Children of the Earth (25 page)

She righted herself, tears stinging her eyes. The church was gone, the families that had hidden inside along with it. Bodies lay scattered in the Earth God’s wake. Beside her, the Children of the Earth sprang to their feet and joined hands, leaping and frolicking with the delight of schoolchildren released into their first day of summer vacation. They grasped at Owen’s hands, but he batted them away, staring sadly at the destruction on the other side of the divide.

Luna clasped her hands over her heart and gazed at the God of the Earth with a look of unadulterated love. “He’s finally here!” she crowed. “The work, the rituals, the sacrifices—it was all worth it.”

The w
ork. The rituals. Th
e sacrifices.

Luna’s words tugged at the edges of Daphne’s visions, melting them together into one long loop.

Owen contr
olling fire.

The ear
th opening.

A pillar
of flames.

A green-
eyed figure falling
into the chasm.

A kn
ife plunged deep int
o Jim’s chest.

Jim m
orphing into Owen be
fore her eyes.

Owen
controlling fire.

God wanted something from her, something she’d been unwilling to see before. He wanted more than her belief and devotion, more than praise and worship. And now, finally, she knew what she needed to sacrifice.

Dropping into a low crouch, Daphne gathered her strength, letting it pump through her veins and fill her muscles. She ran full-tilt at the Children of the Earth, lunging at Luna and tackling her to the ground.

They fell in a twisted ball of black and red and gold and flesh, Daphne’s weight pinning Luna to the ground. Red glass beads and sandpapery dreadlocks slapped Daphne’s face as Luna whipped her head from side to side, struggling to flee the iron of Daphne’s grasp. Even with Luna immobilized on the grass, Daphne could feel the power in her sinewy arms. She sensed Luna trying to summon her powers and clasped a hand down over Luna’s throat, blocking the first pale glow of her blue light.

“Help!” Luna cried. “Get her off of me!”

The Children of the Earth started toward them.

“Where is it?” Daphne muttered, feeling behind her, blindly running a hand up and down Luna’s kicking legs. She knew she’d seen it when Luna’s cloak fell open, the glint of something hard and deadly strapped to her thigh.

The Children of the Earth charged her, rage brewing in their eyes. She felt something cold and metal brush her fingertips just as Kimo’s spidery fingers were about to close around her neck . . .

But suddenly they stopped. She looked up and saw that Kimo’s fingers were locked in place in midair, his face contorted into a scowl. The rest of the Children of the Earth stood immobile behind him, suspended in a freeze-frame tableau.

Confusion clouded Luna’s eyes. Something had stopped the Children of the Earth from grabbing her—some force greater than all of theirs combined.

It was Owen. Standing off to the side, he held his brothers and sisters steady with the fierce concentration of his gaze. He was using his powers on them, preventing them from taking another step. And he was doing it for Daphne.

“No!” Luna cried, thrashing her body like a scorpion’s tail. She grabbed a chunk of Daphne’s hair and yanked, sending rockets of pain through Daphne’s scalp just as she managed to yank the dagger free and hold it above her head.

The blade glimmered inches from Luna’s chest, winking at her, the same blade with which she’d drawn the blood of her sacrifices, marking them so the gods would recognize them as an offering.

Slowly, she uncurled her fist from Daphne’s hair. For the first time, Daphne saw fear flash across her face.

“You won’t do it,” Luna snarled. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Daphne looked down at her, marveling at the destruction Luna had caused, the lives she had taken. All that misery and death from one girl, no older or bigger or stronger than Daphne herself.

“You deserve to die,” Daphne said quietly, watching terror settle over Luna’s features, making her lip tremble. Prone on the ground beneath Daphne’s weight she looked suddenly vulnerable, like the lost little girl she must have been long ago.

Daphne shook her head, unable to go on. “But you were just doing what you thought was right,” she sighed.

Luna nodded, a single tear leaking down her cheek. “It’s what he wanted,” she whispered. She nodded at the God of the Earth, who was stalking furiously up and down the church lawn, scorching wounded parishioners as they tried to crawl to the parking lot.

“Just because someone else wants it doesn’t mean it’s right.” Daphne reared back and brought her fist down hard on Luna’s face, the flesh connecting in a satisfying smack as blood sloshed from Luna’s nose. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and Daphne used that moment to shove a knee hard into her stomach, knocking the air out of her so that she fell back, limp and gasping. “Even if that someone is a God.”

Luna’s eyes fluttered shut, and her breathing slowed. She was out cold.

Daphne turned and wiped the sweat from her brow, the knife still glinting in her hand. Now came the hard part: following her visions through to the end, letting God know that she’d pieced them together and recognized their message. She understood, finally, what God had been trying to tell her––and she understood, finally, what He wanted.

She understood the fear that had gripped her when she saw Owen huge as the hills, controlling fire. It was because God wanted her to be afraid.

She understood why she’d seen the earth open in a great chasm and release a pillar of flames, why she’d predicted being trapped on the wrong side of the fissure with the Children of the Earth. It was because God wanted her to know when.

She understood why He'd made her relive the awful night when she took Jim’s life, only to have her stepfather’s face melt into Owen’s once she plunged the knife into his heart. It was God telling her what to do.

She felt the knife in her hand, heavy as time, swift as sorrow. Now she just needed the courage to use it.

31

OWEN RELEASED HIS CONTROL OV
ER
the Children of the Earth and watched Daphne stand slowly, the dagger clasped in her palm. His brothers and sisters rushed to Luna’s side, circling her frantically as they glared at him, the pain of his betrayal hardening their faces

“What did you do to her?” Kimo shrieked. Freya took Luna’s hand as Abilene fanned her face and Aura ripped a section from her white skirt to staunch the blood from Luna’s nose.

Daphne turned her back on them. She found Owen still standing apart from the others at the edge of the chasm, silently watching the scene unfold.

A hot breeze whipped his hair, and his shirt was scorched to rags, his skin slick with sweat and oil from the roiling river inside the canyon. Behind him, across the crevasse and through a thick haze of smoke, Uncle Floyd hustled Karen and the remaining Children of God into church vans. He climbed in after them and the vans screeched away, doors gaping open to reveal the sobbing survivors crammed inside.

Owen noted the dagger as Daphne approached, but he didn’t run—didn’t even flinch. He stood tall as the church blazed behind him and the God of the Earth pitched his head backward, emitting a roar that shook the mountains.

She stopped just inches from him, close enough to touch.

“You held them off.” She nodded at the Children of the Earth. “Why?”

Owen’s eyes never left hers. “I don’t want this any more than you do. I thought if you could get to Luna, maybe you could stop it.”

The sound of his voice stunned her. It felt like she hadn’t heard it in a lifetime.

“I
can
stop it,” she said quietly. Her throat, already parched from heat and fear, closed around her next words. Her body wanted to stop her from saying what she had to say next.

The world seemed to fall away around them, screams fading into silence, the flaming skies disappearing until everything was a pure, waiting white.

“I know what God wants now. I figured out what the visions were trying to say.” Tears welled in her eyes, and her next words were a half whisper. “He wants a sacrifice.”

Owen nodded silently. Beneath the glow of his eyes she saw someone broken, defeated, confused, and sorry. Remembering all of their days and nights together, for a second she let herself feel that thick bubble of love that filled her chest whenever they touched, that felt so huge inside her that she thought the world was too small to contain it.

“He wants you.”

Owen looked around at the fire, the destruction, the terror, the sadness. “Will it stop all this?”

She nodded miserably, biting her lip. “I think so. It’s what God’s been trying to tell me all along. I just didn’t want to hear it.”

Owen sucked in his breath, his face wrenched with sadness, and pulled her into his chest, the butt of the dagger knocking him on the thigh. “I’m sorry I left you.” He could barely choke out the words. “I didn’t realize how wrong it all was until Janie was dead, and then it was too late. That day at the rig, with the fire, I tried to keep it away. To protect Janie’s body . . . to protect you and your family.”

Daphne let herself cry against his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of motor oil and earth. Finally, she collected herself, taking a step back from him. “I didn’t listen to my visions because they painted you as evil. And I
know
in my heart you’re not.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I always knew. Nobody is all good or all evil. Even Luna. We’re all just human, muddling along, trying to do what’s right.”

A thundering bellow forced their eyes away from each other, toward the God of the Earth. He was coming for them, his footsteps like miniature earthquakes shuddering the ground. His mouth opened, revealing rows of black teeth sharp as swords. Plumes of flame shot from his nostrils.

Owen turned to her, urgency glowing in his eyes. “Do what you have to do—whatever it takes to make this stop. And know that no matter what, I love you.”

She couldn’t answer him with words. Her heart was too full, too heavy, too close to cracking in two like the ground they stood on.

Instead, she leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips burned with all the words they would never get to say, all the kisses they would never get to share, all the smiles they would never exchange—a future cut short by a pair of mad and vengeful gods and the zealots who followed them blindly into a battle that had no point and no meaning.

Owen’s arms went around her, pulling her close as they poured their love into one another, letting it buoy them above the charred remains of Carbon County one last time.

When they finally let go, their faces were wet with tears.

Owen took a step back. He stood at the very edge of the yawning chasm, the dark river spewing oily geysers below him. Daphne took one last look at him, drinking in his features, the face she loved so dearly and would always hold close.

He smiled once—the same cocky half smile that had sent her heart skittering across a gas station parking lot when they first met, a smile that seemed to say that no matter what happened, he’d come out on top. Then she brought the knife down hard.

He stumbled back, his gaze never leaving hers. His arms cartwheeled, and the green of his eyes illuminated the entire sky before dying out entirely, leaving nothing but clear emerald irises shining with the innocence of a newborn. The river of oil melted away, and he fell into the crack in the earth, his body spiraling down and down and down until it was just a speck against the endlessness, a mirror image of the vision that had brought her to her knees. Far below she heard screeching wails and a gnashing, dribbling, lip-smacking hiss. Then the fissure began to shrink, the plates below them cracking thunderously as its walls pulled into each other. Soon it was the width of a highway, then a dirt road, then the dried-up creek bed behind the Peytons’ trailer. Finally, it was no larger than a crack in the sidewalk.

Luna came to and howled, racing to the crack and flinging herself to the ground beside it, sobbing Owen’s name. When she looked up at Daphne, her eyes were damp and smudged with makeup, her nose swollen and bleeding.

“What did you
do
?” she cried.

Daphne looked from Luna to the dagger in her hand. The blade was clean, she realized: Not a single drop of blood marred its glittering surface. But Owen was gone, and her heart felt like it was made of cement.

“I listened,” she replied, wiping angry tears from her eyes.

The God of the Earth spun to face them. A blinding glow of anguish crossed his face, the scenes of destruction that danced in his eyes melting and blurring until they were nothing but static.

The pulsing molten flames of his body began to fade like a campfire going out after a long night. His skin dulled to the glow of embers dying beneath the pearly glimmer of dawn, and beneath the dwindling glare of his fiery skin Daphne saw that he was made of old twigs and chunks of mud, fossilized rocks and decaying animals and rotting pieces of wood.

The last bits of heat consumed these as well. Within moments he was nothing more than used charcoal, a towering mass of ashy gray.

Then the wind picked up, and he turned to dust, scattering across the lawn, landing on Luna’s face and mingling with her tears until her cheeks were caked with soot.

Like an army of angels, dark storm clouds unfurled over the mountains, settling above the demolished church and blotting out the scorched red sky. They opened over the still-burning lawn, releasing torrents of cool, sweet rain that staunched the flames and put out the grass fires. Daphne stood with her arms spread wide and her face open to the sky, letting the rain wash the dirt and sweat from her face and intertwine with her tears. Within moments the raging field of fire that had been the churchyard was an expanse of mud, cool to the touch and squelching under her feet, twisted through with burbling streams that spoke of rejuvenation and renewal, the chance to forget and forgive and start again.