Children of the Earth (20 page)

This time she expected the kick. She aimed the gun at the lock and steadied her hand, squeezing her finger on the trigger and letting her body absorb the power of the blast. There was the scrape of metal disintegrating and an acrid cloud of smoke, and then the door swung open.

Adrenaline took over as she shouldered the gun and pushed her way into the club, her family and community a solid mass at her back. So that was how it felt to shoot a gun and hit a target, to lead an army. It wasn’t pride, exactly—more like pride’s dark and brooding younger sister, a sense of accomplishment laced with uncertainty.

This was for Janie, she reminded herself.

She stepped across the threshold. The moment her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her heart sank. The Vein was deserted, lights off and chairs stacked neatly on tables.

The Children of the Earth were gone . . . and they had taken Janie with them.

24

JANIE STEPPED OUT OF THE
van and onto the mountaintop, the wind making the delicate fabric of her gown cling to her legs and billow out behind her, a sail in the sea of falling darkness. The landscape around her was stunted, ravaged. Little vegetation could grow at this altitude, only small, twisted evergreens and gnarly-rooted scrub.

It was almost time.

She was a rock in the stream of Children of the Earth flowing around her, dredging objects she didn’t recognize from Aura’s van. She looked out across the jagged peaks of the Savage Mountain Range and down the length of the valley to the few sad, stuttering lights that were Carbon County. From the faraway mountaintop the town that had been her world looked insignificant, a postseason string of Christmas lights coiled and forgotten in someone’s garage.

Abilene and Freya swept across the ground, digging their heels into the ashen soil to carve the sacred circle, a circle that would hold them all, with Janie in the middle, the newest initiate, the chosen one.

She’d prepared for this ritual, meditating with Luna and Ciaran, fasting until her body felt as clean and light as the stem of a feather. That morning her Earth Sisters had bathed her in rose water and rubbed her down with spicy, pungent oil, kneading it into her flesh until her muscles sang with pleasure and her skin gleamed. They danced and chanted around her, led by Abilene’s throaty, bluesy alto. They braided her hair with wildflowers and painted her hands with henna designs so tiny and elaborate it looked like the brushes had been made for dolls.

“Are you ready?” Ciaran’s voice was like the kiss of hot bathwater on her winter-chilled skin.

“Yes.” She was more than ready. She wanted to feel the earth move through her feet and stardust settle in her hair the way Luna had described. She was ready to become one of them, one of the Children of the Earth.

It was almost time.

He stood before her and took her hands. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

Warmth coursed through her at his touch, but when she looked in his eyes, she saw concern. He was always thinking of her, always putting her first. She knew that the ritual would be powerful, and that afterward, nothing would be the same. She knew it was a decision that, once made, she could never unmake. She knew that it meant renouncing her friends and family, the life she’d always known and the world she’d always been a part of, forever.

She rose on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. “I want to do this.” Her breath made mist in the chilly mountain air. “I want to be with you. With all of you.”

Ciaran’s eyes darkened. “But,” he began. His grip on her hands tightened, and he leaned in closer to her, his voice low and urgent. “Janie, there’s something I need to tell you—”

“It’s almost time.” Luna materialized at Ciaran’s elbow, and his lips clamped shut, his eyes glazing over in her presence. Luna had piled her hair into a towering crown held in place with massive steel clips, and she wore a halter dress of red and gold Indian brocade that ended at the tops of her thighs. Bronze gauntlets circled her wrists, held in place by rings around her middle fingers.

She placed her hand on their clasped palms, gentle but firm. The edge of her gauntlet was sharp and cold against Janie’s skin, and she felt a flicker of unease somewhere beneath the layers of calm that had calcified inside her during her days with the Children of the Earth. Something wasn’t right in Ciaran’s tone of voice, the dark cast of his eyes, and the sudden, cold kiss of metal on her skin.

“Janie,” Luna said, her gaze holding and penetrating her, the softness of her name on Luna’s tongue snuffing out her whisper of unease like a candle, leaving only the memory of smoke. Ciaran’s hands dropped limply to his side, and he drifted away, joining the bustling swarm of his Earth Brothers and Sisters. He left Janie and Luna alone, two women who would soon be sisters.

“Janie,” Luna said again, and Janie nodded. The fasting made her slow to react sometimes, made her head feel full of clouds. “Are you ready to do your part?”

“Yes,” she said.

The slow flame of a smile spread across Luna’s face, and embers danced in her eyes. “Then let’s do this,” she said.

The cold bronze of her gauntlet warmed in Janie’s hand as Luna led her past the van and into the center of the circle. Thirteen pairs of emerald eyes followed their progress, and she gazed back at them one after another: Gray and Kimo, Aura and Arrow and Silas and Orion and Cheyenne, Freya and Abilene. Heather looked stunned, as always, like she still couldn’t quite believe what her life had become, and Owen’s eyes twinkled with curiosity, drinking in this still-new way of life. Off to the side, not part of the circle but paying close attention, little Charlie gazed solemnly at her through chocolate-colored eyes. He had come to them seeking shelter when his father disappeared, Luna had explained, and they had taken him in and made him one of their own.

Finally, her gaze found Ciaran, and she realized with a small shock that he was crying. Maybe they were tears of happiness that she would finally become one of them; his empathetic nature made him sensitive that way. Or maybe it was the beautiful solemnity of the ritual, the silence that descended upon the circle as Luna lit a candle and held it aloft, touching its tip to the unlit wick of Owen’s next to her and waiting for him to pass the flame in turn, creating a circle of light that glowed and flickered in the gathering darkness. The sun was a scarlet kiss sinking fast behind the mountains, leaving lipstick smears in its wake, and Janie felt her own eyes grow damp, the granite-heavy power of the ritual stirring her blood.

Circles of candlelight danced on their faces as Luna led them in a series of oms that resonated across the mountain peaks and vibrated at their feet. The sound lingered in Janie’s chest as Luna began to speak, her voice low and hypnotic.

“Tonight, we call upon the Gods of Fire.” The candlelight caught her beneath the chin, casting long shadows over her face. “We call upon them to burn this town to the ground, to right the wrongs we have done to this land, and to serve justice to those who scarred our planet in the pursuit of greed and riches.”

Drumbeats began from the edge of the circle, slow and steady. Janie felt her heartbeat recede to their rhythm, felt it carry her pulse. Her body no longer belonged to her but to them, the drums and the night and the Children of the Earth.

Luna opened her mouth and began to chant.

“Gods o
f fire, hot and swif
t,

Bring your flames
to heal this rift.

Heal the scars carve
d in our land

By man
kind’s cruel and gre
edy hand.”

The chant picked up strength as it moved around the circle, mouths yawning open as the drumbeats gathered speed and the words gained momentum, voices bouncing off the stone mountain peaks and echoing back to Janie’s ears.

Still holding their candles, the Children of the Earth began to slowly circle her, their feet a heavy counterpoint to the climbing tenor of their voices. Wind whipped their hair and flung candlelight across their faces, and she felt their energy enter her and fill her with a pulsing, dancing warmth.

Their eyes began to glow, green beams that moved hungrily over her body and set her skin aflame. She was candles and smoke, kindling and heat, a living embodiment of fire. And soon, soon she would be one of them.

Luna stepped forward, a hoop held before her in both hands. A dozen steel spines protruded from it, the ends wrapped in rags that glistened darkly with fresh, wet fuel. Her eyes stayed on Janie’s as she approached, crouching low with each step like a cat hunting her prey, holding the hoop between spikes so that it circled her waist, ready to spin into orbit.

Her boots left soft prints in the snow.

“Now,” she whispered. Janie could smell the fuel rising from each soaked rag, a scent as rich and metallic as blood. Moving as one, the Children of the Earth advanced, still chanting, the threads of their voices weaving a thick web. They held out their arms, each touching a flame to the gas-soaked rags on Luna’s hoop.

Her wicks devoured the flames. Janie gasped as they sucked oxygen hungrily from the air, capering like demons to surround Luna in a circle of fire. Through the haze of heat she saw Luna’s mouth open in laughter, her eyes glow with glee. She had never seen Luna so happy, so alive, as she grasped the hoop and bounced it up and down, making the fire expand into Chinese lanterns in the air.

“G
ods of fire, hot and
swift,

Bring your f
lames to heal this r
ift
,
”

The Children of the Earth linked arms and danced around her in a circle, clouds of snow swirling at their feet. The flames of their candles had grown bigger and brighter, as if touching them to Luna’s hoop had fed them. They glowed with white-hot light, too bright to look at yet too beautiful to look away.

As bright as the flames burned, Janie couldn’t take her eyes off of Luna, the crown of dreadlocks on her head and the feline smile on her face. Their eyes locked and, with an ecstatic laugh, Luna released the hoop and sent it whirling around her waist. The sudden rush of air fanned the flames until the dozen became one, a wall of fire rising between them, laced with sapphire threads of pure heat.

The fire spoke to Janie in whooshes of air, in the hungry crackle of flame burning swift and pure. It beckoned to her, spoke of a world where there was only pure energy and ever-burning life, where there was never any fear or hurt or pain. She had heard this voice before, fire speaking to her in flaming tongues, urging her into its world. She had seen this dance before, the dance of flame eating flame, of fire leaping and twirling and cartwheeling high into the sky. And she had been ready to join it.

It was the night of baby Jeremiah’s funeral, when she and the rest of the townies had gone up to Elk Mountain to drink and forget. That night she’d danced closer and closer to their raging campfire, dancing away her grief and her pain and ready to join the blaze when it beckoned, to be its partner in this world and the one beyond. She had reached out her hands, ready to go to it, the heat entering her body as the candlelight did now, the light filling her until it spilled from her feet and she writhed like a wild woman being consumed from the inside out. She had been ready, willing, to join her life with the fire’s and leave this cold, hard, unlit world behind. Only Doug had stopped her, yanking her away with brute force, throwing her to the ground and screaming at her the way the world screamed and her heart screamed and her womb screamed in its emptiness, in the shock of life being ripped from her with a pain that would never completely go away.

Doug wasn’t here to stop her now.

The hoop whirled inches from her face, a vortex of flame that blocked out the rest of the world.

“
Gods o
f fire, hot and swif
t
,” Janie chanted, the words sparking from the place inside of her where desire burned hottest. Heat flashed through her legs until she was stomping in time to the drumbeats, until she was no longer Janie but a ball of whirling energy, the keeper of the flame.

The chant and the heat moved through her, and, oh, it felt good! It felt right the way being a slow human plodding through the world had never felt right, the way putting her son in a hole in the ground when she should have been holding him to her breast hadn’t felt right. Fire flickered in her blood, and flame replaced her heart, and she was ready now to dance with the fire from this world into the next, to let it carry her to the place where Jeremiah had gone.

Her feet danced closer to the vortex of Luna’s fire hoop. Flames brushed her nose, heating her face until she felt the skin swell and blister. Her eyes met Luna’s through the hot orange veil, and she knew that Luna knew, knew that all of them knew. She was ready.

Luna’s hand whipped out and stopped the hoop mid-spin, and the deafening whoosh of flames ripping through the air stopped, and the chanting stopped, and the drumming stopped, and the stomping, snow-kicking dancing stopped, and the night filled with a sudden, heavy silence. Smoke swirled around their shoes and the sky above them glowed the color of fire’s white-hot core as Luna stepped out of the hoop and lowered it gently, lovingly, over Janie’s head.

She didn’t hold it in place. She didn’t need to. The hoop rested in midair, held there by the fierce concentration of the Children of the Earth, by Janie’s searing desire to let the flames consume her, and by something different and otherworldly, more primal and more powerful than anything she had ever known.

The Gods of Fire were there. Surrounding them. Ready to do what they asked.

As soon as Janie let go.

The pressure of their invisible force sent the hoop gyrating around her, dancing in faster, wilder circles until everything was a blur of blue and orange and blinding, blistering heat. The fire sucked air from her lungs, and she let it, wanting to feed it, knowing that soon it would take her away from this world and into the next, into the place of pure bliss and light where Jeremiah was waiting.

Soon she wouldn’t be Janie anymore. Soon she wouldn’t be alive. And she was ready. She was ready to let go.

Through the cyclone of fire she felt a disturbance ripple the circle, saw a shadow struggle from beyond the flames and lunge toward her, heard a voice shouting: “No!” For a moment, she caught a glimpse of oil-dark hair and terrified green eyes and felt a hand reach through the inferno, saw callused fingers grasp at her, trying to stop the helix of heat.

But it was too late. The flame within had taken over, and she was no longer Janie, no longer of this world. She felt something inside of her snuff out forever as the hoop dropped suddenly, the ring of fire extinguishing instantly in the thick layer of snow at her feet.

Janie followed, falling lifeless to the ground.