Downcast (34 page)

"Oh God," I whispered, catching sight of the three still women on the ground. "Are they...?"

"No," Haley replied with a relieved smile. "And, you can trust me on that."

I couldn't summon even the weakest smile for him because my eyes immediately went to Morris, who was now surrounded by Zack and Katie Jones as well, who were bending over him.

Shock and tears made my face and throat tingle, but before I had a chance to let my grief loose, I heard loud wails behind me as Jordan and Kara stumbled to their mothers' sides.

"She's dead!" Jordan howled, her face entirely swollen and splotchy, but the pain in her voice was real and found its way to my heart.

"Mom!" Kara sobbed, clutching her mother's body to her.

"They're not dead," Haley said gently, still holding me close as if to reassure me as well. "They'll be okay."

"What did you do to them?" Kara demanded, scowling at me through her sobs and the teary snot that dripped from her nose.

"I didn't do anything," I replied, trying to sound compassionate. "They'll wake up. They'll be fine."

Unholy screams of pain filled the air as my mom began thrashing about on the ground, clutching at her head, ripping at her hair and her clothes. She flailed her arms around her, trying to fight off her unseen attackers.

"No," I wailed. "No, this isn't what I wanted, either!"

Pain for pain solved nothing. Seeing my mother suffer wouldn't bring Morris or anyone else back. It wouldn't rebuild the town. It wouldn't ease the hole in my heart.

Before I could think it through, I was running down the field and to my mother's side.

"No more!" I yelled as I flung my body over hers to protect her.

Underneath me, Mom jerked, fighting me while she babbled nonsense in a terrified voice.

The air around us stilled except for Mom's moans and incoherent sobs.

"What did you do to her?" I demanded of the Furies.

"They broke her mind," Haley said, catching up to me and taking a protective stance over me and Mom, his eyes scanning around him. "They showed her what her true nature was and the reality of her crimes."

"Holy shit!" The thought of my mom being enraged was one thing. The thought of her being actually insane was a whole other can of worms that I was not ready to open.

"She has gone mad with the suffering," Haley said, crouching down and gently taking one side of my mom's arms and helping me to hold her still. "There is nothing you can do. Her suffering will be eternal until she can truly ask you for forgiveness."

"Wait!" I exclaimed. "That's not fair! If she's mad, then how can she think about her actions and figure out what she did wrong? She can't ask for forgiveness if she's too crazy to realize that's what she needs to do!"

Haley paused and cocked his head to the side, as if listening to something. Maybe he was hearing the Furies. Maybe I could, too, if I knew how. But, all I knew in that moment was that my mom was still kicking and trying to bite at our hands, in between groans and shrieks of anguish.

"She has paid for her crimes in the only way possible," Haley replied finally. "She's a prisoner in her own mind, now. She's too far inside herself to remember she has powers or to know how to use them. She won't be a danger anymore."

At the other end of the field, Zack was looking up at the sky, his arms extended upwards as if to touch the clouds that now rolled in. A cool breeze began to blow evenly over the field, and gentle, cool rain started to fall.

"This is part of it, too?" I asked, glad the rain was hiding my tears.

"Yes, she's no longer controlling the temperature, and without her anger, the fires will start to die out of their own accord. Things will grow back in their right season, and everything will be in balance again."

"But the damage is still done," I whispered, hurriedly glossing over the truth of that damage in my head.

"Yes," he said, his expression sympathetic.

More tears than rain ran down my face now, and my anger was tempered by cooling grief. It was all over now, but it didn't feel over because it wasn't right. This wasn't how it was supposed to end.

"No," I said finally. "I don't accept this. Tell the Furies to call off their vengeance. Mom needs care and compassion, not madness and pain. Tell them to stop."

Haley paused, then shook his head, looking at me sorrowfully.

"Their justice has been delivered already," he said. "They will do no more, but it cannot be undone."

"No!" I yelled. "No! They can't just kill Morris and drive my mom insane and hurt those women back there without fixing anything! They have to fix this! This isn't justice!"

Haley started, then drew in a quick breath and looked around us.

"They're gone," he announced grimly.

And with them went my last hope.

I LOOKED DOWN
at my mom, who was now nothing more than an exhausted, shaking shell of a mortal body.

She was whispering rapidly to herself, tears streaming from her reddened eyes. I let go of her arm and nodded at Haley to do the same. She wrapped them around her knees and rocked herself.

My heart was sore, as if someone had beaten it with ten thousand baseball bats and a grudge. Choking on my own tears, I looked over to where Morris still lay. Cerberus sat erect and fierce at Morris' head, as if guarding him.

"Will you stay with her for a minute?" I asked hoarsely.

Haley nodded and simply touched my cheek, catching one of my tears on his fingertips, then running his thumb under my eye to catch more of them. I stood up shakily and went over to Morris.

He now lay straightened out on the ground, his hands limp at his sides, and his eyes closed.

"Oh, God," I whispered, falling to my knees next to Helen. "I'm so sorry, Morris! I'm so, so sorry!"

Helen wrapped her arms around me, and we shivered together with our tears. Rob put his good arm around both of us, and I was glad it was Rob. He may not have been part of our Snub Club, but he had grown up with us. He was just an ordinary human like Helen, like Morris, like I had been. It just seemed right that humans should grieve together for one another.

Katie Jones and Zack had been staring intensely at each other, as if having a silent but complicated conversation. Finally, Zack shook his head but shrugged. She turned to us.

"There's a chance," she said breathlessly.

Helen looked up. "A-a chance? What do you mean?"

"I might be able to save him."

"What?!" Helen and I cried at the same time.

"It might not work, but it's better than trying nothing and letting him die like this."

"Is that really a good idea?" I gulped, remembering my almost-zombie incident in the graveyard. "I mean, I want Morris back, but not if he's going to be mangled and miserable, or worse, like dead but not dead."

Helen and Rob looked at me oddly. I gave them an apologetic look, but no way was I telling them about the zombie thing.

"If it doesn't work, Haley will give him the mercy of release," she said. "But, I think we should try."

"Does this involve me?" I asked warily.

"Yes," she replied. "But, Zack and I will help you. You won't lose control between the two of us."

"I knew it," I groaned, terrified at the thought of trying to bring Morris back to life and making just one more fantastically huge, awful mistake in what felt like a long line of fantastically huge, awful mistakes.

"Come over here, kneel by his heart," she ordered me, and reluctantly, I obeyed. "Place your hands over his heart and imagine new cells bursting into existence, their proper function set and working as everything begins to start his heart pumping blood again. Zack?"

"You can do this, Steph," he murmured in my ear as he knelt behind me and leaned in, moving his arms so they were touching mine and his hands covered mine over Morris' chest.

I felt the flow and ebb of his power as it rushed into me then pulled back, taking some of mine with it. For a moment, I grew weak and a little dizzy, but then I was able to focus once more. It was amazing the amount of my power Zack had been able to absorb into himself. He really was one almighty god if he was able to take what I could dish out and suppress it, leaving me just enough to sustain myself and channel a laser-like beam of life straight into Morris' heart.

Morris' body jolted under me, as if I had put cardiac defibrillator paddles on his chest. The small still-mortal part of Stephanie Starr had a wildly inappropriate urge to shout, "Clear!" She thought that Morris would have appreciated it.

"That's enough," Katie Jones said calmly.

Zack carefully pulled me back from Morris, taking a breath and slowly releasing my power back into me. I'd never been drunk before, but the rush of power, even controlled as it was, seemed pretty close to what being drunk must feel like.

Dazed, I watched as Katie Jones' hands began to glow with rainbows of color and light fizzing and swirling around them in a translucent cloud. She placed her hands on Morris' chest, and I saw her push the rainbow light into him. The colors seemed to separate, each gravitating to a specific area of the body. It reminded me of a greeting card about chakras I had seen once in the store.

But then, the colors stretched into glowing strings under his skin, pulsing as they slinked through his veins. I heard an awful crack come from Morris' back, followed by a blinding light that was too bright even for my freakovision. When it cleared, I could see battered Katie Jones still concentrating and pushing more of her magic into him.

Suddenly, the brightness of the colors faded, and the light around her hands grew dim. The pulsing of color and light in his veins stuttered and went dark.

"No," she whispered. "No! This is supposed to work!"

Without thinking, I slammed my hands down on Morris' chest and shot a full dose of life into him.

This time, his body briefly left the ground because of all the energy I had shoved into him, throwing me, Zack, and Katie Jones off of him and onto the ground. Bursts of light began to go under his skin like fireworks in a jar, and I could sense the rampant flush of new life zipping and zinging through his body.

He hit the ground again, but this time, there was a distinct, "Oomph," that came from his lips, right before his eyes fluttered open.

"Wha—" Morris murmured groggily, tentatively sitting up with a wince. "Wha' habben'?"

"You're alive!" Helen squealed and launched herself at him, pulling him into a fierce hug. Cerberus frisked around Helen and Morris, wagging his tails and play bowing.

I was so relieved and wanted to hug Morris, too, but Zack held me back. I realized I probably wasn't fully in control of myself just yet, and I didn't want to risk Helen or Morris by touching them.

"Wha'd'ya mea' alive?" Morris asked, clutching at his head.

"Well, let's just say you were down for the count," Helen replied. "For the really, really long, permanent count. But, Stephanie and Katie Jones brought you back!"

Morris gazed in bewilderment at Katie Jones and at me.

I stared back at him, half in wonder, half in horror.

What had I done?

I was definitely not looking at the Morris I knew.

"I think you might have overdone it with the life thing," Katie Jones said with a grin.

"Yeah, maybe," I agreed, still in shock.

Helen noticed us and pulled back to look at Morris, then gasped.

"What?" Morris asked.

"Uh, you're alive!" Helen answered with fake cheerfulness.

"Oh God, I'm a zombie, right? I'm already decomposing and horrible!"

"No, actually, you're kind of the opposite."

"Wait what?"

Helen and Morris looked at me, and I held up my guilty hands defensively.

"Don't look at me," I said. "I have no clue how this happened."

Zack laughed and clapped me on the back hard enough to make me cough.

"I think the ol' Stephinator here gave you a bit more life than you bargained for," he said. "She may have accelerated your body by about two years in the space of two minutes."

"You look good," I offered apologetically.

“Yeah," Helen added. "Really good."

And, he did. His braces had fallen off his now-perfect teeth. His face had lost its baby fat and now showed lean, clean lines and sharp cheekbones. Gone were the pimples of high school and here to stay was a man's skin with a faint hint of stubble. His body actually looked longer to me, and his muscles had filled out. He was no quarterback, but he had a tall, broad-shouldered, athletic look to him, which, of course, made his now-ragged clothes seem way too small and tight on his new frame.

"How about we get him to a hospital before we get him to a mirror?" Katie Jones suggested. "We should probably get his back x-rayed to figure out what we actually did to it."

"My back?" Morris spluttered.

"Yeah," I said sheepishly. "It was kinda broken, and we fixed it."

"Do I want to know?" he groaned.

"No, not really," Helen told him.

"Fine by me. I'm done with magic and gods. I'll be sticking with the weather from now on."

"Good idea," she agreed, motioning for Zack to help him to his feet.

He winced as he tried to straighten up.

"Your spine is probably still a little sore," Katie Jones said kindly. "Fusing breaks like that leaves the tissue and nerves a little tender."

He looked at her wide-eyed for a moment, then shook his head. He turned with Helen and Zack to head back toward the gym. He stopped and turned to look back at me over his shoulder.

"Thanks, Steph," he said awkwardly.

"Anytime," I replied, equally awkwardly.

"I hope not."

"Me, too."

I watched them walk off and then approached Katie Jones.

"Are you going to be okay?" I asked.

"Me? Oh, I'll be fine," she replied, smiling wryly. "After I sleep for about a month."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure you're exhausted."

"That doesn't even begin to cover it. However, we need to talk about your mother."

"Right." It was the last thing I wanted to discuss. I needed five minutes by myself, pretending none of this had actually happened, before I was ready to deal with more grim reality. But goddess is as goddess does, and this goddess had a mother problem to handle.