by R. T. Lowe
“I hope the rest of this thing doesn’t collapse,” Allison said softly as the tremors began to subside. Then she looked down at Felix and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You have a knife in your leg.”
“Oh. I forgot.” Felix grinned raggedly at the absurdity of forgetting such a thing. “That’s why you took that little log ride.” He reached down and pulled it out. Blood trickled down his leg like sap from a tree. “Owwww! Shit! That hurts!” He held it up close to his face and watched the blood slide languidly down the blade to his fingers. With an angry grunt, he threw it off the cliff.
“You two devils are very sweet,” a voice croaked.
Felix turned to see that Tripoli was smiling at them, on her back, her mouth filled with blood (and very few teeth).
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Felix murmered. He heaved himself to his feet and limped painfully over to Tripoli. Her body was wrecked and he wondered for a moment how she could still be alive. “Why are you doing this?” he shouted down at her. “Why are you trying to kill me?”
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Allison’s. Her face was grim, determined.
Tripoli laughed and blood bubbles formed at the corners of her mouth. “You’re not… you’re not… even… the one.”
“What?” Felix said, confused. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“I’ll… tell.” Tripoli’s eyes closed, then fluttered open. Her breathing sounded gurgly, as though her lungs were filling with blood.
Felix got on his knees and shook her roughly. “Tell me!”
“Felix…” Allison warned, holding out a cautioning hand.
“Here… closer… I tell.”
He bowed his head, placing his ear next to her mouth. “Tell—”
Tripoli’s arm flinched.
Felix didn’t have time to react. A hot, stinging pain just beneath his rib cage was followed by dull, thick pressure. It hurt. A lot. He screamed in agony, his fearful eyes glancing down. Tripoli had stuck him with a knife. She’d shoved it in deep; he couldn’t see the blade, only the glinting steel handle sticking out from his jacket. He screamed again. Then he reacted in a burst of fury: He broke her arm in two, snapping it with a satisfying crack. The splintery edged bone cut through her shirt just below her elbow.
Tripoli laughed gleefully, too far gone to feel pain. Her limbs went slack and her laughter caught in her throat mid-cackle, then her eyes glossed over and her head lolled to the side as if her final wish was to look out at the ocean one last time.
Felix fell onto his back and curled up on his side, hugging his arms across his stomach, fearing that if he didn’t, his guts would spill out all over the path.
“Felix!” Allison shrieked with panic, jumping beside him, hands on him. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Felix!”
His stomach was raging with molten pain. Blood pumped from the wound, spreading over his hands and arms. “How bad is it?” he asked.
Allison ripped open his jacket and gasped. “It’s in there a few inches.” Her voice was shaky. “It’s a puncture wound. She didn’t hara-kiri you or anything, but you’re bleeding pretty bad.”
Some of the pain had already subsided. Felix grabbed the knife by the handle and yanked it out furiously. “That bitch! I hate that fucking woman!”
“Are you okay?” Allison looked at him uncertainly, wiping the corners of her eyes. “I thought…”
“I’m great.” He struggled to his feet, wincing, and tossed the knife on the ground next to Tripoli.
Allison stood up and took a step back, giving Felix a curious look. “You’re covered in blood, in case you’re wondering.”
“I don’t think all of it’s mine,” he replied, using his sleeve to wipe off his face. He eyed her for a moment. “You don’t look much better.”
“Really?” she said, feigning dismay. She held up her arms and looked herself over. Dirt and pitch smudged one side of her face. A lock of wet hair was plastered to her cheek—wet with what Felix didn’t want to think about considering the various substances residing on the log. Her clothes were stained with blood. Her hair was matted with it. “Just bumps and bruises,” she said casually. “Maybe a few scratches.” She turned her hands, bringing her fingers up close to her face. “Damn nails! I just had a manicure.”
Felix snorted.
She circled him, looking him over slowly with a steady, studious gaze.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking at her skeptically.
She smiled. “How many times did you get stabbed?”
It was such a ridiculous question he found himself laughing. “I lost count. Ouch. Oh.” He clutched at his stomach, keeling over in pain. “It hurts to laugh. Ouch. Don’t make me laugh. Ahhh…”
Allison started laughing.
Drunk with exhaustion and relief, they laughed all the way back to the car.
Chapter 60
The Trunk
The adrenaline rush passed quickly. Nothing seemed very funny anymore. They were back at the parking lot searching Bill’s car for a first aid kit. Felix was staring inside the trunk, empty of not only a white box with a red cross but empty of everything, which probably should have made him wonder why he continued to stare at it. But something about it didn’t look right. Above the headrests he could see the back of Allison’s head; she was in the passenger seat.
“Anything?” Felix called out to her.
“No.” She snapped the glove box shut. “You?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t need it anyway,” she muttered. Felix could hear the irritation in her voice and he knew where it was coming from. He didn’t agree with her self-diagnosis—“nicks and scrapes,” she insisted—and thought an actual doctor should take a look at her injuries. Of course a trip to the ER was out of the question because of the annoying proclivity of those in the medical profession to ask meddling questions. So that left the first aid kit. Allison was being predictably stubborn about not needing it and kept reminding him that “while we’re wasting time looking for it, what do you think will happen if someone shows up here and sees us in the parking lot and associates the two kids with the Range Rover with the three corpses on the Cliff Walk.”
He was starting to think she had a point.
Allison hopped out of the car and climbed into the back seat. A fat drop of rain landed on Felix’s nose while Allison plunged her hand into the plastic bag from 7-Eleven, flipping aside a magazine (the one with Dirk Rathman and his new tattoo featured on the cover), a bag of chips and a jar of peanuts. She sighed loudly so that Felix could hear her consternation, then opened a bottle of water and took a long drink. The raindrops drummed heavy on the roof of the car and left dark spots on the asphalt where they landed. Felix thought the weather was about to get really nasty. And then, as if the weather gods wanted to make light of his meteorological prognostications, the sun emerged from behind a bank of clouds, bathing the parking lot in a cool, steely winter glow.
“Nada?” Felix asked.
“Nada.”
“You’re not even looking,” Felix complained. “What about under the seats?”
“I’m not the one who got stabbed like forty million times.” She gave him a harsh look and scooted across the seat, letting her legs hang out of the car.
“Can you toss me one of those?” Felix tilted up his chin at the bottle of Poland Spring in Allison’s hand. He was thirsty enough to lap up the puddles studding the lot.
Allison slipped out of the car and came around back, handing him a bottle.
Felix drank half of it in four long swallows, watching Allison as he did. The wind tugged at her hair, blowing strands of it across her face, but not so many as to conceal the blood spatters on her cheeks and brow, her swollen lips or the nasty red welts next to her left ear and on her forehead.
Allison suddenly flipped up his sweatshirt and splashed water on his bare stomach.
He jumped back in surprise, flinching from the cold. “Why’d you do that?”
/> “Just to confirm something,” she said thoughtfully, using his shirt and the sleeve of her own to dry him off. “Let me look.” She yanked up on the front of his shirt again, raising it up to his chest.
Now he understood what she was doing.
“It doesn’t hurt, does it?” Allison said quietly. Her gaze fixed on his eyes for a moment before moving back to his stomach.
He shook his head. He’d never felt better. Strange, considering the knife wound to his gut—just one of several knife wounds—had bled so much that his shirt and jeans looked like they’d been used to sop up the floor of a slaughterhouse. After Allison cleaned off most of the blood, already crusty and more blackish in color than red, and the skin was once again visible, they couldn’t find the wound; it had healed completely.
Allison’s forehead wrinkled in confusion for a half-second and then smoothed over, her lips twitching up in a smile. “That’s pretty cool.” She ran a lone finger over his stomach. “Not even a scar.”
“Just like my nose,” Felix replied, recalling how surprised he’d been when he looked in his dorm room mirror and realized his broken nose from tangling with the Faceman had fixed itself in just a few hours. But this time, the healing process was faster, significantly faster. Tripoli had stabbed him in the gut fifteen minutes ago at most. His, whatever you wanted to call them, abilities, powers—words like that sounded corny and comic bookish to him, evoking images of capes and masks—seemed to be escalating. He wondered for a moment where it would all end and shivered.
“Just like your nose,” Allison repeated. Then she added with a groan: “Must be nice. I hurt everywhere.”
A thought occurred to him as he stared at the trunk and he blurted, “Where’s the spare tire?” There were five latches on the floor: One in each corner and one centered in the front. He tugged on the corner latches. Nothing happened. Then he slid his fingers over the latch in front. It felt like the ‘on off’ switch from the old printer he’d had in high school. He pressed down on one side of it—the raised side—and the floor flipped open like the mouth of a giant clam, revealing a false floor.
“Holy shit!” Felix shouted. On TV, false floors were primarily used to hide drugs, guns, money, and the occasional dead body. Life was imitating art: Bill’s concealed the biggest gun in the world.
Allison’s mouth formed a big letter O and her eyes bulged. “Did you know that Bill drives around with a cannon in his car?” She pointed at it, startled. “What the hell is that thing?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said softly, staring at it. The polished barrel was black and as thick as Felix’s wrist. “Damn. This thing’s huge. I think it’s a military shotgun. Lucas and I play this computer game sometimes—that’s the gun we use. It’s an automatic, I think. I’m pretty sure Bill’s not supposed to have it unless he’s like a cop or special agent or something.”
“He’s not just a groundskeeper, is he?” Allison didn’t get a response from Felix—there were only so many head shakes and shrugs in his arsenal—so she continued to look down at it suspiciously, standing back from the trunk as if she was afraid the gun might go off all on its own.
“We better hide this,” Felix said, thinking that one of these days he really needed to get together with Bill and ask him some questions; he knew almost nothing about the guy. He pressed down on the floor panel, trying to muscle it back into place, but it only gave way in front, bending down slightly.
“Here.” Allison stepped up to the car and nudged him aside with her hip. “You’re going to break it. I bet you need to press this.” She pushed down on the other end of the switch with her thumb—the raised side—and sure enough, the floor panel silently closed. No more cannon.
A long silence followed as Felix considered what to do with the gun, finally deciding the best place for it was right where it was. “I guess we should go.” He slammed the trunk shut and started for the driver’s side door.
“What about our clothes?” Allison said, sounding troubled. “If a cop pulls us over for speeding we’re screwed.”
Felix stopped and turned back to her with a grin on his face. “How do you feel about unwashed gym clothes?”
“My favorite.” She smiled, then abruptly squinched up her face in pain, putting her hand to her mouth. She glanced down at the blood on her fingertips and added wistfully, “Is that all you brought?”
“We’re lucky I even have ‘em. I was planning to do a load of laundry at the dorm before I head back.”
Her expression stiff with skepticism, Felix led Allison around to the back seat where she watched him dig through his grandma’s floral print duffel bag until he found shorts and hooded sweatshirts for them both, hers orange and green, his blue and gray. He set his aside and lobbed hers over his shoulder. Allison snagged them with one hand, using the other to affect an exaggerated pose: a dramatic pinching of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
And then they took off their clothes.
Allison’s undergarments had survived the fight unscathed. Felix’s hadn’t—his underwear was soaked through with blood—and he didn’t have a spare pair in the bag so he was forced to keep them on. They smiled at each other, though not out of nervousness or insecurity; after what they’d just endured, stripping down to their pale goose-bumped skin seemed both trivial and the most natural thing in the world. Allison shivered as the shifting winter winds tore across the parking lot.
Felix should have probably realized it earlier, but once he did, it came as a shock, like a punch to the face: He felt the cold, but he wasn’t cold. He watched Allison’s breath puffing out in little trailing clouds. It was like he could see her body heat dissolving away as the winds nipped at her exposed skin. He knew the bitter coastal air was just a few digits north of refrigerator temperature. But he felt… comfortable.
He must have had a strange expression on his face because Allison narrowed her eyes at him. “Let me guess—you’re not cold.”
Felix shook his head apologetically.
“You suck.” Allison laughed as she pulled the extra-large hoodie over her head. The sweatshirt bagged on her and hung down straight to the hem of her shorts. She pushed back the puddles of fabric on her sleeves. “Okay. Ready.” She started for the passenger side, walking with a mild limp.
He hid the clothes they’d had on—now little more than blood-stained rags—at the bottom of the bag, covering them up with the rest of his laundry. He slid the bag onto the floor and stuffed it under the seat, then closed the door. As he turned to head toward the front of the car his eyes were drawn to the black Mercedes SUV parked just two spaces away. He swallowed convulsively. He’d been trying not to look but now that it had him in its grip, he hesitated, and his eyes roamed over it. Tripoli, Parni, Bianca and the now headless man whose name he didn’t know, had left the engine running. The streaming clouds of idling exhaust chuffing out from the dual exhaust pipes rose up but only as high as the bumper before the scouring gales carried them away. The cocky bastards had expected a quick kill and a quick escape.
But it wasn’t the Protectors’ arrogance that bothered Felix. Just a little while ago, four people—people, he reminded himself—had climbed out of that car. A lot of things about the world and his life confused him. But there was one thing he knew for certain: Those four people wouldn’t be climbing back into the car. They wouldn’t be driving out of here. That reality, the absolute finality of that fact, was terrifying. Four people—four actual living, breathing people who had existed just an hour ago—no longer existed. They were no longer living and breathing. They were gone. Gone because of him.
The sound of overstressed tires on pavement sent shock waves running through Felix’s body. His eyes snapped away from the Mercedes and he looked to the mouth of the parking lot. What he saw made his stomach clench.
A silver sedan was speeding toward them.
Felix stepped away from Bill’s car and glanced over at Allison. She nodded at him. She didn’t have to say a word
because her expression told him everything he needed to know: They were thinking the same thing. Her thoughts mirrored his.
Felix raised a hand toward the sedan, staring ahead blackly. His jaw hardened. A burst of adrenaline pulsed through his veins. Whoever was in the car—the fifth Protector late for the party?—was going to deeply regret coming to the Cliff Walk.
Felix had been stabbed enough for one day.
The sedan skidded to a screeching stop, writhing plumes of blue smoke rising up from the asphalt beneath the tires. The car puffed out exhaust which wafted for only a moment before whipping away in the winds. Then the engine cut out. The driver’s door swung open as sheets of sunlight shone down through a swirling veil of cloud cover. Felix stared at the windshield, squinting against the glare, but all he could make out was that the visor was in the down position. He couldn’t see the driver’s face.
A foot emerged from the car—a dark brown riding boot—followed by another. The driver—a woman, Felix concluded quickly, based on the boots—stood up. Above the door her head appeared; long wavy blonde hair whipped around her face in the wind, covering it up almost completely. Felix still couldn’t see her face. Yet there was something familiar about her. He didn’t know what it was—the color of her hair? the shape of her head?—but he felt his throat tighten. She turned and started running toward him, her hair falling back from her forehead, dancing on her shoulders. When he saw her face he nearly passed out on his feet.
It was Harper.
Chapter 61
The Unexpected Visitor
Felix felt his mouth fall open in astonishment as he watched Harper running toward him. A smile stretched across her face, her cheeks turning instantly pink from the chill. As Harper drew near, she hesitated, some of the newfound color draining from her face. Felix exchanged an uneasy glance with Allison while Harper looked at them suspiciously, no doubt puzzling over what they were doing at the Cliff Walk parking lot in the freezing cold wearing only shorts and sweatshirts. The three of them looked from one to the other, waiting for someone to say something. It was hard to decide who looked the most surprised.