When Stars Burn Out (Europa Book 1)

by Anna Vera

  Moments later, I see the flickering of candlelight.

  The rest of us follow, single file, inside. The room below is extremely small and perfectly square. The ceiling hangs so low, the boys have to duck while walking. I see a vent wheezing cold air into the corner of the room, and a well trickling with the echo of water at the base of the stairwell.

  A series of beds make up the far corner, the near corner set up with a chair and a rifle, stationed for lookout duty. Rion gets a second key, also hidden (under a mattress) which unlocks another trapdoor packed with supplies.

  Apollo begins distributing water bottles. The cool water is a salve to my raw throat—to the residual burn left in my lungs after all my screaming. We uncover stale energy bars, homemade and wrapped in plastic bags. Though old, they taste great.

  I collapse on a bed, staring at the ceiling. I feel the mattress compress and realize Rion’s sitting at the very end, focused on reloading the rifle he’s taken from the side of a chair stationed at the very bottom of the stairwell.

  When he’s done, he sighs, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling distantly. The others are upstairs, loading the car with more supplies for the trip back to the quarantine, leaving us temporarily alone.

  Rion sits up before I can say anything. With a jacket caked in dirt and grime, he’s decided to take it off, leaving it to hang in the far corner of the safe-house.

  My eyes skirt the planes of his back, memorizing the dips and curves of his shoulder blades, resurrecting images of the time he was shirtless and I dared to sail my fingertips over and across the stretch of his body.

  I think of how there’s only one part of him that isn’t corded sinew and roped muscle—that isn’t masked in brutal scars, fading tattoos, dirty clothes, and messy dark hair.

  His eyes.

  Though carefully guarded and usually edged, I’ve seen light escape them before—a light that sought out the darkest recesses of myself and fought off the shadows.

  He passes a hand through the mess of his hair, as though fighting an internal debate, warring with himself, and then—so fast I barely register—he’s kissing me.

  Hand cupping his chin, covered in stubble, I break away from his lips and say, “Is this your way of saying goodbye?”

  “I don’t believe in goodbyes.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “What should we say instead?”

  “Good night?” I suggest, thinking of Lios. It was easier to say good night instead of goodbye. We walk to the door, arms twined together, the warmth of his body a pulse.

  Rion must remember my goodbye to Lios, too, because he rests his forehead against mine and breathes, “I’ll see you in the morning, Eos.”

  “Get up early,” I whisper.

  “I will. I’ll get up as early as I can.”

  “When dawn breaks?”

  “Earlier,” he says, winking. And then his body peels itself away from my own—the space between tangible, like a rubber band that strains the farther it’s stretched.

  At the top of the stairs, he blends in with the others as they rally together, readying to go. Apollo and Jac say their goodbyes to me from the top of the staircase—both knowing better than to tackle me with a hug.

  Then I hear an engine rumble, followed by the crackling of pine needles and rocks under tires as they drive away, heading to the heart of the war by themselves.

  Leaving us here—the aliens, the enemy—to be safe?

  Lios, Cyb, and Merope descend the stairs, locking the door over our heads. We’re plunged into a dreary darkness, lit up only by the flickering of buttery candlelight.

  Lios, the least exhausted of us, offers to be lookout.

  Merope, Cyb, and I pile into a bed together, too tired to get under the covers. The edges of my vision blur before I’ve even put my head against the pillow.

  When I fall asleep, I’m not troubled by a single dream.

  A whole week passes.

  The eighth dawn we’re awoken abruptly by what feels like an earthquake; cracks split the ceiling into a puzzle, and the floor reverberates violently underfoot.

  “Get out, get out!” Cyb yells, shielding her face to a spray of crumbling rocks falling from the ceiling. “Get out—it’s going to cave in on us!”

  I stagger, following her. Merope and Lios scale the stairs in my wake—all of us operating blindly—as I spill out of the shelter messily, slipping to my knees.

  Slipping in a pool of blood.

  Fresh blood.

  Against a marbled silver sky, a Black Hawk helicopter spits a peppering of bullets at a podcraft—in broad daylight—which, in retaliation, deploys a bright green beam of light. that slices the helicopter perfectly in half, throwing it out of the sky, spiraling and careening out of control.

  Not a light—a laser.

  It wrecks nearby, exploding in a plume of vicious yellow fire and a black column of smoke, shaking the ground thunderously the second it makes impact.

  We duck and cover, lying together on our bellies, our faces varying hues of ghostly white. What’s going on? What have we missed in the last week?

  Most of all: Are the others alive?

  My chest tightens, realizing that Rion’s a pilot. I stupidly never thought to ask of what. A pilot of a helicopter, or a jet, or a regular plane? Is he fighting now, in the sky, and I just don’t know it?

  The sky blazes, lit on fire. Another helicopter roars out from the graying horizon, heavy artillery spitting bullets at the very craft which glides effortlessly through the sky.

  Another joins it, this one a bright violet—not green, as all the other podcraft are—which lights up like a sun, blinding its adversaries with sickening ease.

  “HEADS UP,” Cyb yells, finger pressed avidly to her pale temple and, just when I think it can’t get worse, a scouring wave of the Muted crests the hill, heading straight for us.

  Lios shoos Merope and I away, aiming at the influx.

  “Hold up the rear!” he orders loudly, yelling over the noise of another Black Hawk wrecking in the distance; he tosses me a pistol, and Merope a knife. “That’s all I’ve got!”

  It’ll have to do.

  We traipse up the hill behind the safe-house—so steeled we’re forced to crawl. Peering over the edge, we’re subjected to a sight too horrific to articulate.

  Bodies.

  Everywhere.

  “What are they?” Merope cries, glancing at me. Everything seems to happen in slow-motion. Her black hair floating in the gusting wind, eyes cut wide.

  The columns of smoke in the distance mark the dead as effectively as headstones—a rigid finger pointing to catastrophe, to stark-smelling death, pools of blood, and splintered bone.

  And now, the bodies. Piled as high as the hillside itself. They aren’t bodies of the Muted, nor are they human beings, leaving us with one alternative.

  “Borealians,” I whisper, voice swallowed up in the booming chaos exploding around us. “Look at their faces!”

  Their faces, narrow and disproportionately large, hanging on disconcertingly elongated necks. Eyes like almonds, large and bulbous, insect-like. Their skin is pallid and cracked, and I think of how Apollo said, when weakened, they aged . . .

  Maybe they didn’t age at all. Maybe, with energy reserves compromised, so was their human illusion—revealing a haunting peek of what was behind the mask.

  They have teeth, but not for chewing—we know, already, they don’t eat physical foods—but for killing. Long sabers hang out from under their thin lips, two on top and two at the bottom.

  But why would they need them, when they’ve got skillsets?

  Many of the bodies are burned beyond recognition.

  They must’ve wrecked . . .

  Or were made to.

  Suddenly, a black podcraft emerges. Its tail is like b
lack ink swirling in clouded water as it jets silently through the heart of the white sky.

  Merope and I follow, stumbling back down the hill to where both Cyb and Lios are killing the Muted. Cyb holds them, Lios firing at them, slowly and systematically picking them off.

  Until they see the black podcraft—and freeze.

  The Muted, in the presence of the podcraft, flee back into the depths of the forest. To our shock, it settles itself in the ranks of a line of Black Hawk helicopters, deflecting blows fired wildly at them with staggering ease.

  “Who is that?” Cyb asks frenziedly, but doesn’t have to wait long for an answer. The black craft descends, as though exempt from gravity, with an unnatural grace.

  The other podcraft lower, landing as well. I notice there’s a fourth that I missed: blue.

  Each podcraft exhales a string of Borealians—all apparently in their shapeshifted forms, still visibly human. Most stay behind while their leaders go to meet at the center of a clearing cupped at the base of our hill.

  “It’s Pavo,” Lios announces gravely as a tall, absurdly thin figure drifts out of the green podcraft. He’s followed by a female from the blue podcraft, whose hair is as orange as a sunset.

  They walk together—chins held high, dignified—toward the heart of the clearing, where they wait.

  “I recognize that woman,” Merope says, nodding at the fiery haired figure. “Andromeda—the leader of the Elite. But what’s she doing with Pavo, of all people?”

  “She’s on his side,” Cyb says, sneering. The sight of the two together does something to me: it ignites a rampant fury in the places of myself I thought empty, filling me up.

  The black and violet podcraft open, three figures emerging.

  They are dressed entirely in black—cloaks whipping in the blustery, winter wind—faces hidden by heavy hoods. They walk in perfect tandem, stride for stride, exuding a power that I didn’t expect from them.

  A power that Pavo and Andromeda don’t have.

  A power that suggest they are killers.

  They aren’t afraid of it.

  The figure in the center of the other two rips back the hood of her cloak abruptly, exposing a face I recognize easily, even at such a stretched distance.

  “Onyx!” I get up off my belly, rising to see better. “I can’t believe she’s here, that she’s facing—”

  “Get down!” Cyb grabs my sleeve, dragging me back onto the snowy ground beside her. “They can see us from here!”

  The two others walking beside Onyx shake their hoods free from their faces, exposing a woman I know is Mabel Faye and a lovely, younger woman with magenta hair and gemstone eyes.

  “I—I recognize—” I can’t articulate myself, too startled by the sight unfolding before us: the women approach Pavo and his rigid ally, the trio as stoic as stone statues.

  We inch together nervously, watching our mentor lead her crew of three traitors straight to leaders charged with the duty of issuing death sentences for less.

  Pavo approaches, lips peeled to speak, but it’s clear within seconds that Onyx isn’t interested. I see her face flicker and shift before my eyes, the illusion disguising her as human fading away to reveal her Borealian form.

  Onyx is a body of thin, marble white. Eyes black and as big as an insect’s. Fangs drip out from her jaws, thick sabers that she has capped with vicious, pointed iron tips.

  Pavo says something—a plea.

  Onyx raises a palm, slamming an invisible force directly at his frail chest, sending him flying. Andromeda raises her palm in retaliation only to be levitated vulnerably in the air, lifted high by the magenta-haired woman.

  Meanwhile, Onyx and Mabel march toward Pavo, faces lit up with boiling rage, unrelenting determination etched into every rise and fall of their features.

  Pavo gets up and cries, “I don’t know where she is!”

  “Liar!” Onyx yells, blasting him again. This time, however, he’s ready for her, parrying the attack and somehow sending it ricocheting back at her.

  Onyx soars off her feet, crashing into the snow.

  Pavo’s illusion lifts, revealing a terrifyingly inhuman body and face beneath: gray flesh webbed with veins, eyes black and depthless, teeth uncapped but sharp.

  His fingers light up, literally a beam of fire, which he uses to trace the outline of her body in the snow—a threat similar to tossing a knife inches from somebody’s face.

  I could’ve killed you, but I chose not to.

  Next time you won’t be so lucky.

  My eyes drift sidelong to my league. Their facial expressions reflect my own concerns. Unless Onyx has decided to go against her beliefs, there’s no possible way she’ll be as strong as Pavo, who’s likely already feasted on thousands of souls.

  Onyx gets up, wordlessly striking Pavo with another burst of invisible force—striking him in the chest so savagely, he’s left coughing up a sticky, tarlike substance.

  The blood of a Borealian.

  Pavo’s jaws snap, baring his teeth animalistically.

  Onyx drops to a crouch, fangs also showing, as she raises each of her palms in his direction.

  BOOM.

  Pavo skids over the icy surface of old snow, his cloak ripped and flapping in the wind. But he recovers fluidly—with a kind of practiced alacrity—and plunges after Onyx in a sprint so fast, my eyes can barely catch up.

  They meet each other halfway, fighting physically—fangs and claws deployed, skillsets firing mercilessly under the gaze of hundreds of startled onlookers.

  In the distance, Mabel raises a palm, knocking Andromeda into a coma with the swift flick of her wrist, approaching with a mean glint to her eyes, ready to land the final blow . . .

  I cringe, recoiling at the sight. “Onyx can’t win,” I say at the sight of Pavo and Onyx fighting even harder, no longer holding back in the slightest.

  “I don’t think she’s trying to win,” Merope replies wisely.

  “What is she doing, then?”

  “Making a point.”

  Pavo and Onyx exchange words in a foreign language, their stiffening postures heralding danger—and then, out of nowhere, they shift back to English.

  “Sister, enough of this fighting!” Pavo decries, dropping his fists to his side. “Please,” he begs, inching closer. “Please, Sister, we can end this war today—together.”

  “I have two terms.”

  “Name them,” Pavo says eagerly.

  “Give me my daughter and let us go free.” Onyx’s words are met with a strangled silence. The onlookers whisper frantically to each other—and Mabel, standing farther off, winces.

  Betrayed.

  Onyx has just betrayed her only ally—for me.

  Pavo smiles with relief. “I accept.”

  “I don’t,” Mabel yells abruptly, raising her palms not to use her skillset ability, but send a signal. “I’m sorry, Onyx.”

  A signal to her helicopters—to strike Onyx down.

  And strike her down they do.

  I feel the rip of a scream rake claws down my throat.

  But I can’t hear anything. I only run, tripping over the lip of the hill, stumbling down the sloped expanse, crawling. I reach the edge of the clearing just in time to see Pavo retreat—face gray, a stomach full of bullets and bleeding profusely, a leg shattered . . .

  A sister lost.

  Just as I ready to plunge into the clearing, I see a figure bolt out of the forest’s shadows. Apollo.

  Folding me in his arms, he whispers, “Be quiet. It’s okay.”

  I notice he’s crying.

  I notice I’m crying.

  Together, we watch Mabel look back at Onyx—her eyes a mess of sour tears, body shaking. She looks as though she’s about to breakdown completely. Flanking her sides are an entourage of soldiers—native borns�
�who usher her off protectively.

  Her counsel.

  “I’ve got to go with Pavo,” Apollo croaks.

  “No—why?”

  “Now that Onyx—” He stops, gazing at her body lifeless in the snow, a stain of black blood marking her grave. “We’re going to need a new spy on the Ora.”

  “Apollo,” I cry, holding his face. “I’m so sorry.”

  “This is not over,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “I’ll be back for you—I won’t forget,” he says, kissing the top of my forehead. “Forgive her.”

  And then he’s sprinting off, boarding the podcraft just as it’s about to take off. He reserves his final backward glance not for me or for our league at the safe-house . . .

  He saves it for Onyx.

  The podcraft’s door lowers, shutting. It cuts his face out of view and I wonder, truly, if I’ll ever see him again—if I’ll ever get to make sense of his final words: Forgive her.

  Forgive who, Apollo?

  Onyx or Mabel?

  28

  When the clearing is empty, I find Onyx’s body.

  I kneel beside her, tracing a finger along her arm stretched peacefully at her side, webbed eerily in black veins. And despite being in her unfamiliar, Borealian form, she’s still lovely.

  I had the chance to go to her—to save her.

  And yet I stayed.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say, throat tight. Without thinking, my fingers slip through hers—spindly, clearly inhuman, but bearing an echoed resemblance to my own.

  Just as I go to release her, I feel the tug of energy.

  I freeze, tears stopping.

  A pull . . . not an influx, the way it usually feels.

  My energy wants to . . . filter into her.

  And so I let it—exploring the sensation, feeling the rush of my skin’s golden glow draining into the marbled skin of the hand lifeless in my own, siphoned mysteriously by the conduit of our physical contact. My head spins, mouth drying.

  I don’t stop.

  I give it all to her, everything I’ve got.