Scott had cleared his throat before speaking, his voice still hit a few nervous high notes. Judging by his stutter and Jillian’s sudden fidgeting, neither of them had thought we would actually detonate the grenade. Then again, neither of them had seen pure evil in the mirror tonight.
I was still examining the grenade, wondering exactly how I should go about releasing its destructive power, when I caught a glimpse of movement. When I looked up, Joshua now stood less than a foot from me.
“Amelia,” he whispered, “I don’t think we should do this.”
I lowered the grenade so that it wouldn’t hang in the air between us like a threat, and leaned toward him.
“I know, Joshua. And on most days, I’d agree with you. But what if we can stop the demons tonight? What if we can end the threats to your family? To us?”
Joshua shook his head, but I saw his eyes dart involuntarily to the bridge. Although his gaze only lingered there for less than a second, I knew I’d struck a nerve. Joshua hated that bridge almost as much as I did. Still, he wasn’t quite on board with this plan yet. Which meant I needed to give him one last push. . . .
Holding the grenade slightly behind me, I reached out my free hand to brush my fingers against his. Except our fingers didn’t connect. Instead, our hands floated through each other like passing currents of air. Like nothing.
“Joshua, listen to me,” I whispered. “Please. As long as the rest of you take cover, all the risk falls on me. And what’s the worst that could happen? I die, lose my Risen abilities, and get to touch you again? Sometimes, that’s all I really want. So if the three of you are safe, then there’s no downside to this.”
The reluctance in his eyes shifted into something that resembled hurt.
That look didn’t mean I’d hurt him; it meant that he knew I would die again—and eagerly—if I had to. And in that glint of hurt, I saw everything clearly: even though Joshua understood me, even though he might agree with me just a little, he wouldn’t go along with something like this. Not now, not ever.
Keeping the grenade tucked behind my back and out of his reach, I lifted onto my toes. With my eyes shut, I planted a small kiss on what I hoped were his lips. I lingered near the warmth of his skin. Even without a real kiss to precede it, that warmth felt delicious, and I wanted to remember it.
After a slight hesitation, I moved closer, until my lips were only an inch from his ear. There, I said a single, simple word:
“Run.”
I didn’t wait for his reaction; I followed my own orders, spinning away from Joshua and sprinting as fast as I could for the entrance of the bridge.
While I ran, I heard desperate shouting behind me as Joshua ordered Jillian and Scott to dive behind their cars. Thankfully, none of them had tried to follow me.
I skidded to a stop at the center of the bridge and stared down at the dark, incomprehensible thing in my hand. I gripped its safety lever tightly and felt it press against my palm.
What did Scott say? I thought feverishly. After I pull the pin, do I let go of the lever?
No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t remember how this thing actually worked. After far too long a pause, I thought:
Only one way to find out.
With the lever still held tight, I slipped one finger of my free hand through the ring of the pin. Using more force than I’d thought I would need, I yanked the pin loose. It dangled on my finger, like some macabre ring, and I just stood there for a blind second, watching it.
Suddenly, instinct took over. I felt my grenade arm pull back behind my head and then propel forward. During the forward arc of my arm, I had the briefest flash of memory—a sunny day; my father, adjusting the throwing position of my elbow while I clutched a grass-stained softball.
The memory faded into the darkness and, without another thought, I released the grenade.
I heard a small snick as the safety lever snapped back out. Now armed, the grenade continued on its trajectory above the bridge. I watched, temporarily dumbstruck by how small it looked in comparison to the tall support girders. Then another instinct took over: one of self-preservation.
I spun around on one heel and pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could. Although I moved fast, a fuzzy, molasses feeling sank into my thighs, making me feel as if I had to run harder if I wanted to escape.
Once I finally reached the end of the bridge, I threw myself at the shoulder of the road, rolling down the steep embankment toward the river.
The ground hurt me badly each time it connected with my shoulders. But that didn’t hurt half as much as the painful boom that suddenly rang in my ears, or the pieces of blasted bridge that began to rain down upon me. I dug my hands into the ground to stop my rolling and then curled into a protective ball. Just before I tucked my head under my arm, I caught a glimpse of a piece of concrete flying toward me. It was huge—the size of a small car, with bits of sharp wire poking out from its edges—and I knew I wouldn’t survive when it hit. At least, I wouldn’t survive like this.
So here was the moment. The one I’d been dreading and anticipating in equal measure since December. I steeled myself for it as best I could, summoning up my brightest memories to wrap around me when it happened.
By the time I’d relived those memories twice, I knew that something was very wrong. Like the fact that a thousand-pound chunk of concrete was taking minutes instead of seconds to fall, for starters. After waiting a few more seconds, I had to look up.
What I saw made me uncurl instantly and skitter backward like a crab along the embankment.
There, about ten feet above my head, the enormous block of concrete looked just as it had when I first glimpsed it, all brutal rock and shredded wires. Thick and sharp and very lethal. But clearly lighter than air, too. It floated, suspended impossibly on the breeze.
As did every other piece of High Bridge. Chunks of concrete, strips of asphalt, even slices of the metal girders—they hung in the night sky like unnatural constellations.
Apparently, the only things that actually made it to the ground were the smaller rocks that had initially rained on me. Road debris and gravel, by the looks of it; pebbles that had no structural connection to the bridge. Everything integral to the bridge itself—every bit of foundation, of support—remained in its strange stasis in the sky.
Until the rubble did move again. Instead of falling toward the earth as it should have, it started to drift slowly back to where the bridge originally stood. Once there, rock and metal began to link together like pieces of a puzzle, moving of their own will to re-create the structure I’d tried to destroy. Within the span of only a few minutes, the dark outline of High Bridge began to reform.
I watched, openmouthed, as a tangled set of wires straightened and then slipped into corresponding holes in an upright wall of concrete. A girder set itself upon the newly stabilized wall, as if placed there by an invisible carrier.
But not quite invisible, I realized.
If I looked closer, if I squinted just right, I could make out the occasional inky trace of black smoke drifting beneath the individual components of the bridge. Yet the smoke wasn’t insubstantial. Though thin and nearly transparent, this black smoke could evidently carry hundred- and even thousand-pound pieces of construction.
I’d seen smoke function like this before—smoke that moved in ways it shouldn’t. Which led me to the conclusion that the shadowy vapor now rebuilding High Bridge wasn’t smoke at all.
“Wraiths,” I gasped, crawling farther up the embankment on my hands.
As if to confirm, the individual tendrils of smoke rearranged themselves while they worked, taking on thin but near-human forms. During the transition, they never slowed or faltered in their reconstruction project—even when their environment shifted into something cold and ghastly.
All around them, all around