She dives for me, her fingers gouging for my eyes, but I’m so horrified that it’s all I can do to step aside and let her fly past, scratching a long scrape across my cheek. Growling, she skids to a stop and charges back, leading with her snapping jaws this time, like a shark.
I come to my senses and swing my sword—because, what else am I going to do?—and slice her tiny body in half, getting splattered with black gore in the process.
Nearby, Laney is ceaselessly pulling the trigger on her gun, sending the Reanimates back to whatever heaven or hell they were mercilessly dragged from.
“We can’t last forever!” she shouts. “We need to find another way out.”
She’s right. There are too many and getting through the Reanimate-clogged players’ tunnel is an impossible goal.
I swivel around, looking for an exit sign. That’s when I see her.
Blood pulses in my head. Terror curls in my chest.
Jasmine, my sister, once dead but now alive again, sprints toward me.
Chapter Sixty
Dropping my sword, I grab her tiny but strong body and hold her away from me. Her little arms claw at my face while her teeth snap and snap and SNAP!, clacking so loudly I’m afraid she’ll break her jaw.
Her features are remarkably well-formed, which is why I was able to identify her in the first place. Her brown skin, complete with the heart-shaped mole on the side of her neck. Her thimble-shaped nose. Her light brown eyes. Distorted and malformed and yet, definitely her. Definitely Jasmine.
“Carter, look out!” Laney yells, and I see her Glock angling in my direction, zeroing in on my sister.
“No!” I shout. “No! She’s my sister!”
Laney’s eyes meet mine and fill with the blackness of dread. A moment later she’s forced to turn away to shoot another charging Reanimate. “You have no choice,” she cries over her shoulder, firing again and again.
“Ahh!” I shout as the Jasmine-creature rakes her claws along my hand, drawing blood. She’s trying to get me to drop her.
“Jasmine!” I shout as loudly as I can. “It’s me, Rhett!”
Her wild eyes stop roving about, lock on mine, and for a second she stops fighting me. “It’s me,” I say again, softer this time. She sniffs the air, as if trying to identify my scent. Is she still in there? Does she still know me?
The light, if there ever was one, blinks out and she bites at my hand, forcing me to relax my grip, leaving the hold of my other hand unbalanced and awkward. She twists away and comes at me with such fury that it’s all I can do to drop to the ground, letting her trip over me, falling headlong into a warlock who’s fighting another Reanimate.
She scrambles to her feet, looks back, and then comes at me again. From the corner of my eye, I spot my sword, reflecting the sun. I reach for it, feeling its cold hilt against my hot palm.
And Jasmine leaps, her own force and energy and rage sending her directly into the tip of my sword, which I thrust out firmly.
She topples over me, screaming and writhing and bleeding, and then—
Stopping. Dying. Impaled on my sword. I couldn’t save her then, and I couldn’t save her now.
Murderers, Mr. Jackson’s voice says in my head. It’s the same thing he once said about the evil witches who carried out Salem’s Revenge.
I’m numb and I’m cold and I’m done—so done—with this fight, with this world, but I must go on, because Beth might still be out there and Laney’s in a fight for both our lives. And so, I pull my blood-slick sword from my sister’s stomach, and fight my way toward my friend, who’s made some progress toward a red exit sign.
She fires and I slash and Reanimates and witches from both sides fall under us, trampled beneath our feet. And I realize: I don’t care. Death is nothing anymore. Killing is nothing. Real life doesn’t feel real, like it’s one of Tillman’s video games.
And then we make it through the press of bodies and the exit is right there, we just have to run through it, when a shadow falls from the sky, landing before us, blocking our path.
“Rhett, please,” the Reaper says, all power and authority leeched from his voice.
~~~
I don’t care how pitiful and desperate he sounds. The heat of the rage inside me is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It’s the fury of a storm and the rumble of an earthquake and an exploding missile. It has one message and one message alone:
KILLKILLKILLKILLKILL!
I slash at Xave’s father, who steps back quickly, saying “Whoa! Hold on now.” But I’m not listening, intent on ending the man who trained me with the very sword I’m swinging at him now.
I swipe and he dances away, and then says the only words that could ever get me to stop my attack. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Beth.”
I pull up short, my arms full of tension and unspent anger. “Tell me where she is, NOW!” I scream.
“Rhett,” Laney says. “Kill him, Rhett.” But I can’t, not when he has the only information that has ever truly mattered to me. Not when every last hope and fear rests on his shoulders.
“I didn’t want to put you through anything more than you’ve already been through,” he says.
“Tell me,” I growl.
“I don’t know who killed her,” he says.
“No,” I say. He’s lying. I know he’s lying. He’s always been lying.
“She was already dead when I found her. Xave was curled up in a ball, sobbing. Holding her.”
“Shut up. You’re lying,” I say, meaning to shout it, but it comes out as a croak, the words sticking in my throat.
“I’m sorry, Rhett. So sorry.” I hate that he actually sounds sorry. I hate that I’m starting to believe him. “I wrote the note in blood about the Necros. I had to make sure that you thought it was us, so if you were ever alone, you’d seek us out. It was the only way I could be sure you’d find your way back to us.”
“I hate you,” I say, my voice gaining strength.
“I’m not the enemy.”
“You’re my enemy,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, motioning behind me.
Now it’s my turn to laugh, a scoffing, slightly crazy chuckle. “You think you can fool me that easily? Your protégé?”
“No,” he says. “No joke. See for yourself.”
A voice, still carrying the honey-sweet tone I fell in love with, but distorted with strain and hunger, like a crushed throat, speaks. “Rhet-t-t-t,” it says, chattering at the end, as if speaking through a snowstorm.
I whip around, pushing past Laney, watching as Beth steps forward, her eyes closed, her perfect lips still trying to form my name. “Rhet-t-t-t.” Flashes of a memory explode in my head.
—Sitting on a bridge, our feet dangling beneath us.
“Beth?” I say, my heart leaping, because she’s not dead, not a creature, her every feature as perfectly formed as they should be, except…why won’t she open her eyes?
—The sparkles in her big brown eyes painting a permanent smile on my face.
I choke out a sob as I see it. Her eyes aren’t closed—they’re sewn shut. Little black threads circle the flesh of her eyelids like railroad ties.
“I’m here, Beth,” I say, even as screams and shouts and explosions and death swirl behind her.
—Reaching for her hand, which is open, palm up, so inviting. So close. So close.
Her perfect hands reach for her face, feeling around her eyes, as if trying to figure out why she can’t see. “It’s okay, Beth. It’s okay,” I say, although it’s not. Far from it.
She claws at the threads, and I say, “No,” but she doesn’t listen, plucking at one. I start to run toward her, but she’s clawing now, ripping away the black threads, pulling at her eyelids, which stretch grotesquely.
—Her warm fingers curling over mine, weaving together like a perfect tapestry. “I love you,” I say.
I stop when her eyelids flash open. There’s no blood, only black. Her eyes are gone, leaving pa
rtially healed patches of skin, flecked with black dots, like ash.
“God,” I murmur. “Oh, God.” But no. If there’s a god, he’s abandoned us.
Beth blinks, although she has nothing to lubricate with the instinctive motion.
—“I love you, too,” she says.
The memory fades, snapping reality back into focus. A reality where Beth will never see me nor say I love you again.
That’s when the field explodes.
Chapter Sixty-One
Darkness and fire and black and light, the world whirls around me in flashes and booms.
There are screams surrounding, and then a hand on my shoulder. Laney, crawling up to me, her face streaked with ash.
“The wards are breaking,” she gasps.
“Beth—we have to find her,” I say.
“That wasn’t her,” she says. “A Reanimate. Like your sister.”
“No,” I say. I won’t believe it. She was perfect. Except for her eyes, she was perfect. Not like the other raised dead. And she said my name; she knew me. No one could have brought her back like that, unless…
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Although the new explosions are from high above, blocked once more by the wards, New America has hastened its bombing, likely encouraged by the lone missile that got through to the field. It must have exploded at the far end, otherwise we’d all be dead.
“She’s gone, Rhett. I’m sorry,” Laney says. “But I’m not. And you’re not. We have to go.”
“No.” I’m not going, not until I’m sure.
Choking, I crawl through the smoke, aware that Laney is sticking close to my side. I almost trip on something. A burnt and charred body crumbles beneath me, scorched beyond recognition by either the bomb blast or one of the Pyro fireballs.
“Rhet-t-t-t,” I hear, whisper-soft, like a voice from a dream.
She’s there, reaching for me, her slender fingers somehow knowing the direction of my approach. And I reach for her, and our fingers touch, spinning volts of electricity through me for that one, last, final second before—
Her hand drops and her head lolls to the side.
Beth dies again, a jagged arrow of metal protruding from her chest.
And though I don’t want to notice it, I do:
There’s no blood.
Not for the first time, Laney hauls me up and pushes me, muscling me forward, my hand somehow remaining clenched around my sword, dragging it after me.
The exit is open. Mr. Jackson is gone.
We get through, stumbling down a concrete walkway to the outer atrium, which funnels into an exit. Once blocked by turnstiles, the exit is filled with metal and stone rubble, which we scramble over, scraping our knees and hands and elbows.
The scene outside the stadium is surreal. Hundreds of witches and warlocks—the Wardens—form a ring around Heinz Field, their hands raised to the sky, like believers praying to the heavens. At least half have fallen to their knees, screaming in pain.
The intensity of the attack is wearing them down. Slowly but surely.
“This way!” Laney shouts, pulling my hand toward a familiar black-cloaked figure.
Xavier turns, one hand holding Felix’s, who’s still standing, his teeth gritted, trying to maintain the dome of protection. My friend’s eyes are wild with excitement or terror or something else.
“Did you see her?” he says urgently, speaking to me. “Did you see my most beautiful creation?”
And although I already knew it, his words strike me like a punch in the face, stopping me short. “Why?” I say. “Why would you do that?”
The question seems to surprise him. “I had to do something,” he says matter-of-factly. “She died in my arms, Rhett. She was already dying when I found her. I know you think it was, but it wasn’t the Necros. She was killed by one of the rogue witches. Father says it might have been a Changeling that did it. But we couldn’t let her death go to waste. I couldn’t let it go to waste. She was my best creation,” he says, and I can hear the pride in his voice. “Almost perfect. I just couldn’t quite get the eyes right, although I kept trying. I wanted to tell you about her, but I couldn’t until she was perfect.”
And though his words sound slightly crazy, for that one moment I understand him. Because I might have done the same thing in his position, if I had the power that I now truly believe he has. Tried to bring her back the way she was. Tried to save her. He thought he had the power to do it right, and so he tried, and for that I can’t blame him, or hate him. No, Xavier didn’t make the world the way it’s become, Salem’s Revenge did that all on its own.
With an anguished cry, Felix drops to one knee, desperately fighting to keep his arms above his head.
“Come with us,” I say to Xavier. “We’re leaving, and you need to come with us now. You can still live. You can still change things. We need your help.”
The sorrow in my friend’s eyes is almost more than I can take. “I—I can’t,” he says. “There’s only one place left for me. I won’t leave my father now that I’ve found him.”
“But I’m your best friend,” I plead. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”
He nods. “You should stay, too,” he says calmly.
“No,” I say. “I won’t be a part of this. I won’t die like this.”
“Rhett,” Laney says urgently. “We’ve got company!”
A Hummer bursts through the wards on the far side of the stadium, showering sparks and glistening with red-hot heat. The doors open and The End spills out, carrying guns and knives and grenades. Gravedigger. The Silent Assassin. Eddie X. The Mad Sheriff.
And then the killing begins.
Two vicious slashes and Silent has beheaded two of the Wardens, their heads rolling across the pavement. The Mad Sheriff is shooting dual pistols in every direction, missing with most shots, but occasionally sending one of the witches sprawling. X is tossing grenades like rotten eggs, blowing up half a dozen Wardens at a time. And Graves is fighting barehanded, twisting necks and breaking bones; and then, he raises a radio to his lips and shouts so loudly we can hear him from two hundred feet away. “Wards are down! Attack! Attack!” As a group, they jump back into the Hummer, slamming the doors and whooping like bandits.
Graves, as if sensing my stare, turns in my direction. He sees me and smiles victoriously.
And then, as quickly as they came, The End roars off, having sufficiently weakened the squad of Wardens. Mr. Jackson was telling the truth. The End are responsible for calling in the air strikes, not Bil Nez. Which means Bil’s mission was…
“Run!” Laney shouts, even as the first missile screams overhead.
“Xave, c’mon!” I urge, tugging at his hand. But he pulls back, rips his fingers free of mine, clinging to Felix, who’s lying on the concrete, convulsing as if he’s having a seizure, white foam bubbling from his mouth.
“Go,” Xave says, tucking an arm behind Felix’s head to stop it from banging on the concrete.
Something licks my hand, and suddenly Hex is there, standing next to Trish, who points toward the river.
Tears in my eyes, I fire a final glance back at Xave, who only watches us as we run away from the rockets streaming toward Heinz Field.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Trish is screaming her head off and I throw my hands over my ears, but the sound is deafening. Missiles are exploding overhead, but there are too many, as numerous as drops of rain in a storm. She can’t destroy them all.
And then we’re running in a bubble, the world around us distant and wobbly, like we’re looking at it through thick Jell-O. Hex’s new collar—one of Huckle’s gifts—has turned fluorescent white and is pulsating with energy. Strangely, as we run, the bubble doesn’t seem to touch us, moving around us like a viscous liquid, but never getting in our way. The explosions are muffled, allowing Trish’s piercing cry free reign to assault our eardrums.
The river’s edge appears before us and we charge for it, even as Trish stops screaming, the echoes of h
er cry ringing in my ears. There’s a brilliant and fiery flash of light and a booming explosion, and the bubble shudders, shudders, and bursts in a purple shower of mist that evaporates in an instant, even as a rush of wind rages behind and in front and all around us and—
—we dive—
—our bodies picked up by a powerful force in our wake—
—tossing us like a child’s toys into the air, spinning, flipping, heads over heels and then heels over heads, and then—
A surge of icy water surrounds us, slapping and churning against our helpless bodies. Hex’s tail is in my face, and someone’s foot, and a flash of blond hair. The sounds of the battle suddenly seem far behind us, distant, as if muffled by a soundproof barrier.
I spot Trish, who doesn’t seem to know how to tread water, just sinking further and further into the river. Kicking hard, I swim toward her, grabbing her hand, pulling her toward the surface.
We break through, gasping for breath. Laney and Hex are nearby, and start kicking for the opposite shore when they see us. I follow them, pulling Trish along with me, acutely aware of how much heat I feel on the back of my head.
But I don’t look back.
Won’t look back.
We clamber onto the shore, sopping wet, tired and bloody and emotionally drained. At least I am. Laney, too. Trish and Hex seem calmer, more collected.
Trish ushers us up a small rise and away from the river. Just before we disappear past a building, I hazard a glance back at the stadium.
Smoke and fire and rubble and complete destruction meet my gaze.
I say a silent prayer for Xavier and keep walking, until movement catches the edge of my peripheral vision.
I twist my head but only catch the edge of a shadow, darting behind a building and out of sight. Despite the bare glimpse of him, I know exactly who it was, the top of his crossbow silhouetted against the white-painted stone.