Текст книги "Boundless"

Автор книги: Cynthia Hand

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

The reality of what’s happened breaks over me like a tidal wave. We’ve waited too long, too afraid to take action. We’ve let this happen. We’ve let them kill her.

“Let’s go,” Asael says.

They move swiftly toward the door, giving Christian only seconds to drag me down the stairs before we’re seen. There’s not enough time to make it across the lobby and out into the street. He pulls me inside the auditorium, moving us blindly into the dark.

For a few minutes I stand in the blackness, quaking, my eyes going in and out of focus, my stomach cramping, yet at the same time I feel strangely disconnected from my body, like I’m seeing myself from a distance. From a vision, maybe. My vision.

Anna is dead. Angela is being taken to hell. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

The group comes down the stairs, Phen first, from the little I can see through the two-inch slit in the velvet curtains, then Angela being flanked by two identically dressed dark-haired girls. I don’t see their faces, but something about them strikes me as young, about my own age, maybe even younger. Angela’s face as she passes is shocked; tears gleam on her cheeks. She keeps her eyes down. Then a guy I’ve never seen before saunters by—the one called Desmond, I assume—and finally a man in a black suit who looks enough like Samjeeza that from a distance I doubt I could tell them apart. He raises a hand, and everybody stops in the middle of the lobby.

“You two,” he says. “I want you to stay and clean up.”

“Clean up?” repeats one of the girls in almost a whine. “But Father—”

“Burn the place,” he says.

“But how are we supposed to get back?” asks the other.

“Just take care of it,” he says irritably.

Desmond snickers, and one of the girls hits him hard in the chest. He lifts his fist to retaliate, but Asael stops him, laying a hand on his shoulder in a paternal manner, then turns to Angela and grabs her gently at the back of the neck. He smiles. Leans close to her ear. Whispers, “This, my child, is where you must abandon all hope.”

They vanish.

The first girl makes a disgusted sound, kicks a booted foot against one of the brass poles that holds up a line of velvet rope. It topples to the floor with a resounding crash. “Why do we always get the crap jobs?”

I expect Phen to disappear too, now that his dirty work is done, but he stays. He comes to the theater entrance and pulls back the curtain, forcing Christian and me to slink even farther into the belly of the auditorium, deeper in shadows, crouching among the seats.

“All the world’s a stage,” Phen says absently, like he’s talking to himself. “And all the men and women merely players.”

“What are you talking about?” one of the girls asks him. Their voices are exactly the same, like they’re twins or something, although one of them is wearing a bunch of glinting silver bracelets that occasionally jangle together when she moves. From the sound of it they’re breaking open the cash register at the refreshments counter and scooping out the change.

“I think Father’s done with you,” she says to Phen. “You can go back to your little hidey-hole in Rome. Unless you’d give us a ride home? Would you? That would be so sweet of you.”

“All the world’s a stage,” he murmurs, seeming not to hear her. “A stage.”

He turns, letting the curtain drop, and we’re plunged back into utter darkness.

“Oh, come on,” the girl purrs, “we’ll make it worth your while.”

No answer. He’s gone.

“Jerk,” Evil Twin One mutters. “Where’s the next train station? Like five hundred miles from here, I bet. Dumb hick town.”

“You have to admit, though, Phen’s sexy,” teases Evil Twin Two. “I wouldn’t have minded doing him a favor.”

“Just because he’s in a hot body doesn’t mean he’s not an old man inside,” Evil Twin One retorts.

“That’s right; I forgot,” says Evil Twin Two, obviously chewing on something, probably candy from under the counter. “You only go for younger guys.”

“Shut up. Come on, let’s get this over with,” Evil Twin One says.

It’s quiet for a minute. My heart drums in my ears, hard and fast. Then I catch the first whiff of smoke in the air.

This is it.

I know how this is going to happen. I’ve seen it too many times to count. But even so, in the real-life moment, knowing all that I do, I hold on to the hope that they’ll just leave now. I hear them jangling toward the door, and I think, They’ll leave this time, and then we can get out of this black hole that’s got us. I’ll run upstairs, and Anna will still be alive, and I’ll heal her. We’ll find Web. Everything will be okay, somehow.

But then, as always happens, there’s the high-pitched cry, muffled and frightened. And I remember.

Web’s in here with us. Somewhere in this darkness.

Behind me I feel Christian tense like a coiled spring.

“What’s that?” one of the twins says. “Shh. Be quiet.”

As if on cue, the crying abruptly stops. The silence in its wake is deafening. I hold my breath.

Then the curtains part, sending a beam of light down the middle of the auditorium.

“Something’s in there. Get the light.” They scuffle along the wall.

“I can’t find the stupid switch.”

The first one laughs. “Watch this.”

The fireball arcs over my head and strikes the back edge of the left wall, which ignites instantly. I’m blinded by the light.

Christian doesn’t wait for them to see us. “Get down!” he yells, his glory sword like a flare in his hand. I dive for the aisle, which is awkward since it’s slanted. I bang my chin hard and then lie flat as Christian leaps over me, bringing his blade down hard on an evil twin’s black dagger. The sorrow blade crackles and splits, but the girl has another one in her hand before the first has fully disintegrated. She lunges down at him, swiping at his legs, but he moves aside. The other girl hisses and tries to move in on his flank.

“Who are you?” She darts in, and he easily deflects her blow, shatters her dagger.

“Concerned. Citizen,” he gets out between lunges.

They haven’t even seen me.

I scramble backward until my back hits a chair. I watch Christian dodge another strike from the second twin, moving faster than I’ve ever seen him move. Suddenly he veers sideways into the first twin and turns and hurls her into the second one. They stagger but recover quickly, advancing. One hops over a row of seats, then another, attempting to get behind him, but he retreats, keeping them in front of him. They remind me of snakes, I think dazedly, their movements fluid, purposeful, synchronized.

The fire’s spread to the heavy curtains at the edge of the stage now, filling the room with thick black smoke that boils in the rafters overhead. The baby starts to cry again, louder this time, angrier. The twins turn toward the sound.

Christian pivots to stand between them and the direction the cry is coming from. He’s amazing with the sword, whirling and cutting, keeping them at bay almost like a dance, so much more than I ever saw in our training together. There’s a fierceness in him that’s breathtaking to behold. But he’s tiring. I can see that, too.

I need to get up, I think. I need to draw my own sword, and help him.

I get my legs under me and shakily rise to my feet.

No, get back, Christian says in my mind. I’ll hold them off. Find the baby.

Web. My shell-shocked brain struggles to focus. I need to get Web.

I stumble up onto the stage and beyond it, backstage into one of the tiny dressing rooms on the side. There’s fabric everywhere, rolls of it lying around, costumes. I paw through them but don’t hit anything solid like a baby. I try to listen for the crying, but it’s stopped again.

“Web!” I call, even though he obviously can’t answer me. “Web, where are you?”

Over to the other side of the stage I go, to another dressing room, but it’s empty. The fire is on this side, and I can literally feel its heat growing. There’s a snapping sound above me, and one of the lenses from a stage light crashes to the floor, making me scream. It’s dark back here, too freaking dark to see anything.

“Cry, Web, cry,” I call. I hear Christian shout out in pain from somewhere above me, near the door to the lobby. I have to do something.

I stagger into the middle of the stage. I don’t see the bright arc of Christian’s sword or the shadows of the twins anymore. The lobby is completely engulfed in flames. There’s not much time left before I won’t be able to breathe or see or fight my way out of here.

But I can’t leave here without Web.

And then I remember the trapdoor. Angela showed it to us once, when we were bored during Angel Club. It’s a space under the stage only big enough for a person to fit, meant for moments in a play when the character should magically disappear.

trp dr

Angela was trying to tell me where he was.

I dash over to the spot and start tearing at the floorboards, then reach deep down into the dark beneath, coughing on account of the growing smoke, and my fingers touch something soft and warm and alive.

I pull out a bundle wrapped in a blanket.

Web.

I don’t take time to get reacquainted. I snug his body into my shoulder and turn and head straight for the back door, which lets out into the alley behind the building.

Christian, I think. I have him. I’m getting out.

But before I make it three steps, I find my path blocked by the twins.

I take a stumbling step back.

They’re my brother’s girlfriend. At least, one of them is.

“Lucy,” I say, blinking at them in confusion.

“Clara Gardner,” says the one with the jangling bracelets, her dark eyes widening in astonishment. “Oh my God.” She smiles. “What a coincidence, me stumbling upon you here, of all places. Clara, I’d like to introduce you to my sister, Olivia,” she says, like we’ve bumped into each other at the country club.

She killed Anna, I think. That girl just killed my friend’s mother.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” says Olivia, although she’s clearly not charmed. “Give us the baby,” she says. “It’s over.”

I glance over my shoulder, back at the auditorium. Where is Christian?

“Oh, we took care of your friend, although he did put up a pretty good fight,” Lucy says offhandedly. “Now hand us the baby. If you give it to us right now, I promise it’ll be quick when I kill you.”

My throat closes in despair at the idea that Christian is lying in the dark below us somewhere, dead or dying, his soul laid bare. I clutch Web to my chest. He’s being so quiet—too quiet, I think—but I can’t worry about that at the moment.

“Give me the baby,” Lucy says.

I shake my head.

She sighs like I am really wrecking her day. “I’m going to enjoy gutting you.” The black dagger appears in her hand. I sense a kind of humming noise from it, a vibration that resonates all through me. She steps closer to me. “I just adore your brother, you know.” She laughs. “He’s the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. So attentive. So sexy. It’s going to be terrible when he finds out his sister died. So tragically too—a fire. He’s going to need so much TLC to get him through it.”

She’s trying to goad me, I realize dully, but nothing in me rises to fight her. I don’t have long now. Out of the corner of my eye I see Olivia start to move in on me from the side. They’re backing me to the edge of the stage. Even if I could fight them, I’d never be able to keep them both at bay. Not with Web in my arms.

They’re closing in for the kill.

I need to summon glory, I think. I don’t know if it will keep them back the way it will for Black Wings, but I need to try. It’s my only shot.

I close my eyes.

I try to empty myself.

Focus.

Every other time I’ve asked it, truly asked it, the light has come to me—that day in the forest with my mother, when I fought Samjeeza; the night of the car accident after prom; any time I’ve truly needed it, it’s been there like it was waiting for the moment to literally shine. But there’s no glory anywhere inside me right now, or if there is, I can’t feel it. I can’t access it.

All I feel is dark. Because I’m going to lose this battle. Christian’s seen it.

I am going to die.

No, comes Christian’s voice in my mind. No, you aren’t.

Tears spring to my eyes. You’re not dead, I say stupidly.

I need you to do what I tell you, exactly when I tell you to. Okay?

Okay.

I hear the sound of sirens in the distance.

“Give. Us. The baby.” Olivia is close enough now that she could easily stab me. She lifts the dagger.

“Go. To. Hell,” I say between clenched teeth. Maybe there is some fire left in me, after all.

Lift Web up over your head! Now! Christian shouts in my mind, and I don’t think, I just do as he asks, I lift the baby, and Christian leaps up from the orchestra pit onto the stage, and his glory sword is a blinding spray of light as it passes through me from shoulder to hip. I can feel it slicing through my clothes, but when it touches my skin, there’s only warmth.

“No!” someone calls out.

Dazed, I lower Web back to my shoulder, and that’s when I see Lucy—the one with the bracelets—standing a few feet away, her face a mask of rage and disbelief, screaming in this ragged, animal-like agony.

And Olivia falls at my feet, dead.

Cut almost in half by Christian’s glory sword.

“I will kill you!” Lucy screams, staring at me with bulging, grief-filled eyes, the black dagger clutched in her fist.

But Christian is with me now, beside me, sword in hand, and the sirens are getting closer. Any minute and this place will be crawling with firefighters.

Lucy glances toward the exit. “I swear I will kill you, Clara Gardner.” A tear makes its way down her face, dangling on her chin for a few seconds before it drops. “And I’ll make sure you suffer first,” she says, then turns and runs up the aisle of the theater, bursting through the smoke and flame and out onto the street.

I can hear her sobbing as she runs.

I don’t look at Olivia. I can’t. I turn away, bile rising in my throat as I realize that I’m covered in her blood, my shirt soaked with it, my shoulders and arms splattered.

I used to think of this place as being so safe, I think. A place for all of us to talk and be ourselves. A magic place.

Now it’s burning down around us. It’s gone.

Angela is gone.

Slowly I become aware of Christian standing in front of me, panting, pressing his shirt to his ribs.

“Are you okay?” he asks, squeezing my shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” I answer to both questions, then see that he’s bleeding. “You’re cut.”

“I’ll survive,” he says. At the same moment, we hear shouted voices in the lobby. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

We hurry toward the back exit and into the alley behind the theater. Cool night air hits my skin, my lungs, and I can breathe again.

“We have to fly,” Christian says. He unfolds his wings, the black speckles standing out on his white feathers like ink spilled on paper in the dark.

My heart is so heavy with dread and shock, with sadness for Anna, with fear for Angela, with Olivia’s death, that I know flight isn’t possible. I shake my head at Christian. “I can’t.”

He looks down at the ground for a minute, thinking, then nods solemnly and retracts his wings. “Okay. We’ll circle around and get my truck. It’s a better plan, anyway. All right?”

I nod.

“You’ve got him?” Christian asks.

I gaze down into Web’s round little face. He looks up at me with wide amber eyes. Angela’s eyes. He coughs. I pull him tighter to me.

“I’ve got him,” I say, and then we’re running, running, through the smoky streets of Jackson.

Christian’s hand trembles as he puts the keys in the ignition. Then his jaw tightens and the truck rumbles to life and we peel away from the curb. Neither of us says anything for a while, the only sound the gunning of the engine. I want to tell him that he’s driving too fast, that the last thing we need is to get pulled over, what with us all bloody and a baby in the front seat, but I don’t have the heart. He’s doing the best he can.

“Where are we going?” I ask as he turns onto the road that will lead us out of town.

“I don’t know,” he says. “The girl, the one who I didn’t—” He stops talking for a minute and takes a shallow breath, like he’s trying not to puke. “She’ll probably call for reinforcements. I don’t know how long it will take her to get to hell and back.”

“Lucy,” I murmur.

He glances over at me sharply. “How do you know her name?”

“She’s Jeffrey’s girlfriend.”

If it’s possible for his face to go any stonier, it does. “And she knows who you are? She knows your name?”

“Yes.”

“Then we can’t go home,” he says, as if that settles it.

I fight down a wave of panic. “Why? It’s hallowed ground; your place and mine both are. It’d be safe there.”

He shakes his head. “The hallowed-ground thing works on Black Wings, not Triplare.” He takes a deep breath. “We have to go,” he says slowly, deliberately, because he knows this is going to upset me. “They’ll be hunting you. They’ll be after the baby, too. We have to get far away from here.”

“But Angela—”

“Angela would want us to keep Web safe,” he says.

I know he’s right, but there’s a finality I feel in this moment, like if we go now, if I leave this place, we’ll never come back. We’ll always be running. We’ll always be scared.

“Clara, please,” he says softly. We’ll figure something out. But right now I need you to trust me. I need you safe.

I swallow, hard, and nod. Christian lowers his head for a second, relieved, then reaches under his seat and pulls out a faded road atlas. He opens it to a map of the United States and lays it across the dashboard.

“Close your eyes and put your finger down on a spot,” he says. “And that’s where we’ll go.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and touch my finger to the page.

I wonder if I will ever see Tucker again.

We drive through the night. In the morning we pull over at a rest stop to clean up and then Christian goes into Walmart for some new clothes, a car seat, and baby supplies. He surprises me by unlocking the silver box in the bed of his truck to reveal an escape kit straight out of an action movie: a bunch of documents, birth certificates, fake driver’s licenses, something that looks like insurance paperwork, and the biggest pile of cash I’ve ever seen.

“My uncle,” he says by way of explanation. “He could see into the future—not just his own, sometimes, but for others. He always said someday I’d have to run.”

His uncle was a bit extreme. But then, here we are. Running.

I try to fix Web a bottle of formula, but he won’t drink it. He takes one good look at me now that it’s light and starts crying. Hard. Nothing I do seems to help. I am not his mother. Where is my mother? I can practically feel him wondering. My grandmother? What have you done with them?

“You should try to get some rest,” Christian says after we pull back out onto the highway and Web, lulled by the vibrations of the road, finally goes back to sleep.

There’s no possibility of that. Whenever I close my eyes, I’m back in that stairwell listening to somebody kill my friend’s mother. I’m in the dark room waiting to be killed myself. I’m watching someone die right in front of me. Instead I reach into my pocket and take out my cell and call Billy for like the tenth time since we fled Jackson.

She doesn’t answer, which makes me all kinds of paranoid that somehow Lucy has gotten back to hell by now and rallied some evil army of the undead and has already been to my house looking for me, possibly stumbling over an unsuspecting Billy. I keep imagining it like a scene out of a horror film, where Lucy is standing in front of the answering machine, laughing wickedly as she hears my voice trying to warn Billy.

“Hi, Billy, this is Clara,” I say into the phone, my voice cracking on my own name. “Call me. It’s important.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Christian says after I hang up. “Billy can take care of herself.”

I think about the blood. The sound of Olivia’s body hitting the stage.

“It’s okay, Clara,” Christian murmurs. “We’re safe.”

I turn to look out the window. We’re passing a ridge full of wind turbines: tall white windmills, their propellers whirling round and round, cutting the air. The clouds leave shadows as they move between the sun and the earth, like dark creatures roaming the land.

Will we ever be safe again? I wonder.

Christian takes one hand off the wheel and reaches for mine. He rubs his thumb across my knuckles, and it’s supposed to comfort me the way it always does. It’s supposed to fill me with his strength.

But all I feel is weak.