Earthbound

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I’m lying on something hard and lumpy and my clothing is slightly damp, making the freezing wind all the more biting. My nose is so cold it feels like needles are jabbing into it and I’m afraid to open my eyes.

But I have to.

Because whenever this happened, I did, and all I can do is lie here and replay the memory exactly as I once lived it. I give in and let the vision overtake me.

Voices draw near, and soon my view of the snow-covered park is blocked by a voluminous black skirt with silver brocade. Leather boots and the bottom of a greatcoat join her and I stifle a tiny sigh of relief as the thick fabrics block some of the punishing wind. I try to go back to sleep—to take advantage of the slight warmth before they stand and leave, but the words they’re saying keep waking me up.

“It will destroy nearly all of them. And half the Earthbounds. We can start over. It will be the Reduciata’s finest moment. Our finest moment.”

“It’s not ready yet. You cannot release it without the antidote.”

“How many more lifetimes? Three? Ten? I grow impatient and the Curatoria … they grow bothersome.”

“Don’t you think I know that better than you?”

Earthbound … Reduciata … Curatoria.

I don’t know what the words mean, but my mind latches onto them and clings, forcing my eyes open, my thoughts spinning.

And spinning.

And then something else.

A sensation unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Pictures flash before my eyes, and it feels as though someone has opened up my head and poured in hot broth. It fills me with warmth, with knowledge, with voices.

Voices that warn me into silence.

I try to remain quiet, but as lovely as the warmth is, it’s also a hurricane of … something I have no words for. Like suddenly I am a hundred people all at once.

I gasp and feel beads of sweat forming on my brow, despite having been so desperately cold only moments before.

Moments?

Yes, it has only been moments.

Suddenly a hand is wrapping around my arm and the man yanks me out from beneath the bench. His face is inches from mine and he shakes me with teeth-rattling force. I am still too full of those strange feelings to hear a word he says, but I manage to whisper, over and over, “I heard nothing, sir. I heard nothing!”

He stops shaking and it’s all I can do to keep my head up at all. I stare at that face, craggy, with a short beard and a scar along the side of his cheek. I can’t be sure if he’s a gentleman or a rough sort.

But his eyes are a light, ale-colored brown and I stare at him for long, silent seconds.

I know this face.

I’m certain I’ve never met him before, but I know this face.

“She’s just a little human child,” a woman’s voice says from out of view. I spin my eyes over to her. She’s going to save me!

But what greets me is the small barrel of a flintlock pistol, nearly touching the skin on my forehead, held in a delicate, gloved hand.

“No one will miss her,” the woman finishes. My eyes widen and I look into her face. She looks kind, regal, almost beautiful.

But she shows no remorse or hesitation as she draws back the hammer of the gun, and my last moment is flooded with the earsplitting report of a shot as my head snaps backward, alight with pain.

And then my soul rips away again.

I gasp for breath, my lungs begging for air. I touch my forehead and find whole skin there. Perspiration mingles with splattering rain, but I am unharmed.

I’m alive.

It was only a memory.

I look up at Marie; there is no gun this time, but I see that same look, devoid of emotion.

“It’s such a shame,” she says evenly. “You and I, we were friends once, before you sided with the Curatoria. So many aeons ago and yet I still remember the ages we spent making a river, a canyon, whose great walls and beautiful landscape would be legendary, just because we could. You creating high mountains, me carving out those deep ravines. Give-and-take, balanced exactly the way the Earthmakers were intended to be. The two of us making something beautiful while our lovers quarreled and fought. I still have a tiny twinge of regret every time someone speaks of the Grand Canyon.”

I’m still trying to make sense of her words when a stinging slap flings my head to the side.

“That’s for leaving me behind,” she says softly.

Anger roils inside me, filling me with a rage that blots out any pain from the slap. My life, my parents, my love; she is responsible for everything I no longer have.

“You have taken everything from me,” I shriek, a flash of lightning accentuating my words.

“Yes, I suppose we have,” she says, utterly calm.

But even as I’m sure the rage is going to overwhelm me, something shifts inside and a black calm settles in my mind.

No more. Voices I don’t recognize echo in my head as a razor fury makes a pit in my stomach, white-hot anger at wrongs I can’t remember—and yet the pain, the agonizing loss, that I recall with perfect clarity. Not one. More. Damn. Thing.

I push my hands out in front of me, pour out my rage, and instantly I’m standing before a mountain: a dusty red behemoth of crags and sharp boulders that towers hundreds of feet above my head, the sheer face of a cliff an arm’s length away. The forest that was is nothing more than a destroyed memory, swept away by stone.

For an instant.

It blinks out of existence. Not the normal five-minute way—it’s forced out of existence, leaving Marie standing there, looking almost bored, surrounded by splintered trees as far as I can see in the murky dusk.

Marie the Destroyer.

But I’m not done. That was only a test.

Lava, steel, bullets. They come from every direction as the women in my head pick weapons from memories out past my reach. And I let them. I surrender my mind, allowing the Tavias of old to let loose every drop of anger and pain I’ve built up for millennia.

One voice, one memory fights to the surface.

The night I was in the water, when I was Rebecca—the face I saw above me, just past the icy surface.

It was her.

How many times has this face been my last sight?

My concentration wavers. She’s killed me before—she’s going to do it again.

No.

I won’t drown; I won’t die. Not this time.

Power surges within me, filling my body to bursting and creating a noise in my head so loud I’m sure I’ll be deaf if I survive this.

If.

I don’t even care.

More rage, more white-hot heat, more molten anguish pours from me. I can’t see anything as the fullness begins to ebb, leaving me completely bereft of energy. I teeter, not certain I can stand any longer. Rain falls in soft rivulets down my face, but it feels almost warm.

“Tavia, come on!”

Elizabeth’s voice, her hands, dragging me. I can’t see and stumble as I try to follow her, running blindly, steered only by Elizabeth’s hand clenched around my arm. The sound of a car door, a shove that sends me down onto a seat.

I blink and stars swim in front of my eyes. My head lolls to the side as Elizabeth drops into the seat beside me. Thank gods the car wasn’t crushed by my mountain. I’ve just made a hell of a lot of trouble as it is.

And I’m not even sure just what I did.

I look out at what’s left of the forest, and an enormous pile of rubble, silhouetted by the glow of molten rock, stares back. Every kind of matter I can imagine is in a smoldering heap where Marie was standing, barely visible through the trees.

It won’t last long; she’s too good. It’s already blinking away, bit by bit, as though I never made it at all. As nonexistent as the mountain that once was. People are running toward us. I recognize one as the guy who dragged Benson off. They’ve almost reached the car.

The engine roars and Elizabeth peels out backward, smacking a tree, the crunch of the bumper a macabre harmony with the squealing tires.

Dark shapes whirl around us and I feel the dull thud of flesh on metal at the back of Elizabeth’s car. I try not to think too hard about that as my throat convulses. But Elizabeth is already throwing the car into drive, lurching forward, gaining speed.

I don’t look back; I don’t want to see anything else. I already have the sight of Sammi and Mark’s decimated bodies to haunt my dreams.

And Benson’s betrayal.

I can’t even think of him without a vile sickness clutching at my stomach.

Desperate to distract myself, I click my seat belt just before Elizabeth almost dumps me into her lap turning a sharp corner.

“There’s no time to get to the plane—assuming the Reduciata haven’t taken control of it already,” Elizabeth shouts, forcing me to pay attention. “I’m going to drop you off at an alley two blocks south of the Greyhound station,” she continues, her eyes glued to the road. “Take this.”

My fingers wrap around the cell phone she proffers even as she spins the car around another bend. As soon as I’ve taken the phone, her burned hands are back on the wheel, and as we pass under a streetlight, the steering wheel glints wet.

Blood.

I remember her falling against the charred car—the scream she let out.

This drive must be killing her hands.

“Get on a bus—the next bus,” Elizabeth orders, her eyes still fixed on the road. “It doesn’t matter where it’s going. Just get on it no matter what it takes. Understand?”

“Yeah,” I say weakly, bracing my arms against the door for another squealing corner.

Another flash of light; her hands are red and seeping.

“Elizabeth, your hands—”

“Will heal,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’ll call you when it’s safe. I don’t know when that will be. Don’t you call anyone. Especially Benson. You have to accept it; you can never have any contact with him ever again.”

Benson. I nod, hating the truth of it. It’s worse than him being dead. It might be worse than me being dead. Elizabeth hits a curb, throwing my head against the window. Distantly I feel pain, but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

“Open my purse,” Elizabeth instructs. I look around at my feet and find the black bag that’s tumbling around. “Take my wallet.”

“But I have—”

“Take it, Tave!” she orders.

I unzip the leather bag and fumble around for the wallet, transferring it into my backpack.

“There’s some food—it’s not much, but you’ll need it.”

I sift around and find part of a candy bar and a large package of trail mix. Gratefully, I slide the trail mix into my backpack and stuff the entire piece of candy bar into my mouth to fight off the blackness that’s trying to close in around the edges of my sight.

Seconds of silence pass as my mind tries to take in what just happened.

As soon as I choke down the candy, I blurt, “I beat her.” They beat her. This time.

“Yes, you did.” Her words hold a softness and I hear thank you in them.

But it feels empty. I didn’t save Sammi and Mark.

I saved Benson instead.

And he betrayed me.

Elizabeth spares me a glance as she continues to drive erratically. “You did good.”

Not good enough. Marie’s still out there. She’s probably not even hurt. I got away, but I didn’t actually stop her.

“Quinn was there. I saw him,” I say, trying to push away my despair at still being on the run from this woman.

Elizabeth is silent, one lip pulled between her teeth.

“He warned me. How can he do that? He’s not real. I mean, every time I’ve seen him, he’s been an illusion, right? He’s not … . real.” My mind hasn’t stopped whirring since I saw him tonight—I don’t know how to justify it, what he did. “His soul isn’t here; it’s with Logan. It is Logan.”

Elizabeth spins around another corner with her eyes glued to the rearview. I’m completely lost. “The mind is an incredibly powerful thing, Tave. But it’s also very fragile. Your memory unlocking must have started when you saved yourself in the plane crash, but your brain was too damaged to survive such a drastic change. So when the memories couldn’t be held back any longer, your mind seems to have done something to protect itself. Created something to personify it; a comfortable person you could accept. Someone safe. A defense mechanism, if you will, to ease you into your full awakening without burning out your synapses.” She sweeps me the barest of glances. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“So he didn’t save me?” I ask quietly, not wishing he had exactly, but wanting someone to have been on my side.

Elizabeth turns and for just a second our eyes meet. “No,” she says, and she sounds very certain. “You saved yourself.”

“Elizabeth?” I hesitate. “Sammi was right, wasn’t she? The Reduciata actually want me so badly they sent their leader after me. For a secret I’m too damaged to even remember?”

She doesn’t look at me, but I see her swallow. “They want you bad, Tave. Something’s going wrong. I think they released the virus too soon. It’s affecting everything too strongly. The death time that’s too short to go unnoticed, the crazy weather that people are starting to realize can’t be natural,” she says, gesturing at the downpour that looks like it’s trying to turn into either hail or snow. “It’s all wrapped up in their screwup. They miscalculated, and now everything is spiraling out of their control and it’s only going to get worse.” She looks over at me. “They wanted you to die in the plane crash, but something about what you did … now they think you can fix their mistake before it destroys all of us—including them. That’s all we know.”

An oily fear coats my stomach. “They’ve got to be wrong. Elizabeth, I can’t help. I can’t do anything. I don’t remember whatever it is they think I do.”

Her eyes narrow. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as a Curatoriate, it’s that the Reduciata are almost never wrong. Tavia, do not die. Somehow, you are humankind’s last hope. You need to figure out why, and then you need to stop them.”

I sink back against the seat and say nothing. I’ve never felt so small, so inadequate. If I’m humankind’s last hope, then humankind is doomed.

Elizabeth glances at the rearview again as we drive through a nearly dark section of town with half the streetlights burned out. Seedy-looking and more than a little scary. “I don’t know if I’ve lost them, but they’re at least far enough back that I can’t see them anymore. When I pull over, you jump out and hide. Wait for about thirty seconds so I can get away from you. Then run in that direction,” she says, pointing toward a shadowy alley sided by two lines of decrepit wood-slat fencing. “You’ll reach the bus station in less than two blocks. You can’t miss it—it’ll be all lit up.”

“Elizabeth?” I say desperately.

“What?”

I want to tell her that I’m not ready, that I don’t really understand how I saved myself on the plane or in the fire, and especially not from Marie. And I’m not convinced I can do it again.

Not alone.

Not without Benson.

No, don’t think about him.

“Thank you,” I finally whisper instead.

“Thank me if we live through this,” she says, so quietly that I don’t know if she intended for me to hear her. “Ready?”

I pull my backpack over my shoulder and unfasten my seat belt. My fingers are poised over the door handle as I choke out, “Ready.”

It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told.

The car screeches to a halt, and the second we stop moving, Elizabeth’s hands are pushing at my back and I’m wrenching the door open and almost tumbling out, staggering down to one knee as my shoe slides on the oily cement beneath my feet. The car’s already moving again. I’m bathed in dark shadows, but I force my knee straight and dive behind a Dumpster anyway, not daring to peer out to watch the taillights disappear. The icy rain soaks my face as I begin counting.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

At eighteen the earth beneath me trembles, the light of flames reaching my eyes before the slower sound waves echo in my ears.

An explosion.

It’s to the east.

The direction Elizabeth drove.

And it’s exactly the distance a speeding car would cover in eighteen seconds.