Something shot from the center of the room, spewing mangled chairs and stone and plaster in all directions. Tremors coursed through my body, shaking me with such force and ferocity I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. My eyes glued shut. Whatever was coming for us from below, I couldn’t face it. I didn’t have the strength.
Quinn flattened his body over mine as debris rained down on us. I felt rather than heard him yell as the stage cracked and jerked, sending us sliding. We slammed into another body. The world spun out of control.
The god screamed in triumph.
The tremors stopped.
Silence reigned.
White, hollow, deathly silence – even the god didn’t trouble my mind. He had gone somewhere. He had no more need of his conduit.
I opened my eyes.
What.
The.
Actual.
Fuck?
Chapter Two
In the center of the room stood a square pillar with four sides, its pointed tip nearly touching the collapsing auditorium roof. It reminded me of the obelisks of Ancient Egypt, only the geometry didn’t seem correct. If I stared at a single point for too long, the angles appeared to recede into and overlap each other, revealing layers beneath that my human eyes could not fathom.
The smooth sides caught the light of the intact chandelier and the scattered fires, illuminating pulsing veins against its sleek black surface. About halfway up one side, I noticed a sigil ringed in fire. A coldness not unlike the chill of the god’s void emanated from the stone.
What fresh horror is this?
I staggered to my feet. Quinn clung to my arm, but I shoved him off. I stepped over a squirming Vincent Bloomberg, still pinned down by the shadows and by the pain of his wounds. He hissed at me, the sound of air rushing from a tire. I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t remember how.
I kicked Vincent in the head. It felt good.
Around the room, others lifted their heads and noticed the pillar. Some wept, others cried or whimpered or screamed. I could no longer distinguish student from parent or faculty. My ears buzzed, and the rising noise around me receded into the background. I transcended the pain in my body until it became a siren call, urging me forward. The pillar called me, begged me to come closer.
“Hazel, what are you doing?” Trey cried.
I jumped off the stage, crashing my way through the smoldering orchestra pit. Smoke and shadow curled around me as I vaulted the broken chairs, kicking Damon Delacorte’s hand from around my ankle.
The pillar towered over me, ice and malevolence rolling off it in waves that shook my bones. I pressed my palms against the stone. A hum that was more than sound pulsed through my fingers – the heartbeat of the universe coursing through the monument.
Come home.
Come home, a voice that was not a voice called to me, in a language that wasn’t words.
The ice collided with the flame inside me, dragging up all the rage I thought had been spent. All that horror and pain and fury soared through my veins… it had to go somewhere. It had to be unleashed.
I am the conduit.
Above my head, the sigil glowed with a blue flame. And although I had no idea what any of this meant, I understood what I had to do. I curled my fingers against the stone, letting the hum pulse through me. I piled up everything inside me – my regrets, my righteous anger, my hopelessness, my love – into kindling. A scream escaped my throat as I ignited that fuel. As the fire roared through me, soaking my veins in crippling emotion, I pushed with my mind.
My power, my fire, my essence, flowed into the pillar.
My fingers shuddered as the fire raced along my arms and poured through my fingers, like magma bubbling from an active volcano. That was what I felt like – a mountain that had suddenly been blown apart.
My entire body convulsed with light and pain and desire, all of it pouring into the stone.
Chapter Three
Fire crackled along the stone, latticing in all directions – forks of lightning earthing themselves to whatever was in reach. Chairs crashed against the walls, and the room trembled from a violent quake. People might’ve been screaming, but I couldn’t hear them. The hum shook me inside and out until I didn’t know myself anymore.
Beneath me, the obelisk rumbled to life once more. The stone rose higher, cracking the floor beneath it. The tip punched through the roof, sending a fresh avalanche of plaster down on the room.
Behold, for I have waited and dreamed in the deep, that what has sunk may rise again, the god screamed in my ears.
My bones cracked. My veins boiled. I longed to release myself from the hell that captured me, but my fingers remained glued to that stone. I felt my own mind slipping away, my organs turning to rocks, my body becoming one with the god.
“Hazy!”
A voice broke through the hum.
Three faces flashed in my mind – three broken Kings who needed me.
Trey. Quinn. Ayaz.
I drew up every last ounce of self I had left, every semblance of human emotion, every memory of safety and kindness and love.
I yanked my hands from the pillar.
The shaking stopped.
The shadows retreated.
Silence fell on the room, punctuated only by the steady crackle of fires not yet contained and the subtle sob of a student. Smoke and plaster dust clung so thick I could barely see a foot in front of me.
“Hazy?” From the smoke emerged figures, hands outstretched toward me. One had a body flung over its shoulder.
My Kings.
Quinn stopped just short of touching me. Tension crackled between us, rutting deep lines across his handsome face. “Hazy, you… you tried to burn them.”
I had no response to that.
“And where did the pillar come from? What possessed you to touch that thing?”
That, either.
“What the fuck is it?” Trey glared up at the pillar. Ayaz’s head flopped against his bicep, dropping my heart to my knees. Is Ayaz okay? He’s not dead. He can’t be dead.
Trey’s words broke the spell that held the room entranced. As the shadows retreated, parents and teachers and students leaped to their feet and fled to the exits, crawling over themselves in a mad frenzy to escape the alien monstrosity. I watched them through the haze with an odd detachment. I knew I didn’t want them to leave, but I couldn’t remember why.
“Trey, don’t you dare leave with that girl.” From the stage, Vincent’s glacier eyes met mine. He staggered to his feet, his hands clenched in fists at his sides as he fought against the horrific pain that must’ve been attacking his body right now. His smartly-tailored suit was now a mess of charred fabric and ruined skin. He roared as he shuffled forward, every step a fresh agony.
That’s right. Vincent is here. That’s why they can’t leave.
“What are you going to do, Vinnie boy?” I yelled back, stepping close to the pillar. My fingers itched to touch it again, to pull from it enough power to raise the shadows and send them to torment him. “It looks like the god isn’t under your thrall any longer.”
Hands shoved me toward the exit. “Don’t worry about him now. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Trey and Quinn closed in behind me, blocking me from returning to the pillar. I reached out, but Quinn knocked my arm away. He shoved me toward the exit.