Death Thieves

by Julie Wright

  Winter’s worry worried me, too. The curse of twins—what bothers one of us will bother both of us, whether we want it to or not. Still, I held firm that five blocks couldn’t kill me. Unless Theresa found out, then it would as good as kill me.

  Nathan had already pulled up to the curb by the door leading to student parking. He revved his engine when he saw me. I got in and buckled my seatbelt, giving an extra tug to make sure the strap held tight, grumbling about Winter’s paranoia.

  We were off. I let out a small breath of relief when we got to the Corner Café without anything catastrophic happening, and chastised myself for giving in to Winter’s delusions. Half the art club filled nearly every seat of the diner.

  Nathan kept a close eye on the clock while we ate and rushed us out exactly on time. I stared out the car window as we drove back, trying not to feel drowsy from my full stomach, when I sat up straight. My throat closed off, choking out any noise I might have made. I pointed at the window, my fingers tapping violently against the glass trying to get Nathan’s attention.

  It was the face, the gray guy—he stood pale and ominous on the sidewalk, his long black cloak swirling around his legs in the wind, his eyes locked on mine. He gave a small nod.

  “Nathan—” I turned to tell him about the guy. That’s when I saw something far more alarming. Barreling toward the driver’s side was a canary-yellow truck. It had run the red light. I screamed. “Nathan! Look out!”

  Everything went quiet. Nathan’s mouth moved, yet no sound came out. The guy in gray suddenly appeared by Nathan’s window. I wanted to yell at him to move but couldn’t. As I threw my hands up in front of me to brace myself against the impact, the guy’s face shimmered through my vision again, only this time he was right in front of me. He unclipped my buckle, and I felt a pulling from my midsection.

  My heart thumped faster in the mire of the moment. The pulling sensation stopped, and I found myself outside the car, standing on the sidewalk.

  The crunching of metal and shattering of glass filled the silence, making me jump in alarm and shock. Nathan’s car flipped and skidded across the road. Pieces of windshield rained down, glittering in the sun as they fell to the ground. My hands ran over the length of my body. How am I staring at Nathan’s car? I’m supposed to be inside that car. I’d yelled to Nathan about the truck. It was going to hit us. We didn’t have time to avoid it, but I’d yelled—yelled and stared at the oncoming truck, unable to close my eyes to the horror of impact. Yet, here I stood, not in the car.

  “Nathan!” I screamed. “Nathan!” I tried to run to the car, but something held my arms, making any forward motion impossible.

  My breath came in sporadic bursts. My head spun as if I’d been turning in circles for an hour. I looked down at my arms, trying to comprehend what held them pinned at my sides. Hands held me.

  I turned, every inch of me shaking and convulsing with shock. And there he was—the face. “Wh—what happened?” My voice sounded foreign and hollow.

  He stared at me, his ashen features hard with lack of emotion, measuring me before he took a deep breath. “You’re dead, Summer Dawn Rae.”

  That was it. His entire explanation swept over me in an icy wave of five words.

  “No. I’m not—” I couldn’t say the word. Dead. My legs buckled, and I fell to my knees. In an odd moment of detachment, it occurred to me that the action hurt me. Blood pooled under my right knee. The wound from the cave ripped open on impact of the cement. Yes. That hurts. Do dead people hurt?

  I tried to stand, but my watery legs refused to obey my brain’s commands. “If I’m dead, why am I bleeding?”

  He did look concerned then, and swiftly bent to pick me up. His muscles tensed under my weight. “I’ll get you medical care for your wound.” In the movement of being picked up, I felt a pulling at my middle again. I squeezed my eyes shut against the vertigo. When I opened them, he appeared to have actual color in his face. He no longer looked like a human made of gray thunderclouds. His eyes seemed like hard blue ice crystals, chipped from glacial ice. His brown hair was darker than mine, something Winter would have called henna-brown. Compared to the pale ghost of a person he’d been before, he now looked like he might have been blushing.

  “What are you?” I’d meant to say, who are you, but who didn’t sound right. “The angel of death?”

  He looked down into my face again. His blue eyes flickering with a warmth so brief, it could have been imagined. He jerked his head back up and began walking, seeming entirely unhindered by carrying a girl around. “I am the furthest thing from an angel that I know. Your heart still beats. You’re only dead to everyone who knows you.”

  At these words, and with the realization that his movements took me away from the car and Nathan, I freaked. I struggled to release myself from his grip, but he held firm and didn’t act bothered by my attempts to escape. “What are you? Some sort of psycho kidnapper? Let me go!” Sirens wailed in the distance, coming because of the accident. “What about Nathan?” Tears streamed down my cheeks.

  “He is dead.”

  “Why didn’t you pull him out?” I kicked and flailed with greater fervor, desperate to get away. “What is going on here?”

  Again the flash of warmth—of compassion. “He’s already infected. I’m sorry.”

  I screamed.

  I screamed long and loud, stopping only long enough to draw in another breath and scream some more. People walked past us—me screaming. No one paused or took notice. I’d become invisible, like the ghost I still half believed this guy to be.

  The sobs came from lack of oxygen and the irrepressible fear tightening all around me. I shuddered and heaved. “They can’t see me!” I said. “They can’t hear me!” I looked over my abductor’s shoulder, back to the car wreck. The entire scene behind me looked hazy. “I am dead. Nathan! I’m dead! Nathan—No!” My breath caught with a realization that swept beyond the car holding the shattered remains of my boyfriend, beyond any thought of myself. “Winter!”

  Chapter Four

  No matter what I did, the gray man’s grip never loosened. His strength seemed superhuman. No one on the street saw me. Paramedics, fire trucks, and police cars all raced past with no notice of this ghost stealing me away. No one heard my cries. Every step took me farther from the world I knew.

  He stopped a few blocks away and looked at the sun as though trying to tell time from its position in the sky. He stood there several long moments. Impulsively, I bit into his wrist. With a yelp, he released me, which landed me hard on the ground. Adrenaline took over as I hopped to my feet and sprinted away. I still screamed—screamed and ran—until I found someone out changing the letters in the sign outside a bookstore. I grabbed the person’s shoulders and spun him around, trying to force him to see me. The guy looked maybe twenty, his face the ashen color that the gray man’s used to be. His eyes swiveled everywhere as though a demon had caught him and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Help me!” I yelled in his face, but he gave no indication he’d heard me. He whimpered and his jeans turned dark at the crotch. Bewildered, I let him go. He stumbled back, falling to the ground, where he crab-walked backward until he could get his feet under him. Then he ran back into the bookstore.

  I spun in a circle, taking in the world around me all at once. Everything had gone gray as though a wet newspaper had been wrung out over the city, leaving a colorless film over everything.

  The gray man was now the only thing that had color. He caught up to me and took a firm hold of my arm. “You made us miss our window.” His tone indicated his irritation.

  “He didn’t see me.” I glared at the man. My breathing came too fast, making it hard to move oxygen to my brain. “He acted like a ghost had him. If I’m not dead, why can’t anyone see me? Why can’t anyone hear me? What is going on?”

  The man looked at his wrist and sighed. “You’re outside of this dimension, but inside the same time. You don’t exist on the same level as these p
eople.”

  “So I am dead?”

  “No.” He moved us off the sidewalk so the mother with her little boy could pass without bumping into us as they headed to the bookstore. “Dead means something else. No one knows what happens to the dead. Lots of research but no conclusions.” He lifted up his shirt sleeve, revealing what looked to be an arm shield for people who did archery. It had a screen like my phone. The gray man manipulated the screen with his fingers, making information appear. “This has enabled us to move outside of this dimension. We’re here, but outside of it. Does that make sense?”

  “No. Who are you? And when are you going to let me go, so I can go home?”

  “My name’s Tag. I can’t let you go.”

  As I breathed in to start screaming again, he put his hand—the one not gripping my arm like a tourniquet, to my mouth. “Let’s start over. Let me explain. I’m not going to hurt you. But I know I’ve handled this badly.” He sat us down, his grip on my arm strong enough to leave me no choice but to sit with him, even though I wanted to stay standing, to stay in a position that allowed me to run.

  “You’ve been following me for days.” I accused. “You were at the cave. And you’ve been outside Theresa’s house.”

  He nodded. “I worried you would damage yourself in the cave. I had to make sure that didn’t happen.”

  “By what? Scaring me enough I let go of the rope? Thanks for the assist.”

  He ignored my sarcasm but instead looked confused. “You saw me? That’s why you let go of the rope?”

  “I’m not blind.”

  “But I was outside of time. You shouldn’t have seen me. I should have been invisible to you.”

  “Nice try on being sneaky. You will never be invisible to me.”

  He smiled as if I had paid him a compliment. “I shouldn’t be surprised. That was one of the things I noted about you in my research: you see things when all others cannot.”

  “Noted? Who are you?”

  “I’m from the year 2113, sent to save you from your death and bring you back to a place where you’ll have great influence. Had I not pulled you out, you would be dead along with your boyfriend.”

  “So, great. You pulled me out. Now let me go home.”

  “You’re dead to everyone who knew you.” He looked irritated to have to repeat this information.

  “But I’m here. They’re going to know I’m not dead when they don’t find my body.” The surreal slant of the conversation made me feel sick. My muscles trembled. Blackness edged into my vision.

  “There’s a body there. One who matches you in most respects. The coroner has no reason to delve too deeply, because it’s known you were with Nathan in his car.” The words sounded far away in my ears.

  “I am dead.”

  I blacked out.

  ***

  I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. A soft, thin sheet slipped off me when I stood. The cold air bit into my skin once the sheet no longer offered me protection from the elements.

  The sun setting far to the west meant that a lot of time had passed, and we’d traveled outside of Orting, Washington, and into Mount Rainier National Park. Tag sat in front of a fireless fire pit. The tang of charred wood, ash, and pine clung to the cold air. He looked like a shadow—all huddled into himself in front of the dark pit. I’d been laid out in a clearing next to a picnic table. My first instinct was to run, but in what direction? He watched me closely through the long shadows cast by the sun’s waning presence. I moved a step to the right and two more steps behind me. In what direction should I run? The panic started immediately upon seeing him.

  I ran my hands over me, wondering if he’d taken advantage of my inability to fight back while I’d been unconscious, and wondering if—somehow—my blacking out had been his fault. Had he drugged me? I didn’t know and couldn’t tell.

  My clothing looked undisturbed aside from the hole in my jeans at the knee. He’d cut the hole open larger and a white bandage now lay over where I’d cut myself. The tank top worn under Winter’s ruffled blouse remained tucked in. My shoes and socks were still on and my laces were tied the way I always left them. Could he remove my clothes and put them back on exactly the way I’d had them? I didn’t know and couldn’t tell on that, either. “You drugged me.” The accusation hung in the air between us.

  “I didn’t touch you,” he said finally.

  Could he read my mind? How could he know I was thinking that?

  “How do I know you didn’t? How do I know you’re not some pervert preying on high school girls?”

  He stood, but stayed on the opposite side of the fire pit. “I didn’t touch you.” His words came through clenched teeth. I kept my hands at my side to keep them from double-checking all buttons and zippers on my clothing. After holding his gaze for several long moments, I determined he just might be telling the truth. But if not to take advantage of me, kill me, and leave me in the forest so some Boy Scout troop could find my body in six or seven years, why bother kidnapping me?

  “You have to let me go home.”

  He let out a breath of exasperation. “The future is in a crisis situation. You’re going to be like a—a queen. You’ll be honored and very nearly worshipped for the service you’ll perform for humanity.”

  “Service? What service? What crisis? Do you have any idea how Hades in the underworld you sound right now?”

  “Hades?”

  “He’s a Greek god, bonehead!”

  He cringed when I shouted and let out another deep breath of exasperation.

  “I know who Hades is. I just don’t understand how this compares. We don’t need to be enemies—”

  “Well don’t expect me to be your friend. I just want to go home! My sister needs me!” I kicked some old leaves into the fire pit.

  He pulled out a small metal box-looking thing and turned his back on me as he dropped packets into his box. I examined him good and hard for several long moments to make sure I could pick him from a lineup when the police caught him. He wore a long black jacket—like something Indiana Jones would have worn—only with better style and cut, and I preferred black to khaki any day. It had a utility look, filled with pockets. Those pockets bulged slightly from whatever they contained. The jacket itself hung loosely over his medium build. He was taller than me but not so tall as to be remarkable in any way. I was five foot eight and I guessed him to be a few inches above that, five foot ten or five foot eleven. His dark hair was short on the sides and in the back and just long enough to comb back on the top. No scars or tattoos or anything that made him stand out were readily visible with him all bundled up. His black jeans and jacket cast silver glimmers in the fabric as he moved. He ignored me with the same intensity that I inspected him. That bothered me.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I want to go home!” I moved in front of him to keep from being ignored. If he waited much longer, I fully planned on going back on my own—even being lost on Mount Rainier had to beat being a kidnap victim.

  “I heard you.” His soft voice almost made me feel guilty for all my shouting. Almost. He finally looked up from his box. “Dinner’s ready.” He handed me a spoon and lifted the lid to the box. Without waiting or saying a blessing on the food like Theresa did, he pulled out a pouch and dug into the contents of the pouch with his own spoon.

  “What is that? A little heater or something?” I peered into the box.

  “It’s a hydrator. It’ll heat, too, on solar power, but as you can see—” He looked up to the darkened sky. “We have no solar power at the present, so we’ll have to make cold pasta work.”

  “How does the hydrator work?” I didn’t really care but wanted him to think I had an interest in his stuff. My mind raced with ideas for things I should do—things I might say, how I might get myself out of this nightmare.

  “It pulls moisture out of the air. They don’t work so well in arid climates. Some of the other soldiers have reported troubles, but I’ve been lucky so far.”

 
; Small talk failed me. I couldn’t pretend. Winter was the actress, not me. My mind pulsed with plans and confusion, and keeping my anger under the surface proved impossible. “So what happens after we eat? You rape me and bury my body under the leaves?”

  His mouth clamped shut so hard, his teeth made a clicking noise. He turned his back on me. He poured something else into his hydrator and pulled out a knob, pumping it several times before pushing it back in. “I would be violating my guard honor to even think of touching you,” he finally said.

  “Oh yeah, we wouldn’t want to violate that.”

  “Exactly.” He’d apparently missed my sarcasm.

  My stomach growled, but I refused to eat any food from his little gadget. If he wanted to be Hades and drag me to his underworld, then I would be Persephone and not eat.

  “Were I to touch you in any way that would harm you, I would be executed.”

  “I thought you were taking me to the future, not the dark ages.”

  He smiled. “Executions aren’t as they once were. There is no guillotine, no mass audience to take delight in the fact that their head isn’t on the chopping block. The death sentence is quick, private, and . . . seldom anticipated.” His face darkened with every word as though he’d gathered together a black hole and consumed it. He shivered and inhaled deeply. “The future is dark, but you will change all that.”

  “No, because you’re going to make a decision to do the right thing and take me back to my sister.” Though I’d determined not to eat anything, I couldn’t handle the cold anymore. I grabbed the little sheet-blanket thing and wrapped myself up. I sat on a boulder near the fire pit as though the nonexistent fire might contribute warmth.

  “When you died in that car wreck, you became lost to her.”

  “But I didn’t die in that car wreck,” I reasoned. “You said so yourself.”

  “To her, you did.”

  My throat constricted against the sob that fought its way to the surface every time Winter came to my thoughts. Since Winter always stayed in my thoughts, the sob sat like a cancerous lump in my throat. I tried to swallow it down to keep my kidnapper talking.