Total Eclipse

by Rachel Caine

Page 35

  Overhead, the sun was black in the center, rays blazing out in intense bursts from the edges. It was frightening and strange, and I wasn't sure what I was seeing at first, until Lewis said, hoarsely, "Eclipse. "

  "It's not an eclipse out there," David said. "Not one scheduled in this part of the world for years to come. "

  It didn't matter. This was Imara's domain, and she could do anything she wished here. If she wanted to blot out the sun, she could.

  I looked up. At the top of the cliffs above us was a harsh glitter of glass windows built into the structure of the rocks. "She's up there," I said. "We're on the wrong side. The stairs are behind it. "

  The Chapel of the Holy Cross was built by man, but it had been laid on the template of something that had been there for ages, maybe since the beginning of time. Standing here, I could see through this world and into the next, with Oversight, and the chapel took on huge, shadowy dimensions, filled with power and significance, pain and endurance.

  "No time for the stairs," Venna said, and tried to take our hands. Lewis and I both stepped back. She raised her eyebrows. "What?"

  "No more of that," Lewis said. "We've pushed the odds too far already. You'd lose one of us this time. "

  "You say you need to go up there," she pointed out. "What would you like us to do?"

  "Carry us," I said. "Get us to the top, but not through the aetheric. Can you do that?"

  She considered it for a few seconds, locking eyes with David in silent communication, and then they both nodded.

  "She's going to try to stop us," David said. "Whatever you do, don't let go. "

  He put his arms around me, holding me tight against him. I looked over at Lewis and Venna, and burst out laughing. It was ridiculous. He towered over her on approximately the same scale as the cliffs towering over all of us. What was she going to do, hug his knees?

  Venna looked vexed, then she simply changed her body, growing, filling out into the size of an adult woman. She kept the pinafore and the blond hair, but when she'd finished, she was Lewis's height. "There," she said. "That should do. "

  "Talk about one pill makes you larger

  . . . ," Lewis said, which even now, at the end of the world, made me smile.

  Venna wasn't as amused. "Turn around. "

  David and I were face to face, but evidently Venna didn't feel that close to Lewis. He turned his back to her. She stepped up and fastened her arms around his waist, and without even a pause, she launched herself, and him, into the air. David followed. The shock of being airborne, without any real means of support or propulsion, made the less rational parts of my brain scream in panic, but David and Venna kept rising, steady and controlled, as the cliff's multicolored shadings flickered by in front of us.

  "All right?" David asked me. My hair was blowing in the wind created by our passage, and I pulled it out of my face to nod. He looked grim and focused, probably anticipating the conversation we were about to have with our child. "Almost there. "

  Almost being, of course, not quite good enough. I'd noticed the height of the cliffs before we'd taken to the air, and we should have already been to the top. They weren't that tall. But now the cliffs seemed to be stretching themselves taller, and taller, and taller, and we kept rising on and on, racing to get to a point that continued to outpace us.

  "Imara!" I yelled. "Imara, stop! Let us in, please

  !"

  For a long few seconds, it seemed that she'd keep playing this game until the Djinn ran out of power and plummeted back to the canyon floor, miles below now . . . but she wasn't cruel, our daughter. Just pissed.

  The cliffs stopped rising, and in a matter of seconds we were on the rocks. I tried not to look back at where we'd been. We were far, far too high for comfort.

  There were no trails on this side of the chapel, so we had to scramble over ancient ledges and boulders to get to the peak, which rose up in a defiant jut of glass and a simple, elegant cross that buried itself into the rocks.

  There was a kind of a path on the downslope that intersected with the stairs, and I led the way down it to the concrete steps.

  This was how I'd always come here, up these steps.

  This was where I'd seen my daughter die, and the memory still burned, both here and on the aetheric. My heart pounded harder as we ascended, heading for the entrance to the chapel at the top.

  Venna stopped. "I have to wait here," she said. "I can feel it. You three have to go on. "

  I cast an uncertain look at David, who was holding my hand. He nodded. "She's right," he said. "We have to go alone. "

  As we climbed the steps, Lewis said, "There was something you were going to tell me, back at the Luxor. Something about Jonathan. "

  "It's about how he died," David said. "I told you he died in battle, and that's true. What I didn't tell you is that we were losing. Our forces were being slaughtered; the plains were heaped with our dead and dying. Jonathan and his guards--I was one--were the only ones left. "

  We reached the top landing. The unnaturally occluded sun seemed to cast a shadow over all of us. Below, Venna stood watching with her glimmering blue eyes, and I realized she'd stopped in exactly the place where Imara's body had come to rest, broken, when she'd died.

  "Jonathan reached out to the Mother," David said. "In fury, and rage, and desperation. He woke her up. That's why so many more died. He wanted to destroy everything, including himself. But instead, she . . . took him. Made him Djinn. That's how he died. I was already wounded, probably dying. He held on to me and dragged me through with him. But she consumed him, Lewis. Body and soul. She can't do anything else when she's drawn to a human. If you do this--"

  Lewis was very still, listening to this, and I wished I understood what he was thinking. He was usually much easier to read, but now . . . now I didn't know. My skin was cold, and even though the air was still, I felt phantom winds blowing in this place. The aetheric was unsettled, on the verge of explosion.

  "Before we go in," said Lewis, "I want to say something to both of you. "

  David cast a quick glance at me, frowning. "What is it?"

  Lewis smiled. "I wanted to tell you that the best man won," he said. "I would have loved her, but you adore her. You make her better. You protect her, and honor her, and that makes me glad, David. Jealous as hell, but glad. "

  David said nothing. I didn't think he really knew what to say to that.

  Lewis shifted his attention to me. "You were the only woman who ever really touched me,"

  he said. "But I wouldn't have been good for you. And now we can leave all that behind. "

  It was good-bye, and it was final, and I felt the changes in him, in me, even in David.

  David silently offered his hand. Lewis took it and shook. I stepped forward, and he kissed my cheek. With his lips close to my ear, he whispered, "You're pregnant, Jo. Tell me that doesn't make you happy. "

  I gasped and pulled back, staring into his face, suddenly overcome with shock. "I would know--," I said, and stopped, because I did know. I did. I felt it now, that tiny seed of life, still just a cluster of undifferentiated cells. David's baby, conceived on the ship. Our baby.

  I looked at David, and I saw the knowledge in his face, too. The wonder. And a little bit of fear. I reached for his hand, and he almost broke mine with the force and fierceness of his grip.

  I felt shaky and on the verge of tears, and I didn't even know why, really, except that there was a sense to all of this of endings. Maybe endings without new beginnings.

  "Are we done?" I finally said, and forced a cocky smile. "Because there's world-saving to be done. "

  "Right," Lewis said. "There always is, isn't there? That part never changes. Hey, if it's a boy, name him after me, will you?"

  "You don't have to do this," I said. "I could try--"

  "No. There comes a time when you have to realize that you can't save the world alone, Jo.

 
You have to let someone else take a shot. And it's my turn. "

  I took a deep breath, forced a smile, took one last look at the blackened sun in the red sky, and opened the door of the chapel. We got on with it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Imara was standing at the front of the chapel, silhouetted by the giant sweep of windows that displayed the eclipsed sun, the red sky, the dramatic drop of the canyons. It was the kind of view that would make anyone religious, I'd always thought, but right now, all I could see was my daughter, standing motionless in front of all that glory, with sand whipping around her like a tornado. Her black hair was lifting on an invisible wind, and her eyes were just as dark, lid to lid, like a night sky flecked with exploding stars. She was . . . terrifying.

  And angry.

  "Imara," David said, and walked down the aisle toward her. "I'm sorry, but we had to come.

  You know this place won't last much longer. You'll fall, and when you do, you'll destroy. We can stop it, if you'll help us. "

  She laughed. It was a wretched, despairing sound, and it lashed at our faces like slaps. I winced and wanted to turn away; I hated seeing her like this, so alien and far from the child I'd known. All grown up, some part of my brain contributed helpfully. Parents never do understand their children.

  "You're fools," she said. "I tried to stop you. I tried to tell you, it's useless.

  I don't want to see you hurt, don't you understand? I can't protect you!"

  "We're not asking you to, sweetheart," I said. "Please. I know you can hear her. Open yourself up, and let us talk through you. I'm begging you, for the sake of the half of you that was once like me. Please. "

  "Mom, it won't help, don't you get it? You think she doesn't know about humanity? About what it is, what it's done? This is the reckoning. We all told you it would come. " Imara was crying, black tears like oil that marred her perfect, pale face. "If I open the connection, I can't shut it off.

  I'll be lost. We'll all be lost. "

  Out there, canyons trembled, and rocks shifted, and I saw part of the cliff face opposite shear away and fall to the rocks below. Her perfect sanctuary couldn't hold. She couldn't hold.

  None of us could.

  "Please," Lewis said, and stepped forward. Imara's black eyes focused on him, and I saw him falter, just a little, before he continued moving toward her. "Please let her see me. "

  "She'll destroy you," Imara said. "Don't you know that?"

  "Yes," he said. "I know. It's the only chance we have. I'm willing to take that risk. "

  "It's not a risk. It's a certainty. "

  I took in a sharp breath, and David's grip on my hand tightened, warning me not to interfere. We'd done what we could, and now, Lewis had shouldered the burden.

  As I'd known he would, from the beginning. This was what Lewis had been saving himself for all along--not his survival, but to be sure that his death counted for something important.

  I'd thought, more than once, that he was a cold, manipulative bastard, and that was all true . . . but this

  was true, too. He'd sacrificed others, but he'd done it because he knew, eventually, that he'd stand here, in this place, and be the only one who could change the world.

  My heart was breaking to pieces, but I understood.

  Imara took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. Behind her, the eclipsed sun exploded back into fiery, full life, burning brighter, brighter, until I had to shut my eyes and turn away from it.

  When the light receded, I looked back, and met the eyes of Mother Earth.

  They weren't white. They were all the colors of the sea swirling together, deep blue and warm turquoise and milky jade green. They were so beautiful. So peaceful.

  So utterly merciless.

  Her gaze held me, and I felt drowned in a vast, astonishing warmth. But it wasn't acceptance. Everything in me was being emptied out, examined, and found wanting.

  The warmth abruptly cut off, and I sank down to my knees, sobbing with longing to feel that again, be that again. I thought I'd touched her consciousness before, but it had been nothing like this, this--power.

  I'd never felt anything like it, and I knew that, like the screams of the Djinn, I'd never be able to not feel it, on some level. She had taken me, marked me, and discarded me.

  Next to me, David slowly, gracefully, bent one knee, and I saw him stare fearlessly into her eyes. Imara's face took on a hint of a smile, and I felt the echoes of the warmth that cascaded into him, through him, waves of ecstasy that burned even as removed as I was from the experience. Only a Djinn could have withstood that, and even David finally bowed his head, trembling and shaking.

  She fastened that deadly, warm, perfect gaze on Lewis, and I heard him let out a sound that was something between a sigh and a moan. His body went rigid, head thrown back, and light streamed from him in golden flickers and flows, cascading into Imara.

  Into the Earth.

  "No," he said hoarsely, and with a huge effort, he stopped.

  He denied her.

  I couldn't imagine how that was possible, but he did it.

  He advanced toward her, until they were no more than a foot apart, and Lewis said, "You can't have me. Not like this. Not if you destroy my people. "

  The sea-blue eyes slowly blinked. "Your people chose this," she said, and her voice was vast and bell-like, and the windows behind Imara shattered in a hail of glittering shards that fell away into the canyon. Wind whipped in, and I saw storms forming, black and furious.