This news did not surprise the King, and he did not dwell on it. There remained other matters that needed his attention. “Fine,” he said. “I want the four of you to round up the Warriors here, all of them. Tell them I will be addressing them shortly, and speak to no one about what has happened. After that, bring me every person who has any connection to the Sun Warrior and her sister.”
The Warriors bowed low and left him to his thoughts.
A smile found the King’s face. He would give his people some examples, examples of what happened to traitors.
Alexa
Kayden slammed the van door shut, cutting off my sight of what was inside. “Shit,” he said.
I barely heard him. Breaking free of Tommy’s grasp, I rushed forward, groping for the door handle. Kayden caught me around the waist, halting my progress. I almost punched him, but caught myself. Instead, I shoved him away and took off across the parking lot, running into the field of tall grass, smashing through it and leaving a stomped path in my wake.
Now I did scream. “Nelly!”
No answer. I ran further still, panic taking over my body, my head whipping from side to side. She couldn’t have gone far. We’d only left her for a moment. “Nelly!” I called again, and was answered again with silence.
I raced off in the opposite direction, still calling for my sister, my voice cracking and my throat aching. My wrists throbbed at the ends of my hands, and my heart thudded so fiercely that it seemed to be vibrating rather than beating. I ended up back in the parking lot, where the others still stood, faces pulled tight with worry. Patterson slumped against Gavin with his head in his hands. Queen Camillia was crying, saying her niece’s name over and over again, and for a moment, this gave me pause. I came to a halt near them, staring at the closed van door and trying to pretend that a scene out of a horror story didn’t wait inside. I glanced around the parking lot. It was still too early in the morning for anyone but a few truck drivers to be out. Luckily for us, truck drivers are experts at minding their own business.
The world spun around me, and I swayed on my feet. Was this how my life was always going to be? Full of dead bodies and slaps in the face? Could I really have just gotten back my Mother and my sister, just to lose them both within a matter of hours? Slowly, I began to realize that this was exactly what had happened. My Mother was dead. My sister was missing. And more than likely her hands were painted an ugly red. Along with everything else that I’d just learned, these things seemed to be the straw that broke my back, or rather my mind, as it couldn’t seem to be able to wrap itself around a single thing. Now I didn’t feel empty. I just felt broken.
What are we going to do now, Warrior?
“I’m open to suggestions, Monster. All I feel like doing is crawling into a hole and dying.”
Well, now that wouldn’t be very productive. We’ve got the King’s hunting party on our heels, two bodies in the back of our van, and a sister who has gone bat-shit crazy.
“Thank you for that helpful rundown.”
No one seemed able to move. As I watched the tears rolling down Queen Camillia’s face, saw the faraway heartsick shock in Patterson’s eyes, remembering that once upon a time he and my Mother had dated, a stab of guilt went through me. I should be crying, too. I’d just lost my Mother. And yet my eyes were wide and dry, my mind in too much shock to process anything concrete, as if waiting to wake-up from some terrible nightmare.
When Kayden spoke, we all jumped a little in surprise. “Tommy, go back into the station and buy some blankets and as many wet wipes as you can find. Make sure to get a plastic bag. Go.”
Tommy cast a nervous glance toward me before loping off. Kayden turned to Soraya and Catherine. “You two go to the Mercedes. Camillia, Patterson, go with them and start the car. We need to get out of here. Gavin, you drive the van. The rest of us will have to…clean up on the road.”
Listening to Kayden’s orders seemed to snap me back to reality, and my stomach twisted when I saw everyone move to do as they were told. “Wait,” I said, shaking my head. “We can’t leave. I have to find Nelly. She’s got to be around here somewhere. We have to find her.”
Kayden regarded me carefully. “Alexa, we have to…we can’t stay here. The police could be on their way already with the way you were tearing around screaming your sister’s name.”
My fist flew out on its own and slammed into Kayden’s chest. He skidded backward several feet and would have fallen to the pavement if Gavin hadn’t caught him. I strode up to face him as he righted himself, hardly aware of what I was doing, and my voice came out in a growl. I gripped him by his shirtfront, and pain flared again in my wrists. I ignored it. Kayden stared down at me, his hand spread out over the spot where I had hit him on his wide chest, his golden eyes unreadable.
“I am not leaving here without my sister,” I said. “Go, if you want to. I won’t leave Nelly.” Some part of me knew that I was taking out my anger and hurt on the wrong person, but I couldn’t seem to care. All I knew was that I was upset, and that meant I was looking for a fight. It didn’t matter who it was with.
Tommy returned with the things he’d been sent to get, but stopped when he saw me. “I’ll stay with you and look for her, Alexa,” he said, earning a glare from Kayden, which he ignored.
I nodded once, still seeing red around the edges of my vision. At least someone here was seeing reason. I shot a look at Kayden that I hoped conveyed how betrayed I felt. He knew better than anyone what Nelly meant to me. How could he expect me to leave her?
Because he’s right, Warrior. We can’t stay here.
“When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it. And I didn’t ask, so shut the hell up already!”
For once, my Monster listened.
“Warrior,” Kayden said, his deep voice tight. “Can I talk to you?”
No, I thought, but my steam was running out, and now I felt like crying again. I seemed to be swinging from emotion to emotion like a monkey in a tree. I nodded curtly at Kayden, and stalked off around the other side of the van. I heard Kayden give the others orders to get into the van and start cleaning, to use the wet wipes to clear the blood, the blankets to cover the bodies, and my stomach lurched. I bent forward, bile spewing from my mouth and making my eyes water. When I had wretched it all out, I leaned against the side of the van and rubbed my eyes dry on my forearm. I had to pull it together.
Kayden stood watching me for what seemed to be a long time, saying nothing. I surprised us both by speaking first. “I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly too embarrassed to look at him. “I shouldn’t have hit you. I’m sorry.” My voice was small, defeated.
Kayden came forward, but stopped short before touching me. I heard him sigh, watched his wide chest rise and fall, and saw that he was tired, too. He had taken a bullet back at Dangeon, and had not been allowed to heal. Now a little bit of blood bloomed through the gray of his t-shirt where I’d punched him. I’d forgotten about his injury. Now I felt even worse.
“Oh, Kayden,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes and spilling over. Now he opened his strong arms to me, and I fell into them. “I’m sorry. I forgot you were hurt. I’m so sorry.”
I felt Kayden’s shoulders rise in a shrug. “Don’t be,” he whispered, and it was so unexpected that I looked up at him, taking in the perfect lines of his face. His golden gaze was gentle. “You owed me one anyway,” he continued. “Besides, I’m a big boy, built for wear and tear. I can take whatever you can dish out, Warrior.”
This only made me cry harder. I had never felt so shitty about myself.
“Shh,” Kayden said. “Man-up, remember. I promise you we will find your sister. But you know that we have to go now, Warrior.”
“But I can’t leave her. What if she gets hurt? What if the Lamias find her? Or worse, what if the King does?”
It was my Monster who answered me, coming forward and stepping up to the plate with a little reason when I myself was obviously too messed up to manage.
Nell
y isn’t the one you should be worried about, Warrior. It’s everyone else who is in danger now. Our little sister will have no trouble looking after herself. The same way you and I have no trouble looking after ourselves.
“Alexa, are you listening?” Kayden asked.
I pulled back from him, nodded. “Yes,” I said, sniffing up the last of my tears. “We can go.”
He walked me over to the other side of the van, and I hoped that the others had covered up my Mother’s body, because I wasn’t sure if I could bear to look at it. Not because of obvious reasons, but because it was hard proof for what my Monster had just voiced, for the thought that I had refused to let permeate my head. Now that it had, it was as clear as day, as ugly as malformation. All signs pointed one way, and there was no way to deny it.
Nelly had murdered Bethany, which I couldn’t care less about. The girl had been a snitch; chances were I would have killed her myself if given the opportunity. But, Nelly had also killed our Mother, and that was just unfathomable.
True monsters use no discretion, Warrior. Perhaps you ought to think about renaming me.
I offered no response to the voice in my head. There was too much else weighing down my mind at the moment. Somehow, in one dark morning, I had gone from trying to save my sister from the world, to trying to save the world from my sister.
And it was a task I wasn’t sure I could handle, a mountain I wasn’t sure I could climb.
Nelly
It was too bright. I could feel the light of the day burning my eyes, so I closed them, still moving very quickly, almost as if I were flying. And it was wonderful, like children’s giggles and cozy places and Thanksgiving dinner. I felt stronger than I could ever remember feeling. And I ran and ran. Some distant, barely existent voice inside of me begged me to take pause and remember what I was running from, but I couldn’t find the mind to listen to it. There was too much going on around me. I was passing by and smelling and seeing so many souls all at once, and it was like jogging past a buffet line filled with an endless assortment of food, skimming my fingers along the edges of the endless table.
But, it was still too damn bright.
Instinctively, like looking for the nearest restroom when you feel the urge to go, I began scanning the land all around me for someplace to escape that dreadful light. I could feel it beaming down on me in waves, suffocating me, touching my skin unpleasantly, as if I were sitting too near a high-powered heater. I saw my destination in the distance, or felt it, rather, and I knew where I needed to go.
Wrong, that faraway voice whispered.
I didn’t slow my speed, but I wondered what that meant. What was wrong? As far as I could see, everything was right, just as it should be. Despite the fact that my eyes were closed, it was as if a blindfold had been removed from my inner eye, and now I could truly see things the way they were meant to be seen. I got the meaning of it all. Yeah.
And I was hungry.
But I had reached my destination, faster than was humanly possible, and this also made the tiny shadow of doubt about things, whatever those things were, pop up in my head. Something was off in the scheme of things, maybe. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I had room only for the sight of the souls and the hunger in my belly. And a dark place. A nice dark place.
I came to a smooth stop. I looked down. Sparse green grass breathed beneath my feet. Trees, pines and ferns mostly, stole energy from the hateful sun above and grew all around me, home to countless creatures from tiny to large. In front of me, a small mountain, gray rock and jutting cliffs. And in between these rocks, about fifty feet up, my dark place, where I knew something waited for me. I just didn’t know what that something was.
I placed my hands against the sharp rocks, and began to pull myself up. I crawled as might a four-legged spider, scaling the mountain’s side in coordinated, fluid movements. I could feel the air growing thinner, though it didn’t seem to be having any negative effects on me. My breathing stayed even and steady. A moment later, I climbed onto a cliff and stood. In front me were two large oval-shaped boulders, supporting each other tip to tip. And beyond those boulders, that dark place beckoned me.
I crouched down and began to crawl, feeling a little like a cockroach skittering someplace beneath the floorboards. The light behind me shrank and shrank, until the darkness swallowed me whole. This seemed to comfort me, like crawling into a clean, warm bed at the end of a long day. The blackness was as heavy as ink, and the tunnel I crawled through twisted and turned and slowly declined. My eyes were wide open now, and I could see everything just fine. Perfect even, though not in the way that one sees with the assistance of light, but rather in some alien, other way.
Eventually, I came to a large cavern and climbed to my feet. I rolled my shoulders, stretched my arms and legs. Then I heard something hiss. Actually, I heard multiple somethings hiss. My back went rigid, my head titled back, my eyes piercing the darkness. Above me, hundreds of Lamias hung suspended from the ceiling, clawed feet gripping the rock like human-sized bats, long flowing hair reaching toward the floor.
I opened my mouth and returned their call, a hiss rippling through my lips that matched their own deafening high-pitched cry, note for note.
Then they all started to swoop down to the ground, like bats taking flight, surrounding me as completely as the darkness, cutting off any chance of escape.
Alexa
We found a small dirt road off the highway that led us into a deserted area, just rolling hills and thick stands of trees all around us. If Camillia—I saw no more point in referring to her as “Queen”—was telling it right, we were only about fifteen minutes from our destination, but we had to stop. I’d insisted. We’d stolen a shovel from a barn a few miles back, and I didn’t feel bad about that at all. I needed it more right now than the farmer. I needed to bury my Mother. I couldn’t stand another minute in this van with the form of her body lying under the truck-stop blanket, and I couldn’t see tossing her in a river somewhere. I had already gotten sick twice, and the van smelled strongly of lemon-scented wipes, copper, and regurgitated stomach acid. At least now there was absolutely nothing left in my stomach, so I was stuck with dry-heaving. Small mercy.
As soon as the van lurched to a stop, I threw the door open with a bang and jumped out, blinking my eyes at the harsh daylight. I stood on the edge of a dirt road, ahead of me a small forest. The stolen shovel was clutched in my cold left hand, my Gladius in my right. I began to march toward the line of trees, leaving the task of moving the bodies to the others. I couldn’t handle that, couldn’t think about it or understand it. But, dig, I could do. It might even help me to let off some steam, plunging the iron spade into the earth and ripping it up, as long as I didn’t think about what I was doing and why.
Twigs and dry leaves crunched under my shoes and birds called out their presence from above. It was a warm, pleasant spring day, the sunlight gentle and sweet on my skin. That’s what I concentrated on, only that.
Eventually, I came to a stop when I found a small clearing in the trees. Wild flowers bloomed here, yellow dandelions and purple violets. The air was cooler here, fresh, the sounds of nature the only things to be heard. A pretty place. A peaceful place. It would have to do.
I set my Gladius down beside me, then straightened and slammed the tip of the spade into the ground, shoving it in deeper with my foot, over and over, turning and tossing the earth. I was panting like a winded dog by the time the others reached me. Sweat matted my hair to my forehead and neck. I’d ripped off my jacket and tossed it aside, and now the sun glinted off my silvered right arm like a mirror, blinding me when I moved it certain ways.
I continued to dig. I could feel the eyes of the others watching me, knew how insane I must look, didn’t care. I just pretended they weren’t there. I wished they weren’t there, waiting to drop things into the holes I was digging. My wrists throbbed and hurt so bad that I was sure that at any second my hands were going to tear off of them and thump to the ground. Th
at didn’t happen. But I welcomed the pain anyhow. It was better than nothing to hold my attention. Easier than dealing with whatever pain I would face emotionally when I had a moment to stop and think things through.
We had only the one shovel, and either everyone else was too tired, or too afraid to offer to take it from me. Better that they didn’t. I wanted to do this. Somehow, it only felt right if it were me.
Before I knew it, the task was complete, and two deep rectangles had been cut into the earth. I’m not sure how much time passed, and the others waited by patiently without saying a word. But when I climbed out of the earth with an assisting hand from Kayden, my body screamed its exhaustion at me through my muscles in high-pitched wails. Kayden’s arms wrapped around me, holding me upright. The digging had taken more from me than I had realized.
The Rise (The Alexa Montgomery Saga) Page 8