The Destined

by E. J. Mellow

  Perfect for the picking.

  With control he never knew he’d be able to possess, he resisted running straight toward the other tunnel and instead turned to his team.

  Pointing to each of their various weapons, he indicated for them to pick a target. They would get as many beasts as they could from where they stood. The Metus outnumbered them by one, but it didn’t matter. Dev was quick with his bow and would have one of his arrows flying at another before the first made contact.

  Lining up next to each other, each soldier took aim, and with the loosening of Dev’s first arrow, the rest followed suit. The creatures didn’t know what hit them before they were all blown apart, coating the space with their slime, another layer against the black tar. A few of his team members bent over coughing from the overbearing smell, but Dev merely covered his nose and darted forward. He heard Aveline call his name, but he didn’t stop, his only purpose to find Molly.

  Please Terra, let me find Molly.

  The entrance was smaller than the one they had previously traveled down, and sloped deeper into the ground. Dev had to dig his gloved hands into the wall to keep from slipping as he ran full out. But as he made it to the bottom, he hesitated when he heard the wail of a girl echo out of the darkness.

  “Molly!” he choked out as he plunged forward, his light stick guiding his way as he rounded a bend, skidding into a smaller cave. He barely registered his leg hitting against a wire before he found himself ducking as a bright shot of Navitas flew straight at him. The rock wall broke apart beside his head. A booby trap.

  Rolling into a crouch, he swept the area, landing on a tall male with hollowed-out cheeks and dirt-smudged blond hair, staring at him from across the cavern, a flash of surprise in his gaze before he pulled a gun from a holster at his back.

  “Aaron,” Dev spat, every one of his muscles coiling to spring forward, but the Vigil’s surprise switched to a smile as he pointed his weapon while simultaneously slapping a round contraption onto the wall where he stood.

  “I wish I could stick around, but—” Aaron darted to the other side of the cave, where another opening was sliced thin into the wall.

  Dev pounced, but Aaron held him off with a shot from his gun. Dev followed suit with one of his arrows, the two men sparring from their separate sides of the cave, lighting it up with sparks of blue and white.

  “Uh-uh,” the man tutted. “I’d choose wisely now,” he said and glanced to where he previously stood, where Dev realized a timer was counting down. A bomb. “Which do you want more? Me or her? And I’ll give you a helpful hint. If you don’t decide soon, we’ll all die, though that’s rather an inevitable end eventually.”

  Dev’s blood ran cold. Her? Swiveling around, he searched the shadowed cave, squinting as his eyes landed on a blue glow coming from the corner, a small huddled form wrapped in wire.

  The world spun out from beneath him.

  “Molly!” He ran, barely aware of the man at the edge of his vision slipping through the crack and disappearing. “Oh, Molly! Can you hear me?” As he crouched down, the girl flinched away while simultaneously curling into a smaller ball, a whimper escaping.

  Dev’s heart broke into a million pieces. “Midnight,” he said more gently as his hands hovered unsurely above her. He didn’t know exactly what was wrong with her, besides everything, and he didn’t want to add to her pain. Glancing at the timer, seeing he only had a few minutes, he returned to take inventory of the woman by his knees. He scanned her bound hands behind her back, chained and connected to the wall. She had a thick, glowing belt around her waist that painted a grisly scene of the rest of her. Clothes, once a durable black uniform, were now a stained and tattered mess. Her skin was so covered with dirt and…other things, Dev could hardly make out if she had any cuts or bruises. Clumps of her hair were stuck together, worming over her cheek and across her chapped lips, and she looked half her weight. Red exploded in Dev’s vision, his body quaking in unchecked rage. He would kill him. He would peel the skin off his body slowly, methodically, and enjoy every sound of terror that devil screamed out. Aaron would pay for this. He would pay dearly.

  So consumed in his thoughts of revenge, Dev barely remembered cutting the binds from Molly’s wrists and lifting her into his arms. She flailed in his grasp, seeming to confuse his help for another’s torture, and Dev could hardly see past his own tears as he sprinted toward the exit.

  He ran and ran and ran, even after the blast of the bomb shook the underground tunnels as he and his team burst through to the surface. Didn’t stop when Aveline called his name, saying they were safe. Dev kept going, moving, getting as far away from that horror-filled cave, hoping with every step the distance would somehow remove all the seconds, hours, and days the woman in his arms had swum in nightmares.

  —∞—

  The next day and a half were…unbearable. Dev had her back, had her an arm’s distance away, could look at her, smell her, yet she wasn’t there. Molly was a shadow, a mirage of her once bright self. Even after Elena ordered the doctors to induce her into a coma so she could splice her memories, try and remove some of the sickness of what she’d experienced with Aaron, Molly only woke a hair’s breadth better. She was given advanced medicine and high-carb-filled fluids to bring her gaunt body back to one that could stand without shaking. Her hair, so matted and stuck together, had to be cut. It now hit right at her shoulders, which helped in rounding out her face. But even after all of this, even when she returned to her correct body weight, the bruises, cuts, and broken bones mended, and her freckles returning to dust along the bridge of her nose and across the flush of her cheeks, her eyes said it all. They retained a slight glaze, a tendency to drift out of focus in the middle of a conversation. And though Molly had stopped flinching when Dev reached for her, even allowed him to hold her, which he so desperately needed, she seemed nervous, tight.

  Dev was at a loss.

  He knew the only thing that would truly mend things was time. And time, well, it wasn’t something they ever had the luxury of having. Her grandfather’s funeral was in two days, and he still hadn’t told her the news of his passing. With a headache creeping along his temples, Dev scrubbed down his face as he watched Molly sleep, as he sat in the chair across from her.

  She lay curled in a ball on the couch in her private chambers in the DCC. She preferred resting here to her bed, and Dev tried not to think about why. Even though he knew, saw along with Elena, the rest of the elders, and the engineers who took and spliced her memories. They watched what Molly couldn’t relive in words, viewed what they needed for intel on a hovering screen in a sound-proof room. Though slightly muted, as if behind a veil, they heard Aaron’s insistent questions, the screams, her screams, tears, pleas, and final confessions. They viewed it all until Dev had to leave the room in a burst of his own madness and blurred vision to puke in the hallway. His midnight had been broken and then broken again, and those sounds…scenes… By the elders, where would they go from here? Where would she? Dev had howled then, succumbing to the blinding rage to wrap his fingers around a certain Vigil’s throat, watch as his eyes bulged in protest before they dimmed to the shade of death. The only solace he got was that Molly hopefully didn’t have these memories anymore, even if Dev had them for eternity. It was the least he could give her, his third-person pain for her first.

  Then there was Hector, who surprised Dev with his unwavering support and aid. He seemed almost as desperate as Dev to put Molly right again, even when dealing with his own grief. And while it sometimes annoyed Dev to have his place by her side so encroached, he was grateful to the Vigil. He knew he couldn’t have done this alone. His small family of Aveline, Tim, and now Hector were the only things holding him together. If only Rae were here…

  “Dev?” A soft voice came from the sofa, and he blinked out of his internal musings. Molly looked at him under half-closed lids, her head propped on a pillow, her soft ivory lounge clothes of sweatpants and tee twisting in the blanket Dev had place
d on her. She had fallen asleep reading some human book about a beast and a beauty. Since moving in here, she had collected quite a few books.

  “Do you need something?” He slid forward on his chair, ready to stand.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched him from her fetal position on the couch. “How did you do it?” she eventually asked.

  “Do what, midnight?”

  “Live after Anabel.”

  Dev sucked in a quiet breath. He wasn’t prepared for that.

  “How did you cope?” She remained lying on her side, the only movement her slow blinks and the gentle rise and fall of her chest.

  “I just had to,” he said with a frown. He would never tell her he had seen clips of her memories, would never give her reason to bring them to mind any more than they seemed to come on their own.

  She held his gaze and then nodded softly. “I’ll have to.”

  Dev was by her side in an instant, kneeling before her, his hand pausing in question. Can I? he silently asked.

  Another nod.

  Dev slipped his fingers into her curled ones. They were so cold.

  “The difference is you won’t have to alone,” he said, brushing a bit of her hair from her face. She closed her eyes at his touch, and Dev didn’t know if it was from pain or pleasure, her brows so stuck together it was hard to tell. The thought that his touch might cause her discomfort sliced another cut in his tattered heart.

  Her lids fluttered open, her gaze going to their connected hands. “I…”

  He waited.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dev pulled back slightly. “Molly, you have nothing to apologize for.” He almost yelled the words. “Why would you say that?”

  “I just wish…I wish I didn’t feel like this. I wish I didn’t let what he did…I want to be me again,” she finished in a broken whisper.

  And there it went, finally, his heart in pieces on the floor.

  Not waiting for her permission, because he needed this like he needed to breathe, he shifted her around so he could hold her in his arms, cradled like a child. “And I wish I could tell you that you will be.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “But we both know that would be a lie. None of us can go back. By the stars, how many times I wished we could. But no, our world only turns one way.” He leaned away so she could look him in the eyes. “I can tell you one thing though. While you might not be the exact same Molly and I not the same Dev, when we get through this, because we will get through it, we’ll be something even better, closer and fiercer.”

  She scoffed, looking like she wanted to roll her eyes. Which was a good thing. The Molly he knew loved to roll her eyes.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Being able to live past what life throws at us, live despite it, find our laughter again, well, that’s what makes us a different breed of strength altogether.”

  She chewed her bottom lip, seeming to take in his words as her gaze dipped to his mouth, and something warm spread through him. And just when he thought he never would again, she said, “Kiss me.”

  His arms tightened ever so slightly around her. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s the only thing I’m sure about.”

  Without needing any more of an invitation, he leaned down, heart beating wildly in his chest, and gently brought his mouth to hers. It was like the first time all over again, out on the field, wrapped in the cool night air under the blanket of the shooting stars. His head went up in flames as he brought her closer, her lips so sweet, her small hands on his shoulders. He was desperate for her, devastated by her. He never felt so needy while getting exactly what he wanted. No, that wasn’t true. He wanted so much more. He wanted skin to skin, wanted to taste more of her, to feel more of her, but he knew she wasn’t ready. This alone was a huge step forward, and he had to remember to hold back, find a way to push down his overflowing desire to strip the clothes off both of them. With a low growl, he moved back and gazed down upon the woman in his arms. Her eyes, he was pleased to see, had a light in them that had remained out of sight until now, and her skin flushed a pretty pink.

  “I love you,” she said, bringing one of her fingers to graze along his stubble-filled chin. “I don’t know what I would have done if—”

  “And you’ll never have to.” He cut her off with another quick kiss before adding, “I love you too.”

  They fell into a comfortable silence, Molly drawing patterns along Dev’s shoulder, and he wished they could stay like that forever and that the ghost of her cries would eventually stop evading his thoughts.

  “I think I should go home for a bit,” Molly said, and hurt bloomed in Dev’s chest, hearing that she still thought of Earth as her home when his home was anywhere she was.

  “Once I’m feeling a little better, that is,” she added quietly. “I want to be here with you, but…but I think I need some time away from…this.” She glanced to their surroundings. “I think it might help me…heal.”

  While his first reaction was to violently disagree and beg her to stay—he just got her back—he also knew what he wanted didn’t much matter anymore, especially with what he still needed to tell her.

  He took in a steadying breath. “There’s something that you need to know.”

  She must have sensed the change in his tone, for she sat up. “What?”

  Even though he dreaded saying the next words, the ones that would surely set them back, he had no choice.

  He told her about Robert and watched her face go still, her eyes return to a glossy fog, a doll’s unblinking gaze as she absorbed the words. But what happened next truly made Dev cold to the bone, for Molly didn’t cry once, not a single tear. In fact, she hardly said a word. She just remained void—blank, an empty vessel. Like she decided right then, in his arms, that she was unplugging.

  They were in big trouble.

  For in a world that needed a hero, what were they to do when the one they had stopped caring?

  — 41 —

  What must it be like to live with seasons,

  by the sun and moon’s rise and fall?

  It must be nice to have warmth to eventually thaw the cold,

  light to even out the dark.

  —Part of a letter from Dev to Molly

  Streams of sunlight filter through the funeral home’s windows, golden dusted highlights caressing the rows of mourners and setting the bouquets of flowers decorating the room to an oversaturated glow.

  Here, look! they seem to say, there is still life to be found among the dead.

  I always thought it was an odd sort of condolence—flowers. Why give the aggrieved something else that will die? Or is that the point, to remind us that all life has beauty and that part of it is in dying? A ticking clock of sorts for our own grief. When the last petal falls, it’s time to move on, to smile again. Whatever the reason, I’m currently glad they are there to draw my eye away from the black closed coffin that rests in the center of the room, a heavy brick of reality.

  A shape moves outside the window, and I turn to watch a sparrow dart across the azure sky, its brown flap of wings quick against the slow-rolling puffs of clouds. I can’t help but see the irony in it all. How long I had craved the sun and now find myself resenting it. Earth seems to be laughing at me, a jester to my bleak mood.

  It should be raining, hard. Should be storming with sixty-mile-an-hour winds, cracks of thunder and lightning that shake the walls. A baby should be crying somewhere, alone. A cat left out soaked to the bone. Some dismal scene that can accompany my own, but instead it’s a beautiful sunny day. One of the most gorgeous we’ve had all summer, in fact, according to the DJ on the radio as we drove here.

  Gorgeous. Perfect. Happy.

  I blink back to the aromatic beige room, watch my parents, with their puffy eyes and supportive arms around one another, murmur their thanks to the guests lined up to say their condolences. I still haven’t cried. Not one wet drop squeezed out. And while I’m more than sad, heartbroken, it’s almost li
ke I can only feel it through a dense fog. The sick part is, I’m grateful for it, relieved even. After Aaron…if I could take in what was happening here, I don’t think I’d be able to move again, not that I’m currently animated. But it’s like my mind, having sensed this, placed me in survival mode. Now I’m just doing everything by memory: waking up, brushing my hair, teeth, chewing my food—even when it tastes like dust—nodding, and saying words when I’m meant to.

  Rinse and repeat.

  And no one questions it. No one sees my behavior as odd. I’m a girl who lost her grandfather, after all. Of course she’d look adrift and broken, have dark circles under her eyes, and appear like she was just tortured by a madman. At least fate gave me that, gave me something to hide my recent experience under.

  How kind of it.

  My fingers dig into my thigh as the memories of the painful hours left alone in a dark, wet cave mixes in with even more painful hours in the company of someone in a dark, wet cave. They flutter violently through me, phantoms that, despite Elena’s attempt to cut them out, still drift by like a chill on the wind. I might not be able to see them, but my body knows they’re there.