by Bre Hall
Ren levitated in the middle of it all, looking from the sky to the ground. Meredith and Peter swirled above her, duking it out in the night sky. Pike tussled in leopard form with wounded Beverly. There was nothing to do, really. No way to insert herself. It was technically her fight and she wasn’t even getting to be a part of it.
That’s when she heard it. A distant tea kettle whine, growing louder by the second. A flash of silver light emerged above the tree tops. It had to be Joe coming back. The coward returning to fight.
Ren squared her shoulders, cocked her arm back, and shot a jolt of electricity through the air. Joe dodged the attack, but before Ren could launch another blast, the silver light of his being consumed her. Rough hands grabbed hold of her shoulders and pushed her through the air so quickly she felt weightless. It was like falling through the chasm of color and into one of her past lives, except she wasn’t falling, she was flying.
Joe’s face was so close she could have sunk a finger in the valleys between his pock-marked cheeks. His jaw was tight, loose, tight again. His eyes narrowed on her.
“Be a good girl and go quietly,” Joe said.
Ren wondered briefly of their meeting in Meredith’s parlor. How simple it would have been to take her out. She didn’t know how to use her powers at the time. She’d only possessed the ability to levitate then. Joe could have inflicted a little quiet strangulation. It would have been perfect. Easy. So, why hadn’t he? Had he been ordered to wait? By who? By Peter? To see if his little experiments would get the job done once and for all? Her mouth hardened. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go quietly. She wouldn’t go at all.
She worked up the evilest smile she could conjure and latched a hand onto the side of Joe’s face. She squeezed tightly. Simultaneously pumped him full of blue sparks. It reminded her of the cattle prod her dad used to use when he still had a herd of Angus. A strip of electricity pressed against the muscular body of an unruly beast. That’s exactly what she was doing.
Joe screamed. He released her. They spiraled away from one another in free fall, Joe into the trees, Ren back toward her father’s blazing pickup truck, where Meredith and Peter were now brawling.
Just before Ren hit the ground, she caught herself, hovered for a moment, and touched down gently. She bounced to her feet and gaped at Meredith. Watched Mer drive a fist into Peter’s face. Ren could hear the cartilage and bone scrape against one another as it broke.
Ren looked around for Beverly and Pike, but saw neither. She attuned her new, hyper-sensitive ears to the noise around her. The shiver of the wind. The squeal of a screen door miles away. The weighted footfalls and staggered breath of a person close by. Ren turned toward the sound and spotted a shadowy figure swaying across the field. They appeared to be holding their side as they limped into view. Pike, in human form. The closer he came, the more Ren could see. His forehead had a deep gash in it, dripping blood down his temple, his cheek, pooling somewhere beneath his black t-shirt. He held his right side and winced with every step. She jogged toward him.
Her breath was a smoke signal in the cool air. “Oh my God, what happened?”
Pike looked up at her through his oddly-shaped glasses. “Bitch got a hold of a shard of shattered glass from the truck.”
“Why aren’t you a leopard still?” Ren asked.
“I think the shock of the stab snapped me back into human form,” he said.
“Where’s Beverly?” Ren asked, her fists ready to scald.
“She flew away,” Pike said. “Must have thought I was a goner. Where are the others?”
“I took out Joe,” she said.
“For good?”
“Shocked his face until he fell from the sky,” she said with a proud lift of her chin.
Pike shook his head. “He’ll be back.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “Got him pretty good.”
Pike pressed his hand deeper into his side, which was damp, bleeding. “Only one way to kill an Auxilium.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Do you know how?”
“No,” she said. “Peter wouldn’t give me specifics.”
“’Course not.” Pike inhaled sharply, winced. “You have to rip off their wings.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “That’s it?”
“Is that it?” Pike laughed, then groaned. He stumbled over the field. Ren reached out and steadied him. He was snow bank-cold. Sweating profusely. Even in the dark he looked a peaky shade of green. She tried not to think about the fact that she really didn’t know Pike, even though it felt like she did. Though she still hated him for lying to her all of those months, he had shown up when she needed him most. And, he said he’d wanted to reveal his identity sooner, hadn’t he? Maybe he wasn’t as bad as she’d initially thought.
“You don’t look good,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“Sit down.”
“And be a sitting duck?” He scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ll keep you—”
A boulder-like force slammed into Ren’s back and knocked her off her feet. She hit the dirt face first, sliding over the plowed field, over the firm ruts.
When she finally came to a stop, her elbows were raw from scraping over clods of earth. The fabric of her long t-shirt was ripped at the hem. Her knees had suffered the same fate as her elbows.
She spat dirt from her mouth and came up onto all fours. She was bending a knee to stand when slender fingers wound through her hair and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet.
Beverly’s voice snaked through her ear. Surround sound. Loud, even though she was probably only whispering. “I should have clawed your throat out the moment I saw you at the coffee shop.” Beverly’s fingernails, long and sharp, grazed Ren’s neck, as if to make her point. “Should have hurried up and ran you over last week, instead of letting Peter rescue you. He said it would gain trust, but here we are, rolling around in the dirt. Trust broken. Making no progress, still.”
Ren’s stomach tightened, her hands curled to fists, and her eyes narrowed. “You’re wrong about that.”
Ren elbowed Beverly hard in the gut. The woman released Ren’s hair, giving her just enough time to turn around. With open palms, Ren pressed her hands flat against Beverly’s cheeks, sandwiching her face between Ren’s hands. Electric pulses gurgled into Beverly the same way they had Joe. Zips of blue tunneled beneath Beverly’s skin, shooting into her veins, plucking at her nerves. The Auxilium squirmed, tried to pull away from Ren’s grip, but she kept her hold vice-tight.
Slowly, Ren rose off of her feet and, electricity still zapping her, levitated Beverly in the air with her. From the corner of Ren’s good eye, she could see Pike, still clutching his side, watching her with his mouth drawn open, eyes peeled back wide. Beyond him, she could see Meredith, her glimmering wings shivering as she dusted herself off. Peter and Joe were nowhere in sight.
“Please,” Beverly pleaded. “Please, stop.”
“I’m sorry?” Ren asked. “Did you say something?”
Ren dug her fingernails into Beverly’s cheeks, the electric pulse strengthening. The woman’s cries turned from blubbering tears to a whimper, before the only sound that escaped her was an indiscernible moan, fading. Her eyelids fluttered, like the blur of a deck of cards being shuffled. Slowly, her eyes began to roll back in her head.
“Enough.” A sandpaper-rough voice came from Ren’s blind spot.
Ren turned her head slowly to the direction of Peter’s voice as she clung to Beverly. Peter stood a few feet away, his face swollen, bloodied from his fight with Meredith. In his hands, he held a pistol, aimed at Ren. Wasn’t it just a few days ago she was kissing him? Infatuated with him? He cocked the gun.
Ren laughed loudly, her voice echoing off the distant trees that ringed the field. “A gun? Really? Now, that’s not very fair, is it?”
“Just as fair as what you’re doing.” Peter nodded to Beverly. Ren dropped her. She fell to the ground in a
shivering heap. She twitched for a moment, but then went completely still. Ren knew she wasn’t dead, her wings were still intact, but obviously, there were ways of pushing an Auxilium close to edge. Finding the point in which they would surely break.
Still levitating, Ren held up her palms. “How about you put down the gun so we can talk about this?”
“Talk about this?” Peter gripped the pistol with both hands. He threw his head back and laughed, his teeth feathered with blood. The gun quivered. His voice cracked. “Talk about this?”
“Peter.” Meredith took a step toward him. “This obsession must end. You’ve oppressed the Discentem long enough. Give them their lives back. Let them be.”
“Yeah.” Ren chuckled. “Aren’t you tired of following me around all the time, killing me? It must really cause a problem for your social life.”
Peter shook his head. Smiled. “I won’t have to follow you around anymore. That was the point of the last few weeks. Build up your soul enough to send you to an afterlife—to be finished for good—and not have to worry about you returning ever again. Two lifetimes stitched to your current soul is sure to tip the scale enough, don’t you think?”
“Three,” Ren corrected. “Meredith had another relic.”
“I knew she would,” Peter said, turning briefly to wink at Meredith. “Thanks for the help.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Ren met his shifty gaze, wondering how he’d ever gotten her to trust him so thoroughly in the first place.
“Then I’ll learn from my mistakes,” Peter said as he lifted the gun slightly so that it was aimed at the center of Ren’s forehead. “But I’ll be honest, I rarely make them.”
“You did when you chose this lifetime for your experiments.” Ren’s eyes hardened. Her blood was hot. Her hands buzzed with excess energy. She could have exploded into a cyclone of fury at any moment. Destroy Peter and everything around her. Her jaw tightened. “You picked the wrong girl to fuck with.”
Peter’s finger curled around the trigger the same way it had that cold December night in Oklahoma when she was a prohibition-era bootlegger. The hammer of the gun fell, but Ren was ready. She focused on the bullet even before it exited the gun. Heard the space around it as it began its release. Felt it swirling out of the chamber and into the air. Just like she and Meredith had practiced during her training, she put up her hands and caught the bullet mid-flight.
“What the—” Peter’s face went slack, an unraveled drawstring.
Ren turned the bullet quickly back toward him, using its momentum to her advantage. She told the tiny metal cylinder exactly what to do. The bullet, holding the same force as if it had just been released from the pistol, shot up Peter’s back on one side and down on the other. The bullet sliced cleanly through the bones and flesh of his wings.
Peter shrieked, like a dying fox. Loud. Straining. His wings fell to the field first, completely severed from his body. Then, Peter swayed, his voice gone, but lips still wavering. He dropped to his knees with a grunt, his breath visible in the cool air. His curls slowly washed over his eyes, already glazing over with death. Then, his head dropped, his square chin dove into his sternum, and one last breath escaped him before he fell forward.
Peter hit the plowed earth with a thump, his head burrowing into the ground.
Ren had to look away.
“Is he?” Pike asked, hobbling over to get a good look at Peter.
“Yes,” Meredith said, her voice as steady as ever. “He’s dead.”
Ren touched back down to the ground, close to Beverly, who was still lying limp. Meredith squeezed Ren’s shoulder, then turned sharply on her heels and marched to the burning truck. Meredith plucked a shard of glass free from the window and returned to Beverly’s side. Squatting close to her, Meredith pressed the edge of the glass to her left wing.
“You may want to look away for this,” Meredith said.
Both Ren and Pike turned away, but they could not escape the gnawing sound as Meredith hacked away. A dull serration. The slow chomp of a razor on flesh and bone.
Ren blinked back at Peter. He was motionless, the wing tattooed on his finger still curled around the gun, which lay in the dirt beside him. It was strange how close she had gotten to him. How easily she had trusted him. How wrong it all had gone.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
“You two should start for home,” Meredith said as she worked. “Afran—Joe, I mean—has probably gone back to his home base. If he returns, he will bring others.”
Ren breathed deeply through her nose, trying to calm the roiling in her gut. “Why not hunt him down and finish him before he gets there? Then we won’t have anyone to worry about. We could live in peace. Lead normal lives for once.”
The grating sound stopped. “If only it were that simple.”
“It is,” Ren said.
The cutting started up again. Meredith breathed heavily, as if the work was making her sweat. Ren imagined beads of liquid pooling on Meredith’s perfect complexion. Cheeks turning blotchy.
“It’s not just these three who don’t want you to return to your full form,” Meredith said. “The other rogues will come for you, and I’d like to be far, far away from Wynn when they do. We’ll set off at first light.”
“You mean we’re leaving town?” Ren asked.
“Yes,” Meredith said. “We need to get far away. And fast.”
“What about Dad?” Ren asked. “And Grams?”
“I’ll call in a friend,” Meredith said. “She’ll help them forget we ever existed.”
“I’m not leaving the only family I have.” Ren whipped back to Meredith, who was splattered with blood from her finger tips to the end of her nose. One of Beverly’s wings lay completely severed. The second was nearly detached. Beverly did not move. She wasn’t even breathing. Gone, already. Ren dug a toe into the raw, Kansas dirt. The land she’d been born out of. “We’re staying here. We’ll make do in the safe room. We’ll train. We’ll prepare.”
Meredith tensed up and, in one, quick movement, sliced off the last of Beverly’s wing. Meredith stood, tossing aside the shard of glass. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing a streak of blood over her forehead.
“Peter and his cronies were specks compared to what is out there.” Meredith was so close Ren could smell death on her. “The stronger the Discentem get—the more the resistance grows—the bigger a priority the Dark Souls become to the Rogues. They want nothing more than to keep you cursed. Weak. I cannot train you the way you need to be trained in the safe room. I cannot provide new relics. I cannot prepare you for what is coming.”
“What’s coming?” Ren asked.
“Revolution,” Pike said, his voice wavering from the pain in his side.
Ren rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Revolution? You need me for a damn revolution? Do you know how stupid that sounds? You don’t need me. You seemed to handle yourselves just fine without me.”
“You forget who you were, Ren,” Meredith said.
“How can I forget someone I don’t know?”
“Samara was a name once known by all Discentem, Auxilium, and Human alike. You were more powerful than anything that walked the earth at that time. You were once the force everyone looked to in every situation, every battle. Hundreds, soon to be thousands, will soon be looking to you once more,” Meredith said. “Deep down, Samara lives in you. She may be dormant, but I see that drive, that fire in you that I saw in her all those centuries ago. Samara wanted this to be the way back. The way out of these terrible times. Ren, I need you to dig down inside yourself and see that this is the time to be brave, to do something with your life. Something bigger than Wynn. Bigger than you. We need you. We all need you.”
“Do it for Alfie,” Pike said. Ren looked at him, her eyes softening. “Make his death count for something more.”
Tears were on the move. Hot and salty. Stinging her eyes. She twisted her face up, trying to keep them bac
k, but she couldn’t. They bubbled up and trickled down her cheeks. She wiped at them with the sides of her index fingers. The moment she opened the moon engraved locket there was no turning back. Alfie had died because of a centuries-old battle. Because of a curse. Pike was right. She needed to avenge him. Killing Peter wasn’t enough. Not if others like him were still out there.
“Alright,” Ren whispered, her voice strained.
“What did you say?” Meredith asked.
Ren breathed deeply, wiped at another tear, and said loudly, “I said ‘alright’. I’ll do it. I’ll go with you.”
Meredith squeezed Ren’s shoulder. “Good girl.”
“Great,” Pike said, his voice gruff. He was still holding his side, leaning heavily on it. “Now, can we please go home?”
Meredith pushed Pike’s hand away from his torso and lifted his t-shirt. She pressed the heel of her hand into the wound. Pike yelped, flinched away from her touch.
Meredith looked at Ren and rolled her eyes. “What a baby.”
“Hey,” Pike said. “I don’t see you two with any major gashes on your flesh.”
Meredith pressed her hand against Pike’s wound again and he let her. Slowly, a strand of silver light washed over the side of Pike’s abdomen. Soon, the light faded and, when Meredith pulled her hand away from Pike, the wound vanished. Nothing but taught, porcelain skin remained.
“There.” Meredith started off across the field, toward the roadside. “Now, come on. I want to be gone by morning.”
“Did you know she could do that?” Ren asked Pike.
He lifted up his t-shirt again to look at the place where the gaping laceration had been. He nodded his head, adjusted his glasses. “But I’ve never seen her work up-close.”