Karsten Knight - Afterglow

Eve was right. They had made so many sacrifices for their adopted daughters.

The emotions of all this renewed Ash’s strength. With a war cry that could probably be heard as far as Blackwood, she arched her back. She let the steam build up in her limbs as though they were pistons.

And then she hurled the three-ton stone slab off her with so much force that it flew off the side of the tower. Once Ash made sure that her parents truly hadn’t been squashed by the slab, she let the volcanic armor soften back into flesh. She stretched her sore arms and legs, and joined Eve at the edge of the lighthouse. Down below they could see the slab, broken into pieces, a shattered stone commandment in the tide. Itzli’s body floated facedown in the shallows next to it.

“You’re really developing a thing for throwing people off buildings,” Ash said.

“My only wish,” Eve said, “is that the lighthouse had been taller.”

Their parents were safe, but there was still the matter of Colt and Rose. Colt was standing at the edge of the lighthouse, tensed and ready for action. Ash could see in his eyes that he knew he’d lost this round. But Colt was regenerative, just like his powers—you couldn’t maim him or cut him out of your life. If he got away now, he’d just find a way back into their existence, again and again, until he finally succeeded.

Colt turned and took a wild leap off the lighthouse, trying to pull the same stunt he had back at RazorWire Laboratories. He would just hit the water below, take the pain, let his body mend itself quickly, and then escape off into the night.

Eve was ready for him though. A massive updraft of tornado-force winds caught him mid-flight, and for a moment his body hung in the air cartoonishly, his limbs windmilling. Then the gust tossed him right back up onto the lighthouse platform. Eve sent a heavy current of lightning through his body to subdue him, and Colt writhed on the stone, his body shuddering with a violent seizure.

Before Ash and Eve could converge on him though, they heard a strange sound: It was the tinkling of a music box.

Rose sat on the edge of the lighthouse platform, cradling the music box that Ash had salvaged from her old home. She must have spotted it poking out of Eve’s abandoned knapsack and grabbed for it in a moment of anxiety, hoping that the familiar song would comfort her.

Only this time, when the melody reached a certain point, the gears inside caught. Rose frowned and then wound the key several more times. Again the glockenspiel-like music danced lightly on . . . until it reached the same point in the song. The box must have been damaged when Rose exploded back in Central Park, after hearing it the last time. Now, every time the music snagged on that one note, Rose grew increasingly distressed.

The rumbling of the offshore volcano crescendoed suddenly, and the stone lighthouse bucked hard under their feet. The unexpected earthquake caught Rose by surprise, and the music box slipped out of her grasp.

Ash watched in horrified slow motion as the music box hit the stone platform.

As it bounced over the edge.

As Rose let out a half-sob and reached unsteadily for the familiar toy.

And as she lost her balance and slipped right off the edge with it.

Ash and Eve both cried out, but it was Colt who wailed the loudest. Ash started to take a step toward the lighthouse edge to look down, but the thought of what she might see in the water below was just too much to handle.

Colt rolled onto his side, practically foaming at the mouth as he glowered viciously up at the two remaining Wilde sisters. There was no love left in his eyes. “Look what you’ve done!” he snarled. “Now I’ll have to wait until the next lifetime to put you back together.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Ash shrieked at him, wiping the wetness from her face. “A bloody battle between gods, your right-hand man is splattered on the water below, a little girl just accidentally took her own life . . . and you’re worried that you’ll have to wait another eighty years to get your Frankenbride?” Ash ignited her hands. This was it. This was the final push she needed to end Colt’s life, even if it was in cold blood. He had nothing left to defend himself with, and Ash was still ready to rip the heart right out of his chest.

Before she could lunge for him, the rumbling of the volcano deepened even more. Something was wrong. Ash reached out to the volcano with her mind, and she could feel the heat reaching critical mass, feel the pressure building inside it.

And just like that, the crater on top exploded. A salvo of enormous fiery stones rocketed up into the sky, burning bright, burning hard. The dump-truck-size boulders left the earth with such velocity that they punched a hole right through the clouds and continued upward. Eventually, they would reach the top of their arcs and hurtle back to the earth.

Most concerning, when Ash reached out with her mind to the fiery stones, mentally tethered to them by their shared volcanic origins, she could feel the trajectories they would follow.

And as one of them ran out of steam, miles above, she could feel it begin its descent.

Heading down toward the lighthouse.

In that moment she saw exactly what she had to do. Because of his abilities, Colt theoretically could only die if his heart were removed . . . or completely destroyed.

Ash placed her hand on Eve’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re just as strong as I am. Carry Mom and Dad down the stone steps as fast as you can.”

Eve was crying again, and Ash could see her own image reflected in her sister’s glossy pupils. The two sisters had never looked more alike. “What are you going to do?” Eve asked.

“See this through to the end.” Ash wrapped Eve in the tightest hug she could, but released her before Eve could hug her back. They had no time.

Ash dove for Colt, who was crawling his way toward the edge. He, too, seemed to have noticed the comet that had reached the peak of its arc in the sky above them and was heading back toward earth . . . back toward him. Ash caught him by the shoulders and pinned him to the ground. He writhed, struggling to free himself like a worm caught in a bird’s beak, but she just clamped her burning hands into his shoulders. Rage had made her stronger than ever, and there was no escaping her now.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Ash screamed into his face. Fire wreathed her head, and she brought her nose down to his. She wanted Colt to experience terror, true terror, in his final moments on earth—even if they were to be her final moments as well. “You and Pele, together until the end?” She pressed her scalding lips to his in an angry, violent kiss. “Well you’ve got your wish.”

When she pulled away, Colt’s charred lips healed themselves, and he stared up at her in defiance. “You may have stopped me this lifetime,” he says, “but I’ll be back. You’ll wake up a century from now with no memory of all this, and I’ll just charm my way back into your life. You can’t out-trick a trickster, Ashline.” He let out a crazed laugh.

Ash continued to stare into his eyes. She didn’t want him to be the last thing she ever saw, but she also didn’t have the courage to watch the fireball come down. The air around them quivered electrically, and she could feel the umbra of the enormous comet coming down to destroy them both. Ash might be fireproof, but that would do nothing to save her from being crushed by the volcanic boulder or the three-hundred-foot fall afterward. This was her death sentence, her burden.

A hand wrapped around the back of her shirt, and in the brief second before she was yanked back, her first crazed thought was that Colt had somehow grown an extra arm.