“You’ve got to stay on the surface,” Ananias shouted. “Don’t slip under.”
I crawled the last few yards to the water tower and reached for the ladder. A pirate was fighting his way over too, recognizing it as his last hope of escape, but the rats overwhelmed him. More than that, they attacked him, biting and clawing until he writhed in pain, thrashing his limbs about in an attempt to free himself from them.
Having subdued another victim, the rats turned on me. I threw myself at the iron rungs, and climbed the ladder. Ananias was close behind me. He had hold of Dennis, and wouldn’t let the boy go. But Alice was still several yards away, and slowly disappearing beneath the blackness.
Dennis didn’t hesitate. As Alice covered her eyes, he took Ananias’s hand and they combined, sending a band of fire that momentarily cleared the area. Free again, Alice grabbed the nearest rung.
Hand over hand, foot over foot, I pressed on. From ten yards above the ground, I had a clear view of Skeleton Town’s ongoing destruction. The surviving pirates worked their way from roof to roof, setting fire to everything they saw. Maybe they thought it was the only way to combat the rats. Or perhaps they thought that this night would mark the end of everything, and they wanted to be the cause of it.
The remaining clan folk had gathered on a far distant roof, insulated from the mayhem. On the street, my father’s body was almost too small to see, even as the fires in the buildings spread, bathing the scene in a red-orange glow. Tarn tended to him, and she wasn’t alone. There was someone else beside her: a woman, I thought, though I couldn’t be sure. They were fighting a losing battle against the never-ending tide of rats.
The other woman turned around then, as though she wanted me to see her—a face I recalled from a picture I’d found in Bodie Lighthouse weeks earlier. I took in the first view of my mother in thirteen long years.
Watching my father die had stripped me of anything but the need for revenge. But seeing my mother reminded me there were others to save, and others to live for. Griffin deserved the chance to meet the mother he’d never known.
I climbed again, faster than before. When I was halfway up the steps, Jossi appeared high above me. He held a lantern close to his face, presumably so that I could see his expression: crazed, unhinged. “Don’t come any closer,” he yelled.
“Let them go,” I shouted back. “Before everyone dies.”
“Why? Brings on the rats, I say. Let them come. Look around you. This is how we’ll all go, the only way elementals will suffer the way that we have suffered. This’ll be remembered as the day the earth was purged.”
Below me, Dennis, Ananias, and Alice had continued climbing, and the ancient ladder was rocking back and forth under the strain. Several of the supporting clamps had rusted away.
“I told y’all to stop!” Jossi screamed. He leaned over the railing. “One more step and I shoot.”
I had no choice. I stopped, and the others did too. The ladder continued to sway. Would Jossi even let us go back down, or was he planning to hold us there until the ladder buckled? Never mind that he wouldn’t be able to get down either. He’d clearly seen how devastating this night would be, and had made peace with it.
I surveyed the town again: the burning buildings; Tarn and my mother dragging Father’s body away from the stream of rats; and on the roof of the hurricane shelter beside us, a man who lay on his back, rifle pointed toward the sky.
A shot rang out. Above me, Jossi collapsed against the railing with a jarring clang. Down on the shelter roof, the man took aim again, but couldn’t seem to hold the rifle steady. When he dropped the gun, he didn’t even attempt to retrieve it.
It was Dare.
“Go!” Alice screamed.
I climbed. The ladder shook, but I didn’t care. My fingers barely grazed the iron rungs as I heaved myself toward the tower platform, where several heavy footsteps pounded against the metal grate, and bodies collided with the massive water drum. Kieran’s parents were fighting back.
The tussle ended as suddenly as it began. Only this time, no one hit the railing. Instead, a body was thrown clear over it. It passed by me with a rush of air, and landed on the mountain of rats below. I had no idea who had just died.
It didn’t take long to find out.
Kieran’s father teetered on the edge of the platform above me. Jossi was on top of him, landing punches to his face. As I neared the gap where the stairs connected to the platform, I got a clear view of Kieran’s mother holding her son back, protecting him at any cost.
The victim must have been the other pirate. Which meant that Jossi was fighting alone.
I slapped my fingers onto the edge and pulled myself up the final step. Seeing me from the corner of his eye, Jossi pushed away from Kieran’s father and staggered toward Kieran. As I swung a leg onto the platform, the boy’s mother intercepted the pirate and they crashed against the railing. The suddenness of it, the sheer force, ruptured the rusted metal bars. They had no chance to stop their progress. There wouldn’t have been anything to hold on to, anyway.
Jossi fell first. His hands were wrapped around Kieran’s mother’s arm, and she fell too. Together they hurtled past the broken railing and over the edge, plummeting toward earth. Arms outstretched, they almost brushed against Dennis, Ananias, and Alice, who were still climbing. A half yard to the side and Jossi would have taken all the elementals down with him.
“Mother!” Kieran’s voice was high-pitched and frantic.
His father lay dead or unconscious on the platform. Kieran stood beside the gap, toes overhanging the edge, face frozen in horror. The tower was leaning, groaning under the strain. I crawled toward him. When I was only a yard away, he turned to me. I expected to see horror in his face, or desolation, or anger. Instead I saw only defeat. Kieran had endured so much, and done unimaginable things in the hope of being reunited with his parents. Now his mother was gone.
Kieran bowed his head and climbed over the railing.
CHAPTER 33
I leaped at Kieran and got a good hold on his ankle. Yanked the foot back before his momentum carried him over. He slid forward, but only his torso went over the railing.
Alice appeared beside me and tended to Kieran’s father. I hoped it would placate Kieran to see that his father wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t even looking. Instead, he kicked at me with his free leg, hell-bent on breaking away.
I curled my other hand around the ankle as his foot connected with my cheekbone. White-hot pain flared across the left side of my face, and my pulse kicked. My element was misfiring, powered up and with only one place to go. Kieran unleashed a sound that was part scream, part gargle.
Having thrown everything into saving him, now I was killing him instead.
The others had staggered onto the platform, which began to sway under our weight. Ananias and Dennis grabbed Kieran too, and tried to heave him back up, but he was thrashing about so hard, they couldn’t. I was sure he’d fall if I let go.
I stopped fighting my element and combined with Kieran instead—imagined my element flowing straight through him, a direct line between me and the rats. I did it to save his life, but it was a relief for me as well. Draining, yes, but we were working together now. He didn’t kick me anymore. He didn’t cry out. He just closed his eyes and allowed the combination to take full effect.
I heard voices. Kieran’s father was groaning. Dennis was asking who had tumbled from the platform. Then everyone fell silent. They were all looking down.
I tilted my head to look through the grate. Directly below, the black mass of rats roiled like an ocean in a hurricane.
“The rats are climbing the steps,” said Ananias.
“Not the steps,” Alice said. “Each other. They’re using themselves to get to us.”
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. The top of the pile resembled the skinny, pointed
sand-drip towers we used to make on the beach. And just like those towers, no matter how many times the rat-tower toppled, it always grew back even higher than before as the base grew wider, just by force of numbers. The rats were already a quarter of the way up the steps. And they weren’t coming for us.
They were coming to Kieran.
“Make them stop, Thom,” shouted Alice. “You have to take over his element—turn the rats away.”
As I regained control of my breathing, I reduced the amount of energy pouring through him. I didn’t want to take over his element entirely—Jossi had already used Kieran to serve his own ends—I just wanted to slow things down, and give us a chance to think. But Kieran responded with a keening wail that resonated through every part of me. It was a cry of agony and hopelessness. A cry for the end of the world. And still the rats came. And still the town burned. And the rats ignored their instincts and scurried into the flames, until the heat that rose to greet us was tinged with the rancid odor of burning flesh.
Alice was right: I had to do something to stop the rats and the searing heat.
But Dennis had other ideas. He linked hands with Ananias and Alice and pulled them to the railing. “Combine!” he yelled.
The result was immediate and awe-inspiring: Wind took the flames leaping from Ananias’s and Alice’s hands and turned them into a firestorm. It cascaded down from the tower like a waterfall, incinerating the rats as they converged below.
Beside me, Kieran screamed for his mother. He must have known the fall had killed her, but the fire raining down left no shadow of doubt. I kept waiting for him to give in, to relinquish control of the rats now that neither Jossi nor anyone else had any power over him, but he seemed more determined than ever. He drew them to himself, rank after rank, and watched them die by the thousand in the inferno.
That’s when I understood. Kieran wasn’t trying to punish Jossi, or the pirates, or us. He wanted to kill as many rats as possible. Burning . . . crushing . . . it didn’t matter how they died, just as long as they were destroyed.
With a loud metallic groan, the tower shifted slightly beneath us. I couldn’t even see the base of the stilts anymore—they were hidden behind flames and under the smoldering remains of countless rats. We all knew what that sound meant, and there was nothing we could do about it. No time to climb down, and no way to survive the hell below, even if we did. The inferno would kill us as quickly as the fall.
I thought of Rose and Griffin then. Mother too. If Kieran and I could kill the rats before the tower collapsed, wouldn’t our lives have meant something? Surely the survivors—clan folk and elementals—could coexist peacefully on an island without rats. In time, Griffin and Nyla could cure those who had contracted Plague. There would be a future here. Even without us, there would be that.
Kieran wasn’t trying to pull away anymore. There was no need. Why jump, when falling was inevitable? Instead, he grew quiet, all his energy focused on the rats. I did the same. Together, the two of us brought even the stragglers toward the tower, until a clear perimeter emerged a few hundred yards away. The heat from the burning carcasses was overwhelming. I gagged on the rancid air.
This time there was no warning sound, just a violent shift as the tower leaned ever more precariously to one side. The other elementals were jolted against the railing, but it didn’t break. They didn’t miss a beat, either, but rejoined hands and continued their combined assault.
I looked at each of them in turn: Dennis, who like me had lived in fear of displeasing the Guardians; Alice, the outsider, always fighting for what was right while enduring everyone’s criticism; Ananias, who had only ever wanted the Guardians to respect him. I wanted them to live. I wanted all of us to live. But I said good-bye to each of them anyway, silently, so they wouldn’t have to hear.
Another hideous groan as the aching stilts warped and fractured under us. The railing couldn’t hold us back much longer. I didn’t even have to look through the platform to see the firestorm below anymore. Limbs dangling through gaps in the railing, I could see everything perfectly because I was already facing down.
The rats plowed on to certain death, lured by Kieran’s siren call. With every passing moment we were purging the island. But as the others began to tire, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Their trail of fire retreated like the ocean after high tide. With the tower straining, we were measuring life in heartbeats—ten if we were lucky, one if we weren’t. Neither was long enough to rid the island of rats. They were so close too, concentrated within a radius of a hundred yards at most.
Ananias, Alice, and Dennis closed their eyes and gritted their teeth, trying to eke out something more. They must have known they were going to die here, and were determined to give everything. It wasn’t enough, though. It could never be enough . . .
Unless I took over their elements. I might kill them in the process, but they were already as good as dead. Hadn’t Tarn and Dare told me this moment would come?
I broke contact with Kieran. He didn’t fall. He just stared at the rats and tried to hold them in his thrall.
Dennis screamed as I wrapped my arms around him. Alice and Ananias tried to resist as I placed my hands on their arms, but I wouldn’t let go. They weren’t elementals anymore; they were conduits, and I controlled the flow of all energy. I was fire and wind. Raw power flooded from me like water through a broken dam.
Fire no longer cascaded down from us. Instead, like a hurricane squeezed into a canister and unleashed in a moment, the inferno exploded. Flames radiated in an unstoppable ring, incinerating everything in their path. No rat could escape. No human either. Even high above, I was sure my skin was melting.
Ananias passed out first, unable to give any more of himself, and unable to stop me from taking from him anyway. Alice followed him into unconsciousness. I barely noticed. I didn’t need their minds, just their elements. Such a betrayal to treat them like objects, but who would be alive to know what I had done?
I’d waited a lifetime to matter. To be someone. Now, as the world beneath me burned, I was so much more than that. I was a star—incandescent and all-powerful. And so bone-crushingly tired that I craved the moment when I’d be extinguished, and the echo would finally stop.
It was almost a relief when the first stilt gave out. The tower buckled backward, twisted sideways, and fell. I closed my eyes and let myself go.
CHAPTER 34
Combine!” Someone was holding my hand. I didn’t know who it was—Dennis, maybe. “Combine!”
Plummeting through the air, I thought of the wind and unleashed a single pulse of my element.
There was a jolt of air from under me, so powerful it was as if the earth itself had risen up and stopped my fall. My insides lurched as I flew upward, caught on the drafts of an enormous funnel. Below, the tower collapsed into the flames. The stilts were mangled, as twig-like as the bones of a dead bird.
The chute of air weakened. Hand in hand, Dennis and I began to turn. He must have wanted me to give him more power, but I couldn’t do it. I just focused on the ground, and the need to stay conscious as the world twisted around me.
I wasn’t sure which way was up. I thought I caught a glimpse of the others beside me. The raging fires blurred with the darkness until the entire island appeared bathed in furious orange.
I stopped rising, and began to free-fall. The heat grew more intense. Thick smoke filled the air. By the time I was able to get a look at the island, I saw something too bizarre to be real: A tidal wave crashed through Skeleton Town, large and unstoppable. And near the crest of the wave, a ship.
I willed myself not to look away. If I was dreaming, it was a dream I welcomed.
Another rapid turn through the air, but the ship was still there. Marin and Rose stood on the prow, with Nyla between them.
I braced to hit earth, but landed with a splash instead. Just as I’d been tossed about in the air, now I was twis
ted around in the water. It shocked me. Revived me. But I couldn’t breathe.
My back scraped along what I figured was the ground, so I planted my right foot against it and pushed upward, surfacing almost immediately. About fifty yards away, the ship collided with the top corner of one of the buildings, ripping the hull to pieces.
I looked for Rose and Marin and Nyla, but I couldn’t see them. I could hear Dennis’s voice, though. He was close by and floundering in the shifting currents. The water level was dropping, but as it sank it created eddies that sucked objects under before tossing them out again. By the look of it, Dennis had been caught in one. I swam the couple yards over to him and grabbed his tunic. Once he saw me beside him, Dennis went limp. He was completely spent.
Kieran was nearby too. I heard him screaming, but as the last of the fires was extinguished by the advancing tide, I couldn’t see him. Keeping one hand on Dennis, I swam toward the voice. Kieran let out a single, short cry. Then nothing.
“Kieran,” I shouted.
Not a sound.
“Kieran!”
Something erupted from the water beside me. A figure cleared the surface entirely before splashing down beside me.
Rose.
I couldn’t make sense of how well she appeared, and how strong. There wasn’t time to ask, either. “Kieran,” I said, pointing in the direction of his last cry, and even though Rose had never seen the boy, she took off to find a child in the murky gray water.
While she was gone the water receded enough that I could touch the ground again. I couldn’t anchor myself, though, as the currents continued to swirl, so I allowed myself to float about. Dennis bobbed up and down on his back next to me. Apart from the ebb and flow of water, the scene was oddly quiet, so I tried to hone in on voices. I didn’t hear anyone.