by S. C. Green
“As you hit that first corner,” Lorcon said, “all your cares tumble out of the backpack and are lost in the stream of water.”
I kept chanting. The backpack grew lighter. Fears wrapped in clingfilm tumbled down the chute beside me, rolling and crashing against the slide. They were no longer my problem.
Alain squeezed my knee.
“You’re coming to the end of the slide now,” Lorcon said. “You’ll fly off the end, you’ll dive through the air, and the light of the Seidr will swallow you up.”
A bright light blazed from the depths below me. I sped toward it, the water rushing faster. I tensed my body, preparing to fly.
The slide spat me out. I soared through the air while a bright light cascaded around me. Hope swelled in my chest. I’d done it. I was inside the Seidr—
No. The light wasn’t the same as last time. It wasn’t pale and luminous. It flared around me. In the distance,a crackling sounded. I glanced down. Beneath me, the city burned. Hundreds of people stood on the streets, their hands raised in supplication as the flames tore at their bodies. Fire rained from the sky, great molten waterfalls pouring into the metropolis below.
The screams rose up, pummelling my ears, searing the inside of my head. My eyes flew open, and the vision disappeared in an instant. I was back on the helicopter, being lifted to safety. But back there, the city was burning and people were screaming for real.
Lorcan's kind eyes met mine. “What happened?’
I shook my head. It was no use. Every time I closed my eyes, the flames leapt up, boiling the water, burning the city to ashes and dust. Guilt tore at me, clouding out any possibility that I’d be able to reach the Seidr.
The helicopter touched down on a pad in the desert, kicking up a pillar of sand. The guards jumped out and dragged us all after them. One slammed the butt of his rifle into my back, urging me forward. The blowing sand raked across my face and bare arms.
A small guardhouse beside the helipad stood open, the door propped open by yet another guard. As I was shoved through the door, I glanced back over my shoulder at the glowing horizon. The outline of another helicopter raced toward us over the red-tinged sand.
The guard placed my hands on a metal ladder and ordered me to climb down. I obeyed woodenly, my hands and feet moving robotically while my mind travelled miles away, back to the city of the dead, with all the people I should have saved.
At the bottom of the ladder was a long, low concrete hallway. Men and women in army fatigues lined the hallway, ushering suited government officials into different rooms. Huge pallets containing hard cases were stacked along the length of the hall. From one, I noticed a commander handing out weapons.
We were ushered into a concrete room, empty save a small metal table and two chairs. I was struck by the similarity of this space and the one Raine had taken us to beneath the Sunn headquarters where the tunnel had extended through the wall. Arnold invited two of the guards inside with us, posted another outside, then slammed the door shut with a bang that echoed through the empty space.
“What were you doing in the helicopter?” Arnold demanded,
“We told you,” Alain said. “Sydney has the power to stop the cloud. She can sever the thread that binds the wraith to this world, meaning they will stay in the underworld.”
“Only Reapers believe in this underworld bullshit,” Arnold spat.
“You don’t see what we see,” Raine said, her voice breathless. “I’ve told you that before. That city is choked with the spirits of the dead. Now those spirits are becoming part of the cloud, being consumed by the wraith and turned into energy.”
“Sydney is special,” Lorcon said. “That is why we took such a risk in bringing her through the dome. But she is young, her power is unpredictable, and it will take her practice to be able to harness her abilities.”
Arnold stepped toward me. He looked tired, his eyes ringed with black smudges. He no longer wore his suit jacket, and his crisp white shirt sleeves were streaked with dirt. This was not the confident, sneering man who’d confronted us in the boardroom. I wondered if he had family in the city.
“Did you succeed?” he asked, a tinge of hope in his voice.
I shook my head, the guilt eating away at my insides. “I can’t see anything inside my head that isn’t my own thoughts. It’s not like last time. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“What did you do last time?” Raine asked. “Describe it, exactly as you remember it.”
“What good will that do?”
“Maybe we can recreate it.” Raine nodded to Lorcon. “You know more about this than either of us. Perhaps there’s some vital detail we’ve overlooked.”
As quickly as I could, I described what had happened that night, when I’d ran into the wraith deliberately, where I’d died a ritual death in order to access the underworld. How I’d ended up in a desert not unlike this one, talking to my mother. And how I’d found the black threads inside the blinding white heart of the temple, and I’d severed them. I skipped over the part where Diana died, but her face flashed through my head again, and I had to suck in my breath to stop myself from weeping. There had been too much death.
“If this is really true, then the solution seems simple.” Arnold swung his gun around toward me. “You need to go through this ritual death again.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said, turning my stomach away from him. “I’m pregnant. I’m not going to risk my child by having anyone kill me.”
“You might not have a choice,” Arnold growled, the barrel pointed directly at my heart.
Alain leapt in front of me, his arms spread wide. He bared his teeth at Arnold, his whole body a warning.
I felt a burst of love for him, that he was still on my side, despite my inability to save the city.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he snarled.
The guards whipped out their guns and pointed them at Alain.
Fuck fuck fuck. This was getting way out of hand.
“Woah, stop! Maybe she doesn’t have to die.” Raine tugged on Arnold’s sleeve. “We’re talking about a ritual death here. Sydney just has to believe she’s going to die.”
“Or that someone she loves is in tangible danger,” Lorcon added. “A ‘ritual’ death may also be the death of a loved one.”
“Would this work?” With a flick of his wrist, Arnold trained the barrel of his gun on Alain’s head.
My heart stopped. All my focus narrowed on that barrel, trained directly at the person I loved most in the world. Alain’s lips pursed in a line, his eyes still staring daggers at Arnold.
No one spoke. My heartbeat pulsed inside my ears. My vision blurred, every detail of the room receding into the background, while the gun remained in crystal focus.
Something thin grew from the end of the weapon. A black thread, barely the thickness of a hair. It extended up toward the ceiling. In my mind, I snapped the thread, yanking it from the end of the weapon with all the force I had.
Arnold yelped, grabbing his hand. The gun clattered to the floor.
“What happened?” Alain stared at the weapon on the floor in front of him, then at me.
Arnold rubbed his fingers and winced. “She’s good.”
“Huh?”
“I didn’t drop that gun. It suddenly flared with heat and jerked away, as if something in it had broken.”
We all stared at the discarded weapon. Suddenly, it seemed to occur to everyone that this might be our chance to escape. One of the guards lunged for the gun, but Lorcon swooped in faster. He picked up the weapon between two long fingers and held it beneath the dim fluorescent bulb.
“It’s warm,” he said.
“Drop the weapon now,” one of the guards warned.
Lorcon smiled and placed the weapon against his shoulder.
“I’ve never done that before,” I said, staring at Arnold’s red, swollen fingers. My body rippled with energy. Somehow, when I snapped that thread in my mind, I’d moved the gun.<
br />
You’ve nearly got it. You’re so close.
“You’re beginning to understand your power,” Lorcon said.
My gaze returned to the gun. The energy in my hands sizzled. I knew what I had to do.
I pointed to Lorcan's gun. “Shoot me in the shoulder.”
“What?” Alain grabbed me and shook me gently. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I yanked my arm away and kept my eyes on Lorcon. “Do it. I’ll be fine. Shoot me here.” I tapped my skin just below my collarbone. “ I need it, Alain. I can feel the energy in my hands, but I need the pain, the ritual death.”
“Raine’s a nurse. She fixed me up,” Jack said, rubbing his leg. “She’ll be able to repair you.”
“Get the first aid kit, now.” Arnold barked at one of the guards.
“I’m not letting this happen.” Alain hugged me to him, crushing my body against his, placing himself between me and the barrel of the gun. “What about the child? The trauma could do irreversible damage.”
“And what about the irreversible damage the wraith will do if we don’t stop them? It’s the only way,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Only when your life was threatened was I able to hold the Seidr. But as much as I love you, it wasn’t enough. I have to feel the danger to my own body, to know the baby is in trouble, if I’m ever going to be able to stop the cloud.”
“How can you risk the baby, Syd?” Alain’s eyes blazed, but there was a flicker there too, as if he knew there was no other way.
“I need to do this, Alain, and we have to do it quickly, or I’ll lose whatever foothold I currently have.” I tore myself away from him. I expected him to grab me again, but he just stood there, stunned into inaction, his face clouded with pain as he fought to comprehend what I was doing.
Now that I knew this was possible, I’d never be able to live with the guilt if I didn’t try it. I couldn’t just let more and more people die, even if it meant we might lose our child.
I’m so, so, sorry, little peanut.
I grabbed the back of a chair and braced myself, glaring at Lorcon. “Do it.”
He sighed and raised the gun. A boom exploded through my ears.
At first, I didn’t think I’d been shot at all. It felt more as if a prize fighter had just given me his most punishing blow. The force of the shot knocked me back. My feet went from under me. I toppled over the table. All of it happened in slow motion, like a dream. I barely felt any pain at all as my body slammed against the concrete floor.
“Sydney?” Alain’s voice tore with panic.
I looked up in search of him, and then pain shattered inside me. Never in my life had I known such pain. Someone had shoved a lump of molten lead inside my body. It burned me up, boiled my blood, turned my whole body into a flow of molten lava. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think about anything but the burning.
Alain knelt beside me. I think he was touching me, speaking to me. But all I could hear was the roar of my heart in my ears.
I glanced down at myself, noticed my shirt was covered with blood. Where had it all come from? It seemed like so much … Too much of...
… my blood. I couldn’t make the dots connect in my head. My brain seemed slow, sluggish, like I’d been working too hard on a hot day.
Now …
I closed my eyes, trying to force my mind away from the pain. I remembered what Lorcon had taught me. I pictured myself on the waterslide, but this time, the image wobbled and spun, the colours distorted. I stepped into the water, only to discover it was a river of my own blood. I didn’t have the backpack this time, so I lowered my pain-choked body into the water and down I fell toward the light.
The light rose up to meet me, and I flew off the end of the slide and sank into it. The heat in my body bubbled and swelled, the pain so intense it was like not having any pain at all.
My eyes were still shut, but around me I still sensed the light. It glowed with brilliant detail, a million luminous facets all gleaming and glittering in their own unique way. I was falling through a diamond, lost in a prism of lustrous and vivid brightness.
My body spun lazily as I fell, and I found myself being pulled, tugged, to the left. I didn’t fight the feeling, but let the light lead me. As I passed deeper into it, black threads latticed through the air around me. At first there were only a few of them, but as I fell deeper and deeper, the threads grew and spun off, weaving themselves around each other to create vicious-looking black webs.
I couldn’t explain it, and it looked nothing like what I’d imagined, but I knew I was now inside the cloud.
As I dropped deeper into the mess of black threads, my arm brushed against a thick web. I yanked my arm away. Stickly lines of black tar crisscrossed my skin.
Each thread was a life, unfairly tethered to the world.
I reached out and grabbed a handful of the threads, yanking them toward my chest. Snap snap snap! The threads snapped away in my hand. I grabbed another handful. The threads fell all around me, their severed ends tickling my burning skin.
Snap snap snap snap.
From inside the cloud, there came a roar. The noise bounced through it, growing in volume as the whole thing became a reverberating speaker. My bones rattled. My teeth clattered. The cry of the cloud pounded inside my skull.
I’ve hurt it.
“You won’t stop me,” the voice thundered in my ears. It was Harriet’s voice, and yet, it wasn’t. It boomed with a force and ferocity that even Harriet couldn’t muster.
In response, I grabbed another handful of the strings and tore them away. The cloud heaved, pressing me further into it.
“Give me May, Harriet,” I cried. “You don’t want to hurt her. I know you don’t. Give her to me.”
The cloud laughed. Harriet’s tinkling voice ricocheted around me. In front of me, the strings looped and danced.
“May is mine. She’ll be with me forever, long after I’ve burned this planet to dust.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I hissed.
I spun my arms around, collecting as many strings as I possibly could. Sticky tar clung to my arms in wet streaks. I yanked back hard, and the fibres tore apart in my hands.
The voice screamed, “You’ll pay, Sydney Cale. You’ll pay.”
Suddenly, I was falling. Air rushed around me. Panicked, I flailed my arms and legs, searching for anything to hold on to. I grabbed at more strings, snapping them away, but there was nothing to keep me upright but air and dust and light.
Harriet’s laugh followed me down, down, down. I fell a long time, long enough that my body seized up in anticipation of when I eventually ran out of space to fall through.
I hit something. Hard. The impact tore me apart. I lost control of my limbs. The world buzzed and went black. I opened my eyes. How was I still alive?
I wasn’t in the city or inside the cloud. I was back in that tiny concrete room, concerned faces peering over me. Well, that was unexpected.
“Sydney, what happened?” Alain’s face was inches from mine, his eyes wet with tears. He cupped my cheek in his hand, the touch like hot wax searing my skin.
The pain returned. My whole body burned. God, why had I done this?
“I didn’t …” I tried to explain, but the words wouldn’t come. My voice said it all. I didn’t.
Alain’s face fell. I wanted to comfort him, to reassure him that it would be okay, but darkness slipped over my eyes. My body was swallowed up into the night.
I’d wounded it, but I hadn’t been able to stop it. Worse than that, I’d made it angry, and I’d shown it where we were.
21
Raine
There was no window, only a small air vent in the highest corner of the room. Reapers were always held in windowless cells. They couldn’t risk us flying up in our bird forms and slipping through the bars, no tiny pills needed to disable our shifting. The other, nastier drugs came later.
I rubbed my arms, my fingers tracing the lines of scars from my previous drug inf
usions. I didn’t know how long I’d been inside the cell. It might have been minutes. It could have been days. Outside, faint traces of voices yelled, argued, and occasionally a gun rattled high above my head. But none of that mattered anymore. These were to be my last few hours of cohesive thought before they came to pump me full of drugs again, and my mind went far away.
I tried to focus, to think of some way to get everyone out of this. Hope had come to me in that concrete room, when Sydney had gone off into the Seidr. As I’d worked to staunch and dress the wound in her shoulder, I’d felt a rush of love so primal and powerful it was almost unseemly.
Sydney would save everyone. That was why Alain had chosen her. I brought destruction, but she would bring life. She was the right person for the job – she would look after May when I was gone. My body burst with love for her, the woman who would undo my wrongs and cleanse me of my sins.
But Sydney came back, and the cloud had not been destroyed. She hadn’t done more than anger it. She hadn’t even seen May inside. And we were right back where we started.
Except this time, Sydney was gravely injured. We’d lost precious minutes waiting for her to get inside the Seidr. I hadn’t been able to staunch the bleeding. Her blood soaked my forearms as I tried to save her, but she slipped away. The guards dragged her away before she faded completely, but I was certain she was gone.
I’d done it again. I’d taken yet another beautiful thing from my family. I’d deprived the world of the one person who might be able to save it. And her baby.
After that, Arnold had lost patience with all this talk of Seidr and power and reaping. He never did believe Reapers were anything other than messed up humans. He sent us all to the cells.
Waves of despair washed over me, killing any rational thought that entered my head. I was back in the place I feared the most, the place that had given birth to every nightmare I’d experienced over the last ten years.
The one small flicker of hope, the tiniest consolation, was that the Reaper Institute hadn’t caught May. Even though my mind would soon be reduced to mush, and I’d be denied the sweet escape of death I so craved, at least my daughter would never know the same torture.
