When Devils Sing(110)
Isaiah reacted first. He grabbed the nearest torch pitched in the ground, then buried the flame in the line of cicadas that pooled from the chasm. The fire seemed to sever the supernatural connection, sending the insects scattering away from Sam and Dawson. The pair were whole; they were alive.
Reid blinked, giving himself a mental shake. He couldn’t linger in his relief for long. They had to escape. Now.
He, along with Isaiah, gestured for everyone to run, but most of them could still barely stand upright on their own. Isaiah struggled to pull them up, using his own body as support. Reid followed suit, helping drag people off the ground and out of the clearing. They needed to be as far from the chasm as possible.
The final minute passed, but it seemed the devil had given up on the captives. The cicadas began to swarm the dozens of Clearwater folks scattered around the clearing, their bodies still enraptured from Neera’s song.
Run, Reid struggled to pantomime, praying they would understand. Run to the shore and don’t look back.
It was only a matter of seconds before Neera’s song was to end, but Isaiah, Dawson, and Sam still lingered at the edge of the clearing. They looked at Reid expectantly, but he couldn’t yet follow. He shook his head, begging for them to go, as he still had one thing left to do.
A moment later and they were gone, disappearing into the dense pine trees.
The clearing was entirely free of the sacrifices once Neera’s performance was over. It was only Reid, the Clearwater community, and the devil himself threatening to rise from the earth. Everyone was slow to wake as Reid raced around the clearing, knocking over the kerosene lanterns and torches that illuminated the woods that night. The dead ground was the perfect kindling as a fire quickly caught and began to spread around them, billowing up the pines and igniting in the low, dry grass.
It wasn’t long before the screaming began. The hunters had become the hunted, as many people found themselves covered in cicadas that tried to pull them into the yawning darkness below.
“Reid!” His father’s voice rang across the clearing, over the roar of the cries, the fire, and the rapid pop pop pop of fireworks. “What have you done?”
Reid Langley didn’t look back as he ran into the woods, leaving behind everything he had ever known.
CHAPTER 48NEERA
The audience was dead, until they weren’t.
Neera had watched the Clearwater crowd drop like flies on the shore. She truly feared she had killed them all, but her song was now over, and they were awakening, albeit slowly. There was no time for anyone to question their collective fainting, or the peculiar black liquid that had bled from their faces, as smoke began to billow from the center of the island. That was the boys’ signal.
They did it, she thought, but where is my mom? Where’s Isaiah? Sam?
Neera untangled herself from the Yamaha, then scanned the island from the stage. The ground continued to tremble, and the Clearwater attendees grew frenzied. There was a collective panic building in the smoky night air. She spotted Laurence Johnson in the crowd, searching the tree line yards away, just as she was. Did he know what Isaiah had done?
There wasn’t time for Neera to speculate further before someone grabbed her arm, yanking her backward and onto the ground. She fell into Grant Langley. He held her wrist so tightly, Neera thought he might break it. From the cruel look across his face, black tears streaming down his cheeks, it seemed like he wanted to.
“What the fuck kind of stunt was that?” Grant demanded, his easygoing facade entirely gone. He was clearly angry, but Neera saw something else in his gray eyes—fear. But it wasn’t from the fire or the chaos that surrounded them, it was because of her. Of what she’d done to the crowd, to him.
Neera took advantage of Grant’s uneasy stance and pushed him, sending him stumbling a few feet back. He looked wild in the uneven glow cast from the fireworks, like a monstrous thing. Neera now felt a little monstrous, too. “It was just a song.”
“Just a song?” Grant repeated. He laughed darkly, winding his fingers through his sweaty hair. “Do you take me for a fool, kid?” He scrubbed away the lingering black liquid from his neck, studying his hands with a look of revulsion. “This wasn’t part of our agreement.”
“Fuck your agreement,” Neera spat, pushing Grant again. Her sense of self-preservation was crumbling. “You said you’d save my mom! Where the hell is she?”
Grant opened and closed his mouth, glancing at the black stains that ran down his button-down shirt, then to the hysterical crowd beyond them. He righted himself, drawing close again. “You’d do well to remember that I own you and your family, kid. They are merely collateral to me. Nothin’ more.”
It took everything within Neera not to push him a third time, but she could only nod. The timbre of her voice turned desperate as she said, “Please, Grant. Just find my mom.”
Grant looked to the pine trees, the fire growing larger by the second. In a low voice, he admitted, “They should’ve been back by now.”
SAM
HELL WAS AT Sam’s heels. She and the remaining captives ran through the woods, racing toward the sounds of freedom, splitting off in different directions. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost sight of Reid and Isaiah. It was only her and Dawson now. They both tossed their earplugs, running toward cheering and away from the screaming. With the fireworks going off in droves, it was almost impossible to distinguish the two, which was the point. To conceal the sacrifice within the wild celebration of the Fourth of July.