to unseal him. Hurry, Audrey. Go.”

  I spun around, groping toward the car.

  The driveway at Gideon’s house was empty. The drapes were closed, the windows dark. One of his sisters’ bicycles lay abandoned in the yard, but there was no sign of its owner. No one home, I thought at first, fighting down panic—but no, Iris had told me to go, to hurry. Whatever she’d sensed was close. And I had felt that chill of dread, that rush of horror. It was coming here. It was going to unseal Verrick.

  I parked quickly, leaving the car running. I’d tried Gideon’s number as I drove, but my calls had gone unanswered. I tested the door and stepped inside when I found it unlocked. I made for the basement at half-gallop, not pausing to see if anyone else was there. Nothing mattered but getting to Gideon.

  “Gideon!” I called when I reached the basement steps.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found him. I didn’t have a plan beyond reaching him. I would drag him to the car if I had to, and then I’d just drive. Drive and keep driving, until we were so far from the Circle that no Harrower could push through, no matter how powerful. After that, I would decide what to do. I would think of something to tell him—anything but the truth. But I’d think of it later. First I had to find him. First I had to save him.

  “Gideon!” I shouted again.

  “Audrey?”

  Relief poured into me. I ran down the rest of the steps and pitched myself toward his room, nearly colliding with him as he opened his door and stepped through it. He looked like I’d just woken him from a nap. His hair was sticking up, and he blinked at me sleepily, rubbing his face with his hands. I grabbed his hand, gripping it tightly and drawing him toward the stairs.

  He didn’t resist, but his pace was sluggish. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  I kept tugging him, urging him to move faster. “I’ll tell you later. You need to come with me. Just trust me, okay? We need to go. We need to go right now.”

  “Go where?”

  “I’ll explain, I promise—”

  Abruptly, we were flung apart. Gideon’s hand was jerked from mine, and I found myself airborne, crashing against the wall. My shoulder took the impact, but I felt it all through me, sharp pain shooting out along my limbs. Dizzily, I groped my way back to my feet. Through the fog in my vision, I saw Shane.

  My stomach plunged. My throat constricted. I had failed. Shane was going to unseal Verrick, and I couldn’t prevent it. Leon would arrive any second, I knew. And this time he wouldn’t even pause. He’d just grab me and teleport away.

  “Gideon, run!” I cried.

  But he couldn’t run. I knew that, even as I shouted it. There was no exit here, no avenue of escape. Shane—or the Beneath—had found him. If Gideon moved, it would follow. If he ran, it would give chase.

  And it would catch him.

  There was no question of that.

  Gideon lay on his side, clutching his head. He made a noise, trying to pull himself to his feet. Shane stalked toward him.

  His feet were still bare, I saw. The bottom ends of his jeans were brown with dried blood. Up to his ankles.

  “I have heard the singing of your blood, prisoner,” the Beneath said with Shane’s voice. “I hear the drag of your chains. I am here to loosen your bonds.”

  I wondered how I had ever mistaken it for Shane. I felt its malevolence in every word it uttered, every gesture it made.

  “Run!” I screamed.

  Gideon scrambled backward on his hands.

  “You know me,” Shane said, herding him, keeping him cornered. “You’ve always known. You hide it away, you deny it. But you have felt it. You have tasted its call. The fury that feeds you. The thirst for the kill that hums in your blood. You understand who you are. This Kin-child lied to you. She speaks in untruths. She draws fictions out of air. She is not your friend. She is not your kind.”

  “RUN!”

  “Do you know what her kind did? What her Kin did to the girl you loved? They opened her veins. They gave her to the earth and let it gorge. I will gift you something in return. I’m going to give you vengeance. I am going to give you back your wrath.”

  I struggled to my feet. Unthinking, uncaring, I hurled myself toward them.

  Shane caught me one-handed, lifting me from the ground. “Your blood is not required, Kin-child.”

  He tossed me backward. I hit the floor hard.

  I rolled, trying to pull myself up onto my hands and failing. My arms buckled. My hands wouldn’t hold me. Something sharp sliced into my palm. I raised my head, and in the darkness of the basement, across the distance of the room, my eyes met Gideon’s. Our gazes locked.

  Everything stilled. For a moment, there was no sound, no sense, no feel of the floor beneath me. I no longer saw Shane’s blood-crusted jeans or his bare feet. I saw only Gideon. In reality, it measured no more than a heartbeat, a blink, but in that moment, time was elastic. It drew us backward, across years, across memory, into a long ago morning and a sunny classroom that smelled of licorice and crayons. We were eight years old, and I was making my slow way through the door, pausing as I stepped. Gideon was there at his desk, turning to face me. I saw the light that clung to him, that beautiful, burning light, clean and shining. He smiled. I smiled. And I knew, right then.

  We’re connected, I thought now. We are bound. By the blood of my father, and by the light of the Astral Circle, blazing so brightly around him. A thread drawn between us. And we would stay there, in that single stopped second. The rest of the world would go on, but we would remain. Nothing would touch us. Nothing would change.

  But the heartbeat passed. Time sped forward once again. Gideon sucked in a breath. I saw a flash of understanding in his eyes, truth cutting through the fiction. He knew what he was. Somewhere inside, he’d always known. And he knew that I lied. I wanted to plead, to apologize, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. Darkness swelled across my vision. My thoughts slipped away.

  The last sound I heard was Gideon screaming.

  My mind slid backward into memory. Consciousness flickered and faded; I heard voices, someone speak my name. I felt arms lift me, a warm touch on my face. But I resisted. I retreated into sleep—or perhaps into Knowing. It wasn’t like a dream, drifting from thought to thought or scene to scene. It wasn’t abstract or ambiguous. Behind my eyes, images collected and took shape: thick grass stretching in every direction; insects humming in the cool, clean air; the rise of pines in the distance.

  Above, the last edge of light was retreating from the night sky. I recognized the setting—the dirt road trailing off out of sight, Gram’s rusty blue truck parked in the gravel. It was our old house up north, where I’d spent the first eight years of my life in the sleepy quiet of the country. It was late summer, and the flowers that crept up toward the porch were beginning to droop and die. There was Gram, seated beside me on the porch swing. I was little, maybe six years old, my feet bare and dirty as I pulled them up onto the swing and tucked myself against Gram. She hummed a tune, stroking my hair idly. I listened to the rise and fall of the notes and the creak of our swing as it swayed.

  We were watching the stars come out. Counting them, giving each a name—this one Jacky, for my grandfather, that one Lady, after our greyhound. They had names already, I knew, real names, but Gram asked why that should matter to us. The stars didn’t care. They did not belong to Earth. Some were distant suns, shining for distant planets. They were the beacons of all the cosmos, she said—pinpricks of light in the darkness, where all hope begins. And on our porch, we would name them what we wished.

  “Listen, sweeting,” Gram said, her voice soft. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”

  It wasn’t a secret she told me, but a story.

  She had told me it before. It was about my grandfather, who had died before I was born. “I wasn’t supposed to marry Jacky,” she confided, lifting he
r hand to tuck a stray curl of hair behind my ear. “I was engaged to his brother, George.”

  I knew the details already. A wedding had been planned, and then delayed. Gram’s white dress had been left in the closet to gather dust. Then George had been killed overseas, and for two years Gram had withdrawn into herself, barely eating, barely speaking. The world outside her window had no color, she told me; food had no taste. The turn of seasons didn’t touch her. Chords strung together had no music in them.

  “Jacky,” she said. “He was my lodestar. The flame that guided me home. That’s what you do when you’re lost, sweeting. You just look for the flame.”

  “But he died,” I said.

  Gram only smiled. “He is in the earth now, but I’m never alone. Even when we die, we’re still a part of the people who carry us. I keep him here”—she touched her heart—“and there.” She raised her arm, pointing to the horizon. I lifted my eyes to follow the motion.

  But when I looked at the sky once more, all the stars were red.

  I woke in my own room, in my own bed, warm blankets tucked up to my chin. Late afternoon light streamed in around me. My window was open, letting in the sound of birds, the smell of the lawn. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful. As though nothing had occurred. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend nothing had.

  Instead, I tried to move. My head swam. Groggy and disoriented, I groped toward the wall, pressing my hand flat against it until my vision ceased its spinning. Then, carefully, I climbed up out of the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I sat there a moment, evaluating. My shoulder ached. There was dirt on my shorts and tank top, a thin smear of blood on my arm. After taking a steadying breath, I stood and padded toward the door.

  Downstairs, there were voices.

  I made my way slowly, clutching at the railing. The stairs creaked as I stepped, and the voices went silent. I heard footsteps. My mother appeared, peeking her head out from the living room. Her mouth slanted downward.

  “You shouldn’t be up yet,” she said.

  “I need to know what happened.”