Everneath. Part 3

Before I could protest, he placed his hands on either side of my head and I felt something whoosh inside. Immediately my bedroom melted away. Everything around me went pitch-black. My chest was crushed, as if it were in a vise, and when I fought for breath, I inhaled a handful of dirt, and choked.

Buried alive.

I fought and clawed at the heavy dirt weighing down on me, until my fingertips felt air. I dug my way out and fell in a heap on muddy ground. But I wasn't outside. I was in a long, dark tunnel with walls of coal, hundreds of pale hands sticking out, flailing. I tried to crawl away, but the hands grabbed my ankles, my legs, my arms, and dragged me back inside the walls.

I opened my mouth to yell at Cole to make it stop, but the black rocks poured in, covering my tongue and pushing toward the back of my throat. The whole thing felt too real. The stones in my mouth cut the inside of my cheek, and I tasted blood. This was no vision. I was trapped.

I screamed, but I couldn't hear a sound until the nightmare had completely disappeared and I was back in my room with Cole, his hand over my mouth.

I blinked, trying to reconcile what had just happened in my head. He gave me a look, like Are you done screaming? I nodded and he lifted his hand. The vision had left me lightheaded, and I started to sway. Cole caught me and held me close to him, my head on his chest. Where I should've heard his beating heart there was nothing.

"Those are the Tunnels, Nik. Those are what you chose, over me."

The Tunnels. The Everneath's final claim on every last drop of energy in a Forfeit. I knew they were bad, but Cole's shared vision left no doubt.

"Why are you here?" My voice sounded breathless.

As if it should've been obvious, Cole said, "I came here to offer you eternal life. Again."

I pushed away from him. "I already made my choice."

"Yes, but it's obviously the wrong choice. Return with me. To the Everneath. And we'll live in the High Court. And you won't be a battery in the Tunnels. You could be a queen."

"The Everneath has a High Court?"

"Of course. It's where Osiris and Isis ruled. Hades and Persephone. Every realm in every dimension has people who give orders and people who take orders. And I'm tired of taking orders, Nik."

I grimaced. "That has nothing to do with me."

He paused and let out a little sigh. "Then I'm saying it wrong, because it has everything to do with you. I want what Hades and Persephone had, and I can't do it without you. The only time the queen of the Everneath has been overthrown is when an Everliving has found his perfect match. I've spent my whole life-and it's a long one, trust me-looking for my perfect match, and it's you. I knew you were different from the first moment I met you. The first moment you placed your hands on mine. You remember?"

I nodded. It had been the night we first met.

"Your cheeks turned red, and I was gone for you." He shook his head, and his lip quirked up in a smile. "I know you felt it too. The connection between us. It started even before the Feed."

I looked away, because my cheeks were getting warm thinking about it, and I couldn't let him see it. Remembering that night was pointless. I was a different person now. "It doesn't matter what I felt then. I didn't know who you really were."

I glanced up. He raised his eyebrows and said, "It wouldn't have made a difference."

He held my gaze with eyes so intense I couldn't look away. He was probably right. From the moment we met, I had been drawn to him. At the time, nothing would've changed my decision to go with him. I just hoped I was stronger now.

I turned away, and then he pulled his guitar forward and picked a smooth, soft melody.

"You've had plenty of Forfeits," I said. "What exactly makes me different?"

"I wish I knew. I really do." He let out a deep breath and stood up as if he would leave. "Think about it. I'm offering immortality. You could be like me."

"Tell me one thing. If I went with you, became an Everliving, would I have to Feed off others the way you Fed off me?"

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

"I thought so. I would never do to someone else what you did to me. I'd rather be a battery in the Tunnels." I tried to infuse my voice with authority, but the attempt made it crack.

He smiled. "You don't belong here. And you don't belong in the Tunnels." He leaned closer, swinging his guitar around to his back. "You saw what I just showed you." I shivered as I remembered the vision. "We could go now, and leave it all behind. Look at you. This world will kill you."

Cole was right. Returning was harder than I'd imagined, but I couldn't let him know that. His eyes locked on mine.

"Please, Nik." He ran a finger down my cheek.

I blinked my eyes to break his gaze, and turned back around to my book. "I'm already dead. It's your world that killed me. Just go."

He placed his hand on my shoulder, his fingers grazing my collarbone, causing the black scar on my shoulder to sting. The mark was shaped like a stab wound-a thin oval with pointed ends-and it was in the same spot where the Shade in the Everneath had transformed into a knife and sliced me. It'd never completely healed.

"You were supposed to..." He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was gruff. "You were supposed to forget your life here."

I nodded, wincing from his touch on my shoulder. "I forgot most of it." I had forgotten almost all of it, and if I hadn't remembered Jack's face, I probably would've gone with Cole.

"Why would you ever choose to Return? You could've just gone straight to the Tunnels. Why, Nik?"

I flipped a page of my textbook.

"I don't have to answer you. I don't owe you anything."

"Hmm." His gaze hardened. "You know, I was wondering about your brother, Timmy."

I eyed him warily. "Tommy. What about him?"

He shrugged. "Nothing much. It's just that I've never Fed off a child before, mostly because children's emotions haven't matured to their full potential. I always thought of them as unripe fruit. But now I wonder if it would be more like eating veal."

I stood up and grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the bedroom door. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"You know what. Leave Tommy alone." My voice was stronger than it had ever been since I Returned. "I'll answer your question, if you promise to leave my family alone."

"You'll answer my question?"

Just get through this, I thought. "Yes."

He c.o.c.ked his head, as if he was taking his time to consider the offer. Finally, he sat on my bed. "Deal. Why did you come back? And remember, it doesn't count if you're not honest. And, Nik." He paused, his gaze boring into me. "I'll know if you're lying."

I took a breath. "I came back to see my family again." Jack was family too. "And to say good-bye ... better. Last time, I left during a fight, with no explanation. At least this time I can leave them a note, so they don't waste their time thinking I was kidnapped or something."

Cole moved forward a little. "Be serious. You don't really believe there's a good way to say good-bye forever, do you?"

I didn't answer. He was giving voice to thoughts I'd been trying to bury, because I knew how selfish I was being in Returning.

He sighed. "I'll tell you this much, Nik, you may have survived a century in the Everneath, but you won't last six months on the Surface. You'll be begging me to take you away again. I promise. There's too much pain for you here."

I squeezed my eyes shut as I listened to the sound of my bedroom window opening. He paused.

"Your mark."

My hand flew up to the black daggerlike mark on my collarbone. It was still warm. "What about it?"

"It's the mark of a Shade. You have a Shade inside you now." Seeing my expression, he quickly said, "Don't worry. It can't hurt you. But eventually that Shade will want to be reunited with the Tunnels. It's like a magnet for them."

I'd thought it was just a scar. I suddenly wanted to tear at the skin on my shoulder. Rip it until there was no dark left. It couldn't be true.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"In case you start thinking you can hide. The Tunnels will find you. They can't be outrun. They can't be overpowered. And as long as that mark is on you, they'll find you."

"Why do you care if I try to run?"

When he spoke, his voice was soft. "The Tunnels can track you. But I can't."

I couldn't listen anymore. Whether it was true or not. "Get out. Just get out."

He nodded. "I'm gone. But watch your mark. It will grow bigger as your time on the Surface winds down."

He slipped through the window and was gone.

I sprinted to the mirror hanging on the back of my closet door and pulled the collar of my shirt aside.

Cole was right about my mark. I hadn't noticed before, but it was getting bigger. What if it wasn't just a scar? What if it was an actual Shade inside of me? A tracking device, growing, counting down the time I had left.

And there was nowhere I could hide.

FOUR.

NOW.

The soup kitchen. Five months, one week left.

I tried to forget about Cole's visit. He didn't come back the rest of the week, and I thought maybe he would give up. At least, I hoped.

That Sat.u.r.day, my shift at the soup kitchen started. I was relieved to be put to work. There was no way to make up for all the pain I'd put my family through, but service to others was a start-my last chance for any sort of redemption, if it existed.

When I got to the shelter, the manager of the soup kitchen met me outside the doors, and another a man with a serious camera was there. I felt like turning and leaving, but I couldn't disappoint my dad anymore. I had to get through it.

The manager came toward me, hand extended. "Nikki, right? Your dad told me to expect you. I'm Christopher." Smile. Click. The flash of the camera went off as Christopher took my hand.

"Nice to meet you," I said.

Christopher leaned in and said in a quiet voice, "Just ignore this guy. What matters is that you're here to do some good."

I immediately liked Christopher. His breath smelled like peppermint and tobacco, and tattoos of vines and wire crept out from underneath the collar of his shirt and snaked along his neck. He ignored the photographer and led me inside to the dining hall, which smelled like a cafeteria mixed with a thrift store.

It wasn't hard to learn the ropes at the soup kitchen, and after ladling the first few bowls, I hit a groove. The photographer took the required pictures of me with a ladle in my hands. Then he took off.

As the line of people grew, I could no longer study faces and wonder how they ended up waiting for handouts at a soup kitchen. I just slopped chili and tried to keep my ladling hand from shaking.

Most of the people trudged along silently, which is why I was surprised when I heard an older woman say to me, "You are absolutely beautiful."

I looked up from the vat of soup. "Me?"

"Yes," the old woman said. Deep wrinkles filled every inch of her face. The skin around her eyes was pinched in the corners, as if she'd spent years squinting. Despite this, her eyes looked clear and fresh. Her withered hands reached out to take the soup; they seemed so brittle I worried the bowl would be heavy enough to snap them. "You're not old," she said.

"Oh," I said, a little puzzled. "I guess not. I'm seventeen."

"I'm eighteen," she said. She straightened up as she spoke, making herself a little taller.

Christopher, who was standing next to me, dealing out the bread, chuckled. "Hi, Mary. How are you today?"

The woman-Mary-kept her eyes on me when she answered. "Just fine. Can you believe how young she looks?"

I turned to Christopher, who winked at me rea.s.suringly. "Yeah, she looks seventeen."

A loud crash made us both whip our faces toward Mary, who had thrown her bowl of soup to the linoleum floor.

"I'm eighteen." Her lower lip trembled. "I'm eighteen, I'm eighteen ... or maybe I'm nineteen. Wait, who's the president?" Her words melted into sobs, and she seemed to forget where she was. "Who's the president?!" she wailed. Then she jerked her head up and looked at me with clear, dry eyes, and out of nowhere she said, "You broke a heart."

My breath caught in my throat. She said it with such conviction, for a moment I had a hard time believing it was just a random comment. It was like she could see inside me, to the guilt that was there. But she couldn't know. It wasn't possible.

Christopher made his way around the counter and put his hand on her shoulder.

"C'mon, Mary," he said. "Let's go sit down and have some lunch. Together."

One of the other volunteers-a girl maybe a few years older than me, with two French braids on the sides of her head-handed me a couple of rags, and we mopped up the floor.

"Don't worry about her," the braid girl said.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Dementia or something. The first time I met her, she kept saying she was lost. Asked me over and over to help her find someone's daughter. I had no idea what she was talking about."

"Someone's daughter?" I asked.

"Yeah... Penelope or Priscilla or something." She made one last swipe at the floor and then gathered up the rags into a big ball in her hands. "She wouldn't stop talking about it."