If it hadn’t been for her, there would have been no question about Selena being welcome. Sara said so herself—the girl would have been allowed to come.
If it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have had to hurt Sara. It wouldn’t have been necessary. They would all be in the lake by now, traveling together through the portal, maybe even be in Atlantis already.
He hopes Sara knows it was an accident how hard he hit her. That it wasn’t his fault. He hopes Tethys knows, too.
He holds his palm in front of Sara’s face, hoping to feel a slow rush of warm air. But there’s nothing, not even the slightest hint of movement. He tells himself that doesn’t mean anything, that sometimes a person can be breathing so shallowly you can’t feel their breath.
He glances down at her again, at her mat of faintly glistening black hair, then back into the mirror. Yes, he knows who’s really to blame here. He knows who’s responsible for tearing his world apart.
Her.
* * *
They stop again just a few minutes later. “Are we here?” someone asks in a tone that Natalie can’t quite decide is hopeful or fearful.
Peter opens his door and the dome light pops on. “Yeah, we’re—” he starts to answer, but his words are cut off by his own startled cry and, a split-second later, a horrified scream from Tracy. She is pointing at the space between the front seats, where Peter has reached to unlatch his seat belt. Sara’s head has pitched sideways again, and both it and Peter’s hand are soaked in dark blood. A small rivulet of deep red is coursing slowly down one of the ridges in the center of the van.
“Oh my God.” Tracy shrieks. “You really did kill her!”
With wide, frightened eyes, Peter twists around to face his compatriots. “No,” he says. “No, it’s not what it looks like.”
But by this point several of the others have joined Tracy’s wailing. His words get lost in the din. Only Natalie is paying attention. watching him carefully from her spot in the back.
“It’s just blood,” he says, violently rubbing his hand against his jeans. “See?” He holds up his still-red palm. “It comes off.”
As if that’s the issue, Natalie thinks.
“She’ll be all right, really. It’s just a little blood.” He grabs Sara by the shoulders and pushes her body back into its seat. “Head wounds—they bleed a lot, you know. Always look worse than they are, isn’t that right, Sara?”
The way he talks to her. fusses over her—setting her body carefully upright in her seat, carefully arranging her limbs—reminds Natalie of those stories about Jackie Kennedy retrieving bits of her husband’s brain and trying to push them back into place after he’d been shot. The analogy brings her a hint of grim satisfaction. This isn’t the same distant Peter who gazed past her with his faraway eyes back at the barn. This is a frantic Peter, no longer confident, no longer sure, struggling to contain the explosive part of him that knows he’s in denial, that knows he’s a murderer. Worse than a murderer, a traitor. Betrayer of a sacred trust, assassin of his people’s hopes and dreams.
Natalie hugs Selena closer. For the first time in she doesn’t know how long, she feels a glimmer of hope. And not just hope, but power. Peter’s guilt is a weakness she can exploit. Not easily, not reliably ... she knows enough to fear the demon of doubt that she’s unleashed. But it has the virtue of being something. And if her life has exposed her to any one lesson, it’s the art of exploiting another person’s uncertainty, another person’s guilt. In that, she has trained at the feet of masters.
As the tiny trickle of Sara’s blood continues down the middle of the van, most of Natalie’s fellow passengers shrink back in horror, as if it might burn them. But one, Tracy, reaches out toward it as if in a trance. Crying, “Sara, Sara!” over and over again, she dips her finger in it and lifts a dab of blood to her lips. “We need you,” she whispers, and licks it clean, licks and sucks until her finger emerges white as bone, at which point she collapses in a weeping, sobbing heap.
The van’s back doors are yanked open and Natalie, who has been leaning against them, almost tumbles out. A rough hand pushes her back Inside and swings her around. She finds herself staring into a mask of rage and pain. Peter. She was so preoccupied with Tracy, she didn’t notice him slip out of the van.
“You,” he barks.
“Not me,” she says, quickly repositioning Selena so that she isn’t between the two of them.
“You made me do this.”
“I didn’t make you do anything. I was just doing Tethys’ bidding. So was Sara. You’re the only one who’s not.”
She peers around him into the darkness. They are parked on some kind of concrete apron, surrounded by dense, black trees. She can’t see the lake, but the air has a moist quality to it, and she assumes the water lies directly ahead of them.
Peter shouts at the other passengers to quiet down, and when they don’t comply, pulls out his gun again. Almost immediately, the level of noise inside the van drops to almost nothing. “Now, I know what you think,” he says, his voice trembling, “but she’s not dead. You all know me. You know I wouldn’t do something like that.” He hands a thermos to one of the men. “Here, pass it around. We don’t have time for the whole ceremony thing. I’m sorry—I wish we did, but under the circumstances—well, we just don’t. You all know the drill. Just declare your readiness to yourselves and we’ll get going.” Turning to Natalie, he scowls. “Not you. You’re getting out.”
She starts to protest. “Peter—”
“Don’t. I said I’d think about it and I have. You’re disruptive, a distraction. The last thing we need right now. To get through the portal, we need to be focused and happy and I don’t see how we can be with you along. Now give me the girl.”
Natalie turns her body to keep him away. “No way.”
He leans forward and presses the nose of the gun into the center of her forehead. “I said, now.”
“What are you going to do, Peter, shoot everyone?”
“Not everyone. But you, if I have to.”
“And how are you going to explain that one to Tethys? Here you have me, ready to go, her precious Last One, the one she’s worked so hard to bring here, and you shoot me? How do you think that’s going to go over?”
“Don’t play games with me!” he erupts, pushing the barrel hard into her skin. “You don’t think I know what you’re trying to do? I see it, I’m not stupid.”
The gun grinds against Natalie’s skull. She tries not to wince, tries not to appear weak. She knows very well that it does no good to beg and plead with lunatics. “I ‘m not playing games, Peter. I’m trying to help you.”
He hesitates. “By telling me I killed Sara?”
“By keeping you from making things worse than they already are!”
This time he doesn’t answer. Natalie feels the pressure on her forehead lessen slightly.
“Peter, you’re scared right now, and I understand.” she continues. “But you’re in charge, which means you have to rise above that. You have to be brave. And you have to think.”
“About what?” he asks skeptically.
“About everything. About how it all fits together. What happened with Sara, that was a mistake, wasn’t it?”
The nose of the guns jams into her skull again. “It was all your fault!”
“OK, fine. But you didn’t mean to hit her that hard, did you?”
He shakes his head. “I never meant to hurt her.”
“So it was an accident. That’s my point. These things happen. Tethys will understand that. You saw the tape—she said it herself. Even she’s made mistakes. She’s not going to condemn you for making one.”
“You think?” His tone is suddenly hopeful.
“I know. She and I go way back, remember? She’ll understand. And she’ll forgive you. Everyone will. But, Peter?”
“Yes?”
“Not if you deliberately defy her again. Not if you show up without me, or with the girl. One mistake, she’ll
accept, but not three. Not three, Peter.”
He stares into her eyes for the longest time before answering. Natalie can tell he’s thinking about what she’s saying, but not how it’s affecting him. The nose of the gun stays firmly in place in the center of her forehead, his finger white-knuckling the trigger.
When he answers, it’s in a whisper. “She belongs with me.”
“Maybe,” Natalie says tenderly. “And maybe she’ll join you someday. Maybe Tethys knows a way you can come back and get her. But you know you can’t just show up with her, not after everything that’s happened. You do know, that don’t you, Peter?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You wouldn’t do that to Tethys, would you?”
His shoulders sag and begin to tremble. “She’s going to be so angry at me.”
“Only if you defy her again. Take me, Peter. Leave the girl. Be the hero. That’s what you want, isn’t it? What you’ve always wanted, to be the hero? Now’s your chance. You made a mistake, so what? Everyone does. But not everyone gets the chance to be the hero. and not everyone takes the chance when they get lt. Look around you, Peter, at your friends. They need you now. They need you to be their hero, their leader. You don’t want to fail them, do you? You don’t want to fail Tethys.”
His eyes well up. “I already have.”
At that point, an odd thing happens: the others, who have grown quiet listening to their exchange, start to reassure him. Natalie can hardly believe it but they actually start to reassure him. They tell him he hasn’t failed them, they tell him they love him. The ones who are close enough touch his arm. They tell him Tethys will understand. What Natalie has concocted as a narcotic for his ears has apparently appealed to all of them. Suddenly she is surrounded by allies, all pulling Peter in her direction. and as she sees the hope begin to build in his eyes, the slow building of a smile, she knows she has him.
For just a second.
He opens his mouth to say something, God knows what when there is a rapid series of pops and his head explodes and Natalie knows, in that tiny, infinite moment, something else of how Jackie Kennedy must have felt.
* * *
Blood everywhere. Scraps of flesh and shards of bone. People inside the van screaming again.
Peter’s body is flung forward by the impact so that he’s laying across their laps, his feet and legs dangling over the bumper.
A shadow emerges from the woods. “I’m baaaack,” it says in a cheerfully bitter voice. “Again.”
Bret Hartlow emerges into the small ring of light cast from the dome lamp.
He’s carrying an automatic rifle identical to the one Sara took from the woman in the TV room.
“Nice of you all to leave me this,” he says, tossing the weapon to the ground. “Won’t be needing it now. Seems everyone’s losing their heads, doesn’t it?”
He laughs, takes something from his pocket, a little pill, and pops it into his mouth. Drugs, Natalie thinks, that explains it. People wired like this can be hard to subdue. And, it seems, hard to kill.
Even in the bad light she can see how pale he is. His eyes are wide and so dilated all she sees is white and black. His lips are curled back in an unnatural smile, and his entire body, the upper portion of it soaked in blood, is shaking. He seems barely able to stand.
Staggering closer, he leans over Peter’s body and spits on it, a spewing bloody froth that slides down his chin. “That’s for you, old buddy. Leave me behind to die, will you? I don’t think so. You thought you had me, but no one outwits Bret. No one.”
In a single, powerful motion, he grabs Peter’s legs and shoves his body forward into the van. Every muscle in Bret’s body seems to pop from the effort, and the moment it’s done he nearly collapses onto Natalie. She suspects that in his current state he could be knocked down by a small gust of air one minute and the very next lift a man with one hand.
“Should leave you here,” he continues, still addressing Peter’s body, “Like you tried to do me. Not gonna do it, though. Gonna let Tethys sort it all out. You can answer to her. I think that’s fair, don’t you?”
“Bret –” Natalie starts to say.
But he steps back without even looking at her and slams the rear doors shut. A second later, he climbs into the driver’s seat and closes his door behind him, plunging the van back into darkness.”
“Everyone get their little drinkie-poo?” he asks.
Natalie hears a click. the sound of his own handcuff.
“Bret!” she screams.
“Time to go, kiddies.”
The engine roars back to life and the van begins to drift slowly forward.
“Bret!” Natalie screams again. “You have to let the girl out. She’s still here.”
“Ah,” Bret says. “You. You’re a bitch, you know that? I don’t have to listen to you anymore. You didn’t help me when I needed you. so I’m not going to help you.”
“But Tethys—”
“Will sort this all out when we get there. I’m not letting anyone out, so you can just stop your whining. This is all one big mess. I’ll let Tethys make some sense of it all. She can tell us what to do.”
The front of the van dips and they begin to accelerate downhill. A few seconds later they hit the water with a loud splash. The impact throws them forward, and again Natalie almost loses Selena, who suddenly grabs hold of Natalie’s neck with her small arms. “Make it stop.” she cries in her smallest voice. “Please make it stop.”
Natalie begins to cry, too. She feels the van begin to float, a slight lifting and tipping, and then the gurgling of water, rising through cracks and holes, shockingly cold on her skin. “Steph,” she sobs, and then, correcting herself: “Selena. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
She yanks on her chain, and that’s when she remembers it: Peter had a key.
He had a key.
She tries to remember when she saw it. It was when Sara was threatening Selena with the gun. He took the key he denied having out of his shirt pocket and unlocked her handcuff. What did he do with it then? Natalie didn’t see, she wasn’t paying attention. But if he returned it to his pocket, then she figures it’s probably still there.
“Hold on tight,” she whispers to Selena. “I have an idea.”
She claws her way along his body, pushing against the people next to her, until her outstretched hand finds his shoulder. He’s lying on his stomach, dead weight just beginning to sink in a couple inches of water. She tries pulling him over but his body won’t budge. Instead she pushes him, a giant heave. From the people across from her she hears cries of, “Hey!” and “Stop that!” but she doesn’t care. She pushes again, harder and more violently. And his body tips, then flips up and over.
Desperately, her hand inches along his chest until she finds his pocket, a little flap of wet cloth. Be there, she thinks. Please be there.
But she can tell just from the flatness of the pocket that it’s empty. She jams her finger in anyway, an act of desperation, but finds nothing, just hollow cloth.
“Shit!” she screams. “Son of a bitch!”
“No swearing,” Bret admonishes from the front seat. He begins to hum, then breaks into song: “Tethys loves me, this I know, ‘cause Peter tells me so.” He giggles. “New song. Old skin.” Another giggle.
The water is getting deep now, up to Natalie’s waist as she crouches. Selena feels it and she’s crying hysterically, but still holding onto Natalie for dear life. Natalie tries not to panic, tries to keep thinking. But her mind keeps wanting to slip away in a rush of mad terror. Nature’s gift to the condemned. At its peak, terror sometimes helps the brain to disconnect, become oblivious, and her mind is desperately trying to reach that point now.
The key.
She tries to focus on the key.
Maybe he tossed it aside, maybe he gave it to Sara, in which case they’re dead.
But what if he didn’t?
She grabs for his body again. He’s floating slightly, so he’s easier t
o maneuver. She jams her free hand in his pants pockets, first in front then in back. They’re soggy and hard to pry open, and with everyone moving around, reacting to the water, she has to struggle to keep him in place long enough to get her hand inside.
All four pockets come up empty.
She keeps telling herself not to panic, but her body and mind aren’t listening. The van is full of noise now, a clanking, groaning, screaming, sobbing, moaning whirlwind of panic and distress. Nearby a man is grunting horribly as he tries to pull his hand through the tight metal ring that binds it. Natalie can almost hear the sound of skin rending.
Up front Bret is still singing and swaying like a happy-go-lucky drunk out for an evening on the town. “Yes, Tethys loves me,” he sings, “yes, Tethys loves me . . .”
Natalie grabs Peter and methodically starts checking his pockets again: left back, left front, right back, all empty, just like she feared. She is just pulling her hand out of his right front pocket, which except for a wad of wet tissue is as vacant as the rest, when her hand brushes over a tiny sleeve of easily overlooked denim. A change pocket. Losing hope, she jams her finger inside it and something sharp slices through her skin and the tender nerves under her fingernail.
The key.
She grunts with triumph as she extracts it between two fingers and holds it up as if to see it, as if to venerate it. And just as she does, someone bumps her arm. The key drops out of her grasp and disappears under the rising surface without so much as a sound.
Momentarily frozen by what she’s done, Natalie can’t even scream. How could she drop the key? What sort of idiot is she?
The water is a couple of feet deep now. “Stand up,” she tells Selena.
The little girl hesitates.
“Just do it!”
Selena lets go of Natalie’s neck just enough for her to pry herself loose. “Now don’t move.”
Without thinking she plunges her head down under the water and begins to grope around. The key is small, no thicker than a dime. Not much of a target.
Someone steps on her hand, crushing her fingers, and she almost cries out in pain. She bursts to the surface for a sharp intake of new air before ducking back down again.
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