by Laura Legend
Without conscious deliberation, Cass threw herself across the shaft at Miranda. Miranda, though, propelled herself to the opposite wall, gamely staying out of arm’s reach.
“I have to finish what I started,” Miranda continued. “There’s no going back now. Stopping now would be the worst cruelty of all, wasting in the process everything that we’ve already sacrificed.”
Miranda, clearly, was pulling her punches. She hadn’t disarmed Cass for the sake of an advantage. She’d done it to avoid hurting her more than necessary. Cass could see the visible struggle in Miranda’s own face as she pushed back against the ferality stalking her.
Cass decided to switch gears and draw Miranda out.
“What kind of sacrifices are we talking about, Miranda. Are we talking about the sacrifices that my mother made? Are we talking about my twin brother?”
The fire was roaring up above. The entire compound was ablaze. In contrast with the cool white light pulsing from deep in the water, the air above them crackled red and orange.
Miranda didn’t know what to say in response. Cass had cut close to the bone.
“What about me, Miranda? Am I one of these sacrifices? I know the truth. I know that my own mother cast the spell that locked my emotions away, set my eye wandering, and short-circuited my powers. Why, Miranda? Why? What was it all for?”
Cass’s voice kept escalating as she pressed further.
Now she was shouting. The anger filled her. “Why, Miranda? What happened to my mother? Did the Lost kill her? Did you join forces with her murderers!?”
Miranda hesitated and Cass attacked. Weaponless, they launched themselves back and forth across the circumference of the shaft, trading knuckles and knees and elbows, drawing blood and cracking bones, sometimes running along the interior of the wall to gather more momentum, before hurling themselves again.
Cass began to tire. Her eye wobbled out of focus. Her light began to wane.
“You’re asking the right questions, Cass,” Miranda conceded, wiping blood from her lips and retrieving her sword from the crevice she’d jammed it into. “But these aren’t my answers to give. These aren’t my stories to tell. If we survive the night, you’ll know the whole story soon enough.”
Then, before Cass could respond, Miranda dove into the water and swam straight down, aiming for the pulsing light. As Cass’s own light faded, the pulsing light grew stronger. She could feel it vibrating in her teeth.
There was nothing to be done now but follow.
Cass dove in after Miranda.
She wasn’t going to catch her, though. Miranda was streaming downward, kicking to propel her descent, gaining speed. Her sword was stretched out in front of her, the tip of the spear.
The deeper they went, the stronger the light became. Cass’s lungs began to burn, her legs ached. How did Miranda ever hope to make it back to the surface?
Then Cass realized that the light was emanating in waves from a bubble at the bottom of the well. She watched as Miranda, at full speed, rammed her sword into the bubble of light, popping it. A massive percussion wave expanded to the fill the well as the bubble burst, severing the connection between the monastery and the Underside. The wave threw Cass back against the stone wall, cracking her head.
Cass’s vision blurred. Once the percussion wave passed, all of the well’s black water began to drain out of the bottom of the well, sucking Cass downward. Cass’s senses were scrambled.
There was nothing she could do.
She was going to get sucked down with it. She was going to die.
Then Miranda’s hand snapped out and snagged Cass by the collar, holding her fast until the water had all drained away.
Cass blacked out again.
When she regained consciousness, is was all over.
She was alone in the bottom of that dry well and, in the world above, everything was dark and deathly quiet.
17
CASS LAY STILL at the bottom of the well for a full five minutes, listening to the ominous silence from above, afraid to move. The stonework was rough at her back. She was damp and cold. But for her clothes to only be damp, hours must have already passed since she’d followed Miranda down into these depths. Her head throbbed, and she vaguely realized she probably had a concussion. She wondered if she’d be able to move her head at all—at her first attempt, pain shot through her right temple with all the delicacy of a drill hitting concrete. Cass squeezed her eyes shut against the wave of nausea and the pain pulsed its way down behind her eyes, settling in her sinuses so hard it made her cheekbones ache and her nose started to drip in response. So. That was a no, at least for the moment.
Cass struggled to open her eyes again. Her weak eye felt especially clouded and blurry. A hint of gray morning light shone in a broken circle at the rim of the well’s opening.
Cass couldn’t bear to think about what might greet her on the surface. Eventually, though, as her headache shifted into a steady hum rather than the bone jarring bass drum beat it had started at, she was more scared to stay where she was than to find out what had happened above.
She rolled over onto her side and almost fell into the hole through which the water had drained from the well.
“Mother—” Cass whispered, recoiling from the edge.
She rolled to her knees and peered into the hole. There was no light. There was no pulse. If the well had once been alive in some way, it was dead now. A vague scent of decay wafted up from the hole, rotten and briny. Cass dropped a pebble down the shaft and listened. Eventually she heard it bounce off the side, then again, but she never heard it hit the bottom.
Pressing her hand against the side of the well, Cass could feel a difference in the earth itself.
Where, previously, the monastery grounds had hummed with life, existing in more than one place at a time because of their connection to the Underside, now the grounds were flat and one-dimensional. The magic was gone. Now the monastery was just itself. It was just a monastery. And in that respect, the monastery didn’t resemble itself at all.
Cass slowly stood. As she straightened her body, each new movement revealed to her in painful detail the extent to which last night’s fight had left her battered and bruised. And as she stood, she became aware of the anger that was lurking inside of her like a subdural parasite from head to toe, just beneath her skin. The anger felt real enough—biological enough—that she wouldn’t have been surprised to bleed it.
Once she was standing, she tried to shake off the sensation by finally looking up. The surface was at least five hundred yards away.
“Shit,” Cass said, rubbing the mammoth bruise on the back of her head.
It was going to be a tough climb. She was about to begin when, off to the side, she saw something glint in the gray darkness.
Her sword. Her mother’s sword.
She picked it up and examined it. In her hand, it still faintly glowed.
“Thank you, Mother,” she said and, with the help of the sword, began the long, dizzying climb.
The sides of the well were slick and slimy, covered in a substance that felt more animal than vegetable. With her face this close to the wall, the smell of decay was stronger. She turned her face to the side, ignored what her nose was saying, and climbed. More than once, the anchor provided by her sword was the only thing that prevented her from slipping and falling to her death.
After what seemed like an hour of strenuous climbing with little to no foot holds—completely maxing out whatever strength she had left—she finally collapsed onto the bottom stair. Every muscle in her body wobbling and her knees threatening to buckle every second, she began circling upward. Once she reached the top of the stairs, she began to hear the faint calling of voices. She stopped and listened.
They were calling her name.
No.
Zach was calling her name.
Here above the waterline the walls were dry, and Cass quickly ascended the remaining distance.
“Cass! Cass!” she heard Za
ch wailing.
The closer she got to the top, the closer he seemed to come to the well. By the time she was just below the rim, Zach was standing right next to the well, his back to her, desperately shouting her name.
“Cass!”
She popped her head above the rim and said wearily, “You rang?”
Zach froze in place, unable to believe his own ears.
“Cass?” he whispered back, as if he were speaking to her departed spirit.
Cass threw her leg over the side of the well and tumbled out onto the ground.
Zach jumped.
“Cass!” he exclaimed turning to find her.
“Right here,” Cass said, shielding her eyes from the morning light, waiting for them to adjust. “Was there something you needed?”
Zach fell on his knees, propped her head on his lap, and kissed her.
“Just you,” he said. “Just you.”
Zach brushed her hair from her eyes and Cass noticed that he still had his ring. She looked down at her own hand. Her ring, woven from grass and blessed by magic, was still intact. She was still his and he was still hers.
Zach helped her to her feet and Cass got her first look around.
Every building in the compound—all of them hundreds of years old—had burnt to the ground. The compound wall was itself largely destroyed, still standing in just a few lonely sections. The trees that supported the roof of the well were cracked, scorched through, and dry as bone. Burned corpses lay scattered everywhere. A layer of ash covered everything.
Surveying the scene, Cass felt her simmering, subterranean anger contract into something cold and hard deep inside of her. Without losing any of its underlying force, her anger shifted from something aflame to something frozen.
Cass literally shivered in response.
Is this how normal people feel? she wondered. Is this how emotions work? Is this what Zach was feeling as he looked around at the ruins of the monastery: a tight, cold, contraction of hope into something small and black? Or is this ability to gather up a feeling and lock it away in concentrated form part of the “gift” my mother gave me before she died?
“Is there anyone else?” Cass asked, afraid of the answer.
Zach gestured in the direction of the main gate—or, at least, in the direction of what had been the main gate. There, in the shadow of the ruins, Dogen was tending to Kumiko. Zach had gotten her out before the building fell. Three other Shield soldiers stood in a loose knot on the far side of the gate in a scorched field.
“That’s it?” Cass gasped.
Zach hesitated. “Yeah, as far we know, that’s it. Five survivors. Six counting me. Seven, now counting you.”
Cass felt her left hand contract of its own accord into a tight fist. The longer she looked in Kumiko’s direction, the more impotent and angry she felt.
Her knuckles were white and her nails cut into the palms of her hands. Her fist trembled.
She couldn’t forgive this.
“If there is a God in heaven,” she spat, “may he damn them all to hell.”
18
GARY JONES OPENED his door in the evening of the same day to find Cass and Zach, battered and bruised and covered in ash, propping each other up on his doorstep.
It had taken the seven of them hours to get down out of the mountains by way of an old truck and rough service roads. With the destruction of the monastery hub, the whole network of tunnels branching from the base had collapsed. Eventually they found a functioning entry point to the Underside in a nearby city.
Kumiko and Dogen had retreated to an Underside safehouse. Cass, though, couldn’t imagine going anywhere but home. And Zach, for his part, couldn’t imagine going anywhere but with Cass.
Now, standing on Gary’s doorstep, the pair of them looked like death warmed-over.
Gary ushered them into the house. He’d just been stir-frying some bulgogi and the smell of Korean barbeque filled the house. The smell made Cass weak in the knees. When was the last time she’d eaten? A can of beans twenty-four hours ago? Had she really been safe in bed with Zach just twenty-four hours ago? The cabin seemed a world away. The time they’d spent there felt like a dream.
In response to the aroma, a deep hunger collided with an overwhelming grief inside of Cass. Her knees buckled and her vision blurred as she stumbled to a seat at the kitchen table. She put her head in her hands for a moment and then looked up at her father with a weak smile.
“Mind if we join you for dinner?” she asked.
Gary slid his place setting in front of Cass and put one out for Zach. Cass couldn’t help but notice him register the fact that Zach was wearing her grandfather’s wedding band. Gary glanced in turn at Cass’s ring finger and took in the improvised jewelry she wore, but didn’t say anything in response. Cass could see that he was, naturally, both pleased that she’d found someone and troubled that— only a few days into their lives together—disaster had already struck.
Once the food was in front of her, Cass wasn’t sure she could actually eat anything. Her stomach gurgled warily. But after she’d taken a small bite, life reasserted itself and neither she nor Zach had any trouble polishing off what Gary had prepared for his own dinner. Gary sat at the other end of the table with a cup of coffee and watched in silence as they ate.
When she’d finished, Cass pushed her plate forward and leaned back in her chair. She began to lace her fingers behind her head, but the sudden jolt of pain from the deep bruise made her jump, and she settled for folding her hands together in her lap as she looked up, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“The monastery is gone, Dad. It was overrun by the Lost and burned to the ground. Its connection to the Underside was severed. Nearly a thousand were killed.”
Gary nodded and his eyes narrowed as he pushed his glasses back into place. He followed Cass’s gaze to the ceiling as if he might find additional clues or meaning there.
Cass continued. “Kumiko is still alive. But the Lost are desperate and the whole community is on the verge of going feral. Miranda included.”
Gary flinched a little at the mention of Miranda but still didn’t say anything.
“The consequences could be dire,” Zach noted. “The Shield has been one of the few things keeping the Lost in check for more than a thousand years. And now that check is needed more than ever.”
“Yes,” Gary agreed, “with Judas gone, the wheels have come off, just as Rose feared.”
At first, Cass was surprised by this response. She knew that he knew about this world, but she could never quite square that with the aging librarian sitting across the table from her. That he and Rose had once been young and had had adventures of their own, that they’d met through Kumiko, that his family’s connection to magic and the Shield went back generations—Cass couldn’t get those files to merge.
Still, she didn’t have any trouble believing that her father, quiet as he was, always knew more than he was saying.
“Tell me, Dad—about Mom . . .” Cass ventured. “Did the Lost kill her?”
Cass recalled her recent—and bloody—conversation with Miranda.
Gary was reluctant to answer. He took a sip of his coffee and stared into his mug without meeting her eyes.
“Dad,” Cass said more sharply than she’d intended. “I need answers. I need to know what’s going on and why. The time for protecting me and keeping secrets is long past.”
Zach reached across the table and took Cass’s hand, then turned his own attention to Gary, waiting for an answer.
“Keeping secrets from you was never a particularly effective strategy, anyway,” Gary admitted.
He turned his mug a quarter turn, aligning the handle with his spoon.
“Against Kumiko’s wishes, your mother was looking into ways of helping the Lost. Instead of always fighting them, she was looking for ways of changing or redeeming them. She had some early, partial successes with some willing participants but, as she got pulled deeper into that dark world, she shared less a
nd less of her plans with me.
“I was frightened for her and, in turn, she was trying to protect me. I wanted her to go slow and keep some distance, but she felt a kind of urgent pressure to act—a pressure that, in her mind, was tied up with finding a way to help you manage your own emotions.
“In the end, she would disappear for weeks at a time and had stopped talking to me about it altogether. In retrospect, the outcome felt inevitable. I retreated, she forged ahead, and, eventually, the people she was trying to help turned on her.”
Cass tightened her grip on Zach’s hand.
Gary finally met her eyes.
“Yes, Cass. They killed her.”
19
IT WAS DIFFERENT to hear her father say it out loud. It was different than hearing it in her own head, the product of deduction and circumstantial evidence.
Now it felt real. The idea had weight.
The Lost had killed her mother.
Cass felt the cold, hard ball of anger in the pit of her stomach somehow grow even colder and harder. Her jaw clenched. Her gaze grew distant. A wisp of white smoke curled from the corner of her weak eye.
Gary looked alarmed and set his mug down abruptly, spilling coffee on the table. He’d never personally seen Cass’s powers manifest this way.
“Cass,” Zach said, interrupting her, bringing her back to the room.
Cass looked at him, blinking, as if she’d just woken up.
“Mr. Jones,” Zach said, standing, “I think Cass needs some rest.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Gary said, rising. “I’ll show you where her room is.”
Then, glancing at the ring on Zach’s finger, he added after a moment’s hesitation, “Your room, I mean. For the both of you.”
He led them down the hall to Cass’s room. Zach followed with Cass in tow. Cass was numb and distracted. Gary swung the door open and stood aside. Zach ushered Cass into the bedroom, mouthed “thanks” to Gary, and quietly shut the door.
Cass stood in her childhood room, hands on her head, and felt as out of sync with her surroundings as she ever had. Her hair was still filled with ash, both from the fire and from the undead. Her grass ring felt heavy on her finger. The fire behind her weak eye sputtered and sparked. Time flickered in and out of focus, the record scratching.
