by eden Hudson
Another paper cut memory—lying with my head on Tough’s shoulder, listening to his mp3 player, even though it was so hot we had to keep wiping the sweat on the sheets. That had been just yesterday. Why couldn’t we go back to that?
On the porch, Colt pushed himself up and walked to the shed at the tree line.
He was taller than Tough and his skin had a lighter undertone, but the family resemblance was there in more than just the hair and eyes. They stood the same, walked the same. On Colt it came off as deadly competence, the equivalent of staring someone down. On Tough it was all attitude. I could imagine Tough in a fight with a guy twice his size. He might not win, but he would mess the other guy up enough that it wouldn’t matter.
A few seconds after Colt went into the shed, the light inside came on and it occurred to me that I should check on him. The drain unclogger was probably in the cabin if it was anywhere, but I remembered another comment from the message boards about someone whose cousin had hung himself in the barn.
I walked down to the shed and looked in the half-open door.
Colt had a broadsword. An honest-to-God broadsword—three-foot blade, two-handed grip, shiny, pointy, lethal end—and he was swinging it around like it wasn’t nearly as heavy or as deadly as it looked. The way he moved with it, even the way he breathed with it, said Colt absolutely knew what he was doing and there was no way I’d be able to stop him if he wanted to use that thing.
Not only that, but the walls of the shed were lined with racks of swords, battle axes, pole arms, maces, mauls—everything you’d need to accurately reenact a medieval war fantasy. There was even a matched pair of crossbows. All along the door-side wall were racks of shotguns, rifles, and machine guns, pistol cases, ammo boxes, and bandoliers of ammunition. In the far corner under a faded, duct-taped, sliced-up punching bag was a metal locker marked Semtex-H.
Semtex. Plastic explosive.
“Holy crap,” I said.
Colt spun around, real-life-freaking-broadsword ready to chop my head off. There wasn’t any sort of recognition in his blue-green eyes.
“It’s me,” I squeaked. I put up my hands to show I wasn’t a threat. They practically vibrated. “Desty. Modesty. Do you remember me, Colt? Tough’s girlfriend? Grace?”
It probably wasn’t more than a few seconds before he brought the sword down, but it seemed like forever.
“I wouldn’t have hurt you,” Colt said, letting the point of the sword rest on the shed’s dirt floor. “I knew who you were.”
“It’s just…the arsenal that scared me,” I lied.
He looked around like the weaponry wasn’t something he’d ever considered.
“I think there used to be more. Most of it was confiscated after the war. This is just what we recovered. And I guess we sold some of it.” He tossed the sword up to eye-level and caught it near the middle of the blade, point-down. There was a cross etched down the length of the sword’s blade. “But this was one of ours.”
I stepped into the shed.
“Jax told me that your dad, um, trained you all,” I said. I had just sort of assumed since Daniel Whitney had been a pastor that ‘training’ had meant ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ not ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ I looked around. “So Tough can use this stuff, too?”
“Not legally,” Colt said. “Everyone who signed the armistice had to swear they’d never carry or use a weapon. It took a while after the war, but Tough signed, too.”
“When you say ‘the war,’ you mean the NP-Human Conflict?” I asked.
“That’s what the traitors and the cowards call it,” he said.
“Uh—” Duh, self—just duh! Of course the semantics were a big deal to somebody who’d fought—whose family had died fighting—than to somebody who had only seen the updates from the warzone when they interrupted her cartoons.
Colt cocked his head at me and half-smiled. “I was just kidding, Grace. It was a joke.”
“Oh.” I tried to laugh. It sounded as awkward as it felt. I swiped my bangs out of my face. “Sorry. I kind of suck at basic human interaction. Until recently, I never really had to do it. My sister handled pretty much all that stuff when we were growing up. Actually, you might know her—Tempie. Temperance? She’s Kathan’s familiar.”
Colt’s fist tightened around the sword grip enough that I could hear the leather creak.
“I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“No,” he said, looking down. “It’s not that. I just didn’t…get out much with Mikal.”
“Yeah, Tempie said her and Kathan almost never leave the bedroom.” Then I realized what I was saying. Way to make things less awkward by bringing up sex-marathons.
But Colt didn’t seem to notice. He kept staring down at the floor. He looked like he had the day I took the tour of the Dark Mansion—like he’d left his body behind. Well, that minus being naked and on Mikal’s leash.
“They need a lot of attention to make up for what they lost when they fell,” he said.
I shifted from one foot to the other and tried to find anything else to talk about.
“Dammit,” Colt said. Then continued as if he was arguing with someone. “It’s not that hard to understand. Everybody else deserted me. She didn’t. She protected me. It’s just basic psychology. Yeah, basic you’re-batshit-crazy psychology.”
I didn’t touch him in case he was on the edge of another meltdown, but I got close enough to make him look me in the eyes.
“You’re not crazy, Colt. I’ve read a lot about the emotional and psychological effects of being a familiar and—”
“I read those AIPM articles, too,” he said. “Fairhaven Syndrome and objectification, right? But there weren’t any articles that mentioned a familiar who had his burning angel forced out and then came back to life.”
“Burning angel?”
A dark blush bled into Colt’s cheeks.
“Fallen angel,” he whispered. “I said ‘fallen angel.’”
“Colt, I’m sorry, I—”
“I think her getting forced out destroyed a lot. If this was all going according to the articles, I should be able to remember everything from before, shouldn’t I?” He scratched the irritated skin of his throat where the collar had been. “And I should be begging like a good dog.”
“Maybe you’re different,” I said, but it seemed like he wasn’t listening.
“If I tried to cope with the objectification by creating Ryder— But I should still be able to remember what my parents looked like, shouldn’t I?”
“Maybe none of this is permanent.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I sure hope not,” Colt said. “Not that you’re not cute, Grace, but I can’t keep listening to Ryder going on about how Tough wouldn’t know what to do with an ass like yours.”
My face got hot, but I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice. “My name isn’t—”
“Yeah, well, whatever the first one was, it’s obviously too far gone to salvage now,” Colt said. “I wouldn’t have planned for a survival contingency. So fucking come up with something else. Just shut up for a second.” Colt looked at me. “You’re tired.”
It took me a second to realize he’d gone full circle from talking to me, to himself or maybe someone else, and then back around to me.
“It’s getting late,” I said. “Do you want to come inside and get some sleep?”
“That’s all right. I’m going to drill for a while.”
My expression must’ve given me away.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to kill myself tonight. When I’m training… Moving helps me think.”
He hadn’t denied wanting to commit suicide—that’s the first thing I would have done if I wanted someone to leave me alone so I could do it—and it wasn’t as if Colt would be worried that I might be able to stop him or even slow him down if he wanted to kill himself.
I started to go.
“She’s just going inside. Don’t be such a pussy.”
I turned back around.
Colt closed his eyes.
“Shit,” he said. “You heard that.”
“I can stay out here if it would make you feel better,” I said.
He shook his head and swung the broadsword up onto his shoulder.
“I’ll come in later,” he said.
“You’re not alone,” I said. “I’m here and Tough will be back.”
“No, he won’t,” Colt said.
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“No one comes back, Grace.” The way Colt was looking at me—it was like he did know. Like he’d been there a million times.
Before he could say anything else, I turned around and ran up to the cabin.
When I made it inside, the broken countertop and the door’s empty window pane were glaring at me.
God, was I the only one who couldn’t see how delusional I was? I smacked both palms on the lip of the sink as hard as I could. The sting ran down my fingers and up my wrists. Tempie might’ve been on a one-way train to self-destruction, but at least she could accept reality for what it was. No one stayed—not even if they loved you—and no one ever came back. You either kept moving or you got left behind.
Colt
“How about we start with the obvious question,” Ryder said, nodding at the punching bag. “What were you doing stabbing the shit out of that?”
I spun the sword back to attention and stopped moving.
A piece of six-inch PVC pipe was screwed to the side of the punching bag where a holster or sword would hang if it was a person. The cuts in the bag had all been made from below, a straight blade stabbed upward, probably in close quarter combat. And there were lip-prints. My face got hot and I looked to see whether Ryder had noticed them.
Ryder’s always had a high-pitched laugh for a guy like him.
“You get lonely or were you practicing for Mikal?”
For a second I was back there. I felt Mikal’s open mouth on mine, her forked tongue slithering through my lips and up the back of my throat into my nasal cavity. I couldn’t breathe or move my hands. They were cuffed behind me and I was scared as hell because that wasn’t part of the plan. Then Mikal’s burning-tar essence flooded my brain.
The memory disappeared. I was back in the shed.
“Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying,” Ryder said. “Course, you can blame him for being retarded. Did you really think she’d just tell you to kneel down and take it? She ain’t stupid, Sunshine. Even after she had you in the lunatic’s cell for a week, she wouldn’t just assume she had you broke.”
I tried to keep breathing. Focus on the light in the shed, the sword in my hand. But every time I blinked a web of glowing, red lines flickered onto the backs of my eyelids. I could feel the black noise collecting at the base of my skull, ready to drown my brain.
“Get your shit together, Colt.” Ryder’s voice was like a jolt from a Taser. I’d heard him say that before. He had grabbed me by the back of the neck and whispered it so loud and so sharp that it drowned out my screaming.
“I can help you numb the crazy, Sunshine,” Ryder said, pushing away from the wall. “But you got to be working out a plan to put this right or everything from Mom dying on will’ve been for nothing.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “I don’t even remember what the first plan was.”
“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Ryder said. “Think. Real hard. Why ain’t you hitting the bottle right now? That’d be the easiest thing to do—get drunk.”
“That’d be what you would do,” I said.
“No, what I would do is get you drunk. You’re a cunt when you’re sober.” Then Ryder laughed. “You remember that time we got drunk off our asses and snuck over to the edge of the farm?”
I remembered standing at the tree line in the back pasture, howling at the Dark Mansion like a couple of moon-crazy werewolves and firing off a 12-gauge until we heard a four-wheeler coming. Then we took off back to where we’d stashed the truck.
“We parked out on that little dirt road that connects to Old 63,” I said because it seemed like an important detail. “Why doesn’t Kathan keep a guard on that road?” Anybody with a dozen people could come in and surround the Dark Mansion. That was how the angels had ambushed our camp and ended the war in the first place.
Ryder shrugged. “Nobody takes Old 63 anymore. Bet you fifty bucks most people around here forgot that dirt road even exists. Why waste the manpower?”
I shook my head. That train of thought wasn’t taking me anywhere. I couldn’t think like this, holding still.
“Want to practice?” I asked.
Ryder grinned.
“Here I thought you’d never ask.” He tossed his spit bottle.
Before the bottle hit the ground, Ryder had a shortsword in one hand and a poleax in the other. I just barely blocked the ax from hacking open my face. He went for my ribs with the sword, but I caught his wrist before he did any damage.
Fighting another physical body felt so good. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. Stretching out, getting into the rhythm, even the little scratches and bangs that wouldn’t make any difference in the long run—it was like Heaven getting all that back. But training by myself for so long had gotten me used to acting instead of reacting and a month stuck inside my own head had thrown off my reflexes. Ryder chopped and sliced and shoved me across the shed.
My left side smashed into the rack of automatic rifles. Metal thudded into wood and I almost tripped myself trying to take a step. He’d pinned my pants leg to a stud with his shortsword.
“Dammit, Ryder, these’re my only fucking jeans!”
Ryder swung the ax at me. I blocked, but just barely. I was at a bad angle and I couldn’t turn right to throw him off or I’d rip the hole in my jeans bigger.
“Aw, prissy baby don’t want to get his clothes dirty?” Ryder laughed that high-pitched laugh and leaned harder on the ax. My arms started shaking. “Somebody been too busy fucking the enemy to practice.”
“You think I wanted to be her bitch?”
Ryder started jolting the ax. “I think you wanted her attention pretty bad to be sniping her familiars with no suppressor and no cover.”
My jeans tore free from the wall as I threw him off.
It was a trap. Ryder let the ax go flying and punched me in the throat with his off-fist. I tried to cough my trachea back into shape.
He grabbed my wrists and tried to wrench the broadsword away. When that didn’t work, he went for the head-butt. I brought my jaw up at the last second so that he hit my teeth. It hurt like hell, but Ryder came out of it with a bloody cut across the bridge of his nose and forehead. He stumbled back a step. I dropped the broadsword and tackled him.
We rolled across the floor and hit the Semtex locker in the opposite corner.
“Colt?” That was a girl’s voice.
Ryder kicked me off and stood up.
The shed door opened and Grace came in as I was getting to my feet.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes jumping all over my face. “What the heck happened?”
“I’m fine. I—” I looked behind me at Ryder. He was sitting on the Semtex locker, holding his spit bottle. No blood, no cuts, no sweat. Not even out of breath.
Grace took a step closer to me. “You didn’t come in last night, did you?”
“Last night?” I said. Her hair was wet as if she’d just taken a shower and the sky showing through the door was starting to turn predawn gray. “What time is it?”
“Around five-thirty,” she said. “Maybe you should come inside.”
I stared down Ryder. He shook his head like he was disgusted with me. I flipped him off before I remembered that Grace was watching.
If she was something I had made up, shouldn’t she be able to see Ryder? And if she couldn’t see Ryder and she was real, what would be the least crazy way to explain that I was flipping off my dead brother who I didn’t always remember was dead
and who might actually just be brain damage?
“Colt?” Grace asked.
I licked my lips and got a mouthful of blood that tasted real.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just…fell or something.”
“Come on,” she said, nodding toward the cabin. “You should at least get something to drink. It’s already pretty hot out for being so early and dehydration sucks.”
I hung the broadsword on its rack and picked up Ryder’s ax. The shortsword was still stuck in the stud next to the automatic rifles. A piece of my jeans was pinned under it. So either my mental construct could kick my ass or I could kick my own ass and tell myself it was him.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit,” Ryder said.
I dropped his ax onto its hooks and headed for the shed door.
Grace followed me up to the cabin.
In the kitchen I turned on the faucet, filled a glass, and left the water running while I gulped it down. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was. It hit my stomach hard and cold, but I had to drain two more glasses before I felt like I could slow down. I scratched my arm. Dried salt built up under my fingernails.
So I’d been drilling and arguing with Ryder—or maybe myself—all night. Thinking that made me feel dizzy. I turned around and leaned against the sink to catch my breath.
Grace was standing by the table watching me. When I caught her eye, she shifted feet and tried hooking her bangs over her ear even though they weren’t long enough.
“I was just wondering— Remember how I told you about my sister, Kathan’s familiar? I wondered whether there was any way to tell if he was hurting her.”
I tried to think of a nice way to say ‘no.’
“Things look different from the outside.” That was the best I could come up with. “From the inside out, she might not even— I mean, hell, just trying to think is—”
“You retard,” Ryder said. “You’re going to make her cry again.”
Grace’s eyes were dry, but she was biting her lips together.
“I’m sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck, felt the calloused skin from the collar. It had been so much easier to think while I was moving. Now everything was piling up and the screaming in my head wouldn’t stop. “Kathan’s different from Mikal. He’s an alpha, so it’s all about power, right? And didn’t you say your sister wanted to be his familiar? He would probably take care of her just because she wanted to be his.”