“How could anybody forget you?” Evelyn’s answering laugh rang like a climactic note through a packed auditorium. “And you’re never alone! You got us!”
She took his hand as the music modulated to a more glorious major key. The stage fell away along with all their fears, and together they flew far from bad dreams, beyond despair, and past the faintest memory of anything lonely or cold.
“And we got you. It’s okay, honey. We got you.”
Their own galaxy-bright glow lit up the sky brighter than any spotlight, stronger than any flame. As they spun together in a dance through the stars, bathed in endless light, their hearts hummed with the voices of a thousand lives singing out in joy instead of fear.
Evelyn’s heart leapt. In this moment she knew exactly who she was: the golden goddess of the microphone, stage, word and her own heart, striking power chords with the strings of life and love and victory. Her own song was an unbreakable lifeline in a roiling sea, solid ground in a world of pitfalls and snares, and an unconditional stairway to heaven.
For a half-heartbeat (or maybe an hour; time happened all at once here) she thought about Regan and how badly he’d wanted this exact feeling, this self-knowledge that was a sword, shield, armor and healing kiss all in one. Like Evelyn, he’d finally found it. But unlike her, he’d had to lose it first.
It seemed like the cosmic song ended before it began. Golden and magenta notes gradually faded into the gentle darkness. A moment of silence stretched, eternal, soothing, patient and kind. Then, a bright and piercing whistle split the calm, followed by a wall of applause that broke over them like a white-capped wave.
“I thought I’d be alone forever,” Gabriel whispered. “I forgot what anything else felt like. I forgot I could even be happy. I forgot… I…”
“I know. But it’s not too late. You’re not what you lost.” She gently lifted his chin, and they both turned to see the truth. “You’re what you remember.”
There wasn’t an empty seat in the house. Not until the entire audience rose to their feet to clap and yell their delight and love. She saw Regan first, his fingers still in his mouth and tongue flickering from when he’d given that first whistle. Danae’s freckled face was bright and shining with joy and pride, Rose right beside her, cheering them both on with boundless love. Jack was snuggled between them, giggling and reaching for the light. Zilch’s patchwork face stretched in a wide, wonderful grin, while Finn wrapped an arm around them, laughing and secure. Lisette and Wren appeared as if by magic to applaud together, Jenny Strings twirled in joy and her own spotlight. Liam sat in the front row, subdued and still, but smiling. And floating over their heads, faint and fading but present, was Hans. Eyes full of tears, he looked directly at Gabriel and mouthed two words: “I’m sorry.” With that, he was gone.
Then one more figure emerged of the soft darkness, walking toward the stage. Garrett Cole, in his gold-sequined ringleader’s hat and tails, his arms full of the biggest flower bouquet Evelyn had ever seen. He handed it up to her, and then faded away like smoke. Tears blurred his wide, bright smile, the last thing Evelyn saw of him.
“Looks like we’ve got a standing ovation,” she said quietly, standing beside Gabriel to face their adoring audience. The light shone bright on their raised hands, and she realized every one of them was reaching out to help Gabriel up from the dark. Evelyn turned and offered her hand too.
“We’re right here with you. You’re going to be okay.”
Gabriel took her hand.
❈
“Did you feel that?” Zilch whispered. They felt warm—not the scorching heat of the fires, but pleasantly warm, like they were laying in sunshine, with skin that could feel its rays. Or maybe like they were made of sunlight, entire being suffused with the wonderful, golden glow. And whole. For the first time since they could remember, they felt whole.
“Yeah,” Danae whispered back. “It was… it was all of us. I could feel all of us.”
“But did we do it?” Evelyn asked quietly, feeling suddenly very small and cold. She’d been basking in the light too, joyful in the connection, and now that it was gone, she felt empty. “Did we save Gabriel?”
“We did it.” Regan was standing straight and tall, staring up the tall cliffs stretching far above them, and the faint, small pieces of sky. Evelyn recognized something in the way he stood. She’d seen it before. What she hadn’t seen was his smile. None of his anxious energy. His eyes were so calm it was almost like he was just waking up from a dream—but it had to be the best and sweetest dream he’d ever had after a lifetime of nightmares.
“Regan?” She took one step toward him. She didn’t get to make another.
BOOM.
The ledge shuddered from a thunderous explosion, knocking Evelyn off her feet and into Danae, who instantly curled around and shielded her as they fell. Huge chunks of rock plummeted into the flame, and more fell from above. Loose bits of metal and pipe and dead machinery rained down on them while choking dust clouded the air and flew into Evelyn’s nose. For a moment they were all laid low, disoriented and blind on the ground.
Zilch staggered to their feet, dust and small rocks raining off them. They wiped the oily dust from their face, and immediately froze at what they saw. “No…”
Peeking out from behind the bend in the chasm ledge, covered in dust and filth and wearing every bit of clothing he owned, plus a makeshift mask of rags was Finn. He was covered in ash, his clothes ragged and covered in burn marks where they’d actually caught fire and been stamped out. His orange hair stuck out at wild angles, singed black on the ends, and shiny red burns spread across the slivers of his exposed flesh. “Zilch I… I think the booms are back.”
Zilch charged across the ledge and grabbed him by the shoulders. “You said you’d stay at the house! Stay alive! Safe! You never stay—sense! No sense!” Then they pulled the young man into their arms, squeezing the air from Finn’s lungs.
“I thought I’d never see you again—couldn’t let you go alone—”
“I know!” Zilch groaned. “Why does nobody listen? I won’t burn! You will!”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Furious. And so glad you’re here.”
The low rumbling that had been building through their conversation rose to a deafening roar. The booms were indeed back, with a vengeance. Another explosion ripped through the air, and the world shook from the fracture-bomb blast. Finn’s screams blended with the rest of them; the world was a mess of debris and fire and smoke and nobody could see a thing.
Evelyn groaned, sitting up from where she’d fallen to the ground. She registered with some surprise that of all of them, Regan was still standing, looking back at her. At all of them. With an expression she’d only caught glimpses of on his face before: peaceful, serene, fond, and resolved all at once.
“Regan! Come on! We have to get out of here!”
“You have to,” he said, not moving. “We’re not coming.”
“What?” She froze halfway to her feet. Something about the difference in his face scared her.
“There’s something I have to do, and I can’t stay here to do it.” His words were steady, voice full and unwavering. When he turned away from her, his movements were smooth and sure.
“Don’t do this,” Evelyn lurched the rest of the way upright. “Whatever you have to do, you don’t have to do it alone!”
“You’re right,” he shook his head, smiling. “I won’t be alone.” He turned, as if he were listening to someone softly speaking, who none of them could see anymore. “I’m doing what I couldn’t ten years ago. I’m carrying him out of the fire.”
Her eyes slowly widened with a slow realization that chilled her like a cold winter wind cutting through her suit, the fire, and down to the bone. “Gabriel’s still with you, isn’t he?”
“I’m sorry for not telling you,” he said, and regret passed over his face, but only a flash, and only for a moment. “You’d never let me do it.”
“
Do what? Regan, what are you going to do?”
“He’s leaving.” Zilch’s voice was low. Almost incredulous. But it carried the same note of near-panic as their cries when they’d seen Regan gasp for air in Hans’s strangling grip, or when Finn had been carried away by SkEye.
“Leav—no! No, Regan, stop!” Evelyn cried. “What about everything you learned? Everything you did—we did, together? You came so far! You got it all back, doesn’t any of it matter?”
“It does.” His voice dropped, rough, and in that moment it did shake. “It does, so much. That’s why I’m doing this.”
“You don’t have to,” Zilch’s said, lowering their voice to match his. “You don’t have to fight anymore. You’ve done too much already. Rest.”
“Can’t,” Regan smiled up at them, but it looked like it hurt. “Hans said he was going to help, but he was lying. Of course he was. He only wanted more death, and revenge. But I—I really mean it! If I have even one shot at getting us out of here, I’m taking it!”
“I know how you feel!” When Finn looked at him, it was with something nobody else here offered. Regan turned toward the hope in his eyes and held on. “I do! I know how much it hurts when you can’t help the people you love—and how much you need to try, at least! You’d do anything, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah. Yes. I would.”
“Then try! I believe you can do it! Just stay alive, and home again!”
“Thank you, Finn,” he said quietly, suddenly remembering a dash across Parole’s rooftops. Working in the shadows for the pursuit of life and resistance against despair. A voice in his earpiece telling him the next step. Soft, rapid typing; long fingers on a keyboard. A cat purring in the background. A rush of endless joy and boundless freedom. Leaping into empty space and flying instead of falling. Complete trust in himself and in the solid ground that would meet him. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. It’ll be oka—”
“No it won’t, not if we separate!” Danae shouted, her voice cutting through his memory and shaking his momentum. “Don’t you walk away, not now! Not after all this! Nobody needs you to—”
“Listen.” He looked away, breaking the connection and his friends’ combined, desperate attempts to reach him. “There’s a storm coming. You have to be ready.”
“What does that mean?” Evelyn frantically tried to remember where she’d heard that word before. “What storm?”
Regan didn’t move, and he raised his eyes to give them all one more long, lingering look. But his outlines became indistinct and started to shimmer, rippling like air rising from the sidewalk in the dead of summer heat.
“Chimera! Stop!” Zilch’s cry held a note of desperation nobody had heard before. They still held onto Finn, but much more tightly, like all their fear left buried and dormant had reached its breaking point, leaving them paralyzed. Like maybe they would if they might fall if they let go. Or Finn might disappear. Or they’d rush across the quaking ground to Regan and seize him in the same desperate hold and never let him go either. “Not again. Just got you back. Don’t disappear. Not again. Please no. Please.”
All at once Regan was solid again, looking directly into their eyes. He took a step closer.
“Please don’t go,” It wasn’t Zilch who spoke softly, voice barely audible over the fire’s roar and ever-growing rumble. Finn blinked back tears. “You remember now, right? So that means Zilch can tell you everything. And you can say it back. And I… I want to know you too. Because you have to be pretty amazing, if…”
“If they love me.” Regan smiled, and closed the distance. “I could say the same to you.”
Just as Zilch had done before, he was beside Finn before either of them could react—and then the helmet was off his head, and being gently pressed over Finn’s singed hair and down onto his head. A thunderous roar from below them shook the ground and their bones, and then Finn’s arms were around Regan, hugging him close as Zilch wrapped both of them in their tight, increasingly desperate embrace.
“Thank you,” Zilch’s eyes were dry. They always would be. But the pleading look on their face as they held Finn close with one arm and gently touched the fragile, still-bruised and now heat-damaged skin around Regan’s neck almost brought tears to his own. “But you’ll burn.”
“Not for long.” He caught their hand and held it. “And neither will you.”
Regan pulled Zilch into a kiss that was faster, deeper, surer than the one he’d given them hours before and thousand feet above.
It was more like the ones he remembered.
He fell into the recognition like finally falling asleep after the longest, most exhausting journey of his life. The familiarity, the confirmation, the warmth entirely unlike the deadly heat surging around them. The absolute certainty that lifted the heavy weight of fear and made him brave enough to take a breath and a step and a chance. He knew them like he knew his name, and everything else.
But that was no surprise. Zilch hadn’t changed. They hadn’t. This hadn’t.
Regan had. He’d always trusted them. But in no moment remembered or newly forged, could he remember trusting himself this much. There was no solid ground below him, but that’s what happened when you jumped.
“This place is coming down now so you have to go,” he said quietly as he took a step back. He gave Zilch’s gloved hand one last squeeze, and when they let go it wasn’t because they’d been torn apart by fire. They looked steadily into his eyes and their own were still full of fear, pain, loss… but now, faith. That’s what he was looking for. That’s what he needed. “So do I.”
“Regan, it’s not too late!” Evelyn’s voice rang out above the rising noise, and he recognized all its truth and love and undaunted hope as well. “You can still come with us! You and Gabriel, but we have to go now!”
“I’ll be back,” he promised. “Then we’ll all walk out of here together.”
“Dammit, Regan!” Danae’s voice nearly broke under the strain of all her frustration, exhaustion and limit-breaking pain. “Walk out of here with us now! You don’t have to do this! We didn’t ask for this! We don’t want you to throw your life away! We don’t need saving if it means—”
“I’m not throwing anything away. Took me ten years to get here, I’m not letting anything destroy it! But when I’m done, I’ll give you back everything you gave me.”
“Chimera…” Zilch said quietly, slowly, like they were trying to memorize the syllables of his name, the one that once had meant control and imprisonment and torment and death, and in their dark, familiar tone meant only warmth and love. “Where are you going?”
“To help us save ourselves. Because we can save ourselves.” As soon as he said the words, he realized he knew them from somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. “You know something? Until right now… I actually forgot that.”
Regan smiled, and stopped trying to place the words. Instead, for one last breath, he focused on the present. Like when Gabriel had joined their minds like linking hands, he saw them all in a moment, and tried to capture it like a photograph in his heart.
There were tears in Finn’s kind eyes, but he held Regan’s gaze and gave him a slow nod, as if he were trying to send him some of his unshaken faith and determination, even as the ground shifted beneath their feet. None of it was fair. But he believed in second chances and happy endings anyway, with strength of spirit that could move mountains.
Danae and Evelyn held each other tight, steady together on the shaking ground. Danae wasn’t angry anymore, instead looking caught between helplessness and fear. She’d conquered a tank and an army even at her lowest and most terrified, but she couldn’t stop these walls from crumbling, or Regan’s decision. More than anything, she wanted to protect the people she loved from anything that hurt them, even the demons in their own minds and hearts. Regan remembered her half-snorting laugh when he surprised her by joking back. She’d had his back. Time for him to have hers.
Rose. Brilliant, generous, patient, cerebral, in
tensely protective, steel-nerved, nerdy, perennial survivor Rose. Cold, hard steel had never been so sweet and warm. Regan never got a chance to ask forgiveness or explain, and maybe there was no way he could make it right—but he wouldn’t stop until he could come home and try.
Evelyn had told him once that even heroes got afraid. When you felt overwhelmed with it, sick with fear, and stood your ground or moved forward anyway, that was bravery. Evelyn Calliope’s bravery didn’t fight back tears, or spend last precious face-to-face seconds in blame. She didn’t know what was coming but promised without words to do whatever it took to see them all through it alive. Regan smiled back and believed her with all of his heart. He’d carry Evelyn’s songs with him too, beside her every warm memory and strengthening thought. Their intensity, their sweetness, their gale-force power and healing beauty.
Good night, dream sweet. Regan recognized those words now, where he’d first heard them and how to get back there again. It hadn’t been a dream. But now he was finally waking up.
Regan’s eyes slowly returned to where they’d begun, where they always seemed to end up, every time. He held onto the fierce love and patient promise in Zilch’s bright, strikingly alive eyes as the now second-nature icy chill began to run up his spine, holding onto the image of their face until the very last second.
“Thanks for reminding me.”
Regan faded into the shadows and was gone. A rush of red-hot air buffeted all of them like the winds of a hurricane, and then died away to nothing.
They were alone as the world fell down around them.
They ran. Evelyn, Danae and Zilch pounded back up the way they’d come, making for the scaffolding and relative safety of the sewers. The two women led, their intact suits protecting them as they kicked debris out of their path. Finn kept up as fast as his short legs could, and bits of his exposed skin starting to bubble. Zilch pulled him along, running with their eyes squeezed shut, the exposed skin on their face starting to singe black, ripple and curl at the stitches.
Chameleon Moon Page 34
