The Gathering

by K. E. Ganshert

  Hope for freedom.

  The words of the prophecy come with astounding clarity. I am hope and my grandmother will offer me for her freedom. She didn’t try to kidnap me as a baby to protect me. She tried to kidnap me so she could hand me over. “But you were fighting. The night I found you, you were fighting them.”

  “It was a construction.”

  “There were rumors. About a powerful Fighter.”

  “He spread them. He made sure they would get to you. We knew it was only a matter of time until you found me.” She finishes binding my ankles and comes around to look at me, her eyes flooding with sorrow. It’s the same sorrow I saw before I wrapped my arm around her shoulder while she wept. “This is the only way. I don’t have any choice.”

  “There is always a choice.”

  “You don’t understand what I’ve been through. You don’t understand what I’ve done.” The shaking in her hands grows worse—great seismic waves. “It’s too late now. I can’t take it back. It’s too late.”

  I look at the gun in her hands.

  Jillian’s gun.

  The little warmth that remains in my face trickles away. Dread fills every cell of my body. Every atom. “How did you get that gun?”

  “It doesn’t matter. This will all be over soon. He promised it would be over.”

  “Who?” The word explodes from my mouth. So loud my grandmother jabs the weapon between my eyes, the madness in her own full throttle. But I keep going. Let her shoot me. “Scarface? Is that who you’re going to trust?”

  “Shut up!” She cocks the trigger.

  I don’t care. I look straight into her madness and dare her to shoot. But she doesn’t. I can see in her eyes that she won’t pull that trigger. Not on me.

  Behind her, Luka stirs.

  Wake up, Luka, please. Wake up!

  Slowly, he lifts his head. His eyes flutter open, take in what’s happening, and flood with panic. He’s bound, and a madwoman has a gun pressed against my forehead.

  “Why don’t you just get it over with?” I ask.

  At my words, Luka jerks wildly against his restraints.

  My grandmother spins around.

  He glares up at her, his nostrils flaring, his chest heaving.

  I twist my hands furiously, desperate to loosen the rope.

  “I’m not going to kill her,” she says. “I don’t want to kill anybody. There’s no need for you to die. Not if Teresa gives me her cooperation.” She turns back to me.

  I stop moving.

  Luka starts, working silently and frantically to free himself.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do.” She walks to my nightstand and picks up one of the ear buds next to the dream phone. “You and I will use these to put us to sleep. If you do not meet me right away, I will startle awake and shoot Luka in the head.”

  My muscles seize. Every single one.

  “Scarface will be waiting for us. You will hand yourself over willingly. I will startle myself awake and leave. You have my word that no harm will come to Luka, or any more of your friends.”

  Any more.

  “Do you understand?”

  My thoughts spin into chaos. If I try to revolt, if I try to take my grandmother out, there’s no way I will be able to get to her before she startles herself awake and follows through on her promise. I could startle myself awake, too, but I’m tied to this chair. And Luka can do nothing. He can’t even shout for help.

  She digs the gun against Luka’s temple. “Do. You. Understand?”

  Wincing, he stares at me, begging me with his eyes not to agree. I’ve never seen him look more desperate.

  But I nod—quick and fast—because what else can I do?

  And then it happens.

  A knock on the door—a glorious, wonderful knock!

  “Xena?” Another knock. “You okay in there?”

  My grandmother puts her finger to her lips. Her eyes wide. Her face deranged. She digs the gun harder into Luka’s temple. “Tell him you are fine,” she hisses.

  “I—I’m fine, Link.” But my voice trembles. I can’t help it. All I can see, all I can think about, is that gun and my grandmother’s shaking hands and her finger curled around the trigger and how in less than a millisecond, Luka could be gone.

  “Why did you leave the dream?” Link asks.

  My grandmother’s trigger finger twitches.

  “I—I don’t know! I just woke up. I promise I’m fine!”

  There’s a pause, and then like a nightmare, the door handle turns. “Why’s your door locked?”

  She keeps the gun pointed at Luka and creeps toward the door.

  My panic grows.

  Link is unarmed and unsuspecting on the other side. I twist my wrists harder, faster, my heart galloping inside my chest. Frantic. Desperate. Crazed.

  She unlocks the door and ducks into shadow beside Luka.

  I yank and pull and jerk against the rope until one hand wiggles free.

  The handle turns.

  The door opens.

  Link stands on the other side, his eyes widening.

  No, no, no!

  My grandmother raises the gun, but Luka kicks her. Somehow, he managed to free his legs. She lurches. The gun clatters to the floor and slides forward. I dive toward it, taking the chair with me.

  My hands find cold metal. I clamp onto it, rise up to my knees.

  My grandmother claws around on the floor, pulling herself up to standing. She stops when she sees the gun in my hand. Her mouth opens, but I don’t give her a chance to form words. I point the gun and pull the trigger.

  The blast is deafening.

  My eardrums ring—a high-pitched, monotone scream.

  My grandmother clutches her chest and looks down. When she takes her hands away, red stains her palms. A circle of deep crimson spreads across the front of her shirt. She looks up at me with my father’s eyes. And then she collapses to her knees and slumps over on the floor.

  Her eyes—his eyes—go glossy and dark.

  *

  My hands turn into my grandmother’s. They won’t stop shaking. The more I try to make them stop, the worse it gets.

  The ringing grows louder. It has turned into a lament that drowns out all other sound. I cannot hear Vivian or Marcus or Cressida or Geoffrey as they run into the room asking questions. I cannot hear Luka, as he gently pries my fingers from the metal, unties my ankles from the chair, and whispers soundless words into my ear.

  All I can hear is the gunshot.

  Her body crumpling.

  My ears ringing.

  The shaking in my hands ripples into my arms. It moves all the way through my body until my teeth chatter so violently, I’m barely able to get the name out. “Jillian.”

  Everyone stops and looks around, taking note of her absence. The keeper of the gun is the only one missing from the scene.

  Luka sets the weapon carefully on the ground. “Can somebody check on her?”

  Vivian leaves. Her husband follows.

  Luka holds me, as if his strong arms might be able to still the shaking. As if his warmth might be able to chase away the coldness spreading through me like the dark crimson circle that spread on my grandmother’s chest. But it doesn’t matter how tight he holds on. Luka can’t undo what happened.

  She betrayed me and I killed her.

  My own flesh and blood.

  My father’s mother.

  From the very beginning, I was nothing more to her than a ticket to freedom. When she tried kidnapping me as a baby. When Luka and I found her in Shady Wood and she called me “the key.” When I almost lost him to save her. I was only ever a means to an end. I was nothing more to her than a peace offering, a bargaining chip. And yet, I invited her here. I didn’t even think to question it. I handed her our address.

  And now …

  Vivian returns. She stands in the doorway, her face an odd color, as though a familiar photograph has gone from glossy to matte. “I’m sorry. Your friend Jillian is
dead.”

  Everything goes numb.

  Link slides onto the seat where Luka was tied.

  I move to the woman on the floor and remove the leather straps from her wrists. The symbol is there, etched on her skin underneath.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Aftermath

  I pore over the journals, turning each page with manic fingers. I should have known. I should have seen. If I would have been paying attention, I could have prevented it. Instead, I let relief blind me. I’d been so desperate to lock arms with another powerful Fighter, to have a piece of my family back, to redeem the mess-of-a-mission that was Shady Wood, that I failed to see what was right in front of my face.

  Someone touches my hip.

  I jump.

  It’s Luka. He takes a step back and holds up his hands, reminding me of the way I treated her—my grandmother. Like any sudden movement would chase her away.

  His attention flicks to the notebook in my hand. “What are you doing?”

  I open the journal wide, hold it in the air, and recite the words from memory. “A beacon will come before … Evil will rise up to destroy her. If an offering is made, she will give hope for freedom.”

  Jillian, dead.

  The gun, vibrating between my palms.

  A circle of blood, spreading like a bull’s eye.

  The mark on her wrist.

  “The prophecy was talking about the beacon, not the One. Evil rose up to destroy my grandmother. I was the offering. Hope for freedom. How did we not see it?”

  And yet I know exactly how.

  I was too busy ignoring the prophecy to embrace the prophecy. I didn’t want that kind of pressure. I didn’t want to make Luka worry anymore than he already was. I didn’t want to believe. And because of that, Jillian was stabbed to death. My grandmother wasn’t too deranged to realize that a gunshot would have woken up the whole house. She’d stolen a knife from the kitchen. I close my eyes, wishing I could shut my brain off. Wishing I could erase the images.

  Clive, dropping his cloak.

  The mark on my grandmother’s wrist.

  Gabe, dead.

  Jillian, dead.

  “Both of them were betrayers. I brought us on a mission to rescue the bad guys.”

  He touches my arm, but I pull away. I don’t want to be touched.

  I grab another journal and continue my search. For what, I’m not sure. It’s a desperate scramble. A clawing for information. Maybe if I learn enough, I can prevent more deaths. Protect the people I love instead of endangering them. Maybe if I read enough, I can escape the black thundercloud of thoughts swirling overhead, threatening to unleash.

  My grandmother, dead.

  The mark on her wrist.

  “How do you even get the symbol? Has Cormack been hijacked or something?”

  The cloud breaks open and the terrible, horrible thing I’ve been trying to avoid pours out like acidic rain. I lifted the gun and I pulled the trigger and I took her life. “What if she was hijacked? What if she was hijacked and I killed her? What if she was innocent?”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Listen to me. What happened was not your fault.”

  “Yes, it was.” I’m the one who insisted we break her out of Shady Wood, never mind what Cap thought about it. I’m the one who went looking for the Fighter, despite Cap’s orders to leave it alone. I’m the one who invited her here. It was all me. Just me. Only me.

  “Tess …”

  “I can’t trust anyone.” Myself, included. Myself, most of all. I’m always wrong. I trust the wrong people. I accuse the wrong people. “It’s like I have no idea which way is up. Nothing feels safe anymore.”

  Luka grabs my hand firmly and spins me around. He places my palm against his chest and covers my hand with his. “I’m up, Tess. I’m safe. I will help you get through this.”

  There’s a faint bruise on his temple. A reminder that I could have easily lost him, too. Images of what-could-have-been grind what’s left of my sanity to pulp. I remove my hand from his heartbeat, but Luka holds my chin so that I can’t look away. My turmoil seems to strengthen him. Bring him back to life. It’s like he only wants me when he’s able to put me back together again. The dark turn of my thoughts has me squeezing my eyes shut. Retreating.

  “Tess, look at me. I’m not going to let you drown.”

  “You can’t save me. You can’t even help me.”

  My words wound. I can see the pain flicker in his eyes, even as he hurries to cover it. Maybe if I inflict enough, he’ll go away and the next person dead won’t be him. Maybe I should do what I should have done forever ago, what I promised myself I would do the day I eavesdropped on his parents telling him to stay away from me. But the thought steals what’s left of my breath. “Please, Luka, just leave me alone.”

  “Tess …”

  “I just—I need some space.” I pull his hand away and turn around, back toward the journals.

  There’s a pause.

  My heart beats into the silence as I wait for him to decide. A piece of it breaks at the sound of his receding footsteps. I’m all alone in the library, with nothing to keep me company but dark thoughts and a growing obsession. I have no idea how much time passes, how many journals I frantically skim before someone joins me.

  When I look, it’s not Luka. It’s Link.

  He sits with his feet propped up on the table, twisting his Rubik’s Cube. “You know Williams is worried when he sends me to check on you.”

  I sink into Cressida’s desk chair and cradle my head in my hands.

  “He told me that you think your grandmother was hijacked.”

  “She could’ve been.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  I look up. Link says it so matter-of-factly.

  He sets his feet on the ground. “Your grandmother went through a whole lot of trouble to turn you over to this guy—Scarface. Why is that?”

  “She thought he’d leave her alone if she handed me over.”

  “Exactly.”

  My exhausted brain ties into knots. Link’s going to have to spell this one out for me.

  “Hijackers don’t act out of self-preservation. Or desperation. If she was being hijacked, she wouldn’t have bothered turning you in for her freedom. Her freedom wouldn’t have mattered. She would have waited for the opportune moment and killed you on the spot.”

  I let his words sink in. They make sense. A lot of sense. And yet, they don’t bring the relief I long for. Jillian is still dead. And my grandmother was a betrayer. I resume my head-cradling and stare at the floor. My throat feels raw—like I’ve been screaming for hours, only I’ve hardly spoken all day. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  I give him a wry look.

  He sets his cube on the table. He’s being strong for me, but I don’t miss the pinched look in his eyes. He and Jillian were good friends. “Come on, Xena. You have nothing to apologize for. If Jilly-Bean were here right now, she’d say the same thing.”

  Tears prick my eyes.

  “Jillian is dead because of your grandmother. Not because of you.”

  “But I—”

  “Invited her. So what? We all let her stay. Don’t play the blame game. Nothing good comes of it. Trust me, I speak from experience.” He crosses the stone floor and leans against Cressida’s desk, releases a long sigh and scrubs his face. “My father wasn’t a very nice guy. He used to hit me. A lot.”

  His confession comes like a glass of ice water to the face.

  “I never knew what would set him off, you know? There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. He could be in a perfectly fine mood one second, laughing even. I’d say something innocent, and the next second, wham.” He smacks his fist against his palm. “I’d be flat on the floor, my ears ringing.”

  I picture a ginger-haired little boy, beaten and bruised, and bile burns a path up my esophagus.

  “I spent years and years trying t
o figure out what I was doing wrong. Trying to figure out what I could change so he’d stop hitting me. It took a solid twelve months of being free from him, away from that dysfunction, before I realized I didn’t do anything to make him hit me. It was his fault; not mine. Just like Jillian’s death was your grandmother’s fault; not yours.”

  A tear tumbles down my cheek.

  “I know what it’s like to be betrayed by someone who’s supposed to love you. I know what it’s like when nothing feels safe. I know what it’s like when trust feels impossible. But I also know that if we give into those feelings, if we start doubting every move we make or let ourselves live in isolation, then Xena …” Link looks deep into my eyes. They’re as serious and as certain as I’ve ever seen them. “The enemy has already won. We might as well surrender right now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Burial

  Beyond the patch of woods, the Rivard family property has a small burial plot. This is where we lay Jillian to rest. All of us gather around her grave to say goodbye.

  The muggy air twists strands of hair around my face as Link gives an impromptu eulogy. He speaks like he’s talking to her—his friend, Jilly-Bean. And as he does, vignettes play through my memory like moving images on a film reel. The agile way she hopped over the sofa and smiled at me that first night in the hub. The quickness with which she volunteered to go with me to New Orleans. The way she handled the gun in the alley after we escaped Agent Bledsoe. How quickly she forgave me after I accused her of betrayal. The smile we shared when she said that someday, she’d have a lifetime worth of crazy stories to share with her family.

  Only now, she won’t be able to share them. Death is such an odd thing, the way it happens in the middle of life. Yesterday, Jillian was here, all excited over our recent discovery regarding the list. And today … she’s not. Today, she’s with her father, wherever that is.

  When Link finishes, we take turns dumping a shovelful of dirt into her grave. The hole becomes a small mound, one I stand by long after everyone else has gone, alone with the humidity and the bugs.