Читать книгу: «Earthquake»

I sit up with a muffled scream, my hands clutching my chest. Air is honey-sweet on my tongue as I suck in breaths—gripping my arm with my nails to feel the pain. To assure myself that I’m alive.

Three nights in a row it’s been like this. Dreams of Sonya. Sonya running from what I can only assume are Reduciates: Earthbound bad guys. Sonya afraid of her own powers—afraid to protect herself.

And, of course, Sonya taking her own life. But in the dreams I’m not looking down at her. I’m not an observer. In the dreams I am her.

Am myself, I guess. In my past life. My most recent life.

But unlike true memories, this dream shifts every time it comes to me, the way I end my life changing with each passing night. I’ve pulled the trigger of a gun pressed to my head, thrown myself in front of a speeding semi.

But turning my heart to literal stone? This one was the worst. I don’t know if that’s how it happened. If any of them are how it happened. I don’t understand why my mind is making me see her death over and over—and why I can’t remember how it all actually went down.

Or better yet, why.

Well, I know why, technically. The secret. The one from way back in Rebecca’s time—the girl I was in the early nineteenth century. The one I told no one, not even my partner, Quinn. I was silenced at the end of that life, silenced myself at the end of my life as Sonya. But I don’t know what that secret is.

And I have a feeling the dreams won’t end until I figure it out.

I should remember. I’m an Earthbound—a cursed goddess who lives life after life, seeking my perfect love. I should remember all my lives. But something about the injuries I received in a plane crash last year have made everything … difficult.

My body is covered with sweat, and it’s not all from the harrowing dream. The Phoenix heat is sweltering even in the dusky hours of dawn, and the air conditioning is … less reliable than the hotel manager insinuated. I drag myself from sticky sheets to twist the tap on the sink that’s inches from the foot of the tiny single bed.

The water dribbling from the tap is lukewarm at best, but I’m in no position to be picky.

The spring heat is too intense, topping 110 for several days even before I arrived. The temperature broke records every day last week. I wonder if it’s part of the weather phenomenon my former guardian Mark was sure the virus was somehow causing. It seems like it must be. Everything in the world is crazy right now. The virus is spreading so quickly no one can get a truly accurate death count. Five thousand yesterday, one news channel said. Ten, claimed another.

Either way, it’s out of control, and nature apparently isn’t immune.

I don’t know how the hell I can possibly stop this, but Mark and his wife, Sammi, were certain I held the key, if I could just resurge with Logan—the boy Quinn is in this life. I have to trust that. It’s all I’ve got.

As I splash myself I consider again the braid of twine that Sammi gave me. The one Sonya made. Sammi kept it from when she encountered Sonya eighteen years ago. Sammi and her father were Curatoriates. They’re supposed to be the good guys—the opposite of the Reduciates. I’m not convinced it’s that simple. Neither was Rebecca. I have a feeling Sonya wasn’t either.

I could find out. The little braid is still in my faded red backpack where Sammi put it last week. It’ll give me my memories back. The memories that Sonya had.

Probably.

But considering the way the last awakening went, I’m not completely sure I’d survive a second round. Not without someone to help me. And I can’t take any risks until I resurge with Logan.

Or we’ll both be dead forever and the rest of the world will die with us.

That is the single truth that keeps me here. Trying.

I’m desperate. That is also a truth. More true than anything else in my life today. Besides, what I really need is to figure out how to wake Logan up before the Reduciates who are after me kill us both. And Sonya’s memories won’t help with that since she never found him during her life.

I turn on the leaky showerhead and duck into the tiny stall, sluicing away sweat as though I could somehow cleanse myself of the awful dream. Of this awful week. Everything is falling to pieces. I lean my head against the tiled wall and review the last few dismal days as water beats down on my back.

It started out so well a mere three days ago. After sleeping the whole night in a real bed for the first time in almost two weeks—not to mention getting my first shower in eight days—I woke up on Sunday morning ready to take on anything. I was in Phoenix, I’d located Logan, and I knew he was the one. The rest would be easy, I was certain. I didn’t care that the hotel towels didn’t look quite clean, or that the clerk had vastly under-reported how loud the train just outside my back window would be.

That first night I didn’t even care about the lack of reliable AC. I had a home base that didn’t require ID. And more importantly—thanks to getting his number on Saturday—I had a date with Logan. Quinn. Whatever anyone in my head wanted to call him, I had a date with the love of my life. The love of my many, many lives.

And it went fabulously. We talked, we laughed, the sun glinted off his golden hair, short now and a lighter blond thanks to bleaching from the desert sun. At one point he even reached out and touched the end of my nose. It was perfect.

At that moment it was easy to forget the entire reason I was in Phoenix: because I’m being hunted by the Reduciata. Because we’re being hunted, really.

If they can kill us before we resurge—before we both remember our past lives and regain our powers—we’ll be gone permanently.

But none of that mattered as I sat there bantering with Logan. I knew, was sure I was only minutes away from reaching my goal. The Reduciata was way in the back of my head. As far as I was concerned, I’d practically won already.

Then it fell apart. I fell apart.

I’d told him I was a history buff, and right before dessert was served I pulled out what I said was a rare antique. A journal.

His journal.

This was the moment.

I’d realized that morning that I’d been stupid to think the necklace could bring his memories back. The necklace that initially brought my memories back. Some of my memories, anyway.

Of course, I thought it was Quinn who made the necklace …

Anyway, that didn’t matter—the journal, full of his handwriting, would give me back my destined lover. My Earthbound counterpart. The god to my goddess. I pulled it out, opened it, and wondered if he would recognize his own writing. Then I slid it across the table.

He laid his hands on the pages and … nothing.

I tried to smile. To act like everything was okay. But I could almost feel the shards of the world clattering down around me. On top of me.

In the previous weeks I’d run for my life, seen people die, had my entire view of reality revamped, and been betrayed deeper than I ever thought possible.

All to get me here to this boy. For him to remember me. To love me. And then for us to somehow save a world that’s dying more and more quickly every day from a mysterious virus I have no idea how to fix.

I couldn’t stay there at the restaurant with him. It was too hard. I threw down enough money to cover the bill, mumbled an apology, and took off without waiting for my sundae.

About ten feet from the table I stopped. I couldn’t help it; I looked back.

And he was just staring at me. He called my name—a question, almost—but I ignored him. And even if he had run after me—thrown the doors open, tried to look for me—he wouldn’t have found me. Because in that shadowed space between the two sets of doors, I changed.

Changed into my mother.

I do it every time I’m in public. Use my powers as an Earthbound to wear her face the way I desperately did on the bus in Portsmouth. I pretend it keeps me safe.

There’s a chance it does.

I walked back to my hotel and—of course—the door had been kicked open. I didn’t know if a Reduciate assassin was to blame or simply the fact that my hotel was so crappy, but it wasn’t worth risking my life to stay to find out. In a fear-fueled panic I grabbed my stuff and got the hell out of there.

Five minutes later, with nothing but the belongings in my backpack and an already aching leg—it still hasn’t fully healed from the plane crash that took everything from me—I moved to another cheap hotel. A less-than-pristine establishment that didn’t ask questions when I laid an antique gold coin on the dingy counter, one of many from a collection Quinn and I had stored two hundred years ago. It was a win for both parties; they got to feel like they were ripping me off, and I got a bed and shower that didn’t cost me anything I considered important.

The next day the bedbug welts showed up. Large, painfully itching bumps all over my arms and legs that make me look like I have a disease. Or, at the very least, cleanliness issues.

I hate them. And there is no lotion that takes that burning itch away.

If I’d been smart—no, not smart exactly, but slower and less desperate—I would have stopped at a store somewhere. Gotten a pretty, long-sleeved shirt to cover my scabby arms. After all, I have money. Plenty of money. I’ve been selling a little gold at slimy pawnshops in every city where the Greyhound gave us a break. Hoarding it. Just in case.

But I wasn’t smart and I wasn’t slow.

I was in love instead.

So I went to Logan’s house early Monday morning, walked to school with him. Followed him all the way to the front doors. Stuck to him like glue, hoping something—something!—would click in his head. I suspect it wasn’t any one thing that made him drop his eyes and lie to me when I asked if he had plans for dinner—it was everything all mixed together. The welts, the rumpled clothes, the stalker-ish behavior, the desperation emanating from me in waves.

I waited for him after school, but he must have seen me and gone another way. I should have camped out at his house instead. All I had to show for my two hours was a nasty sunburn.

Some goddess I’m turning out to be.

I’m ten minutes into my tepid shower—which actually feels pretty good on my reddened shoulders—when I realize I have one more item. One more shot at getting Logan to believe me. I shove my soggy head around the shower curtain to glance at the tiny clock. 7:04 a.m. Still time.

I get at least most of the suds out of my hair before half tripping out of the bathtub and drying off as fast as I can. Yesterday he left the house at 7:35. I can still make it. My hair is a mess, but it can’t look much worse than it did the last time he saw me, so it’ll have to suffice.

I grab a gold coin and clutch it in both hands, taking a moment to close my eyes and release my hopes into the universe. Just let this work! You’d think an Earthbound—a literal goddess—would be able to handle something as easy as restoring memories to her eternal partner. But none of my abilities can help with this.

My leg is throbbing as I approach his house, and I can’t stop my heart from racing when Logan bursts out of his front door. He looks around warily—I guess I really got to him—but he doesn’t notice me duck behind the bushes. I follow him from across the street and touch the heavy silver necklace for confidence. The one that brought me back my memories but failed to bring back Logan’s.

The one he made for me two hundred years ago. He just doesn’t know it.

Now.

I jog quietly up behind him before saying, “Logan?”

He whirls around, and I get a glimpse of real fear painted on his face before stubborn anger takes over.

“I have something to show you,” I announce before he can speak.

“Listen, Tavia,” Logan says, rubbing at his neck in what Rebecca-in-my-head instantly recognizes as his nervous twitch. “I don’t really understand why you keep bringing me stuff. It’s … it’s kind of weirding me out.”

“Will you at least look at it?” I beg. I have no pride left. Not anymore. None of my attempts have had any effect whatsoever, and everything I’ve sacrificed—everything others have died for—will mean nothing if I don’t succeed.

Logan studies me for a long time, and I try to keep my face relaxed. “Fine,” Logan finally replies after what feels like ages. “Whatever.”

I hold out my hand and pray—to whom, I don’t know; the God I was raised on, the other Earthbounds, whoever made the Earthbounds; I don’t care anymore—that this will work. The coin falls from my palm into his with a barely audible smacking sound.

He lifts the gold circle close to his face—but not too close—and studies it. Then he sighs and hands it back to me. In a show of what I can only imagine is pity, he curls my fingers around the coin and then his hand around mine. “Tavia, I know someone must have told you this is gold, but you’ve got to stop believing everyone so easily. I—” He hesitates, and my heart sinks. I can sense the impending rejection. “I think you’re a really nice person. And pretty,” he blurts out and then looks like he surprised himself with those words. “But I can’t help you.”

He’s talking again before I can latch onto the word pretty too hard. “I’m just a kid, and I think you seriously need some professional help.”

My hands are so weak from disappointment that I can barely hang on to the coin. It would be my luck that when we split up supplies, I took the bag of gold coins I made as Rebecca, and Benson got the bag that Quinn made. Or maybe I made them all—I’m a little fuzzy on the details.

I swallow hard at the thought of Benson—the boy I thought I was in love with … until he betrayed me—but push it away just as I have innumerable times in the last week. It hurts too much to dwell on. To wonder where the Reduciates are keeping him. If he’s being treated humanely. If … if …

I can’t. Logan. Focus on Logan.

“You don’t understand, Logan.” I can hear the crazy-laced desperation in my voice, but I can’t stop. I don’t know what else to do. If I don’t pull out something impressive I’m going to lose him.

“They’re coming after you,” I whisper, trying to sound so serious—and so sane. “They almost killed me last week and they’re after both of us now and I have got to find some way to make you remember and I’ve tried everything and—” I force myself to stop; I’m just babbling. I plead with my eyes for him to believe me.

“Who’s coming after me?” Logan asks after a second, indulging me as one would a very young child telling an obvious lie.

“The …” I almost tell him everything—that it’s the Reduciata who are on his trail. That they are going to kill him. Probably in a matter of days, if not sooner. Possibly the Curatoria too, considering Mark and Sammi were hiding me from them. But I know that the specifics will only make me sound even more like I have a couple of screws loose.

His face is a rumpled mess of emotions. Despite my failed attempts at subtlety, he obviously thinks I’m out of my mind.

But there’s something else—that pull that made him ask if he knew me the first day we met. That attraction that makes him want to forget all logic and throw himself at something completely unexplainable.

I understand. I felt that way toward him.

We stand there, steeping in the silence, and for just a moment it looks like he’ll believe me. Or at least that he’ll listen. But good sense takes over, and he sets his lips in a hard, straight line. “Tavia, I—”

“I’ll show you,” I interrupt, my hair starting to fall across my eyes in damp strands as sweat rolls down my temples. Even at seven thirty in the morning the heat is so intense I know it can’t be natural. “Watch.” I glance in both directions and then open my hands to reveal a pencil.

I probably should have come up with something more original.

Logan just rolls his eyes and starts to push past me.

“Wait!” I gesture vaguely at the yard to my left and conjure a table and two chairs into existence. Show him what I can do: create something from nothing. He doesn’t know it’ll disappear in five minutes.

It’s not just any dining set. It’s the hand-carved oak set we shared as Quinn and Rebecca two hundred years ago. Maybe … maybe seeing it will do something. Spark some memory. Maybe not enough for a full re-awakening, but enough that he’ll take me seriously.

I turn back. “They’re after us because we’re special,” I say with solid conviction, keeping my voice even. “You can do this too, you just don’t remember. And you have to remember. At least try!” I wave again, and the table fills with “our” dishes. A rug that used to sit in front of the fireplace. His favorite coat draped over the chair. I’m ready to recreate the entire house if I have to.

Each time I make a new item appear, I glance back to check his reaction—to see if I’m stimulating any memories.

But he just looks confused.

Then angry.

Anger does not come naturally to him—never has. I’m not sure who that thought comes from in my tangled web of memories—which one of my predecessors felt compelled to share this tidbit of information—but I know it’s true. Whatever I’ve done—whatever he thinks of me—this has pushed him over the edge.

“Stop!” he hisses very quietly, but with a harshness that swings me around to face him.

“Please,” I whisper, and somehow I know it’s the last word I’m going to get in.

“No,” he says. “Take your hidden cameras and practical jokes somewhere else. I’m done.”

“Logan—”

But he puts his hands on my shoulders—firmly, not roughly—and moves me out of his way. “Don’t follow me anymore.”

I’m gasping for breath as sobs of failure slam into me, overwhelming me like ocean breakers. I can’t … I can’t just—

An unseen force slaps my back and throws me against Logan as the world ripples beneath my feet. The motion tosses us to the sidewalk, splaying us both on the ground. My elbow stings, and blood drips from a cut across Logan’s eyebrows. I’m staring disbelievingly at the vibrant red when a burst of sound reaches us, deafening me even as I scream at the top of my lungs. Logan’s face contorts into a mask of horror, and I whip my head around to follow his line of sight.

All I see are flames.

Flames where Logan’s house used to sit.

We both scramble up and run toward it, our mutual desperation to see what’s happened so intense that I hardly feel the sharp pain jolting up my leg.

His house is gone.

A smoking pile of charred rubble sits in its place. Orange flames dance over its remains, staining the sky. If I didn’t already know, I couldn’t have guessed what sort of structure had previously stood there—everything has collapsed. The flames burn so hot that even from several hundred feet away the waves of heat feel like they might blister my skin.

This is a fire meant to kill.

Meant to kill Logan.

And I know who set it.

“We have to get out of here now,” I say, whirling and grabbing Logan’s arm, trying to drag him with me.

I might as well be trying to shove a boulder. He stares, dumbstruck, at the horrifying destruction.

A column of thick, murky smoke is already rising high. It’s going to attract the attention of everyone for miles around. Reduciata handiwork for sure—subtle is not in their vocabulary. If I have any shot of hiding the fact that Logan survived, I have to get him out of here. “Logan, please!”

I don’t hear the sound of tires screeching as a car pulls up beside us, but I smell the acrid scent of rubber a second before something comes down over my head, blocking my sight. I fight and tear against the suffocating material, but a sharp jab stings my arms, burns for a second, then blackness.