by Kay Camden
Rex drags me from room to room, person to person. Outside, I throw up three times on the way to his car. Inside it, he beats the steering wheel while I buckle up. After a few minutes on the road he pulls to the shoulder and gets out to scream, hands over his face, bent at the waist, falling to his knees out of sight.
My new language has gained vocabulary tonight. I was misguided before. I should’ve listened to Rex. Sometimes killing people isn’t just easy but necessary. Warranted. If that’s what has him so angered, then maybe I need to explain it to him again, either in his own words, or in the new ones that live inside me now.
I go for my harness release to get out and help him, but my fingers feel slow and unattached, my eyelids heavy. Sleep is a thundering tidal wave, and I drop to the ground so it can roll over me.
*
Swaying light above me. The pesky tickle of a breeze. I rub my eyes, feel the gritty soil against my skin. Lifting on my elbows, I blink awake, my watering eyes turning the dusky light sparkling and prism-like. The canopy of a giant oak drapes above me. I breathe in mint and look down, finding my pouch lying on my chest. I take two leaves and put them in my mouth.
Peach sky peeks through the trees to my left. To my right, deep cobalt. I suppose it could be dawn instead, so I sit up and check the tree trunks for moss to figure out which is east and which is west. Yep—it’s dawn. I scoot toward the trunk of the oak and find a resting spot in the deepest shadow against its curling exposed roots.
Rex has laid out a blanket. A small campfire burns several yards away. I take off my boots and let the air weave through my toes, trying to remember how we got here and where we’re going next. How long I slept. When I last ate. None of it seems to matter though.
A butterfly drifts into a shaft of sunlight. Beyond it, Rex, coming toward me in his underwear, his hair spiky and wet. When he gets close, I see that knife wound in his side has scabbed over, dark against his skin. He tosses me his phone.
There’s a great little creek through there. Highly recommend.
The body language is all wrong. Almost like we’re strangers.
It will make you feel better.
I type, I feel fine.
Really?
Fine enough. I get up and stretch.
He watches me until it gets creepy. Then he goes to his bag for shorts and a tee. I stoke the fire while he unloads grocery bags on the blanket. All this shit is organic. I found this grocery store with a food bar. It’s probably cold now, but we can heat it on the fire.
I’m not hungry, but he seems to have gone to a lot of trouble here. Fresh fruit, stir-fry veggies, flatbread, bean salad. Fancy carbonated fruit juice and that same brand of mineral water Aaron sent via drone a lifetime ago. I see he’s put place settings on the blanket with paper plates and plastic utensils, so I sit.
He holds out a take-out box. Chicken? Organic and humanely raised and fed with rainbows.
I shake my head, feeling like I should laugh but it never surfaces.
Okay more for me, then. He catches my eye, tentative, almost shy. Again like we’re strangers. He speaks again. It takes effort to break his gaze to check the screen. You have to eat though.
I load a plate and nibble, wishing I’d gone for a dip in the creek instead. Maybe by the time I was finished, I’d be ready to eat. But my stomach is twisting and growly so it doesn’t make much sense why I’d wait.
We’re taking a few days off to rest up, he says. We have one last house to do.
When I raise my eyes from the screen the expectation on his face is hard to miss. I’m supposed to guess something, but how? He’s been keeping track of all the households on Aaron’s list. I haven’t seen it or cared to see it for a long time.
And I wonder what he’s planning. Why his body language is so off. Did he drag me all over the country only to walk me straight into a trap at the end?
My house, he says, deadpan. Seeing him so withdrawn has me second-guessing every promise we’ve made. Every hard-earned understanding. Every kiss.
I set down my plate to type back to him, but there’s nothing to say. He’s right. We can’t skip the most important house in the family. Aaron had no need to put it on the list—Rex and I know where it is, and we should’ve included it. It feels like a betrayal, though, not knowing we’d have to go back there this whole time. Not expecting it or planning for it. He could’ve at least mentioned it once. But can I blame him for not mentioning something I should’ve been prepping for myself?
He reaches for my shoulder. Sloane.
I sign, What? Because why is he being so weird? Or maybe I should ask, why am I?
His spoken response looks like an unfinished sentence; he withdraws his fingers, looking aside like he’s just remembered something. We both reach for the phone, but I get it faster.
On the screen: You can trus—
He attempts a grab but I hold the phone out of his reach. He needs to finish because that sentence cut off like that is a damning contradiction of itself. This time he holds out his hand. I place the phone in it. He checks the screen. Sees how much of the sentence I got. Looks up at me. You can.
I fingerspell, I can what? That’s a challenge and he knows it. Because I have a hunch that there’s evil in him I never removed. It’s too integrated, too untouchable. If I removed it all, there would be no Rex Moore left. All this talk of trust and allegiance and teamwork has been one big lie to get us through what we needed to do. I’ve lost too much of myself to know if the lie was on both sides or just his. If he was this much of a liar the whole time and I’m finally clued in to it. Or if all the faking it has finally gotten to him, made him think there’s something here that isn’t.
He sets his phone on the blanket. Then he’s tugging me up by the arms, towing me behind him into the trees. I stumble along, my legs too short to match his strides, my bare feet no match against his boot-covered ones. Distantly I wonder if my old self would’ve fought him because right now I’m too tired to even try. He must realize that too; he squats, heaving me onto his back.
Water twinkles through the underbrush ahead. Seeing it before sensing it convinces me how far gone my old self is, how dulled my earth magic, and how apathetic I’ve become. I smell the freshness of the water still in his hair against my cheek. It takes me straight home to the bank of my river, the river I love, the river I forgot.
Rex lets me down beside the creek. I turn away, blinded by its collection of dazzling sunlight. Its image remains in my head—clear water, swift current, tiny fish darting all around. The opposite bank is a swim away, at least forty feet. This isn’t a creek but a small river. Rex pulls me forward. I feel the shade cover me like a blanket on my skin, a refuge. I open my eyes. He’s raising his eyebrows, Better? I take in the bliss of thick canopy above, blocking the sun’s rays.
He grips my shirt, lifting it over my head and off without warning. The waistband of my shorts, tugged down to the ground. His own shirt over his head. Shorts, down, kicked off. He turns, waving me toward the water, and I see what an innocent thing that was. How platonic. Well good, that’s good—I think? But he’s caught on to my hesitation because now he’s looking deeper, taking a step back to look me over in my stretchy bra and undies. Which causes me to check him out in his tight boxers. His eyes return to mine, asking, Keep going?
I shrug. A dare. He wants to be bold; well, I’d like to see how bold he can be.
He rubs a hand over his smiling mouth as he glances away. An act of cover that reminds me so much of the shy Rex I know that I can’t stop my own smile from creeping up. I don’t wipe it away though. I let him see it. It isn’t a swim in the creek that’s going to make me feel better, it’s him. It’s already him.
He’s fighting the same fight I am: to keep my eyes on his and not let them travel to body parts wrapped only in underwear. To end the torture, I offer him my hand. He takes it so cautiously I’m t
empted to promise him I won’t bite. Not anymore, anyway.
We wade in and dunk down. Summer-warmed water churns with the colder current, swirling around me. With his chin dipping into the water, he watches me, curious and attentive. Light reflecting from the water highlights the golden hue in the shadow of stubble on his jaw. I send a splash toward him. He splashes back, harder. A giggle bubbles up into my throat as I wipe my eyes; he snags my arms, hauling me against him. His lips move against my ear, out of sight and impossible to read, and that’s how he wants it. A tender kiss on the cheek seals his voiced secret, then he pulls back, his face turned away like he’s just become embarrassed by that impulse and afraid of my reaction.
To avoid having to explain what he just said, he pushes away into faster current and submerges. I’m filled with lead. If I go under I’ll never be able to overcome its weight and I’ll drown. Elements that used to comfort and revive me are now a danger. I’m so out of tune I don’t know how to preserve what’s me while harboring this mass I’ve collected. It’s a power source for black magic, not earth magic. And if I draw upon it for the little black magic I know, I’m afraid it will be too much for me to handle.
Rex pops up downstream in deeper, stiller water, beckoning me with a hand. I imagine deep sea creatures and sharp-toothed piranhas awaiting my flesh. For the first time in my life, nature sends a shiver down my spine, and the black magic roars inside me in combat. I’m made of two kinds of magic. There’s no reason they’d be in opposition. But I’ll never be able to join them with this mass of hate filling every space inside me, damming the flow between them.
Forget this crap. I refuse to be afraid of a creek. I kick off toward the faster current, riding it until the water flattens out and I lose the bed of rock below my feet. Rex swims to meet me. He goes upright, feet planted, but water laps at his mouth which means it’s too deep for me. I aim for the shore, but he catches my foot and hauls me back, against him.
My skin finds the slippery warmth of his. It’s sinfully perfect how our bodies align. In his arms my lead-filled body becomes weightless. I hug him, bury my face against his neck. We become the water. We sway with subtle current, our warm blood mixing with its cool depths. His heartbeat joins mine, bringing with it the rhythm of the elements so present I can’t believe I’d missed them before. I sense a faraway rain trickling in on the breeze, the pull of the sun reigning in the eastern sky. The mighty trees, roots dipping into the water on the bank. The animals basking in the morning all around. I reach with all I have, drawing it all together and in, crushing and compacting that dark hate down into itself, into a more manageable size.
Rex shudders in my arms. Our connected heartbeats falter; I lose the rhythm that was guiding me. I lift my head to look at him. He’s saying my name, apologizing. One arm has stretched into the water to stabilize us, the other goes around my waist to keep me from drifting away.
I take a breath and go under. The distance to the shore doubles and triples as I imagine how condensed and heavy that mass of hate must be. I break the surface, gasping for air. That mass isn’t a tangible thing though. It has no weight. It can’t hurt me here. So I take another breath and swim until I hit the slope of the bank and drag myself out of the water.
He’s still in the middle of the creek watching me. He should come; I want him to come. I don’t want to sit here alone. And my eye contact must be the invitation he needs because he crosses the water and bursts out beside me. Feel better?
I guess he’s choosing to ignore that strange discord that overcame us. Or maybe he didn’t feel it? And from the way he’s looking at me, I can tell he doesn’t need an answer. He already knows. He leans in to wipe a drip of water off my chin, a move designed to get him in kiss vicinity. It would be the perfect way to thank him for what he just did. So I don’t understand why I stand up instead.
He rubs a hard hand over his head. That old habit—too rough, painful to watch. Almost as painful as what it feels like to see him rejected. I see him shutting down, walling up—an expert reaction produced by much practice. Rejection must be a common thing for him, something he knows well. That new language is speaking to me though, saying it’s okay, it’s what he deserves. He’s a Moore. He’s not worth it.
Chapter 28
Rex
Night moves in like an army. The day’s heat retreats. Sloane teaches me how to warm the earth, a skill that comes so naturally I wonder if Aaron taught me long ago and I forgot. We line up together on our heated pad of earth under the only break in the trees, a high-def vid of stars versus wispy clouds and a random flapping, dipping bat on its way to somewhere important.
Every inch of my skin burns with the urge to kiss her, but she’s been so distant I’m pretty sure she’s come to her senses and started hating me like everyone eventually does. What we’ve been doing isn’t rebellion. It’s a mistake.
I use that thought to extinguish the fire all over me. Infatuation with each other will only ruin what we need to achieve. Power for me, death for her. My family under new rule, her family obliterated. Expected and easy, the natural end to this war. There will never be peace between our families no matter how much hate she steals. If it’s removed from my side, it will survive on her side. Hate breeds hate. Which is why her side must die once we’re finished with mine. One more house to hit and we’re there.
*
My heart punches me awake. The creeping footsteps in my dream have slipped into the waking world around me. I stiffen, blending with the shadow, trying to separate one footfall from the next and count how many surround us. Five? No—ten. Completely doable. It’d be much slicker with my .45, but I’m pretty sure I left it in the car. I slide a hand on the ground toward Sloane and find bare ground. I’m on my feet then, unable to stop myself.
The embers of our fire glow orange a short distance away. On the ground beside it a person—a girl—hugging her knees. Of course she hasn’t heard what I heard. They’ve stopped moving in because I got up. They want to see what I’ll do before they attack.
I grab her, haul her up. A red sunburst pulses in my eyes—she’s clocked me so hard I’ve eaten my own lip. Don’t hit back, Rex. I halt the retaliation before it reaches her even though she’s dodged and grabbed me by the shirt. I turn my head to spit blood. Then I grab her back, yanking her into my face to whisper, “They’re here.”
She pushes against me for space, but she’s not strong enough. A rapid succession of kicks to my knee, my ankle—I avoid them all. It’s work though, making my heart pound harder, my blood soak my chin and shirt. Her regretful gaze lands on the mess she’s made of my mouth, but god we have no time. We have to get out of here.
“Sloane, we have to go!” The blood and saliva are so thick in my mouth I can barely get the words out. She ducks and twists—one moment my death grip on her solid, the next, all I have is air. She’s walking in a small circle, eyes leveled and wide like a cat hunting at night. Those black magic eyes will see what I can hear, and then we can infiltrate the woods and take them down one by one.
When she turns to me she’s relaxed. She does the sign for all good.
No, not all good. I spin her body to face the last set of footsteps I heard. Poke a finger in their direction. Too late I realize what a bad move it is to show them we know where they are while I’m being pricked by ten sets of eyes. I haul her behind a tree trunk, push her down against it and block her in.
She presses her finger against my forehead until I look at her. When I do, she taps my skin in the same spot, her expression so dull it gives no clues to what she’s trying to tell me. All at once I’m reminded of the vivid thoughts that used to display so clearly on her face, and their new absence. Missing temporarily? Or zapped forever?
Because I’m not reacting, she’s taken my arm, writing, It’s all in your head.
The sky falls. Shadows crumble around us. I turn around and take in the scene with enlightened eyes and fres
h ears. A sleeping forest. A soft breeze creaking through the underbrush like footfalls on a path. My own panicked gasps now slowing because of Sloane’s hand on my back.
I’m sorry, she signs when I look at her. She brings fingers to my lips, admires the blood she comes away with. The idea must spring into her mind as it does in mine, and I could stop her but I don’t. She kisses me, her clean lips against my swollen bloody ones, seeking the cuts she caused, healing them. This girl is twisted, a queen of gore. She’s as messed-up as me. The thought is so sweet it hurts my teeth. I can’t help but love her. It’s like she was made just for me.
*
I wake a second time to a scream. Grope for Sloane’s body beside me—gone again. It’s a dream, a nightmare. Another freak-out. I dig in my pockets for my pills. Find a car key, bottle of black magic, a random bullet. Move down a set and find gum, a pocketknife, more bullets. Damn it all, I need my pills—there, in the left cargo. I shake one into my hand. A shriek unloads above me; I duck, cover my head. Not fast enough to avoid a set of razors tearing through the shirt on my back which feels too real to be a nightmare. The itchy sting of torn skin. The weep of blood. I reach, see the blood on my hand.
Not real, Rex. Figure your shit out.
I bend until my forehead hits earth. Press palms hard and reach for the elements like Sloane taught me. My view pulls up, spins around, circling like a bird above, flapping wings in my periphery. I look up, directly into the yellow eyes of an owl in flight above me. It shrieks and swoops. Not an attack. An alarm.
This is real.
Again I hear the scream that woke me. A sound unlike any I’ve ever heard, it’s so guttural and completely unaware of itself. Not a cry for help but a warning to run. I know whose it is, and I’m running between the trees toward it. Upright bodies of men move in the shadows ahead, shoulder to shoulder, a united front, separating me from her. I grab the low branch of a nearby tree and climb, trying to determine if it’s real strength or dream strength to decide if any of this is real. I ease out on a branch and leap before it breaks, swinging into a new tree. Below me I can now see Sloane’s fighting frame, restrained by several men. Behind her, a dozen more. There’s a hood over her head, covering her face so she’s not only deaf but also blind. One of her arms is held behind her while some guy positions a steel bucket filled to the brim with a dark liquid that shines in the night. Because of what I’ve been dealing with lately, I think blood. But no, it’s worse. It’s what we use to block magic in our rivals. To torture them.