Her feet danced closer to the vortex of Luna’s fire hoop. Flames brushed her nose, heating her face until she felt the skin swell and blister. Her eyes met Luna’s through the hot orange veil, and she knew that Luna knew, knew that all of them knew. She was ready.
Luna’s hand whipped out and stopped the hoop mid-spin, and the deafening whoosh of flames ripping through the air stopped, and the chanting stopped, and the drumming stopped, and the stomping, snow-kicking dancing stopped, and the night filled with a sudden, heavy silence. Smoke swirled around their shoes and the sky above them glowed the color of fire’s white-hot core as Luna stepped out of the hoop and lowered it gently, lovingly, over Janie’s head.
She didn’t hold it in place. She didn’t need to. The hoop rested in midair, held there by the fierce concentration of the Children of the Earth, by Janie’s searing desire to let the flames consume her, and by something different and otherworldly, more primal and more powerful than anything she had ever known.
The Gods of Fire were there. Surrounding them. Ready to do what they asked.
As soon as Janie let go.
The pressure of their invisible force sent the hoop gyrating around her, dancing in faster, wilder circles until everything was a blur of blue and orange and blinding, blistering heat. The fire sucked air from her lungs, and she let it, wanting to feed it, knowing that soon it would take her away from this world and into the next, into the place of pure bliss and light where Jeremiah was waiting.
Soon she wouldn’t be Janie anymore. Soon she wouldn’t be alive. And she was ready. She was ready to let go.
Through the cyclone of fire she felt a disturbance ripple the circle, saw a shadow struggle from beyond the flames and lunge toward her, heard a voice shouting: “No!” For a moment, she caught a glimpse of oil-dark hair and terrified green eyes and felt a hand reach through the inferno, saw callused fingers grasp at her, trying to stop the helix of heat.
But it was too late. The flame within had taken over, and she was no longer Janie, no longer of this world. She felt something inside of her snuff out forever as the hoop dropped suddenly, the ring of fire extinguishing instantly in the thick layer of snow at her feet.
Janie followed, falling lifeless to the ground.
25
AS JANIE’S BODY HIT THE earth, Owen felt himself go still, the sudden fury that had made him break the circle and push his hand through the flames leaking out of him.
Silas and Orion released his arms, and he sank to his knees, spent and trembling. Ragged breaths shuddered through him, sending trails of snow skittering across the ground.
Luna knelt before Janie, her ear to her mouth. She pricked Janie’s finger with the dagger she wore strapped to her thigh. Through the haze of smoke now thick on the ground, Owen saw a bead of blood bloom from her flesh. Gathering it with a fingertip black with carbon, Luna drew a single, perfect teardrop on Janie’s forehead.
Hot bile rose in his throat, but he choked it down, gagging on the acidic spike but refusing to desecrate the ground where Janie had been tricked into giving her life, tricked by people she had trusted.
Tricked by people he had trusted.
So this was what it meant to be one of the Children of the Earth, to really be one of them. It wasn’t just walks in the woods and meditation, wasn’t all lentil stew and chanting and finally feeling like he was somewhere he actually belonged. It was sacrificing lives.
Dread ballooned inside of him as Luna picked up her hoop and sauntered away, calling to her brothers and sisters to pick up the candles, erase the circle, and remove Janie’s body. They came to life as if awakening from a trance, Heather woodenly collecting the snuffed-out candles, Freya and Abilene kicking snow and dirt over the circle until it was gone.
He watched Ciaran stumble haltingly to Janie’s body and crouch beside her, his eyes glossy with tears. He brushed Janie’s hair back from her forehead and passed his hand slowly over her eyes, closing them forever, before gathering her in his arms and carrying her through the snow. Right before laying her in the backseat of his old Honda Civic, he ducked his head and touched his lips to hers, letting them linger there as her mouth turned blue beneath his.
The sight was too much. Owen turned and retched violently, his back heaving.
Daphne had been right, he realized as he wiped his mouth miserably with the back of his hand. She had warned him against getting too close to the Children of the Earth, had begged him to leave the Vein before it was too late. But he hadn’t listened. He’d fallen under the spell of his family, and instead of listening to Daphne and trusting the strength of her visions, he’d followed Luna blindly, letting her powers of persuasion take control of his mind. It had started as curiosity, a need to know. And now he knew.
He had stood idly by as his brothers and sisters sacrificed a human life—didn’t just stand idly by but danced and chanted, felt the power of the Gods of Fire course through him and touch him in a place deeper than the marrow of his bones.
He could still feel it, even as he sat back on his heels and ran clammy fingers through his hair. He felt the Gods of Fire swarming up from the south, racing through the air on tails bright as comets, bringing with them the fury of hot, dry winds that would bake the landscape to ash and ignite the mountains around Carbon County, turning the whole valley into an inferno.
He knew that the fire would scream through the foothills and down into the valley, thundering toward the oil rig. But he could only imagine the size of the explosion when the fire touched down on all that crude oil pumped freshly from the ground. It would definitely take down the Peytons’ trailer; he knew that. It would probably wipe out the entire town.
As the sky turned red and tendrils of smoke began to wisp by his nose, he knew what he had to do. He stood quickly, ignoring the quivering in his legs and the nausea still churning his stomach. He was far away from the town of Carbon County, and without the Children of the Earth he’d have to walk.
“Where are you going, Earth Brother?”
Luna stood in his path, hands on her hips and the scent of fuel still swirling from her skin.
Owen didn’t answer. He felt closer to her than ever, closer to all of them. The ritual had bonded them in a way he could never undo, no matter how much it sickened him, how wrong it was. Janie had thought the ritual was her initiation into the Children of the Earth, but she’d been duped; they both had.
It was his.
He brushed past Luna, the skin on his shoulder burning where they touched. With every step away from her he felt weaker and sicker, stretched to his breaking point. But he kept going, the image of Daphne flickering in his mind like a weak television signal that he struggled to hold in place, knowing it was the only thing that could keep him walking forward, walking away. The mountaintop was at least thirty miles from the oil rig, and he’d have to walk. In his broken state it would take hours—all night and part of the next morning. But he would do it. He would do what had to be done.
“You’ll be back, Earth Brother,” Luna called after him, unconcerned, a bird singing out a cheerful tune. “You’re one of us now.”
The tang of smoke choked the air, and he coughed, gagged, drew his shirt up over his nose and kept walking, away from her and them and the monster he knew he’d become.
It was too late to save himself. He had tried to fight his destiny, and he had failed. Maybe it couldn’t have worked; maybe he should have realized that destiny couldn’t be changed or altered by hard work or determination or even by love. He had felt the Gods of Fire penetrate his skin and activate the thing he was underneath, what he always had been and always would be.
He was a Child of the Earth, as much a part of them as anyone could be. He couldn’t change that.
But there was one thing he could change, one thing he might not be too late for. If only he could get there in time.
• • •
; Ciaran arranged Janie’s limbs inside the back of his rusting Honda Civic, carefully placing her hands in her lap and laying her head against the headrest so it wouldn’t loll to one side. He couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down his face and gathering in salty pools around his lips.
He would never forgive Luna for going through with it, or himself for letting her. If only he’d had a moment longer with Janie before the ritual—if only Luna hadn’t shown up exactly when she did, just as he was planning to warn Janie what was about to happen—then maybe she’d still be alive. But he’d been weak, and Luna ignited the part of his mind that was still loyal, the piece that would do anything for the Children of the Earth, even sacrifice the girl he had unexpectedly come to love.
“Ready?” Kimo appeared at his side, all jangly energy and anarchy tattoos. His Mohawk looked taller, electrified by the ritual. Silas, the Vein’s enormous bouncer, loped up behind him, a long coil of rope in his hand.
“I don’t know.” Ciaran still felt like his soul was being chewed apart. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You have to!” Kimo squawked. “Luna says it has to be you.”
Silas silenced him with a stony look. “C’mere, man,” he said to Ciaran. He opened his arms, and Ciaran went to him, taking protection in the mass of his brother’s embrace.
“We can do this,” Silas reminded him when they broke apart. Ciaran wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
“We have to finish what we started,” Kimo added.
Ciaran handed his car keys to Silas. “You drive.”
They piled into the car, Ciaran struggling not to look at Janie’s cold, dead face in the rearview mirror. But he couldn’t help himself, and there she was, her lips already turning blue—lips that had been so full of life when she first kissed him under a snowy canopy of trees.
“I know this is hard for you, man.” Silas had a leather-and-tobacco voice that filled the small car as he maneuvered down the winding gravel road. “But remember: She wanted to go to the other side.”
“Yeah.” Ciaran stared down at his hands. “I guess.”
It was because of this that Ciaran had first approached her. As soon as she’d stepped into the Vein he’d known how miserable she was, how exhausted with life and everything in it. She didn’t want to live anymore but couldn’t figure out how to end it. It would actually be doing her a favor, making her their next sacrifice.
What he hadn’t counted on was being able to change her. In the short time they spent together, he’d realized that all Janie had needed was for someone to look at her and actually see her, to understand and accept her pain, and the next thing he knew she was blooming under his nose, her thirst for life huge and overwhelming. She was beautiful and happy and bursting with life, and she loved him. And as hard as he tried not to, he’d found himself loving her back.
For the first time since his eighteenth birthday and the terrible dreams, he felt that maybe his powers of empathy could help people, people like Janie who needed to overcome loss or sadness and find peace with themselves and the world. Maybe his gift could be a blessing.
Silas slowed the car to a crawl.
“What’s that?” he muttered, headlights catching a lone figure limping painfully along the side of the road.
“It’s Owen.” Kimo fidgeted in the backseat, trying to squeeze himself as far from Janie’s corpse as possible. “I sensed him from a ways off.”
Silas rolled up parallel to Owen and cranked down his window. “Hey, man, you okay?” he called.
Owen shook his head and kept walking, feet dragging in the dust, hands clutched to his stomach.
“Get in, man.” The wheels barely moved as they kept pace with their Earth Brother. “Kimo can scoot over.”
Kimo’s face paled.
“C’mon.” Silas rested an elbow on the window ledge. “Where d’you think you’re walking to, anyway? We’re thirty miles from anywhere right now.”
Owen turned, glaring at him. His eyes were rimmed in red. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he spat. “I’ll walk all night if I have to.”
Ciaran wished he had the balls to do what Owen was doing—to walk away from Luna and the Children of the Earth, to follow the tiny, keening voice at the bottom of his heart telling him that what they were doing was wrong, that sacrificing people was not the answer.
For a moment, with Janie, he’d thought about it. The two of them could run away somewhere safe, and he could go to school for psychology, use his powers to help people overcome their pain. But there was never time, never a chance to get her alone and talk. Janie had fallen in love with the Children of the Earth, and Luna was always there, inside their minds, pulling at their desires until they no longer knew which thoughts were hers and which were their own. He had pledged his future to Luna, his loyalty. He’d signed over the deed to his car and invested his meager savings in the Vein. And now with Janie, his one chance for redemption, lifeless in the backseat, he had no hope left.
He was, and forever would be, nothing more than one of the Children of the Earth.
Silas shrugged. “Suit yourself, Earth Brother,” he said to Owen, starting to roll up the window. “I wish you luck—it’s hard out there without your family.”
He stepped on the gas, and the car lurched forward, kicking up gravel in its wake.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Kimo asked tentatively from the backseat.
“Oh yeah.” Silas nodded, chewing on his lower lip. “He’ll be okay—and he’ll be back. Mark my words. He will definitely be back.”
26
DAPHNE WAS INSIDE OWEN’S DREAM. She recognized the bonfire towering before her, clawing at the sky and spewing plumes of heavy black smoke, and the Children of the Earth whirling around it. They danced exactly as Owen had described: in a stomping, spinning, almost spastic frenzy. Occasionally one twirled toward her, flashing eyes that glowed phosphorescent green.
They danced to drumbeats that made the earth tremble beneath her feet, and with every revolution around the circle, the flames leapt higher and their eyes glowed with brighter, wilder abandon.
Daphne could feel the terror Owen had described, and she wanted to turn and run, but her feet disobeyed her and stepped forward. The heat from the bonfire made her face tingle, and she could feel the breath of her enemies warm and rotten on her cheeks.
“Come with ussss,” the Children of the Earth hissed, tongues slithering from their mouths. In the smoky darkness their arms curled like serpents as they reached for her, scaly fingers trailing across her skin. “Join usssss.”
She wanted to scream that she would never be one of them, but she found her tongue had cleaved to the roof of her mouth. It must be the heat, she thought dizzily, melting her insides together. The smoke entered her lungs, filling her with poisonous tendrils, choking the flow of oxygen to her brain. If only she could drop to her knees and cover her face, escape from the overpowering smell of burning pine. But her arms had melted into her sides, and there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go, no way to escape the horror that had been Owen’s, night after night after night.
The Children of the Earth advanced, locking arms and trapping her. Their eyes burned hotter than the flames, and she saw when they opened their mouths that their tongues were forked, their skin covered in scales.
“Come with usssss,” they hissed again, and then they opened their mouths wide and screamed, a scream that turned her too-hot blood to ice, that echoed up from the fire and into the mountains and throughout the whole world.
The scream went on and on, an endless, anguished wail. Within it words began to form, unintelligible at first, then clear.
“No!” the Children of the Earth shrieked, forked tongues convulsing. “God, no! Please, no! God, why?”
But why were they invoking God? What did God have to do with them?
Daphne looked a
round the circle and saw the green glow of their eyes fade and disappear, the scales fall from their skin and their forked tongues vanish.
“What’s happening?” she asked. “Is it me? Am I doing this?”
Her only answer was the Children of the Earth dropping to their knees, still crying, still invoking God. They shrank to the ground and beat the earth, growing smaller and smaller until they were no larger than granules of dirt. Then they were gone entirely, and all that remained was the fire, and the smoke, and the screaming . . .
• • •
The screaming.
Daphne bolted awake, her hair wild around her face. She couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour. After driving around for most of the night, the Children of God had peeled off one by one, claiming exhaustion and vowing to continue the search for Janie the next day. Daphne had tried to keep going, to push through her exhaustion with Red Bull and coffee, but when Floyd caught her dozing in his passenger seat he insisted she get some rest. It had been almost five A.M. at that point, and dawn would be there sooner than they realized.
Now it had arrived—or at least some red and hazy approximation of dawn. Smoke choked the sky outside the trailer’s small window, and the scent of burning pine filled the air.
The screaming went on and on. With dawning horror, Daphne realized she recognized the voice.
She shoved her feet into boots, not bothering to tie the laces, and stumbled through the trailer. The thin metal door felt hot to her touch as she flung it open, and sweat dotted her skin as soon as she stepped outside.
Carbon County was on fire.
The blaze consumed the mountains, blanketing them in red and black. Through the haze of smoke she could make out the charred stalks of pine trees lit up like candles. Bulbous black smoke roiled from the flames in clouds so thick they blocked entire mountains. The sky looked like it was bleeding.
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