Unearthly (31 page)

“Tuck, come on!” I yell.

“Go!” he shouts at Midas. “Get out of here!”

He hits the horse on the rump and it makes a noise like a scream and darts away back up the mountain. I run to Tucker and grab him tight around the middle, under the arms.

Please,
I pray even though I know I have no right to ask.
Give me strength.

For a moment I strain with all the muscle in my body, arms, legs, wings, you name it. I reach toward the sky with everything I have. We push off in a burst of sheer will, rising up through the trees, through the smoke, the ground dropping away beneath us. He holds me tight and presses his face into my neck. My heart swells with love for him. My body tingles with a new kind of energy. I lift Tucker effortlessly, with more grace than I've ever had in the air before. It's easy. It's like being carried on the wind.

Tucker gasps. For a few seconds we see Midas running along the side of the mountain, and I feel Tucker's sorrow over losing his beautiful horse. When we get higher we can see the flames pushing steadily up. There's no way to tell if Midas will make it. It doesn't look good. Below us Tucker's land, the little clearing where I first showed him my wings, has already been engulfed. Bluebell is burning, sending out thick, black plumes of smoke.

I turn us in the air and then move away from the mountain, out into the open where I can fly more smoothly and the air is clearer. Three green fire trucks are tearing up the highway toward the fire, sirens blaring.

“Look out!” yells Tucker.

A helicopter shoots past us to the fire, so close we feel the force of its blades cutting the air. It pours a sheet of water onto the flames, then circles back toward the lake.

Tucker shudders in my arms. I tighten my grip on him and head for the closest place that I know will be safe.

When I come down in my backyard, I let go of Tucker and we both stumble and fall onto the lawn. Tucker rolls onto his back on the grass, covers his eyes with his hands, and lets out a low groan. I fill up with a relief so overwhelming that I want to laugh. All I care about in this moment is that he's safe. He's alive.

“Your wings,” he says.

I look over my shoulder at my reflection in the front window of our house. The girl staring back ripples with power the way heat shimmers over a sidewalk. I can suddenly see part of that other creature in her, like the one behind the Black Wing. Her eyes are shadowed with sorrow. Her wings, half folded behind her, are a dark, sweet gray. It's clear even in the hazy reflection of the glass.

“What does it mean?” asks Tucker.

“I have to go.”

At that exact moment my mom pulls up in the Prius.

“What happened?” she asks. “I heard on the radio that the fire just passed Fox Creek Road. Where's—”

Then she sees Tucker kneeling in the grass. The smile fades. She looks at me with wide, stricken eyes.

“Where's Christian?” she asks.

I can't meet her eyes. The fire has been at Fox Creek Road, she said. She crosses quickly over to me and grabs me by the wing, turning me so that she can get a good look at the dark feathers.

“Clara, what have you done?”

“I had to save Tucker. He would have died.”

She looks so fragile in that moment, so drained and broken and lost. Her eyes so hopeless. They close for a moment, then open.

“You need to go find him now,” she says then. “I'll look after Tucker. Go!”

Then she kisses my forehead like she's saying good-bye to me forever and turns toward the house.

Chapter 22
Down Came the Rain

I'm too late, but then I knew I would be.

The fire has already been here.

I land. The place where I usually start my vision is scorched and black. There's nothing alive. The trees are blackened poles. The silver Avalanche is parked on the side of the road, smoke still rolling off it, charred and gutted by fire.

I run up the hillside to the place where he always stands in my vision. He isn't there. The wind picks up and hurls hot ash into my face. The forest looks like the hell dimension, the land the same as I knew it, but burned. Empty of everything beautiful and good. No color or sound or hope.

He's not here.

The weight of it hits me. This is my purpose, and I have failed. All this time I've only been thinking about Tucker. I saved him because I didn't want to live on earth without him. I didn't want that kind of pain. I'm that selfish. And now Christian is gone. He's supposed to be important, my mom said. There was a plan for him, something bigger than me or Tucker or anything else. Something he was meant for. And now he's gone.

“Christian!” I scream raggedly, the noise echoing off the blackened tree trunks.

There's no answer.

For a while I look for his body. I wonder if it could have been burned into ash, if the fire was that hot. I circle back to the truck. The keys are still in the ignition. That's the only sign of him. I wander the burned forest in a daze, searching. Then the sun is setting, a fiery red ball descending behind into the mountains. It's getting dark.

The storm clouds that have been moving in from the east open up and pour like a faucet being turned on. Within minutes I'm soaked to the skin. Shivering. Alone.

I can't go home. I don't think I can stand to see the disappointment on Mom's face. I don't think I can live with myself. I walk, cold and wet, strands of hair sticking to my face and neck. I hike to the top of the ridge and watch the fire burning in the distance, the flames licking at the orange sky. It's beautiful, in a way. The glow. The dance of the smoke. And then there's the storm, the black rumbling clouds, the little flashes of lightning here and there. The rain so cool on my face, washing away the soot. That's how it always is, I guess. Beauty and death.

Behind me, something moves in the bushes. I turn.

Christian steps out of the trees.

Time is a funny thing. Sometimes it crawls endlessly on. Like French class. Or waiting for a fish to bite. And other times it speeds up, the days zooming by. I remember this one time in first grade. I was standing in the middle of the elementary school playground near the monkey bars and a bunch of third graders ran by. They seemed huge to me. Someday, a long, long time from now, I thought at that moment, I will be in third grade.
That was more than ten years ago, but it feels like ten minutes. I was just there. Time flies, isn't that what they say? My summer with Tucker. The first time I had the vision until now.

And sometimes time really does stop.

Christian and I stare at each other like we're both under a spell and if one of us moves, the other one will disappear.

“Oh, Clara,” he whispers. “I thought you were dead.”

“You thought I . . .”

He reaches to touch a strand of my wet hair. I'm suddenly dizzy. Exhausted. Wildly confused. I sway on my feet. He catches me by the shoulders and steadies me. I press my eyes closed. He's real. He's alive.

“You're soaked,” he observes. He pulls off the black fleece jacket, which is only slightly less damp, and drapes it around my shoulders.

“Why are you here?” I whisper.

“I thought I was supposed to save you from the fire.”

I stare at him so intently that he flushes.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “That was a weird thing to say. I meant—”

“Christian—”

“I'm just glad you're safe. We should get you inside before you catch cold or something.”

“Wait,” I say, tugging at his arm. “Please.”

“I know this doesn't make any sense. . . .”

“It makes sense,” I insist, “except for the part where you're supposed to save me.”

“What?”

“I'm supposed to save
you
.”

“What? Now
I'm
confused,” he says.

“Unless . . .” I take a few steps back. He starts to follow, but I hold up a trembling hand.

“Don't be afraid,” he murmurs. “I won't hurt you. I would
never
hurt you.”

“Show yourself,”
I whisper.

There's a brief flash of light. When my eyes adjust I see Christian standing under the burned trees. He coughs and looks at his feet almost like he's ashamed. Sprouting from his shoulder blades are large speckled wings, ivory with black flecks, like someone has splattered him with paint. He flexes them carefully and then folds them into his back.

“How did you . . . ?”

“In your vision, did we meet down there?” I ask, gesturing down toward Fox Creek Road. “You say, ‘It's you,' and I say, ‘Yes, it's me,' and then we fly away?”

“How do you know that?”

I summon my wings. I know the feathers are dark now, and what that will mean to him, but he deserves to know the truth.

His eyes widen. He lets out an incredulous breath, the way he does when he laughs sometimes. “You're an angel-blood.”

“I've been having the vision since November,” I say, the words tumbling out. “It's why we moved here. I was supposed to find you.”

He stares at me, stunned.

“But it's my fault,” he says after a moment. “I didn't get here on time. I didn't expect there to be two fires. I didn't know which one.”

He glances up at me. “I didn't know it was you at first. It was the hair. I didn't recognize you with the red hair. Stupid, I know. I knew there was something different about you, I always felt—in my vision you always have blond hair. And for a while that's all I saw—I'd hear someone walk up behind me, but before I'd turn around completely, the vision would end. I never saw your face until I had the vision at prom.”

“It's not your fault, Christian. It's mine. I wasn't here to meet you. I didn't save you.”

My voice is loud and shrill in the emptiness of the burned forest. I put my hands over my eyes and will myself not to cry.

“But I didn't need to be saved,” he says gently. “Maybe we were supposed to save each other.”

From what, I wonder.

I drop my hands to see him walking toward me, reaching out. We aren't in the vision now, but I still find him beautiful, even wet with rain and smudged with ash. He takes my hands in his.

“You're alive,” I choke out, shaking my head. He squeezes my hands, then pulls me in for a hug.

“Yeah, that's good news to me, too.”

One hand strokes slowly down my wings, sending a tremor through me. Then he pulls back and lifts his hand in front of him, looking at it. His palm is black. I stare at it.

“Your wings are covered with soot,” he says with a laugh.

I grab his hand, draw my finger across it, and sure enough, come away with a mix of soot and rain. He wipes his hand against the sides of his jeans.

“What do we do now?” I ask.

“Let's just play it by ear.” He looks into my eyes again, then down at my lips. Another quake shakes me. He wets his lips, then looks back into my eyes. Asking me.

This could be my second chance. If neither one of us needed saving. What else is there, but this? It seems like we've been set up on some kind of heavenly ordained date. We don't need the fire. We could reenact the vision here and now.

“It was always you,” he says, so close I could feel his breath on my face.

I'm drowning. I do want him to kiss me. I want to make everything right again. To make my mother proud. To do what I am supposed to do. To love Christian, if that's what I'm meant for.

Christian starts to lean in.

“No,” I whisper, unable to get my voice any louder. I pull back. My heart doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to Tucker. I can't pretend that away. “I can't.”

He steps back immediately.

“Okay,” he says. He clears his throat.

I take a deep breath, try to clear my head. The rain's finally stopped. Night has fallen. We're both soaking wet, and cold, and confused. I'm still holding his hand. I tighten my fingers around his.

“I'm in love with Tucker Avery,” I tell him simply.

He looks surprised, like the idea that I might be already taken never crossed his mind. “Oh. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. Please don't be sorry. Anyway, aren't you still in love with Kay?”

His Adam's apple jerks as he swallows. “I feel stupid. Like this is all some big joke. I don't know what to think anymore.”

“Me neither.”

I drop his hand. I extend my wings and grab the air, rising from the top of the ridge and up over the burned forest. Christian stares up at me for a minute, then lifts off himself. Seeing him like that, riding the air with those beautiful speckled wings, sends a chill down my spine and a wave of confusion into my already shell-shocked brain.

You're in big trouble, Clara,
says my heart.

“Come on,” I say as we hover for one final moment over Fox Creek Road. “Come with me.”

We stand outside the front door for a long time. It's dark now. The porch light's on. A moth is hurling itself against the glass again and again in a kind of rhythm. I fold my wings and will them gone. I turn to Christian. Our wings are no longer out, but he looks like he would rather fly away now and never come back. Pretend none of this ever happened. That the fire never happened. That we don't know what we know, and everything isn't impossibly screwed up.

“It's okay.” I don't know if I'm talking to myself or to him.

This is my home, the beautiful, secluded log house I fell in love with eight months ago, but suddenly I'm a stranger here, darkening this doorstep for the very first time. So much has changed in the last few hours. My mind is clogged with all I've seen, what I've survived, battles with evil angels, forest fires, and the implications of what I've done. Christian is alive, standing there looking as jumpy as I am, smoke-streaked but beautiful and so much more than I ever expected him to be. But I've failed at my purpose. I don't know what will happen now. I only know I have to face it.

There's a noise behind us, and both Christian and I spin around to gaze out into the growing blackness. A figure flies toward us through the trees. I don't know if Christian's aware of the existence of Black Wings, but instinctively we reach for each other's hand, as if this could be it, our last moments on this earth.

It turns out to be Jeffrey. He lands at the edge of the lawn, wild-eyed like something's after him. He's carrying his backpack over one shoulder, curling his arm around it to keep it out of the way of his wings. He turns to look down our driveway. For a moment his back is to me, and all I see are his wings. The feathers are nearly black, the color of lead.

“Is that your brother?” asks Christian.

Jeffrey hears him and turns like he expects a fight. When he spots us on the porch he lifts his hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the porch light, squinting to identify us.

“Clara?” he calls. It reminds me of when he was a little kid. He used to be scared of the dark.

“It's me,” I answer. “Are you okay?”

He takes a few steps forward into the circle of light from the porch. His face is a flash of white in the darkness. He smells like the burned forest.

“Christian?” he asks.

“In the flesh,” Christian replies.

“You did it. You saved Christian,” says Jeffrey. He sounds relieved.

I can't stop staring at his dark wings. “Jeffrey, where have you been?”

He flutters up to the roof, landing gingerly in front of his bedroom window, which is wide open.

“Looking for you,” he says in an anxious hush before he ducks inside. “Don't tell Mom.”

I look up at the starless sky.

“We should go in, before anything else happens,” I say to Christian.

“Wait.” He lifts his hand like he's going to touch my face. I flinch, and then he flinches. His hand stops inches from my cheek, an almost identical pose as what I've seen a hundred times in the vision. We both know it.

“Sorry,” he says. “You have a smudge.” He takes a breath like he's making a deliberate decision and his fingers graze my skin. His thumb strokes a place on my cheek, rubbing at a spot. “There. I got it.”

“Thanks,” I say, blushing.

Just then the door swings open and Tucker stands on the other side staring at us, first at me, his eyes sweeping over me from head to foot to make sure I'm all in one piece, and then at Christian and his hand, which still hovers near my face. I watch his expression change from something worried and loving to something darker, a resigned determination that I've seen before, when he broke up with me.