And then Will arrives down on the sand.
The instant he appears, Lumines crewmen start shouting for each other to get back, get away.It’s Constantine!One of them is too close to Will to run. He turns to attack Will, but Will just sweeps his hand impatiently through the air. In the blink of an eye, the air transforms into a poisonous gas that surrounds the crewman—he shrieks as his skin blisters and falls to his knees with foam bubbling from his mouth. Will continues on, his face dark with purpose.
A second Lumines crewman lunges at him, boots splashing into the surf. Will bends down and dips his hand into the water. In a flash, the waves all along the beach freeze solid, so fast that the crewman’s legs are trapped in the ice. He struggles for a second before Will reaches him.
Will touches the man’s forehead once. The man only has time to open his mouth in horror before Will freezes the water molecules in his body, causing every vein to burst in unison. The man’s skin turns crimson underneath. Frozen blood crystals spurt from his mouth. He collapses.
The other Lumines crewmen retreat, running up the sand.
“Take himalive!” Will shouts, eyes on Ari. “I want himalive!”
Ari looks around and finds Sam—but another Grand Central crewman grabs his free arm and twists it behind his back. Will reaches Ari, seizes his hair, and yanks it viciously back. Sam remembers in a flash the feeling of those curls through her own fingers, the tender way he had cupped her cheek.
It had all been lies. She feels like someone has melted her heart into steel. He had been sent here tonight to kill her.
And she had been sent here to capture him.
Ari winces at Will’s grip on his hair. Will leans close to him, his face the portrait of ice, until his lips are barely an inch away from Ari’s.
“Well,” he says. “Looks like Shakespeare’s at a loss for words.”
Ari meets Sam’s gaze one last time.
Then Will releases his hair and pulls a gag tight across Ari’s mouth. Another man throws a black bag over Ari’s head.
Sam can feel nothing. Her hands have turned numb. Her arms and legs are numb. Her skin tingles, as if wanting to be cast away. Everything looks like it’s moving slowly, sounds are muffled, screams are muted. All she canpicture, over and over again, is Ari standing before her, eyes gentle and overcome with grief. Ari, whispering to her,I’m so sorry, Sam.
He was sorry for what he was about to do. Why he was here.
I’m sorry too, Ari,she thinks in anguish. What a fool she was, to think that they could ever have a safe place, like they ever had a chance. Love is like their lives, something they are helpless to control. They live and die with the tide, pulled in and thrown back out again, slowly washed away into nothing. Perhaps they are doomed like this.
Forever sorry for what they will do to each other. Forever bound to do it again.
It is the curse of having a strong soul—the indiscriminate ability to pull others to you, those who are both kind and cruel, who despise and yet desire you, often at the same time.
A Study of the Alchemist’s Soulby Socrates, 1967
