Children of the Earth (2 page)

2

OW
EN CROUCHED IN THE D
ARKNESS,
his body sizzling with need. Being at the motocross track was both a torture and a release: Torture in the jumps and berms that made him miss his dirt bike the way an amputee misses a limb. Release because it meant time alone with Daphne, whose touch raced through him faster than any motor and cut like the sharpest hairpin turn.

With the track shut down, she was the only thing keeping him sane. She was a reason to get up and go to work on the oil rig each morning and his last thought before falling into a fitful sleep every night. But even the cool relief of her smile, the kisses stolen on their lunch breaks, and their electric evenings alone on the motocross track weren’t enough to staunch the dreams.

They came thick and furious each night, the same nightmares that had driven him to Carbon County so many months before. Dark figures danced around a bonfire, but now he could see them more clearly, eleven pairs of emerald eyes glowing like fireflies, only one face still dark. They danced and chanted, hands clasped and limbs gleaming in the firelight, and as their voices crescendoed to a wild shriek and the fire flung itself into the sky, the earth began to shake, threatening to open up and release a mighty and powerful god, the God of the Earth.

The dreams always ended with a voice of thunder and lighting, of molten gravel pouring from the earth’s core.
Find the ve
in
, it had whispered to him long ago, terrifying and seducing him, sending him back and forth across the country until he found his sister, Luna, and together they let it draw them to Carbon County like gravity, an elemental force.

That voice was the God of the Earth, Luna had explained to him, and the God of the Earth was their father. At first he thought she was crazy, a lost hippie child who’d probably taken too many substances at the music festivals where she performed with her glowing hula hoop. The only evidence that they were even related were their identical green eyes and her stories of growing up on the commune where he was born, a commune called Children of the Earth. But when the Aramaic tablet told of a great battle between the Children of God and the Children of the Earth, he began to reluctantly believe his sister. If she was right, that meant that he and Daphne were on opposite sides of a great battle between good and evil—a battle that the tablet had threatened could destroy the world.

He didn’t want it to be that way, but the predictions on the tablet had all come true, from the fiery wreck that had taken Trey’s life at the motocross track to the flock of birds of paradise that had dropped dead from the sky on the day of Janie’s wedding. Now the second part of the prophecy was coming true: The Children of the Earth were arriving in Carbon County.

He’d noticed others with the same green eyes trickling into town, other children of the God of the Earth, and he knew from the faces in his dreams that all but one had arrived. Like him, they’d been drawn there by dreams of fire and destruction that ended with the gravelly voice of their father urging them to “find the vein.” And Luna, in that half-cheeky, half-ominous way of hers, had made it easy for them.

She had her own place now, a brand-new nightclub that was full to bursting with roughnecks and prospectors each night. All Children of the Earth were guaranteed jobs there, as bartenders and busboys, bouncers and cocktail waitresses and kitchen crew. And just so there wasn’t any question about where they should go, she had named it the Vein.

So far Owen had managed to stay away, gritting his teeth and gripping the bottom of his chair as Luna packed her costumes and hula hoops and urged him to move across town with her to the loft above the club, tears filling her eyes and her words wrapping around him like a serpent as she begged him to join her.

He’d refused. He had to stay away from her, from all of them, to protect his love for Daphne. If she knew, just as the tablet had predicted, that most of the Children of the Earth were already in town, she’d be forced to choose between her loyalty to him and her duty as the prophet of the Children of God. He knew that he’d have to tell her eventually, but he couldn’t bear for her to have to make that choice just yet.

So he stayed far away from the Vein despite Luna’s text messages and the voice in his dreams, which pulled at his blood like a magnet at metal shavings. His will was strong, and his love for Daphne stronger. But each day that he held out was harder than the last, and he was terrified that someday, by his will or against it, he would end up among them. As much as he fought it, the need to go to his brothers and sisters grew stronger every day.

A scream cut through his thoughts with the white-hot immediacy of lightning, making the hair on his arms stand on end. He was on his feet before he could catch up with his body, racing down the face of the jump and calling her name. He knew that voice and knew it could only be her.

Daphne.

He shouldn’t have let her come alone, he thought, furious at himself as his feet pounded the track, kicking up dust and splattering his pants with mud. Daphne was tough, but the path through the drifters’ camp was dangerous, the squatters unscrupulous in their quest to get what they wanted—and what if what they wanted was a girl? Owen never should have put her in that kind of danger, and Daphne never should have agreed to it. Their desire for one another had grown huge and reckless; something had to change before it was too late.

Unless it already was.

A thin layer of sweat clung to his skin by the time he reached the messy circle of squatters who had gathered at the bottom of the dark path down to the track. “What happened?” He shouldered past the men, ignoring the sour scent of their beer breath and unshowered bodies.

“Looks like she’s having a seizure,” someone grunted.

“But I wouldn’t get too close,” another cautioned. “Lookit what she did to him.”

Ignoring the warning, Owen stepped to the front of the crowd.

Daphne convulsed on the ground, flopping like a minnow in the bottom of a rowboat. Her eyes were narrow white slits, and her lashes beat furiously against her cheeks. A few feet away, a man lay unconscious, stringy hair feathered around his head. His eyes, one gray and one brown, were open but unseeing, the red still draining from his face and a patina of bruises decorating the stubbled skin of his neck.

A knife marked the ground between them, its blade throwing slices of light from the drifters’ headlamps and gas lanterns.

“Daphne!” Owen rushed to her even as crooked hands reached for his arms and tried to hold him back.

“You don’t wanna do that,” someone warned. “We pulled her offa him, but it wa’n’t easy. Girl’s got a demon grip.”

“Call an ambulance!” Owen broke free and rushed to her side. He wasn’t afraid of her, even if the rough-and-tumble drifters were.

He knelt by Daphne’s convulsing body and slipped a gentle hand under her head. She stiffened at his touch, and her eyelids flew open. But the eyes that bored into his weren’t hers—they were barely even human. They blazed with fear and distrust so sudden and unexpected that he snatched back his hand.

Daphne’s body jackknifed, her legs spasming as her hands flew to his throat. Steel-strong fingers closed over his neck, crushing the air from his lungs.

“I told ’im not to go in,” he heard one of the squatters say, but it sounded like it was coming from far away, from another continent on another planet in another lifetime.

He sputtered for breath. He was losing air, losing consciousness. The world telescoped inward, its edges black and fuzzy, static filling his ears like sand.

He was going to die. The realization shot a cannonball of adrenaline through him, and with the last shred of his waning strength he brought his hands to his neck and closed his fingers over Daphne’s. He imagined strength pouring up his arms and through his hands, pictured Daphne’s vice-strong grip turning to jelly under his fingers. The vision squeezed through the choked-up passageways of his windpipe, rushing from nerve to nerve.

My fingers are st
eel, her fingers are
jelly
. These words would be his last thoughts, he realized through a thick film of panic. If only they were true: if only Daphne’s strength really were waning, if only the crushing tension in her muscles would relax into flesh and beyond flesh, into jelly so soft he could spread it on toast. As he pried at her fingers, gasping for breath, he thought he felt her hands loosen under his, her strength give millimeter by painstaking millimeter.

A sliver of air rushed to his lungs, just enough to give him a better grip. The refrain of
my f
ingers are steel, he
r fingers are jelly
pounded in his brain. He breathed in again, the sound raspy and desperate as he wedged first one, then two, then all of his fingers into the growing gap between her hands and his throat. With a final burst of strength, he freed himself and threw her aside.

Daphne’s arms flopped in the dirt. Black dots floated in Owen’s vision as he rubbed his throat, the bruises tender beneath his fingers. Air had never tasted sweeter, and he sucked in giant lungfuls of it, the pain in his windpipe a stabbing reminder of how close he’d come.

“Damn.” A nearby prospector shook his head, whistling air through his teeth. “That was close. How’d you do it?”

“I don’t know.” Now that he was out of immediate danger Owen could feel power surging through his body, sparking from his mind down to the tips of his fingers in electrical currents that made his skin seem feel hot and too tight. His brain was on overdrive, the echo of
my fingers are st
eel, her fingers are
jelly
dancing there like a song that had stuck in his head. It almost felt like those thoughts, rather than his own strength, had saved his life.

Daphne shot to sitting like a zombie rising from the grave. Her eyes flew open, and she looked around wildly, taking in the knife and the man lying unconscious and the circle of drifters. When her gaze reached Owen, she shrieked and scuttled back in the dirt. Her face was drawn in terror, and she whimpered as if the sight of him caused her pain.

“Daphne.” He kept his voice low and gentle, knowing she must be disoriented. “It’s okay. It’s me, Owen.”

“No!” She turned her back to him and clutched her knees, curling into a ball and rocking back and forth.

Still gasping for breath, he crawled over and wrapped his arms around her trembling shoulders. She shrugged him off at first, still whimpering into her knees, but as the keening wail of the ambulance grew closer and the drifters began to scatter he tried again.

“You had a seizure, Daphne,” he said softly, his lips close to her ear, soothing her the way he’d soothed his little sister after a nightmare in his previous life back in Kansas long ago. “I know it’s scary, but you’re okay. You’re going to be all right. I’m here.”

She relaxed and let him envelop her, wrapping herself in the scent of earth and motor oil that never left his skin, resting her head against his chest and drying her cheek on his T-shirt. This was Owen, the
real
Owen. That other Owen, the one who’d blazed huge and evil in her vision, didn’t exist. He couldn’t. She’d been hallucinating, her mind riled up in self-defense and playing terrible tricks on her.

But as the siren swam closer and the sky pulsed red and she sobbed into Owen’s shirt, another thought nagged at her, one she couldn’t ignore. Because, whether or not she wanted it, she was a prophet—and prophets didn’t see mistakes or hallucinations. They saw visions from God.

3

THE
DOG WAS BARKING. BEL
LA
stood on the pink lump that Janie made under her sleeping bag, pawing at her shoulder and yapping in her ear, awakening her from a heavy nap dotted with restless dreams.

“Shut up, Bella.” Janie swept the dog onto the floor, but Bella landed on her cream-colored paws and went right on barking, dancing back and forth from the couch to the TV and making the cherry vodka on the milk-crate coffee table slosh in its plastic bottle.

As she struggled out of the depths of sleep, Janie slowly realized what the dog was fussing about. Someone was knocking on the door, the pounding echoing through the empty halls of the half-finished mansion atop Elk Mountain.

“Crap.” She sat up, throwing off the sleeping bag, and ran a hand through the rat’s nest of her hair. She dimly remembered something about Hilary coming to visit, a text message exchange from yesterday or the day before—it was easy to lose track of time when all you did was sleep and watch
Teen Mom
.

“Janie, it’s for you!” Deirdre Varley’s nagging trill floated up from the lobby and bounced off the vaulted ceiling.

“Coming,” Janie called back. But it came out sounding like a croak.

She found her slippers and padded down the hall, tightening the drawstring on her sweatpants as she descended the stairs.

“Hey, girl!” Hilary’s voice was unnaturally bright, the brightest thing by far in the towering, empty lobby of the half-finished chateau. She wrapped Janie in a hug that smelled like baby powder and fresh laundry, making Janie wonder what had happened to her old best friend who had always reeked of cigarettes and Rihanna’s Rogue perfume.

“Close the door, you’re letting cold air in,” Deirdre admonished. She gave Janie a pinched glare. “I wish you’d remembered you were having company,” she sniffed. “I had to come all the way down from our wing to let her in.”

“Sorry.” Janie looked down at her slippers, threadbare Smurfettes staring mournfully from her toes. “I’ll remember next time.”

Like there would be a next time. It’s not like anyone ever came to visit her—even her mom had gotten sick of Deirdre’s sniping and stopped coming round, choosing instead to nag Janie by phone.

“It’s good to see you.” Hilary smiled and pushed away a stray corkscrew curl that had fallen over her eye. “It’s been too long.”

Janie didn’t know how long it had been, exactly. Lately she’d been losing track of time, whole days disappearing between commercial breaks and fitful dreams. But it must have been a while, because Hilary didn’t just smell different, she looked different, too. She’d put on some weight, and her face was rounder, the skin taut and glowing and her old acne pockmarks nearly gone.

“Yeah, well.” Janie gave a vague shrug. “I guess we should go upstairs.”

She led Hilary up the wooden skeleton of a wide, sweeping staircase that would one day be finished in marble, past doorways with no doors that peeked into rooms whose only decoration was yellow sheets of insulation stapled to the walls. With the lawsuit against Janie’s father stalled and the Varleys hurting for cash, they’d sold their ranch house in town and moved the family to the chateau on Elk Mountain before it was finished—and judging from the way money had been lately, it seemed like it may never get done at all. Vince Varley swore they’d get it fully insulated and heated before winter, but there had been no workers for days, maybe even weeks. The Wyoming air was chilly even in early September, wind whistling through the cracks in the walls like lost children crying to come home.

“Brrr.” Hilary hugged her arms and shivered as they entered the den. It was the only room in the west wing—Doug and Janie’s wing—that was fully furnished, but the old leather living room set from the Varley’s ranch house still seemed dwarfed by the vast expanse of plywood floor. “It’s cold in here.”

“I’ll build up the fire.” Janie dredged logs from a cardboard box and poked at the smoldering coals, watching them jump and hiss before licking at the wood and filling the room with smoke. “At least there’s plenty of wood on this land.”

“Remind me to bring you a space heater next time I come.” Hilary perched on the end of the couch and looked around, slowly taking in the panorama of the Savage Mountain Range from the huge bay window. “Sure is some view, though.”

Janie guessed it was okay, but she preferred to face away from the lonely peaks, staring instead at the fireplace or the flat-screen television Doug had propped somewhat precariously on a milk crate.

“Want a drink?” Janie held out an economy-sized plastic bottle half-full of the cherry vodka she’d taken to sipping throughout the day. The strong, clear liquid burned sweet trails down her throat and kept her mind hazy and soft, away from the thorny edges of thoughts that caught and ripped at her brain: memories of the birds that had fallen dead from the sky on the day of her shotgun wedding to Doug, of Daphne holding her stillborn infant son in her arms, of Doug pushing her into the dirt and screaming over her as she sobbed, blaming her for their son’s death. “It’ll warm you up.”

She realized that maybe she should go to the kitchen for glasses (it’s what a good hostess would do, what her mother would do), but that meant a long trip down the cold stairs and dark hallways, and possibly meeting Deirdre Varley’s disapproving face over the vast kitchen island, silently judging her daughter-in-law while she attempted a new casserole with some phony-sounding French name.

But Hilary shook her head. “I don’t really drink anymore,” she said. “I know—crazy, right? Me, turning down a drink? But, well, ever since everything happened, with Trey going to God and them finding that ancient tablet and—well, you know . . . what happened to you.” She averted her eyes, color creeping into her cheeks. Janie knew. Sometimes, it felt like it was
all
she knew.

“Anyway, I’ve been trying to live a little cleaner since all that,” Hilary went on. “Pastor Ted says the Rapture’s coming any day now, and we all have to get right in the eyes of God. That means no drinking, no swearing, no getting down before marriage—which is great for me, ’cause now Bryce keeps talking about putting a ring on it.” She grinned wickedly, a flash of the wisecracking old Hilary superimposed over the clean, shiny new one.

Janie took a swig from the bottle, seeing as how Hilary didn’t want any anyway. Maybe it wasn’t exactly polite, but what did it matter? It wasn’t like Hilary was the queen of England. As the liquid warmed her insides, she looked up and saw concern flash in her old friend’s eyes.

“We miss you at church.” Hilary sounded like she was trying to coax a scared dog out from under the bed.

“Yeah, well,” Janie shrugged. She already wanted another swig—it seemed like she needed more and more to take the edge off lately. “I’ve been real busy up here.”

Hilary’s eyebrows knit, and for a moment Janie saw herself through her friend’s eyes: hair matted around her face, bundled in her old Carbon County High sweatshirt and a cheap pair of sweatpants that, honestly, she hadn’t changed in a few days. She must look pathetic, like a washed-up housewife who couldn’t even get it together to do laundry. Not that the laundry hookup was even close to ready in the Varley mansion, and Deirdre, being too proud to let them go to the laundromat in town, insisted they hand-wash their clothes in the sink. Screw that: Janie had better things to do. Like sleep. And watch TV. And drink.

“Well, we’d all love it if you could find time to come see what we’ve been up to at the church!” Hilary sounded too upbeat, too positive—the very opposite of her sarcastic former self. Had Janie been that annoying when she was on her big Jesus kick? She couldn’t remember. Everything about the past, the time before she married Doug and lost her baby and moved into the house at Elk Mountain, seemed so far away, like it had happened in another lifetime to another person. A happier person.

“So many people have moved into town since Pastor Ted got that show on the Christian channel,” Hilary continued. “There are all these great new folks now, we’ve started a youth group and everything, and the Sunday sermons are packed. Seriously, Janie, you would not believe it: standing room only! It’s a good thing your folks are donating the money for a new church, and that’s close to done, too, so we’ll have room for everyone who’s ready to be saved.”

Hilary leaned forward on the couch, eyes glowing. “Just come to church this Sunday, Janie. It would mean so much to your folks, and to Pastor Ted, and . . . well, to
me
.”

Janie couldn’t hold out anymore. She grabbed the bottle and took a good, long gulp. The vodka burned, but it was so much easier to swallow than Hilary’s words. She’d believed in the church—in God, in Jesus, all of it—with all her heart before. But where was God when she’d cried out to him to let her baby be delivered safe and sound? Not listening, obviously. So why should she put her faith in him now?

She set the bottle down and wiped the back of her mouth with her hand. “I’ll go,” she said.

“You will?” Hilary scootched forward on the couch and wrapped her arms around Janie, a hint of her old fierceness in her grip. “That’s so great! Pastor Ted will be so excited—and Daphne, too! She’s there every Sunday now, and you wouldn’t believe the fuss people make about her. I guess not every congregation gets to have its own real, live, honest-to-goodness prophet.”

“That’s . . . awesome.” Janie tried to force a smile, but it just wouldn’t come. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Daphne, not exactly. Just that she didn’t buy into all that prophet baloney. A real prophet would have been able to save her baby. A real prophet wouldn’t have let an infant die in her arms.

Hilary sat back on the couch and kept talking, her chatter rapid and meaningless. Janie tuned out, sneaking occasional nips from the bottle and nodding along numbly as Hilary gossiped about their old friends and raved about Pastor Ted and waxed on about clean living and the Rapture and that weird new club in town, the Vein, which Pastor Ted said was a hotbed of sin they all must avoid if they wanted to be swept up to heaven in God’s golden light. It was a relief when her friend finally ran out of things to say and Janie could escort her downstairs to the door, the naked worklights strung through the hallways yellowing their skin as they said goodbye.

“So you’ll really come to church on Sunday?” Hilary asked for what seemed like the millionth time, clasping one of Janie’s cold hands in both of her warm ones.

“Yeah.” Janie nodded thickly, knowing it was a lie. But if a promise would get Hilary off her back, then she was more than glad to make it. The vodka had worked, finally, and the world was sleepy and slippery around her, a snowglobe filled with static. “I’ll see you there.”

“Great. I can’t wait!” Hilary kissed her cheek, and then she was gone, and Janie was blessedly alone again, her footsteps ghostly echoes in the huge, silent halls. She trudged upstairs, swaying, a little off-balance thanks to the booze, and tipped another shot into her mouth as she turned on the TV. A little girl’s face filled the screen, lips pink, eyes rimmed in fake lashes. One of those child beauty-pageant shows. Perfect. Janie loved those.

Bella leapt onto her lap and snuggled into her, the dog’s cuddles one of the few honest pleasures still left in her life. Janie felt her head tip sideways and her mouth fall open, the booze and couch and the dog’s tiny patch of warmth pulling her eyelids shut into a heavy, troubled sleep.

• • •

An arrhythmic thumping jerked her awake. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, only that it was dark outside and her head was pounding, her mouth dry and scratchy from her lips all the way down to the sour slosh of old vodka in her stomach.

The thumps grew louder, suddenly familiar. It was Doug, stumbling down the hall. So it was late, then. He always came home late, and often drunk—not that she had any right to judge. She held her breath, wondering if it would be one of those nights he wanted something from her or if he’d just pass by, heading to the large, lonely bed in the master bedroom they supposedly shared.

Things had been different with Doug since that night, the night of Jeremiah’s funeral, when he left her sobbing in the dust by the bonfire. He’d apologized, of course: Doug was good at apologizing. He’d gotten down on his knees and said he was out of his mind with grief, so broken up about their baby that he didn’t know what he was doing. And she’d forgiven him, because she didn’t know how else to respond and because she loved him and wanted things to go back to the way they were.

Not that they had. Now they were ghosts orbiting each other in the giant house, Doug finding as many excuses to leave as Janie did to stay. She didn’t know where he went. All she knew was that he came home drunk, sometimes wanting her body and other times wanting nothing more than bed.

The footsteps stopped, and he appeared in the doorless doorway, weaving slightly on oversized feet, his big head blocking out the work lights from the hall. Disgust and desire welled up in her, battling for control as he lumbered toward her and lowered himself to the couch with a heavy grunt. Even as the whiskey on his breath repulsed her, she found herself arching out of the sleeping bag to meet his groping hand.

He didn’t say a word as he unbuckled his belt and grasped her hand roughly, guiding her to him. She didn’t either, although her breath quickened and she felt herself lean toward him, anxious for even the quickest, sloppiest kiss, the most fleeting connection to what their life and their love had once been.

Her cell phone jangled on the coffee table, startling them both. It was late, she knew—too late for anyone to call.

“Mom?” Her voice was rusty with disuse. “What’s up?”

She listened, her eyes widening, before hanging up and slipping the phone into her pocket.

“What?” Doug fell back on the couch, staring woozily at the mournful sliver of moonlight outside the bay window as Janie chased her shadow around the room, looking for the boots she hadn’t worn since her last trip out to gather kindling.

“It’s cousin Daphne.” Her voice was hollow. “She had an accident or something, and she’s in the hospital. I gotta go.”