Karsten Knight - Afterglow

Modo started to lunge for his fallen sword, which was faintly smoking, the rain evaporating off the blade, but Ash grabbed him by the front of his chain mail and yanked him back. “Don’t pick that up, idiot.”

“Oh, please,” Eve muttered, climbing up onto the platform. “Metal might speed up the process, but we both know that I can make a perfectly workable lightning rod out of a human being.”

Ash shook off the mental image of Eve electrocuting the field hockey captain a year ago on the Wilde’s roof. Even after all that time Ash could still smell the gruesome odor of burnt flesh.

“After all you’ve done, after all the people you’ve hurt,” Ash said, “I still came to the Cloak Netherworld, risked my own life to get you down from that terrifying tree they’d plugged you into—and you repay me by coming here to electrocute another high schooler?”

“College student,” Modo corrected her.

Eve slicked back her rain-drenched hair. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Ashline. If you knew who he is—what he is—you wouldn’t be protecting him.”

“All I know is that if Colt wants him dead, then I want him alive,” Ash said. “I’ll stand between you and him as long as—”

She cut off when she heard a splash behind her. Modo had hopped off the back of the stage and was fleeing out the rear of the amphitheater. Despite his impediment, he moved at a surprisingly quick gait.

“Courageous, isn’t he?” Eve said. With that she held out both her arms, letting electricity crackle over them until a bright, white charge accumulated at her fingertips. She aimed her hands in Modo’s direction, ready to take him out with a bolt before he could disappear behind the row of marketplace shops.

Before Eve could release the charge, Ash spun around and slammed a fireball into her sister’s stomach. The detonation shot Eve backward like an arrow. She landed in the dirt of the amphitheater floor and carved a long line through the thick mud until friction brought her body to rest.

Ash stepped up next to Eve, who was groaning and trying to pull her wits together enough to stand up. Ash drove her heel into Eve’s ribs and pushed her over so that she flopped onto her back. The mud splattered up around her.

“Do you know what my major motivation is for stopping Colt from melting you, me, and Rose back into one goddess?” Ash said. “It’s the fact that if I were given the choice between waking up in the next lifetime sharing a brain with you and not waking up at all, I would choose eternal death in a heartbeat.”

Eve started to say something, but Ash was too disgusted with her sister to listen to another word out of her. Using the supernatural strength that only came to her in times of true rage, Ash scooped her up by the waist and hurled her up and out, toward the nearest medieval workshop.

Eve landed on the slope of the roof, which yielded under her weight. She dropped through the roof and into the hut in a shower of straw, wood, and shingles, where she lay still.

By the time Ash caught up to Modo, he was already staggering across the parking lot. He held up his keys, which he’d magically hidden somewhere in his pocketless trousers. When he pressed the button, a little green sport coupe nearby clucked twice, its lights flashing.

Ash didn’t let him get to the car. She caught him by the arm and pushed him up against the side of a nearby van. “Look,” she said to him, pinning him against the wet metal. “If this were just about you, I’d say screw it—the kid can try to survive on his own if he really wants. But it’s not just about you.”

Modo squirmed but Ash held tight. “I’m just an engineering student,” he protested. “I build prosthetics for amputees, for God’s sake. Fake feet, fake legs. What the hell could anyone possibly want from me?”

It was a valid question. But if Modo was truly Hephaestus, a god whose specialty was weapon making, and Colt had sent Eve to assassinate him . . . “It’s probably about what they don’t want from you, something they don’t want you to build. Something worth killing you for.” Her mind replayed watching Rolfe get skewered through the heart, watching the weeping willow tree crush Aurora, watching Raja get thrown off the side of a skyscraper. “Three of my friends are dead because of them. If you run away from me, if you won’t let me protect you—if they find you and get what they want—then my friends died for nothing.” Ash finally released him. “At least stay alive so they’ll have died for something.”

Modo surprised her by reaching out and tenderly wiping the tears off her cheek. “It’s just rain,” she said.

Modo offered a sad, close-lipped smile. “Of course.” He nodded back toward the Renaissance fair. “So these guys really want to hurt me? To kill me?”

“Modo,” she said. “You were about two feet from being zapped with enough lightning to run Boston for a day.”

“Then I guess we better clear out of here . . . and get the hell out from under these rain clouds.” He cringed and ducked down, as though the lightning were coming for him again.

Once they’d climbed into his car, there was a moment when they both sat silently in the front seat. The car vibrated quietly beneath them. Modo’s hands rested on the steering wheel as he blankly watched the windshield wipers bobbing back and forth. “What do we do now?” he whispered.

Ash’s window had begun to fog up from the air conditioning. She drew a little flame in the condensation. “First we find out exactly what they don’t want you to build. . . .” When she’d finished the flame drawing, a few beads of water dribbled down the glass. “And then we build the hell out of it.”

This beach is your favoritebecause the other gods avoid it.

The Council loathes it, in fact. Hundreds of islands in this archipelago, innumerable beaches to choose from . . . so why, they ask, would you willingly opt for the one covered in dark lava rocks over one with smooth, walkable sand?

To you this is walkable, comfortable. You love the way the coarse igneous stone feels beneath your bare feet. Those same dark stones protrude from the water, where the lava once pooled after cascading from the summit of Haleakalā and didn’t let anything stop its path until the sea itself finally cooled it. I made this , you think proudly. Although on second thought, as you gaze back toward where the rising sun is illuminating the summit of Haleakalā, you think: I made all this. Every big island, every little one, all gifts of the volcanoes, of the magma rising up through the sea. You may not remember it—they were from a former incarnation of Pele, after all—but this beach and the archipelago in general are a point of major personal pride and accomplishment for you.

As you walk in the shallows, you’re so busy watching the morning light play over the bay to the south that you don’t see the corpse until you trip over it.

You nearly drop knees-first down onto the man’s back, but catch your balance. He floats facedown in the shallows. He wears no shirt, and his waterlogged trousers are in tatters. Curiosity seizes you, so you bend down and roll the man over.

The first thing that you notice: He’s not of your people. The deep tan of his skin leads you to believe that he’s lived under a sun just as strong as the one that kisses these islands, but he is by no means an islander.

The second thing that you notice: He is beautiful.

It’s an otherworldly beauty. You’ve long thought that Tangaroa, the sea god on the Council, was the summit of attractiveness, among gods and mortals alike. And he’s shown no subtlety in the way that he looks at you.