Undone: The Complete Duology, page 37
Everyone in Thorn Tree was taught from an early age not to venture to the river without the Reverend, and he only led us here on the Feast. The rest of the year, the river remained undisturbed. I had never gone this far, and I had no idea what waited at the end. Would we find ourselves back in the shifting forest? Then what?
Could we ever really escape Thorn Tree?
My spell was all but forgotten. The moment Mac had said that he’d found Robert, I knew I couldn’t bring myself to sacrifice his brother. He would know, and he would know when I was doing it. The thought was too much.
Maybe I could have brought myself to finish the spell for the greater good—Mac might even understand, given his brother’s confessions—but now I had no idea what to believe. Mac had said I wasn’t a witch.
Clearly, he was wrong.
But maybe he wasn’t. I’d been so certain, but I couldn’t remember when or why I had determined that. I’d felt the magic course through me, again and again, but what did that mean?
What did any of this mean?
I didn’t have time to pick at all the knots in my psychology at the moment. We had to keep going. Mac’s determination to follow the river was as good as anything on the surface, but the longer we trudged through the swirling bloody water, the more I was convinced he was on to something. The only part of his map that didn’t match was the church insignia.
There was something at the end of the river. If we managed to reach it.
My feet went out from under me. I grabbed at Mac but my wet fingers slipped. I toppled face forward into the water. My mouth filled with blood, and I spat it out as I flailed upright again. Mac looked over his shoulder at me, reaching back to grab me until I steadied myself.
“Just a little farther,” he said, though he couldn’t possibly know that was true.
“I just want—”
He put a finger to his lips to quiet me. I hesitated, listening.
The sound of roaring water filled the distance. We continued forward, bobbing along in the red water.
Up ahead, the water rushed together.
“Turn back!” I shouted, but it was too late.
The water grabbed us as if it were a sentient being. I was yanked forward. My head went under, and red bubbles burst from my lips as I struggled for the surface. My body twisted and turned with the current. I was thrown to one side then another. Red rushed past my vision, filled my sight. My lungs constricted with the need for air.
Then I was out of the water, free falling. I sucked in enough air to scream. Water and light alternated in my sight. My back hit water, knocking what air I had from my lungs. Then I was under the red water again.
I couldn’t find up or down. My limbs seemed to be lost in the struggle.
A hand grabbed my shirt and yanked. I broke the surface. My attempt to breathe was cut off as I coughed up blood water. I treaded as I struggled to breathe, panting in short sharp breaths.
Finally, the world cleared. Mac and I floated in a pool of blood water filled by a gushing waterfall. To one side, the pool flowed out into another river that curved and disappeared into the distance.
I stared up at the waterfall. I’d lived my entire life in Thorn Tree and had never known this even existed.
“Look,” Mac said, nodding towards the waterfall. His hair was slicked to his head with blood, and his face tinted red.
We looked like extras in an excessive horror movie.
“There’s a cave behind the waterfall,” he said. “Come on.”
He swam towards the cave. My limbs were weak as I struggled to catch up with him. He climbed onto a rock platform to the side, then helped me out of the water. I hunched on the rocks, shuddering. He put his arm around my shoulders as I stood and together, we wound around the rocks towards the waterfall.
The roar of the falling water drowned out my thoughts.
Mac gave me an apologetic look before leading me through the falls. Blood water pelted me in the head and face, blinding me, as we pushed through the curtain. My sopping wet shoes squelched against the stone floor.
The cave opened before us, stretching up towards the sky and reaching far back into the mountains. I couldn’t see the back wall.
Mac and I crept farther into the cave. My muscles were tight, my senses on alert. Despite being less than a mile away from my hometown, I had no idea where we were or what we might find.
Whatever it was, Mac’s father had seemed it to be significant enough to mark on the map.
Despite how far we traveled into the cave, we never lost light. There was no apparent source of it, but I’d found the same to be true in the demon tunnel that had collapsed while I’d been exploring.
I glanced towards the ceiling, hoping this cavern didn’t try to take us out too, but I couldn’t see anything among the shadows that engulfed the top of the chamber.
In the back of the cavern, a tunnel branched off into darkness. We walked single file through the narrow path, my shoulders nearly dragging on either side. Mac had to hunch in on himself to fit.
The tunnel wound farther into the mountain. If it began to collapse as the other had, we would have no chance of escape. The path went on so far, I began to wonder if it would ever truly end. Perhaps it was a trap, and we would wander for eternity.
Without any warning, the tunnel led us straight out onto a rock ledge that jutted out above an abyss.
My heart all but stopped. In every direction was endless darkness, a chasm from which we would never return.
Perhaps this had been an abandoned mine. I didn’t dare speak aloud, as if a single syllable would crack the ledge on which we tentatively perched.
I was about to creep backwards into the tunnel when shuffling noises came from below, though I couldn’t see past the impenetrable darkness of the abyss over which we stood.
Mac shot me a concerned look. I couldn’t bring myself to move more than necessary.
Heat rushed up towards us. I took a step back as the darkness below broke. Two tall spires, wide apart, rose from the dark. They kept coming before a black rounded surface appeared between them.
Then I found myself eye level with a monstrous pointed face topped with twisted horns that stretched towards the ceiling of the cavern.
I would know that face anywhere: the statue in the alcove behind the drapes in the church had been crafted in its likeness.
In its honor.
“The insignia,” Mac said, breathless. “It represents this…demon.”
The demon’s enormous eyes shifted to take us in. From behind the hulking body rose a jointed tail that curved over its back into a stinger, like a scorpion.
“Grace Miller,” the demon said, though its mouth did not move. “At last, we meet, face to face.”
I trembled, unable to formulate words. Whatever I had expected to find at the end of the river, this was not it.
But why not? Demons had roamed the town, and the Reverend had certainly been far from angelic.
“I gave you everything, Grace. Love, devotion. No work, no famine, no disease. Isn’t that what humans want?”
This beast didn’t just reside near Thorn Tree. It was Thorn Tree.
We had never known, none of us, except the Reverend.
“It came with strings,” I said, finding my voice though it wobbled and cracked. “It came at the cost of our souls.”
The demon’s booming laughter filled the cavern and pressed against my eardrums until they might pop.
“Do you think your hatred gives you a soul?” He rose up higher, and he seemed to expand on until infinity. “You must be tired. You’ve been resisting for so long, and to what end? To lose everything, including yourself? You have become consumed with revenge. It feeds me. You have never stopped feeding me. You are still part of Thorn Tree.”
“I’m nothing like Thorn Tree,” I spat, anger fueling me with more indignation than was safe for my survival.
“You are, in the most important way,” he said. “Not one of you can save yourselves. Every Feast, your blood fills my river, and I can taste your essence in it. I know everything about you, Grace Miller. Your hatred, your fears, the thoughts that keep you awake at night. Every moment of your life belongs to me. It sustains me for the year. Just submit to me, and all will be restored.”
“Never,” I said, inching closer to the edge, to him. I leaned forward, anger erupting through me. “Never!”
I screamed in his face, nose to nose with the beast that had created and destroyed us.
The cave rumbled.
“I’ve had just about enough of you,” the demon said. “My avatar tried to bring you back, but you had to upset everything. For hundreds of years, Thorn Tree has satiated me. Just one little offering a year, and you lived a peaceful existence. But you—you ruined it. The people have turned on you, and soon they will turn on each other. The illusion is falling apart. There is nothing left to salvage unless you submit.”
I clenched my fists at my side as I screamed, “I will never bow down to you!”
The demon roared, its scorpion tail swaying.
“Never! Never!” I couldn’t seem to stop screaming at the beast. “Never!”
Nearly lost in shadows, Mac whispered, as if to himself, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”
The demon whipped its head between us, then narrowed its gaze at me. “There is only one way out of Thorn Tree, Grace Miller. Are you sure?”
“Anything!”
Mac’s eyes widened as he reached for me, but I didn’t care. There was nothing in this world that would stop me from taking the chance for freedom.
The beast shot up towards the dark ceiling above.
The fucker had been crouching.
Hot air rushed around us. The cavern trembled. The ledge shook, and I stumbled back with Mac towards the tunnel. The world shifted and moved, and I realized the ledge had rocketed upwards like an out-of-control elevator. I fell back on the ground and pressed my palms against the rock as if I could stop myself from toppling over the edge.
We broke through the surface of the ground. Rock and debris pelted around us, and I covered my head with my arms.
“Grace!” Mac grabbed my arm and yanked me backwards.
The ledge we’d been perched on toppled into the pit that had opened in the ground. Below, glowing lava pulsed otherworldly light into the world above.
We stood in the middle of Thorn Tree, with the main road broken and sagging into the hole. Filling the hole was the head of the demon. He scanned his eyes over the town.
Then he opened his mouth.
The sound of a tornado filled the air. I pressed my hands to my ears as I staggered backwards. I collided into Mac, and he wrapped his arms around me as we moved away from the edge.
Around us, the buildings on either side of main street began to collapse. The piles slid towards the open pit and toppled into the waiting mouth of the beast.
The edge of the pit crumbled farther, and the demon grew with the expanding hole. Asphalt broke off and tumbled down his gullet, followed by fences and trees and cars. Screams broke over the fierce sound of wind. Bodies tumbled into the pit of his mouth as he expanded, consuming more and more of the town.
The trees on the outskirt of town toppled into each other, and they rolled together in a landslide into the waiting mouth. Rocks bounced along the sloping ground and disappeared.
The pit expanded again. Mac and I scurried backwards, moving up an incline.
Sheriff Ditka’s home, now a pile of rubble, slid into the demon’s mouth. He swallowed it down as Honey and Hive followed, the field where the Feast was held, and more trees. Mac and I scurried farther and farther back. The headmaster’s house, the school, the abandoned barn full of gasoline, and my tent from the woods slid in from the other side of his mouth and dropped into the belly of the beast.
A familiar structure rolled towards the pit as it enlarged yet again. The remains of the building were nearly into the demon’s maw before I realized what I was seeing: my house.
More and more of Thorn Tree disappeared into the mouth.
“When does it end?” I yelled to Mac over the raising wind.
“I don’t…I don’t think it does,” he said.
I jerked around to look at him. We moved farther up the hill, towards the mountain, as the monster within the pit continued to consume.
“I don’t think it ends,” Mac said. “The Reverend mentioned something about that before I killed him, but I didn’t realize what he meant. He said it will be difficult to stop him once he starts. He’ll just keep going.”
“Until when?” I snapped.
Not like any of this was Mac’s fault, or that he had a chance of knowing how to stop this whirlpool of destruction we had opened.
I had opened.
More cries split the air, but then they were gone. And so was the town. Trees toppled in, along with grass and flowers and dirt.
Mac had been right. The beast had no intention of just destroying Thorn Tree.
I dared a few steps forward.
“Stop!” I screamed at the demon. “That’s enough! Stop it!”
The whirlwind ceased. I staggered forward in surprise. Mac caught the back of my shirt and tugged me back towards him.
The demon shifted to face us head on, hovering inside the pit. His tail rose up through the darkness and swayed high above him in the night sky.
“I require a sacrifice,” he said. “One of a soul in exchange for the world.”
Sickness washed over me. The world?
“You really plan to keep…eating?” I stammered.
My mind couldn’t quite comprehend the enormity of such an event. The demon was going to literally consume the entire planet.
“Of course,” he said. “I am the King of Gluttony, after all. The purest intentions are the sweetest.”
“I’ll do it.”
I jerked around as Lexi made her way down the rocks towards us. Somehow, she’d survived the feeding, at least so far.
Then her words registered with me. “No way. You can’t—you’re not even part of Thorn Tree.”
“He didn’t say anything about having to be part of this awful town,” she said. “Besides, the Reverend made me an honorary member.”
There was a part of me that wanted to step out of the way and let her go, let her be the noble one and save the world. Mac and I could ride off into the sunset. We would make a little altar dedicated to her sacrifice and never forget what she did for everyone.
But this wasn’t her war.
“You can’t do that,” I said.
“Nonsense.” Lexi stormed past me, towards the beast.
He snapped his mouth closed.
Lexi halted at the edge of the pit. “I’ll do it. I came here to save Mac. There’s no purer intention than that, right?”
The beast snorted out smoke from its nostrils. “Silly humans, always so limited in their assessments. A sacrifice is nothing if it is not received.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Lexi looked between the beast and us.
I shrugged.
“You cannot save those who do not want to be saved, and you cannot sacrifice yourself for those who do not accept your sacrifice.” He swung his tail lazily behind him. “You may be willing to offer yourself, but they are not willing to allow it. You are denied.”
“But wait—” she said.
He shot his tail stinger towards her. I lunged at Lexi and yanked her out of the way.
The stinger stabbed into the earth where she had been standing.
I turned to the beast.
“I’ll do it,” I said softly.
“Not a chance! Are you insane? I don’t accept it.” Mac faced the beast. “I don’t accept it. I don’t accept her sacrifice.”
I shook my head and rested my hand on his arm, staring up into his eyes. Fear fluttered across his face.
We both knew the truth: he had already long ago accepted my sacrifice. He’d known that I intended to end Thorn Tree at any cost, including my life. He had come into this battle knowing that I might not make it out no matter how much he would try not to let that happen.
The reverse wasn’t true though. I would never accept Mac’s death as an option. His sacrifice would be denied.
“I can’t let you go,” he said, voice shaking. He brushed blood-soaked hair back from my face. “We’re so close, Gracie. So close. We can have a life past Thorn Tree.”
“Not if the world is consumed,” I said. I squeezed his bicep. “I’m sorry, Mac. I have to do it. This was also my goal. It has to end.”
I leaned in and kissed him. He tensed and did not return the kiss. I wrapped my arms around him, and he sank into my embrace. He deepened the kiss, pulling me tighter against him. Hot tears rolled down my face, and I couldn’t tell if they were mine or his.
When we finally broke the kiss, he pressed his forehead to mine. “I’ll do it.”
“Denied,” the demon said without any concerns.
He would receive his sacrifice, or he would keep consuming the world. He won either way.
When I faced the demon, he opened his jaws. His maw was like a fiery inferno, and if it weren’t for the jagged teeth around the edges, I wouldn’t even recognize it as a mouth. It more closely resembled staring down into a volcano.
Holding Mac’s hand, I took a single step towards the beast, towards my end. Then I took another, and another.
My fingers slipped from Mac’s hand.
“Gracie, please,” he said.
It didn’t matter if he swooped in and took me away from all this. The beast would reach us before long, and we would disappear with the entire planet.
It was me, or everyone. The beast demanded a sacrifice, one that was given and accepted in equal measure.
I took another step. My footing slipped. I landed on my ass and slid down the incline, headed straight for the gaping jaws of the demon. My scream mingled with those of Mac and Lexi behind me.
My arm tugged back, halting me. My feet dangled over the edge of the pit, right before I toppled into the beast’s mouth.
I looked up expecting to see Mac, then startled.
Robert, caked in blood and covered in bruises, stood over me, holding my arm. If he let go, I would tumble over the rim and never be seen again.
