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Loud banging, walls shaking, and shouts came from within the lab. When Daisy checked over her shoulder, she saw through to the lab where the Sinners, all worse for wear and torn and bleeding, held a line on this side of the glass doors. Beyond the doors were the Seven. Parker’s gold eyes were bleak as Alice held him back from tearing everything down. Metal in the lab lifted and hovered as Griffin worked to overpower them—but his hold was weak. They were all tired. Liza threw her shoulder against the glass. Sloan’s palm plastered to the door, tears running tracks down her dirty face. Tony’s fire spluttered somewhere behind the group and they all made way for him. Evan was the only one standing and staring as though, perhaps, he had also seen Mary’s and Flint’s fate and expected this. Or maybe he was finally piecing it together.
Julius, sitting in the dark with his failures, laughed and hiccuped between his tears.
“It should be him!” Daisy choked out as she glared at him. The force of holding the gate sent a warm trickle running from her nose. Blood. She wouldn’t be able to hold for much longer.
Mary kissed Daisy on the cheek, through the wet tears sliding down her face.
“It can’t be Julius,” she explained as she looked at the illuminated hole in the ground. “We don’t want to send him to an afterlife full of joy, and that’s what it is, you must sense it by now.” She was right. Daisy knew this, deep in her gut. One side was despair and sadness, the other joy and light.
“It has to be us,” Mary insisted. “It’s the only way you’ll see that you’re worth it, mija.”
Flint kissed Daisy on the other cheek and patted her shoulder.
“Remember what I told you when Mary had passed out?” he asked her softly.
“You said, when you love someone, you keep the faith.”
“Good girl.” He coughed in the manly way fathers do when trying to hide their feelings, but then he added, “Remember to remind your siblings of that when we’re gone.”
Daisy sobbed, fell to one knee, and the dark pulsing shadows pushed out, testing her hold. She screamed with the pain of reining her control back in. More wetness trickled onto her upper lip. Just as Mary and Flint walked toward the hole filled with light, just as they were about to step in, Daisy shouted at their backs, “You’re wrong. I do love you. I never stopped.”
That’s why it hurt so bad.
Mary’s liquid gaze filled with forlorn anguish. “Then you understand why we’re doing this. And you know what must be done afterward. We are grateful for you, Daisy. Family first.”
With that, they stepped into the beyond. Light swallowed them.
Gone.
There were no screams of terror, no sensed despair, only flutters of joy. Then the pressure in the atmosphere equalized. Balance. The malicious forces pushing against her hold on the dark gate eased. The pulsing shadows lessened. All light in the tunnel winked out.
The gates were closed.
Daisy scrambled to the hole Mary and Flint had stepped into, but the bottomless pit was gone. Only a ditch of dirt and rock remained. She dug around with her fingers, desperate to find them. Nothing.
Julius’s laughter spurred her on.
“You did this,” Daisy blurted, aiming her fury and pain at the location his laughter came from. It was hard to see in the darkness, the only light coming from the hole in the wall leading to the broken lab. She wasn’t sure if her borrowed gifts were weakening, or if it was the light blinding her. “You took them from me, not once, but twice.”
“You did this,” he shot back. “You ruin everything. Always have! Ever since the first moment your mother birthed you, and she looked into your eyes and changed her promise to me.” He put on a mocking tone, “Ooh Julius, we’ve done something wrong. We can’t make murderers of these beautiful creatures. We can’t!”
While Julius descended into mumbled curses and conversations with a dead woman not there, cold fury stole through Daisy’s being. Her katana scraped along the concrete as she picked it up and stood.
“I’m not a helpless child anymore, Julius. I don’t fall for those cowardly remarks. You lost. Face it.”
Evil eyes stared back at Daisy in the gloom. For a moment, she thought the being that had invaded him before still existed, but then dismissed it. This was all despicable Julius.
He tossed the sand of his loved ones into Daisy’s eyes and escaped into the sewer.
* * *
Wiping tears from her eyes,Daisy’s bottom lip trembled. The sounds of her family breaking through the lab door only punctuated her pain.
Mary didn’t think Daisy loved her, and that’s why she’d offered herself up. Flint went because he needed to be with his wife. Their love was that strong. They thought this was the only way to prove to Daisy that she mattered to them, and now they were gone, and now she would never have the chance to prove them wrong. She would never have the chance to learn how to cook from Mary, or patch bugs in AIMI’s system with Flint. She wouldn’t be able to experience the love they’d tried to give her… and she’d been too damaged to accept.
She sniffed, unable to stop the overwhelming wave of despair coursing through her body. Like standing on the shore and watching a tidal wave come for her, she knew but was unable to stop it.
Despair. Thick. Black. Cold.
Daisy’s siblings won’t see it the same way. But Daisy knew what it felt like to be left behind, how the sting would burn for years and fester like an open wound. This loss would hurt them more deeply than it had ever hurt Daisy.
Despair. Thick. Black. Cold.
Her fingers clenched around the hilt of her sword. She glanced at her siblings now dispensing with the respect that allowed the Sinners to keep them at bay. She glanced at Raven, half passed out and slumped. And knew what she had to do: end Julius, once and for all.
Her siblings would only get in the way. Before despair completely took hold of her, she had the sense to deposit Raven in the lab. Then she went back into the sewer, stepped deep into it, and ran toward Julius, welcoming the blackout that came with her sin, and the ruthless hunter she became.
As her vision crowded, she vaguely registered the sewer tunnel collapsing behind her, knowing that she must have used telekinesis to bring it down, knowing that she didn’t consciously do it, knowing—
