Dying Day

by Kory M. Shrum

  In a furious rage, it slams my back into the snow. A hand closing over my throat. The face bleeds from Ally’s to Caldwell’s.

  “I could have made this pleasant for you,” Caldwell hisses. His dress shirt is open at the collar. His brown hair falls into his eyes. Veins in his forehead bulge as he squeezes all the air out of me. He’s crushing my throat.

  The face changes again. The hairline recedes. The jowls fatten and sag. A thin mustache forms over the lip, and when he smiles, one front tooth is blackened and crooked. It’s Eddie, staunch potbelly and black shark eyes staring down at me. Sweat stands out on his pockmarked skin. “But if you prefer it the hard way.”

  Without thinking, I call forth the flames that I’ve carried in my heart ever since that night in the barn. I burst into fire. Only it isn’t just me that burns now. The entire cyclonic funnel of power catches and fire rumbles up its pillar and into the sky.

  The sky is burning.

  The whole world is burning.

  My god, what have I done?

  Chapter 23

  Ally

  “There, there,” Gideon says. “It’ll be all right. I’d wager your budding general was always looking for a way to play hero for you. She’ll thrive on that dose of chivalry for decades. I’m sure of it.”

  “She’s going to die up there,” I scream. Tears stream freely down my face. I try to crane my neck to see the plane, to get a sense of where it has gone and if it’s all right. But I can’t see above the orange and white chute canopied overhead.

  “Ah, give her some credit. Soldiers like that rarely die so easily.”

  He’s trying to reassure me, but it isn’t working. My heart aches as badly as my head.

  “What the fuck!” Gideon cries. His mouth falls open in horror and surprise.

  “What?” I try to turn around and see what he is seeing, but the way my harness is latched to his, I can’t quite crane my neck fully in that direction.

  “Put your legs together and bend them!” he screams.

  “What? What’s happening?”

  “Hold on!” He wraps one arm around my torso, pinning me to his chest.

  I see a wall of fire only a second before it tears through the parachute.

  We drop, screaming for ten or twenty feet.

  Then Gideon yanks a cord, and another chute explodes from his pack. I bite my tongue when it catches the wind and I’m jerked upward.

  “Bless the bloody soul who thought two parachutes were better than one.” All the air leaves him in a heavy sigh.

  I’d forgotten that chutes are often packed with two should the first fail. But why did ours fail? Why did we pinwheel out of control for those terrifying thirty seconds?

  I don’t need to ask Gideon. The wind shifts, and I’m turned more directly in Jesse’s direction.

  I cry out in surprise at the shocking sight.

  The sky is on fire. The purple light that was covering the ice shelf and giving it an enchanted look now burns with an orange glow. Flames lick the sky for as far as the eye can see, swirling like a mushroom cloud of destruction in every cardinal direction.

  “Nikki!” I scream, squirming against Gideon’s chest.

  “She will lower the altitude in time,” Gideon says, but he isn’t even trying to convince me now. No jokes. No playfulness. It sounds like a prayer.

  I hear a rumble, and I’m certain that it’s the plane exploding, somewhere in the distance.

  “Is that an earthquake?” Gideon asks. “It’s an earthquake, look.”

  He points at a mound of ice in the distance. I can’t tell if it’s an iceberg in the ocean or if it’s protruding from the earth itself at this vantage point. But I do see its side crumble and slide off.

  “Bend your knees,” he reminds me again, and I look down to see the ice and snow rushing up to greet me. “We will actually hit this time.”

  We hit hard, and I pitch forward. I’m certain I’m going to hit the ground face first, and that Gideon will grind me into the snow after. But his long legs stumble and catch at the last minute, long before mine, given the difference in our heights. And he has the buckles of the parachute undone before we can be pulled down with it.

  Two snaps of my harness and my dangling boots hit the earth.

  He takes a moment to adjust the face mask, coat, and gloves protecting his skin. I do the same, searching for the cold that’s seeping into the collar. It takes a minute, but I manage to seal the air out again.

  “You’ll warm up when we start walking. We have about a kilometer. Maybe less.”

  We start marching toward the light, toward that center plume of blazing fire. But the ground shakes under our feet, and the march is slow going. But what else can we do? I will walk to Jesse if I have to. I didn’t come all this way to turn back now.

  “Which snow queen do I have to seduce to get a snowmobile?” Gideon asks, groaning beside me. “I hate walking in snow.”

  “Careful,” I tell him. “Our legs might freeze and fall off. Then you won’t be walking at all.”

  I can’t decide what I’m supposed to be looking at. The sky…? Searching every ripple of flame for a hint of a plane. For wreckage raining down into the distant ocean.

  “Excellent point, love.” Gideon catches me searching the sky. “You can’t see Tamsin from here. Not with all this fire in the sky.”

  I force a strained smile. “True.” But even as my anxiety for Nikki rises, and I hope against hope that she will survive, I keep looking toward the fiery plume. Toward Jesse.

  Is that Jesse?

  How in the world can Jesse be standing in the center of a blazing spire? Inside her shield?

  Gideon is still watching me with that even gaze—or at least I think it is. It’s hard to identify his exact line of sight beneath those large black goggles.

  “What is the plan, darling?” he asks. “Are we simply going to walk up and say, ‘All right now. You’ve had your fun. Time to stop destroying the world.’”

  I snort. But it’s tight and strained. There’s no humor in it at all. The silence stretches between us.

  “No, really,” he says at last. “What do you intend to do once you get there?”

  I have nothing to tell him but the truth. “Talk to her, I suppose.”

  He stops walking. “Talk to her. You suppose?”

  I turn and face him. “What else can I do?”

  “I don’t know. Have you considered putting her in a sleeper hold?”

  “Do you think she’s going to let me put her in a sleeper hold, Gideon?”

  He starts walking again. Snow and ice crunch under his boots like muffled Styrofoam.

  His silence only expands all of my fears. I don’t know what to say to Jesse. Gloria and Maisie both warned me that she might be out of her mind. And it isn’t like I didn’t have time to prepare for this. Months ago, Caldwell had trapped Jesse in the church with no windows or doors. And when she had a chance to kill Caldwell and take all of his power then, I had stopped her. I stopped her because I understood that when the power overtook her, the woman I loved might cease to be the woman I love at all.

  It was more than that, my mind tsks. Haven’t I been afraid of madness even before that? Back when Jesse was death replacing and every death meant one more step toward this fate? Okay, not a fiery plume in the middle of a tundra, true, but madness. Yes. Jesse was always afraid of madness. And so was I—because it was another way of losing her.

  But how does one prepare for the inevitable? I might have always known this moment was coming, but even as I walk toward it, I don’t feel prepared.

  I have no right to ask you, Gloria had said. You will die if you go. You will die.

  And I suppose if I have no better plan than to walk into the flames for her, then yes, I will die. But I don’t want to die a pointless death. Would I die for Jesse? Without question. But dying just for death’s sake? I need to do better than that.

  “What would you do?” I ask Gideon.

  He
turns toward me. He yanks down the black mask covering the lower half of his face. “What would I do for what?”

  “If it was Rachel in there. If Rachel was in the center of that fire, and you needed to convince her not to destroy the world, what would you say?”

  He considers me a moment, his eyes hidden behind those dark glasses. I expect some joke, perhaps roguish flirting. But he surprises me with his seriousness.

  “Well, we’d be fucked, wouldn’t we? Rachel didn’t give a damn for anything I said.”

  “But you’d try.”

  “Of course I’d bloody try. My behavior may suggest otherwise, but I don’t actually want to perish in flames, Alice.”

  “So what would you say, if you were trying to convince her not to kill us all.”

  “Rachel and Jesse aren’t the same person.”

  But even as he says it, both he and I know better. “Close enough.”

  Silence continues stretching between us as we walk. The fire grows brighter and brighter as we advance. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to see once I get much closer—if I can get that close.

  “I would tell her that she gave everything in the room color,” Gideon says finally. I can barely hear him over the crunching snow and the howling wind. “That seeing her face was like looking upon a Matisse that no one had ever seen. I would tell her that she was the greatest thrill I ever had. She terrified me, my every waking moment, but I loved—I’d tell her I—well, I’d tell her everything that I wish I’d told her.”

  My chest aches from the labor of walking in this climate, and the devastating heartache in Gideon’s melodious voice.

  “If we’re all going to die anyway, I’d want to die knowing I said everything I wanted to,” I say.

  “Well, here’s your chance,” he replies. “What’s that?”

  He points at the horizon, and at first, I don’t see anything. But after a few more steps, I see the black smudge on the ground. The outline of a body. My heart pounds.

  We run, or try to run. When we reach him, Gideon turns him over and lifts his mask.

  I recognize him immediately. “Lane?”

  “Who?”

  “Lane. Lane Handel.” When he peers at me questioningly, I add, “Long story.”

  He bends an ear to Lane’s mouth. “His breathing is shallow. If we don’t get him out of here, I don’t think he’ll make it.”

  He turns Lane on his side, and we see the rod sticking out of his back. It looks like a piece of flying shrapnel got him on his lower left side.

  “You’ll have to take him to the base,” I say. “Can you carry him?”

  “Yes, but what about you?”

  Hurry, Gabriel whispers. We are almost out of time.

  I turn toward the fire and see the shimmering shape of a man, liquid heat rolling off him.

  “I have to keep going.” I give Gideon my bravest smile. Immense gratitude swells in my chest. “Thank you for seeing me this far, Gideon.”

  “You’ve got guts of steel, love. You’re an amazing woman.”

  I laugh, surprised.

  This seems to delight him. Then, with a nod. He stands, hefting Lane up onto his shoulders as if he is only a child. I never realized he was so strong. He positions him with his back to the sky as to not disturb the rod.

  “Godspeed, Alice,” he says, giving me a final smile. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you too. I hope you get your friend’s plane back. But I hear Tripoli is nice this time of year.”

  He laughs. A low, melodious sound.

  Sadness hangs between us for a moment, then he turns and walks away without another word.

  I watch them head toward the station until their figures grow small. When I feel another nudge against the wall of my mind, I know Gabriel is urging me on.

  It’s time to go.

  Without another thought, I march into the firestorm.

  Chapter 24

  Jesse

  I’m on the beach. To my right is the A-frame house, flames dancing in its dark windows. On my left is the ocean, the storm so torrential that waves slam against the shore. The surf washes all the way up the back of my calves with each splash. And I have the clear sense that the water is rising. The tide is coming in.

  Michael stands in front of me, his smile wide and defiant. Behind him, a hundred angels stand at the ready.

  “You’ve made the way for me,” he says with a wolfish grin. “Now you need only let me pass.”

  At first, I’m not sure where he wants to pass to. I cast one nervous glance over my shoulder and see it. A bright, shimmering door has appeared on the sand about ten feet behind me. It’s more like a vortex of light than an actual door. At least five feet high, three feet wide, it sparkles like a star in the night sky.

  I understand what I’m looking at. It’s the bridge between Earth and this in-between place. Somehow, I’ve opened it, or it opened itself, and now Michael and his army intend to go through me and seize control of my time and place.

  “Surrender, and I’ll make sure you do not suffer.”

  I snort. “Promises, promises. Besides, you’re too late for that. I’ve already suffered plenty.”

  He takes a step toward me.

  We are coming, Gabriel whispers. I can feel him and his scent of rain. Hold on.

  I need to buy time. “Did I tell you about the time my dog ate my finger while I was dead, and then I had to wait until he pooped it out so we could sew it back on?”

  Michael stops advancing, a look of puzzlement on his face. Or maybe that’s disgust.

  “I’m just saying, if you were trying to save me some trouble, you should’ve come around years ago.”

  “You will let me pass,” Michael says.

  “I won’t,” I say.

  He hurls one of his shafts of light. If I had stayed where I was, it would have run me through, splitting my chest wide open. But at the last moment, I duck and roll and come up gasping and sputtering in the surf. Salt water stings my eyes.

  For a dreamscape, this place is awfully real.

  Your power makes it real.

  I shift my body so that I’m standing between the sparkling vortex and the advancing angel army again. But I’m closer now. He’s overtaking the beach.

  Michael grins, realizing his advantage, and throws another bolt.

  I keep backing up, throwing death ribbons, which he deflects.

  I try to call up the sea and drown him with it. He jumps over the waves as if they’re nothing at all.

  I try to use Rachel’s telekinesis to push the angels back. This works for a moment, their limbs going stiff at their sides, but then they break free of this.

  I cast light, fire, and even try to rumble the earth.

  Michael parries each blow effortlessly.

  As a last ditch effort, I reach into his mind with mine and try to stop him in his tracks. My father did this to countless men and women, controlling them from within.

  He reached right into their heads and seized control of their bodies.

  Michael screams furiously and buries a shaft of light through my shoulder. He pins my body against the sand, driving it right through me. Hot blood—my blood—pours out of the wound onto the sand, and a crashing waves sucks it greedily out to sea.

  Another wave pounds my face and neck. I choke and sputter. When water washes into the open wound, I howl, writhing against the pain.

  But I can’t move. I can’t get up.

  And I’m so close to the vortex now. The light sparkles in my eyes, leaving dancing dots in its wake.

  “Stop resisting. Let me pass, and all the pain will vanish. You’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve cleansed the world for you. I will make it into a paradise. An absolute paradise better than you can imagine.”

  The pain twists my mind. I’m trying to pull myself together, but I can’t focus on anything but my throbbing, burning shoulder.

  He leans over me, adding weight to the blade. I’m screaming. I’m s
creaming until I taste blood in the back of my throat. Another wave of ocean water slams into my face, setting my shoulder on fire and choking me. I open my mouth to cough and suck in more freezing, salty water.

  I’m drowning. And I’m bleeding to death on this beach. I can tell by the way my mind is going fuzzy around the edges that it is only a matter of time before I lose complete consciousness.

  Then what will happen? What happens if I die in my own mind? I can only assume the worst.

  The water recedes, and I suck in a desperate, ragged breath. A fresh bout of coughing ripples through me, and my shoulder tears more.

  That’s me screaming, I think. That horrible, horrible sound—that’s me screaming.

  “Jesse!”

  I try to stop howling long enough to breathe. I just need to get some air into my lungs. But my limbs are so heavy that I can do little more than float in the surf.

  “Jesse!”

  I try to turn my head to see who is calling my name. I know that voice. It’s so far away, like a voice carried on a wind through an open summer field, but I know it.

  “Jesse, can you hear me! It’s me, Ally. Oh, Jess. Look at me. Please!”

  For an instant, I see her. A glowing face against a back drop of fire. A purple shield shimmers around her, warring with the flames for the same space.

  I see those beautiful brown eyes and those glistening tears.

  The world comes into sharp focus.

  Despite the pain and unforgiving force of the waves trying to suck me out to sea, for one lightning-fast instant, I know who I am and where I am.

  When I blink and find myself on the beach again, Michael’s eyes are wide and fearful, but his lips are pulled back in a hissing grimace.

  “You will give me back my power!”

  He doesn’t mean the blade of light in my shoulder. He means the power Gabriel stole from him, the power I’m using to protect Earth now.

  “You want your power back?” I latch onto the shaft of light, preventing him from withdrawing it. Before he can think to let go and run, I unleash all of my fury on him. “Take it.”

  Great waves of light and fire erupt from me. Not just death ribbons or that all-consuming smoke. Not just piercing electricity, or endless light. Not just fire and motion.