The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) (7 page)

— 15 —

Woodsmoke meanders through the damp spring air to wrap around me as I lean forward against the rail of Kyla’s back deck. I linger in the shadow of her house, watching the nebulous crowd at the bonfire below. I tell myself I’m not looking for Trebor, but every time I see a dark hooded coat, my heart beats a little faster in my chest. I take a sip from my wine bottle—like a proper lady—and remember I’m supposed to relax.

“I really hope my neighbors aren’t home,” Kyla says as she strolls up to the railing beside me. Before the party started, she put on one of the dresses she makes herself, converted from one of her mother’s old saris: a red, satin, sleeveless number, heavily embroidered at the hem and bust with gold thread, with tiny mirrors sewn into the scrollwork. Even with the short canvas jacket she wears over her arms, she looks like a dreadlocked Indian princess, observing her subjects from her balcony.

I lean over the rail, much less interestingly dressed in the clothes I came over to her house in: dark grey skinny jeans and silver ballet flats, and a cobalt blue button-down cotton shirt, buttoned perhaps a notch lower than is practical against the chill. My feet swing in the air as I balance on my abdomen, staring down into the dark where I’m pretty certain I just saw people smoking a joint—at least I smelled it, and saw the glowing red point of an ember. But these days? Knowing me? It could have been anything. Still, convincing myself it’s just some punks from school, I want to shout something down at them, something that seems clever under the rosy fog of the various beverages I’ve been drinking—but when I look more closely, all I see are shadows.

“So?” Kyla asks, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me back to my feet before I flip myself over the railing.

“So what?” I wonder, and take another sip from my bottle. The wine is tart and astringent, cool and warm at the same time as it slides down my throat.

Kyla gives me a mischievous grin. “Have you seen anyone here you might want to go to the dance with?”

I grimace and look around at all the faces, some familiar, some not, none of them stirring anything inside of me. “I don’t know. I can’t even tell who’s single anyway. Listen, I don’t need a date, Ky. If you really want me to go, I’ll go. I just won’t—”

“Don’t even,” Kyla stops me, holding a hand up. “Do not tell me you’re going to come to a dance, and not dance.”

I laugh again, because everything Kyla says is even funnier than normal when I’m a little tipsy. “I was going to say I just won’t
slow
dance.”

Kyla shakes her head. “Not acceptable.”

“Ky, even if I picked some random face from this whole crowd and he actually wanted to be my date for the dance, I probably wouldn’t want to slow dance with him.” I gesture grandly, encompassing the yard. “Slow dancing is supposed to be intimate, not something you share with a total stranger. Or some guy you met at a party, and maybe drunkenly made out with. I mean, unless you’re into that. Which I’m not. Anymore.” I pause, thoughts catching up with my words. “I’m rambling.”

Kyla laughs. Her eyes actually sparkle when she laughs, not just glisten—it’s like tiny diamonds have been placed under the dark surface of the pools of her irises. “What about Andy?” She points to the tall figure holding court beside the fire.

He’s
everywhere
tonight. “Seriously?” I scoff.

“Well, he’s tall enough, right? And he’s always been super nice to you.”

“Compared to the rest of the seniors, yeah.” I think about running into him and Trebor last night and feel guilty. I haven’t told Kyla about the man in the cemetery; I haven’t told her about the man with the flashing eyes that I saw the other night, or how Trebor’s eyes flash the same way. I haven’t told her that the Sura are
talking
to me now, and that they know my name. I don’t know what I’m waiting for, but I know that every time I think of telling her about these new developments, my stomach twists itself into knots, as if these things might be what push her over the edge and finally make her say
Ana, you’re insane.

I clear my throat. “Anyway, it’s only been to get on your good side. You know that as well as I do.”

Her brow furrows. “I don’t know. I’m out and proud, and Andy practically set Vanessa and me up on our first date.”

I squint at Andy from a distance. “Ky, I know it hasn’t escaped your notice that most of your friends could care less if I continued to exist. I don’t think Andy is really an exception, other than to study my
gypsy heritage
, to satisfy some weird anthropological curiosity.”

“That’s not true, Ana.” Her voice is firm. “They just don’t know you like I do. You don’t
let
anyone know you. I’m the only one you’ve ever let in.”

I turn back to her, see her stern expression, and know that she’s probably right. I’m just unwilling to confront it. “They wouldn’t like who I really am, anyway.” I shrug and sneer in one confused and ugly expression of forced apathy.

Kyla touches my shoulder with hers. “Of course they would. I like you.”

And Kyla is the queen bee, whether she means to be or not.

Vanessa comes up beside her, her tall and slender form reorienting itself to Kyla’s orbit. Blond hair spills out from under a black beanie, down past her shoulders. “Hey,” she says, so low it almost can’t be heard.

“Hey!” Kyla smiles, snaking her arms around her and planting a kiss on her cheek. “What have you been up to?”

I slink away while she’s distracted, before she can convince me to do any more
letting people in
for the night, and take my wine bottle and myself down to the bonfire to get warm. The crowd seems immense, though I know it isn’t all that big—I just saw it from above a moment ago. But down in the thick of it, with everyone’s features distorted and their shadows lengthened by the bonfire, everything suddenly feels overwhelming.

I plant my feet firmly beside the fire and watch a beer bottle turning red hot at the center of the coals. I won’t let the crowd bother me. I’m going to enjoy this night, because tonight, at least, in the circle of protection we’ve cast on Kyla’s property, I’m free of the shadows that have been stalking me.

But, no matter how determined I am to enjoy the night, the crowd does bother me. Something about it all seems wrong, and in that wrongness, I can’t help but feel different, and alone.

I see Andy through the flames, on the other side of the fire, talking with a beer in his hand to someone I don’t recognize. He’s looking in my direction when I happen to see him, and he smiles at me through the fire with a nod of acknowledgement. The boy he’s speaking with makes a point of turning away when I look at them.

I smile and nod back at Andy to be polite, then immediately turn my attention to the ground, where no one is looking at or away from me.

Ugh. So awkward.

Before my discomfort levels can make it to
unbearable
, I take a deep breath and turn away from the fire, moving through the crowd with as much stealth as I can manage. I don’t want to be that girl who wanders off at a party, sullen with the knowledge that no one will notice her absence, but I find myself doing exactly that. I just need to get away from people, find some place to stand where I don’t feel so
outside
of everything going on around me.

The creek that runs behind Kyla’s house is flooded along the bank. It’s muddy by the water, a soup of uncovered fall leaves and clay soil. It smells of algae and earth, a loamy, heady scent that I find myself breathing in with a strange need, taking as much into my lungs as I can before I finally exhale. I hop over a pool of water, onto a rock, then a tree root, again and again until I’m standing at the base of a crooked oak tree, staring out over the rushing creek. The creek has grown fat this week from the rain and the last of the melting snow. Water pours past my toes in hurried sloshes and sprays; somehow I feel the surge of its power as if it is my own, awakening a primal memory inside my cells.

And like that, the visceral thrumming returns to my blood. My body
brims
with something I can’t quite name, and the more I think about it, the more intense it becomes. I want to run, to jump, to dive into the creek and let it throw my body to the rocks. I want to dance, to feel my muscles burning and flexing and stretching. I want to jump off of a roof, to break something, to hurt, to
feel
—anything but this wretched sensation of yearning—this eternal moment
just before
catharsis.

A shiver runs through me, and I think:
What the hell is happening to me?

I look down at the bottle in my hand, then back, over my shoulder, at the silhouettes moving around the bonfire. Did any of them ever feel this way? Did they ever feel like the very marrow in their bones was trembling with the need to escape?

Some of the kids by the fire break away, letting the firelight cast farther out towards the creek. In the faint reach of its illumination, I see there is one silhouette standing apart from the crowd, where the water meets the mud. Its star-bright eyes twinkle at me over a row of gleaming white teeth.

My stomach tightens, realizing that I’ve ventured outside of the circle Kyla and I cast the other night.

“Go away,” I whisper, and I’m surprised by the weakness of my own voice—but when I blink, the shadow has disappeared. I wait, turning left and right, for it to reappear like it did last night. But there’s nothing. There’s only me, the many things that keep me separate from that crowd around the fire, and more questions than I will ever have answers for.

And, of course, there is the urgency inside of me, the hunger I can never sate.

Heart still pounding and body still thrumming, I stare into the dark mouth of the wine bottle and then lift it to my lips. I drink long and deep, until the last drop is gone and my belly sloshes full of wine. It’s sweet and warm, and quick to diffuse its comfort through my bloodstream. It does dull the pain of whatever madness has infused my veins, but it does not for a moment effectively quell the energy burning inside of me.

When all else fails, I close my eyes, and try hard not to feel. But it doesn’t work.

It never works.

Before I know what I’m doing, I cry out in frustration and smash the wine bottle against the trunk of the tree, a surge of anger burning through me. The bottle splits and shatters—not an easy break at the half point, like in the movies—and leaves only half the neck in my hand. The crunch and explosion of glass is satisfying. I hold up the remaining shard of the bottle to the moon and watch the silvery light play across the jagged edges. I can imagine how it would feel slicing across my skin. Worse, I can imagine how it would feel slicing across someone else’s.

My hand stings. I drop the glass, see blood in my palm where the bottle must have cut me when it split open. It isn’t a lot, at first, but I poke the wound and my blood wells up, pools together, begins to trickle down to my forearm in a thin and steady stream. My heart flutters faster and my stomach churns, because for whatever twisted reason the burn of my own sliced flesh makes me feel giddy.

Shaken, I sink to the ground, gazing at the dark line of blood trickling across my skin, suddenly dizzy with the motion of the creek beyond my hand. It takes a moment for me to register the silver form suspended just below the surface of the water, looking up at me from the edge of the creek. My hand drops, and I can’t help but stare.

She’s beautiful, whatever she is. Her face shines up from the water, catching the moonlight on her scales and reflecting it back to the sky. Long white lashes rim huge black eyes, round and endless in their depth. I can see the curve of her neck, the angle of her shoulders, the flow of her arms as she undulates the fin of her lower body to keep herself afloat.

She begins to rise.

Her head breaks the surface of the water, hairless and shimmering, and then her shoulders, her arms, her bare chest and the points of her ribs, rising, rising, until she is towering over me, impossibly—unnaturally—huge and real.

Her lips pull back in a cruel smile, revealing several rows of small, sharp teeth. When she blinks, I can see myself inside her eyes, frail and small and swallowed by their dark depths. But a light begins to radiate from within them, brighter and brighter, until I’m nothing but a pinprick reflection in the white-hot glare of her eyes.

And then, with a playful laugh, the demon grabs me with two massive, webbed hands, lifts every inch
of me clear over her head, and throws me into the creek.

— 16 —

I’m weightless for several heart-stopping moments before I hit the water. It’s not like being thrown into a pool, where you splash in and sink to the bottom, then spring back up to the surface. Instead, the second I hit the water, it grabs hold with icy fists, rolls me over, and drags me down. My body is buffeted about by currents and cross currents, knocked into rocks and roots. I scrape my hands and sprain my fingers on the creek bed as I kick and grab at anything, everything. I don’t even have the luxury of a moment to worry about the thing that threw me in here.

I have no idea which direction is up unless I touch the bottom, at which point even full-force propulsion upwards is not going to be enough to break the surface, not unless the creek allows it. Still, I try, again and again, my body twisting and reaching, pleading with the will of the water to let me go.

Finally, it gives in, pushes me up and over a ridge, riding on the crest of a cascade. I suck in a breath and lose it again in an involuntary scream, but even I can barely hear it over the roar of the creek. The current sucks me down again and again, huge hands grabbing at my shoulders and shoving me down, down, down, but I manage to bounce up once, twice, gathering air to my lungs around forced mouthfuls of water.

Frantic and blind in the dark, churning water, all the strength in my body does nothing to tear my limbs from the current’s grip. It slams me into a series of rocks, rolling me through them. First my knees hit, and then my hip—pain lances through the cold to shock me as the water pushes me back—my head bounces off of something sharp and hard—everything flares bright for a moment—the current flips me over onto my back—a searing pain explodes at my ankle.

It’s stuck, caught between two unyielding rocks, attaching me to the them like a flag caught in the wind. The water pummels me, crashes over me, around me, filling my mouth and nose, snaking down my throat. I fight and fight as hard as I can to bend forward, upward, to keep my face above the surface, but each breath I take is accompanied by a watery hand over my face, forcing me under.

I’m going to die
, I realize.

Water hits my lungs like a vise around my chest. I sink under, slick silver arms coming up around my neck, dragging me down. The creature has found me—or has it been with me all along, dragging me and pummeling me, disguised as the current itself? I pry at its scaly arms with fingers and nails, but my body constricts, betrays, fighting for the oxygen just inches from my face. My fight against my own body fails as my world spins and darkness encroaches on my mind. I can no longer stop myself from breathing reflexively, coughing and choking after each unstoppable gasp, lungs drinking in the creek.

The creature’s arms disappear. Her work is done.

I wait for my life to flash before my eyes, but even in the dizzy whirl of my suffocation I can still see the moon from beneath the surface of the water, and the brightness blinds me. A shadow passes over it in the shape of a man, or a moth, or an angel, wings spread wide like the arms of a cross. The shadow drops towards me, grows bigger and bigger, until I am immersed in darkness.