Perennial (24 page)

They know what they’re doing. They want the floor to collapse and take me with it.

Breathless, I stand and run toward the staircase. I’m three feet away when the seven Arunas explode into a massive fireball. Flames lick the back of my hair and seem to melt my skin. A loud snapping sound joins the roar of the fire. I feel the floor collapsing beneath me, so I scream and leap toward the stairs.

My hands grasp the weak base of the stair rail as the fifth floor crashes to the ground level with a deafening sound. I’m hanging on for my life to a loose vertical pole of the rail, my legs dangling in empty space beneath me. The whole section of rail is dangerously close to breaking away from the stairs, but I manage to pull myself up and wrap my arms around the pole long enough to raise my legs and roll to safety beneath the bottom opening of the rail.

Furious and in great pain, I stand and dust myself off, wiping demon ooze and my own blood from my face and hair. A massive cloud of dust rises from the crash that just occurred on the ground floor, but the silence is welcome after the demonic Arunas’ wailing laughter.

That’s when I hear William outside, yelling my name and asking if I’m okay.

“It’s all good, William,” I shout. “I’m coming out.”

I cautiously navigate the fragile stairs down to the ground floor and make my way around a small mountain of fresh rubble. Approaching the main entrance, the smell of freshly burned demon energy taints the air, and I ask myself if I just earned one Fire or seven by eliminating the Arunas.

I guess I’ll have to ask Roman and London about that the next time I see them.

Despite the overcast early afternoon sky, I have to shield my eyes as I leave the tower and hit the natural light. William runs over to me from the Yukon. We share a long hug and even longer kiss.

“Are you okay?” He looks me over. “I was worried sick when I heard that sound. What happened?”

I tell him exactly what happened.

“You’re bleeding and covered in dust.” He runs his fingertips over the cut on the side of my head and shows me the blood. “That gash looks pretty nasty.”

“I’ll live.” I turn toward the tower. The dust from the collapsed floor is just settling, but remnants of grayish-white material drifts out from openings on the first few floors like smoke from chimneys. “All traces of the battles in my house vanished the moment I won the fights, but it’s different out here.” Intense pain ripples through my head wound, and I’m sore all over from the jumping and falling. “I think it has something to do with the underground portal. I don’t think I can heal when I’m on Fire ground.”

William looks me over from head to toe like a worried parent inspecting a child for injuries. “How do you feel right now?”

“Not great,” I confess. “I don’t think I can stay here much longer.” I scan Oval City. The whole place remains eerily silent and deserted. “People must have heard that floor collapse at least a half mile away.” I shake my head and try to make sense of it all. “I don’t think we have much time. Somebody might have already called the police.” I cough and wince from a sharp pain in my ribs. “Where is he, William? Where’s Face?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Let’s go.” I head toward the Yukon. “Maybe we need to try the next tower.”

We’re stepping onto Brewster Loop and approaching the SUV when we hear distant crying. It’s faint and barely audible, but it stops us in our tracks. William and I glance at each other, turn toward the tower and see a sight nobody should see.

Aruna—the
real
Aruna—stands at the edge of the tower roof fourteen stories above, arms limp at her sides as she stares down at the hard ground she’s about to end her sad life on. I see it in my head before it happens, and it all connects with the vision of her death I had when we first met behind Zeppelin Coffee.

“Aruna!” William says. “Oh my God. Aruna, no!”

“William!” I grab his arm and manage to prevent him from running toward the tower. “It’s too late. Don’t look!”

Aruna’s distant and pained voice: “I’ve always loved you, William. I’m so sorry I lost it.”

Aruna jumps. I turn away and move in front of William, who closes his eyes, drops to his knees, and screams as I wrap him in my arms. Moments later, a dull thump behind me confirms that it’s over. Aruna is dead.

“Not yet,” William says as if reading my mind. “She’s not dead yet.”

He gets to his feet and bolts. I follow him as he races toward her, Aruna a small, wrecked heap lying a short distance from the entrance to the tower.

It’s hard to look at her. Aruna’s frail body is twisted into impossible angles, arms and legs in places they shouldn’t be, her pelvis pushed way too far to one side. Blood trickles from her mouth, ears, and nose. Her eyes are open and gazing skyward as if taking one final look at the roof she stood on seconds ago.

William kneels over her. I stand beside him and try not to look directly at Aruna as she takes her final breaths in this world.

“You…came…back,” she whispers, shifting her eyes to William’s. “How?”

“Shh,” he says. “Why’d you jump Aruna? Why?”

She closes her eyes and swallows. “Face,” she says through a mouth full of liquid. I notice her right hand ball into a weak fist. Then she extends her index finger as if pointing at something out on Brewster Loop. “Face.” She closes her eyes.

William and I exchange looks. Aruna opens her eyes again.

William says to her, “What did you lose? You said you lost something.”

There’s a silence during which the last smile of Aruna’s life crosses her face. “Your…baby,” she whispers, sending my stomach to my feet. “
Our
baby.”

“Oh God.” William rubs his eyes and looks at me. “I didn’t know, Alix. I never knew.” He lays a palm on Aruna’s forehead. “How did you lose it? Our baby. What happened?”

She closes her eyes and swallows. “Right after you…died…Face…beat me…bad…lost…the baby.”

Warm tears stream down my cheeks. I kneel and join William.

“We’re here to stop him, Aruna. I’m so sorry. Do you know where Face is?”

Aruna struggles to whisper, “He’s…every…where, Alix…everywhere…Face…is…Sometimes things…looking…for…in…front…of…you.”

She manages one deep inhale, and then she’s gone.

“No!” William says again, standing and turning away from Aruna’s corpse. “I never knew. I
never knew
!” In tears, he bends forward, with his hands on his knees. “I can’t do this anymore. I never should’ve made the deal. They tricked me, Alix. I need to get out of here.”

I stand, thinking about Aruna’s final words as William and I share a long hug and he cries into my shoulder. I feel awful for both of them, but her last fragmented sentence won’t leave my mind.

“…Sometimes things…looking…for…in…front…of…you.”

Sometimes things you’re looking for are right in front of you.

Was she warning me about William?

I squeeze him close and focus on getting another reading on him. It happens, but all I get are random images of white light and intense fire. Light. Fire. Light. Fire. On and on—a continuous loop of fire and light. William is a good person who died a wrongful death. That explains his light. He’s good at heart. As for the fire, all I can do is write it off to the stupid deal he made with Fire that allowed him to cross over to be with me.

“I didn’t expect this,” he says, ending our embrace. “We need to take care of her, Alix. We need to cover her or hide her or something. We can’t just leave her here for everybody to see. It’s not right.”

He brushes past me on his way to the Yukon. Part of me expects him to drive off and leave me on my own, but that’s not what he does. Instead he hops into the backseat and comes out carrying the blanket we spent four memorable hours together on. I say nothing as William passes me and gently places the blanket over Aruna’s body. He kneels beside her again and looks as if he’s praying. I’ve experienced the awful emotional pain of losing somebody you love, and although William might have long ago lost the romantic love he had for Aruna, I realize that at this moment he’s grieving for the mother of his unborn child and the unborn child itself, a child William never knew about until today.

Poor William! I’m surprised he’s holding himself together at all. Gut-wrenching grief and anger overwhelm me as I watch the heartbreaking scene play out in front of me. Why does life have to involve such tragedy?

Face killed Mr. Watkins, William, Aruna, and Aruna’s
baby
. The ultimate unfairness is that Face can’t die. He’s a demon. All I can do is destroy his portal and send his evil ass back to the Fire world, meaning Face needs to go back to hell before he kills more humans.

He needs to go back now.

“William, wait.” I walk toward him and take a knee beside him, remembering something that didn’t seem like anything at the time but might be important now. “Show me her right hand.”

“What are you talking about? She’s dead, Alix. Why do you need to see her hand?”

“You couldn’t see it, but I did. She made a fist and pointed. I figured she was pointing at me, but maybe she was trying to tell us something.” I pause. “Or show us something.”

William gives me a reluctant nod and carefully slides the blanket back just enough to see Aruna’s pale, bony hand, still balled into a fist, her frail index finger outstretched toward me.

“It was probably some involuntary action,” William says, lowering the blanket back over her.

I reach under the blanket and grab Aruna’s cold, lifeless hand.

“Stop!” William says. “What are you doing?”

“Just one second.”

I close my eyes and squeeze her fingers. White light floods my field of vision. Then I see an image of an iron circle with the word “Detroit” arcing across the top of it. The white light flares and disappears, leaving me breathless and staring at the blanket.

“That doesn’t make sense.” I release Aruna’s hand and stand, hands on my hips as I turn and study the Yukon.

“What did you see?”

“I don’t know, but we’re so close, William. It’s like I can smell Face.”

William lifts Aruna’s blanket-covered body in his muscular arms, a distraught look on his face as he cradles her and walks toward Brewster Loop.

“I’m sorry.” I lay a hand on his shoulder and walk beside him. “We’ll put her in the back of the Yukon and get her to the hospital as soon as possible.”

William nods. Then I hustle ahead to the SUV, open the unlocked hatch, and raise the lift.

“It’s just not fair,” William says, laying Aruna’s body softly into the back of the vehicle and adjusting the blanket so that she’s completely covered. “I never expected anything like this.”

“I know.”

He closes the lift door and turns toward me. We share another long hug. Then I turn and walk toward the middle of the street to think.

I see it the moment my eyes meet the road beneath me. It’s an old iron manhole cover with the word “Detroit” arcing across the top, the exact one I saw in my head when I held Aruna’s dead hand. This is what she was pointing at.

Sometimes things you’re looking for are right in front of you.

“I’m glad you’re strong, William.” I turn to meet his gaze and place a foot firmly on the manhole cover. “Lock the Yukon. I just found the portal.”

William spots the iron manhole cover and nods. Then he grabs the keys from the front seat and closes the door. The Yukon locks with a high-pitched chirp as he jogs over to help me.

It takes a couple of tries and several grunts, but we manage to team-lift the insanely heavy manhole cover and drop it onto the road. It makes a loud metal clang that vibrates through our feet. We kneel and stare down a narrow, dark shaft that looks like a gateway to hell.

For all I know, that might be what it is.

Rats. I hate rats more than Indiana Jones hates snakes. After climbing at least fifty feet down an old, rusty iron ladder hugging the side of the dark shaft, I drop the five feet from the last rung to the concrete floor of a warm, stinky, hallway-like space, where no fewer than two dozen brown rats emit awful high-pitched screeches as they scatter down the hall before disappearing into blackness. My skin crawls at the sight of the filthy rodents.

William jumps down from the ladder right after me and surveys our new surroundings.

“It’s dark,” he says.

“And dank and dirty and pungent and hellishly hot and at least ten other adjectives I could throw in.” I scrunch my nose and wipe sweat from my brow. “This doesn’t look like a sewer.” I inspect the cinder-block walls and the exposed, leaky pipes and old wiring above us. “It’s like some sort of maintenance tunnel. Maybe it connects to all the towers.”

I look in both directions, but it’s too dark to see either end of the hallway.

“Working phones would come in handy right now,” William says.

“Agreed,” I say. “Listen, I know you can’t help me down here, but if you see any rats, feel free to kill them, because I hate rats, William. I’ll take a fight with a demon over one with a rat any day of the week.”

“Deal.”

Blade begins moving against the small of my back like a vibrating phone. I reach for the knife. The handle seals into my palm and urges me forward in the direction the rats went.

“This way,” I say, moving quickly but groaning at the thought of more rats. “Stay close.”

“How do you know the way?”

“I don’t. The knife does.”

Walking down the hallway, I hear countless rats heckling us with their disgusting sounds, but I don’t actually see or feel any of the horrific animals. We travel maybe a hundred feet before coming across a pair of closed metal doors to our right. The darkness is nearly pitch-black, but a thin band of faint light shows in the narrow gap between the doors and the floor.

William hasn’t said a word since asking me how I knew the way, so I reach back to make sure he’s still with me. He is.

I place my palm on the door.

“Ouch!” I yank my hand away and rub my sizzling palm against my thigh. “These doors are boiling.”

“Listen to me, Alix,” William whispers, sounding scared and nervous. “You need to be very careful from this point forward. Do you understand me?”

“What are you talking about?” He doesn’t answer. “Do you know this place?”

“Yes,” he says. “I couldn’t tell you about it, but now I can because you’ve found it on your own. Be careful, okay?”

“Is it the portal?” I ask. His nod confirms it. “Are you coming in?”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.” He stares at his feet. “Open the doors.”

Something’s not right with William. I sense a strong wave of regret coming from him, but maybe I’m simply picking up on how devastated he is about Aruna.

Despite the intense heat coming from behind the doors, Blade wants me to enter the room. When it comes down to it, I
have
to trust Blade, but it crosses my mind that Face originally had the knife, which means it’s possible Blade is leading me right where Face wants me.

Face is everywhere.

Perennial is all around you.

Oh God. What if I’ve been Face’s puppet all along?

After a few deep breaths, I pull open the double doors and enter a space the size of a high school classroom. The concrete floor is full of small, lighted candles. Hundreds of yellowish blue flames dance several inches above the floor like a swarm of nighttime summer insects. A dark, narrow path leads down the center of the room and ends at the rear wall.

The doors close with two dull clicks. I turn to see William gazing over my shoulder.

“This is where I’ve been staying, Alix. I’m so sorry, but it was part of the deal. Please believe me that I love you. I never knew Face would do that to Aruna, and I never knew about my…child.” His brilliant eyes widen with fear. “Here he comes.”

I feel increased heat pounding against the back of my neck. When I turn around, a large circular section in the middle of the wall at the end of the path begins slowly moving in a clockwise direction. Blade retreats for the first time, forcing me to take a few steps backwards until I’m nearly pressing against William by the doors.

The rotating circle is the size of a merry-go-round. It spins faster by the second, until it becomes a blur of bright red violently shaking the floor beneath us. The sound is awful, like having one hundred jet engines blasting in your ears, but what scares me most is that I have little power down here. I felt my abilities weakening in the tower, and my energy level has suddenly diminished to almost zero.

At first I figure it’s the power of the active portal pounding me down to nothing, but then, as the bright red fades to the same disturbing shade I saw in the demonic eyes of the Heater and Crawler, a realization sends my terror levels skyrocketing: Face
is
everywhere and has been since this began. Face
was
the cat-beast Brawler in my living room. Face
was
the Heater in my bedroom. Face
was
the Crawler in my father’s office. And Face
was
the seven Arunas I just destroyed. It’s not that Face was too afraid to battle me on his own, as I originally thought. No. He’s been battling me on his own the entire time, shape-shifting and testing the extent of my abilities with each fight. Face knows my powers as well as I do, and I’ve been stupid enough to think I could simply waltz on down to Oval City and destroy a leader demon that’s been at this game far longer than I have.

Orange fire bursts from the wide circle and nearly reaches my face. The flames quickly disappear. An eerie silence follows during which a tall, wide, hooded figure in a black robe emerges out of nowhere from the now blackened and charred circular hole in the wall. People can call him Face or any other name they want, but the only word that describes what I’m seeing and feeling is “evil.” Pure evil. I have no choice but to play his game. Face knows this. He can read my thoughts just as I can sometimes read his.

The black hood conceals his actual face. His chin lowers toward his chest, Face inhaling and exhaling deeply, each rattling breath sounding like rocks slamming together inside his lungs. The smell of rotten flesh fills the air as he interlinks his gloved hands in front of his chest.

“Hello, Alix,” he says in the same low, gravelly voice he used before shape-shifting into the Crawler—a voice that will never fail to turn my skin to gooseflesh. “Nice to see you still have my knife. And you’ve learned to use it quite well. In fact, you’ve proven yourself worthy of keeping it…under the right conditions, of course.”

Blade continues pressing back at me, wanting me to get out of here. Even the knife is terrified of Face.

“If it’s
your
knife,” I say, trying but failing to sound confident, “then why is
my
name on it?”

“Ah, you deciphered the cuneiform.” He takes a few loud, troubling breaths. Each exhale sends a wave of garbage fumes my way. “Alix, you know I can do anything I want to you down here, don’t you?” I feel him reading me. “Good,” he continues. “You do realize that. So the question is, why are you still alive? Think about it. Why didn’t I simply finish choking you to death in your little Perennial mom dream last night? And why am I letting you live right now as opposed to breaking open your skull and sucking your brain right out of it?”

“Shut up, Face,” William says from behind me. “She doesn’t deserve that, and you know it.”

“Indeed,” Face says. “Perhaps you’re right, William. By the way, how’s Aruna?” His sinister laugh prickles my skin. “Look, I did you a favor, my boy. Can you imagine that poor, pathetic girl ever being a mother to anything?” He laughs again. “Get over here, you foolish idiot. I’m about through with you and our so-called deal.”

I turn sideways to allow William to pass. He gives me a desperate look and offers me his hand as he approaches. It’s nothing more than a brief, gentle squeeze, but the word cloud it delivers convinces me that no matter what happens, William really does love me, and he was somehow double-crossed by Face.

I glare at William, feigning anger and saying, “You told me you made a deal with Fire to be with me. You never said the deal was with Face.”

“Alix, he’s been lying to you for days,” Face says, laughing. “William
led
you to me. That was my requirement for letting him cross over without Vagabond knowing. Think about it. Would you have
ever
come to Oval City without William?” He shakes his head. “No. He’s been with you every step of the way. You let a ghost seduce you, and now here you are, powerless in my arena and about to give me what I want.”

There’s a silence during which I read his thoughts and realize how trapped I actually am.

“You want either me or the knife,” I say, trying to suppress a growing and genuine rage. “You want me to join Fire as a warrior and use the knife against Light. That’s why you’ve allowed me to live up until now. I’ve passed every one of your tests and never gave up the knife when you asked for it as the Brawler and the Crawler. I have no clue how the weapon came into your possession, but I’m committed to the knife because it was made for
me
. I’m even strong enough to fight off your precious little Perennial high.” I force a smile. “That one surprised you, I know. So what it comes down to now is that if I refuse to join Fire but try to keep the knife, you’ll kill me with ease. But you’ll let me walk away if I simply give up the knife, knowing that Vagabond and Light will have nothing to do with me if I voluntarily surrender the weapon to you.” I pause. “You’ve planned well, Face. It’s a win-win situation for you.”

“Precisely,” he says, all business now. “But first, aren’t you curious to know what William wanted as part of the crossing-over deal, because I assure you it had nothing to do with loving you.” He pauses. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is your little heart breaking for the first time, Alix? That’s so sad.” He places a gloved hand on William’s shoulder. “Tell her the truth for once, idiot.”

It’s at this point that Face’s massive size truly hits me. The demon is twice as wide as William and at least a foot taller. William looks like an elementary school student standing next to a large father wearing an all-too-real Halloween costume.

“I’m sorry, Alix,” William says. “Face is right. He let me cross over only if I agreed to lead you to him on his own Fire ground.”

“And what did he promise you in return?” I ask.

William closes his eyes and tries to message me, but I feel Face block it.

Then William opens his eyes and says, “I
hate
Vagabond, Alix. You know that. He thinks he’s better than everybody and everything.” He clears his throat. “Vagabond has used me as a pawn to test your abilities. I’m nothing but a dead, weak drug addict to him. All I wanted was some sort of active role in finding my killer, but he wouldn’t allow it. My murder is nothing more than an opportunity for him. He doesn’t care who killed me. He just wants to know if you can figure it out and get rid of Perennial, Oval City, and a demon as powerful as Face.”

“I’ll ask again, William,” I say, maintaining a hateful glare. “What did Face promise you in return?”

“He promised me…” He clears his throat again. “Face promised me that if I led you to him, he would accept me into the Army of Fire as a demon soldier so that I could help with its goal of destroying Vagabond. That’s how much I hate Vagabond, Alix. He had no right to use me like this.” William looks away, unable to hold my gaze. “Face never mentioned anything about killing my baby two years ago and making Aruna kill herself today, though. I would have never made the deal if I had known those things.”

“No,” I say, lowering my head and shaking it slowly. “There’s just no way, William.” I look up and meet his guilty eyes. “You don’t understand. Deep down Vagabond
wants
to help you find peace. Besides,
nobody
can destroy Vagabond, just like
nobody
can destroy Face. Don’t you at least understand that much about Fire and Light?”

“Oh come now, Alix,” Face says. “If William was stupid enough to make a deal with a demon, what makes you think he can possibly even begin to understand Fire and Light?” His deafening laughter fills me with dread. “I have to go soon, my dear. Have you made your decision yet?”

“Just one more question for William,” I say, staring hard at the beautiful ghost I refuse to give up on. “You
knew
Face murdered Mr. Watkins, and deep down you suspected Face murdered you because of the love you and Aruna shared at the time. So, William, how could you
possibly
make a deal with the demon who murdered you and Marc Watkins?”

Face unleashes his loudest laugh yet, his huge body hunching forward and shaking.

“Oh, Alix,” Face says. “You might be smart, but I’m afraid you’ve missed some important things along the way. Marc Watkins created something I wanted and needed in order to possess as many souls as possible, so I did what I had to do to get full control of Perennial. I
ordered
his death because he turned into a weak, paranoid snitch, but I didn’t do the deed. And yes, I did cause Aruna’s miscarriage two years ago, but Aruna made her own decision to jump from the tower today. I guess I might have driven her to it in some ways, but it’s not like I pushed her off or anything.” He laughs. “Most importantly, I assure you I had absolutely
nothing
to do with William’s murder. William Weed was my top dealer in Oval City for a long time.”

“Top
dealer
?” I say, now genuinely furious at William. “You said you were
addicted
to Perennial and got clean. You never told you me you were the top
dealer
. Why, William?”

He has no answer. All William can do is look at me with those guilty eyes and then stare at the ground.

“You see,” Face says. “More lies. But I respected William for getting clean. In fact, you and him are the only two people I’m aware of who have beaten Perennial after experiencing it. It never crossed my mind to eliminate William. The Perennial addiction and possession business stayed brisk after he left, and I knew he would never turn against me. He was too afraid of me to ever do anything that stupid.” He pauses and finally raises his head, but I still can’t see his face. “Somebody else killed William, Alix. It wasn’t me. You have my word.”