Endless by Kate Brian
“Why has the mayor not wiped their memories yet?” Fisher asked.
“She tried,” Joaquin informed us. “They refused to be alone in a room with her, and she couldn’t have Dorn subdue them, because there were other visitors waiting to speak with her.”
“God, I can’t take the freaking crowds anymore,” Pete said through his teeth.
“I know,” I said, squeezing his arm as the twins turned the corner at the end of the block. “Especially people like them.”
Bea rocked back and forth from her heels to her toes. “I just want one thing to go back to normal around here. Just one thing.”
The wind whistled in answer, spraying us sideways with a torrent of rain. I wiped my face with the back of my wet sleeve.
“Look, if we can just find Tristan and Nadia, we can have everything back to normal by the end of the night,” I said, glancing hopefully up at the dripping gutters on the gray house. “Once we start ushering people again and the sun comes out, everyone will chill. Even the twins.”
Joaquin blew out a breath, his nostrils wide. “Let’s get this over with.”
He hurried up the gray house’s front walk and tried the door, the rest of us following close behind. It was unlocked, as most houses in Juniper Landing were. Slowly he opened the door and peeked inside. There were no lights on in the parlor or the dining room, but I could see a soft glow flickering from one of the rooms at the top of the stairs.
My heart skipped. Joaquin lifted one finger to his lips, then ever so carefully stepped inside. I tiptoed in after him, followed by Fisher, then Bea, Lauren, Kevin, Cori, and Pete, who was bringing up the rear. I noticed that he’d left the door open, which was quick thinking. The click of the latch might alert whoever was upstairs.
Tristan. Please, please let it be Tristan.
Joaquin brought his boot down on the first step. It creaked so loud I almost screamed in frustration.
“Stay to the side!” Lauren hissed. “Steps are sturdier at the side.”
Joaquin nodded, looking green, and pressed himself up against the peeling wallpaper along the stairway. I held my breath as I crept just behind him, each step an excruciating eternity. My eyes were trained on the front bedroom door. The door to the room where Tristan had spied on me during those days after we’d first arrived—the room where he’d taken me on my first Lifer tour, when I’d tried to kiss him, and he’d broken my heart.
Temporarily. Because he’d felt he had to. Now I wished he’d just left it broken back then. It would have started healing by now.
We’d reached the top of the stairs. Joaquin and I locked eyes, and I saw the determination in his. Suddenly I felt weak and childish and stupid. This was not about how Tristan had betrayed me. It was about Darcy and Dad and Aaron and Jennifer and the other innocent souls suffering needlessly in the Shadowlands. It was time to get them back.
“Screw this,” I said under my breath.
Then I turned and threw open the door, the others right on my heels. The curtains were drawn. The room was lit by two kerosene lanterns and one small candle. The first thing I saw by their uncertain light was Tristan, passed out diagonally across two sleeping bags on the floor. I lost my breath at the sight of him. He was on his back in a black T-shirt, one arm stretched out at his side, the other crooked awkwardly over his chest with a bandage wrapped around his hand. His legs were splayed in dirty, wet jeans. A hank of his blond hair fell across his forehead like a crescent moon.
He was here. He was really here.
And I didn’t know what to do. Laugh? Cry? Scream?
Fisher pushed past me into the room. “Tristan!” He thundered, kicking his booted foot.
Tristan groaned and rolled on his side. That was when we saw the blood. It was everywhere. A thick pool of it, dark as oil, spreading out from behind his head. My hands flew to cover my mouth. Cori, meanwhile, crept along the front of the room as if looking for something, keeping her back to the wall.
“Tristan?” Bea gasped, falling to her knees.
She tentatively touched his head, and the color drained from her cheeks. “It’s bad, you guys. His whole skull…”
She turned away, swallowing hard, then got up and staggered to the window, ripping the curtains aside and heaving for breath.
“Who would do this? Who would come in here and attack him?” I asked.
Then, suddenly, Cori screamed.
“What the—”
“Nadia! It’s Nadia!” Cori was pointing at the floor near the back of the room, shaking. “She’s not breathing, you guys! I don’t think she’s breathing.”
I grabbed a lantern and rushed over to Cori’s side. The first thing I saw were Nadia’s black Converse, twisted over each other. My eyes traveled up her skinny legs, her flat torso, up her neck to her face. I gasped and took a step back. Her eyes were open and staring. Not blinking. There was no life in them.
“No, no, no,” Joaquin said, joining us. “That’s not possible. She’s just screwing with us.”
He crouched next to Nadia’s body and put his fingers to her neck. His brows knit and he moved his fingers. Then he moved them again. His hand trembled. When his gaze flicked up to meet mine, I could tell he didn’t want to speak.
“What?” Bea croaked from the far corner, hugging herself. “What, Joaquin?”
“There’s no pulse,” Joaquin said, surprised. “Cori’s right. Nadia’s dead.”
Cori wailed and buried her face in Fisher’s shoulder. Lauren buckled backward, staggering until she collided with the wall, where she sank to the floor, straggly strands of her wet hair snagging on tears in the ancient wallpaper.
“I don’t understand,” I said. We were supposed to be immortal. That was the deal. “If a Lifer dies, where does their soul go?”
No one answered, because there was no answer. This had never happened before. Not in anyone’s memory. Ice-cold fear permeated the room, trembling the air around us, turning eyes wide and jaws slack. Where had Nadia gone? Where would any of us go?
“Please…”
Tristan. His eyes were still closed, but his fingertips clawed at the dusty floor, curling in toward his palm. He groaned and my knees buckled. I threw myself onto the worn throw rug next to him, my heart wrenched inside my throat.
“Tristan?”
I put my hand on his shoulder. He felt cold—impossibly cold—and I could feel the muscles quivering beneath his skin.
“Help…” he muttered, the words a half wheeze. “Help us.”
And then his body went slack.
“We have to get him out of here!” I exclaimed, looking at the frightened faces around me. “We have to get him to the mayor or…or a doctor. Something.”
“What about Nadia?” Cori cried. “We can’t just leave her here.”
“I can carry Nadia over my shoulder,” Fisher said, his green eyes flat.
“You can?” Cori asked.
“Fireman’s lift. She weighs, like, nothing.” Then, to prove his point, Fisher walked over and lifted Nadia’s limp body, folding her over his shoulder. Cori gasped and started to sob. Nadia’s Lifer bracelet dangled from her skinny arm like it wanted to fall.
“I’ll help you with Tristan,” Bea offered, pushing away from the window and stepping up to Joaquin.
Tristan let out a weak, gurgly moan.
“We have to move,” Joaquin said. “We can’t let him…”
“Die.” Lauren spoke for the first time in five minutes. She’d been so quiet I’d forgotten she was there, but now she turned her dark eyes up at me and stared, her arms limp like a rag doll’s at her sides. “Die is the word you’re looking for.”
No one spoke. No one breathed. This wasn’t something we were ever supposed to face. I crouched down next to Lauren and took her hand. “It’s going to be all right.”
“How?” Her voice
I swallowed hard and looked to the others for help. Their faces were blank. A terrified blank. “I don’t know, but the sooner we get them back to the mayor, the sooner we can figure it out. Come on.”
I gripped Lauren’s upper arm and helped her up from the floor. Then Joaquin slid his hands under Tristan’s arms and lifted, letting Tristan’s head loll back against his chest, where it left a smear of blood. Bea grabbed beneath his calves, and Lauren, Cori, and I led the way out the door, down the stairs, and back into the night. The rain was sharp and driven, like tiny pinpricks against my skin.
This was not what I had imagined when we’d come out on this mission. I’d seen myself indignantly spitting questions at Tristan, him hanging his head in shame. I’d seen us gathering at the bridge to free the innocents from the Shadowlands. When we’d driven down here, I’d thought I knew exactly what I was doing. But now I was more confused than ever.
When we got to Tristan’s car, I opened the doors to the back. Bea and Joaquin carefully loaded Tristan onto the seat, laying his head down gingerly.
“We’ll take Nadia in the Jeep,” Fisher suggested.
“There’s not enough room,” Bea said.
“I’ll stay with you guys.” Kevin climbed into the front of the SUV.
I glanced around—at Kevin, at Joaquin, at Tristan. There was nothing left for me to do except climb into the back with him. The guy who’d betrayed me. The guy who had sent my family to hell. I thought about putting his head on my lap, but it seemed too intimate. So instead, I slammed the door, walked to the other side, and put his feet up awkwardly on my lap, every inch of my body tense enough to snap.
“You okay?” Joaquin asked as everyone else crammed into the Jeep.
I grit my teeth. “Let’s just go.”
Joaquin got in, and the engine roared to life. He flipped a quick U-turn and started up the hill toward town, the windshield wipers flapping a frantic beat from side to side. I couldn’t bear to look at Tristan’s face, so instead I stared out the window at the rain.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Who would do this?” I said as we drove out onto the town square, the tires sending walls of water flying up on either side of the car. “Who would attack them and leave them for dead? We’ve all been looking for him. We all want answers.”
“I don’t know,” Joaquin said, glancing over his shoulder at Tristan. “I just hope he lives long enough to explain what the hell is going on.”
The front tire bumped over a huge pothole, and Tristan groaned.
“Pete,” he muttered.
“What?” I said.
Kevin turned in his seat, his dark eyes alarmed. “What did he just say?”
“Pete…killed Nadia,” Tristan whispered hoarsely.
Joaquin nearly drove over the curb at the north end of town, but he turned the wheel at the last second, sending me slamming into the door. Tristan started to roll off the seat, but I grasped his shirt and steadied him before he could fall.
“Where the hell is Pete?” Kevin demanded.
“He’s in the other car!” I said.
“Call them,” Joaquin demanded, slamming on his brakes in front of the police station. “Do it now!”
Kevin fumbled for his walkie-talkie. “Lauren! Come in! Is Pete with you? Over.”
Joaquin was out of the car and storming toward the Jeep when the answer came.
“No. Why? We thought he was with you. Over.”
In the side mirror I saw Joaquin brace his hands on the top of Bea’s Jeep and bow his head. I looked at Kevin, my heart sinking into my toes. “Do you remember seeing him in the room at the house?”
He shook his head. “No. Do you?”
I closed my eyes and took a breath, cursing my own stupidity. But how could I have known? There was no way I could have known what we were going to find, let alone that one of our friends was the perpetrator. “He left the door open behind him. I thought he did it to keep from making noise.”
“I don’t understand,” Kevin said. “What the hell is going on?”
Tristan moaned again and turned on his side. The back of his head was a crater of blood and hair and shards of bone. I swallowed back a heaving breath.
“Pete knew what we were going to find in that room,” I said grimly. “He left the door open so he could run.”
“I don’t understand. If Pete had already found them, why didn’t he just tell us when we bumped into him on Magnolia?” Lauren wondered as we trudged across the sopping grass toward the mayor’s house. She had just radioed all the Lifers, telling them to be on the lookout for Pete. “Why did he let us walk in there all clueless?”
“Because clearly he had something to hide,” Kevin said. “He had his walkie-talkie. If he wanted to, he could have reported it right away. But instead, he attacked them and left them for dead.”
Dead. My brain still couldn’t wrap itself around the fact that we were using that word. Nadia was dead. And Tristan…
I looked ahead at Joaquin and Bea. Tristan’s body hung limply between them as they shoved through the back door of the house. Cori, Kevin, Lauren, and I hung back while Fisher walked past with Nadia slung over his shoulder. Cori’s head was bowed and her shoulders shook. I barely knew her, but I put my arm around her as we followed the others inside. She’d lost her best friend. I knew the sucking void that opened inside you—I was experiencing it right now with Darcy gone—and I wished there was something more I could do.
Every light was on in the kitchen and the wide-open great room beyond it, making for a blinding contrast to the dark night from which we’d come. The clinic had officially closed down now that the last patient had checked out, and the beds had been replaced with the original, beach-chic couches and chairs. The mayor was sitting in the living room in conference with Dorn and Grantz, while Krista stood in the kitchen wearing a yellow dress, making some kind of smoothie with a very loud, very grating blender. She blanched when Joaquin and Bea tromped past her, and the noise died.
“Tristan?”
Her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned forward, her hips pressing against the kitchen island as her hands flattened against its surface, as if she was clinging to this place, willing herself not to faint.
Fisher trudged across the hardwood floor, his massive boots leaving muddy footprints, and gently deposited Nadia onto the one empty couch. Joaquin and Bea shuffled toward the opposite one, which was occupied by the mayor and Dorn, who both stood up to scuttle out of the way, startled into motion. Neither could take their eyes off Tristan as Joaquin and Bea laid him down. His skin was noticeably paler than it had been at the gray house. When his head fell sideways, exposing his wound, the mayor’s mouth set in a grim line.
“What happened?” Dorn asked.
“Nadia’s dead,” Fisher said in his blunt way. He stepped to the side of the couch and took a wide-legged stance, like a soldier reporting for duty. I was starting to notice that when things got hairy, he reverted to this no-nonsense posture, his own personal defense mechanism.
“What?” Grantz snapped.
“And Tristan’s just barely alive,” Joaquin added. He shoved his hands through his wet hair and flung his bloodstained jacket onto the floor. It slid across the wood planks and gathered in a heap near the wall. Joaquin braced his hands on the mantel over the fireplace and leaned into it, blowing out a loud breath. Then suddenly he turned on the mayor, his eyes as fierce as a rabid dog’s. “Do you want to tell us what the fuck is going on?”
The words hung in the air as we each struggled for breath. In the distance, thunder rumbled. The only other sound in the room was the incessant even ticking of the elegant grandfather clock.
The mayor turned away from us and stood as still as granite.
Chief Grantz was the first to speak, rising slowly from his chair
“I was afraid of this,” the mayor intoned. Joaquin and I looked at each other.
“What are you talking about?” Lauren asked shakily. She and Kevin still hovered near the front door, the raindrops from their jackets forming a lake around their feet. “Did you know this was going to happen?”
The mayor turned. “I wasn’t certain. I was hoping we would be able to find out what was happening—who was to blame—and fix it before it went this far.”
“Okay, enough with the vague,” Joaquin snapped. “You’d better start explaining right now.”
The mayor took a deep, audible breath and stood in front of the fireplace next to Joaquin.
“Here’s what I know. Once innocents started being relegated to the Shadowlands, the balance of the universe began to shift, which is why we saw the island become infested with bugs and death and storms. When we couldn’t find the culprit, our only answer was to stop the ushering entirely. It was the only way to guarantee we didn’t tilt the balance even further off its axis.”
“Of course. We know this,” Fisher said, his hands behind his back. “What does it have to do with Nadia?”
The mayor’s eyes grew hard. “Well, what you don’t know is that your immortality, as it were, is contingent upon your continuing to fulfill your purpose. That is, continuing to help souls find their redemption and move on. So when we stopped ushering souls…”
“We made ourselves vulnerable,” I said, my mouth dry. I leaned into the back of one of the taller chairs, gripping its brocade fabric for dear life.
“Yes, Miss Thayer,” the mayor said. “The longer you refrain from fulfilling your duty, the more…expendable you are to the universe.”
“So we can die now?” Krista asked shrilly, her voice filling the long, wide room. “Any of us?”
The mayor turned an inappropriately wry eye on her pseudo daughter. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t go cliff diving anytime soon.”