Fragility Unearthed Page 20

  I touched her arm. “Trust me on this. Unexpected does not equal unwanted.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Thanks for that. So can I change Abbi?”

  “By all means.” I sat back in my chair. “I feel like a lady of luxury. I’m not fighting shadows or changing diapers. Luckiest lady alive.”

  I sat still, just enjoying the semi-quiet of the moment. No one needed anything from me. It was—

  The table shook, and I stood. Were we having an earthquake? No, I darted backwards. I’d never be so lucky as to have something as simple as an earthquake happen. This was something paranormal. I fell over as the feeling of a thousand shadows moved through my body.

  I grabbed my phone and shot Malcolm a quick message. Help.

  Annika called my name from down the hall. I yelled back. “Stay back there. Keep the kids back there. Don’t let the children out here. I don’t know what’s happening yet, but it’s shadow related.”

  Victoria and Henry had set up the house so shadows couldn’t get around the bubble. The floor opened up, and the kitchen table fell through it. Maybe they hadn’t warded the ground?

  I scrambled backwards even further. A hole formed between me and the hallway, taking out all my exits.

  “Annika,” I shrieked this time. “Get the kids out. Go out the window. I don’t care. Grab Jack and get them all out. Okay?”

  “Yes,” she yelled back. I could hear fear in her voice, but her footsteps stomped down the hall. Fear didn’t matter as long as she didn’t lose her footing.

  The kids were safe or would be. Grayson shouted something and then stopped. Glass smashed. Annika had gotten them outside. She’d manage Gray and whatever dreams he had of pulling me out of here.

  The hole in the floor widened, and I could see below. An altar, like the one we’d seen at the high school, rose up as though propelled by an elevator. Sitting on it, surrounded by hundreds of shadow-possessed people, was The Master. I’d know him almost anywhere. No matter whom he took, the same dead-eyed hatred spit from his eyes at me. Right then, he wore the suit of an Asian man.

  I’d stopped trying to remember one persona from another.

  “I know what Top Hat tried to do. The scum. Betraying me after all I did for him and the way he let Levi get around him. I’ll deal with him later. Your friends and lover are stuck right now. They’ll likely get through the trap soon. I don’t mean for them to be stuck there forever. I placed some very dedicated demons in their way. It’ll take a few minutes. By then, this will be done.”

  I pointed to the altar. “You’re going to try to raise the shadows from here? In the kitchen?”

  His hair blew as a wind picked up. “We’re practically there. Took some of Levi’s knowhow and changed it. The energy we need from this dimension to open the other one has begun to travel. I’m glad you’ll be here to see it, Kendall. I would have taken Malcolm or one of the others. But I have to say, I’ve wanted you. The whole time. It’ll feel good to kill Michael’s lightbringer.”

  I had to do something. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—stand there while he raised a hellhole onto the Earth. I’d wanted to stay out of the fight that evening. He’d brought it to me. I wasn’t a coward. I’d do what had to be done. Alone, as it turned out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I couldn’t fight all the shadows trying to kill us in Victoria’s kitchen. Not by myself. Probably not even if Malcolm had been there. But I could maybe stop the onslaught. I wasn’t losing Earth like Michael had lost his planet. Not while there was breath in my body. My kids would have a future.

  I grabbed the chair I’d been sitting on, which had fallen over. One of the legs had come loose, and I yanked it off. Like the Buffy I was not, I jumped down into the hole. The Master must not have expected it because his eyes widened. I couldn’t kill the shadow within, but I could get rid of the body he used.

  I’d never killed a body this way. But with the chair leg in hand, I whacked The Master’s body over and over again. I knew when I’d killed him because The Master’s shadow appeared all around us. My hand bled, splinters from the chair cutting it. I didn’t have time to deal with any of my own pain. I’d disoriented the shadows, and I had to take advantage of the time.

  Plastic lay against the altar, this piece looking totally different than the one Levi had mis-designed. I touched it and jolted backwards. Heat scalded me, and I screamed at the top of my lungs. They’d fused it down. It wasn’t going to come off, and I couldn’t touch it anyway. I sunk to me knees.

  Everything tilted left and a surge of blackness travelled upwards as the altar opened with a loud groan.

  I looked upwards to what remained of Victoria’s kitchen. No one came. The cavalry had not arrived, and I wasn’t sure what they could have done anyway. For Malcolm not to get to me, he must be very caught up with the demons.

  I hoped he was okay. The world was ending, and we weren’t together. I’d never considered dying alone. We’d always been together when one of us nearly left the world.

  Michael appeared before me. He looked sad, one tear slipping from his eyes. “I’m sorry Kendall.”

  Only I could see him. The hooting and hollering of the happy shadows around me didn’t seem to notice him. The Master hadn’t returned with a new body. Maybe he could have seen.

  “Is it over then?”

  Michael didn’t answer, holding my eye contact. He was my company at the end of the line, and he wasn’t answering me? Maybe he wasn’t able. He couldn’t always bring his energy down. It would destroy the Earth …

  I rose to my feet, despite the shaking. He couldn’t bring himself to Earth. He’d break my planet. He couldn’t go to the shadow world. He was already dead.

  But I wasn’t.

  What had he told me? The phoenix would bring him. I didn’t have it. As far as I knew, it remained in the backyard buried somewhere. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do about getting my hands on it.

  “What happens, Michael, if you went to the shadow dimension? You blow up everything, right? You’re that powerful. But you made me, part of me, from that phoenix, which is part of you. What happens to this if I do it?”

  His eyes widened, and a second later I stood in front of him, the purple waterfall of the Other space behind me. I’d spent my first life here. In a way, it was like coming home.

  “If you go to the shadow world, there will be an explosion. A lesser one than the one I would cause. You don’t have that power, yet.”

  I touched his arm. Michael looked tired. “An explosion that would … what? Would it close the hole? Plug it?”

  “Maybe.”

  That had not been the answer I wanted or needed. If I was going to throw myself in, I wanted to know it would work.

  “If I’m going to die, I need better than maybe. I need to know my kids, Malcolm, Levi, the whole world gets a shot. I need an answer, Michael.”

  He shook his head. “I never considered it. I don’t have the answer. Everything is gone from the way it should be. It might close. Yes. You’d plug the hole. With the Master on Earth’s side, the shadows will lose their way in and out. But make no mistake here, Kendall. There will be no coming back. Not that I can think of. And you won’t die. You’re going in there alive.”

  My heart stopped. How could I be afraid of death? I’d died already. I knew what would happen, only it wouldn’t be hijacked by Michael. I’d move on to wherever we sent the ghosts. Or nowhere. But I knew what would happen. Going into the shadow world alive?

  “I’d be in there? With them? For how long? Until they killed me?”

  Michael took my hand. “Forever, maybe. There isn’t death there. It’s punishment. Pain. Endless. I would never ask it of you.”

  “You did, though.” My whole body had gone cold. There was no feeling left. Only bravery or cowardice. “You told me there would be sacrifice. The only way to win was sacrifice.”

  He threw his hands in the air, and lightning pounded above my head. “I thought Malcolm would die fightin
g The Master. You’d then kill him. Sacrifice. Not this.”

  If I thought punching him would help, I’d have done so. Instead, I quietly put my hands on my hips. “So you were willing to use Malcolm but not me?”

  “He would die. Wait for you. He’d be okay.”

  “Michael, you don’t even know if there is an afterlife. You told me yourself.” I was getting away from the matter at hand. “Send me back to where I was.”

  “No. Don’t do it, Kendall. I’d never ask this. I didn’t rescue you from death all those years ago for this. I swear I didn’t. It’s too late. You’ve lost. It was never fair to ask you to fight.”

  I shook my head. “Stay with me until you can’t. Okay? Stay with. Don’t leave me alone.”

  “I won’t.”

  He must have seen my resolve. I was back by the broken altar, shadows everywhere. I gave the kitchen one more look. If Malcolm came through the door, I wouldn’t do it. I’d wait with him. We’d be with the kids. We’d die together.

  Only they didn’t come, and my decision seemed obvious. I would be brave. I’d give them a chance. Abbi was a baby. She’d never remember me. That broke my heart, and I cried out and then forced the tears back. It was better she didn’t. It was less cruel than what would happen to Grayson, Dexter, and Molly.

  Gray would be angry. Maybe Dexter too. But they had Levi and Malcolm, for that matter. They’d never get over it. I didn’t know what would happen to their lives because of this. But they’d have a life. Molly would think of me on what should be happy days, and my memory would make her sad. Birthdays. Weddings. Births.

  My hands shook. She would have those days.

  Malcolm … he’d never forgive me. He wouldn’t ever understand. I knew he would be there for Abbi. He’d lost his mother, and his father had been an asshole who’d beaten him. Abbi would never know that pain. She’d only have him and the way that he loved her. Maybe he’d even overprotect her into getting a tattoo when she was fifteen.

  Everyone’s life would move on until I was only a memory.

  Michael shook his head, without words telling me that I didn’t have to do it. He hadn’t asked it.

  I had no idea what would happen. There would be horrible pain.

  That’s why they called it a sacrifice.

  I didn’t go joyfully. I didn’t go without fear. I was terrified. A tear slid down Michael’s cheek. In that moment, he seemed so human.

  I jumped.

  ***

  Malcolm

  I stormed into the kitchen and came up short. My heart had stopped beating an hour earlier when I couldn’t get out of the taco place without dealing with the demons. Finding Annika, my daughter, and the kids on the lawn had done nothing to cool the terror forming in my gut.

  Where was Kendall? I could always find her. But I couldn’t feel it … the unexplainable sense of simply knowing where she was in the world. I’d always had it. When she couldn’t remember me, it had been a little harder. Our connection fueled the ability. And now it was just fucking gone.

  “Kendall?” I called out, refusing to consider the possibility of why I couldn’t find her. Life didn’t move without her. It never had. Even when I’d been ten years old, alone save for a foster family that was dangerously close to finally following through on the sexual advances they’d kept making, the only happiness in the world arrived when she did.

  She’d always been mine.

  She always would be.

  The kitchen was a giant mess. Everything was either broken or thrown over. Annika sobbed through her explanation that holes had opened up all over the place. The shadows had busted in from below us. When I’d left them in the driveway, Victoria had been holding Annika while they cried together. There was plenty of blame to go around for how this had happened. I’d take names later.

  As if on cue because I’d thought of her, the witch, Kendall’s best friend Victoria arrived next to me. This was her house. She’d be justified in being horrified, but I only saw resignation and pain on her face. Her son was safe. So was my daughter. And the kids I sometimes thought of as mine, even though they weren’t. Grayson wanted to take on the whole universe. I understood the sentiment. I’d loved his mother since I was his age.

  “I can’t feel her, Malcolm.”

  I hadn’t been aware that Victoria could do that up until that point. It didn’t surprise me. For all that she didn’t do—or wouldn’t—Victoria was probably the most powerful being in our group. Until my daughter came of age. I pushed away the thought. Abigail wasn’t going to have to fight this war.

  I’d win it before then.

  “I can’t either.”

  She rubbed her eyes, pulling in her emotions. “That has to mean one thing.”

  No. It didn’t, and even if it did, death was never the end of Kendall. I’d get her back. Without a word, I turned outside and stormed to the backyard. I’d placed the phoenix in the dirt. I knew where to dig. I’d had a shovel at the time, but my hands would do in this event. I’m not sure how much time passed while I brought the phoenix back to the surface. I tended to lose track of time when things got out of hand.

  What was time anyway? I’d only lived in the borrowed version of it.

  With the fucking bird, or whatever it was, in my hand, I stormed back into the house, stopped only by Grayson who blocked the doorway.

  “Malcolm?” He gulped in his breath. “Where is my mom?”

  I put my hand on his head and rubbed his hair gently. This was a special kind of hell for him. “I’m working on that. When I know, you’ll know.”

  “Grayson,” Levi called out his name. “Come here, son. Let’s let them do what they do. That’s the best way to help Mom now.”

  Kendall’s oldest son pointed into the house. “That’s what I do, too, Dad. That’s who I am.”

  Levi raised his eyebrows and kept his voice steady. “Not yet.”

  Damn, I wish I’d had a dad like Grayson did. Mine would have knocked me into next year for speaking like that. “Let your dad take care of you right now. Let me take care of your mom.”

  He nodded at me, and with what I could best describe as Charlie Brown, slumped-over shoulders, he walked away toward his father. I appreciated that he wanted to be a man. Some day we would all have to let him be one. But not today.

  I stormed into the kitchen. Victoria had opened a bottle of tequila. Although she’d poured some into a glass she’d managed to find, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started drinking it directly from the bottle.

  I wouldn’t have blamed her.

  I held the phoenix up in the air. I’d used it once to save Kendall when she was shot. Otherwise, I’d had little to no interaction with Michael or the Others since I’d come back to life. They preferred to talk to Kendall. She might not know why that was, but I always had. What made matters worse, he knew I did.

  “Michael. You can show up, or I can summon you. Make this easier for once in your life.”

  Like he’d been waiting, Michael appeared in the kitchen. A clunk told me that Victoria had set down her tequila. The years that the witch and I had spent missing Kendall while she didn’t remember us had put us very in tune with one another. Obsessing over Kendall was about all we had in common.

  “Malcolm.” He looked … different. Sad, defeated. I could actually feel my blood pressure rise. This wasn’t good news.

  “Well?” I wasn’t going to play games with him. He knew what I wanted to know. Michael wasn’t all-seeing. He hadn’t been able to find me for Kendall when I’d been missing. Or he hadn’t wanted to. I didn’t know which, and now wasn’t when I was going to pursue that line of questioning.

  “The floor opened up. It was the Master. Kendall figured out how to plug the hole.”

  My girl once told me that I could get stiller than anyone else she knew. What she didn’t understand, because I never explained it, was that it wasn’t so much that I stopped moving. It was that if I let myself give even an inch, even the smallest twitc
h of my toe, I would explode into so many pieces I’d never be put back together again.

  I was the kid who couldn’t stop the demons from infesting me, who couldn’t keep the ghosts away. I lived for control.

  “Which was how?” If I had to drag this out of him piece by piece, that was what I would do.

  “She jumped in. You guys have enough of my energy in you that it reacted badly to the shadow dimension. Closed the hole. It’ll be hundreds upon hundreds of years before they’ll recover enough to try it again.”

  The image of her doing such a completely foolish thing filled my inner mind, and I shoved it away. I was sweating. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this rattled. Even the shooting hadn’t thrown me like this. I’d known what to do.

  “We have a new baby, and she killed herself jumping into a hole.” I almost couldn’t believe the words as I spoke them.

  “That’s exactly why she did it.” Victoria’s words choked in her throat. “For you. For her children. For us. Kendall knew what would happen if she didn’t. Abigail has you. Grayson, Dex, and Molly have Levi. She gave you all a gift.”

  I bent over. Breathing hurt. “Bring her back, Michael.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  If he’d been physically in the room with me, I’d have decked him. “The hell you can’t.” A million words rushed my mind. Some in English, some in Arabic. None of them could express how truly ready I was to kill right then. “I know what you’re doing. You have her up there where you are. You want to keep her. You’ve always been in love with her. Guess what? She’s never going to feel that way about you. You’re not even human. Aren’t there any of your own women around anywhere?”

  He blinked rapidly. “She’s not with me, Malcolm. If she was dead, I might be able to help. She’s out of DNA in the phoenix, but I’d gladly give her more and end myself. As you say … I’ve always been fond of Kendall. But she didn’t die in the explosion. She’s not dead. She’s alive. She’s just there.”

  Victoria placed a steadying hand on my arm, but nothing stopped the rage pouring out of me. I screamed to the heavens, if there was such a thing. I hollered to hell, to every dimension who could ever hear me. When I was done, I panted so hard I thought my heart might explode.