Mom doubled over from being punched in the stomach. Mr. Gordon lunged at her attacker and pinned the man to the ground. Nicholae slashed through a man’s abdomen. Erik bashed two heads together. And Cassandra roundhouse kicked a man in the face with her high-heeled boot.
Nicholae saw me in the crowd, then scanned the open space as the man he’d sliced open fell to the ground. I did the same and saw the other Lornes rushing the fight, except for Kafka, who remained back to oversee the scene from his ivory tower. Malakye was once again on his feet and righted the fallen chair. He repositioned the nameless Lorne’s body in the chair, who simply looked like a bloody mannequin.
Nicholae tore through everyone directly in his path to Kafka, which included Malakye, who’d stepped in front of his leader. Malakye tackled Nicholae and they were suddenly all entwined limbs on the ground. Kafka took a few steps back to either fight or congratulate the victor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Logan go down and dashed to his aid. I aimed my gun as I ran, but I was approaching too fast to successfully pull the trigger and instead smacked the guy upside the head with the barrel of the gun. We both tumbled to the side, giving Logan an opening to scramble to his feet and join me in finishing off his attacker. He thanked me in between heavy breaths, but this was no time to stop and celebrate.
I glanced past the crowd and saw Nicholae rise to face Kafka. Malakye remained down and still.
The wolves were now in the mix, viciously targeting our members one at a time—wrestling someone to the ground with powerful jaws clamped onto a calf or throwing someone backward with two front paws to the chest. Each attack ended in torn flesh, spilled blood, and screams of mercy. The wolves showed no mercy.
A boom of thunder came without the precursor flash—instead a flash of pain ripped through my hand and my gun was gone. Blood poured from a rip at the edge of the palm that once held the gun. It skidded away and underfoot others struggling through an ongoing onslaught of attacks.
I wrapped my left hand around the gushing wound, feeling dizzy, looking around for who’d shot me. Ten feet away I saw Georges blowing across the barrel of his handgun like an old western gunslinger.
“Gotcha,” he said, grinning like a stereotypical villain. All he needed was the long wiry mustache.
Erik jumped into the picture and grabbed Georges’s arm and swung him around.
A hand snatched my injured one and I cried out.
“It’s me,” Mom said, placing two hands over mine.
The pain vanished. When she removed her hands, they came away bloody, but the bleeding had stopped. The gash that split the side of my hand like a canyon was gone.
I gazed up at her. “You, too?”
“Remember to be liquid,” she said and ran to Gloriana’s aid as she struggled with two men.
I looked back to Nicholae and his personal duel with Kafka. Each had a blade drawn and ready to strike. They slowly circled each other, engaged in a delicately focused dance for dominance.
For a moment I felt like everything was happening around me and I was invisible, as if I wasn’t really there in the middle of the chaos, just a witness to it all—like someone needed to bear witness to one family’s fight for control of the world. As more people fell on either side of the line, the race to a sole survivor was reaching the end.
Erik dropped Georges and a wolf that leapt at him a moment later.
Cassandra teamed up with Logan, both of them dripping with other people’s blood.
Mom and Mr. Gordon fought two men side-by-side.
Pawns were falling all around me, until there were none left. I stood amidst an amassing pile of nameless bodies.
Kafka was standing over a kneeling Nicholae as he wearily climbed to his feet.
Gloriana doubled over when she took a blow to the stomach. Both hands gravitated to her wound, but she seemed to be moving at half speed. When she collapsed, she did so in the same slow motion. Mom ran toward her and yelled something lost in the roar of the storm with the same sluggish, labored movements that didn’t look real.
The rain suddenly let up, which left a high-pitched ringing in my ears, which drowned out the sounds of the waning battle.
Mr. Gordon turned to find where Mom had gone just as Lazarus appeared behind him and drove a blade into his kidney. He twisted. The blade came out crimson. Lazarus plunged it in again, then let him go. Mr. Gordon crumpled to the ground.
I screamed and could barely hear my own voice. No one was coming to help him and he wasn’t getting up. Everyone was preoccupied with saving their own lives.
“NO!” I ran to Mr. Gordon’s side and dropped to my knees.
He coughed up blood, which bubbled over his lips and down his cheeks and chin.
“Heal yourself!” I demanded.
His eyes were glazing over and I couldn’t tell if he even knew that I was beside him. I felt around his side until I found the leak and plugged it as best I could with both hands.
“Oliver...” he whispered.
“I’m here,” I said, trying to sound calm. “You’re going to be all right. Someone will be here any moment.”
“I’m—I’m dying,” he said. He slowly lifted a hand and dropped it on my forearm. His grip was weak as he tried to push my hands away from his wound.
“I can’t do it—I’m here for you, but I can’t...”
“It’s okay.” He coughed again and slid his hand in one of mine. He clutched it with all his remaining strength, which wasn’t much.
“Help me!” I yelled, desperate for anyone to answer my plea.
“NNOOO!” boomed a voice from behind me, louder than the thunder, and stopped each small war with his voice alone.
Kafka stood with a bloody and broken Nicholae before him like a sacrifice, the Archanum dagger held to his throat. His attention cut through the few left standing with a laser-like focus, those black and crimson-flecked eyes stopping on me.
“Anyone approach Daniel and I’ll see to it Nicholae bleeds out before you reach him,” Kafka warned.
“Please...” I cried. “Let someone save him. Me! Take me instead! You wanted me, remember?” My voice cracked and I tried to stand, but Mr. Gordon wouldn’t let me go.
His hand wouldn’t release mine. I knew he didn’t have much strength left, but he used every ounce of what he had to keep me at his side.
“Oh, Oliver,” Kafka said in a patronizing tone. “You were once a bargaining chip for Nicholae, but look—I have Nicholae! You’re just another pawn, not worth a strike by my own hand. It’s not about you. It’s about my insubordinate protégé right here. I gave him the keys to the kingdom and this is how he repaid me. For what he’s done, he gets to witness the demise of his entire rebellion and family in one fell swoop before I commence the final blow.”
“Just get this over with.” Nicholae spat a thick mixture of blood and phlegm.
“I want to enjoy this,” Kafka said. “You can’t rob me of anything else.”
No one was coming. I looked down at Mr. Gordon and his eyes were closing. He tried to smile, but he was losing control of his facial muscles. All of his muscles were giving in and letting go. He kept his hand in mine for as long as he could, but I felt it slowly releasing.
“You can’t die,” I cried, tears welling up when it registered that this was actually happening. For all he’d done for me, there was nothing I could do for him.
I pictured myself leaning against the lockers with a screwdriver protruding from my stomach and Mr. Gordon not arriving to drag me off to safety—Desiree crying by my side not knowing what to do. I didn’t know what to do now.
His mouth moved, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The sound didn’t even register as a whisper. I leaned in and tried to make out his final words before it became pure gibberish—and then a final breath followed by peaceful stillness. I held his hand, but it was no longer reciprocated. When I let go, his open hand fell to the ground with a deafening finality.
“He kept your f
amily safe for all these years,” Kafka said to Nicholae. “You trusted him with family secrets and now he’s just another casualty due to your recklessness. Do you feel anything?”
No one attacked Mom for joining me at Mr. Gordon’s side because it was already too late. She cried and I couldn’t stop. She rested her head on his chest. I removed his horn-rimmed glasses and closed his eyes.
“Do you think they’ll cry that hard for you?” Kafka asked Nicholae.
“I won’t delude myself,” Nicholae said, tears now mixing with the blood marring his cheeks. “We can’t compete with a guy like that. He wasn’t one of us. He was better. Goodbye, my friend.”
I laid my head over Mom’s. This had been our family before I actually remembered Nicholae in a manufactured, alternate life away from all this. I remembered Mr. Gordon looking at me on the first day of class, pulling me off Sasha, showing me how to truly see, and crying for Jeremy when Kafka dropped his body off the bridge. Mr. Gordon—who was always there for me.
“Take out Helen next,” Kafka commanded, his tone stripped of all negotiation and compassion. When no one moved, he clarified. “Lazarus, kill her now. Don’t look away, Nicholae. I want you to see this.”
Lazarus appeared behind Mom and dragged her up by the hair. She thrashed and screamed, which seemed to make little difference.
“NNOOO!” I screamed, trying to match the power of Kafka’s voice, putting my entire life behind it.
And what happened next I wouldn’t have thought was possible... But became possible as my voice carried a torrent of energy that rippled like a stone tossed into a pond, like a bomb blast, and cracked the glass enclosure of the observation deck. Ghostly images of each Lorne member were cast from their bodies. Their coveted demons writhed and screamed as they sank into the concrete floor before dissipating back to their imprisoning realm.
From Kafka’s hand, the Archanum dagger dropped to the ground. Its clang against the concrete cut through the silence and the ripple delivered the final blow.
Everyone still standing braced themselves as the earthquake rippled through the deck. But it was only the Lornes who were truly affected, truly moved and visibly changed. They were immediately transformed with their daediems ripped away from them—lost, incomplete, no longer confident in the power they’d amassed over their combined lifetimes, over the blurred centuries of conquest.
They seemed to age ten to twenty years in a moment. Their skin lost its remarkable luster. Lines on their faces instantly became more pronounced. They did not stand quite as tall as a second ago, as if it finally caught up with them how incredibly fatigued they were, all of their excess energy stolen from them with a single swipe. And Kafka’s eyes—they were different, no longer so menacing. The red flecks floating in their dark pools were suddenly gone.
The ringing in my ears was all the louder in the stillness. Nicholae was on his knees. Kafka remained standing, but now a few feet behind him. The other Lornes looked like an Archanum blade had just been removed from each of their throats.
There were no words for what happened, only a suffocating silence, but I’d seen it once before, in the room where I’d said goodbye to Desiree—where I’d finally heard Nero’s voice again.
“What...did...you...do?” Kafka’s voice did not have the authority it had commanded previously, now reduced to a regular man whose life had taken an unexpected turn that he couldn’t yet comprehend.
I stood amongst the quaking bystanders and wiped my cheeks. “What you couldn’t,” I said between labored breaths. “Let go. Let you go. Let all of this go and released you. Say hello again to Alkane Fork. And Dad, you too, welcome back Lane Holocrine. You wanted this to be over.” I took a deep breath and heard Nero’s reassuring voice floating in the air. “This is what over means.”
“How did you...” Nicholae’s whole body shook as he tried to climb to his feet. “I don’t understand.”
“I haven’t heard your voice in so long,” Kafka said, staring out at the cracked glass.
I walked to the Archanum dagger, a dropped and momentarily forgotten precious artifact, and picked it up. It was beautiful with intricate designs inscribed into the blade itself, which looked nearly identical to the one on my belt. I saw Kafka eyeing me as I approached him. With no new tricks, nor any flashy movements, I presented the dagger and handed it back to him. He looked down at it bemused, unsure whether to accept it or back away farther.
“Go on,” I said. “You’re not going to kill me. Are you?”
He shook his head and apprehensively accepted the dagger.
Nicholae was finally on his feet and stood behind me.
Kafka assessed the relic like it was the first time he’d ever held it. “I thought you conquered yours,” he finally said.
“I did,” I answered. “Whatever you decide to do now, I’m out. I’m not going to live my life in fear. I believe we can find common ground—that we all can. Look at this!” I stepped aside to allow him to see what this rebellion—this feud—has cost. In blood. In lives. In contributors to what could be a better world.
Mom was still kneeling beside Mr. Gordon’s body, her eyes still glossy with tears, her morose expression begging for resolution.
The cracks in the glass ceiling continued to spread like spider webs until one hail-sized piece fell. Then the entire ceiling gave way and rained down like the final breath of the dying storm.
Kafka walked to the railing and peered over. The clouds were dissipating and the Provex City lights were rising from the fog. A few stars blanketed the sky above, more emerging every few seconds. A full moon was climbing between the buildings.
His head hung low, then I saw him hold the dagger out and let it roll from his open palm over the edge of the building.
I walked up beside him, pulled the twin dagger from my belt, and held it out just as he had.
“It wasn’t worth anything anyway,” I said, and let it tumble from my hand.
As the daggers descended on the streets below, they both vanished in midair. I turned my attention to Kafka.
“Are you sure you’re not Zachariah?” Kafka asked.
“I thought you knew.”
“I thought I did, too. Now...I don’t know what to think. This...this is the new beginning.”
“I’m not,” I said and gazed back down at the now visible streets far below. “I’m just me and that’s the only thing I’m sure of anymore.”
“At least you know who you are. You’re a pretty smart kid. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise,” Kafka said and walked away.
I sank down to the ground. Where there had once been one dead body of a childhood bogeyman, a distraught older brother, and a silent girl friend, was now that living bogeyman wading through a sea of the dead and a father and mother mourning over the body of a history teacher who was always there for a son who never quite felt special—and managed to make him feel like he was.
I sat alone and watched everyone else piece together what parts of their lives they had left. Mom and Nicholae found me resigned to my solitude on the far side of the roof and called me over. Sometimes you’re searching for what you already had. Sometimes you just need the reminder that you knew the answer all along.
22
Home
Nicholae carried Mr. Gordon’s body wrapped in white linen through the doorway that led home. I carried Jeremy’s exhumed body wrapped in the same kind of linen. What had been the rebellion’s last camp was now just an empty field. The remaining members of the small group followed us through the door.
We emerged in a clearing high up in the mountains—what I knew as the San Bernardino Mountains and what used to be the Acanombian Mountains—just beyond the outer wall of Lorne Castle.
It was all coming back to me. The castle looked just as it had in my memories disguised as dreams. It loomed atop Hawk Eye Ridge, on the edge of the ridge’s deepest cliff. Glass cubes made up the outer and inner walls, which looked like polished black opals. Seven black glass tow
ers jutted above the thirty-foot outer wall that protected The Den, each with a view of a different end of the world. The west tower gazed upon the Endless Sea, the southeast tower pointed to Mother’s Chasm, and the north tower watched over the Great Waste of Er. All these significant landmarks meant more to me now that I’d seen them from an alternate perspective.
The thick wooden gate was open and the iron portcullis, up. But there were no wolves guarding the gate like I had remembered. I didn’t hear any bustling from the village inside. The grass along the wall was overgrown and ivy reached up the black glass like green flames. The entire place seemed abandoned.
“It’s all ours, for now,” Nicholae said as he hiked toward the open gate. He led us to the unkempt cemetery so we could add our recently deceased to its sacred land.
Nicholae, Erik, and Cassandra sank the bodies into the ground. Isolde created additional white tombstone markers, including one for her mother. Jeremy and Mr. Gordon were buried next to each other.
“This is your home for as long as you want to call it as such,” Nicholae said to the group of mourners gathered around the newly placed tombstones. “Anything in the village is yours to start your lives as you see fit. We have been here for each other and we’ll continue to be here for each other. We don’t have to run, hide, or fight anymore. Now we can live.”
I knelt down before the marker that read Daniel Gordon and placed a folded pair of horn-rimmed glasses at its base.
“Is Kafka going to come here?” I asked.
“Eventually,” Nicholae said. “Time heals all wounds, and we have more time than most. When he’s grown tired of his ivory towers, he’ll come back here, and when that inevitable day comes, we’ll decide what comes next—which may be a lifetime from now, or may be ten. We’re still not limited to the average lifecycle of man.
“Now, I want to visit The Den. I haven’t stepped foot in there in this lifetime. It’s time to turn on the lights and bring this place back to life.”
Archanum Manor Page 25
