by Kay Camden
The symbol I drew in Rex’s blood stands for unity in black magic. Remembering that only proves the truth of what my dad said. Using it did save my life, but right now it’s enabling a danger that’s about to kill me. Rex is using the connection I opened to find me, and I don’t know how to turn it off.
Never do unless you can undo. It’s an important rule of magic. Is it okay to break this rule in a life or death situation? Yes, but everything in magic has consequences. Knowing how to deal with this one would be convenient right about now.
Ahead, the doe is flipping her white tail at me. No animal has ever betrayed me. Trust is a given, even when it’s a pack of attack Dobermans trained in service to the Moores. Calling upon my moths would only prove my distrust of the doe, and maybe I’m stupid, but I can’t do it. It’s a path I don’t want to take.
I’m sorry, Dad. I’m here on the Moores’ land, and I still can’t stop being ‘so damn optimistic.’
I catch up. She passes through the final line of trees and turns to wait for me. Beyond her sits a road, banked a few feet off the ground. A car perched on top. Rex leaning against it, hands tucked casually under opposite biceps. Waiting.
He ducks down to peer into the darkness of the woods where the doe exited. Her eyes glimmer at me as she turns, reassuring. But I’m already crouching, then backing away, slow as a sneaky cat. One step. Now two. How far do I need to get away before I can run? How deeply into the woods does his sight penetrate? I ease branches aside so their leaves don’t catch any moonlight. As soon as I can’t see him anymore he won’t be able to see me. One more step and—
He straightens, his eyes locking right onto me. I freeze. He leaps off the embankment and runs straight for me as lithe and swift as a deer.
I dart to the side, shoving through the branches of a young pine that scratch my face and arms. Coming through blind I stumble over a fallen log, banging a shin before I catch myself and launch over it. He had to have heard that. I risk a glance over my shoulder and see nothing but the silvery needles of the pine jiggling from my passage, the dark streak of a fallen log like a tear in the landscape.
I turn and run. I don’t get far.
He comes in from the side, first just a blur of human-shaped gray, then a lighter gray arm whipping out. I can do nothing but brace for the landing as we smack together and roll. He’s turned into a wrapper around me, absorbing so much impact the only collision I feel is my frame against his. Followed by more detail—my hip against his pelvis, my cheek against his arm.
And a couple additions once we find rest: my knuckles smashing into his sternum, my elbow crashing into his chin.
He’s choking for air, so I clock him again in the sternum and twist away, all at once realizing he’s got a fist tangled in my hair and he isn’t letting go. I wind up to rabbit-kick him in the previously dislocated knee, decide that would be mean, and aim for the groin instead.
I’m glad I don’t have balls because the position he’s contorted into is painful to watch. The way he’s gone into the fetal position but still hasn’t released my hair shows real grit for a rich, spoiled jerk. I find his hand and start prying fingers but they’re locked like a seized muscle, so I enclose his hand in both of mine and perform an alligator death roll, twisting his arm until he’s forced to let go.
One last minute grab and he’s got me by the wrist, a yank and I’m against him. Arm around my throat, legs constricting mine. Interesting he’d expose the groin again so quickly. I need to kick harder next time.
This is all going totally déjà vu now. All I need to do is bite him again and we can repeat the whole performance. We need to stop doing this. Or maybe continue until one of us wins and can go home. His breath is hot on my ear, words released like jabs he can’t deliver with a fist due to how he’s holding me. He must be telling me off. Such a shame I can’t hear it.
A different kind of language alights over me. My moths are here in the branches above. They’re calling me off. Telling me to relax, there’s no danger here.
Do you not see this? I shoot back.
My head is going light. I’m panting too hard, and Rex is holding too tight on lungs that need to fill. I feel my blood rushing but it’s pained, struggling. My pulse goes into my head, slow and thick. Flecks of black float upon my vision of the gray forest, swimming too close to be outside of me. I struggle against him—a primitive urge I can’t control. I need to breathe. The flecks of black are turning purple. Plum. Red. I choke.
Rex loosens an inch. Instead of fighting back, I breathe. I drag air in, gulp it down. He loosens more. Without my fight it feels like an embrace. He unwinds his legs from mine. His arms remain. The breath on my ear is hot once more but the words have lost their percussive vulgarity. They’re soft now, almost conversational.
I try to pull away and he allows it, one arm fully releasing, tentative. A test.
We untangle and sit up together. His chest heaves in rhythm with mine. All that joins us are his remaining fingers clamping down on my forearm. Not even hard. I raise a hand to his face. In his night-darkened eyes, I see he wants to flinch, but he doesn’t. I relish that for a second because it proves I didn’t lose here. He knows I could attack him right now. This is only over because I say it is. I smear away the part of the symbol recreated on his forehead not already washed away by his sweat. He watches my face as I do it, aware I know what he did because of how he lifts his chin as if to say, yeah, what of it? Caught, yet unashamed.
So I see co-opting black magic from a Bevan isn’t beneath him. Good to know. I can’t decide if it’s a step in the right direction or seriously twisted.
I give a pointed look at his hand still clamping my arm.
He shakes his head. Don’t even think about it, is what that head shake says. His eyes say, I wish I could let you go.
What he actually says is, Stop.
Three completely different meanings, all seemingly genuine, all at battle with one another. He says it again: Stop.
Really? I fingerspell. You chase me, then tackle me, and you want me to stop? It takes forever to spell out but the action of it brings release to the coiled fight mechanism and buildup of tension that comes from not being able to sign with any human being for days.
I twist my arm and pull. He releases it, grabbing the other one with his empty hand. He’s changed his clothes. Soldier boy is actually wearing camo now—digital camo, and only the pants but still. The black T-shirt is clean too. Boots look the same. So he either had extra clothes in that car or he went back to the house. Probably got the car from the house anyway, so either way he went back. He’s talked to his family and they sent him back out here to retrieve me.
He’s produced a phone he’s talking into. Then he puts the screen up to my face.
I’m getting out of here and you’re coming with.
I laugh, out loud this time, unrestrained. He startles, fumbling the phone, and in his effort to catch it before it hits the ground my arm is freed. I push off, making it half a step before my ankle sticks in the trap of his grasp. We’re both stretched on the ground now, neither one of us making any move because the fatigue must’ve just hit him as it hit me. All adrenaline and endorphins depleted. Too many calories missed. And tired, so tired. Tired of all of this.
Rolling onto my back on the ground, I let him keep my ankle. The moon has reached its pinnacle, suffusing the tree branches with silver set off by inky black shadow. There’s a perfect tunnel in the canopy above me, revealing the edge of moon and purple-gray wisps of clouds. An object shifts over my view, so close I have to blink to focus.
His phone again. They’re hunting both of us right now. It only makes sense to stay together. And if we don’t move now, we’re dead. Ask your stupid deer if you don’t believe me.
As if on cue, the doe dips her head next to me, snorting a breath that stirs my bangs. I reach for a stroke on her velvet nose, but I pull
back at the last second. She betrayed me. She is on their side. And just as I think it, her spirit brushes against my mind, beckoning, reassuring, pushing me to move, to go. I’ve never had my trust broken by an animal. That’s a human game, or has been up until now. Something is crumbling inside me and there’s no way to brace against it. Yes, it’s stupid to lay a blanket of trust over all woodland creatures including those I’ve never met. Yes, I’m that naïve to be so bothered to find out some aren’t on my side.
All the things my ancestors have done to ensure this moment and I can’t even follow through with it. I bang my head on the ground, hoping for some idea to spring loose. For some moment of unhinged instinct to rise and help me kill the leader of my enemies, to bring the end to the ones who murdered so many of my people. All I come away with is a damning truth: they made a mistake in choosing me.
Rex has released my ankle and now stands above me, one hand offered to help me up. He’s eaten the wrong mushrooms. There’s no way I’m going anywhere with a Moore sociopath. So I get up on my own and brush myself off, hoping he can read that in my face because I’m in no mood to play charades. The doe stands beside him in visible proof of the side she’s chosen. I ache to call my moths, the bats, birds, or the fox, just to confirm I still have allies here. There’s a chance they won’t come. Or they will come, but line up next to him. I can’t bear it, not when I’m so tired already and the tears lurk so close behind my eyes.
Being safe in the woods was the one thing I could always count on. Well, no more. And for once I truly feel like I’ve stepped foot on foreign ground. Inside the Moores’ car and in their house was enemy territory, but as soon as my boots landed on earth outside it I was home, and there was hope for survival. If the animals aren’t on my side here, then I’m truly on my own.
Rex hooks a finger in the direction he wants me to walk. I give him my best eat-dirt glower. He jumps in front of me as I step away. With another step I brush past him; he gives me a shove backward. I sense the suppression of power in it—he knew I was off balance and could’ve knocked me flat on my butt. Only he didn’t.
He says something I miss until I see the end: with me.
I sign, I’m going nowhere with you, so back off. I know he won’t get it but it feels good to be signing again.
With how he drops his chin and takes a deep breath in, it’s almost like he understood me. Another slow breath—he’s coming to terms with something. Then his eyes are back on mine and something in them is turning corrupt. It’s so easy to forget the first Rex Moore I saw, the one who fed that dark cloud with hate so heated it rose off him like a toxic gas. He’s back now, and that new, other magic jerks awake inside me. As a natural defense? Or because it’s being powered? Could it be both?
Rex pulls a pistol and aims it at me.
Five different moves to disarm an opponent light up in my brain. I act on none of them. The doe is too close, too much at risk if the trigger gets pulled in the scuffle. Rex twirls his finger: turn around. I do, feeling the muzzle against my spine, its slight pressure turning my whole back creepy-crawly.
He steers me back to that car on the road and opens the passenger door while the gun is still jabbed into my back. I start to get inside, but he catches my arm instead, turning to stare down the strip of pavement where it disappears around a bend. I see a curse on his lips. Then he’s tossing the pistol into the car and slamming the door with me still on the outside. Such a rapid change in plan leaves me stuck with a hard decision—I know I could run and get away with him so preoccupied, but is that a good idea?
Now he’s wrenched a huge jug of water from the trunk. He pops the cap and dumps it over the car. The force of water drawing out of the small neck rocks the jug on his shoulder with such force he has to hold tight. Then it’s empty and he’s dragging me down the embankment to the woods. We go flat on the ground together, him of his own volition, me under the weight of his heavy arm. For some reason I resent it more than that pistol jabbed into my back.
Light sweeps the weeds around us, and we both duck. I swivel my head to check his expression and find him turning his face toward me at the same time. All I read is vigilance—furrowed brow, alert eyes, and that cocked-ear, distracted look hearing people get when they’re intent on listening. Rex Moore has entered soldier mode. I raise my head to peek through my bangs and see two cars speed past on an empty road. Wait—empty? His car—
His phone pops in front of my face. See? That was them. Get it now?
I snatch the phone and write back: And your car?
He trades soldier mode for a grin so evil I scoot back a few inches. Taking the phone, he responds, Water effect. Child’s play.
I follow his lead when he stands, wishing I had my leggings. The heat has eased enough to allow the breeze to actually do something, and now my shirt-dress is damp from our dive into hiding. And my legs itch, scratched up by the grass. It doesn’t matter though. Wherever Rex got his change of clothes isn’t somewhere I’m interested in going. The opposite direction though? Yes, please.
And I’m free to go wherever I want now that he’s unarmed. Oh wait, spoke too soon. Pretty sure that’s a boot knife he’s going for right now. He doesn’t unsheathe it though, he only lifts his pant leg so I can see the threat.
How do you know I haven’t decided to go with you? I sign. His car will be a bit faster than my legs if the Moores catch my scent. Plus, invisible. Hard to beat that.
My poise turns inside out when I realize how long he’s been watching me. In the flash of that realization, I’m too hot in my skin even though I’ve cooled in the breeze. I try to rub my suddenly sweaty palms on my pants but find the damp bottom of my shirt instead. Stuck in a car with a Moore was a nightmare the first time. Any enclosed space with any new person is enough of a trial. Coping with social anxiety seems so stupidly easy out of the moment, but when this tension rises from nowhere, I forget how to think. All strategies are drowned. Steady ground is out of reach. I flap and flail and try to breathe. Yes, breathe. That’s all there is to do. Focus on that, not the prickly heat of my skin. Not the spotlight of his gaze. Turn away. Fill my lungs. Feel the ground beneath my boots.
I gather the hair on the crown of my head and fasten it with the band. Distraction helps. Anything to get the attention off me even if it’s still on me due to something I’m doing. Movement is good. Doing anything is good. The rest of my hair blows against my shoulders in a harsher gust of wind. The elements sense my unease and are trying to help. Prickles have turned into gooseflesh, and I’m starting to feel normal again, which always brings a pang of self-disgust. I’m fifteen years old and I’ve got the stage fright of a child.
Cast it away. It serves no good. If only I could obey Aunt Tara’s words like she does. I could say them a million times, and even though I believe them, the disgust is still there like anxiety’s sidekick. They work together to empower one another. Knowing this doesn’t help me fight it. It just builds on more disgust each time I fail to defeat such an obvious and predictable team.
When I turn back around, Rex doesn’t seem at all changed by my crisis. He’s rotating his shoulder and wincing until he spots me looking at him. Then he’s just rotating, face cleared of the wince. I gloat anyway because that’s what he was trying to prevent. That sore shoulder is my doing, and he needs to be reminded of that.
Rex extends a hand that says, after you, and I visualize my options. Banking on his desire to escape his family as truth, I could go with him and deal with my anxiety and the unknown destination of his choosing, safe from all Moores but him. Or I could flee now, on foot, with no change of clothes and a chill building in the air, surviving for who knows how many more days in the forest, scavenging food, water, and shelter while the Moores hunt me. Option one keeps me close to the one I’m supposed to kill, option two strands me far away.
A decision so easy it answers itself.
I walk to his car. Its cloak
has started to show—where the magic has worn off it shimmers, part white car body, part shadow. As we near it Rex taps my shoulder, and I see Irish on his lips. The true image of the car blinks in front of my eyes. Soap-bar-white with electric-green racecar stripes outlined in black, it looks like one of Marcas’ toys. Giant spoiler, big wheels in that same wild green, R5 splashed diagonally across the hood. A small car with a huge ego.
The visual mutes into real life, all colors turned to varying grays in the light of the moon. Now that he’s given me its true image, I can see it to get inside it. I stop in the open door to enjoy one last moment of calm before I enter my cell. With cellmate Rex Moore. Don’t think. Just get in.
Thick metal bars intersect in the door opening. I step over and in—this isn’t a car, it’s an amusement ride. The seat is more like a cup than a seat. We’re packed so close his arm brushes mine as he buckles himself into the racecar seat harness. The surprise contact makes him jerk away. I manage to get my harness going the right way but can’t figure out how it all clicks together. He looks over like he’s about to help, and I figure it out real fast. He starts the car and my seat turns into a massage chair. The vibration is so thick I can feel a quiver in the air. It’s not the muscular chugging of my dad’s car but a different type of power. Higher, more hyper. We’re not sitting in a car, we’re strapped to the back of a hummingbird. I can’t decide if it’s the type of motor that’s powered by gasoline, electricity, or rocket fuel, but from the way we launch from a stop, we’re going to fly, not drive.
Then we’re rolling down the road, but not quite. It’s more like a boxing match. Our tires are beating the road and the road is beating back. And even though I’m cradled by a cushioned seat, it feels more like I’m bolted to the frame of the car, taking each bump along with it. The gearshift sticks up high, a fitting setup for the quick shifts that don’t seem to have a pattern like my dad’s car does. I elbow Rex hard. This car is virtually unsafe, and the way he’s driving it makes it unfit for human passengers.