Chapter 51

  Elizabeth Eddison

  Lizzy’s awesome in many ways. I think sometimes she wants to grow up too fast, though. She IS really mature, but we’re still just girls!

  The best thing about Liz is that she never gives up. If there’s something that needs to be done, then by willikers she won’t stop until it gets done!

  - excerpt from Kate’s journal

  “Are you all right?” Elizabeth asked. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Elmer and Amelia groaned in unison, Elmer as he lay on the floor and Amelia as she sat at the counter.

  “Do you remember this, my dear?” asked Elmer.

  Amelia nodded. “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “I suppose…I’ll have to add it to the book, then!” With a weak smile Elmer removed the notebook from his pocket while lying on the floor. “Could I trouble you up there for a pen?”

  “Oh, get up, Elmer,” said Amelia. She dismounted her chair to assist Elmer to his feet.

  “Why do I need to leave?” Elizabeth asked. “What’s happening?”

  “Oh you’re not in any immediate danger,” said Amelia as Elmer scribbled in his notebook.

  “But this is the Cascade, unless I’m mistaken!” exclaimed Elmer.

  “You are not,” said Amelia.

  “Which means,” he continued, “that this world’s time has come. Or similar. You must away.”

  “With…Callie?” said Elizabeth.

  “Quite! And…perhaps you could take us with you?” He paused from writing and looked up, pen in his mouth. “I say Amelia, I’m not quite sure what I ought to write!”

  Elizabeth gazed out the window into the rainy drizzle outside. Where had Callie disappeared to? She remembered what Kate had said: she should go get her birthday brooch. The one which supposedly summoned Callie. The one which, Elizabeth had no doubt, Kate had created and given her two months ago for precisely this point in time.

  She informed Shape and Sky that she was going to get something and then hurried up to her room. She found the crystalline butterfly brooch and paused looking at it. It would truly be a shame if she had to smash it. It lay next to the book of poetry that Kate had begun. Elizabeth lay her hand on the book and nearly opened it when a loud sound came from downstairs. It was several loud sounds rolled into one: breaking glass, men shouting, and gunshots.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Isaac. He had said something about danger, right? About an inhuman creature hunting him because of his angel? Black?

  Elizabeth gripped the brooch in one hand and the book in the other as the noise below continued. Something crashed, people cried out in pain.

  Elizabeth took a step toward the door, and then another. Who was it? Were they here for Callie? Should she summon Callie now? Were Elmer and Amelia in danger? And what about AJ? Was she still in town? Elizabeth rubbed AJ’s ring with her thumb as she peered down the hall.

  She steeled herself and took another step. If they wanted Callie, she wasn’t here. But…what if they were after Elmer and Amelia? Those two believed they were being hunted. They could be in trouble.

  Step by step, Elizabeth left her room and crept down the hall, past her dance/taekwondo studio. Perhaps she would soon see whether all that taekwondo practice amounted to anything. Eric had always told her she should study something useful like Krav Maga instead…

  The noise of shouting and gunfire from below ceased while she was halfway down the hall. She tip-toed to the stairwell. Someone below spoke. Elmer Sky: “Well, really! I nearly spilt my tea in all that fuss.”

  “Go check on Elizabeth, Elmer,” said Amelia with a sigh.

  “Why, yes! I shall. One moment, dear.”

  Elizabeth descended the stairs with caution. She froze in mid-step as soon as the scene below entered her field of view. A half-dozen men lay sprawled about the kitchen and adjacent family room, some of them bloody. Bullet holes peppered the kitchen. Several chairs had been reduced to splinters. The air smelled of gunsmoke and hot metal. The glass doors comprising the outside entrance to the family room had been shattered inward, and broad gashes marred the walls and furniture of the whole area as though a giant had sliced it all up with a great knife.

  Elizabeth’s first thought was: mom is going to kill me.

  Amelia stood, arms folded, panting slightly as she surveyed this mess. Elmer sat at the counter with his tea. He sipped it as he spotted Elizabeth. “There she is,” he said. “You had us worried.”

  A rough arm seized Elizabeth from behind. She reacted at once as if she’d been subconsciously ready for it, twisting away out of its grasp. She spun and channeled her momentum into a kick against her assailant. Her right shin struck her assailant’s side and bounced uselessly off. He didn’t even grunt. Not enough power. He lunged forward and seized her again. She was not quick enough to avoid this attack. He grappled her with a crushing bear hug and shouted a threat to Elmer and Amelia. Elizabeth gasped as her breath was pressed from her. Were all men this strong? She could do nothing. She clutched Kate’s butterfly brooch tightly. She thought: I refuse to write poems about…dying here! Like this! She struggled, uselessly.

  The man holding her said something else; she didn’t catch it. Then he gasped, his grip weakened, and something warm and wet poured onto the back of Elizabeth’s neck. The man behind her fell. Elizabeth took a couple steps forward, gulping in air.

  “I say!” said Elmer. “Careful, dear!” He raised his eyebrows at Amelia over another sip of tea. “Nicked her hair.”

  “What…” said Elizabeth. She regained her balance and turned to look at the man. She at once turned away. His throat had been sliced open. She tried not to think about what was on her neck. She tried not to vomit.

  “October Industries,” said Amelia as she nudged the nearest body. It groaned faintly. “I remember now. Yes, we were running from these folks.” She frowned down at the men splayed out around the family area. “Can’t imagine why, come to think of it.”

  “Did…you do this?”

  “Yes, quite!” said Elmer with a merry chortle. “I had quite forgotten the sight of Amelia in action. Good show, dear!”

  “But there may be more,” said Amelia as she turned back to face them.

  “And what about Black?” asked Elizabeth.

  They both became very serious. “I think…” said Amelia, “I remember a bit more now. Something about these men…and Black…I am sure that if Black appeared here, now, we would all die. Yes, I am certain of that.”

  Elmer nodded. “Yes, quite.” He took another sip of his tea.

  Elizabeth put a hand to her mouth. Her heart had not stopped pounding, and Amelia’s matter-of-fact statement put a new chill through her. If Black showed up, they would all die? And he was in Montana, looking for Isaac? She knew, perhaps for the first time, what it meant to be really afraid for someone she cared about. She hadn’t really taken him completely seriously, had she, when he was going on about rampaging killers?

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  “Okay.” She took a deep, deliberate breath. “What now?”

  “You need your angel,” said Amelia. “Callie, is it?”

  Elizabeth finished descending the stairs. A radio nearby squawked just as she was about to reply. She couldn’t quite make out what it said, but she thought it was something about breaking radio silence.

  One of the men sprawled out in the family room groaned and struggled to respond. “We—”

  A bright green blade of light speared the man through the chest and then vanished. He slumped to the carpet as it began to turn red beneath him.

  “Really, Amelia, is that entirely necessary?” said Elmer. He appeared only mildly perturbed by the carnage; it certainly wasn’t stopping him from enjoying his tea.

  “Can you take us away, Elmer?” Amelia asked him. She now appeared to be on full alert, scanning the other bodies and watching out the windows. “Make a door?”

  “You know I need a horizon for that, my dear. A hilltop, perhaps? I believe I saw a rather fine one toward the sunrise from here…”

  “But with the Cascade. The sky is cracked. Can you still do it?”

  “I believe so, provided we can find an undamaged portion. Which ought to be quite manageable at this stage! But of course, we must get there first.”

  “Then at least give us a storm.”

  “Right-o!” He winked at her although she was turned away.

  “I can bring Callie back,” Elizabeth told them, trying not to think too much about everything they said. She held up the butterfly brooch, and for the first time noticed that it seemed to glow with an inner golden light. Was that new?

  “Then do so,” said Amelia. “I’m sure she can—” She thrust her hand toward the window over the kitchen sink. The entire view outside the window turned pure sky-blue, the color of Elizabeth’s pants. Not a second later the entire house shook violently with an explosion.

  “-help,” Amelia finished.

  “Dear me!” said Elmer. “Good catch!” The blue-ness out the window vanished, revealing a cloud of dark smoke that at once began to pour through the broken aperture.

  Another explosion sounded nearby, and while the first had apparently been blocked by Amelia, this one definitely struck the house, somewhere upstairs. Elizabeth had a sinking feeling that it was her room. Her room had just been destroyed. Did they know she wasn’t in it?

  She raised the crystal butterfly brooch overhead and hurled it down onto the wooden floor below with all of her might. It didn’t shatter like she’d imagined. But it did break. And when it broke, the room filled with a flash of white light, and then there was Callie. She was seated on a corpse, and at once began nonchalantly licking the fur of her paw.

  “Callie!” said Elizabeth. “Museum! Now!”

  Elizabeth had no idea what to expect, or even whether Callie understood what she wanted. Callie had always been unreliable when it came to following instructions.

  Callie stopped licking and gazed at Elizabeth, eyeless. Then Callie crouched, gathered herself, and sprang at Elizabeth just as another blast shook the house nearby.

  For Elizabeth, everything went white. White and cool and quiet. And then, dark.

  Amelia Shape and Elmer Sky took a moment to gaze at the fallen body of Elizabeth Eddison. Elmer drained his tea with a great final gulp before dismounting from the counter and going over to her. “Well,” he said. “I was rather hoping the cat would open a door.”

  Amelia sighed. “Perhaps we should have explained it further.”

  “Or perhaps the cat understood the situation to be a bit more urgent than it, in fact, was?” Elmer knelt down by Elizabeth.

  “How is she?” asked Amelia.

  “Oh, she’s fine. Though I daresay she’ll have a bruise when she wakes up.”

  “If she wakes up.”

  “Er, yes, quite. What shall we do with her?”

  The house shook once more, and this time part of the kitchen wall collapsed. Amelia tilted her head in thought. “I suppose we should take her to her sister? But what good would that do?”

  “Oh Amelia, there’s always another way in. I remember now!”

  “You do?” Amelia turned as she heard the sounds of men approaching, shouting orders.

  “Oh, certainly. It is a place of doors, after all! We just need to find one. I’m sure we can do it, especially now.” He cast a meaningful glance up above.

  Amelia sighed. “I suppose it can’t hurt to try,” she said.

  “That’s the spirit!”

  “Can you carry her?”

  “Oh yes. Let’s see. Up we go!” Elmer hefted the unconscious body of Elizabeth over his shoulder. She had been holding a book, which lay on the floor beneath her. Elmer paused for a moment before taking that as well.

  “Very well, then.” Amelia began walking to intercept the men. “Stay close.”

  A half hour later, Shape and Sky crested a hill. Wind howled maniacally; thunder shook heaven and earth; unceasing torrents of rain poured laterally through the dark air.

  “I say!” shouted Elmer Sky over the sound of the storm. “Quite a show back there! For one so out of practice you did rather well I think!”

  Amelia grunted her affirmation, but the sound was lost in the cacophony. “Elmer!” she shouted back. “You may have overdone it with this storm!”

  “Quite so! My apologies! I may have gotten a bit carried away!”

  “Just get us out of here!”

  “Right-o!”

  Elmer handed the limp and soaked-to-the-bone body of Elizabeth Eddison to Amelia. He dramatically cracked his knuckles and positioned himself on the hilltop such that only the dark, stormy, and now badly damaged sky was visible to him beyond the crest of the hill. He reached up and pushed. A rectangular section of the dark sky opened backwards like a door, revealing sunlit green hills beyond.

  Amelia proceeded through the aperture in the sky, moving in one step from the cold wind and rain into a warm sunny day. Elmer followed and closed the door in the sky behind him. It troubled him to see that here too the sky above was damaged and dying. But at least they were far from where they had been before, and in a warm dry place where they could take care of Elizabeth.

  They laid her on the grass. Elmer procured a thermos of tea.

  The man named Shadrach surveyed the wreckage. He nudged a fallen board with his foot. Someone, somewhere, must have known about what those two could do. Someone, somewhere, had failed to inform him. Someone, somewhere, could therefore be held responsible for the lives of the nine of his men who had just perished at the hands of a light-wielding variation.

  Raschez, damn him. Nikola Raschez must have known.

  He turned without another word and exited the structurally unsound house. He hoped the others had better luck.