The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series)

by Madeline Claire Franklin

  “No…” But my head and my heart are so full, the word comes out weak, groundless.

  “He knows what you are, perhaps better than you do.”

  “No. I’m just a girl,” I insist. “I’m just a human.”

  “Don’t play dumb.” She sneers. “Faye.”

  Another woman steps forward, no more than five feet tall, the one with a short mop of fire-engine-red hair. She has no expression on her face when she moves, but in her eyes I see something struggling to stay down.

  “Take your cousin’s new toy and bind her.”

  Faye nods and marches towards me, hands at her sides, glowing white.

  “Wait, please,” I try to reason. “Faye, don’t. I’m—I’m dangerous. Don’t come near me!”

  She hesitates, eyeing the darkness around us, as if expecting something to come leaping out of the shadows.

  “I—I can’t control my power yet,” I stammer. “I might hurt you—”

  “Silence!” The dark haired woman shouts, narrowed eyes darting between me and the Irin girl. “Faye!”

  Faye moves forward again, her eyes finally settled on mine, mouthing something to me that I don’t quite grasp—

  “Raven, get down!” One of the Irin shouts.

  The five of them drop, leaving only Faye and I standing as a net of white light falls over the other Irin. Something heavy slams into my right side, hooks under my arms, grabs me, lifts me, shrieking—

  “Hold on!” Trebor shouts, and I cling to him, arms latched around his neck, legs wound around his legs. I bury my face in his shoulder. Trebor squeezes back, and doesn’t let up.

  Wind streams past us. We’re gliding through the air. I realize with some apprehension that we are—or at least Trebor is—flying.

  When I finally open my eyes to peer over his shoulder, I take in the sight of long, slender bones under paper-thin skin, covered in thousands of tiny feather-like scales, shimmering dark blue and green like the sea—like dragon fly wings. Color and bone is spread against the night sky, beating down the air.

  “When the fuck did you grow wings?” I scream.

  But then we’re slowing down, falling, landing. His feet hit the ground with practiced ease, and mine magnetize to the earth, but my fists won’t stop clinging to him, won’t stop shaking. He’s shed his tuxedo jacket, and I can see from the bare skin below his rolled shirtsleeves that his tattoos are gone. His wings—huge, and beautiful, and impossible—are folding down against his back, almost gargoyle-like, protruding from two tears in the back of his shirt.

  “There’s no time, run!” he pushes me, and I go, stealing glances at his wings as we race down the street to my car. They fold down and down, shimmering, breaking apart like pixels and dissolving, disappearing—clinging to his skin like ink.

  We reach the car and climb inside, strap our seatbelts on. I turn over the engine, fire her up, pull away from the curb and into the empty street.

  “Wings?!” I yell.

  “There are more important things to worry about, Ana!” Trebor points out.

  “Yeah, like why you lied to me!” At the end of the street I pause only long enough to be certain we won’t die when I turn.

  “I lied because I wasn’t sure you’d understand until you knew what it was like in Shemayiim. I needed you to trust me if I was going to help you. But I’m not working with the Sura, you have to—Ana—!”

  As I turn onto Main Street, a silver SUV with hideous blue flames painted on the sides peels out in front of me from the curb. I swerve to avoid it, cursing, but the sight strikes fear into my gut. I know that car. Its tires squeal, spinning to catch up. I can’t see the driver in my rearview window, but I can see a living mass of shadows shifting and roiling inside the cab.

  “Trebor?” I ask, both hands on the steering wheel, gunning the gas, but it’s no use. My car is too old for this kind of behavior.

  “Sura,” he confirms. “They’ve found a mark. Someone let them in.” He curses, too.

  The SUV accelerates, comes up alongside us. It’s solid black inside, except for the piercing white eyes blinking out, the sharp smiles, the curved claws scratching against the windows. For a moment, the inky dark parts, just long enough for me to put a face to the car.

  “It’s John,” I barely manage to squeak out, turning my eyes back to the road.

  “Never did like that guy,” Trebor mutters through gritted teeth. He’s holding onto the handle over the door, bracing himself between that and the driver’s seat.

  John swerves and scrapes us, pushes us—Oh my God we’re going to die—knocking control from my hands as the wheels skitter and twist against the massive weight of his SUV.

  “No, no, no,” I whimper, bracing, pushing down on the gas pedal with both feet, struggling with the steering wheel. The bridge over the creek is just up ahead, and I know—I know—John is—or the Sura are—trying to drive us straight into the water.

  The SUV drifts away, winding up for a second attack. I try to slam on the brakes but it’s too little, too late. John cuts the wheel, driving his car right into our path as we fishtail and skid forward, fighting momentum. “Trebor!” I shriek, throwing my left arm in front of my face, reaching for him with my right.

  He shouts something to me, but there’s too much noise, too much confusion: squealing rubber; the shattering of safety glass; crunching fiberglass and twisting metal; a cold, unlikely silence as the world flips and spins. Air rushes past my face through the new cracks and holes in my car, and for far too long, I feel weightless.

  In the midst of those gravity-defying moments, Trebor’s hand finds mine. His fingers twine with my own, clasping our palms together, as if to embrace me—as if to tell me everything will be okay. I risk opening my eyes to slits, just for a moment. He’s watching me, eyes ablaze with thoughts and feelings I’m afraid I’ll never have the chance to understand.

  Through the broken window behind him, I see water streaking past.

  Then I feel it. The roof of the car slams into the shallow creek bed, spraying us with water. My seatbelt is unyielding against my chest and shoulder when my body snaps up—down—head thudding against the ceiling. There’s a sudden silence as the engine cuts, a muddled hissing noise, an echo in my mind that might have been my mother’s voice…

  Wake up, Ana. Wake up!

  — 45 —

  I must have blacked out. For how long, I don’t know, but when I hear the sirens coming, I open my eyes.

  Water has flooded into the car. It’s shallow this far up the creek, but still deep enough to cover the top of my head while I’m hanging upside-down.

  “Trebor?” I rasp, constricted by the seatbelt taut across my chest, cutting into my skin where my shoulder meets my neck. My face feels swollen from the unusual blood flow, and everything is spinning in the dark. “Trebor?” I realize his hand is not in mine anymore.

  I reach for him, weak, disoriented, flailing in the shadows. My hand grazes his chest—it’s warm, wet, sticky with blood. I reach upward—downward—for his head. “Trebor, please, answer me.” Oh, God, what is that sticking out of his shoulder? There is his mouth—his nose—good, above water—his eyelids....

  “Ana...” he mumbles. He opens his eyes for a moment, and I can only tell because they are burning so bright in the darkness, too bright to be real. But his eyes flutter closed again within seconds, and he doesn’t speak again.

  “Trebor?” I beg. “No. No, no, no! Wake up!”

  The sirens have stopped. Red and white lights flash outside my overturned car, dancing on the water; incoherent voices crackle over radios; shouts come from above us; boots tromp along the rocks by the creek; men and women call out for survivors.

  I ignore all of it and reach for my seatbelt, bracing myself with my left hand against the roof, under water. I let myself fall. It is a bad idea, but I’ll pay for it later—right now, I need to know that Trebor is okay.

  I twist onto my bare knees, discovering along the way that I might have broken
a rib as sharp pains momentarily stop me from breathing. But I keep at it, dragging myself through the water until my face is beside his.

  “Trebor,” I whimper. “Please.” My own heart is beating so fast that I’m certain it can’t be in unison with his, not if he’s unconscious. Unless...

  Clamoring, I grab the back of his seat with my left hand—I think the right one is busted—and press my ear to his chest. “Come on, Trebor...come on...”

  There. Faint, but still there, is the flutter of his heart, still in unison with my own, only weaker. “Trebor, please, you can do this. You can pull through. Please, wake up. Please.” I sink to the ground, unable to support my weight any longer as pain shakes through me with every wrong or sudden movement. I try to hold his head away from the water. He is so helpless. I am so helpless, trapped in a mangled heap of metal and glass, kneeling in creek water. Broken. Useless.

  But the dominant thought pulsing through my mind is: I could lose him.

  I could lose him.

  I could lose him.

  “Please don’t die.” I sob suddenly, lifting my face, touching my cheek to his so that I can whisper in his ear. “Please. Keep fighting. Hold on. Trebor?” I’m crying, and my lips are trembling, and my voice is shaking, but I can’t tell if it’s from the shock of the car crash, or because of how terrified I am of these overwhelming feelings breaking loose from my bones. “Please stay with me, Trebor. I need you. I think I—”

  “Miss!” a booming voice shouts into the car. “Miss, can you hear me?”

  “Help him! He’s hurt!” I cry out. Several pairs of hands latch onto me around my legs and waist, pulling me out through the glassless window. “Trebor...hold on...” My hands slip away from his face, and I notice with the increasing distance, as flashlights pass over him, that he’s gone translucent. “No...” I breathe. “Trebor!”

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” The paramedic is in my face, obscuring everything.

  “Help him! Please! He’s hurt. You have to help him!” I beg. But they’re looking around with their flashlights for other victims, and they’re passing over Trebor again and again, each pass illuminating his spectral face for me—the only witness to his existence.

  “The other driver, miss?” the paramedic asks me. “Don’t worry about him right now. Worry about yourself.”

  “No...” I moan, shivering, powerless in their hands. They can’t see him. They can’t see. Trebor is going to be stuck in that car until something or someone from the world of the Arcana comes along and finds him, and by then, it might be too late.

  “Miss, where are you hurt?” the paramedic asks, holding me upright

  Grimacing, my hand goes to the brush burn and broken blood vessels over my heart, and I cry.

  — 46 —

  I’m going on a picnic (during which I’ll have a terrible car accident), and I’m bringing:

  -A totaled car

  -A broken wrist

  -Three bruised ribs

  -A concussion

  -and an endless list of lacerations.

  And I don’t care. My life has stopped until I know what has happened to Trebor. But if I’ve learned anything from television it’s this: never argue with doctors or nurses. Instead, after they’ve stitched and bandaged me up, set my bones, and fixed a cast on my wrist, I let them lay me down to rest while I plot my escape.

  “Your father’s phone has been busy, but we’ll try him again in a few minutes,” my nurse says with a smile.

  I smile back, cavity sweet, and nod, hating the smell of her perfume, the same scent I swear all nurses wear, that for years, as a child, I thought was what a medicine cabinet was supposed to smell like. The entire hospital inspires a sickness in me that I can’t abide. Death lingers in the air like sour potpourri, has stained the atmosphere a dead-tooth blue.

  She sighs. “You poor thing. What a fright you must have had. Got off a sight better than the other driver I’d say.” She pauses. “But don’t you worry about him.”

  I try not to glower. “I won’t.”

  The nurse raises her eyebrows at me, and nods, a conspiratorial edge to her expression, as if maybe she doesn’t judge me for not giving a damn whether John Cassidy lives or dies. “You let me know if you need anything.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The second the door clicks shut, I throw off the covers and swing my feet over the edge of the bed. The floor is cold underfoot; I have no shoes, only paper slippers, no clothes but the hospital gown. But that doesn’t matter. There’s a thin robe in the closet. I put it on, cinching it around my waist, wincing at the new pain these too-fast actions provoke from my battered body. Then I tuck my feet into the slippers and float into the hallway, silent as a ghost.

  Walking quickly, trying not to attract attention, I pass two reception desks before deciding it’s safe to stop. “May I use your phone, please?” I ask, trying to keep the desperation from my voice.

  The young nurse looks up at me with tired eyes and tries to smile, but she’s practiced it too often—it looks robotic and cool. “Of course,” she replies, turning the desk phone to face me.

  “Thank you.” I dial quickly and turn away, hoping I won’t be overheard or seen by my nurse in passing.

  The phone rings on the other end of the line, slow and taunting. I swear there are extra seconds between and during each digital trill. I’m praying Kyla answers—it’s almost two in the morning, so she might still be out or passed out in bed. Worse, her mother might answer—but Amrita might be gone again on business this weekend, I can’t remember. This year she’s been gone almost more than she’s been home.

  Finally, I hear the jostling of the receiver from its cradle.

  “Hello?” Kyla answers, her tone already worried.

  “Kyla,” I whisper. “It’s me, Ana.”

  “Ana! What the hell, man? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah—”

  “Vanessa said she saw your car in the creek! And John’s car all smashed up on Main Street? Someone said it looked like he ran you off the road!”

  “Kyla—”

  “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all night, but your phone was off, and the line’s been busy at your house—”

  “Kyla, I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Are you okay? Seriously. Did you crash your car?”

  “Yes. And no. And yes. But I need your help. Now.”

  “Oh, shit.” She pauses, then says with more focus, “Of course, A. What do you need?”

  “Meet me at the gas station down the street from ECMC, and bring clothes. And shoes.”

  “For you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you breaking out of the hospital?”

  “Yeah.”

  She pauses. “Sweet. I’ll bring my mom’s car, it’ll attract less attention. You sure you’re okay to go?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Trebor’s life is in danger. I need to get to him as soon as possible.”

  “Holy crap. You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do, Ana.”

  “Yeah. I really do. Listen, Kyla, I’ll tell you everything on the way back.”

  “Absolutely everything?”

  “Absolutely everything. Just...hurry.”

  — 47 —

  I don’t get as many strange stares from the people at the gas station as I expected, clad in my hospital attire with fresh wounds still glowing pink from scrubbing and antiseptic. There are butterfly bandages over the cuts on my cheekbone and eyebrow, a heavy plaster cast around most of my right forearm and hand, and, let’s face it: I’m going on three days without sleep and I look like hell. Who knows, maybe they’re used to seeing people from the hospital—they do have a psychiatric ward there.

  Kyla must have sped the whole way from Williamsville because she’s there almost as soon as I arrive. I find I need her help changing in the restroom out back—I can barely lift my arms over my head without searing pain in my sides.

  “Jesus, Ana,” Kyla breathes,
helping me pull a pale blue tee-shirt over my head, eying the black and blue splotches around my ribs. “Are you sure you should leave the hospital?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I’ll be okay. Trebor might already be dead. I have to get to him.”

  She makes a concerned face at me in the mirror. “Ana...what’s going on? What happened to Trebor? Why might he be dead?”

  “They didn’t see him in the car with me,” I mumble, my face hot.

  “What do you mean? How could they not see him? He’s kind of a tall guy.”

  “Because sometimes people can’t see him. Because...he’s not human.”

  Kyla raises a dark eyebrow at me. “What,” she says, disbelieving.

  “He’s an Irin,” I admit, pulling on a pair of black yoga pants. Jeans would have been better, but Kyla’s would have been six inches too short on me, so these will have to do.

  “What?” She says it more sharply this time. “As in the Irin, from Shemayiim? The Watchers? Ana, how have you possibly justified not telling me this?”

  I frown, guilt chomping at my insides. “I was afraid of getting you involved. This isn’t all fun and games, Ky. The Sura are trying to kill me—to empty me. And now I think the Irin want me and Trebor dead.”

  “But I thought you said he is an Irin?”

  “Yeah, well, I guess he’s gone rogue.”

  Kyla stares.

  “Please, Kyla. You have to believe me.”

  “Oh, I believe you. I just can’t believe you. If you weren’t already beat to hell I’d slap the shit out of you right now for not telling me.”

  “I’m sorry, Kyla. I know it was stupid not to tell you, but I was scared—I was confused. Please, I can explain everything. I want to explain. But I need to get to him—” I push the door open.

  Faye is standing there.

  I try to close the door.

  “Anastasia, wait!” She shouts in an unexpectedly high voice, and stops the door with her foot. I think there is more strength in that little leg of hers than in my whole body. She stares up at me, bright green eyes burning. “I’m here to help.”