Hunt the Dawn

by Abbie Roads

  James sat back in his seat. The past thirty seconds replayed in his mind. One moment there was nothing between their palms; the next there was something. Something she claimed was the bullet that had killed Lathaniel. Impossible. And yet, James had felt it. He opened his hand. A crimson smear of blood.

  “I…vvv…dr…” Her speech slurred, her tone disintegrating into a guttural groan. Her eyes darted sideways, seemed to stick there, trembling inside their sockets, eyelids blinking so hard he could actually hear them clicking.

  “Evanee? What’s wrong?”

  Her head jerked to the side in the same trembling motion as her eyes. Her lips pulled back over her teeth, her entire face contorted in a grimace. Sounds he associated with death came from somewhere inside her—grunts and moans of an agony so great words didn’t matter. Every one of her muscles tensed, held tight, and then quivered. Her face went gray, her lips purple.

  Death had been James’s friend, his coach, his advisor, so he recognized Death when he saw it crouching over her. “You are not taking her. She is mine. Not yours.”

  He grabbed her shoulders, inserted himself between her and Death. Underneath his hands, he felt unyielding power and instantly recognized what was happening. A seizure. Only a seizure. Death wouldn’t claim her today. He released his hold on her.

  Not knowing what else to do, he stroked her face, rubbed her arm, tried to hold her hand, but her fingers were curled in tight. “Evanee. I’m here. You’re not alone. I’m here. I’ve got you. I’m here.” He kept repeating the words until the tension relaxed out of her. It was ending. Her eyes rolled slow and unseeing around their sockets. Her head lolled loose on her shoulders.

  He gulped down mouthfuls of air as if he’d been the one to go through it. His heart charged around inside his chest. He sat next to her and held her limp hand tightly in both of his, waiting. Finally, her gaze found his and locked on. Clarity had returned to her eyes.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She raised her hand, palm up. Somehow, he translated the gesture to mean she wasn’t sure.

  “You don’t know? Or you’re confused?” he said. “You just had a seizure. Are you an epileptic?” She didn’t answer, but he could see her taking in his words, processing them, understanding them. “Are you having trouble talking?”

  She dipped her chin and squeezed his hand—an acknowledgment.

  “Give it a few minutes.”

  She swallowed and ran her tongue over her teeth.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  A squeeze.

  He held the glass to her lips and let her drink.

  “Bllt. Nd bllt.” Her words were slurred so badly he didn’t understand. She slapped around the bedding awkwardly until she found the bullet. Bullet. Need bullet. Finding the metal soothed her. She fell promptly asleep, but he kept a vigil for any further seizure activity.

  Twenty minutes later, she stirred, stretched, opened her eyes.

  The questions floating in his mind burst out at her. “Can you talk now? You had a seizure. Are you epileptic? Do you need medication? Or was it an effect of the concussion?”

  “I’m all right,” she said, as if she were soothing him, but her voice lacked comfort, seemed stuck in a flat monotone. “It was the dream. My brain short-circuited—I had a seizure—when I woke up with the bullet. It’s this strange thing that sometimes happens to me when I sleep. Dead people give me things.”

  Dead people give me things. Her hand lay open, revealing the spent bloody round. A bullet she didn’t have until she awakened. A bullet that somehow materialized out of thin air to suddenly be between their palms.

  He never spoke like this, but these were the only words in his mind. “What the hell?”

  “I know. It’s hard to wrap your mind around. The look on your face is exactly how I felt the first few times it happened.” Her words were the correct ones, but they lacked animation and emotion. They were words spoken by a robot. Someone so far beyond mere sadness and depression that they skimmed the edge of suicide.

  “It’s happened before?” He couldn’t keep the incredulity from his tone. He couldn’t stop staring at the bullet. It felt like reality had just shifted a click or two off the norm and he hadn’t caught up yet.

  “The first time was the worst. I woke up with a girl’s eyeball.”

  Invisible fingers tightened around James’s neck, choking off the easy flow of air. He stood, turned away from her so nothing on his face would betray his thoughts. A girl’s eyeball, she’d said. Janie Carson’s? Was Evanee getting the evidence of his kills, not Lathaniel? Was she playing some bizarre game with him? Had all this been a setup? Just to trap him?

  He inhaled a deep, slow breath, held it for a few seconds, then blew it out in a steady stream. His gut told him she wasn’t playing him, wasn’t setting him up, and certainly wasn’t trying to trap him.

  “What happened the other times?” He spoke while he stared at the wall, unwilling to face her while his deeds were under discussion.

  “I woke up with a wad of hair and a tooth one time. Another time a ring. And now this.”

  He felt upside down, like he was an hourglass and someone had just turned him over. His heart beat inside his brain from the pressure.

  “James?” Her voice was small and fragile. It was the first time she’d used his name, and it felt like the sweetest melody to his ears.

  He hid his thoughts in the furthest corner of his mind, relaxed the tension in his face, and turned to her.

  Her eyes were focused on him, and inside those dark-blue depths, he saw fear. Was she afraid of him rejecting her? Or was it something else, something he couldn’t fathom right now. His feet moved his body back to the bedside, and he sat in the same spot where he’d held vigil over her for the past five days. “Tell me everything.”

  She told him about three dreams and how dead people really did give her things and how she really did wake up with them in her hand and how her brain overloaded when that happened. Each thing she brought back from a dream pointed to the Strategist. Each thing carried a clue—some new lead.

  James was fully aware she’d left out the dream that led to her having the bullet that killed Lathaniel. Later, when she fully trusted him, he’d ask. For the moment, he’d grant her this secret.

  She said there was a name for what she did. Oneirokinesis. He’d Google it, but he already believed her. Not only did she have no reason to lie, but she didn’t have the mental strength and fortitude to formulate such an intricate deception about something so bizarre.

  If he boiled everything that had been said down to one base concept, she had been dreaming about his kills. His.

  Her dreams—the evidence she brought back from those dreams—brought them together. From that first dream of hers, they had been destined. That feeling of fulfillment with her was the recognition that they were fated to meet. Fated to have this time, these moments. The upside-down, one-click-off feeling dissipated, then re-formed into a peculiar bond with her.

  She cradled the spent round to her chest.

  “I’ll get rid of that.” He held out his hand to her.

  “I want to keep it.” She fisted her fingers around it. “It touched his heart,” she whispered, emotion strangling her voice, but her eyes remained on him, telling him she wouldn’t give it up voluntarily. When he made no move to try to take it from her, she asked, “James, where am I?”

  He translated the deeper meaning behind the question. Distraction.

  A smile stretched his mouth wide. She was healing, and millions of questions were going to be part of the process. One of the tricks to gaining trust was to offer information so it appeared he had nothing to hide. “You’re in an underground bomb shelter my grandpa built during the Cold War.” The lie slipped out smooth as a strawberry milkshake, but strawberry wasn’t his favorite flavor.

  He dislike
d lying to her, playing with her mind, but he’d dislike it more if she fought him, tried to escape, or was frightened of him. The lies he would tell were necessary. Once this brief moment of history was over, once he built the foundation that would sustain them, there’d be no more deceit between them.

  “You had a concussion and were pretty out of it so I brought you here, where no one would find you.”

  She listened, but she was distracted. Her gaze perused the bunker, paused on the kitchen area, then returned to him.

  “I tried to take you to the hospital, but you said not to.” Another necessary lie. He squished his brows together to convey a look of confusion. “Don’t you remember what you said when I found you?” He forced an expectant look on his face, a look that said You should remember this.

  She looked up and to the left—a classic sign of searching her memory. But she would never find the memory. It didn’t exist.

  “You were wandering around in the woods naked. Covered in blood. I was going to take you to the hospital, but you said if I did, he would find you. Kill you. You looked like he’d already tried. Terror rode you. And I believed you.” He searched her bloodshot eyes. “Don’t you remember any of this?”

  She looked up and to the left again. “None of it. Why would I be in the woods just wandering around? Why would I leave Lathan?”

  “I don’t know those answers. Maybe the concussion has affected your memory.”

  She half nodded, a look of pure concentration on her face.

  “Right now, it’s safest for you here. At least until you feel good enough to begin making decisions about your future.” Decisions he would influence, mold, and shape. He waited for her to comment, but witnessed the distraction on her face. It was in the way her gaze perused the bunker, the way it paused at the kitchenette like she was searching for something before moving on.

  “Decisions about my future? What do you mean?” she finally asked.

  “The police are searching for you. They say you killed Robby Malone and Lathaniel Montgomery.”

  “They’re saying I killed Lathan?” She bolted upright. Gasped. Swayed. Cradled her head between her hands like she expected brain matter to leak out her ears. Her facial muscles tensed—not from grief. From pain. James recognized the victory. Physical pain had finally taken precedence over grief. So many victories today.

  “Slowly. You’ve been horizontal for five days.” He placed a pillow behind her back, then guided her shoulder back so she leaned against the headboard.

  “Five days? It’s been five days since…”

  “Yes.” He answered when she didn’t finish her sentence.

  “I didn’t kill Lathan. Junior shot Lathan, attacked me, and then… I don’t remember what happened. Maybe I did kill Junior. He deserved it.”

  “You did say it was your fault he was dead. I assumed you meant Lathaniel, but maybe you were talking about Robby Malone.” Sprinkling truth around a lie was like fertilizer. It made the lie stronger, heartier, more believable. “I taped some of the news reports. Figured when you were feeling better, you might want to see them. To know what you’re up against.”

  With a few pushes of a button, he had the recording queued up on the flat-screen across from the bed.

  Sheriff Robert Malone stood outside the police station flanked by officers. “Evanee Brown murdered my only son. We have conclusive evidence of this.” The sheriff held up a family photo of a man. “This is a great tragedy to this community who loved Junior, or Robby, as some knew him. I am personally offering a reward of $20,000 to anyone with information about her whereabouts.” What appeared to be a driver’s license photo of Evanee floated in front of the screen.

  The next recording was a press conference. Eric McCallister, with Gill Garrison standing next to him. “Evanee Brown is five foot nine. Long, black hair. Slender.” The same driver’s license photo flashed on the screen. “She is considered dangerous. Do not approach her. Call the task force number at the bottom of the screen with any information.”

  James paused the action with Gill and Eric on the screen.

  “Why haven’t you turned me in? There’s twenty-thousand dollars waiting for you.” Something in her voice still wasn’t right. Her eyes darted back to the kitchen, then to him again.

  “There’s right and there’s wrong. It felt right to hide you. I saw your injuries. I know how badly you were hurt. You are safe here. You can heal here. You can decide what you want to do when you leave here. It felt wrong to turn you in. Leave you alone. Unprotected against them.” He waved at the image on the screen.

  “You’re a good man, James. Taking care of me when I’m a stranger and the police are after me. Thank you.” For a brief moment, sincerity outweighed the numbness in her tone.

  Heat passed over his face. Was he blushing?

  “I need to leave for work soon. I’d like to check your wound before I go. Would that be okay?”

  “Um. Yeah.”

  He unbuttoned the shirt and bared her bandaged breast, all the while careful to disguise the hunger in his eyes with a clinical expression. “After everything you’ve been through, I know this is uncomfortable for you. I’m sorry.” He meant it.

  He picked at the medical tape on the side of her breast until he found a fingerhold and gently eased the tape back. Two of the deeper tooth marks still seeped and bled. Her breast would bear those reminders forever.

  Chapter 17

  James had left. A minute ago? An hour ago? A day ago? Evanee couldn’t understand time anymore. The only thing she could feel was the dagger in her lungs each time she breathed. The blow to her chest each time her heart beat. The absolute torture of living while Lathan was dead.

  Life had never been fair, but she’d always hoped that out there somewhere, something great waited for her. That something great had been Lathan. But he was gone. The promise of love—her happy ending—shot dead in front of her.

  She was tired. So tired of living. Of struggling. Of fighting. Of losing.

  The bullet—she held the solution in her hand.

  She tossed off the covers and got out of bed. Upright, legs trembling and heavy from disuse, she felt the world lazily floating around her like cotton blowing on an early summer breeze. It took a moment for her to realize the world wasn’t floating; she was dizzy. She braced herself against the nightstand until her vision stabilized. Nothing, certainly not a little disorientation, was going to deter her from her goal.

  In the kitchen, she found a plastic cup and filled it with water.

  The bullet blazed hot against her skin. She held it just inches from her eyes and stared at the tiny piece of metal. So small, almost delicate. How could something so innocent looking overpower the strength of Lathan’s life force? But it had. The proof was in the dried blood caked in the crevices and on her palm.

  She wanted this piece of metal, this piece of him, inside her. She popped the bullet in her mouth. Its weight and size were foreign. She focused on her tongue, on her taste buds, willed them to give her Lathan’s flavor, but she tasted nothing. She rolled the piece of metal around in her mouth, exploring the contours, the dips, the valleys, the sharp edges. A primitive part of her brain engaged, and she was a child once more, finding comfort in suckling—but this time it wasn’t her thumb.

  She lifted the cup of water to her lips and drank deeply, swallowing the bullet. She set the plastic glass on the counter, opened a drawer, and searched for a knife.

  The water and bullet sloshed heavily in Evanee’s stomach. She ripped open another drawer. A silverware separator, but it only contained spoons. No forks. No knives. Where were the knives?

  She pulled open the rest of the drawers and cupboards, pulled out pots and pans and baking sheets, knocked cans of food over in her search. But there was nothing in the kitchen she could use to cleave open her vein.

  Weariness settled in her marrow. S
he sank to the floor, not caring that the concrete was hard and cold or that James would find her and know what she’d halfheartedly intended.

  * * *

  James leaned against the back wall of the packed auditorium. From his position, he had a dominant view of his father. The room was filled with the curious, the impressed, and the depraved.

  His father’s voice rose, then fell, his cadence quickening, then releasing with that timeless quality all good storytellers possessed. He’d learned to balance entertainment and the macabre in such a way that even the most gruesome of tales transformed into poetry. Into something beautiful.

  That beauty had made Death attractive and yet something to be feared. That beauty had grabbed James’s attention as a child.

  An exit door on the audience level opened. The dim light offered no more description of the person than the outline of a man.

  Good luck finding a seat in the dark room.

  Purpose drove the man’s stride, his gaze never wavering from Dr. Jonah. James followed the man’s progress toward the front of the auditorium. Another man entered through the same door. The way this guy carried himself, the outline of his form, was familiar. Gill Garrison. What was he doing here?

  “I smell him. Where is he?” The first man spoke in a shout and effortlessly leaped onto the stage. For only a split second, James caught a glimpse of the man’s face. Logic revolted against the message his eyes conveyed. Tension grabbed hold of his neck and started strangling.

  Lathaniel Montgomery. Couldn’t be. And yet it was. Somehow, despite what Death had revealed to him, Lathaniel was alive.

  And his story wouldn’t match the evidence at the scene—James had seen to that. Lathaniel would know someone else had been there. But he wouldn’t know who.

  His father’s theatrical voice faltered. Stopped. He gaped at Lathaniel, backed away as if afraid. Not one person in the entire auditorium sneezed or coughed or cleared their throat. The silence was impressive.