The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  My necklace grows almost unbearably hot against my throat, like it’s burning through my flesh. Dubu is so strong that he holds me by my neck as though I were weightless, a feather. I twist and struggle in his inhuman grip, but it’s no use.

  Aidan breaks away from the circle and rushes toward us. “Let… her… go!”

  “Dubu, no!” Helena screams. “Please. She is my daughter too!”

  “Hello, my beloved,” Dubu says, squeezing my neck a little tighter. “I know this is what you want too, deep inside.”

  “No! Not anymore!”

  Lucio also starts to break away from the circle, but a new onslaught of demons comes after him and the other luiseach. He throws me a desperate look as he tries to fend them off.

  Aidan’s eyes, full of fire, lock onto Dubu’s. “It’s me you want. Let her go. This is about you and me.”

  “Oh, Aidan.” Dubu laughs. “You do continue to amuse. You are as ignorant as you are arrogant. This isn’t just about you and me. I mean, yes, terminating your daughter is—what do they call it?—icing on the cake. A delightful sideshow for the entertainment of all. And a suitable judgment for your own terrible crime a century ago. But first and foremost this is about the Great Reckoning. The pentagram spell has been completed in accordance with the prophecy. Right now in Hokkaido, Rapa Nui, the Cape York Peninsula, and the Chukchi Peninsula, the earth is bursting open and releasing my dark servants into the air, the same as here. It is the apocalypse. The end of the world. When this day is done, millions will be dead… and the luiseach will be no more.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Aidan closes his eyes and lifts his hand. But Dubu does something—I don’t know what, but I feel a terrible burst of energy emanating from his body—and Aidan flies backward.

  Helena’s face twitches angrily, and then she too lifts a hand in Dubu’s direction.

  “Don’t, beloved. Do not test me,” Dubu says to her.

  Helena disregards Dubu’s warning and continues to attack. The two of them lock horns in a fevered exchange of energy. Aidan struggles to his feet and joins Helena.

  As the three of them fight, I gasp and struggle to breathe. I have to do something, anything, now to free myself. But what?

  A flash of hot pink emerges from the smoke.

  Victoria is carrying something. Oh my gosh, it’s my luiseach knife. Victoria was the one who gave it to me in the beginning when she told me about my luiseach heritage; there are only five in existence.

  Did she find it near Zalea’s body?

  She moves quietly toward Dubu, who’s still battling Helena and Aidan. Xerxes, Giovanni, Mikhail, Aura, and Lucio continue to fight off the ever-increasing demons around them. No one seems to notice Victoria’s presence but me.

  Is she attempting to sneak up on Dubu and stab him, distract him, weaken him temporarily?

  She catches my eye and puts her fingers to her lips, signaling me not to give her away.

  I shake my head and mouth: Don’t.

  Victoria smiles sadly and mouths back: This is for Anna.

  I shake my head again, but she isn’t looking at me anymore. She tiptoes up to Dubu from behind and lifts the knife in the air.

  Without even turning around, Dubu lets go of me and raises his free hand behind him. The knife clatters to the floor a few feet from where I land as Victoria screams and goes flying through the air.

  “No!” I cry out.

  She slams against a wall so hard that I can hear her spine shatter.

  Her broken body slumps to the floor.

  “Victoria!” I shout.

  Tears pouring down my face, I rise to my knees and reach for my knife. Aidan glances at me and then at Victoria. His expression is furious and also tormented as he white-knuckles his hand into a tight fist and lets go, trying to increase the force of his attack against Dubu.

  I know my father is trying to figure out how to save the world and me at the same time.

  But he can’t.

  I won’t let him.

  The time has come for me to step up, to assume the burden.

  I close my eyes, and as I do, I mourn Victoria and Zalea and pray for everyone I love—Nolan, Lucio, Aidan, even Helena. And Mom… where is she? Is she safe at home, or has the demon onslaught already spread throughout Ridgemont?

  I compose a special message for Nolan and hope his mind-reading abilities are still operational. Nolan, I love you. For always. No matter what happens.

  I pray for Aura and send her a wave of compassion for the loss of her daughter.

  And Ashley… where is she? Is it too late for her? I pray Lucio or Aidan or one of the other luiseach will be able to exorcise the demon in time when this is all over.

  Because I won’t be there to do it myself.

  The cold steel of my knife twitches in my hand. I hold it up and see Zalea’s blood shining against the blade. More tears fill my eyes—and then rage.

  My father was right. I am stubborn and determined, like my birth mother.

  Aidan knows what I’m going to do. “Sunshine, no!”

  Just before I lift the knife in the air, something explodes outside the gym. A wall comes crashing down, and soldiers leap over the broken cement blocks and swarm into the gym.

  Hundreds of soldiers.

  Luiseach soldiers.

  They’ve come from around the world to join us in the fight, to exorcise the demons, to save humanity.

  A familiar figure in ladybug and sunflower scrubs rushes through the collapsed wall just behind the luiseach soldiers.

  Somehow, through the smoke and fire, her gaze zeroes in on me. She begins running toward me, leaping over rubble and fallen bodies like an Olympic hurdler.

  Which makes this so much easier and also so much harder.

  I say another prayer and send Mom love, infinite love.

  And point my luiseach knife at my chest.

  And end my life.

  The world explodes in a tidal wave of energy.

  This Is Not How It Was Supposed to Happen

  This is not how it was supposed to happen.

  It was supposed to be Aidan and me here in the invisible realm, in our long-awaited duel to the death. His death.

  There was a very precise order.

  First he was supposed to watch me terminate his daughter while he stood by helplessly, revealing himself in front of my beloved Helena to be the pathetic weakling that he truly is.

  And then he was supposed to suffer as I did, weep as I did, boil in torment as I did when he took my first son from me a century ago.

  Yes, that was the order of things.

  How did it go awry?

  How did the girl know about the ritual? Surely he would not have told her?

  But it does not matter. I will easily terminate her in this realm. She is young, so young, and lacks experience. And wisdom. And strength.

  She may be special, but she is no match for a Markon.

  When I am done with her I will turn my attention back to the earthly realm and finish what I started with him.

  And undo the damage she caused just now with that unexpected energy wave.

  And bring my dark servants back to life.

  Battlefield conditions. One must be flexible when it comes to an apocalypse.

  CHAPTER 44

  The End of the End

  Did I die?

  My physical self is gone. The Sunshine Griffith with her frizzball and milky green cat eyes and super-dork style is no more, probably lying on the floor of the Ridgemont High gym with a gaping chest wound and no heartbeat.

  Are they all mourning for me? Or are they too busy trying to destroy Dubu and his demon army?

  Except…

  My mind, my consciousness, whatever I am now, spins around like a disco ball, casting flecks of light that scatter and flutter around and reintegrate in a new pattern.

  I remember.

  Something I hadn’t foreseen, something no one had foreseen.

  At th
e very moment I died my body released a massive wave of energy. The same wave of energy that I supposedly released when I was born.

  I understand it now. Aidan and Helena were wrong—the entire luiseach community was wrong. When I came into the world at 7:12 P.M. Central Standard Time on August 14, my body took in that existing universal energy, the energy that sustained all luiseach, into itself. Which is a big part of the reason why I became a kind of super-luiseach, a luiseach like no other, with unprecedented luiseach superpowers.

  That energy was what had sustained the luiseach race for many millennia—and at that moment I sucked it all in like a paranormal vacuum cleaner. Unwittingly and accidentally borrowed it, hoarded it. For sixteen long years.

  Now it’s back in the universe where it belongs.

  At the moment I died and the energy was released, the demons everywhere began to vanish slowly, gradually, one by one.

  Including Dubu.

  Which means he may be in the spiritual plane with me, right now, waiting to duel to the end. Guera spirito. Aidan’s burden. Now mine.

  But how does this work? How do I fight Dubu when I have no body?

  I should have asked my father for more details before I committed to this path.

  Maybe this was all for naught.

  Or maybe…

  A cold wind or something that feels like cold swirls around this entity that I’ve become. The cold sensation then morphs into colors—gray, blue, then black. Then the colors morph into waves of emotion. Terror, anger.

  Dubu is here.

  I don’t know how to do this.

  Of course I know how to do this.

  I concentrate, concentrate. A buzzy sort of electricity, a life force, courses through this new me.

  There he is.

  I can’t see him, but I can see him. And then, without warning, he comes at me full force, unrelenting, trying to crush me out of existence. No mercy.

  I’m in a dark room, and the walls are closing in, pushing against me.

  I don’t know how I’m pushing back or what is unfolding here… I’m driven by pure instinct. Whenever that was—time feels irrelevant now. Dubu crushes back, and for I’m not sure how long, perhaps an eternity, we’re caught in an impasse: steel against steel, immovable mountain against immovable mountain.

  The image of his face and then his body appears, suspended in pure white ether.

  Is this an illusion? Or a trick?

  No, it’s neither. I’m growing more powerful, able to combine past sensory memories with the ethereal, nonlinear, nonspatial present.

  “You are brave but foolish, just like your father.”

  Ah, I can hear him too.

  “It is time for you to let go. Deditio, Laoise.”

  “Laoise?” I repeat.

  “That is your birth name, after our enemy, your great-grandmother, the daughter of my brothers’ murderers. Now… surrender.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  At my defiance, Dubu becomes pure hatred, pure rage. He comes at me again, the blackness of his soul a weapon that threatens to obliterate whatever light remains in me.

  I don’t know how to do this.

  Of course I know how to do this.

  “Sunshine, gather the light!” Anna’s sweet voice.

  Yes, yes, that’s it. I’ll gather the light.

  I summon all the light spirits of the world to come. And they do. There are so many more than ever before—not just because my power has reached its apex but because tragically, so many new spirits were created by Dubu’s minions in Ridgemont, Russia, Rapa Nui, Australia, Japan—everywhere.

  Their deaths will not have been in vain.

  “Stupid child,” Dubu laughs cruelly. “You think you can stop me with your band of friendly ghosts?”

  The light spirits swirl and swarm around Dubu. He continues laughing, mocking, even as they pin him down and immobilize him.

  “Most amusing. But your parlor tricks will not work here, Laoise.”

  Then I summon the light of my great-grandmother and of Adis and Uiri, of Aidan and Helena, of their parents and their other blood ancestors, of all the luiseach that came before me and will come after me. I concentrate all this light, this glorious light, into a single, perfect, unforgiving blade of radiance and direct it at Dubu, willing it to forever destroy the king of darkness.

  No mercy.

  Somehow, though, Dubu breaks away from the spirits, and the blade misses him. I feel cold, freezing cold, as he rushes at me—furious, unstoppable.

  Is this the end?

  A vision comes to me. I can see the earthly plane below. There’s Ridgemont High, the gym. Hundreds of luiseach soldiers are exterminating the last of the demons and saving the humans.

  And there I am—or rather, there’s the body of Sunshine Griffith. Blood gushes out of my chest where I stabbed myself with my luiseach knife. Mom presses down on the wound with her wadded-up scrubs, desperately trying to save me.

  My blood pressure is dropping, dropping.

  Is this the end?

  Aidan touches Mom’s shoulder gently. “Not yet. She must finish what she has started.”

  Helena leans down next to Mom and whispers something in her ear.

  Mom begins to cry. So does Helena. My two mothers bend their heads together, weeping.

  This is the end, and this is the beginning.

  Sunshine Griffith is no more, in body or spirit.

  I am Laoise, the past and future queen of my kind.

  The light spirits fly at Dubu again and overcome him. His face and body begin to disintegrate. The air fills with his screams.

  His screams grow fainter and fainter as the light—my light, the light of all luiseach—grows bigger and bigger.

  And then I see a small, ordinary gray rock suspended in the air.

  Thank you, Zalea.

  You’re welcome, my friend.

  Crying and laughing—or perhaps neither—I reach out and touch Zalea’s lucky rock. It morphs into a massive boulder. I send all the light spirits, my beautiful light spirits, to the other side. Or perhaps they do that themselves—my last gift to the universe.

  Actually my second-to-last gift.

  I order the boulder to crush what remains of Dubu.

  It does.

  “You can save her now,” Aidan says to Mom.

  CHAPTER 45

  Good-byes

  White walls, beeping machines, the smells of iodine and disinfectant.

  My eyes flicker open, and blurry faces swim in my vision.

  “Sunshine! Oh thank God!”

  I feel a soft, warm, vanilla-scented hand touching my face… and drops of rain. No, teardrops. Who’s crying?

  “We thought you were… the doctors had all but given up, but… oh, we are so incredibly happy to see you!”

  I take a deep breath with great effort and open my eyes completely.

  Mom’s weeping and laughing at the same time.

  “I love you,” I mumble groggily.

  “I love you too. To the moon and back and then a million times around the whole entire universe. How are you feeling, sweetie?”

  I do a mental scan of my body. My chest hurts. My head hurts. Actually everything hurts—a lot. A zillion wires and leads are connected to my body and IV tubes too.

  I touch the area near my heart. My fingers sift through layers of gauze and bandages, and below that, a bumpy scar that is criss-crossed with surgical thread.

  “W-what happened?” I ask.

  More faces swim into my field of vision. Lucio. Aidan. Helena. Nolan.

  They’re all alive.

  Lucio steps forward and grins. His right arm is in a sling, and there are cuts and scrapes all over his body.

  Aidan and Helena look pretty battered too.

  “Sunshine. You had us pretty worried,” Lucio says.

  “I did? Why?”

  Nolan comes to my side and kneels down on the floor. His beautiful brown eyes swim with tears as he takes my ha
nds between his own. “Because you went through with the guera spirito ritual. You sacrificed yourself and fought with Dubu on the spiritual plane.”

  “You mean… I died?”

  Nolan nods, and now the tears pour down his cheeks. “Yes. You won and came back.”

  Helena walks over. Her mouth, identical to my own, curves up in an enigmatic smile as she leans down so our faces are almost touching. “The necklace is gone,” she whispers.

  “What?”

  “The necklace is gone. It crumbled into dust. Which means he’s gone too. For good.”

  “Oh!”

  Helena stands up and moves to Aidan’s side. He smiles at her, then turns to me and strokes my hair.

  “You saved us. You saved the world. But I assume you know that?”

  “I did?”

  “Your… death, your successful execution of the guera spirito ritual… Helena and I were wrong about the energy wave.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember. The spiritual plane. Dubu’s death. The image of thousands, millions of demons perishing as the energy wave lit up the universe.

  “Is everyone okay? The luiseach, the humans?” I ask weakly.

  “There were… fatalities. But because of you, the war ended very quickly,” Aidan says.

  “Ashley?”

  “She’s fine. I exorcised her demon,” Lucio speaks up.

  Then I see the image of Dubu flinging a helpless woman against the wall.

  “Victoria?”

  Mom chokes back a sob. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. She didn’t make it.”

  “But when she died before, at New Year’s, she—”

  “Not this time,” Aidan says sadly.

  Grief washes over me. Victoria. My dear friend, my wise teacher. She died trying to save me, save us all, from Dubu.

  And of course there’s Zalea.

  “What happened to that traitor? That monster? Bastian?”

  Even now, saying his name makes me want to scream and shout and throw things. I was his luiseach mentor. Except he wasn’t a luiseach. He pretended to be so he could get close to me, spy on me, toy with me, confuse me… whatever demented assignment his father had given him. How did I not see through that?

  “We don’t know,” Aidan replies gravely. “It seems he disappeared in all the confusion. Or he might have been exterminated along with the other demons. He is—was—half Markon, half human. As such, we’re not exactly sure what his powers are.” He hesitates. “There’s one more thing.”