Changeling (37 page)

And then death ripped Jimmy away in its unbeatable grasp and tore their hearts to shreds.

Aaron cried out, his wail beating back all other sounds. He reached for his baby brother. Took him into his arms. He tried to keep hold, but Jimmy was already gone. Noah fell away from the surface, shock setting in so hard and fast I almost couldn’t retake control. His emotions and thoughts were so distant, so protected, I couldn’t be certain he was still conscious.

Tears streamed down my cheeks, bitter and hot and anchoring me to the present. Air swirled around us. No, not air. Kinetic energy. The short hairs on my arms tingled. I tackled Aaron to the ground. The scorching heat of the fireball zoomed over us, fluttering my hair. It smashed into the base of the support pillar. The iron structure groaned.

Hatred and grief fueled the ball of kinetic energy I blindly threw behind me, toward the wreckage. Metal squealed and banged. Wood clattered. Debris became shrapnel.

“Get Jimmy out of here now,” I said into Aaron’s ear.

Without waiting for a reply, I scrambled to my feet and plunged into the open arena.

Queen stood in
the middle of the cleared area, hands by her sides, breathing hard. Blood coated her throat and her right arm. A sliver of metal stuck out of her left calf. Her eyes blazed with an unnatural—and quite literal—fire. The air around her shimmered like a heat mirage.

To her left, Deuce sat propped up against a bit of wreckage. Two shards of wood protruded from her chest. Blood pooled on the ground around her. Her eyes were closed, her chest still. No, there it was—a faint rise and fall.

I paced forward, circling around until only ten feet separated me from Queen. The heated air rippled.

“How’s your sister?” I deadpanned.

Her eyes narrowed. “How’s his brother?”

Noah jerked, growing more aware of what I was doing.

“You’re very hard to kill, Dahlia,” she said. “Harder than I would have expected from an untrained Recombinant.”

“See, Queen? That’s why you haven’t won. You can’t see past your own damned pride.”

“Maybe, but I’m not as shortsighted as you think.”

Her left hand twitched. The north corner of the building erupted with fire and flame, throwing rubble and debris high into the air like a volcano. Three more in quick succession lit up the other corners of the burned-out warehouse. The ground thundered with the sheer force of the detonations.
Smoke thickened the air and drifted high, blotting out the waning sunlight.

There was little left to burn, but Queen hadn’t left it to chance. Fire raced along the standing walls of the warehouse, so straight and fast she must have left an accelerant. The familiar odor of gasoline—something I should have smelled sooner—rose on the condensing smoke. Fire surrounded us in a fearsome circle.

“Come on, Blondie,” Queen said. “Give me your best shot.”

Glad to oblige,
Noah said.

Together we unleashed a cloud of telekinetic energy at her. She countered by raising a wall of fire and pushing. The two opposing forces collided in a blinding glare of light. The feedback hit like a kidney punch and knocked me to my knees. Instantly, fire surrounded me, licking and leaping.

I invited the fire inside. It swirled around us, red and orange and yellow, but did not burn. I took its heat, absorbed its energy. Drew it in, deeper, deeper, coiling hot and tight as low as it could go, making room for the continuing assault.

An assault that grew steadily stronger. Fiercer. I couldn’t counter the attack. Too much came at me at once. I could only absorb, and even that grew painful. Too much.

Share with me, Dahlia. Give me some control.

No, the fire will hurt you.

Give me.

Damn him, he wrestled for it. My mind and body were consumed with Queen’s onslaught of pure fire, propelled by her rage. Control slipped to Noah. Pain prickled, barely there at first, but growing. Intensifying.

Step by step, we moved forward. Taking the fire to Queen. The inferno blazed around us, controlled and contained by Noah’s power. Queen screamed. Flames leapt. I reached deep down and pulled power from its storage place. Gave the power to Noah. He took it. Transformed it. Sent it straight back to Queen.

It slammed into her like a carving knife, cleaving skin from muscle. Muscle from bone. Bone from marrow. Endless shrieks blended into the tornado of power and flame and flesh. Pain erupted in my very soul, spreading outward. Touching limbs I no longer possessed, searing flesh I did not wear. It consumed me. Held me in its terrible embrace.

The fire died away; the agony remained. I fled from it, shrinking down as far as I could go. Exhausted. Finished.

Queen was dead, destroyed by her own power. Noah could get the others to safety. He would explain.

Dahlia? Where are you going?

I need to rest, Noah. I’m done.

No! Keep talking to me. Stay here until we can get to Simon.

I’ll always be here.

Dahlia? Dahlia!

I held on to the sound of his voice as long as I could, and then let go of that last, delicate thread. I fell. Down, deep down into emptiness.

And peace.

Thirty

New Game

A
lways with hints of consciousness came agonizing pain. It fogged over everything, thick and murky, harsh and scalding. I fought against it, struggled to pass through it and failed. Voices called to me in words that made no sense—sometimes urgent and fearful, sometimes calm and reassuring. I tried connecting the voices to names without success. Coherent thoughts escaped me. It seemed enough that I wasn’t alone.

Time and again, I lost the battle to wake and slipped back into darkness. Pinpricks of light and those distant voices were my only company. They existed together in a haze of passing time. Immeasurable and never-ending time.

Through it all, I was aware of a constant presence. He stayed close, his voice warm and friendly, even when he wasn’t talking to me.

After a while, memories surfaced with the pain. Images of faces, both loved and hated. Past and present, alive and dead. My mom, smiling through her agony as cancer ate her from the inside out. Always believing in me, even when I did
not. Had she known my secret? Kept my past from me? Did it matter?

Queen, as plain and half-formed as her sister, radiating rage as she died. Disintegrated by her own flames. Destroyed by hatred and blind allegiance to an unknown master. Jimmy Scott, so gentle and undeserving of death, and the rage I’d felt as he was ripped away. Had that been my rage?

Teresa and Marco and Renee . . .

A spike of pain shot through my head. Someone was calling me again, urging me out of the dark. I retreated deeper, away from him.

Teresa. Did they find her?

If I stayed in the dark, I’d never know. I had to know. Agony consumed me as I clawed upward, my entire existence a single, constant throb.

Marco. Did he survive regaining his own body?

I shoved hard against the overwhelming blackness, numb to the pain. Close by, someone sweet and loving caressed my soul. We seemed to pass each other, like wisps of clouds in a bright, blue sky. He didn’t speak; he didn’t have to.

Renee. Burned and disfigured, her stunning beauty marred by vengeance.

Through the thick haze and daggers of pain, I surfaced. Felt flesh and bone, both foreign and familiar. Heard a voice, steady and pattering, close to my ear. I latched onto the sound. Listened for words I knew. Something about the woods. A staccato rhythm. Poetry?

Ethan. I knew his voice.

He stopped speaking. I lost my lifeline and nearly tumbled
back into the abyss. Warmth latched onto my hand and hauled me forward. I concentrated. My fingers twitched around his. No, not really my fingers, were they?

“Dahlia? Christ, there you are. Guys!”

I winced at the volume of his voice—too loud. Everything ached. My mouth was dry, full of cotton balls and sawdust. A warm hand caressed my forehead, while the other squeezed my hand tight. I tried to squeeze back.

“Come on, Dal, open your eyes,” Ethan said.

Obeying his request was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Eventually, my eyelids accommodated my wishes and peeled apart. Ethan hovered above me, his eyes wide and shiny. Dark smudges beneath both betrayed his fatigue. Something else was off, though—where were the scratches on his face?

I grunted, unable to make my vocal cords produce actual words. I had so many questions and needed to know so many things.

“We thought we’d lost you for good, Dal.”

Yeah, me, too.

I blinked at the obtrusive thought—not my own thought, but a rich voice deep inside. And I suddenly understood. “Noah,” I rasped.

Ethan winced. “You’re still inside him.” His voice broke, and his eyes became impossibly shinier. “Simon tried for weeks, but he couldn’t get you out. He thinks it’s because you were shot. Your, ah”—he swallowed hard—“body died when Noah absorbed you. He doesn’t think he can separate you without . . . killing you for good.”

Liquid heat spilled from the corners of my eyes, and I
couldn’t distinguish my emotions from those rising up below me. My own shock and grief at knowing I’d never be the same person I’d once been was caught in the whirlwind of Noah’s shock and grief from having lost both a brother, two sisters, and a woman he’d cared about to the point of risking his family. Ethan’s shock and grief spilled out of his expressive face like a tidal wave.

I’d never be free of Noah’s body. Letting me go meant . . . well, I didn’t know what it meant. Noah said part of the other person was absorbed into his consciousness, even though the body—skin—was discarded. My stomach gurgled and flipped at the image of my skin crumpled on the ground like an old sheet.

Never happen, Dal.
Noah’s words were fierce, though distant. He was giving me space, letting me be with my friends now that I’d found my way to the surface. Could we possibly exist like this?

“Teresa?” I asked, redirecting to more pleasant things. I needed to get the information before I exhausted myself and lost my tenuous hold on this body.

“Right here, kiddo,” she said from behind Ethan. One person’s voice had never sounded so sweet.

He let go of my hand and stepped back. Teresa moved in and perched on the edge of the bed (I realized then that I was in the infirmary at Hill House), her arm in a sling and a wide, sad smile on her face. She looked healthy, if tired—a fatigue that was all my fault.

“You’re okay,” I said.

“Yeah.” She brushed a lock of hair off my forehead.
“Queen stuffed me in the back of a van and left me there high on morphine. I wish I could have done something to help.”

“You lived. Almost died because of me.”

“No, Dal, I almost died because of the Overseer that Queen and Deuce worked for.”

She knew about the Overseer, which meant she knew what I was. I wasn’t one of them, and never had been.

Something in my expression must have alarmed her, because she gave my hand a squeeze. “Dr. Kinsey is okay. He and Aaron have been staying here at the house while . . . for now. Marco, too. He started breathing on his own a day after he was released from Deuce. Physically, he’s almost one hundred percent.”

Aaron? It took me a moment to remember—King and Aaron were one person now, just as Ace/Noah were one. But Jimmy/Joker was dead.

I wanted to be happy for the good news, but so much of it was tempered with unspoken grief. Dr. Kinsey and Aaron were still fugitives from Weatherfield; they had nowhere to go. And what about me and Noah? His place was with his family, but where was my place now? Marco was alive and healing, but had he been changed by sharing a body with Deuce?

God, nothing made sense anymore.

My hold over consciousness was slipping. The slope I’d struggled up earlier was turning to pudding, making it impossible to stay up and alert. I’d have to let go soon. Just not yet. Someone was still unaccounted for. “Renee?”

Teresa’s chin trembled, and I thought she might burst
into tears. My heart slammed against my ribs. Oh God, no.

She didn’t die, Dal.

“She might be able to come home at the end of the week,” Teresa said, her voice husky, broken. “Some of the burns were pretty bad. Because of her ability, the doctors are hesitant to try skin grafts.”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture Renee with her long, straw-colored hair and bright smile, the way her energy filled a room, and her absolute confidence in her sex appeal. All I saw clearly was how she’d lain on that pallet in the conference room, unconscious and still in agonizing pain. More tears trailed down my cheeks. I’d failed all of my friends.

You didn’t fail them, Dahlia. They’re alive. You’re alive.

Jimmy died.

I felt Noah’s grief in a bitter flash of regret.
I was responsible for Jimmy, not you. We lost Jimmy, but we saved Aaron, so that’s something. I could have done a lot of things differently, better, but Ace never understood attraction or love. And Noah’s first battle with cancer started in the middle of eleventh grade, so he didn’t date. I didn’t understand my feelings for you, Dal, not until I saw Queen shoot you. I couldn’t just let you die in my arms like that.

He didn’t say it, but I felt his love. We’d certainly created the mother of all complications to our relationship, and I thought back to our only kiss. A warm flutter in my stomach came on the heels of the memory. It would have to do.

“Dal?” Teresa asked, thumb stroking the back of my hand. “Are you going away?”

“For a while.” I struggled to get my eyelids open and focus
on her. I was definitely going back to sleep. Whether or not “going away” included leaving Hill House with Noah’s family, I couldn’t say. The decision was far beyond my limited faculties.

“Simon wants to keep trying to separate you two,” she said softly. “He won’t give up. None of us will.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

I closed my eyes and drifted. Letting go was easy, and I slipped down, into darkness and warmth. Noah passed by me in another cloud-whisper as he rose to the surface, and I thought I felt our fingers brush. I wrapped myself in a cocoon of love and safety, content to rest for a while. It was finally over.