Against the Dark

by Carolyn Crane

  “So Cole could tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”

  “Oh.” She dropped the ice cube back into the plastic cup. “And?”

  “He assures me you’re okay, but I’m not so sure.” Macmillan scrutinized her face. Then he asked it outright: “Can we trust you?”

  It’s something they did in the Association sometimes—asked a thing outright. Are you going to kill me? Do you know my real name? People rarely expected such questions. It was a way to catch them off guard, to force the truth out in a flash, or even rip open possibilities.

  Cole wasn’t sure if it was his woozy state, but Macmillan’s demand seemed to rip open something in Angel; not so much the truth as a layer of resolve.

  She engaged with the question, strained to meet it. “Can you trust me? To help screw Borgola? To stop that man?” Something in her expression gave Cole the sense that she was viewing an endless and fascinating panorama. And then she said two words: “With everything.”

  As though it was her fight, too.

  Macmillan studied her face. She had the broken finger, but broken fingers could lie.

  Then Macmillan tipped up his head up, a kind of reverse nod, and looked away, satisfied for the moment. Later, it would likely become a problem that Angel knew about the Association. Dax would want her threatened, neutralized, handled somehow. But in the moment, here on the battlefield, Macmillan had seen what he needed to see. He took up his needle.

  Angel took hold of Cole’s arm. “Ready?”

  Cole tried to shake off her hold. “Let go. I’m fine.”

  She squeezed. “Let me help. It’s the least I can do.”

  Cole glowered at the broken down TV. “I’m sitting fine.”

  She let go.

  Her holding his arm was a small and delicious luxury he couldn’t indulge. He couldn’t undo what he’d done, but he could limit the damage going forward. She was a thief. A woman. A vulnerability. She wasn’t for him.

  Cole felt another needle pierce his arm.

  “A little something to help you sleep, old man.”

  “No.” He twisted away from Macmillan. Crap, Cole hadn’t seen that coming. Her touch mesmerized him even in absentia. “Don’t call me old man, dammit.” He didn’t need to sleep, but he felt himself being turned and lowered face first onto the bed. Low voices. The bedspread like a cloud on his cheek, his forehead. A needle pricked the back of his shoulder, followed by a thread, all feeling so far removed. Like it was another shoulder. Another reality.

  He woke up feeling puffy-faced and dry-mouthed, and his shoulder screamed. Traffic sounds outside. A muffled TV from the next room.

  She was in the other bed, flipping the pages of a magazine. Macmillan was nowhere. The curtains were drawn, but the quality of light in the room gave the feeling of dusk.

  She turned to him. “Hey.”

  “What time is it?”

  She put down her magazine. “Five-ish.”

  “Will you bring me my glasses?”

  She climbed off the bed, padded to the dresser, and brought his glasses to him.

  She stood over him as he put them on, dark hair tangled over her shoulders like a goddess. She wore a new shirt—a black silk, long-sleeved affair. Gray pants. Macmillan had been shopping. She brought over a glass of something. “Your friend says you’re supposed to drink this.”

  He scooted up, feeling dizzy. He knew what was in the glass; he’d had that particular cocktail of drugs before—blood boosters and antibiotics. He downed it. She took the glass away and came back shaking a plastic water bottle filled with green liquid. “Now this.” She opened the lid—awkwardly—because of the bandages on her finger.

  Jealousy shot through Cole. He should’ve been the one to care for her, but he’d lain there like a schmuck while Macmillan patched her up, probably even setting the finger. It would’ve hurt like hell. Had Macmillan comforted her? Did they talk about him?

  “Come on, your friend said to drink this.”

  Cole grabbed it. Protein, algae, MSM, and a blend of superfoods—roots from the Siberian tundra and so forth. He braced himself, tossed it back, and wiped his mouth. The crust would clear from his mind if he didn’t throw it all up. “He put a guy out there?”

  “No. It’s just us.”

  He nodded, swallowing back the bile. So Macmillan thought they’d be safest if he didn’t call anybody in whatsoever. Well, if Borgola had inroads into the Association, best to consider them long and wide.

  He eyed the gun on her bed, breathing clear now. They’d had protection after all—Macmillan had trusted Angel to guard them. Macmillan was mercurial like that, making major decisions on a dime. Only a fool is certain and immovable, Macmillan liked to say, quoting some crusty old French essayist.

  Macmillan had accepted her, but Macmillan didn’t have as much to lose.

  Macmillan wasn’t half in love with her.

  Cole pulled himself up and out of the bed and plodded to the bathroom to splash water onto his face. Macmillan had wrapped the hell out his shoulder, but the skin outside the bandage looked good. Not like any infection could live after the antibiotics he’d likely been shot up with. Lifting his arm was painful but possible. There’d be a nasty bunch of scar tissue, but he’d get function back. Macmillan had come through with a toiletries kit and even condoms. He wondered if there was a shirt for him anywhere. He wished he could take a shower, but he settled for brushing his teeth.

  The superfoods were taking hold. He was feeling more alert.

  He walked out. “He say when he’s coming back?”

  She shook her head. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” He motioned at her hand. “You?”

  “I’m feeling thankful,” she said.

  “No need,” he said.

  “No need? Borgola’s still alive out there. And now he knows about you, and he didn’t before. You gave something up to get me. Thank you. Just let me say that.” She watched him, as though wanting to understand why.

  “Well, what the hell, I brought you in,” he said.

  She looked at her hands. “The guy’s a real psycho.”

  “You got that right.” Cole went to the window and looked out. Macmillan had chosen a second floor corner room. A balcony overlooked the parking lot below. Strip mall across the street. He went and stretched out on his bed, feeling her eyes on him. He liked it, in spite of everything. He wanted her to join him, to hold his arm. To be his.

  She’s not for you.

  “You didn’t kill him,” she observed.

  “A choice that may come back to haunt me,” he grumbled.

  “You wanted to.”

  “People were coming.”

  “But you should’ve, right?”

  He sat up against the cheap headboard. If she hadn’t been there, she meant. “Yeah,” he whispered. “And that would have cost us time because I would’ve had to do it with my bare hands, and then I would’ve had to fight a lot more guys in that office.”

  “You seem to have no problem with fighting lots of guys.”

  “I prefer to avoid it.”

  She went and sat next to him on the bed, depressing it slightly. He liked feeling her near. Reflexively, he reminded himself she was a thief, but he found he didn’t care one bit. He wanted her to stay. He yearned to touch her.

  “In the office, you kicked that guy’s gun from his hand. That’s one of those moves that, you know, nobody does.” A humorous light appeared in her eyes. “Because he had a gun and you didn’t.”

  Cole shrugged. “As we established yesterday, your man is a hot and virile hunk of masculinity, even when injured. It’s why you’re always so eager to feed me something delicious when I drop by your condo.”

  She sniffed. “Be serious. It scared the crap out of me.”

  He liked that probably more than he should. “It wasn’t the risk it looked like. Those guards have been my training buddies for a year, and I was training them the wrong way to fight me. I reversed my weaknesses
and my strengths, so that I’d have the advantage in a real fight.”

  A faint smile appeared on her lips. “Diabolical.”

  “Opposite training. You fool them about your strong suit until you’re ready to use it. A way to train sparring partners.” Was he boasting now? Yes.

  “That’s what you call it? Opposite training?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because you knew it would happen someday. That you’d fight them.”

  “Seemed likely.”

  “You wouldn’t have had to fight them at all if I hadn’t gone back in.”

  “I would’ve had to fight them eventually. I would’ve sent you home and stayed on, to be there when it goes up in flames.”

  “Even though you got everything from the safe you wanted?”

  “I needed to see it through.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “To see the way things come apart, and why they come apart. I get a lot of information through equations. Logistics, behavior, that sort of thing. The end of the equation is always where the answers are.” He didn’t know why he was telling her. The quality of her secrets, maybe, or the way she was on the wrong team and they were in this nowhere place, and she knew too much anyway. And how beautiful she was, and how he wanted to open his heart to her. He ached to kiss her.

  “It seems like the end of this equation is where the danger is,” she said.

  “Sometimes you just have to do a thing.”

  She looked sad, suddenly. So alone.

  “Come here.” He pulled her close, giving in to his need to touch her. She lay her head on his shoulder and it was like heaven. He brushed aside her hair. “One thing I can’t figure out—why didn’t you take the diamonds?”

  “I was there for the bead. We said up front I wasn’t taking the diamonds.”

  “You could’ve so easily. When we were in the safe the first time, you were looking at the bags like you wanted to grab them.”

  “That’s not what I wanted to do,” she said.

  “What did you want to do?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He reached up and took a chunk of her hair, smoothing it through his fingers. “It matters to me.”

  “Why? Will it help you figure out my equation?”

  “More like your variables.”

  She snorted and batted away his hand.

  “Come on.” He wanted to know because he wanted to know everything about her: he wanted to know the gum she chewed, the shows she watched, her candy bar preferences, what her grade school art projects looked like. He wanted her secrets and her soul, and she wouldn’t give up any of it. She was worse than a goddamn Fenton Furst. His fingertips lit on a jewel in her lush, wavy hair. “Tell me,” he whispered.

  Her shoulders lifted. “I wanted to hold them. It was always a ritual with Macy and White Jenny and me.”

  “So you held them. But you didn’t take them. Why?”

  She snorted derisively. Before she even spoke, he knew the sassy tone she’d take with him. “Diamonds are so 2008. Don’t you think, darling?”

  A wall. He hated walls. “Don’t reduce it to that. I want to know why. He kissed her palm. “You hold them here.”

  “No. My left hand.”

  Gently he took her left hand in his, careful of her finger. “Then what? What does it feel like to hold them?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Yes you do.” He could no longer tell his lust apart from his desperation to know her secrets. Maybe it was the same thing. “Tell me.”

  “It doesn’t feel that special. It’s like the cherries that line up when you play the slots, and even the coins that come out, it’s not really why you play, but you still want them.” She turned to him then, brown eyes with a hint of gold crackle. “I don’t know why I held them. I risked a full minute for it, like an idiot.”

  “What do you want from them? What do you want from the diamonds?”

  He felt her open to him, come to him a little bit. “I want them to be enough. I want them to make me feel good, the way they make Macy and White Jenny feel. It’s how I’d always imagined they’d make me feel early on.”

  He kissed her on the cheek. A soft kiss. “But it’s not why you play the game. It’s the game itself you enjoy.”

  She looked away and that’s when he caught it—the nearness of truth. She simply shrugged.

  “What do you like about the game?” he asked.

  “Don’t.”

  He knew he should respect that, but something dark in him pressed on. He grabbed her chin, turned her face to him. Crossing the line now. He always knew when he was crossing the line. Knowing was never the problem. “Tell me.”

  She reached up and squeezed his lips shut with two fingers. “Stop it.” A little bit playful, a little bit not.

  He grabbed her wrist, removing her fingers.

  “Don’t.” She tried to pry his fingers off her wrist with her damaged left hand.

  He kept hold. “Tell me.”

  She looked surprised—at his strength, his need, it didn’t matter. Her secrets made a wall between them. Tearing at the wall wasn’t going to get her to drop it, but it was the only way he knew to feel close to her. He needed answers. He needed to know how to save her.

  “I’m done with this talk,” she said.

  “You like it because you disappear.”

  “Fine.”

  Too easy. Something more was there. “You don’t feel.” He waited for the giveaway in her voice, her eyes. A little waver.

  “This is stupid and boring,” she said.

  “You don’t feel ashamed in the shadows,” he guessed.

  Her gaze changed. A click. She pulled and he tightened his grip.

  “You feel ashamed.” Things fell into place the second he said it—how she didn’t like being on display or in front of cameras, why she preferred the shadows. “I made you feel even more that way. Flawed. Bad, ugly somehow.”

  “Like I care what you do,” she said hotly.

  The click. “I know I’m right.”

  She spoke through gritted teeth. “Want a medal?”

  “No.” He was furious at himself for making her feel like that. At the outrageousness that she could ever see herself as ugly and flawed. He was aware of her yanking. She struck at his bad shoulder, not quite at the wound, but that was coming next. “Fuck you, let go.”

  “No, fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you for trashing on yourself when you’re a warrior, and amazing and beautiful.”

  “Let me go.”

  He hauled her up, hauled them both up to the mirror with strength that surprised him. He held her wrists with one hand and her hair with the other. He shouldn’t be using that arm—he might tear his stitches, but he was beyond caring. This simply couldn’t be allowed to stand unchallenged. He said, “I didn’t go in there and fuck everything up to rescue somebody who isn’t beautiful and good and brave. That’s not how this works. You’re not seeing right.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Not until you see yourself right.” He gave her a shake. “Look at yourself. Look!” This was destructive, but he couldn’t stop it.

  “Let go,” she said, looking anywhere but the mirror.

  “No, you are going to stand here and look at yourself and see yourself how I see you if it takes the next ten hours.” She tried to wriggle out of his grip, but he wouldn’t let go. He’d make her see what he saw—he didn’t care that this was the wrong way. Her idea that she was flawed and ugly was wrong. He’d rip it down no matter what. He would pull them both down into the fire if he had to. “Look, dammit.”

  Her dark lashes were matted with tears. “I don’t want to.”

  “Come on, baby, you’re crazy. You’re perfect.” He tightened his grip on her hair. “I felt you in there like an ally. Like someone beautiful and brave and masterful. You don’t need to hide in the shadows. You’re better than that.”

  He pressed closer to her and she stiffene
d. “Stop this, Cole.”

  “Then look!” He was acting like a madman now. “Look at yourself. See yourself.”

  She’d look anywhere but the mirror. “Let me go.”

  “Just try—it’s so obvious.” His voice grated with desperation. He was putting her on display, exactly what she hated. He was crossing so many lines, he’d lost track.

  “I mean it.” She wriggled, then tried to stomp his foot. Unsuccessfully. “God, Cole!”

  “You won’t see yourself right.”

  “And you can’t make me. There are some things you can’t solve with your fucking equations.” She jerked and his shoulder blasted with pain. Stitches ripping. Like he cared.

  He redoubled his grip. “Try harder.”

  “You can’t force me to feel good.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “To see myself new. You can’t.”

  “But I want to.” He tightened his grip.

  The silence stretched long.

  His was the grip of a man holding a lifeline now.

  “I need you to see,” he said finally.

  “No, you need to stop pushing.”

  He tipped his forehead to her cheek. He was suddenly so tired, so fucking tired. “I can’t stop it,” he whispered.

  She softened, then, there in his arms. She whispered, “I know.”

  All the strength went out of him then. Her wrists pulled from his hands, her silky hair slid from his fingers.

  She was turning in his arms and he was letting her, like water, like beauty, as if in a dream. “I know, baby,” she said, facing him now, pressing her soft hands to either side of his face.

  No equation had ever told him anything real, he realized. Like why people had holes in them, or why the best woman he’d ever met could feel worthless or flawed or ugly. Or why two people would die chasing pleasure and leave their only son alone in the world.

  “You have to let some things and some people be fucked up,” she said.

  “How?” he said.

  “You just do,” she whispered.

  And she kissed him. Suddenly all the air and fight was out of him, and there was only her. “Don’t solve me. Just be with me,” she said.

  He didn’t know who or why or what she was, but he felt this softness come over him, like an epiphany. Things could be okay anyway. Nothing was under control. Nothing ever would be. He could love her anyway.