Children of the Earth

by Anna Schumacher

  This book is dedicated to Johnny Irish, who would probably tell me I’m doing it wrong.

  Penguin.com

  Razorbill, an Imprint of Penguin Random House

  Copyright© 2015 Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ISBN: 978-0-698-14638-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  A translation of the Aramaic text carved on a stone tablet discovered in an excavation on Elk Mountain, Carbon County, WY:

  When the true Prophet reads this message, the era of the Great Divide is at hand. For on the eve of the Great Battle, seven signs and wonders shall come to pass, each in turn and none without the others. And these shall be:

  CLARION

  BLOOD

  FIRE

  PLAGUE

  RELIC

  DEATH OF A FIRSTBORN

  PROPHET

  And yea, once these seven signs and wonders appear, there shall be a Great Battle between the Children of God and the Children of the Earth. The Children of the Earth shall sow evil and discord wrought from the pits of Hell, while the Children of God turn to the heavens for strength from the One True Deity. The victor shall rule the land and the sky, the earth and the heavens, and forever hold dominion over the soul of humankind, and the loser shall be cast out forevermore into Eternal Nothingness—while those who fail to choose sides shall perish. Heed, for when this warning is uncovered and the true Prophet comes to light, the era of the Great Divide is at hand.

  The Rite of Air

  Facing east, we raise our swords

  And murmur these enchanted words:

  Gods of Air, where’er ye roam,

  Blow our siblings swiftly home.

  1

  DARKNESS HAD FALLEN OVER CARBON County by the time Daphne pulled her compact Subaru to the side of the dirt road. Up ahead she could make out strains of raucous laughter, and the acrid smoke of charred meat drifted down to her on a sharp breeze.

  She pulled her boyfriend’s worn flannel shirt around her shoulders, trying to ward off the early autumn chill, and double-checked that the doors were locked before slipping the key into her pocket. There wasn’t much to steal in her car—after splitting her earnings from working the oil rig between her ailing mother in Detroit and the collection plate at church, she could only afford an ancient clunker with a perpetually jammed cassette deck. Still, she couldn’t trust the drifters who had taken up residence in the abandoned motocross track parking lot. They were rough-and-tumble oil prospectors with not a lot going for them and even less to lose, and it was rumored that they’d steal the shirt off your back, if given the chance.

  The night noises sharpened as she approached: gas generators hacking out watts of power, hot dogs sizzling on portable barbecues, and plastic tarps erected as haphazard shelters crinkling in the wind. The parking lot where the Carbon County locals had once come to race dirt bikes, drink beer, and swap bragging rights was now a makeshift village of weather-beaten tents and rusted pop-up trailers, the track itself shut down.

  None of the locals had wanted to set foot there since the horrible night just three months before, when Daphne had helped deliver her cousin Janie’s stillborn baby on the cold metal bleachers overlooking the track. Too many of their own had died there: first Trey, who had wrecked fatally during a race, and then Jeremiah, the baby who never took a breath.

  Now the gate to the track was permanently shut, its padlock caked with rust, and the parking lot was transformed into a drab tent city of desperadoes. Only one thing could send Daphne there almost nightly to pick her way through the narrow paths between tents, stepping over mud-caked work boots and pots still crusted with last night’s beans. It drew her there despite the drifters’ unsavory reputation, despite the rumors of their rough-handed, heavy-drinking ways. She went because beyond the gate, on the eroding hills and turns of the track itself, was the only place where she could meet her boyfriend, Owen, in secret.

  Owen was the best thing that had ever happened to her, but also one of the worst. He was the last person she’d expected to find in Carbon County, a rural town in the Wyoming foothills where she’d taken refuge with her extended family, the Peytons, after an especially rough winter in Detroit. But instead of the peace and quiet she’d been craving, she found oil on her uncle’s land and a strange ability to read the ancient Aramaic words on a stone tablet discovered beneath the earth, an ability that some said marked her as a prophet. She found all that, and she also found Owen, a green-eyed stranger who somehow wormed his way into her heart despite her general distrust of everyone, especially guys.

  As soon as he arrived, it felt like Owen was everywhere: on the oil rig where she worked and at the motocross track, where he quickly destroyed the locals in competition, instantly making him the least-liked guy in town. It didn’t help when Trey, a popular local boy, died in a race against Owen—or that later, he and Daphne were the only two present when her pregnant cousin, Janie, went into sudden, early labor, delivering a stillborn infant on the bleachers overlooking the motocross track.

  Maybe the townspeople hated Owen because he was there at all the wrong times, or maybe it was just because he didn’t say much to anyone besides Daphne, didn’t have the gift of small-town small talk that put them at ease. Whatever it was, she knew exactly what they thought of him . . . and what they would think of her if they knew he was her boyfriend.

  Now, more than ever, she needed the townspeople’s approval. She’d fallen from their graces once before, when her cousin’s jerk of a baby daddy, Doug, revealed that she’d stood trial for her stepfather’s murder in Detroit. It had been in self-defense, after he tried to rape her at knifepoint, and she’d been acquitted––but Doug didn’t tell anyone that part. Instead, he’d accused her of not only killing her stepfather, but he and Janie’s infant son as well. He’d implicated Owen, too, and the townspeople had rallied behind Doug, threatening to throw both Daphne and Owen out of town.

  It was only after Pastor Ted le
arned that Daphne could read the Aramaic tablet and declared her a prophet that the townspeople grudgingly allowed her back in their good graces . . . but by then, it was too late for Owen. The town needed a scapegoat, and he was the most convenient target.

  If it weren’t for her aunt and uncle, Daphne wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought about her personal life. But Uncle Floyd and Aunt Karen meant everything to her: They had taken her in when she had nowhere else to go and taught her the true meaning of family and faith, and she would rather die than upset them. They had never trusted Owen and still believed that he may have had a hand in their grandchild’s death–-and until they had a little more time to heal, Daphne didn’t want to upset them further.

  So, to avoid suspicion, she and Owen met on the abandoned motocross track after sundown, where fear of the drifters kept the gossipy townsfolk away.

  Gravel crunched behind her, and Daphne froze. But the path through the camp was deserted, with the drifters gathered around a fire at the other end of the parking lot. An unsecured tarp scratched at the ground, echoing the sound that had made her panic. Exhaling in relief, Daphne turned and made her way out of the camp.

  She slipped past the padlocked gate and onto the dark trail leading to the motocross track. Even when she wasn’t sneaking out to meet Owen, their clandestine relationship made her jumpy and anxious, always looking over her shoulder and trying to wipe the traces of their secret from her face. If she could have resisted him, she would have. But their bond was too strong, too powerful, to ignore.

  The dark drew itself around her, only the pale comma of a moon punctuating the sky, and she heard the crunch again, closer than before. But she wouldn’t turn and look, wouldn’t let her paranoia get the better of her.

  Stones skittered across the path behind her, and the wind panted in her wake. Although it was too dark for shadows, she thought she saw something flicker across her vision. Her stomach clenched as she felt the sudden presence of a stranger behind her, his skin emanating a dank rot.

  She whirled around, but it was too late. Yellowed nails dug into her shoulders, the force knocking her to the ground. She got in one good scream before his hand clapped over her mouth, filling her lungs with the sickening scent of decay. Adrenaline flew through her veins as she kicked the air, praying for her steel-enforced boots to connect.

  The stranger covered her body with his, stilling her legs and pinning her to the ground. Greasy strings of hair fell onto her cheeks, and he laughed a grating chainsaw laugh, reaching into the folds of an oily trench coat to reveal a blade that turned the weak beam of moonlight to ice. The world pulsed, and terror screamed through her, her vision condensing into a single point of light. Her eyes rolled back in her head as power gathered in her stomach, spreading from cell to cell until she was charged like a battery, electricity fighting its way through her skin and making her writhe and quake under his weight. She looked straight into his eyes—one gray, one brown—and saw, with horror, their true intent.

  She’d had a knife to her throat and a grown man’s unwanted body on hers before. She knew what that man, her stepfather, Jim, had wanted: to force himself inside of her, debasing her body until it no longer felt like her own.

  But this man didn’t want that. He didn’t care about her body. He wanted her life.

  She jerked and seized beneath him, and the power rocketing inside of her forced her hands around his neck, choking off his windpipe with a python grip. For a moment, everything was black. Then she heard a voice in her head, and all she could see was fire.

  The Vision of Fire

  And yea, there will come a day

  When ye stand before the derrick

  That pumps oil from the earth

  And a wall of flames consumes the sky.

  These shall be no ordinary flames

  But the hellfire of damnation,

  Wild with hunger to destroy

  All that is holy and good.

  And ye shall see, as the fire approacheth

  And crude oil boils inside the earth

  And the heat peels trees from land

  And skin from bone

  Ye shall see a shadow

  With shoulders wide as mountains,

  Arms raised, fingers outstretched,

  Coaxing the fire ever closer.

  Slow as boulders forming

  The dark figure turns

  Until he looks down upon you

  And you fall to your knees.

  For this figure has a face you know,

  A face you have touched.

  You have seen these eyes

  Flash serpentine green.

  These eyes have deceived you,

  These hands draw down fire to burn the land,

  This heart serves only the dark lord

  And this soul is as black as the devil.

  Your limbs shall tremble

  And your heart shall tear in two,

  For this is a face you know—

  A face you love.

  2

  OWEN CROUCHED IN THE DARKNESS, his body sizzling with need. Being at the motocross track was both a torture and a release: Torture in the jumps and berms that made him miss his dirt bike the way an amputee misses a limb. Release because it meant time alone with Daphne, whose touch raced through him faster than any motor and cut like the sharpest hairpin turn.

  With the track shut down, she was the only thing keeping him sane. She was a reason to get up and go to work on the oil rig each morning and his last thought before falling into a fitful sleep every night. But even the cool relief of her smile, the kisses stolen on their lunch breaks, and their electric evenings alone on the motocross track weren’t enough to staunch the dreams.

  They came thick and furious each night, the same nightmares that had driven him to Carbon County so many months before. Dark figures danced around a bonfire, but now he could see them more clearly, eleven pairs of emerald eyes glowing like fireflies, only one face still dark. They danced and chanted, hands clasped and limbs gleaming in the firelight, and as their voices crescendoed to a wild shriek and the fire flung itself into the sky, the earth began to shake, threatening to open up and release a mighty and powerful god, the God of the Earth.

  The dreams always ended with a voice of thunder and lighting, of molten gravel pouring from the earth’s core. Find the vein, it had whispered to him long ago, terrifying and seducing him, sending him back and forth across the country until he found his sister, Luna, and together they let it draw them to Carbon County like gravity, an elemental force.

  That voice was the God of the Earth, Luna had explained to him, and the God of the Earth was their father. At first he thought she was crazy, a lost hippie child who’d probably taken too many substances at the music festivals where she performed with her glowing hula hoop. The only evidence that they were even related were their identical green eyes and her stories of growing up on the commune where he was born, a commune called Children of the Earth. But when the Aramaic tablet told of a great battle between the Children of God and the Children of the Earth, he began to reluctantly believe his sister. If she was right, that meant that he and Daphne were on opposite sides of a great battle between good and evil—a battle that the tablet had threatened could destroy the world.

  He didn’t want it to be that way, but the predictions on the tablet had all come true, from the fiery wreck that had taken Trey’s life at the motocross track to the flock of birds of paradise that had dropped dead from the sky on the day of Janie’s wedding. Now the second part of the prophecy was coming true: The Children of the Earth were arriving in Carbon County.

  He’d noticed others with the same green eyes trickling into town, other children of the God of the Earth, and he knew from the faces in his dreams that all but one had arrived. Like him, they’d been drawn there by dreams of fire and destruction that end
ed with the gravelly voice of their father urging them to “find the vein.” And Luna, in that half-cheeky, half-ominous way of hers, had made it easy for them.

  She had her own place now, a brand-new nightclub that was full to bursting with roughnecks and prospectors each night. All Children of the Earth were guaranteed jobs there, as bartenders and busboys, bouncers and cocktail waitresses and kitchen crew. And just so there wasn’t any question about where they should go, she had named it the Vein.

  So far Owen had managed to stay away, gritting his teeth and gripping the bottom of his chair as Luna packed her costumes and hula hoops and urged him to move across town with her to the loft above the club, tears filling her eyes and her words wrapping around him like a serpent as she begged him to join her.

  He’d refused. He had to stay away from her, from all of them, to protect his love for Daphne. If she knew, just as the tablet had predicted, that most of the Children of the Earth were already in town, she’d be forced to choose between her loyalty to him and her duty as the prophet of the Children of God. He knew that he’d have to tell her eventually, but he couldn’t bear for her to have to make that choice just yet.

  So he stayed far away from the Vein despite Luna’s text messages and the voice in his dreams, which pulled at his blood like a magnet at metal shavings. His will was strong, and his love for Daphne stronger. But each day that he held out was harder than the last, and he was terrified that someday, by his will or against it, he would end up among them. As much as he fought it, the need to go to his brothers and sisters grew stronger every day.

  A scream cut through his thoughts with the white-hot immediacy of lightning, making the hair on his arms stand on end. He was on his feet before he could catch up with his body, racing down the face of the jump and calling her name. He knew that voice and knew it could only be her.

  Daphne.

  He shouldn’t have let her come alone, he thought, furious at himself as his feet pounded the track, kicking up dust and splattering his pants with mud. Daphne was tough, but the path through the drifters’ camp was dangerous, the squatters unscrupulous in their quest to get what they wanted—and what if what they wanted was a girl? Owen never should have put her in that kind of danger, and Daphne never should have agreed to it. Their desire for one another had grown huge and reckless; something had to change before it was too late.