The earth crumbles at last beneath their feet. Regan, Zilch and the two girls scramble away from the light, but there’s a sharp cry behind them. He lunges forward and catches Gabriel’s wrist as he falls into darkness. Regan screams as fire envelops his hand, but forces himself to hold on. All he can see are Gabriel’s eyes, huge and terrified.
“Don’t let me go!” The boy begs. “Don’t let me fall!”
“I won’t,” Regan grits his teeth as fire licks up his arm.
“You’re gonna be fine, just hang on—”
But he can’t. Regan’s tortured, scorched hand opens and Gabriel falls into the darkness. His high, piercing scream echoes in Regan’s ears as the city and its noise fades away.
❈
Evelyn opened her eyes. There was Hans, still touching her forehead with one long finger. For once, he wasn’t smirking; he looked nearly as frightened as he had in the memory.
“Parole… it was them?” she whispered.
“Yeah. Powder keg only needs one spark, and Gabriel was it. An empath, a really freaking powerful empath… but you know how people sometimes get two powers? Like, say, calming pipes and sonic screams? Or looking like a lizard, and invisibility? Gabriel’s was…”
“Fire.”
“What else, right? And emotion was the gasoline. Bad emotion, anyway. Fear in, fire out, and this is one scared city. And as long as he’s alive, it keeps going. That’s why nothing can put the fire out. Kinda the definition of self-sustaining burn by now.”
“Zilch and Regan…”
“They got us out,” Rose whispered, shaken. “It was him. I… I remembered scales, and eyes like a snake, but—but Parole’s full of people with scales and eyes like his.”
“I didn’t want to see” Danae shook her head, looking exhausted. “All this time, I wanted to think was just a different man who looked like the one who got us out, but no, no, of course it is! I was fooling myself and I knew it!”
“You couldn’t have known,” Rose insisted. “It was ten years. And Zilch too, they looked so different, you couldn’t have known, neither of us could have!”
“Zilch,” Evelyn said, looking up slowly. “You and Regan…”
“Eye in the Sky attack dogs.” They nodded, somehow looking sick. “Hunting dangerous people with deadly abilities. Capturing them. Sometimes killing them. We thought we were doing the right thing…”
“But you saved us,” Danae said faintly. “You helped us escape from Eye in the Sky. You saved our lives!”
“We tried,” Zilch whispered. “We tried to make our own choices. Choose life instead of death. We almost succeeded. And after we escaped, we did what we could to atone. Fight against SkEye. Fight what we were. Protect our home. But we let Gabriel fall. And now Parole is burning.”
“Yeah, yeah, ashes, ashes, we’re all freaking doomed.” Hans tried to roll his eyes, but ended up just closing them. “I could’ve told you that. Actually, I did. A ton of times. When I kept saying I knew how to put out the fire, and all anyone had to do was listen to me, and we would have gotten through this just fine.”
“Except that when you said we’d put out the fire, you meant kill Gabriel.”
Hans opened his eyes again to glare, but he floated gradually backwards instead of advancing in any menacing way. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. Because it’ll work.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t tell Regan, that’s why you took his memories. It wasn’t to protect him. It’s because he wouldn’t do it if he knew.” Evelyn frowned, and her eyes narrowed. “None of us would. That’s why you kept us in the dark.”
“I needed some insurance,” he said, and now defensiveness clanged out loud with his anxiety. “I needed to make sure that nobody would turn on me the first chance they got! Or abandon me! You know, like how certain people abandoned me, ten years ago!” His voice rose until he yelled in all of their heads. “Not like that hasn’t happened before! Not like I didn’t have reason to be scared! Or like I was right! People don’t just stick around and help you out of the goodness of their hearts, you need leverage! You need to give them a reason! You need—”
“You needed help,” Rose spoke softly, voice with just the barest of shivers. “Didn’t you, Hans?”
“Yeah! Yes! God, it took about ten years, but somebody’s finally noticing—”
“Why did it take ten years?”
“Huh?” He stopped, knocked off-balance by her gentle question.
“Why didn’t any of this happen until now? Why didn’t…” She stopped. “I’m not saying ‘why didn’t you say something sooner,’ because that’s not helpful.”
“It’s kinda a good question though,” Danae cut in. “If you could’ve grabbed someone and gone down into the fire to kill Gabriel any time, why wait so long to do it?”
“I… I didn’t know he was down there before. Alive, I mean.” Hans said quietly. “Until he started haunting me.”
Evelyn folded her arms, not sympathetic. “Just like you haunted Garrett, when he didn’t come back for you.”
“Yeah.”
“So instead of actually helping him… you decide he has to die?”
“Well—I mean, it’s the only thing that makes sense! I’m trying to save everyone here, okay? I’m not the bad guy, I’m actually the only one who’s doing any—”
Evelyn looked at him coolly, then shook her head. “You’re trying to kill an abused child who’s been… what, basically in solitary confinement for ten years? Has he been conscious all this time? No, actually it doesn’t matter. You’re trying to kill him, and you endangered other people’s lives to do it.”
“I’m trying to save the entire city! Gabriel’s out of control, as long as he’s alive he’s just gonne keep burning, and burning, he’s dangerous—”
“That’s what they say about all of us!” Danae burst out at last. “That’s what Eye in the Sky says, that’s their excuse for keeping us trapped in here! That we’re dangerous, we can’t be controlled, so we all should die! And that’s what you’re doing, Hans. You’re condemning Gabriel to death, just like Eye in the Sky’s done to us. Now admit it.”
A long few seconds of silence stretched between them. Evelyn and Rose nodded silently, on either side of Danae, who was breathing hard and sweating. Zilch looked stricken, and Finn had been silent this entire time, watching the proceedings with wide, anxious eyes.
“This doesn’t change a thing.” Hans’s steely voice rang through their head. “We still have to go down into the fire. We still have to kill him.”
“No.” This time it was Rose who spoke, unequivocally and immovably. “That boy has suffered enough. This city is not going to be saved by the loss of one more innocent life. We save him—and we save Regan.”
“You’re going to kill us all!” Hans’s eyes flicked desperately from Rose to Evelyn to Danae, seeing each face hard and determined. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Yes we do. Your secret is out, Hans. You have nobody left to control.”
“That’s not entirely true.” Hans’s eyes locked with Zilch’s—but they shook their head, and smiled.
“Do what you want with my heart. My friends will walk through the fire and save Chimera. Save Gabriel. Save Parole.” The twisted smile Zilch gave Hans bore absolutely no resemblance to the one reserved for Regan, or the more subtle one that Evelyn, Rose and Danae—their friends, they confirmed with a slight nod—were beginning to recognize. But it was triumphant. “And I’ll die happy.”
“Oh yeah, you’ll die, for sure! Parole will collapse! You need me!”
“We don’t,” Evelyn said, head high. “You already tried to sentence one innocent person to death, because you think it’ll save your own ass. We’re not letting you do that to another one.”
“We’ll save them. Both of them.” Danae cracked her knuckles.
“You’re wrong! All of you! This is the only way!”
“There’s always another way besides death, Hans.” Rose shook her head. “T
here’s hope, there’s love, and maybe you’ve given up on those things, but we haven’t.”
“And you can either help us,” Zilch added, “or you can sit here and wait.”
Hans’s raging filled their brains. He screamed and stomped his feet, throwing an incoherent tantrum ten years in the making. He howled and cried and rattled around in their brains like a ball bearing in a tin can. They all sat silently, and waited for him to wear himself out… and eventually, he quieted.
“Are you done?” Evelyn asked, when he fell into a sulking, impotent silence.
“We’re all done.” Hans glowered.
“Good. Now are you with us or not?”
“Lead on,” Hans conceded, painfully, and at last. “Your final wish is my command.”
Danae tore into the laundry room, exhilarated and galvanized, and much too excited to notice the subdued look on Evelyn’s face as she followed.
“This is it!” She couldn’t contain herself any longer, she turned and threw her arms around Evelyn’s neck, and then reached back to pull Rose close as well. “No more waiting! We’ll save Regan, and we’ll save Gabriel. It all ends tonight!”
She pulled Evelyn forward, diving into a passionate kiss. The one she gave Rose soon after was more gentle and slow, but sacrificed none of the intensity. Then she was gone again, flying around the room collecting pieces of armor, tramping through the empty space where the broken Toto-Dandy had once laid.
“Are you excited, Danae?” Evelyn said, smiling in spite of her pounding heart as she imagined the treacherous walk and whatever awaited them. “You’re so quiet tonight.”
“Just a little more! Just down into the fire, bam, grab the dorks, drag ‘em back up, everything’s over, we’re done!” She stopped, then, casting a hesitant look at Rose. “Um, I could only make three suits, and…”
“No no, that’s fine! You’re right. It’s almost over.” Rose was smiling too, but considerably more reserved, as if her thoughts were occupied by something else. Something very significant.
“Rose… listen.” Evelyn stopped, reluctant to speak, then forced herself. “I have something to tell you. Both of you guys.”
“What? Does it have to be now?” Danae looked up from where she’d been bending to gather up the fireproof suits she’d been working on along with repairing Toto-Dandy.
“Has to be.” Evelyn chewed the inside of her cheek, not knowing how to begin—so she just said it. “Regan said he saw who shot Rose.”
“Wait—what? Wasn’t it just a SkEye commando?” Danae shook her head, looking nonplussed. Beside her, Rose turned slowly to face them, an expression of apprehension gradually crossing her face. “They were all over the place. And they all wear masks, you can’t tell them apart.”
Evelyn didn’t answer, frown deepening. “What’s worse is… he said it was his fault.”
“What?” Danae nearly dropped the helmet she was holding. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” Evelyn shook her head. “But that’s what he said. A second later he was gone.”
“Rose? Rose.”
“I’m thinking,” she said quietly, arms folded and eyes closed. They both could see the thorns that protruded from her skin stick out a little farther, a little sharper.
“If it’s his fault?” Danae prodded, voice hardening along with her face, teeth clenching so hard her jaw began to hurt. “I say we leave him right down there! Let him burn—”
“You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t! You could have been killed!”
“Yes, thank you.” She cracked one eye open. “I know that.”
“So then how can you possibly—”
“I can feel however I need to.” Rose closed her eye again and didn’t raise her voice, but Danae still shut her mouth. “And right now I don’t feel much of anything. I don’t know if I will, until I have all the facts in front of me. I know myself, I know how my heart and mind work better than anyone. Even you, babe.”
“He said it was his fault,” Danae said, every word filled with deliberate fury.
“Doesn’t make it true. You said it was your fault Finn got arrested.”
“I… that’s different.” Danae paused, frowning. “But he also said he saw who shot you! Like it was someone else, not just a SkEye creep! So—his fault! Somehow!”
“That I can’t explain.” Rose opened her eyes. She’d stayed successfully centered that entire time. But when she looked up at Danae, her gaze wasn’t a glare, but it was much more intense than any look they usually shared. “But do not tell me how to react to this, Danae. It happened to me. Nobody else. That means it’s my decision how I feel, nobody else’s.”
“So you still want to save him?” Evelyn asked cautiously. None of this felt over, but unfortunately they were on a tight schedule. Cataclysmic disasters rarely waited for the emotional resolution she wanted.
Rose gave her a look of genuine surprise. “How is that even a question?”
“I think it's a pretty valid one. You went through Hell because of this.”
“Well, I want to know exactly what he knows.” Rose shot Danae a smile. “And if he did have anything to do with it, then he’ll wish we left him down there.”
“Rose… you’re deflecting.”
“I’m processing my trauma at my own personal rate. Give me a while to think it through, okay? Of course we save him, that’s what we do.”
“And you both know where I stand.” Evelyn grinned, then turned to look at the third member of their little congress. “Danae?”
“It’d be two against one anyway, what’s the point?” she grumbled, shaking her head. But then she shrugged, and spread her hands. “Fine, fine, whole story, important. I vote save. I can always change it later. Lots of holes in Parole.” Her sour face lightened the slightest bit. “I’m kidding.”
Evelyn’s face broke into a relieved smile. “If he’s guilty, you might have to wait your turn.”
“Believe me,” Rose said, voice just as strong and determined. “We’ll get to the bottom of that little mystery. But right now I’m working on one of my own right here.”
“What’s that?” Evelyn turned a curious look her way.
“I know who tried to kill Hans. And I know what Major Turret is up to in this place. And I… I just cracked a lot of cases lately. A lot.”
After a couple seconds of stunned silence, Danae let out a laugh. “So that’s why you’re not fighting tooth and nail to come with us!”
“That, and I’m still recovering. I do have some common sense.” Rose’s eyes had lost none of their warmth but now they gleamed with an uncommon intensity. Or rather, they’d regained it. “So, both of you, get out of here. Save Regan, save Gabriel, save Parole. I’ll be fighting too, right here. Jack needs at least one mommy close by in case things get nasty.”
“You’re amazing, Rose.” Suddenly Evelyn felt like she was back in their kitchen, surrounded by familiar things instead of world-ending fears, daydreaming about fighting side by side with her wives again. Reality was harsher than she’d envisioned, but it made her heart beat faster all the same.
“Some people fight injustice in the middle of the fire. Some people…”
“Alphabetize?”
The smile Rose gave her back wasn’t soft in the least. “Drag liars and villains to the light, kicking and screaming.”
“Oh. Coming back out of retirement after all, aren’t you?”
“What can I say? Once you got the bug…”
“So proud of you, Rose Petal.” Evelyn pulled her close, first into a gentle embrace, then a deep kiss. It might have more time they had any right to linger, but they’d spent so much of their lives rushing around doing damage control, in crisis, in action, they’d earned the right to take one moment slow. “See, you’ve still got your thorns.”
“If Regan really had anything to do with getting you shot, make him feel ‘em.” When her wives looked up at her, Danae’s eyes were still inte
nse and deadly serious. “Or I will. Dandy’s up and at ‘em now, and he’s got some shiny new fangs.”
“Of course.” Rose nodded, just as seriously. “I need to know the truth first, that’s all.”
“Okay. Me too. And… and just be careful, okay?” Danae whispered. Her fire was gone all at once as she looked at Rose and realized how short their next, maybe last few seconds together would be, and her eyes filled with tears. “I need to know at least one of us is going to make it through this.”
“Hey. We all are.” Evelyn stroked her cheek, other hand going to Rose’s. “We are all coming home. We will save the city, we will finish this ridiculous night, and we will come home and kiss our little boy, and then kiss each other, and sleep for about a month, and then we will wake up… and then we’ll do it all over again, because that’s who we are, apparently, and that’s what we love. Because we wouldn’t keep doing it otherwise.”
“I love you. Both of you.” Rose sniffed, tears falling too, but smiled. “Now go. Before I change my mind and try to stop you.”
“Or I change mine and try to stay.” Danae tried to smile and almost succeeded. “God help us all, it’s gonna be a hell of a night.”
❈
“Too dangerous,” Zilch shook their head, looking grave, which for them was significant.
“I can help!” Finn protested.
“Your abilities are unstable. You’d—”
“But they’re gone,” he insisted. “I can’t even do it anymore. I’ve tried!”
“Until they’re back, you don’t know,” Zilch maintained a reasonable tone, but Finn knew their voice too well not to easily hear their anxiety. “Too risky.”
“Please!” Finn’s desperation cut through the air and Zilch shut their eyes as if they’d been cut by a knife that could actually hurt their dead skin.
“No. Three suits. For me, Evelyn and Danae.” Their eyes dropped. Suddenly they seemed to struggle under the crushing weight of fatigue, gravity increasing slightly on their entire tall, thin frame. “Regan doesn’t even have one.”
Chameleon Moon Page 30
