The Edifice

48. How the Stars Fall

LEE

I need to quit smoking.

Addiction has injected its venom into me- I still crave a cigarette even now as I gasp the fresh air into my aching lungs. My oesophagus burns as though blistered, the chill of the night air rips fresh pain through my throat with each breath but the pain comes as relief.

I'm alive. Holy shit.

Olivia and Otis are shouting something nearby, but the sound is muffled and all I can think is how I wish they'd shut up so I can enjoy being alive a little better. Zagan is dying? Ok. That's what happens when you kill yourself.

Fucking hell, the stars and angels are beautiful tonight. Bright flashes of light that soar across the heavens in every direction. It's as though they pull my weary soul along with them, out of my ruined body and away to somewhere I can finally rest. My fingertips spasm in the dewy grass and rubble under where I sprawl beneath the sky, spellrot still wracking my lower arm from my attacks on Zagan.

Nothing fatal. I might lose a couple of fingernails but surely that will soon be the worst of my worries compared to the backlash of this. The most powerful family in the world just lost their only working toy to a couple of humans and a godling with ADD. This is my last time lying this side of the cool earth.

The stars are beautiful tonight.

"Lee! Lee, help!" Olivia's voice is on its own now. Two tiny hands are on my face, slapping my eyes open so I'm forced to see her wide, stricken eyes staring down at me, surrounded by a tumble-weed of hair. "Lee- it's Otis."

What the fuck now?

Otis's body is prostrate beside Zagan's, almost indistinguishable from the dust-grey concrete beneath them. His glow has completely disappeared, now only the spooky glow of Zagan's molten stone skin illuminates the gloom of the lone warehouse. Shit, shit, shit.

Stone-cold reality crushes the relief of minutes before, kick-starting my brain back into survival mode. I'm not thinking fast enough. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Otis is too still. Zagan is still barely more than a desiccated corpse. Olivia falls to the ground besides the two as her legs finally give way beneath the weight of tonight.

"What did he do, Liv?" I ask. I kneel besides Otis and press my blackened fingers to the flesh beneath his jaw, seeking a pulse that shouldn't even be there. It's useless. My numb fingers can't even feel the contact of our skin, let alone any movement beneath it.

Olivia must have rolled him on his side- his tongue lolls from his mouth. I hold my cheek besides the airway and the barest breeze of warm breath brushes my cheek. Nothing about Otis is supposed to be warm. Cunt, cunt, cunt.

"Lee, I feel- I think something is..." Olivia trails off faintly, fingers curling to clutch her head.

I don't have enough hands to spare for both her and Otis any more. Instead I pull out my phone, unsure who even to call. We're half an hour from the city. Even if an ambulance can save the Creeds in time, they probably won't help Olivia and as soon as we check into a hospital, there's no question that a tinted-window van won't show up to transfer us into private care of Creed Estates. Permanently.

This is the family that blew up their own children and sued the survivors into silence, after all.

While my finger hovers under the emergency hotline, the time in the corner of the screen catches my eye and things escalate very, very quickly.

3:12 AM

"Oh fuck-"

3:13 AM