“No. You won’t. Because I’ve already won. You just don’t know it yet.” Zo flickered one more time, his shadow a smear against the black wood of the door. Then, before Dante could react, he stepped forward out of the blur and grabbed one of the carving blades from the floor and slashed it across Dante’s face.
The scream that started in my throat echoed back to me in Dante’s deep voice and then echoed again from Leo until all three voices blended into one note of anguish and horror.
Dante staggered back, clutching at his face, his hands covering his eyes. Blood ran down his cheeks like red tears.
I broke free from V’s grip and ran to his side, but Leo beat me there. He pulled Dante to his chest and turned him away from me.
“Abby, no, stay back.”
“No, Leo, let me see. Let me help.” I pressed my hands to Dante’s back, his muscles twitching and quivering with each quick breath he took. “Dante? Can you hear me?” I circled around them, trying to catch a glimpse of Dante’s face.
Dante panted in pain. Blood streaked through the gold chains and spiraled down his arm. “Leo, is that you? Where’s Abby? I can’t see.” His whole body shuddered, and then he said it again, a moan of disbelief. “I can’t see anything.”
Two drops of blood fell from his elbow and made circles as small and thin as dimes on the dusty floor.
Chapter
27
I couldn’t look away from those blood spots. I covered my mouth with my hands and shook my head. “No,” I whispered. “Oh, please, no.”
Zo threw the blade away, the clatter of the steel on stone sounding as sharp as a broken bone.
I turned on my heel, glad to have a focus for my rage. I felt my hand turn into a claw. Anger thumped in my heart; streams of fire poured out of my throat in a scream. This time, I would make Zo pay for what he had done. This time, nothing would stop me.
I rushed toward him, my hot blood burning like an inferno inside me. I reached Zo in three long strides and clamped my hand around his wrist, around the same hand he’d used to cut Dante.
He looked down in surprise, then back up to my face. His mouth curved in a small grin and I felt him start to flicker.
“No,” I growled, squeezing his wrist hard enough that I felt his bones creak under the pressure. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Zo’s grin faltered and his face twisted in confusion and anger. He tried to pull his arm away, but I held fast.
I could feel the edges of him thinning as he prepared to disappear, but I concentrated on keeping contact with him. I remembered how I had pulled Dante from the darkness between the doors. I did the same thing now, only this time I bent my will on keeping Zo from escaping. I forced myself to remember the first time I had seen him on the stage at the Dungeon. I chronicled the moments I had seen him with Valerie, the times he had hurt me or someone I loved. I pulled out of my memory each and every time he had said my name.
I wasn’t surprised to feel tears washing over my face.
I was surprised to hear V’s voice low in my ear. “Keep him locked in place, Abby,” he said grimly. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw V flicker into shadow and reappear next to Zo.
That was when I saw the knife in V’s hand, the blade still red with Dante’s blood.
V clenched the hilt in his fist and drew his arm back, preparing to thrust down at Zo’s chest in a killing stroke.
Shocked and surprised, I let go of Zo’s arm almost reflexively—and V’s blade swung down through empty air.
Zo flickered back into the room, this time behind V, who was off balance from Zo’s unexpected departure. Almost casually, Zo reached out and pushed on V’s arm, forcing him to follow through with his downward motion, forcing the blade to sink deep into V’s upper left thigh.
Zo grasped V’s hand and twisted the blade, cutting through the main artery in V’s leg. He pulled the knife out, let go of V, and stepped away.
V crumpled into a heap, blood pouring down his leg in sheets.
Zo grimaced as the blood stained his boots.
“No!” I cried and fell to my knees next to V. I pressed my hands to his leg, thinking I could stop the bleeding somehow, but he pushed me away.
“Too late,” he managed, his face already turning pale.
“Oh, V, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let go—” I didn’t know what to do. There was so much blood.
“No, Abby,” V said, his breathing fast and shallow. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault.”
“Leo!” I called out over my shoulder, knowing that it was useless. He couldn’t leave Dante to help me. I looked up at Zo with fury in my eyes. “Help him!”
“And why, exactly, would I do that?” he asked, his smile as pitiless as a shark.
“He was your friend,” I said. V’s body was cold to the touch.
“Was,” Zo said shortly.
“Abby?” V said, clutching at my sleeve with a shaking hand. “Abby?”
I leaned forward, tears spilling over my cheeks. “Don’t try to talk, V. Just hold on, okay? You’ll be okay.”
V’s eyes were bright with pain and with the last light of his life. “Tell Valerie the truth for me. Tell her I loved her. Always.”
He gulped down a jagged gasp.
“I will, V. I’ll tell her. I promise,” I said, squeezing his hand.
A faint smile appeared on his face. Then it faded, along with the light in his eyes.
“V?” I said, clutching at his limp hand, but he was gone. I bowed my head, my tears splashing onto his body.
The floor trembled beneath me, the stones creaking as they shifted on their foundation.
I looked up, startled. Leo caught my eye and we both looked up at Zo, who stood steady despite the uneven ground.
“That was faster than I thought,” he said, pleased.
“What?” I asked, pushing myself to my feet. I wiped my hands on my jeans, leaving behind red handprints on the blue denim. “What have you done, Zo?”
“You know, Abby,” Zo said thoughtfully, turning the blade over and over with his long fingers. “I’ve learned a lot since I’ve started traveling at will through the river. I’ve made some mistakes, sure, but I’ve tried to learn from them. One of the things that has fascinated me about the whole process of changing events is seeing how people’s choices can change what happens to them. The chain reactions are fascinating. Sometimes things work out exactly as I planned.” He nodded to Dante, sheltered in Leo’s arms. “Sometimes I have to improvise.” He knocked a toe against V’s limp body.
“I’ve also learned that traveling between the bank and the river is easy. The barriers there are thin and flexible, but strong. But traveling along the river, as those of us with special passes can do”—he held up his wrists covered with gold chains for me to admire—“can ultimately weaken those barriers to their breaking point. And the more often we pass through them on our travels through time, the more strain we put on those barriers, and the easier they are to crack open.”
“That’s what you were doing with your disappearing act,” I said, and the realization of Zo’s plan made me catch my breath. “You were traveling along the river and making Dante follow you in order to weaken the barriers faster.”
“I actually thought V might take the bait first, but it worked out better this way. V was becoming something of a problem.” He sighed and slipped the knife through his belt. “Though it’s too bad that Dante won’t be able to see the fruits of his labors.”
He turned his head to where Leo cradled Dante’s body in the corner of the basement. Leo had ripped part of his shirt and tied it around Dante’s eyes. The cloth was already soaked in blood.
I started heading in his direction when the ground rumbled again, louder and longer than before.
A crack appeared down the length of the basement floor, running directly toward Zo before stopping at his feet in front of the black door. Zo st
raddled the line, his head thrown back and his eyes closed.
“Abby?” Dante called out, his outstretched hand groping. “Abby? What’s happening? Are you all right?”
I ran to his side and grabbed for his hand, holding on tight. I knelt next to Dante. My eyes met Leo’s and he shook his head.
I didn’t know what to do except hang on and hope. At least I was with Dante. Whatever happened, I knew I would be all right as long as we were together.
Zo lifted his arms as though he were conducting an orchestra, and for a moment the ground stopped groaning. The air seemed to be holding its breath. The sky outside the basement windows turned from blue to gray to black.
With a final, wrenching twist, Zo brought his hands together in a single, thunderous clap. The roof of the basement seemed to peel away to reveal the black sky over the bank. The darkness breathed like an approaching storm. The walls of the basement thinned to the point of transparency and through them, I could see the bank that held the river in place begin to crack and crumble. The air in the basement turned crystal as the dark cold from beyond the door seeped through into the here and now.
I felt the edges of myself thin. I heard music on the fringe of my awareness, right on the border between dreams and reality.
And then, beneath the music, I heard a roar in the distance, a husky cough like a beast on the prowl. The roaring drew closer, rushing high and fast.
The ground shifted, cracks appearing like a tightly networked web around my knees. They made a pattern I almost recognized. The sound of the destruction was a song I almost recalled. My memory suddenly bled into my present vision. I remembered standing on the bank as it dissolved and disappeared into a bottomless chasm. I remembered Zo redirecting the river to flow in new, uncharted passageways.
He was doing it again, only this time the changes weren’t confined to the timeless bank. They were happening now. He was tearing down the walls that kept the river and the bank separate. They were never supposed to mix, and now that they were, there was no telling what would happen.
I remembered Zo’s words from so long ago: Something’s got to give.
I heard a tremendous rip, feeling the repercussions all the way up my legs to the base of my spine. I looked down, terrified to see water start to bubble up through the cracks in the basement floor.
The water wasn’t a small puddle of rainwater, or the morning mist gathering into dewdrops. It wasn’t even the cool, clear water of a mountain stream.
It was the wild, raging, silver-tipped river that carried within it all the past as it journeyed to the present and downstream into the future.
Released from the confines of the bank, the river of time suddenly crashed into the basement of Leo’s Dungeon.
***
What had once been merely a representation of time had become an actual, physical river. Having overrun its banks, the river surged up through the ground like a whale cresting in the deep ocean. The river ran wild and fierce along the scorched stones and the ruined wreckage of the Dungeon. The curling waves washed away the ash and the dust like a baptism. The water seemed to have a strange sheen to it, an electric blue
afterglow I knew I had seen somewhere before.
I struggled to stand against the rising tide; Leo helped me lift Dante to his feet. Together, the three of us waded through the water to the block of white-and-gold marble. Leo insisted I climb up out of the water and stand on top of the stone with Dante. The block wasn’t big enough for all three of us, so Leo balanced carefully on a nearby filing cabinet that had tilted diagonally against the wall.
I wrapped my arms around Dante’s chest and spread my feet apart on the marble to balance the extra weight.
“Abby?” Dante said, his hand finding my neck and touching my cheek. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly, as though if I waited to say it, it wouldn’t be true. “I’m worried about you, though.”
Dante tilted his head. “What’s happening? I hear water.”
“Zo tore down the barriers, and now there’s nothing separating the bank from the river or the river from us.”
The river crashed up against the closed door of the time machine before parting around the edges and continuing to fill the room.
“Where is Zo?” Dante asked, his body trembling with fatigue and shock.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t see him anywhere.” I wondered where he had gone, but it was hard to tell if the ripples I saw in the air were from Zo’s disappearing trick or from the spray of the river.
“There!” Leo called out, pointing to the top of the stone stairway.
I followed his finger and saw Zo’s boot heels step off the stairs and walk the perimeter of the hole that was the basement opening.
“You came!” Valerie’s voice rose shrill and excited above the sound of rushing water. “I knew you’d come back for me. It’s just like in the stories.”
Dread filled me. What was Valerie doing here?
“I do love your pirate stores,” Zo said. “I’m glad you got my message.”
Valerie’s laugh echoed down the stairs. “I did a good job, didn’t I?”
“You were perfect. Would you be a darling and help me with this?”
“What’s he doing?” I asked, craning my neck, trying to get a better view.
A slab of darkness landed over the square of sky with a hard metallic bang.
“He’s trapping us in here,” Leo said, his face hidden by the sudden shadows in the room.
“It just looks like he covered the opening with a board. We could still get out.” I counted the paces off in my head. Five, maybe six to the door. Another seven or ten to the stairs. “I think I could do it,” I called over to Leo. I could barely hear myself over the roaring water. If Valerie was here, maybe Natalie was too. If I could reach her, maybe we could get help.
Leo shook his head. “Crossing the river right now is too dangerous. I don’t think any of us should touch the water unless we absolutely have to.”
“Why not?”
“Look at it.” Leo waved his hand over the water. “It’s still full of time. Who knows what being exposed to that much of the river will do. Especially to those of us who have a different kind of relationship with time.” He pointed at himself and Dante.
Then he pointed at V. The water had lifted his body as if on a pyre and the river turned ember red with his blood. V’s hands, once so strong and swift, had relaxed in death, the waves lapping at his lax fingers.
The blue current that sparked through the water gathered around him, growing in intensity and brightness. V’s body softened along the edges where water met skin. A silver-white shimmer appeared over his body, glittering like light, flickering like fire.
As the silver water washed over V, the outline of his body faded. Consumed from the outside in, V disappeared, washed away as completely as if he’d never been.
My heart ached to see him go. V and I had had our differences in the past, but he had turned out to be a true and loyal friend. He hadn’t deserved what Zo had done to him. I hoped that he was finally at peace in the river of time.
I shifted my weight a little, trying to estimate how long before the river rose to swallow our marble perch. I could see images flowing past me in the river, but now the past and the present and the future were thrown together without any sense of how they were connected.
There was a glimpse of me with Hannah at Disneyland.
There was the same scene but without Hannah by my side.
There was a fragment of a moment where I saw Dante smiling at something I said.
There was a wisp of Leo standing on a hill, gray clouds gathering behind him.
The images ran into one seamless thread that was quickly being twisted and knotted into a skein that might never be unraveled.
“You should go,” I said suddenly to Dante. “You and Leo should go to the bank. That would be safer than being here.”
Dante had started
to shake his head before I even finished speaking. “I’m not leaving you,” he said. “I’m sure that was what Zo was counting on when he dropped that board over the opening. He knew we couldn’t wade through the river and we wouldn’t leave you behind.”
“Then take me with you,” I said. “I’ve been to the bank before. I’ll be okay to go again.”
Again Dante shook his head. “It might be easy to go to the bank, but with the barriers down, it might not be as easy to leave. I don’t dare risk it.”
The water level crept closer to our toes. Leo had already started to edge up farther on the cabinet to avoid the spray and splash of the river.
I scanned the room again, desperate for a way out.
My eyes found the towering black door. Valerie’s voice whispered in my ear: How does anyone go from place to place? Through the door.
“Dante, listen, I have an idea.” I took a deep breath, trying to think it through before I said it out loud. “I’m going to open the door.”
Dante opened his mouth, but I barreled on, and the more I explained it, the more certain I felt it was the right thing to do.
“It’s the only way out. And I think it might be the best way out.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think if I can open the door, then the river will flow through it, right? And since the door opens to the bank, then the river will be directed back onto the bank as well. It will return to where it belongs. We can fix the barriers Zo pulled down before it gets any worse.”
“You’ll have to step into the river,” Dante said, worried. “You heard what Leo said about how dangerous that could be.”
I touched the cloth wrapped around Dante’s eyes. I wanted more than anything to be able to look into his eyes right then. Not to see the quiet and constant belief that he had for me, but so Dante could see the strength and resolve in my own eyes. This was the right path, I could feel it. And I could fix this. I might be the only one who could.
I rose up on my toes and kissed Dante’s mouth. I savored the taste of his lips against mine. I felt the familiar electricity running in my veins as he kissed me back.