by Matt Ryan
I rubbed my temples. I hated the idea of leaving them in the cages for one more minute, but Jackie was right. Entering Quinn’s house would most likely be another war.
“You doing okay, Allie?” Carly asked.
“No, not really. Really happy to see you two though.” I gave a small smile.
“Hey, you have no idea how happy we are to see you. Little Miss Jackie over here had us running around the world looking for you, nonstop.”
“And I’ve done some terrible things . . .” Bridget trailed off, then came back around. “It makes it all worth it though, just to see you two, right here in one of our hideouts. To be honest, I didn’t think we’d ever live long enough to see this moment.”
“It’s not over yet,” Jackie reminded the group.
“Yes, I need to make the breaker stone,” I said, looking at the four stones and realizing I wasn’t sure how to even make it.
“We’re doing this now?” Carly asked.
“No, not here,” Jackie said. “This place gives me the creeps. You up to making some portal stones, Carly?”
“I could make a dozen right now.”
“Good, then start making some, and we’ll go over the plans for making this breaker stone.”
“You know how to make it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve picked up a few things here and there.”
Carly went to making stones at the kitchen table, while we all went into the living room and sat on the couch and chairs.
“Okay,” Jackie started. “I think we should make this stone somewhere remote.”
“This isn’t remote enough?” Bridget asked.
“No, she knows of this place. It’s only a matter of time before her crazy ass pops up here.”
“Then where to?”
“I say we go to where people aren’t. Somewhere where she won’t be expecting us.”
“I say we make it right here, right now,” I said. “I can make a stone in less than a minute.”
“Sweetie,” Jackie said. “This isn’t some freshman stone we’re talking about here. This is some serious shit. This stone is going to try and break you. It could take hours to make. You didn’t know this?”
“I guess not. I’ve been gone for a while, if you don’t remember.” A freaking stone that takes hours? I hadn’t even gotten over the torture of making the philosopher’s stone, and now I had to go through another ordeal?
Mark rubbed my back. “I’ll be with you, the whole time.”
“Yes, you will,” Jackie said. “It’s going to take both of you to make it. Two freaking specials making a stone. Going to be a beautiful sight. Kind of like making babies, if you ask me.”
“What? Mark and I have to both make it?” I asked.
“Just give us all the details, from top to bottom, okay?” Mark leaned forward, elbows on his legs.
“First, we need a location,” Jackie said.
“Oh, I got one,” Carly said. “Remember the ice caves in that glacier?”
“Yeah, we hid in one of those for hours once,” Jackie said. “We better make some heat stones then.”
“We’re going into a glacier?” I asked, trying to get them to slow down and tell me what the hell was going on.
“Yeah, pretty freaking cool, right?” Jackie said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cool was an understatement. The place was frigid, but beautiful. The ice cave had a tube-like shape that seemed to be carved into the blue ice. I ran my hand over the slick surface, and wiped the water off on my jeans.
Jackie set a few heat stones around the room.
“You think that’s safe?” I asked. “Making this stone might melt this place right down on us.”
“Naw, anything that melts will just go into the stream.”
A small stream of crystal clear water ran by the edge of the ice. I had the urge to drink from it. It seemed like the purest water in the world.
“Remember the first stone I had you make?” Mark said.
“Yeah, the one that made my nose run like crazy? Hard to forget that one.” I’d been happy then, and didn’t even know it. So strange, how everything seemed like such a big deal back then. My little stepbrother tormenting me would ruin my entire day. Bridget bullying me daily, making me shrink into almost nothing in high school. Now, I couldn’t even imagine stuff like that would affect me.
Four stones sat on a towel, between Mark and I inside a glacier. The heat stones were warming us up enough that I’d stopped shivering from the cold. Mark didn’t seem bothered by the heat or the cold, he was dialed in and ready.
“We can do this,” I said.
He smiled, as if he had nothing to worry about. “I know we can.”
“You ready?” I asked, taking off my gloves.
“If you are.” Mark slid his gloves off as well.
This wasn’t going to be easy, and Jackie had gone over the instructions with us until we knew them backward and forward. Not that they were complicated to start with. Basically, Mark and I had to meld the stones together, without letting them absorb into us. She thought twins would be ideal, and that was why Quinn had his, but Mark and I should manage fine.
The anger took a bit longer for me to find this time. I think I was getting weary of finding it, or maybe I was burning it so much, it’d lost its edge.
I glanced up at Mark and wondered what he was triggered on, but he looked mad as hell.
I took the first stone, the Lotus stone, and placed it in my palm. Once I was sure I had it under control, I placed the scarab stone next to it. Mark did the same and placed the Dragon stone and canyon stone in one hand. I moved my hand next to his and folded my hand over his, making sure the four stones were touching.
A bright light hit my eyes and I thought maybe my mother or Quinn, back from the dead, was attacking me, but no one else in the room seemed to notice. Mark was utterly focused on the space between our hands. Must have been my imagination.
I closed my eyes and pushed against his hand. That’s when I saw what was triggering Mark. I saw right into his mind.
He was a boy, maybe twelve, and his mother was screaming at him, pushing a yellow testing stone in his hands and telling it to dissolve. I saw the look on Mark’s younger face and the terror and hate in his eyes. He was holding the stone.
When his mom turned away with tears of frustration, Mark breathed out and the stone absorbed into his hand. He then quickly took out a wrapped stone from his pocket and dropped it on the floor. Rushing out of the room, he sat in front of the TV and started watching something. When Sarah returned, she took the stone with her gloved hand and told him they’d try again in a month.
Mark didn’t say anything, but when he turned around after she had left, he had tears in his eyes and his knuckles were white.
I opened my eyes and felt my anger slipping, as pity for the young Mark flooded my body. He had such strength and power. All his mother wanted in life was to create an alchemist, and now she had a special, but he wasn’t willing to play the game.
That was the spark I needed. Because I remembered it was me who made him play the game he’d fought so hard against. Sarah had given up on him by then. And if he’d never met me, she may have never known what he was capable of. Mark revealed himself to his mother that day, and while I knew it was a big moment in their lives, it never really struck me of how big it was, until right then.
I wouldn’t fail him now. Instead, I pushed against Mark’s firm hand. I felt our hand get just a bit closer as the stones started to merge.
I closed my eyes again and tried to resist it, but slipped back into his thoughts. This time it was Quinn. Just his stupid, smug smile. Then it became a compilation of Quinn spouting out his inferences that he and I had a thing going on. Each stupid innuendo ever spouted from Quinn’s mouth, replayed over and over again. I hadn’t realized it bothered Mark so much. At least this one didn’t send me down a path of pity for Mark, this one sent me raging. God, I hated Quinn.
I opened my eyes. “Mark,” I said through gritted teeth.
“What?” he said, but it sounded angry and annoyed.
“I want you to look in my mind and see if Quinn, you know, did anything to me.”
“Why?”
“I need to know.”
“I don’t.”
I felt our hands shaking. We were both slipping at the same time. “Do it!” I screamed, and tried to think of the first moment in the cage. I hated being in there, but soon, I felt the presence of Mark. Like an invisible fire, giving off heat.
“Let me take control,” he said.
I let go and floated above the ground, as if I was using a portal stone, and then the room became solid again. I knew what he was doing, like pressing the rewind button. This was the true first moment of my arrival. He rewound it again, and I was in the space between portals. Then the cage.
After that, Mark ran it fast-forward style, and it all played out exactly as I remembered it. Quinn had been lying to me the whole time. Just a mind game—one that had obviously worked. As much as I knew he’d been lying, there was always this small part of me that feared the worst. Now, seeing it play out in my mind, I knew I didn’t have a minute of lost memories.
Then Mark’s hand went soft against mine. I quickly rotated my hand and became the bottom. “I got you,” I said, feeling such love for him in that moment.
“It didn’t matter what that asshole did to you, I would love you the same way.”
“I love you too, Mark.”
“Then let’s finish this,” he said. Using his free hand, he slid it behind my neck and pulled me forward.
There was more than one type of emotion that could make powerful stones, and sometimes, mixing them together was more powerful than a singular emotion.
Mark moved closer, while keeping our stone hands pressed tightly together. Then he kissed me. It wasn’t our first kiss, but it was our best. I felt my world melt into his. His thoughts of passion and love for me flowed from his mind and into mine. I felt as one with him.
Kissing him back, I grabbed at him and pushed the stones together, harder; feeling the gap closing at a steady pace now.
It felt so good to connect with him. It was something we hadn’t had a chance to do since awakening from our curse, and now I let it all go. He could take me right there, and I wouldn’t say no, even with Jackie, Bridget, and Carly looking on.
We kissed for what seemed like too short a time, when Mark pulled away.
“No, don’t stop,” I whined.
“We did it.” Mark’s voice sounded astonished.
“We haven’t done anything yet.”
“The breaker stone . . . we made it.”
I looked down and opened my hand. A black stone that had a pulse of white every second, like a heartbeat, sat in the palm of my hand. I gasped. “We did it.” I looked up to the group and saw all their smiles. “We can end this.”
Mark hugged me, as the girls ran over and tackled us to the ground, laughing and wanting a good look at the stone we created.
“Look at that thing, it’s freaking amazing,” Jackie said. “Just think, this stone is going to save the world.”
“Let me hold it,” Bridget said.
“Wait your turn, hag,” Jackie pushed her arm away.
“You call me a hag one more time, and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Jackie said.
“You guys want to be alone?” Carly asked.
“Well,” Jackie said, “if I was going to go lesbo, Bridget would probably be my first stop. She’s pretty freaking hot.”
“Thanks,” Bridget said. “But she was asking Allie and Mark, nerd.”
Mark and I got up and I brushed off some of the dirt from my clothes.
“So how are we going to get this to your mom?” Bridget asked.
“That’s the easy part. When the moment is right, I’m going to reveal myself to her and then use it.”
“Just think, we can get rid of Quinn and your mother on the same day,” Jackie said, then had an expression of quick regret. “Oh, Allie, I didn’t mean it like that.”
I looked up and her face was frozen with pity. Actually, her hand sat frozen too, extended toward me but not moving.
Looking around, nothing was moving.
I pried my hand away from Mark’s and stepped back from him. Carly and Bridget were both staring at Jackie in a disapproving way.
“Mother!” I called out. “Show yourself.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I kept looking around for her, and then I heard footsteps in the water behind me. I turned to find her taking a few casual steps in the water, almost playing in it.
“Mother, put them back,” I said pointing to my frozen friends.
“All in good time, Allie.” She wore a dress I remembered from when I was a child. A yellow, high-waisted dress that moved with her as she kicked the water with her bare feet, splashing some of it against the blue ice wall next to her. Her feet must be freezing, but she didn’t seem to be affected.
“How did you find us?” Then I realized it. The moment we created that breaker stone, the Lotus stone no longer existed. “The stone, it doesn’t work anymore, does it?”
“Oh, it still works. That’s not how I found you. I guess the better question would be, when did I find you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked and started creeping toward Jackie and the stone she held in her hand.
“I was one of the first people you met,” she said, then transformed into Zhuang, from Jin’s palace. “Or maybe the gas station attendant in Egypt.” She transformed again into the man at the gas station.
“That’s crazy,” I said and took another step toward Jackie.
“Just as crazy as the American tourist waiting in line with you? Or maybe, the poor lonely Russ, just hoping to have company on the drive through Williams.” She transformed into him and flashed back to her own body.
“Russ?”
“You even hugged me. I thought for sure you’d feel the stone, being that close to you.”
“That’s impossible.” Her words had frozen my ability to think clearly. I couldn’t believe that I was that close to my mother on so many different occasions, and never knew it. She must have taken them, read their minds, and discarded of their bodies before I’d arrived at each location.
A shiver ran through my body.
Then I thought of the conversations I’d had with each of the people. It was as if they were guiding me on a path of reconciling with my mother, instilling in me the importance of family.
“It really was you, wasn’t it?” I asked, but didn’t wait for her response. “Then why? Why let me get so far, and even create the very stone that can stop you?”
“I never believed you would be able to create that stone, really. It was rumored to take a twin power, but I guess that wasn’t very accurate.” She shrugged. “Besides, what I saw between you and Mark in the making of that stone was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot.”
I was only a few feet from Jackie, who had her hand held high, one quick grab and I could have the breaker stone.
Cathy moved closer to me, but was still a good twenty feet away.
I jumped and grabbed the stone out of Jackie’s hand and landed on the ground. Then I leapt to my feet, expecting my mother to be throwing stones, or doing something, but she was standing pretty much in the same spot.
“Really?” she asked, skeptically. “You’re going to use that on me?”
“No, I don’t want to hurt you, but I do want my mother back. You can take that stone out and we can break it together.”
“What you ask is nothing short of impossible. That’s like saying I can rip out my heart, and still be okay.”
“That stone was part of me for just a moment, and I know it can be removed.�
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“Why would I even want to do that?”
“Mother, you’ve killed a lot of people because of that stone.”
“Only to become a greater being so I can help the worlds. You have no idea how small of a picture we are getting here. When I transcend, I can end all suffering.”
“The stone showed me what it wants.”
“Then you should know better than anyone that I can’t do what you’re asking.”
“Please, Mom, take that stone out of your chest. Do it for me, and we can be a family again. I can even forgive you for what you did to Dad.”
“What are you talking about?”
I didn’t want to bring it up. The memory of seeing what happened on the other end of that video call tore me apart. “It showed me how you had him killed, and it even had me watch it happen.”
“Hold on, that stone showed you that? I swear on my life, I had nothing to do with that. I always loved your father. In fact, I’ve been searching for his killer for a very long time now. Wait, you saw who killed him?” She stepped forward, reaching out, as if she could pull the answer from me by sheer will power. And maybe she could, if it wasn’t for the breaker stone.
“It was an alchemist, sent by you.”
“An alchemist . . . ” she looked back at the cave entrance.
My heart pounded and my hand shook, but I couldn’t help but believe her. Maybe because I wanted to believe so badly that she wouldn’t do that to my father, her own husband.
“Then the stone lied to me,” I said. “Just like it’s lying to you right now. It’s telling you that greatness is ahead, if you only feed it more. But that isn’t what it’s about, is it? It needs to keep feeding, or it will die.”
“Taking me with it,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to end that way. Take it out of your chest and let’s break it together.”
“I can’t do that, Allie. The things I’ve done, to so many people across so many worlds. You have no idea what I’ve done. There’s no going back from it. If I don’t finish this, then everything I’ve done to them is for nothing. They weren’t serving a greater good.”
