Embers & Echoes (36 page)
Her half-opened eyes fell on Ash. “Didn’t I tell you that you were all takers?” she whispered, every few words interrupted by the moat water she was still choking on. “First you took thirty years from my life . . . and now you’ve taken the rest.”
Lily’s final breath expired as a wet wheeze, and her eyes closed for the last time.
When she was sure Lily was gone, Ash paddled to the edge of the moat and crawled out. It was as much a relief to be back on dry land as it was to breathe fresh air again. There, she lay in a bed of flowers, trembling, until the drowning sensation had passed and she was well enough to climb to her feet.
Ash plucked one of the flowers in the bed around her and held it up to the moonlight. She recognized it—a black calla lily, a beautiful flute-shaped flower with dark petals.
She dropped it over the edge of the moat onto Lily’s chest, which seemed like a fitting tribute.
After all, like the blossom goddess, the black calla was a lily with a dark heart.
Ash hiked her way up the stairs to the Mound. She felt sore. She felt haggard. She was physically and emotionally exhausted.
It was time for all of this to end.
The search for her sister.
Colt’s schemes that he sucked everyone around him into.
The Four Seasons and their morbid quest for followers.
The rescue missions to save her friends from danger.
The loss of friends she couldn’t reach in time.
The chasing.
The fighting.
The lying.
The dying.
At the top of the stairs, Lily’s twisted landscaping had transformed the Mound into its own cathedral. The mangrove trees around either side had extended their branches up, up, and over, until they braided and twisted together above to form a high vaulted ceiling. On the ground level six rows of shrubs had blossomed out of the ground to either side of a center aisle to form pews.
At the front of the church, a thick knobby altar had been erected. Wes lay on top of it, immobile thanks to the IV tower pumping sedative into his veins. Thorne stood beside the altar, frozen. This was the first time Ash had seen Thorne looking unsure of himself—petrified, even. A cigar smoked faintly from between his lips. He had his hand on something beneath him, out of sight.
When Ash stepped closer to the altar, she could see at last over the front pew.
Ash had to stop walking. Her stomach rolled up tight like a window shade.
It’s her
, Ash thought.
She could be a ghost.
Thorne rested his hand on little Rose Wilde’s shoulder.
As Ash approached, Thorne’s fingers curled around the little girl’s collarbone like an eagle clutching a rodent in his talons.
It was so strange for Ash to finally see the girl—her own sister—in the flesh and not in some freakish vision of death and destruction. Rose wore a lacy white dress that hung unflatteringly over her body. If it were at all possible, she’d
lost
weight since her time half-starving in the Central American jungle. Despite her frail thinness, Ash now saw the uncanny resemblance she bore to pictures of Eve and Ash when they were in grammar school.
If Thorne’s hold on her shoulder was painful, Rose didn’t show it. She peered unblinkingly at the new arrival with her wonder-glazed brown eyes. Perhaps she thought she was seeing herself ten years into the future.
“So,” Thorne said. He puffed on his cigar. His hand shook when he plucked the cigar out of his mouth. “The other Seasons have fallen, and now only Fall remains.”
“The only fall remaining,” Ash said, “is the one I’m going to help you take right off a cliff. Give me back my sister. Give me back my boyfriend. And go fly a kite someplace windy where I’ll never see you again.” Thorne was silent, so Ash added, “I can give you the name of a couple of deserts where you could start.”
“I will have,” Thorne said, articulating each word slowly, “my sacrifice.”
“I just gave you one,” Ash said. “She’s floating in a bed of wet leaves and lily pads. I’m a short fuse away
from dropping you in there with her. The pair of you will make a great compost pile.”
“Better a compost pile than a weeping willow.” Thorne brought his cigar up to take another drag.
Ash focused on the embers at the end of his cigar. The cigar exploded in a cloud of tobacco and ashes. Thorne screamed.
When the cloud cleared, Thorne was quivering with his teeth bared. His face was blackened with soot. “Fine,” Thorne said. He glanced at the camera behind the altar. “I was going to save this finale for your night god lover, but you just earned your spot as my ultimate sacrifice.” Thorne crouched beside Rose. He moved the hair away from her ear and whispered just loud enough for Ash to hear: “Do you remember what you did to that ship after we rescued you from the jungle? Do you? Well, I want you to do something even
worse
to this bad lady.” Just so Ash was clear, he turned and mouthed the word “boom” to her.
Rose’s eyes narrowed. The edges of her eyes grew red in a fiery corona.
Ash felt a queasy, sinking sensation in the bottom of her stomach. Was this how it was going to end after all she had survived? A gory, explosive death at the merciless hands of a six-year-old girl? Her own sister, her own blood?
Thorne grew impatient. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “This bad woman wants to take you back to
the jungle. To take you away from me!” Thorne shook her by the shoulders. “Do you want to go back there and live like an animal?
Then do as I say
.”
Rose turned her head to face the wind god who was ranting into her ear. Her nose wrinkled as though she smelled something foul. Her eyebrows caved downward into an angry V.
“Run,” Rose said.
“What?” Thorne barked. “I don’t want her to run. I want her to
die
.”
“No,” Rose corrected him. “
You
.
You
run.”
Thorne’s mouth opened. He looked back and forth between the two Wilde sisters. Ash watched Thorne’s bravado quickly fall away. No more arrogance, no more megalomania, no more speeches about convoluted religions or a new world order—just sheer, liquid terror dripping off him like an ice cube under the Mojave sun.
Then he fled. Ash stuck out her leg as he passed, and he tripped and flailed, but righted himself long enough to plow his way out of the back of the chapel.
Rose waited until he was a good ten seconds away from the Mound. She smiled. And in the voice more of a demon than a child, she rasped to the unseen Thorne,
“I found you.”
A not-too-distant “Nooooooo!” echoed out of the gardens beyond. The long wail was overpowered and clipped short by the sound of a thunderous explosion. Through the branches that formed the roof of the chapel, the sky flashed red.
Silence.
Ash turned back around, expecting Rose to show some sign of anger or contempt for the man she’d just disintegrated. Instead the little girl had dropped into a sitting position on the ground. She was tugging absentmindedly on a stray branch from the nearest pew, like she’d forgotten all about Thorne already.
Ash shivered and stepped over to the altar where Wes lay. She pulled the IV out of his arm. His breaths were shallow, and when she pressed her head to his chest, she could hear that his heart beat slowly. Still, he did not stir. She would just have to wait patiently for the sedative to wear off.
Well, she realized, maybe there
was
something she could do to accelerate the process. She extended her hands to the roof overhead and let her makeshift flamethrowers consume the mangrove branches in fire. Gradually the hole in the ceiling widened like an opening eye. She tried not to take too much pleasure in destroying Lily’s final villainous creation, this perverse cathedral of pain and suffering.
When Ash had finished, the moonlight streamed through the new skylight in the ceiling down onto Wes’s altar. He trembled under the light, and his eyes shot open. They were black to the corners. Whatever power he drew from the night coursed through his veins, ushering the sedative out of his system.
Ash couldn’t help but remember the night of the
Blackwood Academy masquerade ball—it was barely more than a month ago—sitting next to Colt as he stirred from unconsciousness. Only, then it was Colt who’d had the bag of secrets.
This time Ash was the one with the dark skeletons in her cupboard.
This time Ash was the one saddled with the decision whether or not she should tell Wes the truth.
Tell him that she’d murdered him in the last life.
That she’d
enjoyed
murdering him.
Could their fledgling love survive all the baggage from their previous life?
And more important, could their love survive the baggage from the last
week
?
Wes interrupted her thought process from careening any further into dark territory. He groaned and stretched his arms way over his head. “This is going to make for one punishing hangover,” he said in a groggy voice.
Ash laughed. “Don’t be such a baby. A couple of Advil and a few minutes basking in the moonlight, and you’ll be fine.” She couldn’t help herself—she leaned in and kissed him.
When the kiss ended, Wes’s eyes dipped to look at her lips. “Or maybe I just need a few more of those.” Then his eyes tracked to the empty spot next to Ash where Aurora might have been standing if she were still alive. The romance of the moment derailed in a fiery wreck.
Wes climbed down onto the Mound floor. He took
in the pews, the partially destroyed ceiling, the altar he’d been lying on. “I guess I found religion,” he said.
“That’s not all we found.” Ash stepped to the side so he could see little Rose, who was now tottering and walking up and down a pew bench as though she were a tightrope walker.
Wes let out a long breath. “And now it gets interesting.”
With the explosion that had killed Thorne, Ash knew it wouldn’t be long before the Villa Vizcaya gardens became a crime scene too. She walked over to the pew where Rose was playing. There was so much to say to her, and Ash had none of the words to explain things. She held out her hand and smiled. “Come on, Rose,” she said. “It’s time to go.”
Rose didn’t even hesitate. She grabbed Ash’s hand and hopped down off the bench. For the time being at least, it seemed that this little child really
was
a child. For now. “Where are we going?” Rose asked.
The question startled Ash for some reason—in part because she wasn’t fully sure she knew the answer to it. She started to say, “I’m going to take you . . .”
But the funny thing about the word “home” is that sometimes it’s too big and complex for even a sixteen-year-old to fully understand.
And sometimes the word “home” is too small to fill the spaces left behind by the people who have gone.
One blast of fire from you sends the girl in
the monk’s robe crashing through the front door of the cathedral.
The old wooden doors buckle and splinter, but the girl just keeps on going. She rolls across the dusty road like a tumbleweed in a hurricane. The motion throws back her hood, revealing her Polynesian face, which is quickly bruising from where you blindsided her with your fist.
It’s been years since you last saw Violet, but she looks more like you than ever.
She is
nothing
like you.
Violet takes off into the massive palm grove beyond the steeple. You’re hot on her trail as you chase her into the forest. From your childhood days on the farm, and the bank heist getaways in the years that followed, you know that Violet has always been slightly faster on foot than you.
But you’re the one with the endurance.
The rain picks up, a cold drizzle at first. The clouds roll over the sky like a train coming into the station. By the time you reach the tree line, the rain sweeps over the forest in heavy, pulsing curtains. The palm fronds form natural gutters that pour water onto your head.
It has taken you five years, four continents, and tens of thousands of miles to find your treacherous sister.
You’re not about to let a little bit of rain stand between you and your revenge.
Ahead Violet darts rapidly between the trees, but you can see her growing weary already, her running form faltering, the way her legs look unsteady with every footstep in the watery grass.
You’re so focused on Violet’s feet and closing the distance that you lose your own footing in a deep puddle. You splash down to one knee. You’re quick to get up, but by the time you regain your balance, the damage is done—Violet is out of sight, hidden somewhere among the trees.
You walk cautiously now. The cold rain washes clean any heat trails Violet might have left through the grove. The persistent white noise of the rainfall against the fronds and grass means you have to listen even more carefully for the sounds of any wet footsteps. The sky grows darker by the second as the pregnant clouds amass overhead. The temperature, too, is falling.
As if cold rain could stop your fire.
The lightning bolt hits you in the chest as Violet springs
out from behind a tree. But the electricity pulsing from your sister’s fingertips stuns you only briefly, and once you’ve pushed through the pain, you emerge in a rage on the other side. The fire blossoms out of your hand and strikes Violet in the chest of her monk’s robe. She slams headfirst into a palm tree behind her, and drops to the ground, still. A barrage of dates rains down around her like marbles.
You drag Violet by her legs through the muddy grass. She moans something you can’t understand. With her only half-conscious, the rain dies to a steady trickle.
Nearby a post has been planted into the ground to support a small palm that’s much shorter than the others. Even with the support of the post, it looks sickly and twisted, starved of sunlight by all the taller palms around it.
You make quick work of tying Violet to the opposite side of the post. By the time you’re finished, she looks just like the scarecrows the two of you condemned in the fields of Maine. Just like those scarecrows, she’ll get the kind of quick trial she deserves.