by Logan Keys
The dream is gone.
I’ve wished it all away from my head successfully.
As soon as it’s dark, I leave the room to walk in the shadows, hoping to hide from Shade, but I sense him all too soon for my liking. I’m not sure if he’s haunting me or if I’m haunting him.
Maybe we haunt one another.
I turn to face him. “Stop following me.”
“Stop following me into my dreams.”
“Stop following me into my thoughts.”
Shade charges forward, unaware of his spatial issues, and crowds me until I’m forced to either let him invade my area, or back away. He seems ready to say something but then grabs me.
He kisses me. His shadow face is light as a feather, and firm and cold and otherworldly at the same time. It’s mind numbing. And I like it way too much so I pull away.
“You’re thinking of him again, aren’t you?”
“Him who?” I ask, panic gripping my throat.
“Your friend, Dallas. Your dream is pretty much a shrine to him. I can tell you have a hard time letting him go, but it’s never too late for a new dream. One that doesn’t include aprons. How do you know you even love him like you think you do? We aren’t who we once were.”
When I freeze over, eyes glazed, unfocused, seeing the past, unwilling to let it go, no matter what’s right in front of me, he sighs.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say, spilling out the lie, rewarded with its bittersweet aftertaste.
“Look,” Shade says, the back of his fingers grazing my cheek. “I know you want to live in the shadows, you thrive there. Who can understand that better than I?”
I step away. “It’s easier there. I’m not sure I can love anymore. In my heart, there’s a place that loves people who can’t return it, who are gone, because it’s like that’s all I can do. Love memories.”
“Someday, you’ll find the strength to love through the hatred.”
“Hate? Who said anything about hate?” My lip quivers and in that moment, I do hate. Him.
He’s so fast I don’t see him move, or even notice anything has changed, but he’s cradling my face once again.
“Oh, Dallas,” he says. “There are no lies between us. Aren’t we the same? We have shared our dreams, our yearnings, our past, what more can be shared? Two of the dark hearts, and hatred is our fuel for life. Our plight is similar. I know you have more in your past to hate than to love, and I know you feel like you can’t let go of any of it… but I wish that you would.”
I push him away. “Don’t come into my dreams anymore.”
“Don’t come into your dreams or your heart?”
“Either.” Trying to soften the blow, I add, “I’m not worth all of this, anyway.”
He smiles. “You don’t know how lovely you are to me. And it only makes you lovelier. I’ve been looking for you my entire life. With or without the shadows, the fall of this place, our new nature, I know that I would have found you.”
“And I’ve been looking for someone else.” I blink through the tears. “But that’s all pointless now.”
Shade laughs, self-deprecatingly. “Is it this? Is it my face?”
I start laughing. I can’t help it. I bend over, hands on my knees, breathing deeply, then letting it out in guffaws. I almost fall over with the release of emotion. I laugh and laugh and then I start crying. I let myself slump down to my knees and Shade bends over me. “What?”
I pound the dirt with my hands and I whip my head back and forth in negation. I cry for me. I cry for Shade. I cry for Joelle. I cry for Joseph. His son. Even his stupid wife. I cry for Tommy. I let myself feel it once again. But most of all, I cry because of the men in my life who robbed me of my future. A love I could feel, a sensitivity I must have lost. A hardness they beat into me with each abuse.
“How can the span of a life hurt so much when I’m barely eighteen?”
“Oh honey,” Shade says, coming to his knees as well. “Is that all? You’re just a girl. The dark gift has made you seem older. I’m so sorry to push you. It’s too soon.” Shade tilts my chin back up to look up into what would be his eyes. “Nobody said it would be easy. Right? They just pushed us out into existence and they thought our future would be bright but not without hardships. No one could know what kind of darkness we’d wind up a part of. Or what we’d have to do to start over.” He points to the sky. “But, look,” he says.
It used to be starless. Now they are twinkling bright. The smoke is moving away day by day.
“It’s not your face, Shade,” I say. “I never even thought about thinking you weren’t good-looking enough for me. I’m the ugly one here. I mean, in my eyes. I’ve been too ugly for everything in my life.”
“Such a shame,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Perhaps too beautiful for everything in your life. And not just your face. Inside.”
I put my hands onto his face and touch the darkness. It’s as ethereal as always. Firm, but cold and made of… other.
“Kiss me again,” I say. “I won’t push you away. You haven’t rushed me at all. I’m not… new at this. Not even, well, that’s not the issue. I want to prove to you that it’s not how you look, Shade. I know how you look. Every inch. You are perfect. Okay?”
“No,” he says and pulls away. “I believe you, you don’t have to---”
I tug him back to me. And I kiss him anyway.
This time, I relish in the man that he is. I let my mind’s eye wander back to the shower, but while that was hot and human, Shade is cold and unyielding.
Neither dampens my interest.
Shade is, as himself, thrilling to me even now as a shadow. He tastes like the night. It’s like lapping up black patches between the stars.
And when Shade does the chivalrous thing and lifts me up in his arms, pausing to ask, I nod my head. I clutch his neck and let him carry me to his place on the other side of the wall.
His rooms.
Where of course he doesn’t turn on the lights. We are part of the darkness. It wraps us both in its arms.
It offers us healing.
And if Shade is the night… oh how I let the night love me. I let the night’s embrace fill me with light.
Chapter Thirty
Dallas
“I think she’s falling in love with me.”
Joelle glances at Shade who is standing beside me. We are here to meet with her about Bradford.
I try not to smile, or kick him, but instead… we find out through experimentation… vampires do indeed blush.
“Who? Dallas?” Joelle asks. She shrugs. “She falls in love with everyone.”
And she goes back to reading whatever she’d been looking at.
I think it’s her own diary.
I shoot a look under my lashes at Shade and put my hands in my pockets.
She’s not wrong.
Joelle sighs and closes her book. “Have you been in Bradford’s dreams yet?”
“You know I haven’t.”
She doesn’t ask why, she sees the distraction in my head. Maybe that’s why Joelle asks, to make me see that I’m failing this very important thing we need to do. Every time I go to another dream it’s Shade’s. She’s seen it
Joelle stands and watches me momentarily, a dark eyebrow raised.
“What’s this?” Shade asks. “What’s going on?”
“I… have been properly chastised,” I say with a sigh. “Come on, Shade. Let’s go meet your leader.”
His dark head turns to Joelle and back again. He doesn’t understand the communication but figures out we’d spoken and agreed.
What he doesn’t know is that Joelle sent me information, leagues of it. It’s time we make our move, before her mother does something stupid. The fate of the world rests in the hands of a thirteen-year-old vampire.
Great.
“You ready for this?” Shade asks, as we make our way.
>
I nod and stretch my neck side to side. “If someone’s gonna get hurt, it’s not going to be me.”
Those white teeth again. “I like the confidence.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Crystal
“Good morning,” I say to myself in the mirrors that line the wall of the small gym. It’s a set up for faculty on the island. “How does that rope feel around your neck, today?”
No one’s here yet. It’s only four a.m. I snuck into this side of the compound to stretch my legs.
“Perfect,” I say pulling at the skin underneath my eyes. In truth, I look like absolute hell. I could do with a shower, but instead I’m in a sweater, zipped up, ready to drip until I drop.
I’ll shower when I’m dead.
The type of treadmill they have is where you go as fast as you want. The tread stays with your feet.
I hop on and press the button. “Would you like music?” the monitor offers.
“Sure.”
I start right into a jog. The tread is easy to push. I’m not even feeling any resistance, it just keeps up with me.
I start to run.
The music is good, moody, but fast in beat. Something I don’t recognize. Every once in a while, the Authority pops on to give us a commercial. “Life. Liberty. Authority.” Each word lands on my shoulders like I’m weight lifting instead of running.
I push myself after the first mile.
Mile two blurs by.
The music is bringing unwanted memories of me in my youth. And the streets. Running through them as shadows chased me faster and faster while I pretended there were monsters in them---until I was old enough to have the Authority on my heels. The actual monsters.
So many firsts.
My first ski mask.
My first weapon.
The first man I shot. Not a man. A thing. An Authority guard; a puppet.
A smart ass little girl turned hoodlum. Way too young to be holding cold metal, finger on the trigger.
I run faster. Push for more. The tread is making a whir at this speed.
The machine is reading my heart rate every so often, I notice. She’s talking here and there, feeding me information.
“Your speed is ten miles per hour.”
“Your heart rate is one hundred beats per minute.”
“Your speed is fifteen miles per hour.”
“Your speed is twenty miles per hour.”
“Your speed is… error… error.”
“Your heart rate is sixty beats per minute.”
Damn.
I push harder, and the machine strains. The tread is flying underneath my feet.
I wish I was back there. Running from the Authority again. Out of breath until my chest felt it would explode. Pushing past what thought I was capable of.
I miss struggling with a body that seemed… real. Those nights I’d lay in bed after pretending I was asleep during my parent’s midnight check, heart jackhammering so hard it shook the bed a little under my chest.
Hiding guns.
Hiding spray paint.
Hiding myself.
Being another person. Ready to take on the world.
I want to be tired again.
I run even faster
“Your speed is error.”
“Your heart-rate is sixty beats per minute.”
I push for more, cursing the machine.
I’m alive! I scream inside. I’m alive!
“I’m alive,” I whisper, as my legs heat up my track suit.
“Your speed is error.”
“Your heart-rate is sixty beats per minute.”
I punch the console and the thing cracks into pieces. I punch it again without stopping and the console breaks off completely.
I’m going so fast the tread is heating up now. I smell smoke. I leap off just before it catches fire. And I lift it up and throw the whole thing across the room.
“I’m alive!” I scream.
I stand there breathing normal. Wanting to be panting. Craving the feeling of being soaked in sweat. But I’m not. It’s as if I never ran at all.
I go over the punching bag but I don’t feel it. I need something that punches back.
I’m just trying to deal with the pressure. The tremendous pressure of being the only one left to do this thing. Jeremy can’t help me anymore. I can’t even bounce ideas off him for fear that I’ll set him off.
I want help to cope with the damn pressure!
I rip my hoody back, and I put my head against the cold window. It’s pouring outside. Electrical storms are flaring up and lightning dances across a churning ocean. It’s the sky under pressure.
Like me.
In the mirror, I can’t meet my own eyes. Too afraid to see something else in the reflection.
“Crystal.” The doctor stands at the door.
He looks at the busted machine and I close my eyes and sag against the wall. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll have someone clean it up.”
I push off the wall. “I can do it.”
“No. You have someone waiting.”
“Someone?”
He nods.
I pull off my sweater. “Okay.”
He leads me to the outside of the compound. We go through the place where you’d be zapped had you one of their bracelets around your arm.
Through the rain blowing sideways, I see them all there. “What are you doing here?”
Goodman and the Skulls, most all of them by the look of it, have arrived on the tram. Goodman rises from a crouch. “We’re waiting for you.”
I can’t help it. His earnest expression makes me smile. The weight shifts off my body and lands in a heap.
What was I thinking?
I’m not alone.
We’re all getting soaked by the rain, but it’s refreshing. I needed a shower anyway.
“We want you to come home,” Goodman says, and the rest nod and shout their agreement.
My heart swells. Yea. I’m alive. If I can feel this, then I’m real. And I’d swear my heartbeat picks up, too. “All right,” I say. “I’m coming home.”
The resounding shout of excitement has me looking away embarrassed. Goodman plays it up. “Your kingdom awaits, Crystal. Your people need you.”
I can’t help it. I tear up. Good thing the rain is landing on top of the moisture, like nature’s camouflage.
“Man,” I say. “Seeing all you guys. I needed this.”
Goodman grins and looks quite pleased with himself. “We got a prize for you, too.”
“You do?”
“We hacked into a link. The radio station that everyone seems to be listening to lately, there’s only the one, anyway, we got in. We thought Jeremy would want to say something.”
He hands me a walkie talkie. “Really?” I take it from him and push the side button. “Who’s there? Craig, is that you?”
“I’ll be damned,” answers a familiar voice. “So good to hear your voice.”
The doctor comes forward, and he shakes his head when I raise a brow.
He’s saying Jeremy is away again. The fog.
My excitement falls. I look up at the sky. What else can go wrong?
“Craig,” I say into the walkie. “When can you patch me through?”
“Just say the word, girl.”
The team looks surprised.
Goodman says, “Should you and I take it inside?”
I shake my head and tell Craig I’m ready.
He count’s down, “Three. Two. One. And go.”
I press down and lift the walkie to my lips.
But I freeze.
I don’t know what to say. Goodman nods at me in encouragement. Jeremy’s always done this part. It had looked easy.
I take my finger from the button, mutter to myself. Goodman frowns. With a deep breath, I try again. “I…. uh…. I was going to use this time to say something to the people of Anthem. Er… this is Crystal. Your local rebellion leader.”
G
oodman smiles and gives me a thumb up.
I go on. “Instead, I think I’d rather talk to you, Karma Cromwell. From one leader to another. Evil regime leader of Anthem that is.” I pull my hood up and play with the string. “I’m not alive anymore.”
The Skulls stare at me.
“I just ran forty miles per hour---maybe fifty. I’m barely alive, if you can call it that. After the purge who knows what I’m capable of.”
The Skulls laugh and I laugh with them
“I actually hated it before, Karma, thought maybe it made me less. But now I realize that you created the monster who’s just monster enough. Before, I was merely your foe, but now I am your nemesis.”
Nervous laughter from the team this time. “See the Skulls who’ve been purged are more powerful for your abuse.” Thunder booms, and lightning strikes, as if on cue. I laugh softly to myself. “You hear that?” I ask quietly. “It’s the sound of the storm that’s coming for you. And I swear it, Cromwell. By the end of this. I’ll sit at your table at your seat. And you will serve me and mine from your knees.”
I stand tall, meeting the gaze of my men and women. Each of them nods agreement.
It’s a pact.
A promise.
Walkie pressed to my lips I scream as loud as I can. “Then you will serve in hell!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Crystal
The doctor holds the door open to Jeremy’s cell. First thing I notice are foggy purple eyes staring at nothing, seeing nothing. He has a sleeping sickness. He sleeps while he is awake. Longer and longer it seems.
The doctor leaves us alone. I swallow and approach him. Though, it’s not really him anymore.
Not like this.
This is almost harder than my haphazard speech.
“Jeremy,” I say. “I dunno if you can hear me, but I’m going away. Just for a while. I’ll try to be back before… you know… you are back… Okay?”
I turn away, but then pause. Tears try to press through once again. I’m strung out.
Moving toward him in one big step, I’m at his side, taking his hand, and pulling his face toward mine. “Listen, Jeremy. I just need you to be yourself. And soon. I feel like since Mimi you’ve been gone more than usual so maybe this is tied to your heart or whatever. But listen. Stay. Ok. Don’t check out. Not yet. Don’t you give up on me.”