"I've come to discover that making mistakes is pretty normal. The difference is in how hard you try to be different, and to make up for them. It's really hard sometimes, but I wake up every day and try to do the right thing. To make the people who love me proud."
I could sense the sadness in her voice. I had expected Sarah to have suffered beneath the weight of the Box and what Landon was going through. I expected that it would have broken her. It seemed she was holding up fine. Maybe Elyse had been wrong.
"That's what I want," I said. "I'm not always sure I'm doing the right thing."
"Just do your best. That's all anybody can expect."
I nodded, staring out at the waves. Was taking the Box from her the right thing to do? What if she was trying to get Landon out, too? Had Elyse misjudged her, or was she just having a moment of lucidity that would crumble as soon as the real pressure was on?
"Do you... see things, Elle?"
The question brought me out of my head. "Excuse me?"
"I'm sorry. I know it's a weird question, it's just that... well... I have this perception, like a sixth sense about people. The ones that are different, anyway."
I could have kicked myself. Of course she would be able to tell that Elyse was Awake. That was why she had tested me.
"You're saying I'm different?"
"Are you?"
I wasn't sure what to say. "I..." I sat in silence for a moment. "I have delusions."
"Where do you live?"
It was a strange question, and she didn't Command the answer. "I don't have a home."
"Do you want one?"
She had taken in the Awake before. I decided to play along. "Of course... I mean... why wouldn't I? My family thinks I'm crazy. They don't understand... the monsters. I've seen them."
"I know you aren't crazy, Elle. I've seen them too." She lifted her head, and then turned around. "I have to go now. If you need somewhere to stay tonight, there's a small house about half a mile down. It has white shingles on it. That's where I live, but I'm going out of town for a few days."
Going out of town? I was only going to have one shot at the Box. "Why would you let me stay there? How do you know you can trust me?"
She smiled. "Can I trust you?"
The question was a Command.
"Yes."
"There you go. That's good enough for me." She pushed herself back to her feet. "I'm meeting someone now. If you want to stay at the house, just come by after nine. I'll leave it unlocked for you."
She reached out and patted me on the shoulder, and then turned and headed up the beach. I risked a quick glance back, and then whipped my head towards the ocean.
She was meeting Ulnyx.
I closed my eyes, praying that he wouldn't recognize Elyse, or her scent. He had been part of Landon when he had seen her, but I knew weres well enough to know he wouldn't forget a face, body, or smell like hers. Were the dirty clothes and salty sea air enough to disguise me?
I held my breath and waited. When half a minute passed and I hadn't been confronted, I turned my head again. They were gone. It had been four o'clock when I had abandoned the squad car. That gave me about three hours to get into the house, find the Box, and get out of there. Depending on what her plans were, maybe less. It meant I had no time to waste.
There was no sign of them along the beach as I meandered in the direction Sarah had indicated. Every once in a while I would stop, stare at the ocean for a minute, and then continue on. Each time, I couldn't help but find myself drawn back to the same contemplative thoughts. I wanted so much to do the right thing, to do right by Landon, and to honor the grace that I had been granted.
It took me about half an hour to reach the house. It was easy enough to spot, both due to its more diminutive size, and the white shutters flanking each of the windows. Not for the first time, I wished that I could See.
Instead, I approached the house slowly, crawling up the side of a nearby sand dune that peaked about twenty feet from the foundation. I could see into one of the rooms from there, a living room with an old television, a leather couch, a coffee table and two end tables. There was also a rocking chair in the corner.
I slid back down the dune and circled to the front of the house. There was a long gravel driveway that headed out to a cross street and ended in a circle there. I didn't see any cars and it still looked deserted, so I ran across to the other side behind an outcropping of brush.
Fairly certain that nobody was home, I walked up to the front door, keeping every cell of my eyes and ears attuned to signs of life. I had seen Sarah leave the beach with Ulnyx. I didn't know where they had gone, but I did know they would be here eventually and I didn't want to still be nearby when they returned. I guess I could have passed myself off as too stupid to know the difference between five and nine, but the last thing I wanted was to make Sarah more suspicious than she already was.
I twisted the handle on the door. Locked, as expected. Elyse had come prepared. I turned my hand so that one of the rings pressed against the handle. From the outer edge it was a simple wooden ring, made of teak and stained a deep maroon. The runes were all on the inner edge, and I felt the warmth of them against my finger while I activated the ring's power. The lock clicked. I turned the knob and entered.
I was in the living room I had seen from the window, and now I could see a set of stairs against the back wall before an archway that led into the kitchen. The was no one else here. I closed the door behind me and locked it again. I was in. Now I just needed to find the Box.
It had to be upstairs in one of the bedrooms. I ascended slowly, staying alert to anything that would signal the arrival of anyone. At the top was a tiny hallway with a bathroom over the kitchen and the two bedrooms splitting the rest of the space.
The doors to the bedrooms were open. The one on the left looked lived in: an unmade bed, some clothes on the ground, books littering the floor. The other was neatly organized, and had a musty smell to it that told me it was rarely if ever visited. Not that I had expected Sarah to be shacking up with anybody, but I had no way to know if I was the first wayward Awake she had extended herself to.
I entered Sarah's room. I didn't know how I was going to find it. I only knew that I was as sure as I could be that it was here somewhere. I went over to the closet, which was nothing more than a curtain hung over a cut-out in the room. I pushed the curtain aside and was greeted with neatly stacked piles of clothing, but no Box.
It was at that moment that I wondered how she could leave the Box here, unguarded, and be sure that no one would try to grab it while she was out. I hadn't seen any demonic runes or angelic scripture etched into the walls or the door frame. I hadn't noticed anything that would indicate the house was defended at all.
My heart began to race. The fact that I hadn't seen anything made me suddenly sure that I had missed something. I moved the curtain back into position and closed my eyes, listening.
A minute passed. I didn't hear anything. Maybe I was overreacting, being too jumpy. I knelt on the floor and looked under the bed. It was clean. I pulled back the pillows, opened her dresser, and rifled through her underwear. She left the house unguarded because the Box wasn't here.
I knew that had to be the reason. This was going to be harder than I expected. I needed to be here, or nearby when Sarah returned. I needed to find out where the Box was. I closed Elyse's eyes, letting go of control and allowing her back in.
"You need to get out of here," I said. "I'll stay behind. They're bound to show up sooner or later. Hopefully they'll say or do something to help us find it. Come and get me when they leave."
I wasn't sure I could maintain myself in one place, separated from a body. I had been able to do it when Landon was nearby, but his energy was the energy I was bound to. There was no other way.
"You need to get far enough away that Ulnyx won't smell you."
"I'll go for a swim. The salt and damp should disguise me well enough."
"The water is freezing.
"
"I'll survive. If I have a shot at the Box, I'm going to take it. Be ready."
"Okay. Good luck."
"You as well, Rebecca."
I focused my desire on finding Landon and then let go completely, feeling myself evaporate through her, my mind reduced to little more than a whisper. I needed to know where the Box was. I needed to stay in the house, because that was the way to find out.
Elyse could see me with the Eye. She waved at me, and then made her way out.
CHAPTER TEN
Landon
We were in a house. I couldn't say where, or even when, because the house had no windows, and none of the doors led anywhere but to another part of the house, or in some cases, to a part of the house we had already seen before but couldn't connect under any string of architectural logic.
There was nothing new about it. Nothing fresh. The house was a cliche, a tired idea it seemed that Ross had caught onto somewhere and fallen in love with. He used it in unoriginal ways, sending things out of the woodwork to try to attack us, while his laughter reverberated through the rafters.
Ross. I'd stopped calling him the Beast. I'd stopped thinking of him as the Beast. It made him sound more powerful than he deserved. True, he was still destroying us with near impunity, and sure it still hurt in every way imaginable, but from the hopelessness of it had sprung a new kind of strength that I hadn't even known existed.
"No attacks for a couple of minutes," Charis said.
We had settled into a pair of high-backed, winged chairs angled in front of a roaring fireplace. I stared into the fire, waiting for it to spring out at us, or for something to spring out from within it.
"Stay focused," I said.
It was the realization that had brought that hidden strength into play. Our fight wasn't against Ross. Our fight was against ourselves. Each time he killed us, we lost what had happened before, all the memory and none of the emotion. Each time we came back, we remembered a little bit more. Each time, he made sure to start the cycle again before we could put all the pieces together.
We had to stay focused to remember the parts that were important. We had to repeat them in our minds, over and over and over, until it was so committed that it became a part of the bare threads of who or what we were in this place. It had taken time to figure that much out, and in that time we had lost important information.
Other things, we brought back, some almost as soon as we re-spawned. It was funny to think of it that way, like we were trapped in a video game, but having passed through a door just to wind up on the opposite side of the same room, it felt like one.
"Our power is his power," I said. " We can use his power."
"Not against him," she replied. "It doesn't work."
"Not directly. What if there was another way?"
We were both silent for a minute, each of us repeating the mantra. 'What if there was another way? What if there was another way?'
"He created this place," Charis said. "What if we created something? Made our own monster?"
"It's still his power that is making it. He can unmake it."
She gave an exasperated sigh. "How does that not put us back to square one?"
I heard the creak of the door behind us swinging open, and got to my feet. "Where is our power, Charis? It can't all be his. It just can't. Sarah had to pour some of her energy into the Box. We're almost the same as she is. It has to be available to us."
I looked up at the creature that had stepped into the room. A young woman in a long white Victorian style dress. She looked back at me with cold black eyes.
"This is really unoriginal," I shouted. I knew Ross would hear me.
"You don't like the ruffles?" he asked, through the mouth of the woman. "I mean, I know you tend to go for the ones in the skintight denim, but look, she has black hair." She reached up and twirled a strand of it between her fingers.
"Just get on with it," Charis said, stepping up next to me.
"Now, what fun would that be?" She shook her head. "First, let's see what you can do with my little abomination here. She took me a long time to make, relatively speaking." The eyes flashed from black to white, and then she attacked.
She went right for Charis, moving so fast it was more like she flashed from one spot to another. Her hand snapped forward and caught her under the chin. The force broke her jaw and threw her back against the wall over the fireplace. She bounced off and landed face down.
I set myself while the abomination turned my direction. She had a twisted smile on her face, so similar to his.
"Come on," I said.
She hissed, one moment six feet away, the next right in my face. I tried to punch her, but she blinked to the side, and then raked my cheek with eight-inch claws. I could hear them sliding along the bone, and I felt the warmth of my blood spilling out of the wound.
Not that she could kill me. Maybe I should have let her finish the job so we could reset again, but there was something in me that told me it would be a mistake to give up. To ever give up. I stumbled from the blow, but I straightened up to face her.
"You can do better than that."
She smiled again, and her teeth grew out into fangs. Blink! She was back in my face, her teeth coming down on my neck.
It hurt. A lot. I cried out, planting my arms against her, trying to shove her away. I couldn't get any kind of grip on her through all of the fabric, which was fast becoming soaked in my blood.
"Hey Virginia," Charis said. I found her back on her feet, a steel poker in her hand.
The creature turned towards her at the same time the poker was angling in at her head. Blink! She was on the other side of the room, out of the path of the weapon. Blink! She grabbed Charis by the throat, and threw her across the room. Blink! The abomination followed, flashing from one spot to the other, bending down and raking her across the chest.
I focused, finding the Beast's power and pulling it in. The poker rose from the ground and shot towards the creature like a bullet.
Blink! She vanished before it hit her, appearing in front of me again, smashing me in the gut with sharp fingers. I felt them tear through my stomach and into my intestines, threatening to pull them out.
"Daddy!"
The door to the room swung open, and Clara stepped in.
She was wearing a blue and pink dress, her brown hair pulled back into pig tails, her face angry and afraid.
"Clara?" Charis said. Clara wasn't real. We didn't have a daughter.
"Let my daddy go," she said.
She was walking towards me, her eyes sparkling in a swirling mixture of light and fire. The abomination held my insides in her hand, but she turned her head towards the girl.
"What is this?" Ross asked. "I made you."
"Shhh!" Clara put her finger up to her lips. "It's a secret."
"What are you talking ab..."
Clara raised her hand, and the abomination vanished, Ross with it. I felt wetness at my stomach, the blood running freely now that the claw wasn't plugging the hole.
"Fix it," Clara said, looking at the wound.
"What?"
"Fix it."
She came to me and put her small hand in mine. I felt something then. Not the touch of a child, but the touch of something else. I focused, taking in the Beast's power, and mixing it with the thread of energy I felt running through her palm. The hole in my stomach vanished.
"Clara?" Charis was back on her feet, coming over to us. Her chest was just as torn as mine.
"Fix it," Clara said. She held out her other hand.
Charis took it, and her eyes changed the way I imagine mine had. A moment later her wounds were gone. She looked at me. "Landon?"
I smiled. "The connection," I said. "Our power is here."
In a child. A little girl. She was our daughter, but she wasn't our daughter. It was a complicated metaphor, courtesy of the Box. She had been there all along, through so many of the cycles of pain and torture Ross had forced us to endure. He had destr
oyed her so many times, dissipated the power before it could consolidate and before we could recognize it for what it was. He hadn't made her. He couldn't make anything.
"Come with me," she said. She started tugging both of us towards the door.
"Do you think it will be that easy?"
The abomination appeared in front of us, blocking the path. It had changed. The hair was gone. The dress was gone. It was a humanoid shape devoid of feature or detail. Claws, small eyes, sharp teeth, a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso. That was it.
"Go," Clara said, gesturing at it.
Ross laughed.
I yanked on our power, bringing it into me, and then let go of Clara's hand. I leaped forward at the creature, my own hand elongating into a set of claws. Blink! It tried to escape, but I reached out to it and held it with Divine power. I brought the claws up and around, severing its head.
"Easier then before," I said.
The room started shaking.
"This way," Clara cried.
She started tugging Charis towards a new door, one that hadn't existed a minute ago. Her little legs were too slow, so Charis scooped her up as we ran.
I looked back over my shoulder, at Ross making an appearance of his own. He had his watch in hand, and he'd lifted his sunglasses aside to look at it.
"Not bad, kid. You might make a sport of this yet."
He motioned with his hand and the doorway became a wall. Charis staggered to a stop.
Fifty weres burst through the double doors, charging into the room. They parted around Ross, and a stream of them headed for Charis.
"No," she said. She kicked one in the head, sending it backwards and knocking over two more. She spun and punched another with a free hand, then leapt over a fourth. One of the weres tried to intercept her in mid-air, and she let go of Clara just long enough to smash it aside before catching her again.
Ross watched, and then shrugged. "I guess I need a few more."
"You'll need an army," I said. I found the poker, still laying on the floor. I focused, superheating it, melting into hundreds of white-hot balls of iron. I swept them around the room, pelting the weres, burning through their hearts. I didn't know if they would heal or not. They didn't.
Bound (The Divine, Book Four) Page 6