by Cecily White
At first, I thought we were outside. High above us, pinpricks of light shimmered with a fiery intensity like stars in a nighttime sky. Jack shut off his flashlight and I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the new light source.
“Oh, wow.” I took a step closer to Jack.
The room wasn’t as cold as the tunnels had been, but I shivered. All around us were endless shelves of books. Some were bound in leather, others with an odd metal sheeting that looked as if it had been hammered into existence. Some had rough leather straps and metal locks around the binding. The volumes were shoved into the crevices between rocks, hollow spaces that had been formed by centuries of erosion rather than man-made tools. It was a neat effect, but not the kind of showcasing that gets one on the New York Times bestseller list.
“Wow,” I whispered again.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I was ten when my dad first brought me here. He let me run around for hours reading prophecies, climbing rocks. I think he was trying to wear me out so I’d be able to focus when he finally showed me the one prophecy that mattered. That was only a few weeks before he died. I never came back. Thought it would hurt too much.”
“Does it?”
“Not as much as other things.”
I looked down at my hand. Traitor that it was, it had laced itself back into his grip and glowed a soft shade of gold. I mentally ordered it to stop trembling, but to no avail.
Jack led the way as I picked my path gingerly over the boulders, careful not to step on anything slick or evil-looking. I was already covered in dust, so the last thing I needed was a giant moss stain on my jeans. He held tight to my hand as we went, which made it harder to balance but also ensured that if I fell, at least I wouldn’t fall far.
We came to a stop at a steep, rocky slope. My eyes had grown used to the dimness and I could tell that the lights above us weren’t stars at all. They were insects—beetles, fireflies, June bugs. All the creepy crawlies you’d never want in a library. I was stunned the Great Books hadn’t been picked clean by hungry swarms of silverfish.
I stood there gaping while Jack dislodged a book from behind a rock. It had a dark maroon cover and a thick lock that fell open when he touched it. He didn’t even need a key.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “Books aren’t as dumb as you think. You should try reading one now and then.” He settled himself on a narrow boulder and patted the space beside him.
“I read.” I dusted off the rock and climbed up. “I’ve read all the Harry Potters, three of the Twilights, and every issue of Cosmo ever published. I’m a reading prodigy. Like Stephen Hawking.”
“Yeah, Stephen Hawking,” he muttered. “That’s who you remind me of.”
“Nobody likes a smarty pants, Jackson.”
“Lucky for you, that isn’t true. Now sit, zip it, and listen.” With a hard glare in my direction, Jack opened the volume, took my hand, and started reading.
“In the days of the Judgment, one shall rise: a Son of Gabriel, a child of doom. And he shall be marked with the sign of the angel, but he is no angel. He shall possess the frailty of man, but he is no man. He alone is the sacrifice, the innocent, the last of his bloodline, who, under angels’ gaze, shall be given up to the fury of the avenger. With blood of taint and hair of fire, the beast will fall upon him and his soul will be reaped, as the souls of his brothers. Before the dawn of his twenty-first year, Judgment shall be rendered, and the Angel of Death shall claim him. Only by sacrifice of blood may the Guardians’ burden be lifted.”
Jack brushed his palm across the page as if he could wipe away the words he’d just read. It wasn’t until he fell silent that I realized I must have completely cut off the circulation in his hand.
“Blood and judgment, huh?” I said, unsteady. “Isn’t that the plot of every decent action movie ever made?”
Jack’s eyes found mine in the half-darkness. They glowed like the dying embers of a campfire.
“Amelie,” he said, “this prophecy is why I can’t bond with you. I can’t bond with anyone. I’m the last of Gabriel’s line.” He flipped the volume closed with a final sounding thump. “I’m supposed to die. And you’re supposed to kill me.”
Chapter Fourteen:
The Value of Defiance
I felt like he’d stuck a hot poker through my small intestine, all charred and hollow inside. Something had changed in Jack’s eyes, too, though I couldn’t say what. He looked older, broken somehow.
“That’s completely screwed up.” My fingers screamed in revolt as I unwound them from his. “I’m not killing you. I’m not killing anyone.”
“You may not have a choice.” He gave a wry smile. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but the war isn’t going well. Demon attacks are getting more organized. We barely have enough Channelers to cover the major human cities, let alone Convergence outposts. If this keeps up, in a few years there won’t be any Guardians left. Not to trample your illusions, kiddo, but the Elders have known for decades about this prophecy. They know Gabriel’s bloodline is dying and they’ve kept it quiet.”
“You’re lying,” I said. “And don’t call me kiddo.”
“Ami, think about it. Why did those victims give up so easily? Why did Lutz and Templeman die so quietly?” The cool reason in his voice struck at my chest like a knife. “You have no idea how bad it is out there. The stuff you see at St. Michael’s is nothing compared to what we get in Enforcement. Half of the Channelers I graduated with are dead and more are defecting every day. Put yourself in the Elders’ shoes. If you knew you were fighting a lost battle against an endless enemy, wouldn’t you look for a way out? Wouldn’t you be willing to make a few sacrifices?”
I shook my head. “Not if it meant killing a whole bloodline.”
“Better one bloodline than an entire species.”
Jack moved to rest a hand on my shoulder but I jerked away. I didn’t want to be comforted. It wasn’t like I hadn’t read the news stories, or heard all the gory details of Katie’s true crime dramas. Humans had done far worse for less honorable reasons. But we were Guardians. We were better than that. Weren’t we?
“No,” I said. “There are others. There have to be.”
“Amelie.” Jack’s voice was soft, patient. “Templeman and D’Arcy were the last Gabrielite Watchers. Lutz was my great uncle. When Smalley called me back to St. Michael’s, it wasn’t because she thought I could prevent the prophecy. It was because she knew as soon as I died they would kill you. Maybe she thought I could help you, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “The Elders have known since your birth what you were destined for. This prophecy is the only reason they let someone so dangerous live.”
A chill rippled down my spine. I didn’t feel dangerous. I felt like a part of me had shriveled and died.
My arms wrapped in a tight hug around my torso, as if by sheer determination I could keep my heart from spilling onto the dirt. They’d planned to execute me. Even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“That’s why you came back?”
He nodded. “All my life, I’ve been told you’d kill me, rip the soul right out of me. The first day of school, when I realized who you were, I was terrified. But you seemed so clueless and so…not at all scary.” He smiled ruefully. “I told myself it was okay to talk to you. It was research. If I had to fight you, I needed to know what you were, right? Then, when I realized you had no idea—” He broke off.
“What?” I asked.
Jack tugged the neck of his long sleeved T-shirt over his collarbone. I could see a small line of what looked like pink scar tissue. It formed an oval about the size of a robin’s egg etched at the top of his left shoulder. The mark of Gabriel.
The end of his bloodline.
“I’ve always been treated differently. Teachers were more careful with me, my parents never let me have friends over. No attachments,” he said. “Nothing I couldn’t walk away from. When my dad showed me the prophecy, it was almost a relief. At l
east I knew what I needed to do.”
“What, turn to drugs?” I blurted out. “Your childhood sounds dismal.”
He laughed, halfway between sadness and amusement. “When the Elders found you guilty at trial, it was a split vote. Chancellor Thibault argued that, if they executed you, it could alter the prophecy. Akira finally decided if my death was truly meant to end the war, then nothing we did could change it. That’s why I tried so hard to keep you away from this, away from me. Prophecy is law for us, Amelie,” he explained. “I have to die, and you have to kill me.”
A huge part of me wanted to smack him. In one day, I had lost everything—everything but him. How dare he sit there, so mature and calm, telling me now I would lose him, too?
With shaky hands, I yanked the book from his lap and hurled it across the room like a shot put. It slowed in midair and fluttered to rest against a rock unharmed. It seemed to sigh in dismay, like a small house-pet denied access to its master. We both watched as it tucked the strap indignantly around itself, and then fastened the metal lock over the binding. Evidently, some books are smarter than I thought.
I looked at Jack, but all he did was shrug.
“When?” I demanded.
“Saturday. My twenty-first birthday. If it’s a literal reading, I’ll be dead by dawn.”
All at once, Bud’s words came back to me, a key unlocking a door. Stay away from him until next week. He must have known about the prophecy. But how? And why would he keep it from me?
“You told Hansen there might be more Gray Ones,” I said. “Someone besides me. Do you really believe that?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure it matters.” He ran a frustrated hand across his head. “If you are killing Gabriel’s bloodline, if you did rig your test, then you’re obviously unaware of it. Which means you’re being controlled by someone else.” He paused to let that horrid little notion sink in. “And if it’s not you, then you’re being set up. Either way, you’re as much a victim as anyone else.”
“And yet everyone’s trying to kill me.”
“Absurd, isn’t it?”
I was still shivering when the sound of shifting rocks drew my attention back to the corridor where we’d entered. It sounded too intentional to be a rat, more like steel-toed boots than tiny paws. Both of us slowly turned our heads toward the sound.
“Jack?”
“Run,” he whispered.
His hand felt warm around mine as he pulled me through the chamber in the opposite direction. Breath tore at my chest, pushing me harder and faster than I thought possible over rocks and wet moss patches. As much as I’d hated inching through that first tunnel, right now, I couldn’t be more grateful for it. The longer it took for them to get in, the more time Jack and I had to get out. Somewhere behind us, a clamor of voices rose up, but we kept going.
I barely noticed when the cavern began to narrow. Jack had turned off his flashlight but he didn’t slow, not even as we hurtled toward a pitch-black crevice in the wall. At least the tunnel had the decency to slant upward, so I didn’t feel like I was going deeper into the circles of hell. After twenty yards or so, it narrowed, and we were again forced to our knees.
“Are you sure this is an exit?”
“I thought so,” he said, uncertain, “but it’s been ten years since I was down here. There could have been a cave-in.” His hands dug at the narrow space in front of us, dislodging small rocks. “Give me a second, I think there’s an opening up ahead.”
I waited for a moment as he dug at the earth, sending rock after rock clattering past. My mind whirled and desperation churned in my chest. “Jack, wait! What if I give up?” I asked. “Will they let you go?”
“What are you talking about?” He slowed his digging.
“I mean, if I tell them I killed you and dumped your body in the river, or something… If I turn myself in, will that be enough to end it?”
He froze for a second, and then slowly inched backward until he was next to me again. In the crowded space, our bodies nearly touched. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was scrunched into that adorable “you’re nuts” expression he wore so often.
“Amelie.” I felt his breath, soft and sweet on my face. “If you’re saying this out of some misguided loyalty because of what happened at your test, then please…don’t. When I kissed you, it was the most cowardly, dishonorable thing I’ve done in my life. Just because I thought I was going to die doesn’t excuse it. I made a mistake, but it was my mistake. Please, don’t let it mess with your head. You’re too smart for that.”
My skin prickled, and not from the temperature. A mistake. That’s what he thought of me. It didn’t matter that he’d also said I was smart. All I heard was what a colossal mistake it had been to kiss me.
Tears tightened the back of my throat, but I swallowed them away. “You’re right, I’m being ridiculous.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“It was just a stupid kiss, right? It’s not like we’re bonded.”
He hesitated. “Of course not.”
I rolled back onto my stomach and started wiggling up the steep path through the hole he’d made in the rockslide. Seriously, how many times did I need to be rejected before I’d finally believe him? A hundred? A thousand?
It may have been my imagination, but I could’ve sworn the air was getting warmer. Its scent had shifted from cool and dank to warm and pungent, the way Bourbon Street smells after Mardi Gras. Even the rocks beneath me seemed slick with heat.
“Personally,” I whispered over my shoulder, “I think you’re the most idiotic, pain-loving individual on the planet. You must thrive on suffering.”
“I try.”
“I mean, who else would spend their whole life getting ready to die just because some thousand-year-old prophetic nitwit said so—”
“I can name at least five,” he grunted behind me.
“And then promptly run away with the person he thinks is going to murder him?” I purposefully scraped a few stones loose with my shoe, listening with satisfaction as they bounced off his head. “You must be a complete moron.”
“Uh-huh. You mentioned.”
“Seemed worth repeating.” I edged forward on my elbows. “Still, masochistic as you are, and moronic as it was of you to kiss me, I should warn you that if anyone so much as lays a hand on you, I’ll rip off their fingernails one by one and feed them to Lisa’s cat—Oh crap!”
I stopped talking, not because I was done, but because the ground that had felt so solid just a moment ago gave a sudden lurch. A slow crack echoed through the tunnel. Then, without warning, I was falling. Sliding, really. Rocky dirt crumbled around me like sugar cubes dissolving in hot coffee, and I gave a muffled scream. Head first, my body plummeted into darkness and was swept away into the most putrid smelling tunnel of moving water I had ever experienced…including the time Smalley made me clean the school septic system.
Rocks dragged at my arms, scraping red streaks down to my elbows. I was vaguely aware of Jack yelling at me to turn around but, of course, I couldn’t because of the stupid torrent of silt and sewage. Never before had I been so stuck between a desire to scream and a need to keep my mouth shut so I didn’t swallow half the New Orleans Sanitation Department.
A few seconds later, the waterslide of yuck dumped me into a revolting pond o’ sludge. I surfaced, too shocked to cry, too grossed-out to speak. The smell invaded my nostrils—a mixture of rotted papaya and one of those campground public toilets no one ever cleans.
“Ugh! Yuck!” I shrieked.
“Woohoo!” Jack landed behind me with an enthusiastic battle cry. His impact sent a spatter of something that smelled like decomposed burger across my face and I found myself hating him again. When he surfaced, he shook out his hair like a wet dog, eyes glittering. “Awesome! I knew that was an exit.”
“Oh, you think this is fun, Prophecy Boy?” I yelled, furious. “You think it’s cool that we’re swimming in other people’s feces?”
Brown wat
er dripped down his smiling face as his gaze danced over me. I couldn’t put my finger on his expression. Bemusement. Possibly insanity.
“What are you grinning at?” I splashed a floating chunk of molded apple core at his head.
He dodged the chunk but kept smiling. “Nothing. It’s just…no girl has ever offered to feed my enemies’ fingernails to her cat before.”
“Lisa’s cat. And don’t flatter yourself. At the moment, I’m tempted to feed him your fingernails.”
I glanced at the high, circular opening we’d passed through. For some reason, it left me with the uncomfortable sensation that I’d been digested by the city. Directly above us, a series of large rectangular grates ran along the length of the drainage ditch where we’d landed. Moonlight flooded through them into the small enclosure, making Jack’s eyes glow silver. I held my breath as he waded toward me and lifted a hand to my cheek.
“You’ve got spaghetti on your face,” he said. “At least, I hope it’s spaghetti.”
I frowned, desperate not to think about it. “Yeah, well, you’ve got toilet paper on your chin. And you’re doomed. Pot.” I pointed at him, then back at myself. “Kettle. Can we move it along, please? I think I’m contracting hepatitis.”
He gave me that look again, the cocky half-smile. “Sure. We’re almost there.”
I followed him through the tunnel obediently, ducking my head every few seconds to avoid the concrete arches that supported the drainage structure. I didn’t bother asking where “there” was. Jack was about as forthcoming as a park bench and, frankly, I didn’t feel like wasting my breath.
True to his word, it only took another few minutes before we came to a metal ladder with rungs embedded in the concrete. When Jack finally helped me out of the sewer, I almost cried with relief. Never had the beer/fish/vomit scents of the French Quarter smelled so fragrantly sweet. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of rushing water and steamboat horns rang out. Yup. Not Hell. Definitely still home.
