Earthbound

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Something inside me wrenches away control of my mind and I fall to one knee. My hands swoop out to the side and swing over my head, pages of files scattering to the ground around me.

The space around me vibrates with a sound that pierces my eardrums and yet is strangely muffled. Hot air fills my lungs and I stifle the urge to cough.

Then it’s quiet.

No, not quiet; fire crackles and roars. But the explosion is over.

I touch my arms.

I’m not burned.

Dancing orange flames lick up the trees, devouring the crackly leaves. I look up, but there’s only blackness. I’m standing in shadow.

“Ow! Damn it!” Benson swears beside me after scrambling to his feet only to clang his head on something above us and sink to the ground again.

We’re in a rounded shelter of something black. I lift my hands to it, my fingertips skimming the surface, almost hot enough to burn me. “Cast iron,” I whisper, recognizing the material. Just like the shield that protected Quinn and Rebecca from the bullets two hundred years ago.

Well, at least I know who to thank.

“Tavia, Benson,” Elizabeth snaps. I turn to her with wide eyes as I realize what happened.

“I made this!” The words burst out in a shriek. “Holy shit, Elizabeth, I did it! I—” I saved more than just me this time.

“We have to get out of here,” Benson says, his hand squeezing mine so tightly it hurts. “I can’t—why—this is all my fault.” He releases me and runs both his hands through his hair, ragged gasps loud in the tiny space.

“Ben, it’s all right,” I say, trying to grasp for his hands, but they flutter just out of reach.

His eyes meet mine and it’s like he just realized I’m here. He throws his arms around me and his fingers grasp against my back. “I’m sorry,” he whispers against my neck. “I didn’t mean to. I was trying to get away.”

“Benson, what are you—”

Benson rises to his knees and pulls at his jacket, yanking it down his arms. He grips my leg to get my attention. “Scissors, Tave.”

“What?”

“Make me some scissors. Please,” he adds.

There’s no time for my ethical quandaries. Not when there are three lives to save. I can do this! Scissors. I close my eyes and force my mind to focus. A weight fills my hand and I give a pair of sewing scissors to Benson.

They’re identical to the ones that used to reside in my mother’s sewing basket. Hauntingly familiar. It’s like the locket I accidentally created. Somewhere at the periphery of my consciousness a firefly memory glows. I make what I know.

Benson grabs them and begins cutting his jacket. I still don’t understand what he’s doing, but I trust him with my life. With Elizabeth’s life.

“Water,” he says before coughing. But I’m ready this time.

Liquid spills from my upturned palms and he soaks the pieces of cloth and hands one to each of us.

“Shouldn’t I just use water to put out the fire?” I ask, confused, remembering the huge surge of water I managed to make when Benson’s roommate was such an asshole.

But Benson shakes his head. “If we can get away, the fire might hide us. You put it out, we’re sitting ducks.”

I nod and we all press the wet fabric to our mouths as we crouch together, the temperature in the air rising fast.

“That way,” Elizabeth shouts over the sound of the flames devouring the trees as she points. “Our cars are just up the road—maybe we can get to one. Whatever you do, don’t stop running.”

Benson nods with a calmness I can’t imagine he actually feels.

“What about Sammi and—” I try to ask, but Elizabeth cuts me off.

“Don’t think about them,” she orders. “We have to go. This shield isn’t permanent; it’s going to dissolve any second.”

Sammi and Mark. Reese and Jay. They weren’t close enough to save.

I failed again.

My feet skid a few inches when I step on something.

The files!

In the barest seconds that are left, I gather the pages I can see. Several are singed, and I’m sick wondering how many are gone forever. I don’t have time to put them in my backpack so I clamp them against my chest with one arm and grab Benson’s hand with the other.

Elizabeth looks at us and nods. “Go!”

We duck out from beneath the shield and I gasp as a nearly tangible wall of heat slaps my face, paralyzing me into stillness for just a moment before cool spots dot my forehead, making the heat bearable.

It’s raining.

More than raining; it’s suddenly pouring. But it has no effect on the roaring flames.

Benson’s hand tightens on mine and he drags me along.

My heart freezes when I see them.

Their bodies are half charred and I wouldn’t even recognize Mark if I couldn’t tell it was Sammi cradled protectively in his blackened arms. He threw his body over hers, but a frail human shield wasn’t enough. The explosion must have seared up her left side, killing her instantly but leaving her right side eerily preserved. Her eyelids are mercifully closed but blistering red even as I tear my eyes away and feel the urge to retch rise in my throat.

Elizabeth leads the way, skirting the flames while Benson and I follow her.

She’s almost at the edge of the clearing when something catches her foot and she stumbles toward the burning car. She screams as she falls against the blistering hot metal, and the sound is almost swallowed up by the raging fire.

And then, instantly, the flames are gone.

Gone.

The destruction remains, but the orange fire has disappeared. Almost as if magicked out of existence.

Out of existence.

Of course. I remember now. Equals and opposites. There are Creators like me.

And there are Destroyers. The term Sammi used. I didn’t question it at the time because I knew intrinsically that it was right.

There’s another Earthbound here.

Benson pulls me away, yanking me toward the edge of the clearing. “We have to go now!”

Even as we turn, I hear another sound—this one so completely dissonant that I think I would have heard it over a hurricane.

A chuckle.

A long shadow approaches, but the twilight air is too murky to make out a face until she raises her head.

“Marie?” I whisper, completely baffled. Her hair is pulled sharply back from her face instead of falling in its usual soft waves, and her sleek pantsuit and large silver pendant are worlds away from the dresses and cardigans from the library. She’s tall and stands straight, with a regal air that speaks of both power and pride. Even with rivulets of rain coursing down her face, she looks like a goddess.

Benson’s arm tightens, pulling me against him so hard I can barely breathe. “Run,” he orders, then pushes me away.

I force my legs to move, bursting with sudden speed, but before I’ve gone three feet a thick forearm snakes out and catches me across the throat, and suddenly hands are grasping at my waist, my legs, pulling me away from Benson. The icy barrel of a gun presses against my temple and I still as I hear the words, “One more move and you’re dead. Forever.”

I force myself to be still, but my eyes search for Benson, who’s fighting against his captors. “Stop! No! Leave her alone. I told you—” His words cut off with a sharp crack and I can’t stifle a cry as Benson’s head snaps to one side with the force of a blow to his temple.

I glance around at the dozen or so faces. I don’t see Sunglasses Guy, but without his distinguishing shades—not to mention the shadows of the tree branches crisscrossing all of the faces—he could be any of them.

“Ben, it’s okay,” I chance saying, though I don’t move a muscle. “I’m all right.”

“Aw, isn’t that cute,” Marie says in a tone so unlike her quiet librarian voice that I freeze. “He got the Earthbound to crush on him. That was over and above even for a Reduciate, Benson.”

“It’s not like that,” Benson says, still struggling toward me. Blood trickling down his cheek, mingling with the pouring rain, making red streaks like macabre tears. “Let me go!”

“All in good time,” Marie replies—the embodiment of calm—eyeing me as the world seems to spin, everything turning upside down. “You know, when that hotel room was empty this morning, I was pretty sure you had run away on us, but I see you took your little lesson to heart,” she says, brushing the purple bruise under Benson’s eye. He flinches away from her touch.

Time flows around me in slow motion as I turn my head. “Benson?” Did I even say it out loud?

His face is a mask of desperation. “Tavia. I didn’t mean to. I thought—you have no idea.”

“You did this?” I whisper. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. “No!” I yell the word at Marie. “You’re lying!”

“Am I?” the woman says, so quietly I barely catch her words. “Show her his mark.”

The man holding Benson spins him roughly around and Benson groans as the man tightens an arm around his bruised ribs, yanking his T-shirt up until I can see the skin of his left shoulder.

The shadow of the tattoo I saw through his white shirt last night.

It’s part ankh.

Part shepherd’s crook.

No.

It’s true.

The whole time.

My stomach clenches and I want to double over and clutch it and it’s all I can do to stay upright. A crash of lightning chooses this moment to split open the sky and I gasp at the sudden light.

Everyone is motionless. One, two, three, four. Then a deafening rumble of thunder envelops the space around us, filling everyone’s ears. Only when the silence returns does the chaos begin to move again.

The man behind Benson lets him go, but a foot to his back knocks the boy I was sure I loved to his knees. He looks up at me, his injuries suddenly making more sense. A message, Sammi had said a few minutes earlier. I only wish I know who it was for. She’d know now. If she was alive.

“I didn’t want to,” Benson says, pleading in his eyes. “I had no choice! Last night—I tried to get away.”

I sift through memories of the last few days—the candy bars and french fries he knew I needed to eat, the way he accepted my powers so easily, running away with me, even the stupid wallet-size lock picks. The reality of how much he lied—how far he’d gone to deceive me—snaps into place with a clarity that makes my stomach writhe.

“The entire time, you were—” It’s all I can get out before the urge to retch overtakes me and I gag, my hand clasped over my mouth, the drum of the rain filling my ears. My head, blocking out my thoughts.

“Tave, please,” Benson pleads, but Marie interrupts with an almost casual wave of her hand.

“Take him to the truck.”

Another man grabs Benson’s arms and starts dragging him away.

“Tavia! Don’t listen. Don’t tell them—ah!” Benson gasps for air as the man elbows him in his already-bruised ribs. I can’t tear my eyes away. My heart aches for the cruel way he’s being treated even as everything inside me feels like ashes, crumbling to nothingness. Turning me into nothingness.

I can’t move.

I can’t breathe.

Benson, who has been there through everything. Who told me he loved me.

And I believed him.

But my mind races, finding more proof I refused see before—knowing what the Latin names for the brotherhoods meant, his knowledge that I had to get to Logan, his insistence that we needed to talk on the bus, his cryptic apologies, even his quick thought to use my powers to get us out of the fire when I forgot I had them.

Because he’s been a Reduciate all along.

He’s known about Earthbounds all along.

My heart pounds a too-slow rhythm that feels like a funeral dirge and part of me wishes it was mine.

“The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Tavia?” Marie says, and for the first time, she pronounces my name correctly. I wonder if she got a sick pleasure out of annoying me with that for so many months. “But that’s what the Reduciata are all about. The truth. The cold, hard truth that nobody else wants to face.”

Her voice is poison in my ears.

She looks over where a truck door closes on Benson, muffling his protests.

“You should have a little sympathy for him, I suppose,” she says, almost sounding kind. “It took a lot of effort to get him to go along with it. The guy we had follow you, the car that almost ended you, all reminders to Benson of what would happen if he failed.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I say, trying to wrench my arms away from the two people holding me. “He accepted the job.”

“Yes, he did,” Marie says, a very small smile sliding over her face.

“The Reduciata kill Earthbounds,” I say through gritted teeth. “Why are you helping them?”

She laughs now, and it’s a laugh I’ve heard before. A laugh that sounds like a warbling bird. A laugh I remember from back when she was Marie, the sweet, hovering librarian. Now it vibrates down into my bones, rattling my sinews. Another crack of lightning, but this time the thunder follows more closely. “I don’t help the Reduciata, Tavia Michaels; I lead them. And there are many Earthbounds among our members. Elite Earthbound, who want to restore us to the lives we were meant to lead. You could join us. Willingly, I mean. I think it’s obvious that we want you—need what’s in that pretty, damaged little head of yours. You could accept your role and be one of the privileged. It would certainly be easier on you. There’s no true reason for this enmity to go on.”

A groan escapes my clenched teeth and Marie laughs again.

“I didn’t think so, but never let it be said that I didn’t give you the chance.”

My mind races and I try to think of what I can create to get out of this mess.

As though reading my thoughts, the woman clucks her tongue. “I wouldn’t try anything if I were you. I’m far more powerful than a pitiful demigoddess a step away from permanent death.”

“Then why don’t you just kill me?” I snarl between clenched teeth.

“Because it turns out you’re not who we thought you were. Or, more appropriately, you’re more than just who we thought you were. When we saw what you did to that plane—” She sighs and shakes her head. “And to think we almost lost you.” She steps forward, and even though I try to jerk away, I have nowhere to go and have to grit my teeth as she runs one fingernail down the side of my face. “Don’t you remember? A bitter-cold night in England, on the hard, unforgiving ground, under a park bench? A night when no one should have been about. Where this game of chase all began?” She chuckles again, and I’m shocked by how badly I want to wrap my hands around her throat. “Benson told us you weren’t really remembering things, but I wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth. Maybe he was. Still, surely you remember me.”

Her expression softens and she looks directly into my eyes. My chest constricts and a pain builds up in the back of my head and even though I try to fight it back, for the second time that day, my soul is ripped away.