by David Estes
A small, pink hand flashes in the dark. The eyes belong to Trish.
I scoot over to her, getting close enough to see her face clearly. Her hand moves near the floor. Creeeeaaakk!
Peering down, I see that my sword is laid out in front of her, and she’s running her finger back and forth along the metal face, creating an unpleasantly high-pitched sound. Trying not to spook her, I slide my hand over to the sword and grab the hilt, withdrawing it slowly.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
She just stares at me. Another question hits me, one I’ve been wondering about for a while now. “Why were you looking at those photo albums before? In the apartment. The pictures were of strangers.”
She blinks in the dark. Her bottom lip seems to quiver for a moment, as if she might cry, but then firms up once more. She points to her mouth, then to her head.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Your head and mouth can’t connect?” I guess.
She shakes her head. Using both hands like claws, she moves them all around her head, as if trying to poke holes in her skull. What is she trying to tell me?
She taps her ear. “You’re hearing things?” I ask.
She nods, continuing the assault on her head. “Lots of things?” More nodding. “It’s all too much for you?” At that, she shakes her head. No, it’s not too much for her. She can handle it. I remember the way she pointed at her mouth and then at her head. “But all the things you’re hearing makes it too hard to speak, is that right? You have so many thoughts that speaking becomes too difficult?”
One big nod. She stops clawing at her skull.
She takes my hand and squeezes it, her palm so hot it’s almost burning, and then lays down to sleep.
Once more curling up next to my sword, I call the whole thing a major breakthrough in my strange relationship with Laney’s mute sister. And, despite the flurry of thoughts swirling through my head, sleep takes me once more.
~~~
Beth’s lips move against mine, slow and tender.
Her hand runs along my jawline, down my neck, and to my shoulder, where she begins shaking me. Pulling back to take a much needed breath, I open my eyes and gasp.
It’s not Beth.
A red swirl of hair that seems to shimmer, even as it changes to gold and then blue, almost tauntingly; shining blue eyes; soft pale skin; graceful, seductive movements.
Crying out, I squeeze my hands between us and shove the Siren as hard as I can, launching her against the wall. In one fluid motion, I leap up while grabbing my sword, which I raise to her neck.
“What the hell?” she screams in my face, but it’s not the Siren, and I’m breathing heavily, my heart racing at full speed, my eyes wide and searching, searching, searching for a trick…and finding none.
There’s no Siren.
Only Laney, her eyes full of anger and a hint of fear.
I stumble backwards, withdrawing the sword, staring at her.
Laney raises a hand to her throat, as if to check that her flesh is still intact, and then glances to the right. Still panting, I follow her gaze to where Trish is watching with big, blue eyes, her hand on Hex’s back.
“I—I—” I say, looking back at Laney.
“You scared the crap out of my sister,” she says. And I can tell I scared Laney, too.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I felt someone shaking my shoulder.”
“I was just trying to wake you up. I thought I heard something, you psycho.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, wondering how I’ve gone from Superman to psycho overnight. “I haven’t slept well since…” The witches killed my family.
“I’ll use a ten-foot pole next time,” she says, grinning slightly. Already her anger’s gone. She can go from zero to sixty faster than a Ferrari, but without the sleek lines. She’s all hard edges.
“Better make it a twenty-foot pole,” I say, attempting a laugh but having it come out more as a cough. “Wait. You said you heard something?”
She nods slowly, points toward the rear of the store. “A bang.”
A twist of dread wrenches through my chest. Have they found us already? Managed to track us down despite the severity of the storm? It would make sense that creatures born from magic would have abilities beyond even that of the animals they’re attempting to mimic.
My sword shines as a shred of the coming dawn peeks through the front of the store. Laney reaches down and snatches her shotgun off of a display counter, checking that it’s loaded. In one swift motion, she cocks it. Chook-chook! She almost seems to relish it.
As she starts creeping toward the rear, between the aisles, I say, “I’ll go first.”
She stops, looks back, amusement on her face. Whispers, “I get it, you’re the big hero, but as long as I’m around you’re going to have to get used to sharing the dangerous jobs. Okay?”
I hesitate but then nod.
As she slithers toward the rear of the store, I stay as close as possible without crowding her, readying myself to spring into action at the first sign of shape shifting witches. We pass ornamental lamps and picture frames and a funky-looking chair that promises “a massage so good you’ll think you’re in Sweden!”
My heart stops when there’s a clatter off to the side, behind a row of desks. We freeze, listening, trying to pinpoint the exact source of the sound. In the silence, a high-pitched keening comes from somewhere beneath us. I jump back, but Laney just bends down and plucks a light bulb from where it rolls to a stop at her feet. Holds it up. Smiles. Points two fingers to her eyes, then at mine. Watch me. She motions to the left. Points to me. Motions to the right. Split up.
I give her a single nod to confirm my understanding of the plan.
As I duck away to the right, there’s a scrape off to the left. My eyes dart in that direction, and I see a thick shadow bolt from cover, hear the slap of feet on the tile floor. Laney rushes forward, her shotgun raised like a club, leaps, brings it down with a heavy thud!
She disappears behind one of the displays, crying out.
My body takes over and I hurdle an easy chair, slip around the corner of an aisle as easily as I used to evade would-be tacklers on the gridiron, and spring forward where…
Laney’s got the barrel of her shotgun pressed into a man’s face.
But not just any man.
My friend, the beggar.
~~~
“Who are you?” Laney demands, shoving the dark-skinned man into the area where we were sleeping. She’s still got her shotgun pointed at his face.
As usual, Trish is just staring at what’s happening, her face devoid of expression. To my surprise, Hex runs up to the man and starts licking his fingers.
“Get your dog out of the way, Rhett!” Laney shouts.
“Hex!” I command sharply, as if I’ve ever been able to control him. Hex turns in my direction, and then goes right on lapping at the beggar’s dirty hands.
“Answer my question,” Laney repeats, through gritted teeth.
“Laney,” I say evenly.
“What?” she says, keeping her eyes—and gun—trained on the man.
“He can’t speak,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve run into him before. He doesn’t have a tongue.”
The man bobs his head and, as if to demonstrate, opens his mouth and waggles the stub of a tongue he’s got left.
“Gross,” Laney says. And then: “What do we do with him?”
“For starters, don’t shoot him. He helped save our lives from the Shifters.” A thought springs to mind. “Hold on.” I move to where my backpack is stowed, unzip it, and rummage through my stuff until I find my notepad. I tear one clean page from the very back. Turning toward the man, I ask, “Can you write?”
He nods, but then cringes, his face contorted in what appears to be pain. “Are you hurt?” I ask.
Still cringing, he shakes his head. If he’s not hurt, then why does he look like someone’s driving nails in
to his forehead?
I rest the torn-out page on the cover of my journal and hand it to him with a pencil. “Will you answer my questions?” I ask.
“No,” Laney says. “He will answer your questions or he’ll get a face full of hot metal.”
I give Laney a sharp look, which she ignores, and then take in the man’s reaction to her directness. He just shrugs. Is that a yes?
“Who the hell are you?” Laney says, before I can ask anything.
The man glances at me, almost curiously, but I can still see a twinge of pain in his eyes. I dip my head in encouragement. He lifts the pencil, holding it awkwardly, like he hasn’t used one in a long time, and then scrawls something on the page. Holds it up. Written in shaky block letters is a name.
MARTIN.
“Good,” Laney says. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Her tone is mocking. Not helping.
I jump in before she makes things worse. “Why are you following me?” I ask.
The man purses his lips and tucks them in his mouth. Returns to the paper. I’m not, he writes.
Laney takes two big strides forward and shoves the shotgun under his chin. “Listen, Stinky, Rhett says you keep showing up and there are no coincidences in this freak show of a world we’re living in, so you better tell the whole damn truth before I blow your brains straight through your scalp.” Almost as an afterthought, she glances over at Trish, a flash of regret crossing her face as she seems to realize her sister’s watching her every move.
The movement is so quick I barely see it. All that’s left is the end result: Laney’s gun twisted from her hands, spun around, and pointed back at her head. She backs away slowly, arms above her head. “Man, I’m sorry…I wasn’t actually going to—”
Hex barks, as if to say Silence!
I realize the beggar is still holding the pad in one hand while gripping the shotgun in the other. He’s much stronger than he looks, his muscles likely hidden beneath the thick folds of his brown trench coat.
“Don’t,” I say, my sword raised. “You’ll be dead before you pull the trigger.”
Nonchalantly, he flips the gun in the air, catching it by the barrel and handing it back to Laney, who looks as surprised as I feel when she accepts the weapon.
Hunching over the paper, the man writes something else, taking his time, almost child-like in the way he seems to form the big letters. Hands it over, where Laney and I huddle around it.
I’m sorry. This was a mistake. Beware the Siren.
When I look up to ask another question, the man is gone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The road seems to shrink before us with each step, as if rolling itself up into a tight bundle, like a rug. We have less than ten miles before we reach Washington, PA, and all I want is some quiet thinking time.
Not gonna happen.
The broken iPod that is Laney asks the question I’ve been fighting for the last hour. “What are you not telling me?”
“Nothing,” I say for the tenth time.
“There has to be something,” she says. “You’re being chased by a Siren who wants you to be her sex slave and a mute homeless guy who’s a lot more talented than he appears to be, and apparently the Necros have put a bounty on your head, which—oh yeah—means that every last witch gang in America is out looking for you. Sounds like nothing to me.” Her sarcasm slaps me in the face in a way only she seems able to do.
“Not only the witch gangs,” I say. “Other witch hunters are after me, too.”
“Ha! This gets better and better,” she says. “Let me guess: The End. If I want to keep my sister safe, it seems like being near you is the last place we should be.”
I stop and whirl on her. “Then why are you still here?” I spout. “I never asked you to come with me. You tagged along, Laney. For the last two months it’s been me and Hex and we’ve been just fine. And I know—as you’ve constantly reminded me—that you and your sister have survived on your own, so why are you here?”
For a moment her face goes so red that I think she might spit in my face, or hit me, and I almost wish she would, because it would be better than what she does next. Her shoulders sag and she bites her lip and I can tell she’s fighting back tears. “I was tired of feeling alone,” she says, before stalking off.
I stand there for three minutes, watching Laney and Trish and Hex move off down the road, the only friends I have at the moment.
And then I follow them.
~~~
I can’t stand the silence anymore, so I ask, “What else has she written?”
Laney’s eyes shoot toward me, and I almost feel like I’m looking down the dark barrels of her shotgun, something I hope I never have to experience again.
She looks away, keeps walking. “You mean Trish?” she says a minute later.
“Yeah.”
“You mean besides ‘Tall dead no’ and ‘Ads hall rise’?”
“They might not just be gibberish,” I say. “They might mean something. Like they did before. Perhaps if we can decipher them…”
“My sister isn’t some puzzle you can solve,” she says. “Not everything has an answer.”
“You said it yourself, there are no coincidences.” I might be pushing her too far, but I’m tired of the awkward silence, tired of just taking everything this screwed up world is dishing out.
She sighs and I know I’ve won.
“She’s all I’ve got,” she says. Not what I expected her to say.
“Not anymore,” I say. “Hex and I won’t abandon you. If you ever want to go your own way, you can, but it’ll always be your choice.” I don’t know why I say it and maybe it’s a lame attempt to sew our frayed friendship back together, but it feels right the moment the words roll off my lips.
Laney seems to consider that for a moment. “She’s not some freak,” she says.
“I never said—”
“I know it’s weird that she doesn’t speak anymore and writes in the air and does that freaky staring thing…”
“Like she’s doing right now?” I interject. Trish watches us curiously, a thin smile on her lips.
“Yes,” Laney says. “She never did that before…before my parents died.”
“She never did anything strange?” I ask.
“Kids do lots of strange things,” Laney says, “but nothing out of the ordinary. It’s like something snapped in her when she—” She stops suddenly, her lips clamping shut so tightly that her top and bottom teeth clack off of each other.
“When she what?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer.
“Laney?” I say.
She won’t answer, even when I ask the question another half-dozen times. Now it’s me who’s being the nosy pest.
I give up as we pass the Welcome to Washington sign, the W smudged out by what appear to be ashy fingerprints. Ashington. Scorched beneath are big black letters: PYROS RULE.
Washington, Pennsylvania has been taken by the Pyros.
Her lips a thin line, Laney fires me a look, but then trudges past the sign, holding her sister’s hand so tightly her knuckles turn white.
~~~
Curling fingers of smoke drift skyward in the distance. Splotches of bright blue and green stand out amongst the darkening landscape, almost like strange flowers in full bloom. Not flowers; magical fire. Welcome to Ashington.
As slinking shadows slide over me, throwing rocks and sticks around my feet, I grab Laney’s other hand. “We’ll find a detour around the town,” I say.
She looks up at me, then down at our locked hands. “No,” she says. “I want to see it.”
I frown. “Bad idea. Pyros are pretty badass, especially in large groups. I’m all for poking a sleeping bear if it’s absolutely necessary, but…”
Laney stops abruptly, so I do, too. Then I realize: Laney only stopped because Trish did. Continuing to grip her sister’s hand, Trish begins writing in the air with the other one. Rapt, Laney and I stare at her finger moving gracefully in the
moonlight.
“A,” we say at the same time as Trish connects the upside-down V with a crossing line. I go silent, letting Laney verbalize her sister’s message. “L. L. G. O. N. E.”
“All gone,” I say, when Trish’s hand drops back to her side.
“The Pyros,” Laney says. “They were here, but they’re not anymore.”
When did Laney start believing in her sister’s messages? I don’t ask, because I think I know: She’s always believed in them, even if she didn’t want to.
“I don’t know…” I say, not because I don’t believe Trish, or Laney’s interpretation of her words, but because I know what Mr. Jackson would advise. Don’t pick a fight you can’t win. Avoid large groups of witches.
Hex paws at my leg, whining. C’mon, he seems to say.
“If this goes all wrong, it’s on me,” Laney says. “My responsibility.” Her blue eyes are sparkling, prettier under the starlight than I’ve ever seen them.
“Okay,” I say. What I don’t say is that we’ll all be dead if it goes wrong, so responsibility won’t matter one darn bit.
~~~
The warmth of the burning buildings is almost a relief after the cold rain of yesterday, but even that is dying. On the face, it appears Trish was right. The Pyros are gone, probably recently, leaving the fires to burn themselves out.
We stay low, below the thickness of the dark smog that clouds an otherwise clear night sky. Hex bounds ahead, as if to prove that his low stature has its advantages. He turns and looks back, barks once. Slow pokes, he seems to say, a gleam in his dark eyes.
We pass a McDonald’s, the golden arches mostly consumed by flames, the green roof caved in, glowing blue with still-hot embers. “I guess the Pyros are joining the fight against childhood obesity,” Laney says, making an unexpected joke.
I force out a laugh, although I know Laney’s overcompensating for whatever contradicting emotions are pouring through her.
They were holding fire in their hands. Not red and orange, but blue and green. Balls of fire.
They were going to burn us to death.