Authors: G. R. Fillinger
“It’s going to be ok. Trust me,” he whispered in my ear.
Ria came to our side and wrapped her arms around us. Nate pressed our shoulders down so we would sit on the floor as he bent over us, trying to shield our heads with his torso.
The sound outside turned deafening, and the metal door twisted and curled back inch by inch.
Then the wind whipped in and darkness tugged me into the void.
I hit the ground like I’d been catapulted there. Every muscle in my body squeezed. I coughed and tried to inhale at the same time. There was no more air. Everything was dark dust and flame.
I dug my fingers into the dirt when my lungs started to work again. Everything spun as I raised my head and looked up with my mouth hanging open.
The house was everywhere, all dirt and splinters of wood now.
A bomb must have gone off. That had to be it. Nothing else could have done this. Not this.
I turned left and saw the outlines of three figures against a red horizon. The sun was setting quickly. Grandpa was directly in front of me, hands stacked on top of each other and gripping a sword of blue light. I saw the hilt, the grooved center, the edge. It was just like the one he kept in his bedroom, but it wasn’t completely solid. Blue light pulsed upward from his hands and sparked at the tip.
Nate stood with his feet spread apart, a long, green whip coiled in his hand.
I blinked several times, and neither the whip nor the sword went away.
The other figure was harder to see. Some kind of black swarm buzzed around him so fluidly it could have been liquid. It floated all around, undulating in the air as if waiting for his command.
A honeyed, lively voice projected through the air first. “You should have hidden her more carefully, Solomon. You knew we’d be coming for—”
“You’re using power you shouldn’t be able to wield,” Grandpa said sternly, at once a question and an accusation.
The shadows around the other man seemed to smile before he stepped into the light of Grandpa’s sword just five feet away. It wasn’t the monster I expected.
He was Grandpa’s age but without the wrinkles. Bald. A black soul patch under his lip. A tailored, three-piece black suit. A smile so blindingly white and wide that it reached up into his eyes so even the darkness around him couldn’t diminish it.
I stood and took a wobbly step forward. Ria coughed to my right, her body crouched near a narrow mound of earth, a small fire from the remnants of the house behind her. I balled my hands into fists and set my sights on the man in the suit.
He turned his head to me as if sensing my presence, his grin firmly in place. “Ah, you’re awake, darling. I was beginning to worry.”
“Enough!” Grandpa barked, his voice thudding through the air with enough force to make its own thunder.
Mr. Suit’s smile faltered, and his eyes flashed a glimmer of yellow. “Fine.” He flicked his hand, and the swarm of liquid darkness shot forward at Grandpa and Nate.
Without a second’s hesitation, they both slashed through the fluid black tar with their weapons of light, parting it like the Red Sea. Each twirl of the blue sword and crack of the whip cut the darkness down like the light was making parts of the swarm evaporate.
But it only lasted so long.
Mr. Suit’s grin returned when he saw them working so hard to cut him down. It was a game to him—everything was a game with that smile, and he was the show’s host.
He punched both hands out, and rigid bolts of black lightning shot forward.
Grandpa and Nate’s blue and green weapons absorbed it for a brief moment until they were flung back ten feet, grunting with the impact.
I started forward again, my heart thumping in my ears as I scanned the ground for anything I could use as a weapon.
A glint of silver peeked out of the dirt—a knife!
In one fluid motion, I crouched down mid-run, grabbed the hilt, pulled it back, and let it fly.
I saw every spin, every millisecond of flight as it flew toward my opponent’s finely clothed chest.
It stabbed through his ribs up to the hilt.
He didn’t even flinch.
He smiled as he pulled it out without an ounce of blood staining his shirt.
I stopped running toward him, my jaw dropping. How was he still—?
“Now, now, darling. You can do better than that.” He grinned at me, his next contestant. “Maybe you just need a little more incentive.” He flicked his hand again, and a tar-soaked lightning bolt sprang out of his palm straight at me.
I threw myself to the side and landed on my shoulder as the bolt hit the ground. Clay shrapnel exploded behind me, pelting my back with sharp ceramic slivers.
I sucked in a breath through gritted teeth and rolled onto my stomach.
Blue light sparked to life five feet from me, and I saw Grandpa again, sword in hand.
Our bald attacker flashed another smile, waving his hands around lightly to conduct his orchestra of dark shadow as it snapped and swarmed around Grandpa.
Buzzing filled my ears, but Grandpa swung his sword faster than I’d ever seen him move before, slashing the darkness to pieces, steam floating off the edge of his blade. Then suddenly, Nate was there with a green whip spinning in front of him so fast it might as well have been a solid shield of green light that the darkness couldn’t penetrate.
The man in black pressed his hands toward Nate and Grandpa, both of them in front of me now.
“Eve, run!” Nate yelled as the darkness pressed in on his shield and forced him to his knees. “Get Ria. Run!”
I looked to the right and saw Ria standing. She was caught between wanting to help and having her feet clamped to the ground with fear. Mine felt the same.
Nate grunted something I couldn’t catch, and then, all at once, Grandpa was flung to the side, and the darkness enveloped Nate, pressing him into the ground. A thousand dark buzzing fists pounded on him like machine gun fire until his unconscious body lay at the bottom of a crater.
I gasped as my mind was pulled in three directions—Grandpa, Nate, Ria. Who should I go to first?
My feet decided on Ria before the rest of me had finished the debate. She was the weakest one here. Obviously Nate and Grandpa were stronger than I’d realized, or at least they knew what the hell was going on. Ria was the only one who wouldn’t survive if this man—whatever he was—turned on her.
The moment I moved though, his eyes snapped to me. “Still nothing?” He flicked his hand, and an arm of the black swarm that had been crushing Nate’s chest knocked me to the ground. “What have they been doing to you, sweetie?”
I struggled to breathe. Nate’s unconscious body lay at the bottom of the crater. Grandpa lay crumpled on a mound of dirt, his chest not rising or falling. Ria dropped to the ground again and pulled her knees into her chest, crying.
My whole body tensed in rage, the only emotion powerful enough to take control. I wanted it to. It coursed through my veins and pumped new life and power into every limb that would bring him immeasurable pain. “Leave now,” I said, my voice shaking, eyes wide.
His smile blinded me, and his hands cupped together.
Then he began to whisper under his breath, to chant.
The darkness around him condensed into a tar-black orb, electricity crackling in the center.
I stepped forward, pulling deep breaths before the attack.
“Let’s see how you react to this,” he said and pulsed his hands out perpendicular to his body so a basketball of serrated electric shadow shot forward.
I saw it spin.
I saw the air sizzle.
I saw a jagged bolt snap out from the center.
I saw Grandpa jump in front of me and take it in the chest.
An explosion of white light filled the sky and put purity to shame as a deep, terrible roar of pain filled the air and shook the earth beneath me.
Then it all stopped, and the smell of burnt hair hung stagnant in the air.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” The phrase poured out like a curse from my veins. My skin stung, and my eyelids struggled to open in a world where there wasn’t a white hot sun burning through them anymore.
Ria screamed raw fear and panic.
Slivers of anxiety shot through every layer of skin. “Ria!” I rolled over and forced my eyes open as a stinging puff of smoke billowed toward me. Everything was a blurry watercolor of red flames licking the landscape.
“Eve. Help! He’s not breathing.” Ria’s shrill voice scraped out of her throat.
I pushed myself up and sprinted toward her, my tear ducts clearing away the fiery painting with each stride. I didn’t recognize anything. There was no more house, no garden or workshop. It might as well have been Mars—red dust pockmarked by meteors and scorched by the sun.
In one of the deeper craters, Ria wept next to Nate’s unconscious body. I blinked again and again until I saw them clearly. The side of her face was smeared with blood.
I skidded down the rocky slope. There wasn’t a green whip of light glowing in his hand anymore. I fell to my knees and pressed my fingers into his neck just below his jaw—no pulse.
“Stand back,” I said, closing both my hands over his chest and starting compressions.
Ria whimpered.
I checked his pulse: his skin was ice cold.
I cupped my hands again and pushed harder on his sternum, a steady rhythm behind each motion.
Still no pulse, no breath.
I threw my head back and shrieked frustration to the unrepentant heavens, my arms pumping faster, harder into his chest, punching his heart and threatening to break its cage.
I stopped, out of breath but holding it in as I pressed my fingers into his neck.
Everything in him was completely still.
I shook my head, swung my arm back, and slammed my palm into his chest. “Come on,” I yelled, letting rage build with every attempt to jumpstart his heart. “Damn it, Nate!” I hit him again.
He couldn’t leave us. Not him, too. Not him, too!
I raised my open palm again and hurtled it back down in that moment where despair is about to snuff out all hope.
My hand hit his chest and stayed there.
His chest didn’t move. His heart didn’t beat. There was nothing.
I fell sideways into the dirt, my hand still on his chest, my lips next to his ear. “Nate…please,” I whispered, tears running down my cheeks as I imagined him sinking into the earth, swallowed whole into the darkness.
Then, in the next instant, Nate gasped for breath and bolted upright. “Eve!” He turned to me. “Are you all right?”
I rolled onto my back and panted for breath as even more tears came, joy and sadness swept into one act. Was
I
all right? How was he worried about me?
Ria launched herself into Nate’s arms. She hugged him tighter and longer than I’d ever seen them touch before. He patted her back and stroked her hair. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Ria tensed, pushed herself away, and smacked his chest. “That’s right, you’re fine. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Nate smiled warmly and reached out his other hand to stroke her hair again but pulled it back a second later. He extended a hand to me, and we all rose to our feet together.
“Are you ok?” I managed to ask Ria, my head numb from the whiplash of emotions.
She nodded, eyes fixed on Nate as if she were trying to memorize every one of the many freckles on his face.
We climbed out of the crater, and Nate stumbled out of our arms and into the open, his head whipping around as he took in the scene. Only the blood-red sunset and the smoke from the smoldering tinder scattered over the singed earth blemished the otherwise clear sky.
“How did you—?” Nate said, his voice expectant, preparing for a victory party he was sure we’d earned. Then he froze and swiveled his head to me. “Where’s Sol?”
I wanted to look around, to find Grandpa getting up from another crater, dusty but otherwise fine. My mind and heart willed it, but some other part of me dropped my chin to my chest with the truth. I exhaled, and a puff of white dust sprayed off my shirt. My hands rose to swipe it out of the air, and I realized my whole body was covered in it.
At first, I was curious.
Then, I was sick.
I jumped and thrashed and screamed, shaking around and pounding my clothes to get it off, to get
him
off. But the more I shook, the more it billowed into a suffocating white cloud. It was in my hair, my mouth, my lungs.
“What? What?” Nate screamed in panic and pinned my arms to my sides, forcing me to look into his eyes.
My muscles tensed, and my bones petrified under his stare. I couldn’t move.
Why can’t I move?
I strained to look away, but Nate’s eyes bored into me, and he seemed to realize what the dust was…
who
the dust was.
“What happened?” He looked at the landscape behind me, his words softer now.
I still couldn’t move my arms but shut my eyes as I took small breaths. “After you got hit, that guy in the suit tried to kill me,” I said, my voice far away from my body. “Grandpa jumped in front. There was a white light, and both of them were gone. Dust,” I added and resisted the urge to gag again.
“White. You’re sure it was white?” Nate said, eyes wide with a realization.
I nodded, my body tensing. “What? What does that mean?”
Nate’s eyes darkened again. “It means Sol’s gone. It means he sacrificed himself to save you.”
A lump caught in my throat, and I looked away, anger bubbling in the pit of my gut.
“A Graced’s essence only becomes white in a willing sacrifice.” Nate kneeled and looked at different sections of the ground like he was mapping out how it happened. “The man in the suit was called Kovac—he was one of the leaders of the Babylonians when Sol was in office.” He shook his head. “Graced on either side aren’t supposed to be that powerful—I don’t know how he was able to conjure so much dark essence, but that doesn’t matter now. Sol’s sacrifice killed him and any other evil force within ten miles.”
My head spun. “This isn’t possible.” I glared at him, the only person left to take my anger. “A sacrifice—one person dying for another can’t…people don’t just disintegrate in a blast of light like that. The heat alone—” I stopped myself from saying any more as my stomach threatened vomit again. The white ash was still all over me, and only a thin sliver of self-control acted as a dam to keep me from thrashing around wildly again to get it off.