by Sierra Dean
I had no idea who it had belonged to. She was wearing both of hers.
From here I had a better look at what remained of the seating rows. I could see the place where I’d been sitting during the speech, and the chairs were long gone. The floor was smeared with dust and burned streaks from the heat of the explosion.
There was no sign of Prescott, Leo, or Cade, and I had to believe that meant they had been blown free of the worst of it, like I had. A pang gnawed at my heart. I wanted to look for Cade. I desperately needed to see his face, and hear him tell me he was all right.
But Cade hadn’t been standing right beside the blast.
I ducked underneath the ropes that had been in place to hold the media and civilians away from the clerics. The floor was uneven beneath me, with chunks of rock and debris creating a minefield I had to step through carefully or risk breaking my ankle. The entire lobby seemed to be leaning towards the gaping hole.
Now that I was close enough I could see the hole extended right through to the basement level below. More rocks and bodies littered the area beneath where the stage had been.
I sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. Everything tasted like chalk and ash.
“Sunny.”
I couldn’t hear anything. It was hard to know if I was screaming or whispering. The word made my throat feel raw, but I doubted anyone could hear me no matter how loud I screamed.
The light that had been coming from the glass front doors was totally blotted out by bodies now. Someone had grabbed a metal chair from the Starbucks patio and was using it to try smashing open one of the windows.
The air had become heavy and hot. I realized something near me was on fire. Blinking through the smoke, I saw one of the banners that had been hanging from the upper balconies was smoldering, little licks of flame creeping their way up.
Papers and chunks of rock and personal belongings continued to fall from above me. This was a rain unlike any I’d ever controlled. It was steady and malicious, each new drop a reminder of what had happened.
My heart was in my throat. Nerves were chewing my stomach to pieces. Something deep down was saying Prepare yourself, but I wasn’t ready to listen to reason. They had to be okay. Everyone had to be okay.
I stepped over a body and gave a little sob. Dark hair. Female.
Not them, not them, not them.
“Sunny,” I whispered. Breathing was getting harder now. Both because of my rising terror and how much thicker the smoke and dust was this close to the stage. I could barely see anything.
I tripped over something, fell to my knees, and slid a few inches towards the open mouth of the hole before kicking myself backwards onto more even ground.
My hand was holding something soft and warm.
Don’t look, the logical voice in my head commanded.
I had to though, didn’t I? I had to.
A big chunk of cement was blocking me from seeing what I had touched. I shoved it aside, and a pair of blue eyes stared back at me.
The irises were constricted, unseeing. A film of dust coated her open, unblinking eyes. It wasn’t bothering her.
Nothing would bother her again.
My chest seized, and I touched Sawyer’s face. The side of her head was caked in blood. Her skull no longer had a round shape. The way her body was resting was awkward and impossible.
She was dead.
A sob ripped from my lungs as I shook her. “Wake up. You have to get up.” Her head wobbled unsteadily, but she showed no sign of hearing me. This wasn’t a miracle moment in the making. This was final. I couldn’t undo this.
“Lula?” I don’t know how I heard her. My head was filled with an angry swarm of wasps, everything buzz buzz buzz. Yet I heard my name as if she’d spoken it inside my head, and not through words. I tore my gaze off Sawyer’s lifeless body to where Sunny lay, just a few feet back.
She was pinned under one of the fallen scaffolds. A widening pool of black-red blood spread out under her, a film of dust congealing on the surface. Bones were sticking through the side of her dress.
“Sunny.” I crawled across the floor, cutting my palms open on razor-sharp shards of rock and metal. When I touched her face, my blood left a streak over her too-white skin.
She was looking at me, but I wasn’t sure she actually saw me.
I’d never seen anyone that white before except Manea.
This was skin the color of death.
A scream caught in my throat and emerged as a strangled gulp. “Oh, Sunny, it’s going to be okay, okay? We can fix this.”
“You’re okay, right?” Her free hand gripped mine and squeezed. The pressure was so light I barely felt it.
“I’m okay.” I wasn’t. I never would be again. Part of me was dying with each breath she took, knowing it was one breath closer to the last. I knew I was crying because scalding tears were flowing down my cheeks, but I didn’t bother wiping them away.
“Okay. You’re okay,” she repeated. Her grip loosened. “It hurts,” she admitted.
“I know, sweetie.”
“I don’t want it to hurt.” Now she was crying, and with each tear my heart broke. “Is Sawyer okay?”
I fought against a sob. “Yeah, Sun. She’s fine. You took good care of her.” I stroked my sister’s dirty blonde hair, leaving behind bloody-red highlights in my wake.
Then Prescott was with me suddenly, crouching beside me.
“No.” I shook my head violently, tugging Sunny’s head onto my lap. The blood on the floor around her was soaking into my pants. Even with my damaged hearing I knew her breaths were coming out in rattles.
“It hurts so much,” she breathed.
Prescott put a hand on my shoulder. “Tallulah.”
“No.” I looked down at my sister’s ashen skin, the fading shine in her eyes, and I knew what the right thing to do was, but the right thing meant saying goodbye, and that made it impossible.
I turned to him, and he wore an expression I’d never seen on his face before.
Pity.
“Take me instead,” I pleaded.
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Please. Please.” I took his hand and put it against my forehead, pressing his fingers against my feverish skin. “Take me and leave her.”
“I can’t undo this.” He touched my face gently but left me unharmed. “But I can make the pain stop.”
I choked on my tears and went back to stroking Sunny’s hair.
“No,” I whispered again.
“Lula,” she said. “I’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”
I started to bawl then. Body-shaking, desperate yowls of grief. My chest shook, my limbs trembled, and finally I knew that if I kept her here any longer, it was only for me. “Okay,” I repeated. “Okay.”
Prescott reached past me and gently placed his hand on Sunny’s cheek. She smiled up at him, her beauty staggering even in that final moment, and then she was gone.
One minute she was Sunny, still alive however fleetingly, and the next she was just the beautiful shell that had housed my sister for twenty-seven years.
She was dead.
I would never be whole again.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Prescott had to physically remove me from Sunny’s side.
He dragged me away from the edge of the hole, arms locked around my waist while I kicked and screamed and tried to claw my way back. I was beyond reason. There was nothing rational left in me.
My heart had been ripped out and replaced with a black hole that would suck me apart from the inside out. Soon I would be nothing. I’d be a vacuum where there had once been a soul.
Prescott pushed me against someone, and said, “Maybe you can calm her down.”
Arms wrapped around me, a familiar clean smell totally at odds with the cloying dust in the air.
I looked up and saw Cade staring down at me. His face was streaked with blood, but he looked otherwise unhurt. Leo was right behind him, staring at me as if he co
uldn’t believe I was real and not a ghost.
“He killed Sunny,” I wailed, burying my face in Cade’s filthy shirt. This was unfair to Prescott, who had only done the humane thing for my sister, but I needed to blame someone, and if Death presents you with a physical aspect of itself, that’s where you point the finger first.
Leo’s features darkened instantly and he grabbed Prescott by the front of his shirt. The demigod’s fists went to the cleric’s throat before Cade pried them apart.
“Stop,” Cade said. “He didn’t kill her, he let her go.”
Pres didn’t defend himself or correct me. He hung back a few feet, giving Leo an apologetic look. After a moment he wandered off, guided either by the pull of his mistress or his own knowledge of whose time had come. Wherever he went, death was sure to follow, so perhaps it was better if he didn’t stand anywhere near us for the time being.
Funny that he’d been right beside me when this happened and I had walked away physically unscathed. Emotionally, that was a whole different story.
Cade was stroking my hair, whispering meaningless words of comfort. It was all just a dull roar. My relief that he was okay was going to war with my anguish over losing Sunny and Sawyer. How could I feel so happy to be safe in his arms and so broken all at the same time?
The lightness his presence gave me was like a direct betrayal. I shouldn’t be allowed to feel anything but grief. Life shouldn’t get to go on.
“Where’s Sawyer?” Leo’s voice was strained with worry.
That did it, my brief reprieve was shattered. I glanced from Cade to Leo and shook my head, unable to say the words.
Cade held me closer, and I cried into his shirt until I had nothing left but hiccups and a headache.
The front door was mostly clear now except for a few people lying still, either exhausted or injured from those who had crawled over them. A breeze was creeping in over the broken glass.
Firefighters and paramedics were making their way in, first clearing the bodies in the doorway, then progressing farther into the heart of darkness.
I scanned the crowd, trying to make sense of all this carnage, but there was no sense to be had. People were dead, others were lying in ruin. Cameramen were weaving their way through the lobby desperate not to miss anything while the rescue crews worked.
This was being broadcast live to the world.
The gods had let this happen.
So much for the harvest of belief.
My gaze landed on a man standing near the empty registration desk. He looked pale and shaken, but something in his expression made me stop on him.
A thin twist of a smile curved his lips upward.
His expression was one of pure triumph.
The expression faltered when he caught my eye.
I pushed myself off Cade and bolted across the room, narrowly dodging a BBC cameraman who was filming a firefighter digging through the rubble. The two of them noticed me, and while the firefighter didn’t stop his work, the cameraman followed, jogging behind me with his gear jangling.
The man by the registration desk saw me coming and peeled off in the opposite direction. He made like he might loop back and head for the front door but thought better of it when he noticed the wave of police making their way in.
The security guards who were still present spotted me running, zeroed in on my quarry, and suddenly everyone was in motion. The man—he was in his mid-thirties, pale-blond hair, slight pudge around the midsection—was wearing a Luxor maintenance uniform.
How many other men in identical uniforms had I seen moving in and out of this place over the last week? How many people had gone by right under my nose, totally unnoticed, because they looked as if they belonged? Nothing about this man stood out. He didn’t look evil, he wasn’t wearing a Death to the gods T-shirt. He was so normal he had snuck by, beyond suspicion.
Until his dirty work was done.
He bolted for the stairs up to the second floor, and I was right on his heels. Debris tripped him up as he tried to make headway, and he tumbled, smacking his chin hard on the smooth black steps.
I was right on his heels, and when he went down, I dove for him, but he scuttled backwards like a frightened crab, and when he got to his feet there was a gun in his hand.
How he’d gotten it inside, I didn’t know. How had he managed any of this? Whatever he’d done, his plan had been skillfully executed, because he’d clearly done exactly what he meant to. From up here, out of the corner of my eye, the Luxor lobby had been reduced to a war zone.
I froze in place, my gaze darting from him to the gun, debating whether or not I could get to him before he shot me. My anger was boiling inside me, melting away my grief, bubbling up to such a frenzy I thought steam might start rolling off my skin.
I didn’t care if he shot me.
If there was a cloud in here, I would bring the sky down on him with such a display of vengeance they would whisper about it in awed tones for a hundred years. I would show people what the fury of the gods looked like.
There were clouds outside. I could taste the condensation in my mouth. I stretched my fingers, calling to the weather, pleading with it. The breeze kicked up, dust and ash swirling upwards in a frenzy. The air around us was suddenly damp, the smell of rain heavy.
His eyes went wide once he realized what I was doing.
“I gave you a chance, you know?” His gun hand trembled. “I told you this would happen.”
I had no words to give this man. I had nothing but my hatred.
The only need I understood was the need to kill.
Electricity sparked on my fingertips, and I raised my hand.
I’d make it so there was nothing left to bury.
The air sang with promise, the threat and menace of a coming storm. It made my skin pucker with goose bumps. The security guards who had been following us took a few steps back.
“I’ll show you how much the gods care,” I snarled.
He lifted the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Forty
“No.” Everything went still when the sound of the gunshot echoed.
As quickly as the storm had come, it was gone, leaving only the sticky humidity as a reminder it had been here at all.
The man crumpled into a heap a few steps from me, and everything was in motion all at once. The police and security guards were all shouting at one another, shoving their way up the stairs and past me. One of them gave me a stern look and nudged me back towards the main floor.
I took two steps backwards, then my foot caught on something and I fell, landing flat on my ass and bumping a few steps down the staircase. Whatever I had tripped over groaned.
“My gods, Imelda.” I scrambled back up to where her body was lying, probably where she’d been since the first blast had sent her flying. She was bloodied, her skin burned down one side of her face and one of her legs resting at an impossible angle.
I used myself as a buffer, making sure none of the men with guns jostled her any further as they moved back down the stairs.
“Send a paramedic,” I barked. “She’s still alive.”
They didn’t say anything to me, but one of them nodded to let me know I’d been heard.
I sat down next to her, and when I’d determined her arms seemed to be okay, I took one of her hands in my own. She looked bad, but compared to Sunny and Sawyer her condition was…well, maybe not hopeful, but not hopeless either.
“I should have listened to you,” she muttered. Her eyes were closed, but she was apparently well aware of who I was.
“I don’t think it would have changed anything,” I lied. Lying was getting easier and easier as this day went on. Soon I’d be a natural.
Cade was standing at the bottom of the stairs now that the police had cleared out. His expression was an unspoken question, and I shook my head. I didn’t need anyone’s help this time.
Prescott was nowhere to be seen, so I had to assume that was a good sign for Imeld
a’s long-term health.
“I’m so sorry,” she wheezed.
“So am I.” Her hand was limp in mine, but I still squeezed it lightly to let her know I was there. She was warm, not freezing. All good signs. “I think you’re going to be okay, Imelda. You just need to hold on.”
She nodded gravely. “This wasn’t supposed to happen to us.”
“Why, because we’re beloved by the gods?” My laugh was hoarse, mercilessly cold. “I don’t think it works that way. I don’t think it has ever worked that way.”
This time she opened her eyes and fixed me with a stare so intense it made my organs tremble. There was a ferocity in her still that demanded respect, even as she lay in a broken tangle.
“They’ll never believe again. This…this will ruin us, Tallulah.”
“People will either believe or they won’t.”
Her grip became viselike, crushing my fingers. Her skin was no longer warm, it was downright hot. I tried to pull myself free, but she wouldn’t let me go.
“They have to believe.”
“I don’t…” I drifted off, looking at the mayhem around us, at the film crews broadcasting every second of it. “It’s too late.”
She tried to force herself into a sitting position, and I held her down. “Whoa, come on. You’re just going to hurt yourself.”
“You have to fix this.”
“What?” Something in her expression, in the manic gleam in her eyes, made me nervous and excited all at once. The emotion unfurling in my belly was one I hadn’t expected to feel, not here, not ever again.
It was hope.
“What are you talking about?” I leaned closer to her, afraid to miss a single word. She looked borderline insane, but I didn’t think this was madness speaking. She was trying to tell me something, and I’d be damned if I ignored it.
“I can’t do it to myself.” She shook her head. “The power doesn’t work like that.”
“What power?”
“Tallulah.” She gripped both my hands in hers. “Would you fix this? If you could fix it, would you?”
