3
In the quiet of her mind, Avren dreamed of life, as all shades did.
She was in the Egan Center auditorium again, standing shoulder to shoulder with over fifty men and women who’d weathered the same adversity. The pre-dawn PT runs through January snow; the make-you-puke fitness tests. 3 AM cram sessions. Hours of lectures. Drills in everything from first-aid and firearms to pursuit driving.
Six months of non-stop pressure. Six months of pain, and camaraderie, and tears.
This moment marked the end.
The class of ‘86 stood in perfect formation before the podium: backs ramrod straight, shoulders square, chests out and stomachs in. Every cadet was in their finest. Starched blue shirts with black neckties in perfect knots; navy trousers with knife-edge creases and gold piping down each leg; oxfords spit-shined to a mirrored sheen; service caps crowned with the city shield.
Gold badges gleamed above every heart, all glittering with a luster to rival the sunlight streaming through the windows.
Avren’s own uniform had taken her the better part of an hour to assemble. Her hair took longer still—her auburn mane pinned to a ruthless bun that rested beneath the police cap atop her head. The hat’s visor was so spotless it could’ve been a mirror.
Every eye was locked front and forward, their focus on the man at the podium: Deputy Chief Wahlquist, a slight and narrow-shouldered fellow who wore the glasses of a librarian yet spoke with the voice of a man twice his size. He had a reputation as a hardass, but he was square. Avren had always liked him.
Wahlquist had just finished his keynote address, which had gone on for a solid thirty minutes. The man had a way with words, and damn did he love using them. But now, finally, it was almost time.
Then Police Chief Skarbek took the stage, and Avren’s breath caught.
It was happening. This was it.
The Sergeant-at-Arms’s voice resounded through the auditorium. “First row, ten-hut!”
In perfect unison, Avren and her row snapped to attention.
“Right face!”
As one, the cadets wheeled sharply to the right, as they’d practiced a thousand times before.
Avren’s eyes came to rest on the broad-shouldered back of Blaine McFall, a sandy-haired cadet with a babyface that belied his twenty-five years. His father—a retired Minneapolis police commissioner himself—had made the trip from the Lower 48 to attend the ceremony, and sat in the front row with a smile wide as Lake Superior.
She envied Blaine for that. But… no. Not today.
Good luck, she thought instead. You’ll make your old man proud.
It wasn’t long before the intercom called the first name, and the auditorium filled with cheers and applause. It all faded to white noise.
Memory pulled her to that cold morning in October, when she’d told Skarbek.
“Why’d you come here, Thirsk?” he’d asked, staring out at the frosted plot that formed the academy’s parade grounds. “Why a cop?”
They stood beneath a white spruce at the grounds’ edge, its blue-green boughs drooping overhead. Cold air cut through her academy sweats. The other cadets were already in the midst of warmups, but Skarbek had stopped Avren before she could join them.
“Chief, sir. It’s because… it’s... I want to help people. To protect them.”
He studied her with those hard, soul-searching eyes. “Help them. Yeah. That’s what we’re all here for. But why a cop? Why not a nurse, an EMT, a social worker? Why the force?”
“Because,” she began, holding his gaze. “I owe a debt that can never be fully paid. But the least I can do is try.”
She went on to tell him a story she’d never told anyone. A story she’d kept buried in the deep, dark catacombs of her mind.
A story that began twenty-two years before that day at the police academy.
Fall. The sky was that pale overcast white and the breeze was brisk, not biting.
Avren was seven years old that day. She wore corduroys and her mother’s cream cable-knit sweater, and her long copper curls were pulled back into a ponytail with a rubber band.
She swept the rake across the front yard of their Airport Heights home, gathering bright yellow birch leaves into a growing pile. Inside, Mom was making dinner—macaroni and cheese with a crispy breadcrumb crust. The best. They’d eat when her stepfather came home from the base. She wouldn’t call him Dad. Couldn’t.
To pass the time, she’d started humming—a silly little tune she’d just made up.
“Rake, rake, rake… little by little…
Rake, rake, rake… push them all into the middle!”
She was mid-song when the green car appeared at the curb, rolling right over the sidewalk and onto the grass, past the mailbox. A ‘62 Ford Falcon, she’d much later learn. A balding, bespectacled man in a brown suit stepped out without killing the engine, or even closing the door. Avren assumed he was a salesman.
Much later—years later—she’d learn his name had been Horace Foster Silverthorne, and that he was no salesman at all.
Avren started toward him, rake still in hand, meaning to warn him that her stepfather was going to hit him for messing up the lawn. Mom had told her not to talk to strangers, but the man was going to get hurt if he stayed there, and she didn’t want that.
Next thing she knew, the man’s hand was over her mouth. The rake was on the ground, and the man was hauling her away. She tried to scream, but his hand smothered the sound. She tried to bite, but his hand was too hard. She kicked and squirmed, but the man was too strong.
Then she was in the car.
Then the car was moving. And Avren Thirsk was truly afraid.
She couldn’t remember which way they went, or for how long. Just that the man never stopped staring at her, even while he drove. They were too big, his eyes. They didn’t blink.
“You’re so pretty. So, so pretty.”
She cried for her mom, but that didn’t stop him. He stroked her arm, her hair, her face. His fingers felt like bugs crawling under her skin.
“I’m not a bad man. I’m not a bad man. This needs to happen. You’ll see.”
They eventually drove into a neighborhood the earthquake had destroyed. Condemned houses with caved-in roofs and cracked foundations, nobody living there anymore. The car parked in a garage with no door, the sides bent inward.
Then nothing.
When she woke up, she was in a dark and dusty room, boards nailed over the only window. She couldn’t move. Extension cord bound her wrists and ankles to an old mattress on the floor.
She couldn’t remember what happened next. Just flashes.
Sudden light illuminated notebook pages taped to the wall. Drawings. Dozens of pencil drawings of kids. Girls. Avren’s age. Most were naked and crying, doing things her seven year-old mind couldn’t understand. A few were dead.
The man was there with a camping lantern, talking. He was always talking.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. You’ll see.”
He’d take the lantern when he left, plunging her back into total darkness—hiding the drawings, at least. Sometimes he returned without his lantern and talked to her in that darkness. And sometimes he didn’t talk at all. Just stood there, breathing. Those were the worst.
She kept begging for her mom. She even begged for her stepfather, who scared her—but not as much as the man did. It was no use.
When she’d realized her mom wasn’t coming, she prayed to God. Grandma had always taught her that God loved little children and watched over them. So she begged Him to send a knight to take her away. To save her, like in the fairy tales. To make the Silverthorne Monster stop.
And He did.
The knight burst through the door in blue armor. His shield was a golden badge and his sword was a shining revolver that went BANG!—BANG!—BANG! The Silverthorne Monster fell, and stopped talking forever. Then the brave knight took Avren home in his chariot of black and white, safe and sound.
She never learned his name, that old, gray knight. But she never forgot his face, his eyes that were kind even when they were sad, the way he carried her like a princess.
He saved her. She would have died like the girls in the drawings if not for him.
“If I can be that knight for others...” she concluded, eyes misting with the memory. “I want to try. I want to be a knight. Sir.”
Chief Skarbek stared at her for a long time, breath fogging between them. A gust shook the spruce overhead, sending snow cascading down.
Then, after a heavy silence, he smiled. A weary, knowing smile that told Avren he was there that day, even though she had no memory of him.
He clapped a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll be a damn good one, Avren—”
“—Thirsk, please step forward!”
The intercom jolted Avren back to the present.
She stood blinking at the front of the line. Everything switched to autopilot as she marched across a stage that seemed a mile long. Cameras flashed and whirred, leaving blotches in her vision. An ocean of faces looked on from the audience, cheering, clapping. Yet none of them were the ones she wanted to see.
You’re not here. None of you came.
Not her mother, nor her siblings, or the worthless drunk Mom married after Dad died in the accident—not that she would have welcomed his presence.
No one had come.
She hadn’t met Hale yet. Wouldn’t for another two years, when they’d both respond to the same 10-16 involving a pipeliner on a three-day bender threatening his landlord with a mounted moose antler. She’d round one side of the duplex, Hale the other, and it’d be a match made in havoc, consummated in coffee and doughnuts at her usual spot on 4th. Their own ridiculous cop fairytale.
But he wasn’t there yet.
Avren stepped before the podium, and the portly, insignia-clad police chief behind it.
Russel Skarbek was well into his sixties, and he looked it. His military flattop and handlebar mustache were peppered with salt, and his ruddy, wind-burned face was cragged from decades of winter. But the years hadn’t done a thing to dull the edge in his wolf-gray eyes. Nor had the pounds he’d packed on softened him in the slightest. The Marine Raider, ex-East High coach, and lifelong lawman still had the presence of a territorial Kodiak. Rumor had it he was looking to retire soon, but no one bought it.
Cadet Thirsk snapped a crisp salute.
Chief Skarbek saluted in turn, and then leaned forward as he murmured under his breath: “At ease, kid. Breathe. This is your day.”
She relaxed, just a fraction.
He reached out and shook her hand firmly, palm strong as a beartrap and tough as rawhide. Avren just hoped hers wasn’t clammy. They both turned on cue to face the photographer’s camera, putting on their best smiles and holding the pose until the flashbulbs had their fill.
The chief straightened, gold stars along his collar flashing like marquee lights. “Ready, cadet?”
Avren swallowed. “Yes sir.”
Skarbek lifted a heavy paw to the air. “Right hand up.”
She obeyed, extending her right arm and raising her hand, eyes fixed on a future that was now the present.
His words rang through the microphone. “Now repeat after me: I do solemnly swear…”
Heart pounding, Avren repeated.
Skarbek continued. “…that I will support, protect, and defend…”
Avren echoed him, word for word.
“…the Constitution of the United States and the state of Alaska…”
Again, she repeated.
He paused, suddenly squinting at her. “…that I am duly qualified to hold office under…”
“…that I am duly qualif—”
The auditorium lights flickered then shifted, beaming down pillars of lunatic blue, venom green, and hazard yellow.
A murmur rose from the crowd, followed by a few gasps.
A beat later, the lights cut back to normal.
The chief lowered his hand to the podium. His head slowly began to shake. “Hold it.”
Avren stared, bewildered. “Sir...?”
He clicked off the microphone and leaned forward, gray gaze locked with hers. “Sorry, kid. There’s been a mistake. We both made a big mistake.”
No. “Sir, please. I... I don’t understand.”
“You’re not duly qualified to hold this office, Avren. You’re not qualified at all. You don’t have the aptitude. The disposition. You’re unfit to be a police officer. Unfit to uphold the law.”
When Avren finally found her voice, it sounded distant and weak to her ears. “But I... I thought...”
He drew a breath. “‘To protect and serve’ is more than just some bullshit line we throw on a brochure. It’s a commitment to do whatever it takes. Whatever is necessary. But you... you’re clearly not capable of that.”
“But that’s not true.” The words came faster now. “It’s not! I can do that. I’m willing to serve. I’m committed, sir. You have to believe me. You have to.”
“Tell me, Thirsk. How can you serve when you can’t even protect?”
The question hit like a gut punch. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“That monk—Biao. Remember him? He was counting on you. Kallice too. That little spider-critter. All that talk about being the knight, Thirsk. That’s a nice story. Sounds real good. Fact is, you didn’t save a single one of them.”
The words landed like verdict. Only then did she notice that they now stood alone in a single spotlight, surrounded by infinite black. No audience, no auditorium.
Skarbek pointed to her right. “Or how about him? He was just a little kid, wasn’t he?”
Avren slowly followed the chief’s finger, dreading who she’d see.
A small figure stepped into the light—young, soft-featured, with pale platinum locks and cherub cheeks. The Sojourner’s large eyes, blue as Siberian ice, stared up at her from beneath the fur-lined hood of his uschanka.
The sight of him was a spear to the heart.
“You failed him when he needed you most, Thirsk.”
No...
Skarbek continued, words laced with scorn. “You spoke of repaying your debt from all those years ago. Ask yourself: have you? Far as I can tell, you haven’t paid a damn thing.” The chief’s voice went quiet, regretful. “We should’ve let you die in Silverthorne’s basement. Just like you let this boy die.”
“You’re wrong!” The shout tore out of her, echoing in the emptiness. “I didn’t abandon him. I never gave up on him!” She twisted toward the boy, eyes burning and stomach boiling. “I’m still here for you. I’ll find you, I promise. I’ll bring you home. Just hold on. Please.”
The boy didn’t blink.
Avren stepped forward, hand reaching. “I’ll be your knight. Just wait for me. I’ll bring you back...”
Grinding chains. The cage lurched backwards into the dark, dragging the boy with it. His blue gaze never left her. Please, no. She couldn’t bear to look at him, yet she couldn’t look away.
No!
She shot after him—
She didn’t make it two steps before her own cage slammed down around her with a steel crash. Her fists battered the hellscratched bars, but the metal was impervious, unforgiving.
All the Saint could do was watch, fingers curled around the cold iron as the Sojourner receded into a hungry black maw. Laughter echoed from the void—that unholy housewife shriek breaking into baby screams. Hideous. Wrong. Then silence.
When the last trace of him was swallowed, she crumpled to her knees. “I tried,” she sobbed. “I tried...”
Then she too was dragged from the podium—where Skarbek remained, still shaking his head. “You were born to be a victim, Thirsk. A plaything for monsters.”
The Chief of Police and the spotlight that held him dwindled to a pinpoint of white before winking away.
And Avren dreamed no more.