Authors: Tara Hudson
Elegy (5 page)
N
o one spoke again for a while. Not until Joshua broke the silence with a low growl.
“What the hell, Scott? What is that thing?”
“It’s one of my dad’s hand grenades,” Scott replied evenly. “From his ammo closet. Which is stupidly easy to break into, by the way. This was the best thing I could come up with to collapse the bridge, since I’m pretty sure none of us carries around a spare stick of dynamite.”
Joshua leaned forward to glare at Scott and his sister.
“So you two have been planning this demolition project for a while, huh? Without consulting Amelia and me, even though we’re the ones who have the most at stake. Do I have that about right?”
Clearly unruffled by her brother’s harsh tone, Jillian snorted. “Well, it’s not like we could have told either of you—you would’ve just said no.”
“Damn straight,” Joshua hissed. “We would have told you both to go to—”
“Actually,” I interrupted softly, stepping around Joshua, “I think it’s worth a shot.”
From the stunned looks on all their faces, you would have thought I’d pulled out my own grenade. To be honest, I surprised myself. But the longer I watched that tiny bomb glitter in Scott’s hands, the more this plan made a terrible, wonderful kind of sense.
The end of High Bridge? The end of a place that had taken my life and so many others? Wasn’t that worth the risk?
Of course it was, especially if the burden of risk fell squarely on me.
Before Joshua could talk me out of it, I strode over to Scott. Then, with one hand held up in a signal of extreme caution, I used the other to take hold of the grenade. He relinquished it with surprising ease, probably because he was still a little shocked that I’d agree to this plan at all.
I took a few steps closer to the bridge, handling the grenade delicately, turning it over in my palm so slowly that my movements probably looked comical from the outside.
Of course, no one was laughing. If anything, Joshua’s frown had deepened and his eyes had grown even wider. Although he was my voice of reason—my heart—I turned away from his horrified gaze; I couldn’t let him weaken my resolve.
“So, now that
that’s
settled,” I said with forced nonchalance, staring at the miniature bomb in my hands instead of the people around me, “how does this thing work?”
“As . . . as far as I know, you hold the lever down, pull the pin, and throw. Then, you know . . . run like hell.”
Although Scott had cleared his throat before speaking, his voice still hit a few nervous high notes. Judging by his stutter and Jillian’s sudden fidgeting, neither of them had thought we would
actually
detonate the grenade. Then again, neither of them had seen pure evil in the mirror tonight.
I was still examining the grenade, wondering exactly how I should go about releasing its destructive power, when I caught a glimpse of movement. When I looked up, Joshua now stood less than a foot from me.
“Amelia,” he whispered, “I don’t think we should do this.”
I lowered the grenade so that it wouldn’t hang in the air between us like a threat, and leaned toward him.
“I know, Joshua. And on most days, I’d agree with you. But what if we can stop the demons
tonight
? What if we can end the threats to your family? To
us
?”
Joshua shook his head, but I saw his eyes dart involuntarily to the bridge. Although his gaze only lingered there for less than a second, I knew I’d struck a nerve. Joshua hated that bridge almost as much as I did. Still, he wasn’t quite on board with this plan yet. Which meant I needed to give him one last push. . . .
Holding the grenade slightly behind me, I reached out my free hand to brush my fingers against his. Except our fingers didn’t connect. Instead, our hands floated through each other like passing currents of air. Like nothing.
“Joshua, listen to me,” I whispered. “Please. As long as the rest of you take cover, all the risk falls on me. And what’s the worst that could happen? I die, lose my Risen abilities, and get to touch you again? Sometimes, that’s all I really want. So if the three of you are safe, then there’s no downside to this.”
The reluctance in his eyes shifted into something that resembled hurt.
That look didn’t mean
I’d
hurt him; it meant that he knew I would die again—and eagerly—if I had to. And in that glint of hurt, I saw everything clearly: even though Joshua understood me, even though he might agree with me just a little, he wouldn’t go along with something like this. Not now, not ever.
Keeping the grenade tucked behind my back and out of his reach, I lifted onto my toes. With my eyes shut, I planted a small kiss on what I hoped were his lips. I lingered near the warmth of his skin. Even without a real kiss to precede it, that warmth felt delicious, and I wanted to remember it.
After a slight hesitation, I moved closer, until my lips were only an inch from his ear. There, I said a single, simple word:
“Run.”
I didn’t wait for his reaction; I followed my own orders, spinning away from Joshua and sprinting as fast as I could for the entrance of the bridge.
While I ran, I heard desperate shouting behind me as Joshua ordered Jillian and Scott to dive behind their cars. Thankfully, none of them had tried to follow me.
I skidded to a stop at the center of the bridge and stared down at the dark, incomprehensible thing in my hand. I gripped its safety lever tightly and felt it press against my palm.
What did Scott say?
I thought feverishly.
After I pull the pin, do I let go of the lever?
No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t remember how this thing actually worked. After far too long a pause, I thought:
Only one way to find out.
With the lever still held tight, I slipped one finger of my free hand through the ring of the pin. Using more force than I’d thought I would need, I yanked the pin loose. It dangled on my finger, like some macabre ring, and I just stood there for a blind second, watching it.
Suddenly, instinct took over. I felt my grenade arm pull back behind my head and then propel forward. During the forward arc of my arm, I had the briefest flash of memory—a sunny day; my father, adjusting the throwing position of my elbow while I clutched a grass-stained softball.
The memory faded into the darkness and, without another thought, I released the grenade.
I heard a small snick as the safety lever snapped back out. Now armed, the grenade continued on its trajectory above the bridge. I watched, temporarily dumbstruck by how small it looked in comparison to the tall support girders. Then another instinct took over: one of self-preservation.
I spun around on one heel and pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could. Although I moved fast, a fuzzy, molasses feeling sank into my thighs, making me feel as if I had to run harder if I wanted to escape.
Once I finally reached the end of the bridge, I threw myself at the shoulder of the road, rolling down the steep embankment toward the river.
The ground hurt me badly each time it connected with my shoulders. But that didn’t hurt half as much as the painful boom that suddenly rang in my ears, or the pieces of blasted bridge that began to rain down upon me. I dug my hands into the ground to stop my rolling and then curled into a protective ball. Just before I tucked my head under my arm, I caught a glimpse of a piece of concrete flying toward me. It was huge—the size of a small car, with bits of sharp wire poking out from its edges—and I knew I wouldn’t survive when it hit. At least, I wouldn’t survive like
this
.
So here was the moment. The one I’d been dreading and anticipating in equal measure since December. I steeled myself for it as best I could, summoning up my brightest memories to wrap around me when it happened.
By the time I’d relived those memories twice, I knew that something was very wrong. Like the fact that a thousand-pound chunk of concrete was taking minutes instead of seconds to fall, for starters. After waiting a few more seconds, I
had
to look up.
What I saw made me uncurl instantly and skitter backward like a crab along the embankment.
There, about ten feet above my head, the enormous block of concrete looked just as it had when I first glimpsed it, all brutal rock and shredded wires. Thick and sharp and very lethal. But clearly lighter than air, too. It floated, suspended impossibly on the breeze.
As did every other piece of High Bridge. Chunks of concrete, strips of asphalt, even slices of the metal girders—they hung in the night sky like unnatural constellations.
Apparently, the only things that actually made it to the ground were the smaller rocks that had initially rained on me. Road debris and gravel, by the looks of it; pebbles that had no structural connection to the bridge. Everything integral to the bridge itself—every bit of foundation, of support—remained in its strange stasis in the sky.
Until the rubble
did
move again. Instead of falling toward the earth as it should have, it started to drift slowly back to where the bridge originally stood. Once there, rock and metal began to link together like pieces of a puzzle, moving of their own will to re-create the structure I’d tried to destroy. Within the span of only a few minutes, the dark outline of High Bridge began to reform.
I watched, openmouthed, as a tangled set of wires straightened and then slipped into corresponding holes in an upright wall of concrete. A girder set itself upon the newly stabilized wall, as if placed there by an invisible carrier.
But not
quite
invisible, I realized.
If I looked closer, if I squinted just right, I could make out the occasional inky trace of black smoke drifting beneath the individual components of the bridge. Yet the smoke wasn’t insubstantial. Though thin and nearly transparent, this black smoke could evidently carry hundred- and even thousand-pound pieces of construction.
I’d seen smoke function like this before—smoke that moved in ways it shouldn’t. Which led me to the conclusion that the shadowy vapor now rebuilding High Bridge wasn’t smoke at all.
“Wraiths,” I gasped, crawling farther up the embankment on my hands.
As if to confirm, the individual tendrils of smoke rearranged themselves while they worked, taking on thin but near-human forms. During the transition, they never slowed or faltered in their reconstruction project—even when their environment shifted into something cold and ghastly.
All around them, all around
me
, the riverbank darkened and hardened until the icy purples of the netherworld appeared. The grass beneath my hands frosted over, and I had to jerk my fingers off the ground to keep them from freezing to it.
I only had time for one chilly breath when a slick, unfamiliar voice echoed across the river and silenced me.
“Amelia Ashley,” it hissed. “This was a mistake. Your mistake.”
Although the voice echoed, it didn’t boom; it crept through the netherworld like a whisper, intimate but discomforting in my ear.
“This error will cost you,” the voice continued. “Instead of seven days in your first week, you have one. Agree to stay here now, or someone dies. Immediately.”
I’d been wrong earlier:
this
was my moment.
Now
was the time.
I parted my lips to do the only thing I could: say yes, and commit myself to the darkness forever. But nothing intelligible came out—just one strangled syllable that sounded an awful lot like “No.”
Despite my unclear response, the darkness didn’t hesitate. The netherworld seemed to collapse in upon itself, each garish color disintegrating until nothing remained but real trees, a real river . . . and a very real, very intact High Bridge.
And in that cruel, impossible moment, I knew that my little bomb hadn’t freed anyone. It had condemned someone to death.
N
o amount of reassurance from Joshua could dispel the leaden ball of guilt in my stomach. Almost three pitchers of coffee and nine Mayhew Bakery day-old pastries didn’t do the trick, either, although they had officially proved that I was a nervous eater. During our drive from High Bridge to the Mayhews’ house, I’d felt strangely calm. Impassive, even. Now, I just felt overstuffed with food and foreboding.
I pushed my half-eaten, stale palmier away in disgust and looked around the kitchen. Across from me, Jillian and Scott had fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders, slumped awkwardly in their dining chairs. On this side of the room, Joshua leaned with me against the counter of the kitchen island. He still watched me warily, as though he thought I might try to blow up his parents’ house, too.
I raked one hand through the ends of my hair. “I’m not going to do anything crazy again, Joshua. I promise.”
“I know, Amelia,” he said, keeping his voice low. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“You’re
not
worried that I tried to detonate a weapon of mass destruction tonight?”
Joshua shook his head. “Even if I don’t like how you did it, I don’t blame you for trying. And I don’t think this is your fault, either. It’s not like you
invented
demons and made them evil.”
In response, I held my hands up in a pose of surrender. “But does that matter? Will that matter to the person who dies tonight?” Then I peeked at the kitchen clock. “Or this early morning, I guess?”
I dropped my palms to the countertop in defeat. As he’d done since we arrived home, Joshua placed his own hand comfort-close to mine. I stretched my fingers toward his, aching to tangle both sets together.
“I don’t know the answer to that, any better than you do,” he said softly, running his thumb across the granite counter, near the length of my wrist. “All we can do is wait out the night, and then spend the next six days coming up with a better plan.”
I laughed mirthlessly. “You mean: a ‘better than last-minute, ineffective demolition’ plan.”
He smiled sadly but said nothing. Frowning again, I looked away from him and motioned to the view outside the wide kitchen window, just behind Jillian’s and Scott’s slumped forms.
“Well, fortunately or not, we don’t have much longer to wait out the night.”
Through the newly leafing branches in the front yard, we could see the first traces of sunlight. Without taking his eyes off the window, Joshua walked over to another counter and removed a fresh pot of coffee from the maker. Once he’d poured it into our mugs, we waited in silence, drinking and watching dawn break over the Mayhews’ front garden.
Only when the sunrise shifted fully into early morning did Joshua set down his cup and stretch his arms high above his head. Then he settled back against the countertop with a wide yawn.
“Well,” he said, stifling the last bit of his yawn, “the demons haven’t attacked the house, and we haven’t gotten a tragic phone call from one of my friends. So . . . no news is good news.”
“Maybe,” I murmured. I took another long sip of coffee and kept my eyes trained on the brightening sky. As I watched the colors shift from pink and peach to pale blue and gold, I let myself hope. Just for a few, indulgent minutes.
Maybe Joshua was right. Maybe the demons were bluffing. After all, Eli had told me that demons weren’t omniscient. They didn’t innately know the identity of everyone I’d ever met; the demons merely targeted those unlucky people who happened to be in my proximity. A simple glance around the kitchen showed me that all my companions from last night were very much alive, if thoroughly exhausted. And Joshua had already checked on his parents—more than a few times, actually. So it looked like I could claim the night as a victory.
With one important exception.
Although my mother hadn’t been anywhere near our ill-fated grenade attack, I couldn’t help but worry about her. She was the only other person I’d visited lately, which made her a possible victim. Not a likely one . . . but still. I’d feel much better after a quick, invisible peek in her living-room window.
I laced my fingers and reached my arms forward, across the island, in an attempt to stretch away some of my cramped tension. Then I turned back to Joshua.
“Feel like driving me to my mom’s house again?” I asked him. “Just for a quick check?”
In response, he pulled his car keys out of his pocket and began twirling the ring around his index finger. Seeing the exhausted lines around Joshua’s faint smile, I briefly considered plucking the keys from his hand and giving the whole driving thing a try. But I doubted a wrecked pickup truck would help anyone, especially Joshua. I kept my hands to myself and followed him outside, stifling my own yawns as I climbed into his truck.
On the drive to my mother’s house, Joshua and I agreed that music was a necessity: the louder, the better. We rolled down the windows to let in the cool morning air. As I drummed my fingers against the outside truck door in time to my new favorite song, I felt a twinge of guilt about blasting guitar riffs at seven a.m. on a Sunday. One look at the purplish shadows under Joshua’s eyes made my guilt vanish. On impulse, I started to sing as loudly as possible to keep him awake. Joshua took a surprised, sidelong glance at me, so I added an air guitar, just for effect.
I thought he would laugh, or at least beg me to stop singing. Instead, he joined me, belting out the lyrics in a painful, off-key pitch. While he wailed, he shot me another sidewise glance, smiling a little during a particularly screechy chorus of “baby, baby, bab-eeee.” The performance continued long after I’d dissolved into a fit of tired, giggly snorts.
When we pulled onto my mother’s street, however, my laughter died.
I could see a faint, shifting light in her front window, a sure sign that she’d woken up early to watch the Sunday-morning newscast—a ritual to which she’d strictly adhered for as long as I could remember. That glow, and her brown sedan parked out front, meant that she’d spent the night in the relative safety of her house.
But inexplicably, my stomach began to sour with fear. I pressed one hand to my abdomen, willing myself to breathe normally as Joshua parked the truck a few hundred feet back from my mother’s driveway.
He turned toward me in the cab, his eyes suddenly serious. “I’m coming with you this time,” he said.
Just yesterday, I’d asked him to wait in the car. Although I’d appreciated his support, I didn’t think my mother could take the added stress of meeting her undead daughter’s living boyfriend. But this morning, I wasn’t sure I could make the trip across my mother’s tiny yard all by myself.
Watching the flicker of light in her window, I nodded and, without thinking, reached out to give Joshua’s hand a grateful squeeze. Immediately, my hand slapped against the steering wheel. I looked down to see my hand shimmering, transparent, above his.
“Perfect timing,” I growled, and yanked my hand back.
Joshua sighed, pulled his own hand from the steering wheel, and ran his fingers through the air beside my cheek. An uncomfortable jumble of desire, anger, and fear shot its way through me and came to life as a blush on my cheeks.
“One thing at a time,” Joshua reminded me gently.
“You’re right,” I whispered, shaking my head at myself. “It’s just that I’m . . . I’m just . . .”
When I trailed off, he laughed softly but without humor. “I know. Trust me, Amelia: I know.”
He dropped his fingers and let them hover, a millimeter from the delicate spot above my collarbone. Then, with another heavy sigh, he pulled away and got out of the truck. I waited, fighting the urge to shriek with frustration—about Joshua, about the demons, about what I might view through my mother’s window. After a few embattled seconds, I climbed out of the truck too.
I trudged behind Joshua, dragging my feet through the thick, dewy grass of my mother’s lawn. The yard really needed a good mow, but if I had to guess, my parents’ mower had died sometime after me and my father. I made a mental note to drag Joshua over here, while my mother was still at work, for a day of covert yard cleanup.
If she’s still alive to need it. If
any
of you are.
The cold, slithery voice in my head was my own, but I jerked back as though I’d been slapped.
Shut up
, I silently told the other voice.
I don’t need your input.
Unaware of my nasty inner dialogue, Joshua glanced over his shoulder to give me a small, close-lipped smile as we stepped together onto my mother’s porch.
You okay?
he mouthed.
I just set my lips into a grim line and moved to peer in the front window, praying that my mother had left the curtains parted at least an inch or two.
To my eternal gratitude, she had. Even better, she was sitting on the couch just to the side of them. From that position, I could easily see her profile as she faced the TV.
I gusted out an enormous breath of relief and began to count off each indication that my mother was alive and well: the flick of her ponytail as she moved her head quickly from side to side; the tight clench and unclench of her hands to her closed lips; the almost violent lift and fall of her shoulders. . . .
I stopped counting. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
My mother’s entire body moved as though someone had attached puppet strings to it—she was jerking and shaking on the couch.
Is she having a seizure?
At that thought, I didn’t care if I alerted her to my presence; I practically threw myself against the window to get a better look inside. From that vantage point, I could see that, aside from the heavy crisscross of tears across her cheek, she seemed perfectly healthy. Alert, upright, and in relative control of her limbs. But as she pressed her fingers to her lips and shook her head again, I frowned harder.
TV
, I realized.
She’s crying about something on TV
.
My gaze trailed upward to the program that had affected her so strongly. When I saw what my mother was watching, I froze.
It wasn’t a sad movie, as I’d hoped. Not even a particularly moving commercial. The news played out across her small, outdated screen, just like I’d expected it would. And right now, the news featured a very familiar face.
At first, I desperately hoped that she was just a newscaster. That she only appeared on the screen because she was giving a report on a violent car crash, as the headlines indicated. After a few more seconds, however, it became clear that the blond woman on the TV wasn’t smiling prettily from a newsroom. The picture was a head shot, the kind of photo that reporters place on camera when they can no longer show the real thing. When the person in the picture no longer exists to interview.
As if to confirm my fears, the headline beneath the photo shifted. Previously, it had read:
VIOLENT MIDNIGHT CAR CRASH
Now, in two lines of garish, breaking-news red, the banner proclaimed:
FORMER WILBURTON RESIDENT SERENA TAYLOR, 32,
DEAD IN CRASH AT HIGH BRIDGE
I didn’t have the chance to catch any more of the story because the sourness in my stomach finally rose to the surface. I dove to the edge of the porch, just in time to be violently ill off the side of it. Then, without a backward glance at my mother or even at Joshua, I ran away from that house as fast as I could.