Touching Fire (Touch Saga) (34 page)

“Fallon!” Her small hands closed in her skirt
and lifted the light fabric to give her feet room as she bounded off the steps and dashed towards me.

Her tiny body collided with mine. Her thin arms wound their way around my throat. She held me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe.

“I’ve been so worried!” she breathed into my shoulder.

I gave her a hard hug before drawing back. “Where am I? Why am I here?”
I gulped. “Am I dead?”

Amalie offered me a sheepish grin. “
No, you’re not dead. This is kind of a dream. I brought you here. I’m sorry. But I needed to talk to you.”

I could feel my forehead creasing as I took another glance over the desolate place. “Where
is
here
?”

Amalie shrugged, her gaze following mine. “Home? Limbo? I don’t think anyone knows.”

I looked at her. “Why are you here?”

“We can’t leave.” Sadness passed over her pretty face
… my face.

I’d only ever seen her face once and that had been through glass, but she had my face, or rather, I had her face. We had the same small nose, same heart-shaped lips and narrow chin, all set against a round face. We were both pale and gangly, but the similarities ended there. She had a beautiful mane of copper that tumbled in perfect curls down her back
, and piercing blue eyes that could have been patches stolen from a crystal clear sky. And she was soft, not just her skin, but she looked soft. She looked gentle, sweet and delicate. I knew I didn’t look like that. I was too stiff and awkward and always braced to run, which gave me a sort of spooked appearance. Amalie was my opposite, like the twin sister I’d only ever met in my dreams.

“Where have you been?” I asked her. “I haven’t seen you—”

“I know. I’m sorry.” She threaded her arm through mine. “Things have been complicated since you found my diary.” She paused to nibble on her bottom lip. “Have you read it yet?”

I dropped my gaze to our feet. “
Uh, kinda. We haven’t had much time,” I explained quickly. “Plus I feel weird reading someone else’s diary.”

Her blue eyes found mine, wide and innocent. “But that’s why I wanted you to find it. So you would know…”

“Know what?” I pressed when she abruptly broke off.

She looked away. “
Know what happened.”

I stopped walking and placed a hand on her elbow, pulling her up short with me. “I know what happened. I know what you did.”

Patches of pink rode high on her cheeks. “But you need to read the rest. You need to know why.”

I snorted bitterly. “I’ve met your father. I know why.” She sighed and
I felt a spear of guilt shoot through me. “I promise to read it.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

Still smiling, she led me to the gazebo and the figure waiting at the top.

At first, all I saw were tiny feet encased in strappy gold sandals peeking out from beneath a dress of soft, emerald green. I followed the material up a willowy figure, and froze.

It was as though someone had dropped an elephant down on my chest. Every drop of oxygen was squeezed from my lungs, sending my system into a panic. Alarm bells roared in my ears, so loud, I couldn’t hear her when she said my name. My own lips moved, but no sound came out. At least, I didn’t think any sound came out. I couldn’t be sure of anything except the illusion in front of me.

The figure descended the steps, her movements as graceful as I remembered them. Her warm, green eyes reflected the familiar smile curving her lips. Her image blurred behind a film of tears that
I was too scared to blink away. I was too scared to blink at all in fear that it would all vanish if I so much as breathed. My throat closed around the avalanche of words pounding to be free, forming a tight ball suffocating me.

She stopped inches from me, so close I could feel the heat coming off her. I could smell the familiar scent of her citrus shampoo and chamomile hand lotion. The sweet fragrance became overpowering when she reached out a small hand and touched the side of my face. The gentle caress broke me like nothing else ever could.

“Mom?”

Her smile broadened. “Hey baby girl,” she murmured.

Tears rained down my cheeks. The sob wrenched from my chest a second before I threw myself into arms I’d felt wrapped around me my entire life. My own arms banded around her ribs, so tight I was sure I heard something crack. My fingers closed in the soft material of her dress, clasping her to me in pure desperation.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry for everything,”

“Hush,” she said into the top of my head, brushing the spot with her lips. “You have nothing to be sorry about, Fallon.”

My heart raged, slamming against my chest with such ferocity, I was sure it would just burst out. Its roar pounded in my ears so I couldn’t even hear my own wails.

“I killed you. I’m the reason you’re dead. I’m so sorry.”

Her hands clasped around my arms. She tried to nudge me back, but I wasn’t having any of that. I clung to her as though I would die if she let go. She ceased trying and returned her arms around me.

“You did no such thing.”

“I said such horrible things.”

She stroked my hair, lifting the strands off the back of my neck in a gesture so familiar it sent a fresh wave of grief through me.

“You were upset. I don’t blame you.” She pressed a kiss to my temple. “Fallon, we don’t have much time. There are things we need to talk about.”

Sniffling, I drew away, using the back of my hand to wipe away the tears and snot from my face. “What are you doing here?”

“This is where all my father’s victims go,” Amalie said, moving forward. “They just appear and lately there
have been a lot of new faces.”

I swallowed hard as I glanced at the
figures around us. “Garrison killed all of these people?”

Amalie nodded, taking my arm. “But your mother is right, we don’t have much time.
I won’t be able to keep you here for very long.”

They led me to the gazebo. I kept a tight grip on my mother’s hand the whole way, even when we sat down.

I turned quickly to my mother. “How are you? Are you okay?”

Mom laughed. “I’m fine, Fallon. It’s you I’m worried about.”

I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I hesitated, wrinkled my nose. “Okay, I’m working on it.”

Her smile vanished. “No, my baby, you’re not fine. You are in so much danger.”

My heart sank. “Do you mean Garrison, because I already know?”

“
No, you don’t know. He has gained so much strength. His army has grown as has his power over them. He has already caused so much chaos and confusion by starting a war in the mortal world.”

I
frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The attacks,” Amalie said quietly. “He is the one causing them.”

“Are you kidding me?” I exclaimed. “Garrison’s the reason the entire country’s under lockdown?”

“Yes,” Mom whispered urgently. “
He and his men have been terrorizing the people in the hope of drawing you out.”

I rocked my head vehemently from side to side in disbelief. “How do you know this?”

“Just because we’re no longer alive, does not mean we cannot see what’s happening in the other planes.” Amalie bit her lip. Her gaze darted to the field of dead. “Come.”

She took my hand and dragged me to the north end of the gazebo. She pushed me as close to the railing as she could without shoving me through and kept her hands fastened tightly around my arm.

“Do you see them?” she whispered into my ear.

I did
see them. So many of them. An entire ocean of faces I would never be able to erase from my mind.

There were those who had once been human, men and women with flesh and blood. Then there were the others.
Bear-sized beasts with arms the size of tree trunks and bodies covered entirely in a thick, shaggy carpet of hair. Serrated fangs gnashed from snarling mouths. There was no longer anything human about them, except their eyes. Such human eyes, it was horrifying. They ambled around the clearing, turning up soil with their talons the size of butter knives. Long ears twitched atop massive heads with long narrow snouts. They swung their spiked tails with every powerful stride.

“What are those?” I gasped.

“Monsters,” Amalie whispered back. Her voice gave the slightest tremor and her nails dug into my arm.

She was wrong.
They
weren’t the monsters. The monsters stood at the back, immobile beings that glinted under the filtered light. A low hum, like wind whistling through metal piping echoed from that end of the field and I knew immediately why.

There were children with mechanical arms and legs fused into the place
of their real ones. Some had guns in the place of hands, or their faces were hollowed out like pumpkins and replaced by wired cages containing whatever was now in the place of a skull.

There were
men with sheets of copper cut into their bleeding chests and tubes jutting from their skulls to their necks. A few had metal slabs bolted just over their hearts like protective covers and metallic hands that were sharpened at the tips.

The women seemed somehow infinitely worse. They were naked
and hairless and where their female parts had once been, there were square patches of copper and metal. Their limbs were severed; shoulders, elbows and wrists and extended by patches of copper piping, giving them an almost double jointed appearance. Parts of their faces had been peeled away and replaced with a robotic skeleton with no eyes.

There were dozens of them, a parade of human brutality at its very worst. The chilling horror was a slap of reality I was definitely not prepared for.

Something gentle touched my shoulder.

“Do you see now why you must stop
him?” Mom murmured.

As though her words had the power to sucker punch me square in the gut, I gasped and staggered back from the sight. My head was rocking side to side before I even knew what I was protesting.

“No.” I choked on a breath. “No. I can’t do this.”

“Fallon—”

“No!” I whirled around on her. “I’m not
Harry Potter
, Mom! Nor am I
Frodo
, who, by the way, was never the hero of those movies. It was always
Sam
. I can’t…” I mashed my fists into my face. “I can’t fight him. I’ll just get more people killed.”

“And that is why you are the leader this war needs.” Mom pulled away my hands to peer into my face. “
You care, but more than that, you were born with all this power for a reason.”

“He has a mechanical army!” I exclaimed, waving an arm towards the grotesque museum of mutilated horror.
“Oh and did you miss the giant werebears?”

“That’s not all he has,” Amalie said quietly, still watching the automatons.
“The newer ones, they sometimes still have the ability to talk.” She looked to me, her face a mask of terror. “They tell us how they died. Some of them,” her voice dropped to a near whisper, “have been mutilated so badly, they’re no longer even human. But lately, there’s been talk of a serum my father has been injecting into his patients.”

My own self-doubts were temporarily set aside as I concentrated on her words. “What kind of
serum?”

“The kind that makes you feel
invincible before boiling the blood in your veins and killing you in the worst sort of way possible.”

I recognized the man ambling up the gazebo steps almost instantly. I grabbed my mother’s hand out of pur
e reflex and yanked her back.

“Get back!”

“Hey, easy.” Lew, Garrison’s bodyguard once upon a time, raised his hands palm up.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed.

“I kind of live here now,” he said simply.

Mom touched my arm. “It’s all right, Fallon. He can’t hurt you here.
”

“He’s one of Garrison’s goons,” I said, never taking my eyes off the creep. “He tried to kill me.”

“Well, you did kill me, so I figure we’re even,” he muttered.

I stilled. “What?”

He slipped his hands into the pockets of his black trousers. “After the limo incident, Garrison took us to his lab. Bruce and Johnson were already dead.” He shot me a glare. “But I was taken to get patched up. Only he didn’t patch me up. You pissed him off. He started talking all crazy about how time was running out and
he
wasn’t ready.”

“Who wasn’t ready?”
I wondered. “Garrison?”

Lew
shook his head. “I don’t think so, because he kept saying
he
wasn’t ready, like he was talking about someone else. I mean, I’ve worked with Garrison since I was a kid and I have only seen him that crazy once, when you tried to escape.” He gestured to Amalie. “Whatever he’s working on, it’s huge.”

“What about this serum stuff?” I asked.