End Times (29 page)

“Is she for real?” Daphne overheard one of the floorhands ask another.

“I dunno,” his friend grunted. “But if she’s not, I sure as hell don’t want to wake up.”

Even the Carbon County locals were entranced. Still huddled together, they crept closer to the fire, a cluster of cautious curiosity clutching sweating beers. Doug had his arm around Janie, but Daphne could sense him straining toward Luna, his desire permeating the air like cheap cologne. Janie nestled herself closer to him, reaching up to twist his wedding ring, reminding him of where he belonged. The line of distrust ran even deeper in her forehead, and her eyes were narrowed as if Luna was a too-bright light that she couldn’t bear to face head-on.

Daphne felt a dark presence moving through the crowd. Her skin tingled as Owen appeared on the other side of the circle, arms crossed over his chest and a bemused half smile on his lips. His eyes weren’t fixed on Luna and his mouth wasn’t hanging open like the rest of the men around him. He seemed to be scanning the crowd, looking for something—or someone. For her.

The song drew to a pounding crescendo, and Luna flung her hoop high in the air. It formed a silhouette against the starry blanket of sky and seemed to hang for just a moment from the tip of the moon. Then the song was over and the hoop plunged back to earth, where Luna caught it neatly around her shoulders, arms outstretched as she dropped a falsely innocent curtsy amid applause and catcalls. Guys surrounded her the moment she threw her hoop aside, and she tossed offhanded commands that sent them scurrying to pick up her robe, fetch her a beer, build up the fire, and get her a nice place to sit. The hardened prospectors tripped over themselves like puppies as they hurried to fulfill her demands, their eyes never leaving her body.

Luna’s silvery laugh rang out above it all, inviting and taunting and teasing. She sought Owen in the crowd and curled her finger, beckoning him.

“What do you want?” He was still high from his long solo ride on the track, the adrenaline buzzing through his veins. He wanted to take Daphne aside, to finally finish what he’d tried so many times to start. But Luna was between them.

Luna accepted a beer from a prospector with a deep scar along his cheek. “Are you ready?” she addressed Owen. “To do your part?”

He shook his head, irritated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You always talk in riddles.”

She shrugged her robe over her shoulders, the ends swirling around her feet. “And you always take things too literally. The rest of us are almost here. I know you know it. You’ve seen them in your dreams. You have to welcome them, to help them learn the truth.”

Across the bonfire he saw Daphne back away, fading into the shadows. He didn’t want to let her slip through his fingers yet again.

Luna followed his eyes. “You really want her, don’t you?” She raised an eyebrow.

He kicked at the ground, frustration rising in his chest. “It’s more than just a want.”

Luna’s smile was slow and thick. “So take her,” she said. “Take her for us. We can use her.”

“For what?” Owen exploded. He could see Daphne moving in the shadows beyond the flames, talking to some of the guys from the rig.

“For the battle, of course.” Luna shook her head gently, the charms in her dreadlocks clinking. “For the God of the Earth.”

Owen paused, staring through slit lids at the girl who may or may not have been his half sister. The firelight reflected in her eyes, giving the green irises a mad, red gleam, and her teeth were sharp behind an off-kilter smile. She looked spookily beautiful, like an inmate in a Victorian asylum. She looked insane.

He reminded himself that this was a girl who’d been raised on a commune and grown up believing its lies, who had created a twisted fantasy world out of a few bad dreams. Now she was drunk with her power over the prospectors, delusional for seeing the attention from a few sex-starved men as something more than it was.

“You’re letting a few dreams drive you crazy,” he hissed, his face close to Luna’s. “There is no God of the Earth, and you know it. You’re just trying to make yourself feel better because your dad was a piece-of-shit hippie who abandoned you, and you grew up not knowing shame.”

Luna’s face hardened, the fire smoldering in her eyes. She laughed bitterly. “You’ll see,” she began. “You’ll see how wrong you are.”

But Owen had already turned from her and was half-striding, half-running through the crowd. Between the carousing clusters of prospectors and the glowing yellow tips of their cigarettes, he caught fleeting glimpses of Daphne, her long dark hair and narrow limbs, the cautious purse of her lips that always made it look like she was guarding something.

He cut around someone’s parked Jeep Cherokee and caught her, his hands brushing the butterfly softness of her wrist.

“There you are,” he said.

She turned, eyes liquid.

But Doug stepped between them.

He towered over Owen, a thick-necked mountain, face dark with rage and broken blood vessels snaking red across the whites of his eyes. Janie cowered behind him, surrounded by their friends—none of whom looked like they wanted to be there.

“I thought I told you not to come around here anymore,” Doug snarled.

“Do you own this track?” Owen tilted his head so he could look Doug in the eye.

Doug sputtered, his neck turning a deep scarlet.

“Listen, I just want to ride,” Owen continued. “I didn’t come here to steal your thunder or your friends or any of that, and I’m happy to stay out of your way if you stay out of mine. But I live here now, and since this is the only track in town, how about we learn to share it like gentlemen?”

“You’re no gentleman,” Doug spat.

“Maybe not.” Owen’s smile was calm and measured. “But I’ll agree to act like one if you do, too.”

Doug continued hovering, conflicting emotions crossing his face like cars zooming through a busy intersection. Daphne sensed that he knew he was pushing his luck: A few of the rig workers had already drifted toward the confrontation, and now they flanked Owen, forming a larger and tougher-looking crew than Doug’s small group of nonplussed locals. Owen was popular on the rig, a steady worker who never copped an attitude or turned down extra tasks, and it looked like it had paid off. When it came down to it, his friends had his back.

“I don’t like your attitude . . .” Doug started to say. But Daphne was tired of Doug’s bullying. Janie may have been afraid of him, but she wasn’t. She knew that beneath the bluster and bravado, he was just a sad, spoiled child. She stepped forward.

“Hey, this is a party, right?” she asked, addressing the crowd.

Heads around her nodded, and there were several enthusiastic
yeahs.

“So let’s act like it,” she urged. “Can we get some music going here? Maybe we can all just chill out and have a fun Friday night.”

The crowd murmured their assent. Someone went to the speakers, and soon the familiar chords of that summer’s top pop anthem blared out, the singer urging everyone to
have a drink, or two, or three, or four, then drop it low so it hits the floor
.

The music cut through the thick tension, dissipating it like a bad smell, and Janie took advantage of the break to grab Doug by the hand. “C’mon, baby, let’s go get you another beer,” she cooed. “I’ve got a nice six-pack cooling in the truck.”

“Okay,” Doug relented. But as Janie led him away, he glanced back at Owen one last time. Hatred blazed in his eyes.

“Doug’s got issues, huh?” Owen asked, his voice mild with amusement.

“That’s one excuse,” Daphne agreed grimly. She could still feel Doug’s eyes on them, dark and accusing, from the tailgate of his truck.

“You want to go somewhere else?” Owen asked.

She could hear the subtext in his voice:
somewhere else
meant somewhere away from the rest of the crowd, somewhere they could be alone. She knew she shouldn’t go with him; she was getting worse at saying no to him, at ignoring the heat that spread through her body whenever he was close.

But she was tired of fighting, exhausted from building walls only to have him tear them down like they were made of paper with a single look. “Okay,” she agreed. They turned and began walking toward the track, away from the fire and the noise and the people.

“You want a beer or anything?” he asked before they left the party behind.

Daphne declined. Already, her head buzzed with something clearer and stronger than any intoxicant, and a buoyant, fizzy sensation had begun to rush through her veins.

They left the parking area and started down the trail in the darkness, their eyes slowly adjusting to the dim moonlight. He felt for her hand and grasped it, guiding her over roots and rocks. She could feel the strength in his wiry muscles, and smell the metallic mixture of motor oil and leather on his skin.

It was easier to see in the open expanse of the track, the packed dirt features pale and spectral as an alien landscape in the wan moonlight. They walked the course silently, the only noises their quiet breath and the party’s faraway buzz, until Owen paused at the lip of the high jump.

“It’s either stop or turn back at this point,” he said. “Unless you want to risk the jump.”

Daphne joined him at the edge, and her stomach dropped. It was higher than the roof of the Peytons’ trailer, with nothing but air underneath. It looked so much taller from there than it did from the bleachers.

“I think I’d rather keep my legs intact, thanks.” She sat, letting her feet dangle over the side, and Owen joined her, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his thigh through their jeans. The stars gazed down at them impassively, high and cold as ice chips in the heavens.

“So . . .” they said at the same time. They turned to each other, surprised, and then they were laughing softly, voices clear in the vast, empty space.

Daphne’s mind raced with all of the things she wanted to know: where he’d come from and why he’d left, how he’d gotten to Carbon County and why he’d stayed, the secrets behind his bizarre relationship with Luna and what he made of the strange events that had been occurring in town. But she didn’t know where to start.

“Luna’s pretty talented,” she said, just to break the ice.

Owen laughed. “She knows how to work a crowd,” he admitted.

“How did you guys meet, anyway?” Daphne asked.

Owen paused, and the air around them seemed to thicken.

“It’s kind of a strange story,” he said.

“Everything around here is kind of a strange story.”

He studied her closely, drinking in the clean lines of her silhouette against the night, the gold flecks in her amber eyes and the arc of her legs dangling into the empty space below. As much time as they’d spent together on the rig, there was still something mysterious about her, a secret that she carried like an egg, protecting it from breaking.

“You don’t have to explain—” Daphne backpedaled, but Owen cut her off.

“I want to.”

Maybe if he opened up and told her everything, the whole crazy story about the dreams and the voices and the surreal trip across country, she’d be willing to tell her story, too. The desire to know her secret burned inside him like the familiar urge to win—but he knew he’d never get it out of her if he didn’t open up first. She was too guarded for that.

“I turned eighteen a few months ago,” he began, his arm brushing hers, “and that night I had the first dream. They always start out with fire, and that’s all I see: big, orange flames in every direction, anywhere I look. I get closer and I realize it’s not wood in the flames, but stacks of human bodies.”

Daphne thought of the blood on his hand when he touched the oil and the dark glow of his skin the night Trey died. She shivered, wondering if they were somehow related to his dreams, but said nothing. She didn’t want to stop his story before he even began.

“There are people dancing around,” he continued, “going in a circle to these strange, dull drumbeats, really getting into it like they’re at a ritual or a rave. I can’t see their faces: They’re all just these dark shapes against the fire, and something about them is completely terrifying.

“But at the same time, I feel like I
have to
see their faces,” Owen continued, “like something even more awful will happen if I don’t. So I go closer, even though I don’t want to. I’m sweating bullets, and I’m so scared I want to throw up, but I don’t. I keep going closer, and everything smells like singed hair, and they’re dancing even harder, practically throwing themselves into the fire, but I still can’t see their faces.”

Owen took a deep breath and gazed out over the barren landscape. Daphne could smell the fear in his sweat, the pure terror that came from even remembering the dreams. He turned to her, his strange green eyes holding hers. “That first night, I woke up before I saw any of them. Right before I came out of it, this huge growling voice whispered
find the vein
. I woke up tangled up in my sheets and sweating so hard I was actually scared I’d wet the bed.”

He ducked his head, suddenly bashful. “I can’t believe I just told you that part,” he said quickly. “I mean, for what it’s worth, I didn’t.”

“It’s okay,” Daphne laughed, glad for the small wedge of light in his strange, dark tale. His story had left her feeling cold and frightened, as if his fear was airborne and had somehow gotten into her lungs.

“That first night I tried to write it off as just some stupid nightmare, maybe some weird coming-of-age anxiety dream about turning eighteen. But it kept happening, and before I knew it I was having the same dream every night: the bonfire full of bodies, the voice, and the dancers.”

“Did you ever see their faces?” Daphne asked.

“I started to, yeah. I’ve seen all of them now. They’re all different, but the weirdest thing is . . .” He broke off, unsure if he should go any further. When he discussed it with Luna, it all made a twisted kind of sense, but he had never talked about it with anyone else.

“Is what?” she asked softly.

Owen ducked his head. “You’re going to think this is crazy.”