by C C Daniels
Toci jerked my arm to hold me back. What are you doing?
“You want me to get the skull. I’m going to get the skull.” I knew my eyes were glowing. I felt the heat. I turned to look at her anyway. “Besides. That’s my grandmother in there.” She’s my MawMaw.
Toci, understanding in her expression, loosened her grip. I wrenched my arm free and stepped away all in one motion.
Kanaan saw me coming. He motioned for me to follow his lead. I nodded, and together we inched around the back bumper to the front bumper.
Crouched over, Toci shuffled to the spot Kanaan left behind the truck. “Be careful.” She hissed at us.
Kanaan gave her a thumbs-up.
Inch by inch, we got close enough to the garage side door to peek in. I saw Kai first. He stood in front of MawMaw, protecting her from the gun held by his mother. The room had been torn apart—the coffee table trunk on its side, board game pieces and parts everywhere, sofa cushion stuffing tossed all over, and the shattered fish tank with a big puddle beneath it. Though dented, the globe was still in one piece. It lay near Amaya’s feet on the other side of the room.
Kai’s eyes flared when he saw us. With tiny movements, he shook his head at us, telling us not to come in. Mrs. Bell must have seen his movement too.
“Come in, Wray,” she demanded.
I pitched forward to stand. But Kanaan was faster. He positioned himself so that I was behind him. He stepped over the threshold first with his hands up.
“Oh, Wray? Did you send your errand boy to do your bidding? That’s so typical of the Skys.”
“Mom,” Amaya pleaded.
“Be quiet, Amaya,” Mrs. Bell growled. “Get in here, Wray.”
The viciousness laced in her voice made me cringe. Still, I stepped through the threshold right behind Kanaan. I didn’t put my hands up, though. Mrs. Bell held the piece from MawMaw’s bed in one hand. In the other was a pistol that she pivoted to me the second I walked in. Her expression was stone-cold. I didn’t doubt for a second that she’d shoot me.
Kai sobbed. Mixed into the desperate thoughts of getting his mother to put down the gun were images of Mr. Smith.
From the Bell’s den, Kai had watched Mrs. Bell and Mr. Smith talking and sipping coffee in their kitchen. I got that the two knew each other well. Mr. Smith had on that ugly yellow tie—complete with a fresh ketchup stain on it—which meant Kai’s memory was from the day I took the skull to Ms. Savage.
I stopped directly in front of Kai and pivoted to face Mrs. Bell and her gun.
Her mouth twisted in a hateful sneer, one that could scare the heck out of a gunman dressed in black.
“You think I’d shoot my own son?” With every word, the venom in her voice got thicker and deeper like she were possessed by a demon.
I tried to go into her mind but couldn’t, thanks to the green beads on her necklace.
“Where’s my magic skull, Wray?”
“What do you want with it?” I held back what else I wanted to say—that the skull wasn’t hers.
“I saw the plants and fish.” Mrs. Bell smiled.
Amaya grimaced and whimpered at the same time. I felt her remorse layer on top of disappointment and abject fear of her own mom.
“I know what it can do. Unlike your kind, I’ll make sure that it, along with this”—Mrs. Bell turned the smooth bone in her hand—“are put to good use.”
Her attention, and the aim of the gun, shifted up over my shoulder. Not at Kai, but higher, to MawMaw.
“No, Mom, no.” Kai said, tears in his voice. Over my shoulder, I saw him raise his arm to shield MawMaw as much as possible.
“Tell me where it is.” Mrs. Bell snarled.
Her trigger finger tightened. It was slight, but I noticed. She wouldn’t hesitate a second to shoot MawMaw either. She hated us that much.
“I’m not as weak as my men were.” Mrs. Bell voiced what I assumed.
“You sent the gunmen?” Kanaan’s jaw dropped.
“Of course I did. Those bones can save lives!”
The expression on Kanaan’s face went into warrior mode, flared nostrils and all. His muscles swelled and flexed, ready to pounce.
Mrs. Bell backed up a step and opened her palm to display the bone. “The Skys had this one all along, Kanaan! My son was dying, and they had a cure!” She shook her head. “They have a lot of secrets…secrets you wouldn’t believe. Wray isn’t what you think she is.”
When Mrs. Bell looked back at me, she pursed her lips like she was trying to hold back a sneer and failed. “Where is it?” Her voice rose to a shrill pitch again. Her lip curled in loathing.
Instead of shrinking back from Mrs. Bell. I pulled back my shoulders and held my chin high.
She was responsible for killing my parents. The heat that built up in my eyes was an inferno compared to the other times. Judging from the way hers widened, they must have glowed brightly. I didn’t care. She was not going to hurt anyone else. I would make sure of it.
Despite my anger being at its highest level ever, when I spoke, my voice was amazingly calm.
“Amaya. Get it for your mom.”
Amaya’s eyes got big.
“You have it?” Mrs. Bell swung the gun onto her daughter, red-hot rage twisted her mouth.
Amaya! Get it for her!
Crying, Amaya reached for the globe. Hands shaking like crazy, she put it on the side of the overturned coffee trunk and, after a bit of struggle because of the dents, opened it.
A flash of shock ran across Mrs. Bell’s face. She just stared at it for a few seconds. Then, a slow smile spread across her face.
That strange possessiveness, the urge to protect the skull bubbled up inside me. It overrode my anger, overwhelmed everything else—the need to protect myself, Kai, even MawMaw.
That airplane noise rose quick and my ears popped. When Mrs. Bell blinked, her lids moved slower. A time freeze was coming. Oh, I wished for it to hurry. I focused on it and drew it forward. That seemed to work.
Slowly, Mrs. Bell slipped MawMaw’s bone in her pants pocket and slowly took a step toward the gleaming skull.
The skull’s terrified panic became my own. I tried, truly tried, to bide my time and patiently wait for the right moment, but when the evil woman touched it, the scream was deafening.
Was it mine?
The skull’s?
I’m still not sure.
All I know is that all good sense left me, and I lunged for Mrs. Bell.
Her eyes widened in shock. She spun in slow motion away from me. That I could move at regular speed was to my advantage. With both of my hands on the barrel of the gun, I pushed the pistol so that it pointed to the ceiling.
Mrs. Bell twisted her body in the other direction. I didn’t let go of the gun, though. Claws out, she raked her nails across my jaw. Oh, it hurt.
“Stop it, Mommy! Stop it!” Kai’s voice drew out, getting deeper as time slowed even more. He yanked on the hem of her blouse.
Amaya’s screams, too, were deep, like a voice recording played back at super slow speed.
A spark of light flashed from the gun. I averted my eyes from the long bright light. The boom was loud and drawn out. It ricocheted painfully in my eardrums. In slow motion, the bullet pierced the ceiling. Drywall dust rained down on us. But I still didn’t let go of the gun. I yanked hard on it to get it away from her. There was another spark of light. Another deafening boom.
I jerked my fingers off the hot barrel. The first shot was warm, but tolerable. That second one made the barrel scorching. When I suddenly let go, Mrs. Bell lost her balanced and pitched sideways in extreme slow motion.
“Mooommmmmmmyyyyyyyyyy!” Still holding on to her shirt, Kai began to fall too.
Their movements slowed to a crawl. I kicked a throw pillow underneath Kai to cushion his fall. I didn’t need to hurry, though. He and his mom both froze in place halfway to the floor.
Complete silence settled over the world. Outside, the birds were frozen in mid-flight
. Same with the clouds. The leaves on the trees were still. Once again the entire world was still. Except me. Just like always.
I struggled to catch my breath when a flash of movement beyond Mrs. Bell startled me. It was Toci. She wasn’t frozen either.
Because she’s like me.
And I’m like her.
She moved gracefully into the garage. “Are you okay?” she murmured softly.
My scratched-up jaw stung and my racing heartbeat thudded in my ears, but I nodded.
The gun had tipped completely out of Mrs. Bell’s hand. I took it by the handle and looked for the safety. While I turned the gun over, a drop of blood splattered onto it. It was my blood from the gashes Mrs. Bell etched into my jaw. I touched the wound with my left ring finger.
To my right, MawMaw’s face was still badly bruised—the work of a gunmen sent by Mrs. Bell. The same gunmen who killed my parents. It was her fault. She took my parents away from me.
I took my index finger off of the safety and, instead, used both hands to raise the pistol. The cruel woman destroyed my family. I was going to destroy her.
Justice.
Right then, right there.
I aimed the barrel at Mrs. Bell’s chest—where her heart would be if she had one—and rested my finger on the trigger.
Beyond Mrs. Bell, Toci gasped, her eyes wide and mouth in an oval. But her reaction wasn’t what changed my mind. It was Kai.
I took a few steps to my left so I could look directly into the eyes of my best friend’s mom when I pulled the trigger. But there was Kai with that gut-wrenching look of pure terror on his face. It was so out of place on him, so wrong, so heartbreaking.
My attention went back to Mrs. Bell. Like it or not, she was his mother. I glanced at Amaya’s tearstained face, her freaked-out aura still surrounding her. I couldn’t take away their mom. I knew how that felt, knew how they’d fall apart. I couldn’t do that to them.
What I wanted—what I really, really wanted—was my own mother back. My eyes filled with moisture, the kind that burns like acid and makes everything blurry. I took my finger off the trigger and lowered the gun.
“I want my mom,” I whispered the truth past that stupid choking lump in my throat. “And my dad.”
There. I said it out loud. A murmur, but I said it. MawMaw would have been proud, if she could’ve heard me. I blinked and a fat teardrop ran down my cheek. It stung when the salty tear hit the fresh scratches, which just made me blink again, forcing more salty moisture into the wound. It was so unfair.
The universe is unfair. Toci’s thought was gentle but I heard her own bitterness in it.
A familiar soothing vibe floated through the garage.
Toci, judging from her reaction, felt it too. She scanned the room searching for the energy.
I knew where it was coming from. The skull. It put out the same vibe the night I shoved it into my closet.
I could tell the moment Toci spotted it on the floor. She sighed in relief. I could also tell that it wasn’t anything special to her. To Toci, the skull was just some random dead Nacreous.
But the skull itself? It was anything but dead. That vibe it put out had a tremendous pull that called me to it. Not in a demanding way, but in an encouraging sort of way. Just like that overwhelming desire to turn left with Ella on the trail the day I found it. I was so sure that morning that I was ready to go that way, to pass by the burial ridge. And I was. I didn’t know it then, but I was.
Another drop of blood fell from my cheek. It hit dead center in my palm. The blood oozed into the lines of the triangle, highlighting it in bright red. I shook my head to make myself focus. There wasn’t time for deep analysis right then.
Chapter 31
With the back of my bloody hand, I wiped my eyes. At the same time, with my other hand, I turned the pistol grip to Toci. She balked, holding her hands up and refusing to touch it.
I tilted my head toward Mrs. Bell. “So, you want to be unarmed when the crazy lady is mobile again?”
Toci sighed and her shoulders slumped.
“They’ll unfreeze any second now.” I extended my arm putting the gun within inches of her hand.
Reluctant as she was, Toci finally took it. “Keep them paused while we gather the nacreous bones,” she said.
Like I had any control over the time freezes back then. She eyed the skull. “I’ll get it.” I was still feeling protective of it.
When I lunged at Mrs. Bell, she had knocked the globe sideways. The skull rolled out of the container to the far side of the garage—almost like it was trying to get away from her.
Toci turned her attention to Mrs. Bell. “That leaves the bone for me.” With a grimace, Toci reached for the frozen woman’s pocket.
In the twelve steps it took to walk over to the abalone skull, reality set in. There weren’t any socks handy and my sleeves were too short to use. I would have to get the skull with my bare hands, and I was glad. I wanted to know what it was, who it was. And for that to happen, I needed to touch it.
I pulled the damaged globe closer to the skull. Then, I took a deep breath, but didn’t hesitate. I just reached down and grabbed it. And the instant my fingertips grazed the pearly surface, the images began. Boy, did they hurt.
The first brain-pounding scene was of a gorgeous blue sky. Much like the sky I saw in the Garden the mornings that I rode—only the one in the vision was bluer and brighter. The person whose eyes I was seeing through scanned a distant red-tinted mountain range before looking down to a pebbly garden path that they were walking along.
While the scene filled my vision, I blindly shifted the skull to cradle it in one arm and used my other hand to feel around the floor in the direction where I’d placed the globe.
The person on the garden path wore a long gauzy white gown. It kicked out with a flash on each step taken. The brightness of the fluttering fabric hurt my head even more.
My fingertips rapped onto the spinning bottom of the globe and I almost cried for joy. Once I felt where the concave bottom was, I plopped the skull in as fast as I could. The relief from the images was instant.
Once the visions were gone, so was the pain, and I could see what I was doing with the globe. The perfect hiding place was horribly banged up, but I forced the two pieces back together. When I picked the globe up, though, the bottom half of it fell off. When that half hit the floor with a clunk, it broke into three wedge-like pieces. The skull was dumped back onto the old braided rug.
“Hurry. Get the head out of sight,” Toci urged me. She held the gun on Mrs. Bell with two hands, TV-cop style. In the pocket of her MawMaw-knitted sweater was a bump in the shape of the bone.
“I’m trying.” I looked around for something to put the “head” in. My attention zeroed in on the kitchenette just beyond Toci. I could put the skull into a paper grocery sack, hide it deep under the sink, and come back for it later.
The path to the kitchenette wasn’t entirely clear. I kicked a few board games and sofa cushions out of the way. Then, I positioned myself so I had a straight shot to the counter.
Could I make it that far before the pain from the visions brought me to my knees?
I couldn’t think of another option and didn’t have time to debate it more. So, ready or not, I scooped up the skull again. Of course, the visions restarted instantly, picking up right where they had left off.
As I hurried across the garage, the person in the white gown did the same on the garden path. They rounded a corner to a cute stone house. Lace curtains fluttered in a window on the second floor. Watching their feet, the person held their stomach—a very pregnant stomach, as they carefully took two stone steps up onto a side terrace of the stone house.
It was a woman. The skull used to be a young woman who once had a baby. The terrace was ringed with lush potted plants. And lounging on that terrace was none other than Toci. While the mommy-to-be walked to a settee arranged with needlepointed cushions, I stumbled a little coming off the ratty braided rug towar
d the kitchenette.
The woman sat down on the pretty settee and reached into a big a fancy basket and pulled something out. Just as my hips bumped into the counter in the kitchenette, I recognized the object in the woman’s hands. It was the crocheted center of my lacy dreamcatcher. Reaching back into the basket, the woman pulled out a long ribbon of thin lace. The pattern was identical to some of the lace strips on my dreamcatcher.
Instead of letting go when I rested the skull on the kitchenette counter, I placed both hands firmly around it and pressed the skin of my forearms against it too. The extra contact with the skull sent what felt like lightning bolts through my head. I grimaced, squeezing my eyes together. The high voltage was so painful, so unnervingly loud. Still, I hung on, totally focused on the scene I saw—elegant fingers of a pregnant lady looping and knotting strips of familiar lace onto the bottom of what I was sure was my dreamcatcher. The lady looked up…to a smiling Toci bringing a tea tray outside.
Wray!
Toci’s voice cut through the vision in my head. I tried to push her away and did for a few seconds. I wanted to keep watching the images. The skull, though, warmed under my hands and joined Toci in urging me to let go.
I did. The painful light went away, but the noise didn’t. Holding my throbbing temples, I turned to look at Toci. She was there in the vision. She knew who this skull was, and if I was totally honest with myself, so did I. The question on my lips was, nevertheless, thwarted by my reluctant vocal cords. I swallowed and in a near whisper got it out.
“Is my biological mother still alive?”
Toci’s face fell—first into shock at what I knew was an ill-timed question followed quickly by an aura of profound sadness. It was as if my question knocked the wind out of her. Slowly she shook her head. With a blink, her attention went to the skull for a second or two before coming back to me.
“It couldn’t be,” Toci said.
“I think it is.” My voice broke…and so did the time freeze.
Too late, I realized that the blaring sound in my head wasn’t from the visions, but the customary warning signal that the world was about to come back to life. It did with a roar.