“Doctor, Miss Lyons. You will address me as Doctor. Now, what is it you wanted to see me about?”
“I—I want you to get me out of here,” I said, my mind feeling fuzzy. “I’m not supposed to be here…”
“According to the courts, you are,” he said, his face impassive.
Hadn’t his eyes once been kind? I couldn’t remember.
“If that’s all you wanted to say, I’ll be going. I’ll see you at our session on Monday. Try not to give the guards a hard time.”
He turned to leave, and I stumbled trying to reach him. The door shut and I fell against it.
“Please, I don’t belong here! Please…”
Again I heard the laughter. I rapped my head on door. Softly at first, then harder.
“I don’t belong here, I don’t belong here, I don’t…”
I got angrier and angrier, until I was slamming my shoulder into the wall, the pain my only release. The straightjacket ties flapped wildly—mesmerizing me. If I could just loosen them, I’d be free. I had to get free.
I struggled and jerked. I just had to undo the tethers…
Tether. The word cut through my drugged up haze. That word was important. Tether.
What’s my tether?
I was supposed to ask myself that. What’s my tether?
Life is your tether.
Who had said that? It had been someone important. Someone I loved.
Come back because you’re going to live as long as you’re alive. Any other reason is bullshit.
I strained to remember. I didn’t belong here. I had to get back; people were dying. Taren could be—
His name brought it all back, and the second it did, the sanitarium vanished. I was back in the cyclone, staring down at the abyss that churned beneath me.
Taren was right about life being my tether. Any other tether would fail eventually. A person, a cat, a duty...all could go away. But life kept on, for better or for worse.
Where is a storm most powerful? Cole had once asked me.
I held to how much I wanted to live and plunged down into the center of the Abyss.
56
Falling through it, I felt its sadness, its rage, its pain. I felt something else, something that shocked me, even as I turned end over end, hurtling to I didn't know where. I felt its longing. For connection. For wholeness. They were my longings, and the longings of pretty much everyone I knew, if you went deep enough. The need to feel loved, to feel like we weren't so damned alone.
I reached the bottom and landed softly, surrounded in blackness. What swirled above me was still madness and chaos and fury and pain, but down here, there was a hush. I was in sacred space.
I don't want to fight, I said, before the thought was fully formed. I don't want to fight? I thought. What else was I here for? But however absurd, I knew the words were true, so I repeated them.
I don't want to fight.
What do you want? There was suspicion in its sending.
I want to talk. I want to find a way to work this out, so that we both get what we need.
The silence stretched an interminably long time, and it was all I could do not to fill it. But I didn't. I waited.
You ask something that no one has ever asked before, man or Daemon.
I felt its surprise, and its loneliness.
I’m asking. What do you want?
I want you to stop hating and fearing me.
I don't, I said. Not right now, when I can sense the real you.
You misunderstand. All that swirls above, that is also the real me. It's part of you, too. A part of all life.
I wanted to protest, to say that I was striving to be better than that, but the rock that Cole had insisted I wear grew hot in its pouch around my neck. He'd wanted me to make peace with my darkness. I had a feeling that now was the time.
You need to stop rejecting me.
And what would that mean? I said, afraid of the answer.
It means looking at me. Really seeing me for what I am. I have carried the hatred and rage of man and Daemon for so long. The burden has become too much. Please, take your piece back. Go home and tell the rest of them to take their piece as well. I cannot bear the pain of the world alone any longer.
My heart seized, and I found myself crying an ocean of tears. They flowed from my eyes and pooled all around me. This was where all of my tears had gone. Where the tears of man, Daemon, and all of life went when they wept. And this demon—one I’d thought had been a monster—had held them all.
On and on I cried, knowing that what the Abyss said was true. There were so many things I never let myself feel. Where did I think that pain went? Had I learned nothing? Energy didn't just die. Rage and pain didn't just cease existing because I didn't want to feel them.
I'm so sorry, I said. I didn't know.
There was a kindness in its silence, and as much as I wanted to stop feeling the guilt and shame that coursed through me, now that I knew the truth—that anything I didn't feel, the Abyss would be forced to carry—I couldn't just push it away. I felt it for as long as it needed to be felt.
When I had no more tears and my sobbing had subsided, I found myself curled into a dark embrace. It had no form, just held me gently. Above me, I couldn't be sure, but it seemed the storm raged a fraction less. Was it my piece, taken back from the Abyss?
A fraction of your piece, the Abyss corrected.
I'll work on it, I said. You have to know...we can't let the other demons take over our world. If they keep trying to destroy us, we'll have to destroy them. I don't see myself having this same conversation with a flock of Birds as they try to peck me to death.
Speak with the Daemons, it said. Those from the Colony have a solution I find acceptable.
With that, I was lifted up, back through the hurricane that continued to rage. But this time I wasn't afraid. This time, I was the eye of the storm.
57
I was delivered back to where I’d started, landing softly on the cracked earth, surrounded by Taren, Kat, and so many other people that I loved. Gretchen knelt beside Richard, who was still very much alive.
“What did you do?” Taren said. “The demons scattered, and it feels so different here.”
I was about to answer when something splattered on my arm. I looked up, and another fat drop landed on my forehead. A minute later, and it was pouring. We stared in awe, the people of the Oasis especially.
“Let’s go home,” I said when I was good and drenched. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
58
I never did get my the-world-didn’t-end cake, but Taren did buy me some gelato, which was even better. Especially since I was eating that gelato while sitting next to my mother at the Trevi Fountain.
It had been three weeks since I’d struck my deal with the Abyss—or, as Taren liked to call it, the Root demon to end all Root demons. I still spoke with it every day. Just a few minutes, here and there, to make sure it had what it needed.
Michele and Aldous had been the first to understand. The war between man and Daemon had caused so much death and pain. Neither side took responsibility, each seeing the other as wrong, each suffering because of it. One side had become demons, yes, but it wasn’t about sides. It never was. Maybe the war needed to happen; I certainly didn’t have a better solution than the one they’d come up with by creating the Gateways. But now it was time for something else.
I asked Aldous about what the Abyss had said, and he told me that the Colony—and many of the people from the Oasis—had decided to spend their energy and considerable power healing the demon world.
Sadah came to live with Aryn and Grae in Los Angeles. Cole and Zoe stayed too. They’d become liaisons between the healing Dahraks and the Institute. He’d been right; I did like her.
Michele continued to sing the Sanctuaries into existence. It turned out it wasn’t only Dahraks that could be healed; they were just the most easily reasoned with. But we’d been having luck with Monkeys and Birds, allowi
ng a few through at a time, and, once they were better, letting them choose which world they wanted to live in.
The Gateways became just that—access points between the worlds. It had taken some convincing, but apparently the other Gateways had people as wise as Master Dogan had been, and soon they agreed to learn the songs to expand their Sanctuaries and use them as healing grounds.
It was the Guardians that put up the most fight, thinking it anathema to let demons live, but there was still plenty of work to do, and plenty of demons that wanted no part of healing that needed to be dealt with. Once they realized they weren’t obsolete, they’d begun to come around.
Crystle became a Keeper shortly after the battle. Madison and Bridget were close to becoming Guardians. We’d lost more members of the Institute than I liked to think about, and that had left holes in the ranks that needed filling. Callie, at only thirteen, was too young to become a Keeper, even though she’d proven she had the skills necessary. She was still technically a student, but she had shifts at the Gate. Annys called it an “internship.”
Gretchen, Cole, Michele, and I created a new Gateway to replace the one that had been destroyed.
Kat was…well, Kat. Although she had seemed smitten recently, and I would have sworn I’d caught her and Michele stealing glances.
My mom, like most of Los Angeles, had been blissfully unaware of how close we’d come to destruction. As far as the world knew, we’d had an earthquake, measuring just 4.6, barely strong enough to comment on. Although she did mention that there were less red-eyed, drugged-out club kids, and seemed to know I might have something to do with that.
“Is it as beautiful as you thought it would be?” I asked my mom, who was enjoying some gelato of her own.
Taren sat a few rows up, wanting to give us some time alone. He knew what visiting the Trevi with Mom meant to me, but he was still serious about his duty to protect me. It was less likely there were Reds around, but not impossible. Not all demons go quietly.
“Better,” she said, her smile dazzling.
I didn’t end up turning into a Dahrak, even after using so much of the Chasm. I actually had a theory I’d have given anything to run by Master Dogan. I still missed him every day. What if it wasn’t a forgone conclusion that the Chasm turned Daemons into Dahraks? I suspected that it turned a person into whatever she feared most. For highly evolved Daemons, it would stand to reason that would be something vile and disgusting—something even worse than the humans they’d grown to hate. For me, it had been going insane. When I traced the bipolar episodes I’d had, each followed using the Chasm.
I hadn’t had another episode, but I couldn’t know whether it was something I’d have to deal with down the line. Which is why Annys and I—and Taren, I suspected—were closely watching my mental health and had a psychiatrist on speed dial. If the time came I’d do what was necessary, because this was the life I was living, bipolar or not.
I took another bite of gelato and nudged my mom.
“Come on,” I said. “You know you want to.”
“We’ll get in so much trouble,” Mom said, but there was a twinkle in her eye.
“That’s why we’ve got Taren,” I said, grabbing her hand and walking to the edge of the fountain, where water from a two thousand-year-old aqueduct pooled. “Bail money.”
We shared a smile then climbed into the cool water, causing sirens to blare. I dunked myself, a baptism of sorts.
As lives went, mine was pretty beautiful.
The End
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Christina Garner began writing stories at the age of six. Her first - about a young girl who busted up a nefarious ring of furniture thieves - was a huge hit with her mother. At eighteen, her Hollywood aspirations had her packing up an old Buick and heading out west.
Since then she has written and directed 10 short films and written four novels. She is currently working on her New Adult Urban Fantasy Series, The Witches of Coventry House.
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