Death Before Daylight

by Shannon A. Thompson

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Relax.” My words and my attitude seemed foreign in the dreary moment, but it was starting to feel familiar again—like it truly was over.

  Crystal let out a loud giggle.

  Jessica’s head pressed against my arm. “Did she just giggle?”

  I draped my arm around her shoulders. “That was definitely a giggle.”

  Before Jessica could speak again, the elders finally stepped in. Luthicer was the one to talk first, “All right, break it apart.” He stared directly at his daughter. “Now is not the time to be laughing.” People were still fighting, after all. Whether or not they were dying was beyond me, but it would only be a matter of time. The Light wouldn’t lose their powers immediately, but they would lose them eventually, and the drain would bring them into deeper madness.

  “Sorry.” Jonathon took a wide step to the left, away from Crystal.

  She took a wide step after him, and when they touched each other, they both started laughing again. I had never seen Jonathon laugh so much.

  Luthicer’s shoulders slumped. “Well, I guess that’s that.”

  I tapped the elder’s boot with my own boot to get his attention. There was something I needed to know, and when he looked at me, I spoke, “I thought you said you were Crystal’s father.”

  As far as I knew, Crystal only had her mother in her life, but Luthicer argued that when he said, “I am.” Everyone stopped as the man glanced at his daughter. “Sort of.”

  Before anyone could ask for a better explanation, a light surrounded him and sizzled down his body. He shrank with the beam, and his beard curled up into his face. The long white hair he normally had was replaced with a dark bob, and his sharpened facial features softened. Luthicer wasn’t Luthicer at all. He was Lola Hutchins.

  “You’re—you’re a lady,” Jonathon stuttered.

  Lola crossed her arms as her eyes slit into a glare. “You have a problem with that, Mr. Stone?”

  Right when I thought Luthicer couldn’t be more terrifying, he proved me wrong. Lola was terrifying.

  “Nope.” Jonathon waved his hands in front of his chest. “No problems at all, ma’am.”

  “Good.” Lola’s legs locked as she brushed off her clothes—a simple pantsuit. “A lot of things can change during transformation.” Her words were taut. “But more can happen with a lack of sleep, so I suggest all of you rest.” We would have to deal with the fighting lights in the morning. “In separate rooms.” Lola wasn’t even looking at me. She was looking directly at Jonathon.

  He froze. It was Urte—Jonathon’s father—who responded. “Everything’s already set up.” Urte wasn’t fazed by Luthicer’s transformation at all.

  Jonathon’s eyes widened when he looked at his father. “You knew about this.”

  “You didn’t?” Urte said like it was obvious, but his tone dropped when he continued to speak, “Brenthan wants to see you.” The youngest of the Stones was alive.

  Jonathon rolled his eyes like he didn’t care, and then grinned because he did. “I’m going. I’m going.” He started to walk away, Urte followed, and Crystal left with her mother.

  Jessica and I stayed with my father, but it wasn’t long before he pointed down the hallway. “That way, you two.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Even though I had slept and gained energy, I was drained. I could sleep one hundred years, and I doubted I would ever feel fully rejuvenated.

  As I walked down the hallway, the darkness flickered beneath the emergency lights. Shades were already cleaning the walls. I opened my mouth—ready to offer assistance—but my lips snapped shut as if I weren’t able to do it. When I closed my eyes, I saw Robb’s pale face plastered against my eyelids.

  Jessica squeezed my hand, and I jumped. Still, she never let me go. “You okay?”

  I didn’t nod, but she did. She understood. She was there, after all. She had even killed Ida. I doubted we would ever be the same, but at least we would be together.

  The words left me as I came to a stop, “We’re okay, right?”

  Jessica’s eyes—the color of the sky—moved over my face. “Of course.” She hadn’t taken off her ring, and neither had I.

  I didn’t want to leave her. Even though I knew we had separate rooms, the separation seemed cruel. I wanted her to stay by my side, to sleep next to me, if we even managed to sleep at all, but she moved toward her door only to stop in-between the rooms.

  “Darthon,” she stuttered and shook her head as her eyes fell to the floor. “Robb,” she corrected, “He Named me.”

  It didn’t surprise me, but I couldn’t breathe. The Dark had never offered her a name, but it made sense now. Perhaps the Dark’s instincts had known the truth all along—that Jessica would be a light, that her name had to come from them, but I had never suspected that she had gotten one before the end.

  “Iris,” she said. “It was my mother’s.”

  My shoulder pressed into the wall next to hers. “Are you going to keep it?”

  She didn’t speak.

  I reached over, laid my fingers under her chin, and lifted her face so that she had to look at me. “I think you should.” She had wanted a Name from the beginning.

  Her bottom lip trembled. “Why?”

  I wanted to say it was for her biological parents, for their legacy, but it was beyond that. Robb added to it. “He suffered just as much as we did.” Like us, he was born into it. He didn’t have a choice. The choices he did have had died a long time ago, when he was a child, when he had no ability to fight for it. As much as my father and I had struggled to have a relationship, we had one. Robb didn’t have anyone but fellow murderers.

  Jessica nodded like she understood. “But I still hate him,” she spoke, “a part of him anyway.” Her eyes darted to the wall only to look back at me. “For now.”

  “Me, too,” I agreed, trying to find a place in my heart to understand that our battle was long from over. We had to heal. I cracked a smile like it was the first step. “That’s the human side of us.”

  Jessica hit my arm lightly, but her frown concealed the smile I knew existed beneath it. Her eyes glowed because of it. “Get some sleep,” she said, but her voice dropped on the last word.

  Before she could walk away, I grabbed her hand. “You don’t have to be alone tonight if you don’t want to be.”

  “I know.” She stared down at our hands before unlacing her fingers from mine. “But I should be.” It was me who didn’t want to be alone, but it was worse when I saw the light in her eyes leave right before she turned around. “Goodnight.”

  Jessica wasn’t gone yet, but she was striving to be.

  63

  Jessica

  I had the final decision to make, and I knew I had to do it on my own. While Eric had to kill Darthon, I had to save the Light. They were still fighting, and the stench of the night filled the air. It only got worse as I snuck out of the shelter.

  It was much easier than I thought it would be. None of the shades who saw me stopped me, because they trusted me, and I hoped that trust would remain as I ducked outside.

  While I expected to see people running around in their madness, I saw nothing. I only sensed it. Perhaps they had gone elsewhere. Perhaps they were all fighting inside their own minds at home. But I knew they wouldn’t be for long. I would bring them together again.

  I walked straight for the only place I wanted to be.

  Amazingly, the railing that sat above the river was still intact, and I inhaled a deep breath as I climbed on top of the first bar. It shook like it had the first time I stood on top of it—the second I had met Eric—the moment I had realized I was never alone—and it was for that reason that I turned around.

  At first, I thought I was hallucinating, that my memory had taken over my consciousness and I was losing my mind with the rest of the lights, but then, he smiled.

  Eric was right behind me.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets as his emerald eyes glowed through the dark nigh
t. “You really thought I’d fall for that?”

  When I had told him goodnight, I knew he didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t know that he was aware of my own feelings. I didn’t want to be alone either. I only thought I had to be.

  “No,” I managed as I stepped down. The rushing river was the only sound that cascaded between us. It roared with every word we hadn’t said. “I love you” hadn’t seemed appropriate when others had lost their lives. “I want you” seemed just as selfish. Everything did. That’s why I wanted to do my last battle on my own. “I thought I’d try anyway.”

  Eric grabbed my hand, his touch warming me. When he pulled us up onto the railing, we stood on the shaky metal. A cold breeze pushed against us. It smelled like death. “It’s dangerous out here,” he said exactly what I was thinking.

  “It won’t be for long.”

  I knew I had to do it. I had to listen to Camille and Eric’s silent mother. I had to transform into a light, I had to let my shade self go, and I had to declare myself their leader. I had to let them know they would live on, too. I had to give them hope, even when all the hope I previously had died. I had to believe in that hope again, and in order to do that, I had to sacrifice my own identity all over again. I had to be Iris—the Light’s descendant—and I had to accept everything that came along with it.

  “The Dark will support you,” he said the only words I wanted to hear. Eric always did that.

  I gripped the railing as if it would fall over, but Eric’s hand landed on top of mine. He slowly pried my fingers off the metal. “Whatever happens,” he said as he leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’m here.”

  I nodded, we spread my fingers out together, and I felt our love flow through my veins as they filled with the heat I was all too familiar with.

  I let the red rain fall.

  64

  Eric

  Four months later

  Jessica’s parents came to our graduation, and so did everyone else. Everyone who was alive anyway. A huge section of Hayworth High’s ceremony was dedicated to the victims of the cult—the same cult that the sect had created during the first illusion. Only this time, an illusion wasn’t used. Everyone just accepted it—almost as if they knew about the Light and the Dark—but still, no one spoke of it out loud. Even though the new breed of shades and lights added to our numbers, humans existed. Mindy had proven it to us all, and for the first time, my father didn’t feel guilty for breaking his own laws.

  My family—Mindy, Noah, and my dad—sat on lawn chairs in the same field the Marking of Change had happened, but this time, they laughed, and I wondered if they would sit there when Independence Day came again. It was only two months away, but it would be the first one I wouldn’t make it to.

  In the morning, I was driving to Iowa with Jonathon. We would speak at a council of shades—and lights. It was only our first stop. There were hubs of lights and shades all over the states, people Urte had tracked down after the Marking of Change. Apparently, many of the out-of-towners had bought his cupcake service. Now, Jonathon and I were in charge of bringing everyone together with Jessica’s message. We were taking more cupcakes for good measure.

  Jessica would stay behind.

  It was her plan. After the final battle, she had become a light, and in that power, she had saved the Light. When her red rain fell, dozens of survivors came to us—one by one—and she gave them the strength to stop their insanity. She gave them their powers back, but afterward, she was too exhausted to do much else. Everyone took shifts watching over her until she recovered. It took three weeks, but she was graduating with the rest of us. She was the strongest person I knew.

  Because of her, the Light hadn’t died. They lived with the Dark, and we were one sect again. Still, there was discrimination, and we had already dealt with two murders over it. At the age of eighteen, Jonathon, Jessica, and I were officially elders. We had seven spots to fill, and Crystal was guaranteed one when she returned from college. Jessica would choose the other ones from the Light.

  I leaned my back against the willow tree only to stare up into the leaves. The light that flickered through the spaces looked like tiny stars, and for once, daylight felt like home.

  I only tore my eyes away from it to glance down at Jessica. She was sitting at the base of the tree, right at my feet, and her brown curls were tied into a tight ponytail. She didn’t want her hair in her face as she read, and she flipped pages faster than what I thought was possible. Jessica hadn’t dropped a book since she recovered, and because of it, she already knew more about the sects than I did. Jessica was reading all the ancient texts she could.

  Fudicia—or Linda—hadn’t lied when she said they were saved. In fact, she had saved them before Jessica had asked, but the location was only revealed to her once she became a light. Out of all the places Fudicia could’ve put them, the books were finally found in the art room of Hayworth High. Even more surprising was the person who told us where they were.

  Ms. Hinkel—our homeroom teacher—was an elder in the Light, and she was Fudicia’s trainer. She was also one of Lola’s best friends, a friendship that had remained intact even after Lola—as Luthicer—had left the Light in a murderous rampage. Their friendship was the only way Luthicer had gotten us out of school all along, including Crystal. It also proved that Fudicia wasn’t the only light to choose the Dark in the end, even though—in reality—they hadn’t chosen the Dark at all. Like Jessica, Fudicia and Ms. Hinkel had chosen both sides. But Ms. Hinkel lived, and she named off every graduating senior at the ceremony. She only cried when she got to the end of the list.

  Eric Welborn.

  My surname fated me to be last, and for once, I found my place in it.

  The graduation ceremony was over, but our lives were just beginning, and Jessica was already beating me to the race. Even in her graduation robe, the girl had her nose stuffed in the latest book—one about the Highland, our apparent home—and she rambled off facts as she came across them.

  I hadn’t known a single one of them—how our powers came from another dimension and how we had grown into a human form over time. The sects had been together once before, but when they crossed into our current world, the Light didn’t want a shadow anymore. The Dark refused to accept it, and the elders of both clans decided to take the powers away. Why they gave them back through three eighteen-year-olds was beyond me, but I was sure Jessica would read that fact any moment. Until then, I was satisfied knowing that, for the first time in centuries, we were one sect with our powers intact, and the possibilities were endless. It would take years to understand everything, but right now, I had hours until the morning took me to Iowa.

  I leaned over and grabbed Jessica’s book. She yelped when I took it away, and I had to put it behind me to stop her from snatching it back.

  She pouted. “I was reading that.”

  “You can read it tomorrow,” I said, knowing that I wouldn’t see her for a long time. Today was our last moment together for months. “Why don’t we enjoy the moment?”

  Her pout moved from the left side of her mouth to the right side, but it eventually subsided in the middle. “Let me put it in my bag, at least.” She knew it was one of our last days together. I respected her dedication, but even she needed a break. History would always be there.

  I handed her book back, and she placed it in her backpack carefully—like it was made of glass. She zipped her bag closed, leaned against the willow tree, and blew out a sigh. “Can you believe it?” Jessica’s voice was a whisper as she laid her head on my shoulder.

  I threaded my fingers through her curls. “I can’t believe we don’t actually get our diploma today.” It would be shipped to us in two weeks.

  Jessica nudged me, but she laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  “Sorry.” I chuckled. “I can’t believe I am even getting one at all.”

  She hit me again, a light slap on my leg. Before she could lecture me, I grabbed her hand, bent over, and kissed her.
>
  As her hand curled against mine, her lips moved with mine. It was a short, consoling kiss, but it felt deeper than all of the other ones we had shared. Every kiss we had felt like that—better than the first—and every moment that passed between us was another moment I was grateful we had.

  When we broke apart, she laid her palm on my chest. “This,” she said, “is how I know we’re still alive.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Do you need more proof?”

  She pushed herself away, but giggled as we stood up. It wasn’t two seconds before Crystal and Jonathon joined us on top of the hill, both dressed in graduation robes that were too long for them.

  Crystal hugged Jessica like she hadn’t hugged her before, but—in reality—Crystal hadn’t stopped hugging Jessica. “That wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be.” She cracked a smile, but it was her makeup that gave her away. She had cried during the ceremony, and Jonathon had been the one to console her.

  I wasn’t sure if they were dating, but Jonathon stayed by her like they were. “I’m surprised you didn’t stumble across the stage,” he joked at me.

  “Coming from you,” I started, but he raised a hand.

  “Go ahead: make a blind-kid joke.”

  I cracked a smile. “I was going to make a clumsy joke.”

  Jonathon chuckled, but his eyes never left Crystal as the two girls began chatting. I leaned against the tree just to get his attention, and when he finally looked at me, he was already talking, “It’s going to be weird.”

  “What is?”

  “Being apart.” His eyes moved down the hill, and I followed his gaze to the familiar faces—George and Brenthan, Lola and Mindy, my father and Noah. Jonathon and I would be going alone, and we would truly put distance between us and Hayworth for the first time in our lives.

  “It won’t be for long.” The trip would last one year, and Jessica and Crystal would meet up with us in six months. By that time, we hoped to have a large council together—a united front for a better future. It was a task the previous elders had gladly given us. No more secrets. No more fighting. Only talking.