Earthbound

“She’s just a little human child,” a woman’s voice says from out of view. I spin my eyes over to her. She’s going to save me!

But what greets me is the small barrel of a flintlock pistol, nearly touching the skin on my forehead, held in a delicate, gloved hand.

“No one will miss her,” the woman finishes. My eyes widen and I look into her face. She looks kind, regal, almost beautiful.

But she shows no remorse or hesitation as she draws back the hammer of the gun, and my last moment is flooded with the earsplitting report of a shot as my head snaps backward, alight with pain.

And then my soul rips away again.

I gasp for breath, my lungs begging for air. I touch my forehead and find whole skin there. Perspiration mingles with splattering rain, but I am unharmed.

I’m alive.

It was only a memory.

I look up at Marie; there is no gun this time, but I see that same look, devoid of emotion.

“It’s such a shame,” she says evenly. “You and I, we were friends once, before you sided with the Curatoria. So many aeons ago and yet I still remember the ages we spent making a river, a canyon, whose great walls and beautiful landscape would be legendary, just because we could. You creating high mountains, me carving out those deep ravines. Give-and-take, balanced exactly the way the Earthmakers were intended to be. The two of us making something beautiful while our lovers quarreled and fought. I still have a tiny twinge of regret every time someone speaks of the Grand Canyon.”

I’m still trying to make sense of her words when a stinging slap flings my head to the side.

“That’s for leaving me behind,” she says softly.

Anger roils inside me, filling me with a rage that blots out any pain from the slap. My life, my parents, my love; she is responsible for everything I no longer have.

“You have taken everything from me,” I shriek, a flash of lightning accentuating my words.

“Yes, I suppose we have,” she says, utterly calm.

But even as I’m sure the rage is going to overwhelm me, something shifts inside and a black calm settles in my mind.

No more. Voices I don’t recognize echo in my head as a razor fury makes a pit in my stomach, white-hot anger at wrongs I can’t remember—and yet the pain, the agonizing loss, that I recall with perfect clarity. Not one. More. Damn. Thing.

I push my hands out in front of me, pour out my rage, and instantly I’m standing before a mountain: a dusty red behemoth of crags and sharp boulders that towers hundreds of feet above my head, the sheer face of a cliff an arm’s length away. The forest that was is nothing more than a destroyed memory, swept away by stone.

For an instant.

It blinks out of existence. Not the normal five-minute way—it’s forced out of existence, leaving Marie standing there, looking almost bored, surrounded by splintered trees as far as I can see in the murky dusk.

Marie the Destroyer.

But I’m not done. That was only a test.

Lava, steel, bullets. They come from every direction as the women in my head pick weapons from memories out past my reach. And I let them. I surrender my mind, allowing the Tavias of old to let loose every drop of anger and pain I’ve built up for millennia.

One voice, one memory fights to the surface.

The night I was in the water, when I was Rebecca—the face I saw above me, just past the icy surface.

It was her.

How many times has this face been my last sight?

My concentration wavers. She’s killed me before—she’s going to do it again.

No.

I won’t drown; I won’t die. Not this time.

Power surges within me, filling my body to bursting and creating a noise in my head so loud I’m sure I’ll be deaf if I survive this.

If.

I don’t even care.

More rage, more white-hot heat, more molten anguish pours from me. I can’t see anything as the fullness begins to ebb, leaving me completely bereft of energy. I teeter, not certain I can stand any longer. Rain falls in soft rivulets down my face, but it feels almost warm.

“Tavia, come on!”

Elizabeth’s voice, her hands, dragging me. I can’t see and stumble as I try to follow her, running blindly, steered only by Elizabeth’s hand clenched around my arm. The sound of a car door, a shove that sends me down onto a seat.

I blink and stars swim in front of my eyes. My head lolls to the side as Elizabeth drops into the seat beside me. Thank gods the car wasn’t crushed by my mountain. I’ve just made a hell of a lot of trouble as it is.

And I’m not even sure just what I did.

I look out at what’s left of the forest, and an enormous pile of rubble, silhouetted by the glow of molten rock, stares back. Every kind of matter I can imagine is in a smoldering heap where Marie was standing, barely visible through the trees.

It won’t last long; she’s too good. It’s already blinking away, bit by bit, as though I never made it at all. As nonexistent as the mountain that once was. People are running toward us. I recognize one as the guy who dragged Benson off. They’ve almost reached the car.

The engine roars and Elizabeth peels out backward, smacking a tree, the crunch of the bumper a macabre harmony with the squealing tires.

Dark shapes whirl around us and I feel the dull thud of flesh on metal at the back of Elizabeth’s car. I try not to think too hard about that as my throat convulses. But Elizabeth is already throwing the car into drive, lurching forward, gaining speed.

I don’t look back; I don’t want to see anything else. I already have the sight of Sammi and Mark’s decimated bodies to haunt my dreams.

And Benson’s betrayal.

I can’t even think of him without a vile sickness clutching at my stomach.

Desperate to distract myself, I click my seat belt just before Elizabeth almost dumps me into her lap turning a sharp corner.

“There’s no time to get to the plane—assuming the Reduciata haven’t taken control of it already,” Elizabeth shouts, forcing me to pay attention. “I’m going to drop you off at an alley two blocks south of the Greyhound station,” she continues, her eyes glued to the road. “Take this.”

My fingers wrap around the cell phone she proffers even as she spins the car around another bend. As soon as I’ve taken the phone, her burned hands are back on the wheel, and as we pass under a streetlight, the steering wheel glints wet.

Blood.

I remember her falling against the charred car—the scream she let out.

This drive must be killing her hands.

“Get on a bus—the next bus,” Elizabeth orders, her eyes still fixed on the road. “It doesn’t matter where it’s going. Just get on it no matter what it takes. Understand?”

“Yeah,” I say weakly, bracing my arms against the door for another squealing corner.

Another flash of light; her hands are red and seeping.

“Elizabeth, your hands—”

“Will heal,” she says through gritted teeth. “I’ll call you when it’s safe. I don’t know