The Gathering

by K. E. Ganshert

  Luka sets his hands on the ground and tries to push himself up.

  A Grinch-like smile pulls up the corners of the man’s lips, turning his white scars into the shape of crescent moons. “I knew you would come. Didn’t I know she would come, Mr. Williams? Isn’t love so ridiculously irrational?”

  “Please, Tess,” Luka begs. “Startle.”

  “Oh no, Tess! Please, don’t startle. Come closer instead and give Mr. Williams the kiss he’s been fancying. The kiss he can’t stop thinking about.” Scarface claps his hands together and laughs. A cackle so delighted and amused it raises every hair on my body. “Your dear lover is a parched man and your lips are like water. Won’t you come closer and let him drink?”

  Luka’s shoulder muscles tremble as he pushes himself a little higher. “No, Tess.”

  “Yes, Tess. Now is your chance. There’s only two of us.” Scarface lifts his hand to himself and the guard. “Surely a powerful Fighter like you can handle the two of us.”

  Blood pounds in my ears. I move to take a step, but Cap raises his hand in a sharp, attention-getting motion. His steely eyes command me to wait. To be smarter.

  “No kiss for Mr. Williams? Pity. And here I was hoping to watch the romantic reunion.” He shrugs, like it’s my loss. “Tell me, how is everyone? Good? Are you sure? It’s hard to know who to trust these days, don’t you think?”

  He’s baiting me with Claire, but it won’t work. I never trusted her to begin with.

  The four of us begin moving forward again. Clive stays behind, his cloak extending along with us as we close in.

  “Lucky for me, you’re not the only one trying to reunite with a dear loved one.” Scarface’s eyes glitter, and then narrow into calculated slits. “You know the deal.”

  The words have me stutter stepping.

  What deal?

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have a choice.”

  The hollow voice comes from behind me. I turn around and watch in horror as Clive takes a step back and drops his cloak. The darkened chamber fills with white-eyed guards. Twenty at least. And we are completely visible. One hundred percent exposed.

  With his eyes never leaving mine, black mist curls from Scarface’s fingertips. He aims it at Luka, but it doesn’t wrap around him this time. It seeps inside of him. He arches up violently, almost completely off the ground, and screams. His body bends like I’ve never seen a body bend. Like his spine has snapped in two.

  No! I run toward him, anger and hatred morphing into pure adrenaline. It courses through my veins as I take four guards out at once. In the periphery of my vision, Cap and Sticks fight off three at a time. Gabe throws a shield that scatters five. Luka continues to twist and scream as more guards appear. Like Shady Wood, they come out of nowhere, filling the entire chamber.

  Sticks falls and black mist binds him.

  No.

  I do a running kick that throws two against the wall.

  Six surround Cap and take him down.

  No!

  Fury propels me forward as Scarface drops back like a coward, flashes me a sickening smile, and disappears. Luka falls to the ground. I punch and kick and strike. But there are too many. We’re going to lose. There’s no way we can win. No hope of victory. All I want now is to reach Luka one last time. Touch him one last time. I strike one of the guards with the heel of my palm. Sweep the legs of another.

  “Tess!” Gabe yells.

  Our attention collides and holds through the chaos. His lips pull into a thin, resolved line. And then he throws another shield, bright and blinding. Only he doesn’t throw it at our enemy. He throws it at me. It barrels forward like a rolling wave of billowing heat.

  I don’t have time to understand. I don’t have time to process. All I can do is brace for the impact. But no amount of bracing can prepare me for what happens next.

  The shield does not slam against me. It slams inside of me. Like an atomic bomb of explosive power, so hot and so big I will rupture into a million fragmented pieces if it remains. On instinct, my body convulses and I hurl the power out.

  There’s a brilliant flash of light. So piercing, so overwhelming, there’s nothing but white. It charges through the chamber with a sonic boom, engulfing everything in its path. And when it’s gone, so is the enemy. None remain. Cap and Sticks are no longer bound.

  I don’t wait around to see what will happen next.

  I sprint forward and dive at Luka’s crumpled body. I grab onto his neck and scream at everyone to startle.

  Chapter Eight

  An Eternity

  I sit up straight in the chair. I don’t wait for anyone else to come to consciousness. I rip the probes off my chest and my temple. I fling open the door and tear down the hallway. I don’t stop until I reach the antechamber that leads to the boys’ corridor.

  There’s nothing but dark and silence.

  My heart booms great giant beats that throb against my eardrums. I have a whole new understanding of the phrase—frozen in fear. Because that’s me. I want to sprint ahead, and I want to sprint away. But I can’t do either. I can do nothing but stand with trembling knees, wondering why the hallway is still dark. Why isn’t Luka coming out of his room? Fear terrorizes me. So does Cap’s warning.

  There are bound to be ramifications.

  I can see it—the black mist oozing inside of him. Luka’s body snapping. Were we too late? Scarface thought he had me. So why wouldn’t he destroy him? The bait had served its purpose. My booming heart booms harder.

  And then …

  A latch clicks.

  The door to Luka’s room slowly opens. He steps into the hallway. Luka, his dark hair sticking up in every direction. Luka, awake. Luka, alive.

  His eyes meet mine.

  I stand there, unable to move. Unable to breathe.

  He takes a step toward me, then sets his hand against the wall, as if he needs the support. The invisible chains of fear holding me in place fall away. I run and throw myself into his arms. He lets out a soft oomph as I collide against his chest. His arms slide around my waist. Mine wrap around his neck. He’s okay. Luka’s okay. I hold on tight, repeating the two words over and over and over again. Luka’s okay. Luka’s okay. I can’t get over them. I will never get over them.

  “You could have been killed.” His lips are hot against my ear. A few days worth of scruff scratch against my skin. “If I were a better Keeper, I’d be livid.”

  My entire body thrums to life.

  His hands span the width of my ribcage, and in a moment of total relief and passion, he pushes me against the wall and crushes my lips with his. I’m pinned in the best possible way. I can’t get enough of him. I will never, ever be able to get enough of him.

  “I thought I lost you,” I murmur between kisses.

  “Only for awhile.”

  “It felt like an eternity.”

  Luka slides his fingers into my hair and presses his forehead against mine—his eyes as intense as the raging sea. He kisses me again, so achingly soft I melt against him. I want to stay here forever, kissing Luka. I don’t want to move forward, into the unknown. I definitely don’t want to move back, into the hell that was yesterday. But fragmented bits of information intrude on my euphoria, sneaking into the crevices of my mind like pesky rodents.

  Clive, apologizing.

  Clive, dropping the cloak.

  We risked everything to rescue him from Shady Wood. He was inside Leela’s car. We invited him into the hub. He acted like he was on our side. I trusted him. I thanked him. And then he handed us over to the enemy on a silver platter.

  Heat licks up my chest. Because of him, Non almost became a widow. The hub almost lost its leader. Jillian and Link and Rosie and all the rest would have been left to deal with the fallout. All of it would have happened, too, if not for Gabe and the mysterious shield he threw at me. What was that? And why are Luka and I still alone? Doesn’t anyone care that we succeeded? That Luka’s back and well with no ramifications that I can see?
/>   “I don’t understand what happened,” I say.

  “Neither do I.”

  Footsteps approach.

  Luka and I step apart.

  Jillian walks toward us, her mousy brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her clothes as worn and faded as everyone else’s. She gives Luka a wobbly smile. “It’s good to see you up.”

  He pushes his fingers through his hair. “It’s good to be up.”

  She bites her lip.

  A cold feeling slinks between my shoulder blades. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Gabe.” Tears pool in her eyes. “He’s dead.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Devouring

  I’m no stranger to death.

  I saw it claim a doctor and a nurse outside a fetal modification clinic in a fiery explosion. I watched it persuade a desperate man to stick the barrel of a gun inside his mouth and pull the trigger. I couldn’t stop it from claiming a catatonic woman behind a steering wheel as fumes of exhaust gathered in her garage. I witnessed its merciless appetite as it threw up a carnage of bodies on a stretch of California highway.

  But in the light of day, with my skin burning beneath scratching fingers, death is an entirely different beast. In the light of day, I’ve only stared it in the face twice. First with Dr. Roth, hanging from a noose at the end of his hallway. Now Gabe, lying in a chair inside the training room. His eyes are closed. His frozen lips slightly upturned, as if he welcomed death like an old friend. Link told me once that when Gabe’s anima died, Gabe died in a way, too. Now he’s dead in every way. I don’t understand how.

  Jillian sniffs. “I was watching the monitors when his vitals flatlined. There was no warning or anything. One second he was fine, and the next …”

  With glazed-over eyes, Luka stares down at Gabe’s still form.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” My question escapes without inflection. Today has encompassed too many emotions. The effect has left me wrung dry. I know I should feel sad about this loss, responsible for this loss, but all I feel apart from numbness is relief that the one lying dead in the hub is not Luka.

  “I don’t know.” Jillian’s lip trembles. “Maybe if Link had been in charge instead of me, he would have noticed something. Maybe Gabe wouldn’t be dead.”

  I squeeze Jillian’s hand. “This is not your fault.”

  She wipes her eyes. “After you left, Cap yelled at Sticks and Jose to grab Clive and then he ordered all of us out.”

  A slow-rising anger works its way through the numbness. After everything we did for him, after everything we risked for him—how could he? “Do you know where they took him?”

  “The conference room.”

  I march into the hallway, leaving Jillian and Luka behind. I pass the greenhouse, where Anna hums softly to herself. I don’t stop until I reach the end of the adult dormitory corridor. A thin strip of light shines beneath the closed door of the makeshift conference room. Before I can knock, the door flies open and Cap rolls out, his gray stubble scruffier than I’ve ever seen. Deep lines bracket his eyes as he looks past me. “Where’s Luka?”

  “With Gabe.” Who’s dead somehow. “What happened to him? Why did he die?”

  “Kataphagon.”

  “What?”

  Cap rubs his scraggly cheeks, then pulls his face long with a sigh. “Kataphagon. It’s a Hebrew word that means the devouring. The contemporary name for it is transurgence.”

  I shift my weight from one leg to the other, ready for him to finish his mini lesson in etymology and move on to the information I want—why did Kataphagon kill Gabe? And why does the strange word make my skin prickle with foreboding?

  “That wasn’t a shield Gabe threw. It was his life. It’s something only Keepers can do.”

  My foreboding turns to dread. It sinks like an icy rock into the pit of my stomach.

  “Once the Fighter absorbs it, their power is magnified. How much depends on the strength of the Keeper.”

  As if remembering the sensation, the tendons in my fingers flex. It was like a thousand suns had entered my body. As soon as I threw it out, it devoured the guards. It devoured Gabe, too. “Did Gabe know he would die?”

  “Yes.”

  My mouth turns acidic. “So he basically committed suicide.”

  “Mori est Vivire. To die is to live. He didn’t take his life, Tess. He gave it. And because of that, you’re here. Because of that, Luka is here. To a Keeper, it’s the most honorable way to go.”

  I press my lips together to keep my rolling stomach from staging a revolt. Did Gabe teach Luka about transurgence? I push the question away, scrambling about for something else to focus on. I just got Luka back. I can’t think about losing him again. “The man with the scars said there were other ways of getting to me. I thought he was talking about Claire. But He was talking about Clive, wasn’t he?”

  “It would appear so.”

  “Do you think he got to anyone else?”

  “I don’t know.” Cap sets his hands over the wheels of his chair and pushes himself forward. “But I have the immense pleasure of finding out.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What I should have done after Claire tripped you.” He rolls down the hallway. “Interrogate every member of my team.”

  *

  Clive sits in a chair inside the small room, his wrists and ankles bound by rope. He doesn’t fight against his restraints. He doesn’t even lift his head to see who walks inside the makeshift jail cell. The sight of him obliterates the numbness I felt while staring at Gabe.

  I picture Clive, the way he was the first time Link and I jumped into his medicated dream—standing at attention, alert and ready. A soldier prepared for battle. Turns out, he was preparing to battle for them. I led us on a mission to rescue the enemy. And because of that, Luka was tortured, I brought a betrayer into our midst, and Gabe is dead.

  Contempt digs into my shoulders. “We risked everything for you, and you stabbed us in the back.”

  I wait for a response. Something—anything. But he doesn’t react at all, and the longer the silence stretches, the deeper the contempt digs. I want to tear him apart. I want to make him bleed with regret over what he’s done. I want Gabe’s death to be his fault, not mine. “If not for us, you’d be locked up in Shady Wood. Or maybe you’d be dead like my grandmother.”

  He lifts his chin. His expression isn’t indifferent, or resentful, or calculating. It’s filled with desperation, an emotion I mistook for eagerness. After all the enemy had stolen from him, I assumed he was ready to fight back. “You know what it’s like,” he says.

  I narrow my eyes. “What what’s like?”

  “Being separated from someone you love.”

  The sparse details of his file wiggle into place. I studied it enough to have it memorized. Divorced with two kids and no visitation rights. “You mean your sons?”

  “My children. My wife. She put a restraining order on me. All because of my gifting.” He spits the word like it’s something foul. “It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. It took everything from me.”

  “And handing us over would get it all back?”

  “We made a deal, and he made me a promise.”

  “Who—the man with the scars? He doesn’t make promises. He spins lies. He’s incapable of telling the truth.” I shake my head, disgust blistering beneath my skin. “You’re not a soldier. You’re a coward. You’re a traitor.”

  “You would do the same thing.”

  The accusation burns. “I would never do what you did.”

  Clive lifts his chin higher and looks me directly in the eye. “You can make me into a villain if it makes you feel better. Go right ahead. Think what you want to think. But at the end of the day, I know who I am.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “A husband and a father, willing to do whatever it takes to get my family back.”

  “That’s the difference. I wouldn’t do whatever it takes.”

  He ra
ises his eyebrows, as if calling my bluff.

  I hate how one simple gesture can infuse me with such doubt. I convinced Cap to let us stay here, in a compromised location, even though I didn’t believe a word Claire spoke in her dream. I had no problem putting everyone in jeopardy to rescue Luka. My conscience never tinged. There wasn’t even a prick.

  Chapter Ten

  Weapon of Choice

  Jillian moves her bishop three diagonal spaces left.

  I study the board haphazardly, my mind spinning in too many directions. Luka alive. Gabe and my grandmother dead. Clive’s betrayal. His accusation. Claire out there, knowing our names and location. Scarface torturing Luka to get to me. Transurgence.

  Off in the corner, Declan and Jose play foosball. Bass and Rosie kick a Hacky Sack. Ashley and Danielle sit together on one of the couches, whispering behind their hands, and Ellen reads A Midsummer Night’s Dream in her favorite armchair.

  By all accounts, it looks like a normal evening. Everyone hanging out after dinner, happy that classes and training are done for the day. Someone would have to look closer to notice the current of tension pulsating through the room. It manifests itself in the tense set of Declan and Jose’s shoulders, Rosie’s restlessness, the way Ellen keeps peeking over the pages of her book toward the spot by the door where Gabe usually stands.

  On the television, a news anchor drones on about a new immigration law and its implications for the country. Jillian watches with her bottom lip tucked between her teeth. I move a pawn forward. She pushes her knuckles against the floor and sits up on her knees. “Don’t you think it’s odd?”

  “What?”

  “This.” She motions to the TV. “One second Cormack’s talking about cleaning up the streets and the next she’s talking about taking more people in. She’s speaking out of both sides of her mouth, but nobody ever calls her on it. I mean, she’s the president. If there’s one thing our country’s any good at, it’s nitpicking our leader.”