Chapter Twenty-Nine
I keep my grip on Jack tight. Harrison is at the edges of the shadows, just beyond the lantern light. I can kind of make out
his form on the ground, like he crawled here.
And when he speaks again, he sounds weak, bloody, beaten.
“She tried to kill me,” he says, coughing up something. “She told me she killed Cleo, too. The harbinger is evil, like I always
said.”
I am in utter shock. I didn’t see this coming. I look at Jack, my heart kicking hard. “He’s lying.”
But Jack says nothing. He doesn’t look at me. His gaze is on Harrison, crumpled in the shadows.
And I think, he won’t believe me. He will believe his grandfather, because he’s known him longer, because he’s always trusted Harrison. Because he loves him.
Why would he believe the girl who rolled into town barely a month ago, dispensing doom wherever she goes? I wouldn’t.
But he told me he loved me, and I know he meant it. I saw it. I felt it.
I can’t make this man do anything.
I can only try to actually trust him, when historically speaking, it’s only the twin I shared a womb with who I trust. Everyone
else is suspect.
Yet I understand what’s at stake here. Yes, the world. But also, if we survive, I don’t get to have a man like this if I can’t
trust him. I shouldn’t want a man if I can’t trust him.
I’m standing still, but it feels like I throw myself off the top of the clock tower when I face him. It’s my turn to move
his head with my hands so all that concerned dark green is looking my way.
“Jack, I love you,” I tell him quietly, and with all the conviction I have in me. I hear Logan breathe in, hard. “I know this
hurts. It’s unfair. But he’s one of them, and we cannot let him into the light.”
Jack’s green gaze is steady on mine. “I believe you, Lexi.” He gives me a faint nod and pulls my grip from his arm. And I
have to trust him as he moves toward Harrison. Because he said he believed me.
Now I have to believe him back.
I try to move with him, but Logan holds me in place as Jack heads for the shadows. Where only one lantern still burns.
“Jack.” Harrison is gasping now.
What an act. I hold on to Logan and remind myself to believe, to love.
“Help me,” Harrison wails.
“I’d like to, Grandpa,” Jack says. Too close to the shadows for my taste, but he’s not in them. Yet. “But if you were good, you wouldn’t need an invitation into the light. Because the dark would already have taken you.”
The fake pain turns into a cry of anger, but Jack kicks out, knocking the lantern over and shattering the glass so the flame spreads out quickly across dry leaves and glass.
It illuminates Harrison’s grotesquely demon-possessed face, but Jack doesn’t see it.
Only Logan and I do, and I think that’s a kind of mercy.
Jack has already turned and is striding toward me. He doesn’t stop when he gets here, he just grabs my arm and pulls me over
to the rock.
The pretty pre-hour melody is done. The first of twelve bongs sounds out through the night.
“You don’t have time,” Harrison is shrieking from the shadows, standing now despite his ruined body—but he can’t cross the
line of fire.
We scramble up the rock with an assist from Logan. Jack tosses him a lighter and his phone. “Keep whatever light you can going,”
he orders.
Then Jack and I are on the top of the rock. Just like my dream. My dream was the key all along.
But that’s not quite right. I am the key.
In my dream I stood right here. Was Jack here? I try to picture it, but all I remember in the dream was that there was a rush
of wind. I was saying something. I was waiting for someone. Maybe it was him.
Maybe I’ve always been waiting for him.
It’s a frustrating blur, but I don’t have time for the blur. I have to act. Before Harrison reaches Logan. Before the clock
strikes twelve.
I reach out and lace my fingers with his. We look right at each other, like we’ve done this before. Then we say it together.
“The beginning is the end.”
The rock rumbles beneath us, maybe the whole earth is shaking, but Jack and I keep holding on to each other. The slurping
around us increases, but it’s different now.
Desperate, I think. They’ve put out some of the fire, but Harrison can’t seem to get past Logan’s tiny swath of light as the
sixth and seventh bongs ring out over the town.
Jack and I are making something happen, but I don’t know what. Then I remember my dream about the rock. That settlers gave their blood and the demons gave theirs. That was the original deal.
That was the choice.
And Virginia told us that only blood can stop it. “We need blood,” I tell Jack. “Mr. Over Prepared, you got a pocketknife
or something sharp?”
My heart is pounding in my throat. My hands are sweaty. But Jack produces something from his pocket, because of course, he
does. He slides a blade out, then hands it to me.
It has to be about blood. It has to be about the beginning and we are the beginning, Jack and me. Bellamy and Darling with some foundling thrown in, melded all together. Here at this place where
our ancestors made the first deal.
The wrong deal.
But then someone put forth something good. And I am the result of that.
It means something, I know it does.
With a wince, I cut my palm with the blade. Then I hand it to Jack. He curses under his breath, but nods, then slashes his
own palm. He mimics what I do, which is crouch down and press the bloody part of my palm to the rock.
And then we say it again. “The beginning is the end.”
There’s a bigger rumble, and I can feel the rock cracking beneath us, but it’s still not over. I can feel it. There’s a kind
of electricity in the air.
Something is coiled, waiting.
The tenth bong echoes around us, loud and reverberating in my ears. The wall is nearly closed. Just a sliver of light shows between door
and wall.
I don’t know how to do this, or if we’re doing it all wrong. I don’t know if there’s a right way to perform a demon ritual, so I just say what I feel. What’s in my heart.
Like I trust me, too.
“I’m breaking any deal you have here!” I yell—at Harrison, at the shadows, at Midas itself. “You will not feed here ever again.
Our blood ends this. Our fight ends this.” I think of Amelia and Cleo, who won’t get to see this. My mother. “The sacrifice
of everyone who came before ends this. That is our choice.”
And the rock explodes.
I am thrown hard. I’m really in the air this time.
I lose my grip on Jack and it feels like I’m careening through the sky. The only thought I have in this weird, weightless
moment is that maybe I went ahead and sacrificed everything after all.
And if it frees the people I love, maybe that’s okay.