Scott McCall's Arc

Chapter 21 of 30

The night after the cafeteria felt lighter. Scott walked Kira home under streetlights, sharing a cone of ice cream, talking about nothing that mattered. For a few blocks, he let himself believe normal was a place he could still visit. Kira laughed at something he said. He laughed too. Then the air changed. The arrow came fast and silent. It buried itself in the tree beside Kira's head, the shaft still humming, a pale blue glow shimmering down its length. Kira froze. Scott shoved her behind him. Across the street, between two twisted trees with a dark bush crouched between them, stood a figure with a bow. Long dark hair. A quiver over her shoulder. Allison. "Scott…" Kira whispered. He was already moving. "Stay here." He ran. The figure turned and slipped into the trees, and he followed, branches snapping past his face, Kira's voice calling after him until it wasn't anymore. She stopped in a moonlit clearing. Scott slowed, chest heaving. "You're not her," he said. The figure tilted her head. "You always say that when you're afraid you're wrong." Behind him the woods went silent. He couldn't hear Kira. He couldn't hear anything. Malik's words came back. Love and grief are not the same thing. Scott straightened. He looked at the face he had loved and he did not chase it. "I know what you are," he said. "And I'm not following you anywhere." The figure's smile cracked. Her skin ran dark, peeling into flowing water and black sediment. The Acheron stood in her place, dripping, furious. It lunged. Scott ducked and ran — not from it, but back the way he came, toward Kira's voice he forced himself to remember. He broke from the trees and found her standing where he had left her, hand on the shimmering arrow still stuck in the bark. She was alive. She was real. Scott pulled her close and held on. The Acheron had not been driven off — only denied a doorway. It would come again, wearing someone else's face. But tonight Scott had refused it, and that was a thing he had not been able to do before.