Chapter 55
A WORLD BUCKLING
Simon removes his hood. He sets his hands on the railing and stares at his reflection in the glassy water below. “Soon, she will no longer cower in fear of me.”
I grit my teeth against the pain. “She won’t love you either.”
“You forget what I have.” He fondles the ruby, which is not only an amulet pulsing with Jude’s life. It’s an amulet with the power over human hearts. “Her love will be restored one way or another.”
He runs an icy finger down the side of my face.
I try to jerk away from him, but I can hardly move.
One wrong step and it feels like my soul will be yanked from my chest. “I have spent years resenting your existence. Hating you for distracting her. But without you, the curse would not have been broken. So I suppose you served a purpose after all. And now I must thank you for bringing all the pieces together. One might call it fate, our love written in the stars.”
He gestures to the sky like there are stars overhead instead of a churning, terrifying void. With a snap of his fingers, my wrist sears with heat.
Eleven others ignite around the pond.
We are marked, branded with glowing patterns of dots, each with our own unique constellation that together, forms the night sky as it was in April of 1995.
But choices cannot be undone.
Even if time moves backward, even if one reality is replaced with another, Simon can’t escape his past.
“Nothing will erase what you’ve done. So long as you keep making these choices, you will remain a monster no matter what you look like.”
“Choices.” He scoffs. “I never had a choice. I was sucked into this place and trapped for years before I found a way to get out, but by then it was too late. How could I exist like this anywhere but here? This place has taken everything from me. Now I will take everything from it.”
He reaches inside my backpack. He removes an explosive—a glass bottle stuffed with a rag. He cracks the glass against the bridge. It shatters, the contents inside spilling at our feet. He holds the broken neck of the bottle with one hand and grabs my wrist with the other.
“Let her go!” Jude yells, his shout echoing across the water.
But Vorat doesn’t listen.
He slices my palm with the glass.
Blood oozes from the gash.
Jude fights against his restraints.
So do Twig and Naomi.
But it is a useless struggle.
Simon has our souls in a chokehold.
Blood pools in my palm.
Simon forces my hand over the water.
My blood spills.
It drips into the pond and the water undulates.
A wave builds.
And out from under the bridge comes the rowboat.
My mother lies inside, flat on her back, arms crossed over her chest like a princess laid out for burial. Her eyes are closed. She is ghostly pale, her auburn hair spilling around her in waves. And beside her, nested within a cage of bones, the golden orb throbs softly in the dark.
Simon removes a vial from his robes—the same one that contained a filament of Rafe’s soul. Only now, it is empty. I clench my jaw as he forces my hand into a fist and squeezes it over the vial’s mouth. “The blood of the curse breaker,” he whispers.
Crimson drips inside, and then he is gone with a whoosh like ash in the wind.
He re-materializes inside the boat.
He kneels over my mother and removes the orb from its cage, caressing it lovingly in his hand. He pours my blood over it and the orb flares with brightness. Hairline fractures of red seep through the gold like capillaries around a human heart.
My own beats wildly.
Simon lifts the glowing orb to his mouth and inhales the same way Rafe did. He breathes in her soul.
I choke on a gasp.
“No!” I shout as he bends over her.
Molten strands of light spiral between them, and when he pulls away from the twisted fairy tale kiss, color has returned to her face. He takes off the ruby and puts it around her neck. “She will awake soon, and she will be mine.”
The amulet pulses against my mother’s skin.
My blood drips onto the stone beneath my feet.
Simon glides onto the plinth in the center of the pond where vines crawl across the water and wrap around the clock.
Like a spider in the middle of a starlit web, he spreads his arms and begins to chant—guttural sounds trailed by a chorus of spine-tingling whispers that come from him, but aren’t of him.
His head snaps back.
Ribbons of shadow and light pour out of him, the disembodied voices swirling from within.
An exorcism of souls.
He is releasing his victims.
They are flying free.
In the shadows, his hounds stir as one last voice whispers across the water.
“I’m cold, Simon. So cold.”
Lily’s final words.
Her soul rises. I can see it right there on his lips, on the cusp of freedom, but he doesn’t release it.
Lily, he keeps.
He pulls off his hood and his face is no longer a blur. His face is mostly human. Simon Vandenberg once again. His nostrils flare as he calls on the Overlay to take its fill.
The vines tighten in my chest.
Storm clouds gather over the water.
They roll over my mother in the boat, so thick she disappears beneath them. All I can make out is the red glow of the amulet.
“Twelve souls for fuel,” Simon shouts, and a bolt of lightning shoots upward, from the clock at his feet into the sky. It strikes the abyss overhead and explodes into an expanse of white.
Just like Lily’s vision.
To my left, at one o’clock, Juniper’s body convulses.
Her head snaps back.
The bent, short line of stars on her wrist bursts into flame.
The orb in her chest is torn free.
I can feel a tug inside my own as her soul streaks upward and flares overheard, a patch of night set upon the blank canvas—Aries twinkling in the sky.
The vines release her.
She collapses dead on the ground.
I scream as Lainey Sikes begins to twitch.
Her head snaps back, too.
Taurus bursts into flame.
Her soul is torn away.
The constellation shoots into the sky.
She collapses alongside Juniper.
The clock at Simon’s feet trembles and the hand begins ticking backward.
Griffin’s body convulses, and my fear reaches a fever pitch, because next to him is Twig. Naomi sees it, too. She flails and kicks. Twig struggles in vain while Jude’s form flickers in and out of focus.
The dots on Griffin’s wrist erupt.
The vines lash.
They rip the soul from his chest.
I feel another tug as Gemini catapults into the sky and Griffin falls.
I scream and fight, trying to break free, trying to stop what is happening before Twig is taken next and I lose my best friend.
The rowboat passes before me.
The ruby is ablaze.
My mother stirs.
She opens her eyes and sees me above her. She sets her hand over the amulet as Twig’s body gives a jerk.
I scream a scream that excoriates my throat—a ragged, wild cry for help. I don’t care about the pain in my chest. I don’t care if the veil root tears me in two.
“Twig!” I shout.
His eyes meet mine as the smudge of stars on his wrist flares.
His head snaps back.
“No.” The word trembles deep in my soul.
An objection born from love and friendship.
Vorat will not have him.
He cannot take him.
I won’t let it happen.
I seize the vines ensnaring me and pull back with everything I have.
The vine wrapped around Twig’s soul lashes violently, but I seize the vines ensnaring me and pull back with everything I have.
My hands sear with heat. It feels like my skin is melting and I am screaming, but I don’t let go.
Neither does Naomi. She screams and pulls.
Across from me, Jude is holding on, too.
“Fight it, Twig,” I shout, his body seizing.
Jerking.
Convulsing.
Defying the vines.
Defying the Overlay.
The clock hands spin wildly.
“Stay with us!” I scream. I don’t know what else to say, what else to do but hold on and resist with every last ounce of strength inside me.
Enraged, Simon roars.
The vines pull harder.
I bear down, growling with the effort.
My mother stands from the boat.
She calls Simon’s name.
He looks at her, enraptured.
Distracted.
The vines slacken.
She takes the ruby from around her neck and holds it over the water. His brow furrows with confusion as an arrow flies through the air. With a hiss, it strikes the amulet dead in its center.
The gemstone shatters.
Scarlet fragments spin in slow motion, splinters of crimson crystal, each glittering facet catching the light of the stars.
With my hands still gripping the vine, still holding on for all I’m worth, I look across the shoreline toward the trees, where Rafe stands with Jude’s bow.
The ground trembles.
The night throbs like a heartbeat.
Golden thread spirals from the broken amulet.
It swirls around the starlit web and surges into Jude.
A flood of warmth rushes through me.
The air seems to vibrate with life.
And with a burst of dazzling light, Jude’s form sharpens with clarity. The power of it shoots through the vines that connect me to him, him to me. A tidal wave of love and life, no longer a weapon in Vorat’s hands, but a force so disruptive, it broke a curse that built an entire world.
The web snaps apart.
Simon screams.
His knees buckle.
The sky fractures.
The clock explodes.
The blast of it throws me off my feet.
My head cracks against stone.
Stars dance in my vision.
I clutch the back of my head, wet and warm with blood. Wincing, I stagger to my feet, my eyes sweeping the bank, panic clawing through my body as I search for Twig in the chaos. I spot him sprawled on the ground next to the pavilion.
Rafe pulls him to his feet and notches another arrow.
Simon thrashes in shallow water.
The empty rowboat spins across the pond.
“Mom!” I scream, as the wind howls and beasts emerge and the flock of winged creatures circle lower in the sky. One of them dives at Naomi as she drags an unconscious Emma away from the shore, its sharp talons extended.
I shout her name, but too late.
Its talons grab her by the shoulder and lift her off the ground.
An arrow pierces its side.
With an unholy shriek, the monster explodes into ash.
Naomi falls.
Tentacles burst from the water. They writhe and thrash in the air. One snatches Brady. Another grabs Caleb. A third lashes for Harrison, but a stream of fire hits the slimy appendage and the squid recoils.
Twig wields the blowtorch, flame reflecting off his broken glasses as Brady and Caleb are pulled into the murky depths.
I look away from the horror and yell for my mother.
What has happened to her?
Where has she gone?
“Daisy!” Simon cries with me, lifting his hands to draw power, but he has no power to draw from. As though sensing his weakness, the hounds of the hollow turn.
Growls rumble low in their throats as they narrow their ember eyes at Simon, who is no longer their master.
All except one.
A hound that must be Lily.
She snarls and snaps at the pack as Simon staggers backward.
“Selah!” Jude shouts through the pandemonium.
He hurdles a swinging tentacle, ducks under another, his gaze fixed on me as a winged creature screeches and another arrow flies.
The wind roars.
The hounds lunge.
The pack hurls itself upon Simon and he is no match for his victims.
His flailing stops.
His screams are cut short.
And Jude, his form solid and strong, reaches me. He grabs onto me. Wraps his arms around me.
The Overlay distorts.
Our surroundings ripple and warp.
The world buckles beneath us and we are thrust into the cold, wintry night. With no monsters. No hounds. No thrashing tentacles or sinister webs. Just wind and snow and the blurry outline of people around me—coughing, crying, staggering in the dark.
I sway on my feet.
Jude catches me before I fall as finally, I give in to the dark.