To James,
Who didn’t just stand up for me,
but taught me how to stand up for myself
“Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.”
– HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Chapter One
Let them burn. Let them all burn.
Ayaz jerked me back as flames poured from my fingers, dragging the fragments of my soul along with them. I clenched my teeth as heat burst from my body – a broken hydrant that couldn’t be turned off.
The fire aimed at the Deadmistress went wide, but the other hit Vincent Bloomberg square in the chest. He staggered across the stage as flames enveloped his torso. His scream was like poetry, like music – high and ravenous and beautiful. I reveled in the joy of his song.
Let him sing a whole fucking aria of pain.
“Vincent!” Damon Delacorte vaulted over the last row of chairs and launched himself at the stage. As Damon reached out to his friend, the flames tore along his arm, ripping through the expensive fabric of his suit and sending him reeling, howling, bawling – another voice in the choir of horror I now conducted.
“What have you done?” Ayaz tried to wrestle my arms behind my back, but I slammed my elbows down, breaking his grip. A little trick Dante taught me before I roasted him.
I planted both palms on Ayaz’s chest and shoved, spinning away from him as he floundered on the edge. Through the haze of my fury, I knew that I didn’t want him anywhere near me, that just to touch me might kill him.
“You’re only hurting those you care about, Hazel. Perhaps that is your destiny.” Ms. West stalked toward me. I whirled around and aimed both palms at her. From the well of hate inside me I drew up all the evil things she’d done, all the lives she destroyed in service to her god. I took the hate and twisted it until it burned molten hot, until it boiled in my veins and melted away my skin until it burst through my palms and flew straight at her.
She slammed her body to the ground, flattening herself against the stage. The fire sailed past her and hit Ayaz’s legs.
Fuck.
No.
The world stopped.
Someone screamed. The god screamed too, as pain rippled through his consciousness – a pain that bubbled up from within, that attacked the parts of him that weren’t used to feeling. But the other scream drowned him out, the scream of a soul being torn from its mate.
It took me a moment to realize the one screaming was me.
Ayaz’s face twisted in surprise and agony as the flames circled his legs, devouring his clothing, stripping him bare to gorge themselves on his skin. I stared, hopeless and helpless, at what my rage had created – fingers of fire consuming my love.
Why did this fire feel so different? I’d already burned two people I loved, and I’d gone numb to save myself from the pain – this time, I felt too much. Ayaz’s pain seared me as though it was my own.
He crumpled to the stage, his mouth open in a wordless cry.
His silence chilled the fire inside me more than any scream. A spasm shook my body, dredging up the last flickers of heat. Flames spewed from my fingers and rolled across the stage. My body pushed them out in a final splutter before the urge to maim, to kill, to destroy left me completely.
I was nothing.
I do not know, the god cried – a choir of merciless horror. He burns and I burn.
“Ayaz.” Trey leaped across the stage, diving and ducking between the flames. He grabbed one of the heavy velvet curtains that made up the wings and tore it from its rail. Trey flung the curtain over Ayaz’s legs and rolled him inside it. Back and forth, back and forth, smothering the flames while Ayaz’s silence tore through me.
I hurt him. I thought at the same time the god thought, because our minds were one.
I can’t hurt him I love him I can’t lose another that I love I can’t I can’t…
The god’s pain pushed me out of my own mind. My body pitched forward, the stage rushing up to meet me. I hit the ground hard, my fingers clawing at the wood. “Ayaz, Ayaz…” I cried.
The stage buckled. The whole room trembled. I thought it was just my body crumbling under the strain of the god’s possession, under the guilt for the hurt I’d done to Ayaz, to Dante, to my own mother. But then Quinn slid across the stage in front of me, his arms wheeling in the air as he fought for balance.
All around me, kids and adults dropped like flies, fragile against this new onslaught. What’s happening? Why is the room shaking? Is it an earthquake—
Cracks opened in the walls. The wooden planks of the stage bent and buckled, nails pinging from their places and flying about the room. Quinn dragged himself forward on his elbows and reached out to me. As his fingers brushed mine, his face twisted with indecision, as if he couldn’t decide whether to embrace me or fling me away.
From between the boards of the stage, a black tendril shot out, wrapping around my wrist. Its touch was pure ice – so cold it burned my skin. Quinn cried out and jerked his hand back, rolling away as another inky tendril reached for him.
My servants are yours to command, the god roared in my head. Of course, I’d forgotten that he gave me his shadows. It appeared they’d come to my aid.
More tendrils shot through the stage, wrapping around limbs and trapping students and parents in place. Dark creatures pulled themselves from the cracks in the walls and stalked over the seats, their growls as deep and dark as fear itself, the kind of sound that made your teeth sting and your knees buckle in terror.
The shadows stalked and circled, snarling and snapping jaws of midnight, driving the students back toward the center of the room. I scanned frightened faces until I saw Andre and Loretta huddled together, hemmed in on all sides by other students. I had no way to get to them.
Pull out Andre and Loretta. I gave the thought as a command. They don’t belong here.
Two of the shadow creatures leaped into the crowd, their teeth closing around Andre’s leg and Loretta’s arm. Students dived out of the way as the shadows dragged my friends to the exit and dropped them over the threshold. Andre bundled Loretta away, and the creatures sat down, guarding against anyone else who tried to escape. Behind me, I sensed shadows moving to block the stage door – as if the wall of fire wasn’t deterrent enough.
Quinn’s wide eyes bore into mine. His fingers froze in midair. He knew without knowing that I was in control here. “Hazel, what are you doing?”
I opened my mouth to tell him to run, to take Ayaz and Trey and get out. But I was distracted by what was going on in the auditorium.
Are the seats… warping?
I assumed my ruined mind was playing tricks on me. But no… the seats sloped inward, disappearing into the floor, where a cold wind blew from someplace far below. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling, and the cracks widened. The earth rolled and rumbled. My nails clawed for purchase on the pitching stage.
Inside my head, the god cried. Together, we crack open the ebony gates of oblivion.