Children of the Earth

This book is dedicated to Johnny Irish, who would probably tell me I’m doing it wrong.

Penguin.com

Razorbill, an Imprint of Penguin Random House

Copyright© 2015 Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

ISBN: 978-0-698-14638-9

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A translation of the Aramaic text carved on a stone tablet discovered in an excavation on Elk Mountain, Carbon County, WY:

When the true Prophet reads this message, the era of the Great Divide is at hand. For on the eve of the Great Battle, seven signs and wonders shall come to pass, each in turn and none without the others. And these shall be:

CLARION

BLOOD

FIRE

PLAGUE

RELIC

DEATH OF A FIRSTBORN

PROPHET

And yea, once these seven signs and wonders appear, there shall be a Great Battle between the Children of God and the Children of the Earth. The Children of the Earth shall sow evil and discord wrought from the pits of Hell, while the Children of God turn to the heavens for strength from the One True Deity. The victor shall rule the land and the sky, the earth and the heavens, and forever hold dominion over the soul of humankind, and the loser shall be cast out forevermore into Eternal Nothingness—while those who fail to choose sides shall perish. Heed, for when this warning is uncovered and the true Prophet comes to light, the era of the Great Divide is at hand.

The Rite o
f Air

Facing east, w
e raise our swords

A
nd murmur these ench
anted words:

Gods of
Air, where’er ye ro
am,

Blow our sibling
s swiftly home.

1

D
ARKNESS HAD FALLEN O
VER CARBON
County by the time Daphne pulled her compact Subaru to the side of the dirt road. Up ahead she could make out strains of raucous laughter, and the acrid smoke of charred meat drifted down to her on a sharp breeze.

She pulled her boyfriend’s worn flannel shirt around her shoulders, trying to ward off the early autumn chill, and double-checked that the doors were locked before slipping the key into her pocket. There wasn’t much to steal in her car—after splitting her earnings from working the oil rig between her ailing mother in Detroit and the collection plate at church, she could only afford an ancient clunker with a perpetually jammed cassette deck. Still, she couldn’t trust the drifters who had taken up residence in the abandoned motocross track parking lot. They were rough-and-tumble oil prospectors with not a lot going for them and even less to lose, and it was rumored that they’d steal the shirt off your back, if given the chance.

The night noises sharpened as she approached: gas generators hacking out watts of power, hot dogs sizzling on portable barbecues, and plastic tarps erected as haphazard shelters crinkling in the wind. The parking lot where the Carbon County locals had once come to race dirt bikes, drink beer, and swap bragging rights was now a makeshift village of weather-beaten tents and rusted pop-up trailers, the track itself shut down.

None of the locals had wanted to set foot there since the horrible night just three months before, when Daphne had helped deliver her cousin Janie’s stillborn baby on the cold metal bleachers overlooking the track. Too many of their own had died there: first Trey, who had wrecked fatally during a race, and then Jeremiah, the baby who never took a breath.

Now the gate to the track was permanently shut, its padlock caked with rust, and the parking lot was transformed into a drab tent city of desperadoes. Only one thing could send Daphne there almost nightly to pick her way through the narrow paths between tents, stepping over mud-caked work boots and pots still crusted with last night’s beans. It drew her there despite the drifters’ unsavory reputation, despite the rumors of their rough-handed, heavy-drinking ways. She went because beyond the gate, on the eroding hills and turns of the track itself, was the only place where she could meet her boyfriend, Owen, in secret.

Owen was the best thing that had ever happened to her, but also one of the worst. He was the last person she’d expected to find in Carbon County, a rural town in the Wyoming foothills where she’d taken refuge with her extended family, the Peytons, after an especially rough winter in Detroit. But instead of the peace and quiet she’d been craving, she found oil on her uncle’s land and a strange ability to read the ancient Aramaic words on a stone tablet discovered beneath the earth, an ability that some said marked her as a prophet. She found all that, and she also found Owen, a green-eyed stranger who somehow wormed his way into her heart despite her general distrust of everyone, especially guys.

As soon as he arrived, it felt like Owen was everywhere: on the oil rig where she worked and at the motocross track, where he quickly destroyed the locals in competition, instantly making him the least-liked guy in town. It didn’t help when Trey, a popular local boy, died in a race against Owen—or that later, he and Daphne were the only two present when her pregnant cousin, Janie, went into sudden, early labor, delivering a stillborn infant on the bleachers overlooking the motocross track.

Maybe the townspeople hated Owen because he was there at all the wrong times, or maybe it was just because he didn’t say much to anyone besides Daphne, didn’t have the gift of small-town small talk that put them at ease. Whatever it was, she knew exactly what they thought of him . . . and what they would think of
her
if they knew he was her boyfriend.

Now, more than ever, she needed the townspeople’s approval. She’d fallen from their graces once before, when her cousin’s jerk of a baby daddy, Doug, revealed that she’d stood trial for her stepfather’s murder in Detroit. It had been in self-defense, after he tried to rape her at knifepoint, and she’d been acquitted––but Doug didn’t tell anyone that part. Instead, he’d accused her of not only killing her stepfather, but he and Janie’s infant son as well. He’d implicated Owen, too, and the townspeople had rallied behind Doug, threatening to throw both Daphne and Owen out of town.

It was only after Pastor Ted learned that Daphne could read the Aramaic tablet and declared her a prophet that the townspeople grudgingly allowed her back in their good graces . . . but by then, it was too late for Owen. The town needed a scapegoat, and he was the most convenient target.

If it weren’t for her aunt and uncle, Daphne wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought about her personal life. But Uncle Floyd and Aunt Karen meant everything to her: They had taken her in when she had nowhere else to go and taught her the true meaning of family and faith, and she would rather die than upset them. They had never trusted Owen and still believed that he may have had a hand in their grandchild’s death–-and until they had a little more time to heal, Daphne didn’t want to upset them further.

So, to avoid suspicion, she and Owen met on the abandoned motocross track after sundown, where fear of the drifters kept the gossipy townsfolk away.

Gravel crunched behind her, and Daphne froze. But the path through the camp was deserted, with the drifters gathered around a fire at the other end of the parking lot. An unsecured tarp scratched at the ground, echoing the sound that had made her panic. Exhaling in relief, Daphne turned and made her way out of the camp.

She slipped past the padlocked gate and onto the dark trail leading to the motocross track. Even when she wasn’t sneaking out to meet Owen, their clandestine relationship made her jumpy and anxious, always looking over her shoulder and trying to wipe the traces of their secret from her face. If she could have resisted him, she would have. But their bond was too strong, too powerful, to ignore.

The dark drew itself around her, only the pale comma of a moon punctuating the sky, and she heard the crunch again, closer than before. But she wouldn’t turn and look, wouldn’t let her paranoia get the better of her.

Stones skittered across the path behind her, and the wind panted in her wake. Although it was too dark for shadows, she thought she saw something flicker across her vision. Her stomach clenched as she felt the sudden presence of a stranger behind her, his skin emanating a dank rot.

She whirled around, but it was too late. Yellowed nails dug into her shoulders, the force knocking her to the ground. She got in one good scream before his hand clapped over her mouth, filling her lungs with the sickening scent of decay. Adrenaline flew through her veins as she kicked the air, praying for her steel-enforced boots to connect.

The stranger covered her body with his, stilling her legs and pinning her to the ground. Greasy strings of hair fell onto her cheeks, and he laughed a grating chainsaw laugh, reaching into the folds of an oily trench coat to reveal a blade that turned the weak beam of moonlight to ice. The world pulsed, and terror screamed through her, her vision condensing into a single point of light. Her eyes rolled back in her head as power gathered in her stomach, spreading from cell to cell until she was charged like a battery, electricity fighting its way through her skin and making her writhe and quake under his weight. She looked straight into his eyes—one gray, one brown—and saw, with horror, their true intent.

She’d had a knife to her throat and a grown man’s unwanted body on hers before. She knew what that man, her stepfather, Jim, had wanted: to force himself inside of her, debasing her body until it no longer felt like her own.

But this man didn’t want that. He didn’t care about her body. He wanted her life.

She jerked and seized beneath him, and the power rocketing inside of her forced her hands around his neck, choking off his windpipe with a python grip. For a moment, everything was black. Then she heard a voice in her head, and all she could see was fire.

Th
e Vision of Fire

And
yea, there will com
e a day

When ye stan
d before the derrick

That pumps oil from
the earth

And a wal
l of flames consumes
the sky.

These shal
l be no ordinary fla
mes

But the hellfire
of damnation,

Wild
with hunger to destr
oy

All that is holy
and good.

And ye sha
ll see, as the fire
approacheth

And crud
e oil boils inside t
he earth

And the hea
t peels trees from l
and

And skin from bo
ne

Ye shall see a sh
adow

With shoulders
wide as mountains,

A
rms raised, fingers
outstretched,

Coaxin
g the fire ever clos
er.

Slow as boulders
forming

The dark fi
gure turns

Until he
looks down upon you

And you fall to your
knees.

For this fig
ure has a face you k
now,

A face you have
touched.

You have s
een these eyes

Flash
serpentine green.

T
hese eyes have decei
ved you,

These hands
draw down fire to b
urn the land,

This h
eart serves only the
dark lord

And this
soul is as black as
the devil.

Your limb
s shall tremble

And
your heart shall tea
r in two,

For this i
s a face you know—

A
face you love.