by R. T. Lowe
Felix stood up, still trying to catch his breath, a red rage taking hold of him. “How does that feel, you fucking bitch!”
Allison screamed.
Parni was grabbing her by the back of the head with one hand and taking chopping iron-fisted shots at her face with the other. Allison deflected most of the blows with her raised forearms, but some were getting through. At some level, Felix was conscious that Allison was embroiled in a life and death fight with Parni. Yet he couldn’t draw his attention away from Tripoli. The rage that had bloomed inside him was complete, incoherent. He was going to make her suffer—make her feel exactly what he’d felt. He flicked a finger and the wire tightened on her throat. The squiggly veins under her eyes swelled green, close to bursting. He smiled with satisfaction.
Allison elbowed Parni in the stomach, then connected with a wicked uppercut to the chin. A tooth flew from Parni’s mouth, landing on the path not far from the dark-haired man’s headless body. Parni let go of her hair and stumbled, balancing himself with one hand on the ground. He gave his head a quick shake, stood up in a crouch, hands in a fighting position. Then he froze. His body went rigid and a look of sheer panic passed over his features like a shadow. Allison backed up a step and watched as Parni’s head tilted loosely to the side, twitching violently. His fingers bent stiffly and his elbows dug into his sides. He clawed at the air, mouth open, eyes going in different directions. The blow to Parni’s face had damaged something beneath the skin that Allison couldn’t see. He was having a seizure. He was vulnerable.
Allison came up off her feet in a sudden pounce, bringing her arm forward from the side, a looping punch with enough force to break the bones in Parni’s face, enough force to put him to sleep for a very long time.
Parni shot forward, lunging in close and dropping low to avoid her fist, then he exploded upward with his knee, driving it powerfully into Allison’s stomach. Still in midair, Allison’s body wrapped around Parni’s leg, sagging forward until her face and feet were close to touching. They both hit the ground at the same time. Parni on legs that were as steady as the look in his eyes. Allison stumbled dizzily, awkwardly, falling toward the ocean. She brought up both arms and clutched at her midsection, white-faced, gasping for air, wheezing. Her back to the ocean, unsteady, she rocked back and forth on her heels, dazed.
Parni measured her with his cool assassin’s eyes, sizing her up, his lips pressed together into a tight line. Allison drew herself up and squared her shoulders, head held high, standing tall, as if she knew what was coming and realized that all she had left to preserve was her pride.
Parni rotated on the ball of his left foot, spinning himself clockwise, uncorking his right leg around his body in an explosive roundhouse kick which ended with his leg fully extended and his foot planted in the center of Allison’s chest. The force of the blow lifted Allison off her feet, driving her backward. As she sailed past the end of the cliff, she frantically reached out with her hands, trying to grab hold of the rocks in front of her. Her green eyes grew large with fear… and something else. As he watched helplessly from down the path, Felix would always remember the look in Allison’s eyes: the sudden realization that the path was beyond her reach—the realization that she was going to fall 700 feet to her death.
And then she was gone.
The last thing Felix saw was Allison’s long dark hair spilling out in waves, rising in the air around her face as if she was floating in water.
Felix stared stupidly, his jaw dropping in shock.
That didn’t just happen! No! No! No! No!
Parni stepped back from the edge. Then very deliberately, he turned to face Felix, his mouth curling up into a smug smile, the lines on his face showing white through a slick of blood.
Felix screamed something. He felt his mouth working, but the words meant nothing.
Tripoli made a guttural, strangling sound. Her feet were still kicking, trying to reach the rocky sanctuary just beneath her toes. She grasped frenetically at the wire around her neck. Unthinkingly, numbly, Felix raised a finger and she crashed into the embankment.
Parni was running at Felix now, flying along the walkway, slashing viciously at the space before him with his knife. He let out a roar and his lips rolled back over his teeth to the gum lines. Through the dark haze clouding his mind, Felix pointed at Parni and Parni lurched to a sudden stop. Then he lifted him up until his feet lost contact with the ground. Parni’s expression changed. The anger was still there, but the smugness was gone. And in his eyes there was something new… the seeds of fear.
Felix stood there, unmoving, head swimming, trying to make sense of what had just happened. He glanced over at where Allison had been just a few seconds before. There was nothing but gray sky.
Parni screamed furiously at Felix in a language that didn’t sound like English.
Detached and dissociated from the world around him, Felix dragged his eyes away from the cliff’s edge and stared up at the face of the man who had just killed his best friend. The desire to end his life was overwhelming—and he had every intention of giving in to it. But he wasn’t going to just kill him. He was going to hurt him. He was going to make him suffer. Allison was dead. There was no need to hold anything back now.
Parni went up in flames as if his body had been soaked in jet fuel, every square inch of him consumed in white-hot fire. He screamed and writhed in agony, twisting and flailing his limbs. Gradually, as the thickening clouds continued to settle in overhead, his screams began to dwindle, becoming lost to winds that had grown increasingly frigid. Felix extinguished the flames. He walked over to Parni and looked up at him, studying his bloodied, charred form like it was an insect that had just stung him.
“How did that feel?” Felix said coldly. “You like that?”
Parni’s lips moved noiselessly, his red eyes searching for Felix. When Parni found him, he began to speak in a halting whisper: “Pu… pu… please…”
Felix didn’t know if he was begging for mercy or begging for a quick death. He didn’t care. He set Parni on fire again, the flames engulfing him like a blanket. Parni’s wretched screams floated up to the clouds pressing down on the Cliff Walk, and as his cries began to wane, Felix let the fire go out. Parni’s ravaged body scarcely looked human. Felix had spared nothing. Even Parni’s lips had burned away, melted by the flames. But his chest still rose and fell; he was still breathing. Good, Felix thought sadistically, lighting him up like a torch, yearning to hear his tortured screams. But this time he didn’t scream. His head simply fell forward and he went limp.
“I’m not done with you yet!” Felix raged, increasing the intensity of the fire, the wind whipping the flames around him. “I’ll tell you when you can die!” But the man was dead. Well past dead. His flesh was turning to powder, the stiff gusts breaking over the path scattering the ashes across the walkway and up the embankment.
Felix didn’t feel less anger. He didn’t feel less pain. There was no catharsis borne from avenging Allison’s death. Felix’s world had just ended. He had a limitless reservoir of rage to take out on the man—a rage that had yet to be sated.
But Parni was beyond his reach. There was nothing more Felix could do to him. He gazed on him for a moment with vile contempt in his eyes. Then he waved his hand, sending Parni’s flaming remains spiraling off the cliff into the icy waters far below.
Everything was silent and still.
The battle was over.
Felix looked all around, eyes wild and horrified, as if he had just arrived and the carnage he was observing was the work of another. In the center of the walkway, a body with no head was lying at an odd angle in a pool of blood. Crumpled at the base of the slope was the broken figure of Tripoli. And next to her, Bianca lay on her back with two knife handles sticking out from her throat, the blades buried up to the shafts. He had killed the Protectors.
But where’s Allison? Didn’t you promise to protect her?
He had killed them all. He had won.
Did you? Then where is she?
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She can’t be gone. She must be here. She must. His eyes roamed up and down the path, over the grim scene spread out before him.
She’s dead, Felix! Dead! You’ll never see her again! You promised to protect her! You promised!
This was all wrong. How could she be dead? How could that be? He quieted the voices in his head, listening to the winds singing their haunting songs as they rushed over the cliff. He looked out at the ocean for a long while, feeling numb, like everything inside him had shut down and gone dark. He’d just let his best friend die. Just like his mom—his real mom—had let her best friend fall to her death. All these years later, the family curse had come full circle. How could this have happened? How could I be like someone I never knew?
Felix sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t really be dead. How could I let this happen? He lifted his face to the heavens and screamed in anguish.
A solitary seagull returned his grief-filled cries, mocking him as the finality of Allison’s death seized his consciousness, tearing at his soul, drowning him in a depthless sea of misery. This was more than he could bear. He’d already lost so much. Suffered so much. He didn’t have the capacity for this. Not this. Anything but this. He couldn’t take it.
“Felix,” he said, his voice hoarse, cracking. “Why? Why? Why…?”
“Felix.”
He paused, his eyes moving everywhere all at once. Was that an echo? The voices in his head?
“Felix.”
There it was again. Felix stood up, ears trained, listening for his name.
“Felix!”
He definitely heard it that time.
“Felix! Help!”
It was coming from the ocean. He jumped to his feet, ran helter-skelter and dove, throwing himself head first, sliding toward the end of the walkway, picking up speed as the end of the world loomed up. He was going fast. Too fast. He was going to fly right off the path. One side of his body snagged on something, turning him sideways. His right hand reached out and clawed at the stones, slowing his momentum as he started slipping off the path. With only the cold Pacific air supporting the left side of his body, he dug his fingers into the rocks, grinding to a stop. He swung his dangling leg back onto the path, and still on his stomach, his head hanging over the side, he peered down.
Twenty feet below, Allison was holding onto a rock—a tiny little bulge in the cliff no larger than a dinner plate—with just her fingertips. The cliff angled slightly inward toward the walkway, leaving no footholds, and her legs were swaying from side to side like a falling leaf.
“Hurry!” she screamed up at Felix with desperation in her eyes.
“You’re alive!” he shouted down at her, not realizing that he was smiling. He couldn’t believe it. Allison was alive. She was actually alive. He stared at her with a huge grin on his face, too amazed and relieved to think about helping her.
“Not much longer if you don’t do something!”
“Sorry,” he muttered, getting to a squatting position, urgently searching for something to bring her up to the path. He saw the log. Not ideal, but he thought it just might work.
“Lift me up!” she screamed. “I’m slipping.”
“I’ll break your arms!” Felix screamed back.
“I don’t care! Break them!”
“Wait a sec!” He looked hard at the log and focused his energy, willing it to cross the path to him (not easy given his muddled state), then he lowered it down the face of the cliff vertically, like it used to stand in the soil before the park employees sliced through it with their chain saws, forcing it to a stop when it was next to her. He tried to keep the log from bobbing into her, but the wind was fearsome and balancing it properly was futile.
Allison glanced at it, winced, and blurted out: “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Grab it!”
The wind was whipping wildly, swinging her back and forth. One hand slipped off the rock as a sudden gale jerked her to one side. For a few terrifying seconds, her body was nearly parallel to the dark waters below, yet somehow she kept her grip with only one hand. Then she clutched onto the rock with both hands when the buffeting winds swung her in the opposite direction, slamming her into the log.
“There’s no branches!” Allison shouted, looking at the log. “Nothing to hold onto!”
“Just get your arms around it!”
“This is the best you can do?” she shouted angrily.
He thought for a moment before shouting back: “I don’t see a rope up here! Just grab it! Trust me!”
She muttered something that was lost in the wind as she released one hand and turned her body toward the log.
He inched it closer to her, steadying it, keeping it as still as possible.
She let go of the rock with her other hand and reached out for it, extending both arms.
Felix held his breath. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.
Allison’s fingers scraped into the bark and bit hard, pulling the log into her chest. The log banged against the cliff and she let out a startled shout as one hand came free. She grasped at it, unable to lace her fingers together, dropping suddenly, her nails raking down through its soft rotting shell, peeling off bark as she went. She adjusted her grip, clamping her forearms to slow her descent, hugging her body against it. Her fall temporarily stalled, she blew out a steaming breath and looked up at Felix. Then she raised one leg, and then the other, curling both around the log, squeezing it between her thighs.
“You okay?” Felix shouted down at her.
“Fantastic! What do you think? Bring me up!”
He pushed himself to his feet and concentrated on making the log ascend up the face of the cliff swiftly but without jarring Allison or unhinging her fragile grip. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” he whispered elatedly to himself as the top of the log rose above the path. He started to breathe a little easier, expecting to have the log, and Allison, on firmer ground any second.
A searing pain exploded in the back of his leg and he hit the ground hard, landing on the same shoulder the swinging log had crushed just a moment ago. He grabbed at his leg and felt something. A foreign object. Something strange was protruding out of his right calf. He ran his fingers over it, and after a few stunned moments, concluded that it was the hilt of a knife. He lay there, confused, wondering what on earth he was doing on the ground with a knife in his leg. Then a pair of fists, dripping blood, and a long wire intruded on his field of vision, passing over his face and blocking out the sky. He swatted the bloody hands away and jumped to his feet, his right leg immediately howling in pain.
Tripoli was down on the path in front of him, propping herself up on her elbows. Her blonde hair was streaked red. Blood ringed her throat and ran down her face from ugly gashes on her cheeks and forehead. Her hands were a bloody mess. Her legs were bent, broken and useless, drenched in blood from hip to ankle.
He grimaced with fury and reached down to pull the knife from his—
“Allie!” Felix shouted in terror, suddenly realizing Allison was in a free fall.
He waved a finger at Tripoli, flinging her against the embankment; she stuck to it for a moment, then slid down to the bottom slowly in a twisted heap.
His blood racing, Felix turned to the ocean, raised both arms and screamed at the top of his lungs: “Uuuuuuupppppppp!”
He stepped back from the edge and waited, too afraid to look down.
In the distance, something came into view—but it wasn’t Allison. A rock, long and jagged along its edges, crested the plane of the walkway and continued skyward. Another pillar of stone appeared next to the first, and then another. Soon, an armada of broken sea stacks obscured the skyline. Some were small and unremarkable—except for their altitude—others big (the size of motorcycles and cars), and three magnificent columns of rock, trailing streams of rushing water from huge crevices in their surface,
were as large as school buses.
He stared out at the rocks, waiting with a sense of complete helplessness. He couldn’t lose Allison. Not again. He waited. Time passed like a frozen eternity in purgatory. Then he saw it, the cleanly severed end of a tree rising slowly above the edge of the walkway. His stomach lurched. His heart stopped in his chest. He resisted the temptation to bring it up faster as he watched it ascend inch by inch for some immeasurable period of time.
And then there was a face, a face reddened by the elements pressed tightly against the rough bark. Allison was clinging to the very bottom of the log, her eyes closed and her legs swinging in the open air.
With a sudden rush of glorious, exhilarating relief, Felix brought the log onto the path. When Allison was just a few feet above him, she opened her eyes and let go, dropping into his arms. He caught her, but lost his footing in the process and tripped, and together they tumbled to the ground.
“Thank you,” she breathed in his ear, panting softly. “Thanks for bringing me back.”
The words she’d said to him yesterday came to his mind, and he repeated them to her. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Allie.” He held her tightly, crushing her to him, smothering her; she didn’t seem to mind.
She lay there in his arms for a long while as they looked up at the swirling rain-heavy clouds like two fortunate but exhausted castaways tossed ashore on some distant uncharted island. Finally, she pushed herself up and gazed out at the strange rock formations hovering hundreds of feet above the water.
“Hey, you might wanna drop those things. If anyone saw this…” She shook her head in awe.
He smiled and let them fall. A crackling charge coursed through the air a moment later when they impacted the shoreline. The ground trembled and shook, not unlike the day the earthquake had struck and forever transformed the idyllic nature walk.