The Bargaining Path

by T. Rudacille

  Part III: “This is the way the world ends.”

  Brynna

  I did not leave until Violet told me that the room was secure, and even then, I waited to hear if either she or Penny began to succumb to the airborne trebestia venom. When I did not hear any screams of terror, shrieks of violent rage, or hysterical tears after several minutes, I led James and Savannah out into the hospital’s eerily abandoned corridor.

  “Alright. So, this is the plan: We need the guns from the jail, so we are heading there first.”

  “But the jail is right in the middle of town!” James protested in a voice nearly shrill with worry. Savannah and I whipped around, and he cleared his throat, holding his fist to his mouth hard. “Sorry. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Are you?” I asked, walking towards him slowly. His eyes were squeezing themselves as tightly shut as the muscles that held them would allow. My own eyes narrowed as my arms crossed over my chest. “It is taking over you, James.”

  “It’s not!” He bellowed at me, and the shout was loud enough to make Savannah, who had not been expecting it, startle. “Don’t you even start looking at me like that. Like I’m some pathetic moron who doesn’t know shit! I swear to God, that goddamn look! That condescending fucking look! Stop it!”

  “You don’t like this look?” I asked him, and I gently took his arm, “I am very sorry, baby. Come on. Let’s go in here for a second. Savannah.”

  “No, I love that look. It’s my favorite look.” He whined at me, “Don’t ever stop using that look.”

  Savannah opened the door I was leading James towards, and he allowed me to lead him inside. After I sat him down on the cot in the center of the room, and Savannah began to light the oil lamps, he reached out and grasped my face with both hands.

  “You can’t do it. Not on your own. Don’t leave me here, baby. I can fight through this, I swear. You can’t go out there alone.”

  “Luckily I will not be alone. I will be with Savannah, a woman you have been encouraging me to trust. Now, I am finally doing what you asked. This is a first, and you should take a moment to enjoy this momentous occasion before your trebestia venom-induced hysteria really begins to rattle your mind.” I pulled one of the thick cuffs from under the bed and tightened it around one of his wrists.

  “Brynna… she’s not going to be able to help you. They’re coming. Don’t you see that? Haven’t you seen it? They’re coming. Him coming here… it was all part of the plan. This… this trebestia thing… it’s part of it. They need to shake us up. Divide us and weaken us. And now they can come right in. And they’ll kill you, Brynna. You know they will. Paul won’t protect you. It’s not just Adam they’re after. Not anymore.”

  “James, how do you…”

  I finished locking his other wrist, and Savannah had already done his ankles.

  “I almost lost you, sweetheart.” His voice was crackling; despair would be the first long-lasting fit of what would be an hours-long sickness. “Just now. I did lose you. You died right in my arms. And this time I won’t be there if it happens.”

  “Hey…” I whispered softly, soothingly, “That was just a completely unexpected and uncommon fluke in the way things have always been. When have the lethal creatures that roam this land, human or otherwise, ever been able to get my heart to stop beating before tonight? And look, I am just fine. I will be coming back, James.” I grasped his hand in both of mine, and he squeezed them both as a tear fell from the corner of his eye. Respectfully, Savannah turned away.

  “I just want for you to be okay. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  I leaned down and kissed him softly, my hands on his face, my thumbs gently stroking his stubble.

  “I know. We are going to be alright, sweetheart. We have survived so much. This is just one more fight. I will be back before you know it.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded and kissed me, and I wiped his next tear away, “Go on, you almost suicidally reckless, definitely badass, gloriously attractive defender of the human race.”

  “The Empowered race now. You forget—we’re not humans anymore.”

  “Yeah.” His body tensed, and when his brown eyes met mine, I saw first a grimace of pain and then a metamorphosis; all the love for me and all the fear for my life disappeared as that deep earthly brown was replaced by red.

  “Don’t tell me what to do! Goddamn it, if you knew… if you knew who I was… If you knew where I come from, and what I’m capable of! I killed him! Do you hear me!? Are you listening, bitch?! I killed him because he was weak!” He started to laugh maniacally, his body bending at the waist and his chained hands still managing to slap his thigh as the laughter grew even more intense. “She left, and he was a pathetic, useless, empty dog that needed to be…” His fingers formed a gun, and his thumb clicked once, then again, and again. After each click of his thumb he muttered, “Bang. Bang. Bang.” Then he was laughing again.

  “James, what are you…”

  “And you! You think I want to save you? You think I want to take you with me?!”

  “Come on.” Savannah was behind me, grasping my shoulder and pulling gently backwards. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  “You’re nothing! I would sooner take that woman, whatever-the-fuck-her-name-is, before I would take you!”

  “Brynna, it’s not him. You know it’s not.” Savannah whispered urgently. “Come on. We have to figure out a way to stop this, and we’re not going to be able to do that unless we leave him. Come on.”

  Bang. Bang. Bang. He was weak. You think I want to save you?

  All of James’s words were tossed powerfully through my mind like waves that were as large and devastating as the apocalyptic tsunami I had seen in my dream. All of my thoughts were flooded and drowned by the weight and power of all he had said. The trebestia venom besieged the brain, erasing the unfortunate victim’s ability to distinguish reality from painful memories of the past and nightmarish visions of the future, but it could not create the former. James had used past tense verbs to describe what he had done. “She left, and he was a pathetic, useless, empty dog…” It was obvious that what he was describing had happened, and if that were true, then he had omitted many disturbing details of his life after saying that he had told me all there was to know about him. Naively, I had believed that he had shared with me all his darkness.

  “Oh, you are so in for it, as they say, when you come out of this, James Maxwell.” I whispered, and my trembling hand came up to stroke his stubble when he began to cry.

  “All I ever wanted was to do right by you… I waited so long for you…” When his eyes met mine, I saw that he was lucid; he had returned to me, however briefly. “That’s the man I am without you. Without Penny. Without Violet, and Quinn, and Alice. Without our family. You know that. You knew that all along. That I was not who I said. Didn’t you know that, Brynn?”

  “James, I knew that you had your issues, but…”

  “I paid a price for what I did. I paid for it. I did, Brynna. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. If I had known that you were for sure… that you were real… I would have been better. I would have.” Tears were pouring from his eyes, and I was wiping them away, not only hearing his thoughts, which were only regrets and apologies, but feeling a deep, disfiguring pain that scarred him through all the tissue and bone in his body to his soul. He had kept it hidden from me, that pain. That fear of himself. That loathing.

  “I’m so sorry. Please don’t leave. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Brynna… Brynna…”

  I sat up so quickly that he flinched, and behind me, Savannah, who was watching with concern and only mild impatience, God or Gods bless her, jumped, too. My lips were on his before he could say another word.

  “You are talking like an utter lunatic, though I know that most of what you have said is true, and all that you have alluded to is a secret that you have kept from me. But none of that matters right now. Okay? None of it. I have to go, but I will be ba
ck soon.”

  He nodded, and I wiped his tears away, watching him tense up again as the next painful emotion took hold of him.

  “I love you.” I kissed him, “I love you.” I kissed him again, “I love you. And I will be back soon.”

  His eyes were distant when I looked back at them, and he was fighting off moans of discomfort.

  “Alright. Let us get this over with as quickly as possible and with as little bodily harm endured as can be managed.” I told Savannah, though my words came out more slowly than usual and with significantly less of my usual adrenaline-fueled, danger-loving pep.

  “Are you okay?” She asked, as I closed the door to James’s room just as he began to shout in terror. I turned the key to lock him securely inside, marveling for a moment at the irony of it; my father had locked my mother in her room when her fits became too uncontrollable for him to handle and too embarrassing to stomach. The same way that James was screaming then, my mother would scream behind that barred bedroom door. It was ironic because my father and I, so hateful of one another’s differences and the darkness we each perceived in one another, were sharing an identical moment of spousal preservation. I almost laughed.

  “I am fine, Savannah. If I were not, you would be the last to know.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny.”

  “Was I being funny?” I asked as we walked briskly up the hallway, away from the sounds of James’s wails.

  We reached the hallway just as the door came flying inwards off the hinges. Our timing could not have been more perfect; it is far easier to defeat an opponent when the surprise of his arrival has come and gone quickly. Plus, seeing the exact identity of one’s attacker, or at the very least, assessing them for both physical strengths and weaknesses, plays a crucial role in ending a fight victoriously.

  This attacker was the worst imaginable. Adam, covered from head to toe in the blood of his unfortunate victims, grasped both sides of the door frame and pulled himself inside, snorting heavily through his nose and glaring fierily into my eyes. Once he was inside the infirmary, I realized that though the space was small, and he was much larger than me, and therefore capable of wielding great power with his fists, I was a quicker and more precise fighter. Besides all of that, he was mad with the spell that had come over our humble village; that spell weakened his fighting prowess even more severely. However, his intoxication on the trebestia venom did not stop him from trying to finish what he had started in the village square. Swinging his huge, muscular arms wildly in my direction, he bellowed deafeningly in frustration after I had dodged the umpteenth hit he had tried to land. In my deflection and dodging of his blows, I still managed to swipe my arm back to hold Savannah against the wall when she went to rush to my aid.

  “You will pay for what you have done! Your betrayal will not go unpunished, you traitorous whore!”

  “Your gullibility will not go unridiculed, you hot-headed man-child!”

  Savannah actually laughed. My sarcastic retort enraged him even further, a feat that I did not think was possible, but before he could begin randomly swinging his fists again, I kicked my foot up high, nailing him right in the chest and sending him stumbling backwards several steps through the doorway into the infirmary’s hallway. Before he could recover his balance, I ran forward, jumped up, grabbed the top of the door-frame, swung myself forward, and kicked him in the chest again, this time with both feet. When that did not knock him down, I quickly swung my legs up to wrap them around his neck, before letting go of the door-frame to swing my body backwards and downwards. My body flipped all the way around, my legs still latched around his neck, and the weight and force of my body spinning brought him forward to crash face-first into the ground. Before he hit the ground, though, I unfurled my legs from around his neck and landed on my feet. Immediately, I was on his back, pinning both his arms behind him, rocking back and forth as he struggled to get back up from beneath me. I could not help but chuckle to myself; it was hilariously similar to riding a mechanical bull.

  “I would be willing to bet all the crops in my pantry that you really thought you would win that fight. Didn’t you, Adam?” I asked, and my arrogance was undeniable.

  He roared in utter rage, and the windowpanes rattled ominously at the sound.

  “Liar!” He bellowed, “You are a black-hearted, treacherous liar! The One God will damn you! You will suffer! I will make you suffer!”

  “Help me get him up.” I told Savannah, who hesitated for a moment, her eyes wide with fear. “Savannah, I am not going to leave him out here so he can break down the doors and find James, Violet, Penny, and your kids. Come on. I have him. He will not break free.”

  “Is that what you think? You think you are stronger than me! How very stupid you are! How foolishly self-assured! You will see that you are wrong! I will let you see that you are wrong, and loathe yourself for your mistake, and then I will rip your black heart from your chest! You will feel your loathing and recognize your stupidity as your brain continues to live! Do you hear me?”

  “Your voice is very loud, Adam. Positively thunderous. Of course I hear you.”

  We hoisted him up, and he fought, lunging forward to bite me. First, I moved my face away, but when his fangs grazed my neck, I remembered briefly a show I had watched on sharks, or more specifically, on defensive mechanisms against sharks. Letting go of him with just one hand, I reached out abruptly and punched him hard in the nose. He stumbled backwards into Savannah, who nearly collapsed under his weight. Blood poured from his nostrils, finding no more white cloth to stain with its harsh color when it dribbled down his neck onto his already thoroughly blood-soaked shirt.

  His nose was broken, and believe it or not, I felt a slight pang of guilt. Despite the fact that he had been holding the gun that shot me (I could not be sure if I had pulled the trigger or he had), I knew, however begrudgingly, that he had not been himself when he had been threatening me with it. Someone had broken the ash-circle, and the rage he already felt towards me was multiplied one hundred-fold. I hurriedly whispered an apology to him as Savannah and I laid him down on one of the cots.

  The harsh blow to his face seemed to be what was needed to click his brain over from anger to grief, because his eyes turned back to the usual green, except that they were now much darker.

  “My sweet Brynna...” Adam whispered, and the sight of tears in his eyes gave me pause. “My beautiful Brynna... How I have wronged you... How I have hurt you... I want to die for it!” Tears began to slide from his eyes as I flipped him onto his back and clapped the iron cuffs, as thick as cowhide, around his wrists. “I deserve a painful death for what I have done. There have been so many things. So many things that I have done, so many evils committed. Such darkness in me. Such terrible darkness. Evil... Pure evil. And yet, I am alive. The one God has not cast me into the darkest pits of realms we do not know, where evil men are twisted and ripped and gorged and impaled on their foul deeds...”

  “Cool it with the poetic monologue, Othello.” After ripping a piece of the sheet beneath him off, I held it to his nose tightly, trying to stop the bleeding. Every few seconds, he choked because the blood was flowing down the back of his throat.

  “Here.” Savannah handed me a cloth soaked in some sweet-smelling liquid.

  “What is it?” I asked her.

  “It coagulates blood. Stops bleeding.” She told me, and when I looked at her quizzically, she explained quickly, “Ellie gets nosebleeds a lot, and Dr. Miletus told me how to make that mixture.”

  I held the cloth to Adam’s nose, and sure enough, the bleeding stopped immediately.

  “I have killed innocents. Shot them. Killed them. All because I suspected you... Because you struck that deal with them... And I am so angry... I cannot believe that you would do such a thing, but you have... I cannot believe that you would keep such a thing from me. But I understand. I know how the thought of her pains you still.”

  “I will not discuss this with you now. Not when I have this
colossal mess to clean up. This insurmountable mess.”

  “It is not insurmountable. Nothing is insurmountable for you. Nothing, Brynna. You know that.”

  “The Old Spirits are coming. I can see it. The ones that they had buried in our camp broke the circle, and we will not know who they are. I do not know how many Old Spirits are coming, but I know that we do not have a lot of time to stop them. If we do not…”

  “…many will die. Won’t they? My people. Your people. They will die.”

  “No. It will be worse than that, Adam.” I whispered, as the Sight took over me; it erased him completely as it sent me plunging into its depths. The Old Spirits would come, but they would not kill us outright. Dissenters would be sent to the Lapsarian to die, surely, but amongst them, I saw not myself or James or Don or even Adam and Janna. I saw a select few people I recognized by face but not by name. We all would abandon our principles, but that is not what was worse than death. What was worse was the arrangement of marriages, the selling off of our men and women to an Old Spirit who could bid the highest. Slavery. Was that not always the prize in ancient wars?

  “I will not give you details now, though you do deserve to be tormented for what you have done, you are right about that. However, now is not the time.”

  “The ash-circle being broken… It is a diversion. You know that it is.”

  “Of course I know. Paul told me that his arrival here was just the very first in a long line of events. It was the catalyst that set the other events into motion. The ash-circle being broken is meant to divide us, weaken us, leave us open to easy siege and later occupation. I know that from reading the minds of the many who are coming our way as we speak. Rich Bachum and my father are amongst them, as is…”

  I stopped, narrowing my eyes to shut out the suddenly very bright light. Whenever I was reading into future events or peeking into someone’s mind, the lights became too bright to bear. I closed my eyes, allowing my mind to become colored by the harsh yellow of their torches against the sleeping trees in the steadily darkening forest. Only ten of them. They were being led by a man who lived three down from me; surely his close proximity to my house suggested that he had been told to keep an eye on me. No matter, all he had seen was my humdrum daily routine and the many hiccups in mine and James’s relationship, nothing more. The other spies they had sent were still amongst us, immune somehow. Rich, my father, and all his minions were immune, but only to the airborne toxin, I knew. The trebestia were focusing all the invisible venom in our direction as they prepared to enter our camp. As soon as the light disappeared, they would converge on us, and then, we would all be dead. That much I knew from Sight, not from guessing.

  “Adam, I have to go. We are running out of daylight.”

  “The Old Spirits will come by day. The trebestia will come by night. You must let me up so I can close the circle. I am King. I must protect my people. They rely on me now to save them.”

  “No, Your Majesty,” I said sarcastically, “I must protect them. They are relying on me to save them. You will stay here. You are not in control of yourself, and besides that, the Old Spirits will be looking for you especially.”

  “And Janna… my Janna…”

  I rolled my eyes skyward, so disgusted by the sound of her name, I am surprised I did not immediately storm out of the room with a contemptuous, indecipherable exclamation of randomly strung vowels upon hearing it spoken out loud.

  “Yes. Helen of Shadow-Forest will be sought after as well.”

  “Fetch her for me. Please, won’t you fetch her for me, Brynna? I do not want harm to befall Janna, despite all the strife between us.”

  “Sorry, Adam, but I have bigger fish to fry, as they say. If she comes thrashing and screaming by me, I will send her to you promptly. In the meantime, there are approximately fifteen thousand nine hundred and twenty seven people whose lives I would rather save. Your eyes are beginning to turn red, and that means the rage is beginning to take over you. So I should go. Try to keep it down. I am blowing the flames out before I go so they think that this place is abandoned, but with you, James, Quinn, Alice, and my friends screaming here, they may still come a-knocking.”

  I closed the door before he could reply and walked into the hallway, already addressing Savannah, telling her that I was finally ready. Except she was gone.

  “Savannah?” I said, looking up and down the hallway. As I walked towards the entrance lobby, I blew the torches out, feeling the darkness that followed their extinguishment encase me tightly, squeezing the air from my lungs. It held the torment of all that would come, that darkness. Wherever it touched, it spread all the misery the trebestia so cruelly bestowed on the world. I had spent far too much time with James and Adam. I had spent too much time protecting everyone I loved, but I was not sorry; before I could run headfirst into danger, I had to know that I had done everything in my power to keep them from harm. Even Adam.

  In the vision of Rich, my father, and their gang of lackies, I had seen a slight figure being dragged by the arm. She was resisting, screaming and cursing them under the black bag they had thrown over her head. The sound was muffled, and when the image of them froze and went into a three-dimensional, panoramic view, I saw that her hands were tied behind her back. She was wearing gloves, despite the lack of a real chill in the evening, but then, she had come from the north. One of the lackeys was dragging her along, shouting at her to keep up.

  This was my mother. Maybe.

  “Savannah?” I called again, feeling my heart race at the thought of seeing my mother alive again. I was not happy about the idea. I would surely not shed tears of joy, nor would I shed tears of sorrowful guilt for what I had done to her. I would simply rescue her from those terrible men, free her, and return her to Violet and Eli, who missed her terribly. I sincerely doubted that I would even hug her.

  The distinctive sound of a large gun firing a surely life-stealing blast startled me out of those thoughts, and I had barreled through the door at the end of the hallway before my mind had even processed that I was running at superhuman speed.

  “Oh, God…” She breathed. Savannah dropped to her knees, the shotgun still held in her violently trembling hands. A man was on the floor, twitching and sputtering, spewing blood from his mouth. His hands were covering his chest, and blood poured over them, over his wrists and down his arms.

  “Clear… a… saw… her…!” He shouted, and his eyes were as red as the blood pouring from him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh, God…” Savannah whispered again, this time a little bit louder. She took a breath that lodged in her throat, and I looked back to see her bottom lip begin to tremble a little more quickly than the rest of her. Her eyes flooded with tears, and I immediately looked away. “Brynna…”

  “What did you say?” I asked the man again, feeling that familiar nudge in my chest, urging me to learn all that could be learned. It was an instinct as vital to my survival as my fighting prowess. It was a part of my psychic powers, I knew. My mind would rage if it did not learn important, life-preserving information.

  “Clear… ahh… saw…ler!” He shouted.

  “He lived on our street. Do you remember him?”

  In the moment, I did not. But then, I did not converse with everyone on my street, and one man, I had been told, was a complete shut-in. A Pangaean widower who hated everyone. I had always told Penny to stay away from his house, certainly, as I figured if he was shut-in, he might possibly be a serial killer. Looking at him as he died, I realized perhaps it was unfair to have judged him that way, but I did not apologize, either out loud or in my mind.

  “Clear-a…”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying!” I shouted at him. “I can’t hear him!” I shouted at Savannah, because while he was sputtering from blood loss and as a result of his steadily increasing proximity to death, she was sputtering because she was breaking down into hysterical sobs.

  “I shot him. Brynna! I shot him!” She
cried, reaching out and grabbing onto me with both hands. I turned back to her when the man stopped moving. “He was going to kill me! I’m so sorry! Brynna! I’m so sorry!”

  “Why are you apologizing to me? I did not know him!” I told her, but perhaps by their own compassionate will, my hands were gently rubbing her arms. “Savannah, I know it’s hard. Alright? I do know. The first one is always the hardest. There are many questions steeped in philosophy and religion running through your head regarding the taking of a human life. It must be especially hard for you, being a woman of medicine, even if it is only mental health. Either way, you did swear a Hippocratic Oath, and that is…” I stopped and shook my head rapidly. “Whoa, my adrenaline is going. I need you to forget about this. Forget about him. Let go of your regrets regarding this situation…” I beckoned at the man with an erratically-moving circular hand gesture, “…and get on this level. We have to save our people. We are the only ones left. You and me, Savannah Mack. Against all the evil in our world.”

  I rested my hands on both sides of her face and forced my steely gaze to bore into her watery one.

  “I will pat your head awkwardly as you cry later if you need me to. For me to say that is extremely difficult, as you are aware. Right now, I need you to put it aside, and come with me.”

  Suddenly, my desire to break away from her, to disengage from one whose emotional display showed great weakness, disintegrated, and it was just Savannah, the woman who had deciphered all the complex pains of my life and helped me understand and overcome them, however much she I could. It was just her and me.

  “I need you.”

  The words fell from my mouth just as a random swelling of love for her seized my heart almost violently.

  “I can’t do this without you.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, wiping at her eyes before resting her hands over mine. “I wouldn’t want you to do this by yourself. I’d be worried sick.” She told me with a nervous laugh.

  “Alright, then. Let us go.” I stood up. “But just for your information, I was not referring to just this situation.”

  She was silent for a moment, and I could feel her eyes watching me as I walked away.

  “Well, did you not hear me say ‘let us go?’ I will say it again. Let us go, Savannah!”

  She laughed, this time more steadily, and walked forward to grasp my hand.

  “What you just said…”

  “Yes. Can we drop it? I do not like to admit things like that out loud. The Gods hear my vulnerability and take the next moment to strike. So, let us drop it, as they say.”

  We were outside in the night air.

  “I won’t let you down. Not like she did. You know that, don’t you?”

  I looked at her, contemplating her question. I studied her face, her eyes, searching for any sign of dishonesty; I saw nothing, not even a slight falter, in her sincerity. My heart expanded; I realized that she was not lying. Her mind and her heart were true. It boggled me, that she would be willing to take on the burden of me knowing all that she knew about my difficult past and even more difficult personality.

  I nodded. That is how I told her that I knew, and I did know.

  “If the worst happens, I want you to know that you have my love.”

  “Whoa…” I said, and an actual shudder passed through me. “That is a very heavy Pangaean phrase, one that shows very deep, unconditional, unbreakable love, you know. Or did you mean it in the Earthean way, where it is just an expression?”

  She frowned at me.

  “Well, just so you are aware, it is believed that if one lies when he or she says that, they will be forever cursed with terrible misfortune…”

  “Well…” She pushed my hair back from my face and then stroked my cheek. “Good thing I’m not lying, then. Right? Now, come on. Let us go, as you like to say.”

  I followed after her when she walked ahead of me, shocked by the feeling inside of me. It was warm, soft, and all-encompassing. It was the recognition and reception of maternal affection. I had not experienced that feeling in thirteen years. At first, the spread of warmth through my body felt rather sickening, but then, a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, and I was covering it with my hand and biting my lip. After that, once again before I could even realize I had done it, I had run forward and squeezed her hand in both of mine for just one half-second. I said words to her that would have seemed utterly inconceivable to me mere months earlier, when she had first fallen into my life.

  “And you have mine. Alright?”

  She smiled and gently pecked my forehead. That feeling of love expanded even further inside of me.

  “Alright.”