Everneath
Authors: Brodi Ashton
To: my dad.
A quiet man.
A fierce warrior.
PREFACE
History books call it the Underworld. Or even hell.
But I know it’s neither. It is really called the Everneath,
and it’s not a place for the dead. It’s a place for the
Everliving—beings who have discovered the secret to
eternal life. It’s a place for their Forfeits—the humans
who give up everything to nourish the Everliving. It’s
the world caught between this one and the next, a layer
between Earth and hell. I know because I was a Forfeit.
I would give anything to change this.
TWO WEEKS AGO
I
was picturing his face—a boy with floppy brown hair and brown eyes—when the Feed ended.
At first I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t know where I was or why it was so dark. I knew only that the pain inside me—the feeling that I was being drained from the inside out—had subsided, and now everything was numb. Maybe I no longer existed.
“It’s over,” Cole whispered in my ear.
I wanted to answer, but my mouth wasn’t working.
“Nikki, try to open your eyes.”
That was why it was dark. My eyes were closed. I’d been squeezing them shut for I don’t know how long. The muscles around them had forgotten how to relax, so it was some time before I could pry them open.
When I did, they stung, like a fresh wound exposed to cool air. After a hundred years they had forgotten how to produce tears.
It was still dark all around us, but as I worked on my eyes, the black forms that had bound me to Cole began to peel away, as if an oil slick were lifting from my skin.
I could see.
I looked at my arm, from my shoulder down to the elbow, and a little lower, to where it disappeared behind Cole’s back. My skin was so pale. Almost blue. I was wearing a black tank top. I tried to remember putting it on but came up with nothing.
“Nikki. Try to stand up.”
I shook my head, surprised that I could move my head at all. The Shades, with their black, fluid forms, had cocooned us so tight for so long. Cole’s head was next to mine, his chin resting on my shoulder, his blond hair touching my cheek.
“You can take your time.”
“Mmm,” I said. It was all I could manage.
I started with small movements, flexing my fingers and my toes, shocking my hibernating muscles awake. Cole did the same. I could feel his fingertips pressing into my back, restarting the circulation.
I worked up to my knees, my legs, my elbows, making small movements against Cole’s body. But where I tried to separate my legs from his, the skin stung. It was as if we had been sewn together, and I was ripping us apart.
I groaned in pain and pulled him tight against me again.
He let me. “I know it’s going to be hard, Nik. We’ll just take it slow, okay?”
I nodded, and he held me for a few long minutes before we tried to separate again. This time, he rubbed the affected skin as we went, and I had a brief memory flash of a woman ripping a Band-Aid off my knee, and then rubbing it to ease the pain.
But when I tried to focus on the image, it slipped away and I was in the dark again.
I shook and reached for Cole, but this time he grabbed my wrists, gently and firmly.
“Nik, I’m sorry. The Shades say the Feed is over. I know it feels weird, but we have to get used to it.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him. Without his embrace, my body felt empty and hollow, as though we were one person, divided. Except it wasn’t an even division. He had taken away everything that made me … me. And I would only be
me
again when I was next to him. I wasn’t sure my body would survive on its own anymore. I was no longer whole.
Even though I was trembling, I sat up. My legs dangled over the stone ledge of our alcove and I looked around. We were in a giant cavern, the walls of which were filled with hundreds of alcoves just like the one we were in, but they were all empty.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew we were the last ones to start the Feed, so we were the only ones left. Stairs built into the rock zigzagged up the walls, leading to the alcoves above us. The ground was covered in a sea of black sludge that swelled and pulsed like a lake in a storm.
More Shades. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
“They’re stretching out too,” Cole said from behind me. They should be. The Shades had been wrapped around us for the entire century, unmoving, funneling my own energy directly into Cole.
Cole.
I turned my head until I could see him in my peripheral vision, deeper inside the alcove. His was the only voice I’d heard for the past hundred years. The only name I knew anymore. He rubbed his eyes, trying to pry them open with his fingers. “This part never gets easier,” he said.
I faced forward again, looking out over the dark ground. I had this niggling feeling that I was forgetting something very important. The more I tried to figure out what it was, the more my heart pounded. If I could just remember, my heart wouldn’t explode.
And then it hit me. When I’d opened my eyes, I’d forgotten the face.
His
face. That’s what it was.
I closed my eyes again, and there he was. Hair that flopped forward in a tangled mess. Big brown eyes that could search me out in any crowd. Callused hands that could lead me anywhere.
I couldn’t remember the name that went with the face. I’d lost it years ago.
“Nik?”
Cole shifted so that he was sitting beside me. He had shaken off the shroud of a deep sleep. “Nik, look at me.” There was a strange urgency to his voice. I twisted my head to look at him and was struck by how attractive he still was. I had been in his arms, but I hadn’t seen his face for a century. It was the same. His blond hair framed his dark eyes—eyes that were wide open now, in surprise. His gaze roved over my face, my body. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” My voice sounded strange. I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying because I was thinking about being wrapped up with him again. Being whole again. I started to lean toward him, but he put his hands on my shoulders and studied me.
“You … you’re still the same
Nikki.
You survived.” He cupped my face in his hands, and then turned it left and right, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I found you.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head with a strange smile on his lips. “I mean, I’ve searched for you—for someone like you—for thousands of years.” He tilted his head back and gazed up, as if he were thanking the cavern ceiling for something. He clasped my hands so tightly it hurt. “You have no idea what this means. This. Never. Happens. Nik, you don’t have to go to the Tunnels. You can stay with me. Become an Everliving.”
He jumped off the ledge and stood on the ground, the Shades there making way for his feet. He reached out his hand. “Come with me, Nik.”
I looked at his hand, and then up at his face. “Where?”
“Out of here.” He gestured to the giant cavern. “You can live forever like me, and you won’t have to go to the Tunnels.” His face involuntarily grew hard. It seemed even immortals were scared of the Tunnels.
I reached for his hand, then hesitated as I remembered that face. The one with the brown eyes. The boy with the hands that fit mine just right. I’m not sure how, but I knew if I went with Cole, I’d never see that face again. The boy with that face was not an Everliving.
He was a human, and he was on the Surface. Where I’d left him. I knew it like I knew I needed air to live.
“No,” I said. I pushed away from him and stood up on my own. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I had another choice. “I’m going home.”
The Shades at Cole’s feet whipped into a frenzy at this. “Wait,” Cole said, the realization of what I’d said sinking in. “Wait! She doesn’t know what she’s saying!”
But they didn’t change course. One Shade rose from the whirlpool and, in front of my eyes, morphed into the shape of a dagger, driving itself into my shoulder. It felt like a hot poker, searing through my flesh. As I screamed, other Shades gathered round. They snatched me up, and in a whirlwind of black, I flew through the air as the sound of Cole’s voice grew faint behind me, shouting my name.
I landed with a
thwump
on a surface that was cold and hard, the side of my face smashed against what looked like industrial tile floor. I could smell ammonia, and it was so strong it made my eyes water.
Where am I?
I wasn’t in the Everneath anymore; the light was too bright, the odors too strong.
I rolled over onto my back and found myself staring into fluorescent lights that weren’t lit, yet I had to shield my eyes. I looked around. On my right, a mop leaned against the wall in the corner, next to a brown wooden door with a
NO ADMITTANCE
sign. On my left were rows and rows of potato chips and candy, a couple of soda fountains, and a counter with a cash register.