Dying Light

by Kory M. Shrum

  Caldwell claps his hands together. “It was quite challenging getting you all here today. First I had to find you, discover who you were. Then I had to set a stage worthy of such an event. I had to blow up a whole city just to give us a little privacy.”

  Caldwell laughs, and Rachel and I exchange worried glances.

  Cindy scoots over to my side. “What’s going on here?”

  Her Texas drawl is even thicker than usual, and it doesn’t take a genius to know she’s terrified out of her mind. There’s too much color in her cheeks and her eyes are too wide.

  “No idea.” I tell her and take Winston from Rachel.

  Caldwell can’t seem to wipe that grin off his face. “With all the commotion, no one will notice if we get a little out of hand.”

  I search the faces in the circle. I know Cindy and Rachel have powers like me. And I’ve seen Georgia suck all the life out of a room. But I don’t know what Jeremiah, the black man, or Asian woman can do.

  I point an accusing finger at Jeremiah. “You said you weren’t partis.”

  “Ah, you’re right.” Caldwell says. He crosses behind Jeremiah, speaking over his shoulder “Mr. Tate is our prophet. Every tale needs a teller, and he is ours. Not my choice, mind you. But we make do with what we are given.”

  Caldwell’s giddiness is horrifying. He’s practically prancing around the room. I’d rather he be trying to rip my head off.

  “Like Matthew or Mark,” Cindy says. Obviously, she isn’t having as much trouble staying focused on the conversation as I am. “How’s that possible?”

  Jeremiah doesn’t say anything.

  “Don’t be modest,” Caldwell says.

  “I have visions,” Jeremiah says, as if he knows prolonging this will only make it worse. “I’ve seen each of you as you were chosen. I’ve seen what you’re meant to become and what will happen to the world.”

  “Yes, now that we’re all acquainted, let’s not waste time.”

  My shield goes up. Everyone but Rachel takes a step back. Georgia’s black death ribbons reach up from behind her and strike Cindy, her eyes rolling up into her head as she collapses. Dead.

  Blue flames erupt around Georgia and she starts screaming as if she’s been lowered into boiling water.

  Rachel and I exchange a glance.

  And run.

  Chapter 49

  Ally

  I walk four blocks in each direction, trying to get a sense of where State Street is in relation to the destroyed Tate Tower, but I can’t. I don’t think it’s in this part of the city.

  Firefighters and police flood the streets. I’m approached by three separate personnel.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I say to the person hidden behind the mirrored visor. “Help someone else.”

  They never need to be told twice. They rush on to the next person without stopping. Cops break up groups of looters who are trying to carry TVs bigger than themselves out of busted store front windows.

  “Al?”

  It takes me a moment to process the sound of my name.

  “Al!”

  I turn toward the sound of the voice and see Nikki in black tactical gear, gun slung over one shoulder. She is an imposing figure in the desolate landscape. Her high ponytail and taut face are severe.

  She runs across the street and squeezes me hard, crushing me against the scratchy vest she wears. She kisses me just as hard, cupping my face in her hands and exhales a breath like she’s been holding it for hours. “Thank god, you’re all right.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay too.” I place my hands over hers. “I saw the tower. Did everyone get out?”

  Her face pinches. “Caldwell took Jeremiah. We don’t know where. We’re checking each of Caldwell’s properties one by one. We’ve been at it for a while.”

  “He took Jesse to the State Street Cathedral. Maybe Jeremiah is there as well.”

  Nikki reaches up and presses the snail-shaped device tucked into her ear. “Target 7: State Street Cathedral. Move in five.” She gives me a once-over. “You’re coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so. Let’s suit you up then.” She takes my arm and leads me toward an armored truck parked on the curb ahead.

  Chapter 50

  Jesse

  “God why did you have to bring Winston?” I ask. The pug snorts in my arms, growing heavy. Frankly, I’m tired of him being in danger.

  “I was holding him when Caldwell took me,” Rachel says. “Be grateful I carried his fat ass this long. I could’ve dropped him at any time.”

  My arms are killing me, and Winston makes it worse by squirming. We turn three corners and find ourselves in another large room much like the one we left. The ceiling stretches dome-like high overhead. Columns line the walls, but there’s nothing to hide behind and no exit signs.

  “Hey, stop. Ow. Come on.” I have to set him down or I’ll drop him. What happens is a mixture of both. Winston hits the ground running.

  “What the hell?” I run after him.

  “No Jessup, wait. Christ.”

  I can hear Rachel running after me, the heels of her boots slapping against the marble as I frantically try to catch up to Winston. His feet slide on the slick floor, yet he manages to stay in the lead.

  The cathedral trembles, and again, I’m reminded of Liza being murdered in the other room. I see Cindy falling down dead and my chest aches. What could you do? I tell myself. You can’t shield her. You couldn’t have carried her away.

  Excuses, excuses a voice says—a voice from somewhere deep inside me.

  Winston whips around another corner and slides to stop at the feet of a girl, clutching her backpack.

  “Hey,” I say. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Enjoying the last hour of my life,” Maisie says, scooping up the dog and pulling him into her lap. Winston jumps all over her, licking her face wildly.

  “You again, huh?” Rachel snorts. “I never properly introduced myself. I’m Rachel.”

  “Maisie,’’ she replies.

  “Have you seen a door around by chance, Maisie?” Rachel asks, saccharin sweet.

  “There are no doors,” Maisie says, matter-of-factly.

  “No doors,” Rachel and I cry in unison.

  Maisie shrugs. “He renovated the church to have no doors. He doesn’t want anyone coming in or out without his say so.”

  “Fucking control freak.” Rachel crosses her arms over her chest.

  I’m not surprised. After seeing his underground room and The Needle, I believe Caldwell would build a whole world without doors if he could. Of course, we’d all starve to death in such a world, and then who would he get to torture?

  Georgia steps from the shadows behind Maisie and my breath hitches in my throat.

  “Maisie,” she says calmly. “Take the puppy and scoot, my love.”

  Maisie hesitates.

  My shield is up again. “Get behind me,” I tell Rachel.

  Rachel doesn’t have to be told twice. Maisie, on the other hand, still hasn’t moved.

  “You’re up and running quick,” I tell her. “Shouldn’t you still be dead?”

  “We can’t waste time. We have to save the world,” Georgia says. “It’s our responsibility to make it a better place for our children. I might die, but Maisie and I will be together forever.”

  Maisie gets to her feet, holding Winston to her chest. She slides to the opposite wall, slightly behind her mother, farther away from me.

  “We don’t want to fight,” I tell Georgia.

  Georgia’s black ribbons of death unfurl, stretching out into the room. “It’s too late for that.”

  Chapter 51

  Ally

  “Our intelligence says that he’s collected all the partis,” Nikki says. “We’ve been monitoring all of them, with the exception of Rachel, who we couldn’t find. They’ve all disappeared within the last hour.”

  I fake surprise, as if I didn
’t know the partis were disappearing.

  “Rachel is here too. She was with us when we saved Jesse.” I don’t mention Gideon or how they are able to move around the city undetected.

  “If he’s taken all of the partis to the church, he must be trying to finish this now,” Nikki says.

  “Finish what?” I ask. I think I know the answer, but I want Nikki to explain. Maybe she knows something I don’t.

  “I only know what Jeremiah has told me.” She glances over to make sure I’m looking at her. “He has dreams. He calls them revelations.”

  “Like biblical revelations?”

  “He’s not religious,” she’s quick to add. “But he says the clarity and the way they repeat over and over again make them more than dreams.”

  I understand what she means. Dreams are vague and incoherent. Once I dreamt I was being chased by a spider through the house, and so I put a coat on the couch, knowing the spider would think I was the coat and fail to see me sneak out and take a plane to Lincoln, Nebraska, of all places, which in my dream was a place that spiders didn’t go. Only the Lincoln in my dream was more like Hawaii, with fire dancers and pineapple drinks.

  The cathedral comes into view at long last, and Nikki parks the armored truck on the curb. I hop out of the truck, scraping my back on the way down, it’s so high up. Nikki opens the back and lets her people out.

  “Once around for possible entrances, then report here,” she says. “I want to know about every door, every window, every latch or keyhole. Move.”

  They disperse and Nikki gives me a heavy look. “Will you take a gun if I give it to you?”

  “I don’t need a gun.”

  She huffs. “Stay behind my left side.”

  I let her take the lead and follow her around the church. We see the windows on the uppermost part of the dome, more decorative than functional.

  She lowers her gun as we come around to the place where we started at the corner of State Street. “Shit. He did it to this church too.”

  I run my hands over the smooth façade. “No doors.”

  “All right,” she says, slinging her gun over her shoulder. “Plan B.”

  Chapter 52

  Jesse

  Georgia steps forward. I step back.

  “At first, I believed it was because you were his daughter,” she says with a shrug. “Understandable. He may not be the most loving man, but he does care.”

  I snort. “About Me, Myself, and I.”

  “Then I saw the way he treated you. The way he seemed to delight in your misery. I thought perhaps it was because he still harbors a great deal of hate for your mother. Even killing her did not make him feel any better about her betrayal.”

  Her betrayal—which one? Calling the police on him? Having him carted off to the camps? Or marrying another man while he was locked away?

  “I thought he saw her in you,” she says quietly, taking another step forward as I take another step back. One of the black ribbons tries to squeeze past me and get at Rachel, but I shift and it hisses and crackles against my shield like oil on a hot pan.

  “I’m sorry, ribbon dancer, but where are you going with this?”

  Her cheeks burn red and the black ribbons darken more.

  “Uh, that can’t be good,” Rachel murmurs in my ear.

  “He does see your mother when he looks at you, but it’s more than that.”

  Another snap of the black ribbon reminds me a great deal of a large black snake, head reared and striking. My shield shimmers, deflecting a second and third blow.

  “You remind him that he was once human,” she says. “When he sees you, he sees his own flaws. The imperfections. He begins to doubt his cause.”

  “It would be hard not to doubt yourself in the face of such awesomeness,” I say, and gesture to myself. “I mean, just look at me.”

  Rachel swallows a giggle behind me.

  Georgia doesn’t laugh. No surprise. Few people get me.

  “I don’t know what kind of weird thing you’ve got going on with Caldwell. Clearly you guys made some kind of emotional connection while being tortured, but what I don’t get is why you’re with him now.”

  “I love him.”

  “Weird,” Rachel and I say in unison.

  “He wants to kill you, and your kid. Isn’t that a good enough reason to leave his ass?” I hope she can hear my super judgy tone.

  “I am grateful for every minute of every hour that I was allowed to be Maisie’s mother,” she says. “But our lives are not our own. This cause—our purpose—is so much bigger than us.”

  Georgia looks at Maisie, and something is exchanged between them. Some kind of sad acceptance.

  “Dumb,” I say. “You sound like cult victims.”

  Georgia is about to whirl around and lay into me, no doubt, but Rachel steps around me and shoves Georgia against the wall. Not with her hands but with her telekinetic thing. She shoves Georgia up into the ceiling, and Georgia is howling.

  Maisie charges us. My only warning is Winston’s yelp and the sound of his nails scuttling on the marble.

  I get between Maisie and Rachel before Maisie can tackle her.

  “No,” Maisie wails. “Stop. You’re hurting her.”

  “You realize she’s going to drown you in a tub like an unwanted kitten, right?” I say, knocking her back easily.

  Tears stream down her face. “I don’t care. She’s my mom. Stop. Stop, you’re hurting her.”

  Her desperate screams tear me in half. Dammit.

  “Rach,” I say. “You can’t kill her mom in front of her.”

  “We’re doing her a favor. She just doesn’t know it.”

  “Nor will she,” Caldwell says, appearing behind Rachel.

  In one fluid movement, he grabs her and hurls her across the great antechamber.

  Rachel’s body slams against a massive column and a sickening crack rings off the walls. A second thwap resounds as Georgia hits the ground, screaming out as her leg juts bizarrely from underneath her. The angle is all wrong.

  My stomach turns.

  After inspecting Georgia, Caldwell turns on me with wild eyes. “You’ll pay for that.”

  Chapter 53

  Jesse

  Rachel’s body lies motionless at the foot of the column.

  I’m on fire.

  The rage rolls along my skin again and again, and all I want to do is see Caldwell bleed. I can’t think or consider my next move. I just want to put my hands on him.

  “Oh you’re so upset about her fucking leg, but I can be murdered and you’re all, meh.” I shrug. “Meh.”

  I see red and lunge, but Caldwell disappears and I’m left connecting with the marble. The impact jars my knees and wrists, sharp pains shooting up my arms and into my neck. I realize my shield is down, and I’m about to erect it, but a foot connects with my ribs.

  Blinding white pain erupts through me. I swear I feel one of my ribs crack. Every breath hurts. Every inhale is sharp and murderous.

  “You don’t know how hard I worked for this,” Caldwell says, laughing. “I kept pushing you, threatening you, but no matter what, you would never fully rise to the occasion. I showed you my new family, my better family, and still you didn’t hate me. I tried to complicate the bitterness with mock affection. I killed your handler and turned your boyfriend against you. None of it filled your heart with the hate I so desperately needed. I thought I was going to have to kill your little bitch,” Caldwell sneers.

  “You’re never going to lay another finger on her,” I say. “By the end of the day, you won’t fucking have fingers.”

  I shoot a fire bomb. It bursts forth from me, and I consider my actions afterward, as I see Maisie clutching Winston, peeking her head out from behind a column.

  “Stay back there,” I tell her. “And what do you mean you turned my boyfriend against me?”

  “Oh, did you think he actually loved you for you?” he asks with a snort of derision. “The moment I knew where Brinkley
intended to house you, from whom he intended to rent the office space, I capitalized on that opportunity. I saw the way you looked at him. Waste not, want not. And since I’ve stopped whispering orders in his ear, he’s stopped calling, hasn’t he?”

  I scream and erupt in the brightest flames yet. My shield shimmers and fades, leaving me exposed. Caldwell grabs me again, and I clamp my arms on his, pinning him against me.

  I fully ignite, the blue white fire engulfing us both.

  I swallow my pain, refusing to let him go. “You want to burn? Let’s burn.”

  Chapter 54

  Ally

  Blue fire erupts on one side of the cathedral. At first, I think it’s a trick of the light. Some cop car has cut down a side street or a helicopter beam was momentarily reflected in the glass. Then I see it again. A bright blue explosion.

  “There,” I say and squeeze Nikki’s arm. “They’re in that part of the church.”

  Just as I say it, windows blow out the other side and glass rains down onto the pavement.

  “Jesse is on this side,” I insist. “Unless someone else is shooting blue fire. Unless someone was just murdered.”

  I have to believe she’s alive. After all, everything in me tells me that if Jesse were to die, I would know it. But everyone believes that, don’t they? They think their love and connection is so strong that if one were to die, the other would surely know, instantly.

  I take a breath, but it’s hard. It feels as though there is very little air in my lungs.

  “You have to at least put on the vest,” Nikki says.

  She’s trying to strap thick black material over my body, and I’m resisting, shrugging her off like the dark water of my thoughts.

  “Wear it, Nat, or I’m going to lock you in the back of the truck,” she says, angry with me.

  I freeze.

  Nikki’s face blanches. “Sorry. Shit. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Who’s Nat?” I ask as members of her team come up and lay explosives against the side of the cathedral. So that’s the plan—blast our way in. Jesse would certainly approve.