Children of the Earth

Book 2: End Times

by Anna Schumacher

Genres: YA Paranormal

Synopsis

"Plenty of crowd-pleasing death and destruction...Schumacher wraps up her story with a literal bang."
--Booklist

Seven signs warned them. Now it’s time for Carbon County to fight back.
 
In End Times, Daphne lost herself in love with Owen, only to discover the dark secret that puts Carbon County at ground zero for the end of days. . . . 
 
All thirteen of the Children of Earth have arrived and taken root in town. Together at last, they can perform the series of rituals necessary to awaken their father, a wrathful entity known as the God of the Earth.
 
Daphne protects their identities from Pastor Ted and the God-fearing locals out of love and allegiance to Owen. But when people start disappearing from town and Daphne begins receiving visions from God, her allegiance—and even her love—is brought into question in this astonishing companion novel to End Times.

Release date: June 2, 2015

Publisher: Razorbill

Print pages: 368

Sample

Razorbill, an Imprint of Penguin Random House

Facing east, we raise our swords

And murmur these enchanted words:

Gods of Air, where’er ye roam,

Blow our siblings swiftly home.

DARKNESS HAD FALLEN OVER CARBON County by the time Daphne pulled her compact Subaru to the side of the dirt road. Up ahead she could make out strains of raucous laughter, and the acrid smoke of charred meat drifted down to her on a sharp breeze.

She pulled her boyfriend’s worn flannel shirt around her shoulders, trying to ward off the early autumn chill, and double-checked that the doors were locked before slipping the key into her pocket. There wasn’t much to steal in her car—after splitting her earnings from working the oil rig between her ailing mother in Detroit and the collection plate at church, she could only afford an ancient clunker with a perpetually jammed cassette deck. Still, she couldn’t trust the drifters who had taken up residence in the abandoned motocross track parking lot. They were rough-and-tumble oil prospectors with not a lot going for them and even less to lose, and it was rumored that they’d steal the shirt off your back, if given the chance.

The night noises sharpened as she approached: gas generators hacking out watts of power, hot dogs sizzling on portable barbecues, and plastic tarps erected as haphazard shelters crinkling in the wind. The parking lot where the Carbon County locals had once come to race dirt bikes, drink beer, and swap bragging rights was now a makeshift village of weather-beaten tents and rusted pop-up trailers, the track itself shut down.

None of the locals had wanted to set foot there since the horrible night just three months before, when Daphne had helped deliver her cousin Janie’s stillborn baby on the cold metal bleachers overlooking the track. Too many of their own had died there: first Trey, who had wrecked fatally during a race, and then Jeremiah, the baby who never took a breath.

Now the gate to the track was permanently shut, its padlock caked with rust, and the parking lot was transformed into a drab tent city of desperadoes. Only one thing could send Daphne there almost nightly to pick her way through the narrow paths between tents, stepping over mud-caked work boots and pots still crusted with last night’s beans. It drew her there despite the drifters’ unsavory reputation, despite the rumors of their rough-handed, heavy-drinking ways. She went because beyond the gate, on the eroding hills and turns of the track itself, was the only place where she could meet her boyfriend, Owen, in secret.

Owen was the best thing that had ever happened to her, but also one of the worst. He was the last person she’d expected to find in Carbon County, a rural town in the Wyoming foothills where she’d taken refuge with her extended family, the Peytons, after an especially rough winter in Detroit. But instead of the peace and quiet she’d been craving, she found oil on her uncle’s land and a strange ability to read the ancient Aramaic words on a stone tablet discovered beneath the earth, an ability that some said marked her as a prophet. She found all that, and she also found Owen, a green-eyed stranger who somehow wormed his way into her heart despite her general distrust of everyone, especially guys.

As soon as he arrived, it felt like Owen was everywhere: on the oil rig where she worked and at the motocross track, where he quickly destroyed the locals in competition, instantly making him the least-liked guy in town. It didn’t help when Trey, a popular local boy, died in a race against Owen—or that later, he and Daphne were the only two present when her pregnant cousin, Janie, went into sudden, early labor, delivering a stillborn infant on the bleachers overlooking the motocross track.

Maybe the townspeople hated Owen because he was there at all the wrong times, or maybe it was just because he didn’t say much to anyone besides Daphne, didn’t have the gift of small-town small talk that put them at ease. Whatever it was, she knew exactly what they thought of him . . . and what they would think of her if they knew he was her boyfriend.

Now, more than ever, she needed the townspeople’s approval. She’d fallen from their graces once before, when her cousin’s jerk of a baby daddy, Doug, revealed that she’d stood trial for her stepfather’s murder in Detroit. It had been in self-defense, after he tried to rape her at knifepoint, and she’d been acquitted––but Doug didn’t tell anyone that part. Instead, he’d accused her of not only killing her stepfather, but he and Janie’s infant son as well. He’d implicated Owen, too, and the townspeople had rallied behind Doug, threatening to throw both Daphne and Owen out of town.

It was only after Pastor Ted learned that Daphne could read the Aramaic tablet and declared her a prophet that the townspeople grudgingly allowed her back in their good graces . . . but by then, it was too late for Owen. The town needed a scapegoat, and he was the most convenient target.

If it weren’t for her aunt and uncle, Daphne wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought about her personal life. But Uncle Floyd and Aunt Karen meant everything to her: They had taken her in when she had nowhere else to go and taught her the true meaning of family and faith, and she would rather die than upset them. They had never trusted Owen and still believed that he may have had a hand in their grandchild’s death–-and until they had a little more time to heal, Daphne didn’t want to upset them further.

So, to avoid suspicion, she and Owen met on the abandoned motocross track after sundown, where fear of the drifters kept the gossipy townsfolk away.

Gravel crunched behind her, and Daphne froze. But the path through the camp was deserted, with the drifters gathered around a fire at the other end of the parking lot. An unsecured tarp scratched at the ground, echoing the sound that had made her panic. Exhaling in relief, Daphne turned and made her way out of the camp.

She slipped past the padlocked gate and onto the dark trail leading to the motocross track. Even when she wasn’t sneaking out to meet Owen, their clandestine relationship made her jumpy and anxious, always looking over her shoulder and trying to wipe the traces of their secret from her face. If she could have resisted him, she would have. But their bond was too strong, too powerful, to ignore.

The dark drew itself around her, only the pale comma of a moon punctuating the sky, and she heard the crunch again, closer than before. But she wouldn’t turn and look, wouldn’t let her paranoia get the better of her.

Stones skittered across the path behind her, and the wind panted in her wake. Although it was too dark for shadows, she thought she saw something flicker across her vision. Her stomach clenched as she felt the sudden presence of a stranger behind her, his skin emanating a dank rot.

She whirled around, but it was too late. Yellowed nails dug into her shoulders, the force knocking her to the ground. She got in one good scream before his hand clapped over her mouth, filling her lungs with the sickening scent of decay. Adrenaline flew through her veins as she kicked the air, praying for her steel-enforced boots to connect.

The stranger covered her body with his, stilling her legs and pinning her to the ground. Greasy strings of hair fell onto her cheeks, and he laughed a grating chainsaw laugh, reaching into the folds of an oily trench coat to reveal a blade that turned the weak beam of moonlight to ice. The world pulsed, and terror screamed through her, her vision condensing into a single point of light. Her eyes rolled back in her head as power gathered in her stomach, spreading from cell to cell until she was charged like a battery, electricity fighting its way through her skin and making her writhe and quake under his weight. She looked straight into his eyes—one gray, one brown—and saw, with horror, their true intent.

She’d had a knife to her throat and a grown man’s unwanted body on hers before. She knew what that man, her stepfather, Jim, had wanted: to force himself inside of her, debasing her body until it no longer felt like her own.

But this man didn’t want that. He didn’t care about her body. He wanted her life.

She jerked and seized beneath him, and the power rocketing inside of her forced her hands around his neck, choking off his windpipe with a python grip. For a moment, everything was black. Then she heard a voice in her head, and all she could see was fire.

The Vision of Fire

And yea, there will come a day

When ye stand before the derrick

That pumps oil from the earth

And a wall of flames consumes the sky.

These shall be no ordinary flames

But the hellfire of damnation,

Wild with hunger to destroy

All that is holy and good.

And ye shall see, as the fire approacheth

And crude oil boils inside the earth

And the heat peels trees from land

And skin from bone

Ye shall see a shadow

With shoulders wide as mountains,

Arms raised, fingers outstretched,

Coaxing the fire ever closer.

Slow as boulders forming

The dark figure turns

Until he looks down upon you

And you fall to your knees.

For this figure has a face you know,

A face you have touched.

You have seen these eyes

Flash serpentine green.

These eyes have deceived you,

These hands draw down fire to burn the land,

This heart serves only the dark lord

And this soul is as black as the devil.

Your limbs shall tremble

And your heart shall tear in two,

For this is a face you know—

A face you love.

OWEN CROUCHED IN THE DARKNESS, his body sizzling with need. Being at the motocross track was both a torture and a release: Torture in the jumps and berms that made him miss his dirt bike the way an amputee misses a limb. Release because it meant time alone with Daphne, whose touch raced through him faster than any motor and cut like the sharpest hairpin turn.

With the track shut down, she was the only thing keeping him sane. She was a reason to get up and go to work on the oil rig each morning and his last thought before falling into a fitful sleep every night. But even the cool relief of her smile, the kisses stolen on their lunch breaks, and their electric evenings alone on the motocross track weren’t enough to staunch the dreams.

They came thick and furious each night, the same nightmares that had driven him to Carbon County so many months before. Dark figures danced around a bonfire, but now he could see them more clearly, eleven pairs of emerald eyes glowing like fireflies, only one face still dark. They danced and chanted, hands clasped and limbs gleaming in the firelight, and as their voices crescendoed to a wild shriek and the fire flung itself into the sky, the earth began to shake, threatening to open up and release a mighty and powerful god, the God of the Earth.

The dreams always ended with a voice of thunder and lighting, of molten gravel pouring from the earth’s core. Find the vein, it had whispered to him long ago, terrifying and seducing him, sending him back and forth across the country until he found his sister, Luna, and together they let it draw them to Carbon County like gravity, an elemental force.

That voice was the God of the Earth, Luna had explained to him, and the God of the Earth was their father. At first he thought she was crazy, a lost hippie child who’d probably taken too many substances at the music festivals where she performed with her glowing hula hoop. The only evidence that they were even related were their identical green eyes and her stories of growing up on the commune where he was born, a commune called Children of the Earth. But when the Aramaic tablet told of a great battle between the Children of God and the Children of the Earth, he began to reluctantly believe his sister. If she was right, that meant that he and Daphne were on opposite sides of a great battle between good and evil—a battle that the tablet had threatened could destroy the world.

He didn’t want it to be that way, but the predictions on the tablet had all come true, from the fiery wreck that had taken Trey’s life at the motocross track to the flock of birds of paradise that had dropped dead from the sky on the day of Janie’s wedding. Now the second part of the prophecy was coming true: The Children of the Earth were arriving in Carbon County.

He’d noticed others with the same green eyes trickling into town, other children of the God of the Earth, and he knew from the faces in his dreams that all but one had arrived. Like him, they’d been drawn there by dreams of fire and destruction that ended with the gravelly voice of their father urging them to “find the vein.” And Luna, in that half-cheeky, half-ominous way of hers, had made it easy for them.

She had her own place now, a brand-new nightclub that was full to bursting with roughnecks and prospectors each night. All Children of the Earth were guaranteed jobs there, as bartenders and busboys, bouncers and cocktail waitresses and kitchen crew. And just so there wasn’t any question about where they should go, she had named it the Vein.

So far Owen had managed to stay away, gritting his teeth and gripping the bottom of his chair as Luna packed her costumes and hula hoops and urged him to move across town with her to the loft above the club, tears filling her eyes and her words wrapping around him like a serpent as she begged him to join her.

He’d refused. He had to stay away from her, from all of them, to protect his love for Daphne. If she knew, just as the tablet had predicted, that most of the Children of the Earth were already in town, she’d be forced to choose between her loyalty to him and her duty as the prophet of the Children of God. He knew that he’d have to tell her eventually, but he couldn’t bear for her to have to make that choice just yet.

So he stayed far away from the Vein despite Luna’s text messages and the voice in his dreams, which pulled at his blood like a magnet at metal shavings. His will was strong, and his love for Daphne stronger. But each day that he held out was harder than the last, and he was terrified that someday, by his will or against it, he would end up among them. As much as he fought it, the need to go to his brothers and sisters grew stronger every day.

A scream cut through his thoughts with the white-hot immediacy of lightning, making the hair on his arms stand on end. He was on his feet before he could catch up with his body, racing down the face of the jump and calling her name. He knew that voice and knew it could only be her.

Daphne.

He shouldn’t have let her come alone, he thought, furious at himself as his feet pounded the track, kicking up dust and splattering his pants with mud. Daphne was tough, but the path through the drifters’ camp was dangerous, the squatters unscrupulous in their quest to get what they wanted—and what if what they wanted was a girl? Owen never should have put her in that kind of danger, and Daphne never should have agreed to it. Their desire for one another had grown huge and reckless; something had to change before it was too late.

Unless it already was.

A thin layer of sweat clung to his skin by the time he reached the messy circle of squatters who had gathered at the bottom of the dark path down to the track. “What happened?” He shouldered past the men, ignoring the sour scent of their beer breath and unshowered bodies.

“Looks like she’s having a seizure,” someone grunted.

“But I wouldn’t get too close,” another cautioned. “Lookit what she did to him.”

Ignoring the warning, Owen stepped to the front of the crowd.

Daphne convulsed on the ground, flopping like a minnow in the bottom of a rowboat. Her eyes were narrow white slits, and her lashes beat furiously against her cheeks. A few feet away, a man lay unconscious, stringy hair feathered around his head. His eyes, one gray and one brown, were open but unseeing, the red still draining from his face and a patina of bruises decorating the stubbled skin of his neck.

A knife marked the ground between them, its blade throwing slices of light from the drifters’ headlamps and gas lanterns.

“Daphne!” Owen rushed to her even as crooked hands reached for his arms and tried to hold him back.

“You don’t wanna do that,” someone warned. “We pulled her offa him, but it wa’n’t easy. Girl’s got a demon grip.”

“Call an ambulance!” Owen broke free and rushed to her side. He wasn’t afraid of her, even if the rough-and-tumble drifters were.

He knelt by Daphne’s convulsing body and slipped a gentle hand under her head. She stiffened at his touch, and her eyelids flew open. But the eyes that bored into his weren’t hers—they were barely even human. They blazed with fear and distrust so sudden and unexpected that he snatched back his hand.

Daphne’s body jackknifed, her legs spasming as her hands flew to his throat. Steel-strong fingers closed over his neck, crushing the air from his lungs.

“I told ’im not to go in,” he heard one of the squatters say, but it sounded like it was coming from far away, from another continent on another planet in another lifetime.

He sputtered for breath. He was losing air, losing consciousness. The world telescoped inward, its edges black and fuzzy, static filling his ears like sand.

He was going to die. The realization shot a cannonball of adrenaline through him, and with the last shred of his waning strength he brought his hands to his neck and closed his fingers over Daphne’s. He imagined strength pouring up his arms and through his hands, pictured Daphne’s vice-strong grip turning to jelly under his fingers. The vision squeezed through the choked-up passageways of his windpipe, rushing from nerve to nerve.

My fingers are steel, her fingers are jelly. These words would be his last thoughts, he realized through a thick film of panic. If only they were true: if only Daphne’s strength really were waning, if only the crushing tension in her muscles would relax into flesh and beyond flesh, into jelly so soft he could spread it on toast. As he pried at her fingers, gasping for breath, he thought he felt her hands loosen under his, her strength give millimeter by painstaking millimeter.

A sliver of air rushed to his lungs, just enough to give him a better grip. The refrain of my fingers are steel, her fingers are jelly pounded in his brain. He breathed in again, the sound raspy and desperate as he wedged first one, then two, then all of his fingers into the growing gap between her hands and his throat. With a final burst of strength, he freed himself and threw her aside.

Daphne’s arms flopped in the dirt. Black dots floated in Owen’s vision as he rubbed his throat, the bruises tender beneath his fingers. Air had never tasted sweeter, and he sucked in giant lungfuls of it, the pain in his windpipe a stabbing reminder of how close he’d come.

“Damn.” A nearby prospector shook his head, whistling air through his teeth. “That was close. How’d you do it?”

“I don’t know.” Now that he was out of immediate danger Owen could feel power surging through his body, sparking from his mind down to the tips of his fingers in electrical currents that made his skin seem feel hot and too tight. His brain was on overdrive, the echo of my fingers are steel, her fingers are jelly dancing there like a song that had stuck in his head. It almost felt like those thoughts, rather than his own strength, had saved his life.

Daphne shot to sitting like a zombie rising from the grave. Her eyes flew open, and she looked around wildly, taking in the knife and the man lying unconscious and the circle of drifters. When her gaze reached Owen, she shrieked and scuttled back in the dirt. Her face was drawn in terror, and she whimpered as if the sight of him caused her pain.

“Daphne.” He kept his voice low and gentle, knowing she must be disoriented. “It’s okay. It’s me, Owen.”

“No!” She turned her back to him and clutched her knees, curling into a ball and rocking back and forth.

Still gasping for breath, he crawled over and wrapped his arms around her trembling shoulders. She shrugged him off at first, still whimpering into her knees, but as the keening wail of the ambulance grew closer and the drifters began to scatter he tried again.

“You had a seizure, Daphne,” he said softly, his lips close to her ear, soothing her the way he’d soothed his little sister after a nightmare in his previous life back in Kansas long ago. “I know it’s scary, but you’re okay. You’re going to be all right. I’m here.”

She relaxed and let him envelop her, wrapping herself in the scent of earth and motor oil that never left his skin, resting her head against his chest and drying her cheek on his T-shirt. This was Owen, the real Owen. That other Owen, the one who’d blazed huge and evil in her vision, didn’t exist. He couldn’t. She’d been hallucinating, her mind riled up in self-defense and playing terrible tricks on her.

But as the siren swam closer and the sky pulsed red and she sobbed into Owen’s shirt, another thought nagged at her, one she couldn’t ignore. Because, whether or not she wanted it, she was a prophet—and prophets didn’t see mistakes or hallucinations. They saw visions from God.

THE DOG WAS BARKING. BELLA stood on the pink lump that Janie made under her sleeping bag, pawing at her shoulder and yapping in her ear, awakening her from a heavy nap dotted with restless dreams.

“Shut up, Bella.” Janie swept the dog onto the floor, but Bella landed on her cream-colored paws and went right on barking, dancing back and forth from the couch to the TV and making the cherry vodka on the milk-crate coffee table slosh in its plastic bottle.

As she struggled out of the depths of sleep, Janie slowly realized what the dog was fussing about. Someone was knocking on the door, the pounding echoing through the empty halls of the half-finished mansion atop Elk Mountain.

“Crap.” She sat up, throwing off the sleeping bag, and ran a hand through the rat’s nest of her hair. She dimly remembered something about Hilary coming to visit, a text message exchange from yesterday or the day before—it was easy to lose track of time when all you did was sleep and watch Teen Mom.

“Janie, it’s for you!” Deirdre Varley’s nagging trill floated up from the lobby and bounced off the vaulted ceiling.

“Coming,” Janie called back. But it came out sounding like a croak.

She found her slippers and padded down the hall, tightening the drawstring on her sweatpants as she descended the stairs.

“Hey, girl!” Hilary’s voice was unnaturally bright, the brightest thing by far in the towering, empty lobby of the half-finished chateau. She wrapped Janie in a hug that smelled like baby powder and fresh laundry, making Janie wonder what had happened to her old best friend who had always reeked of cigarettes and Rihanna’s Rogue perfume.

“Close the door, you’re letting cold air in,” Deirdre admonished. She gave Janie a pinched glare. “I wish you’d remembered you were having company,” she sniffed. “I had to come all the way down from our wing to let her in.”

“Sorry.” Janie looked down at her slippers, threadbare Smurfettes staring mournfully from her toes. “I’ll remember next time.”

Like there would be a next time. It’s not like anyone ever came to visit her—even her mom had gotten sick of Deirdre’s sniping and stopped coming round, choosing instead to nag Janie by phone.

“It’s good to see you.” Hilary smiled and pushed away a stray corkscrew curl that had fallen over her eye. “It’s been too long.”

Janie didn’t know how long it had been, exactly. Lately she’d been losing track of time, whole days disappearing between commercial breaks and fitful dreams. But it must have been a while, because Hilary didn’t just smell different, she looked different, too. She’d put on some weight, and her face was rounder, the skin taut and glowing and her old acne pockmarks nearly gone.

“Yeah, well.” Janie gave a vague shrug. “I guess we should go upstairs.”

She led Hilary up the wooden skeleton of a wide, sweeping staircase that would one day be finished in marble, past doorways with no doors that peeked into rooms whose only decoration was yellow sheets of insulation stapled to the walls. With the lawsuit against Janie’s father stalled and the Varleys hurting for cash, they’d sold their ranch house in town and moved the family to the chateau on Elk Mountain before it was finished—and judging from the way money had been lately, it seemed like it may never get done at all. Vince Varley swore they’d get it fully insulated and heated before winter, but there had been no workers for days, maybe even weeks. The Wyoming air was chilly even in early September, wind whistling through the cracks in the walls like lost children crying to come home.

“Brrr.” Hilary hugged her arms and shivered as they entered the den. It was the only room in the west wing—Doug and Janie’s wing—that was fully furnished, but the old leather living room set from the Varley’s ranch house still seemed dwarfed by the vast expanse of plywood floor. “It’s cold in here.”

“I’ll build up the fire.” Janie dredged logs from a cardboard box and poked at the smoldering coals, watching them jump and hiss before licking at the wood and filling the room with smoke. “At least there’s plenty of wood on this land.”

“Remind me to bring you a space heater next time I come.” Hilary perched on the end of the couch and looked around, slowly taking in the panorama of the Savage Mountain Range from the huge bay window. “Sure is some view, though.”

Janie guessed it was okay, but she preferred to face away from the lonely peaks, staring instead at the fireplace or the flat-screen television Doug had propped somewhat precariously on a milk crate.

“Want a drink?” Janie held out an economy-sized plastic bottle half-full of the cherry vodka she’d taken to sipping throughout the day. The strong, clear liquid burned sweet trails down her throat and kept her mind hazy and soft, away from the thorny edges of thoughts that caught and ripped at her brain: memories of the birds that had fallen dead from the sky on the day of her shotgun wedding to Doug, of Daphne holding her stillborn infant son in her arms, of Doug pushing her into the dirt and screaming over her as she sobbed, blaming her for their son’s death. “It’ll warm you up.”

She realized that maybe she should go to the kitchen for glasses (it’s what a good hostess would do, what her mother would do), but that meant a long trip down the cold stairs and dark hallways, and possibly meeting Deirdre Varley’s disapproving face over the vast kitchen island, silently judging her daughter-in-law while she attempted a new casserole with some phony-sounding French name.

But Hilary shook her head. “I don’t really drink anymore,” she said. “I know—crazy, right? Me, turning down a drink? But, well, ever since everything happened, with Trey going to God and them finding that ancient tablet and—well, you know . . . what happened to you.” She averted her eyes, color creeping into her cheeks. Janie knew. Sometimes, it felt like it was all she knew.

“Anyway, I’ve been trying to live a little cleaner since all that,” Hilary went on. “Pastor Ted says the Rapture’s coming any day now, and we all have to get right in the eyes of God. That means no drinking, no swearing, no getting down before marriage—which is great for me, ’cause now Bryce keeps talking about putting a ring on it.” She grinned wickedly, a flash of the wisecracking old Hilary superimposed over the clean, shiny new one.

Janie took a swig from the bottle, seeing as how Hilary didn