Sickness. Was he sick?
“I want you to leave.” I told Adam quietly. “I told you to stay away. I was very clear in my orders. Yet here you are.”
“I was enjoying your leader's party when I saw you slink down the stairs. Curiosity got the better of me, I am afraid.” He replied as though I had asked for an explanation.
“If Penny had not been able to defend herself, he would have killed her.” I told Adam quickly. We were in a pattern of conversation where we ignored whatever the other had said.
“If I don't kill him now, he will kill her. All of his internal cries for forgiveness do not erase the rage he feels in his heart for what she has done to him.”
“Are you quite certain of that?” Adam asked.
“Yes.”
“You are not.”
“You do not know what I am thinking. You also do not know what I can hear inside of him.”
I was not sure if he could hear Donovan's thoughts or not. I wondered if perhaps Adam was right and I was lying. Maybe Donovan did not feel that strong urge to take revenge on my sister. Whatever the case, I refused to take the chance. I had to end his life. Though a part of me sympathized with him and wondered if maybe he could be saved from his violent lust, I could not risk his recovery. I could not see him walk around, healthy and whole once again, after the fear he had struck in Penny.
“There it is.” Adam whispered. I was startled to find that he was right behind me. “You cannot bear to see him live for you wish to enact your own final form of justice. You wish to dispatch a man from this realm whom you feel does not deserve his life. You accuse me of playing God. How very hypocritical of you, Ms. Olivier.”
“Go away!” I shot at him furiously. I had raised my voice so that it thundered authoritatively around the room. I was sick of his calmness. I was sick of his constant analysis of me.
“You cannot do it while I am standing here. You know that you are wrong.”
“I am not wrong! I am doing this for Penny!”
“You are doing this to feel that you have taken action against a morally depraved man. You suffered great pain at another man's hands as a child. Now, you wish to kill poor Donovan because you were unable to kill your uncle. You think I do not know of your weaknesses, Brynna Olivier. But I know them all. You are doing this to assert power over men like them for it is men like them that took your own power.”
I looked back at him, the flame from the lantern beside me crackling in my eyes.
“How are you able to read my mind? How do you know all of that, Adam?!”
“It is not your mind that I am reading; it is your face. Your eyes tell dark stories of your terrible past. I find it very...” His hands ran down my arms and I shook him off furiously, “intriguing.”
He was right only partially. A large portion of my decision to kill Donovan was motivated by my fear for Penny's safety. But the other part, the larger part, wanted to kill him for what he had done to those women. I wanted to avenge the violent deaths that could have been my own. I wanted to avenge the repulsive act those two women had been subjected to, for I had suffered it myself.
“You are weak in that sense, my dear Brynna. Your fire both strengthens and cripples you. It is almost pathetic, in a way. It is certainly a fascinating paradox in my view, at least.”
Now, his barbs were flying. Whatever minimal pain I had inflicted on him with my cutting rejection and my bluntly honest assessment of his ways was driving his words. He wanted to punish me for my harshness towards him.
I found myself laughing. I covered my mouth lightly to suppress the snort that always seemed to follow such hilarity.
“I must have cut you so very deep, Adam. I am aware that you thought yourself unable to feel pain. I wondered that myself, actually. Now, I know that you feel. Not only do you feel, but it was me that was able to hurt you. Now, I know that I have power over you.” I smiled to myself, “For whatever reason, I am able to shatter your armor.”
He chuckled softly and squeezed my shoulders more tightly than perhaps he intended. His mouth pressed to my ear and he whispered:
“Do not flatter yourself, my dear. I hold your life in my hands. I hold your secrets very close, even those that you do not know yet. I can shatter your armor just by making a fist. Do not forget that.”
As he drifted away from me, I looked down at the maimed man before me with fury boiling to frenzied life in my chest. I hated Adam. I hated Donovan. I hated Don. I hated those raucous, partying buffoons stomping and screaming above my head. I hated Dad. I hated Mom. I hated Maura. I hated Michael.
I brought the pillow down and held it over Donovan's face; I strengthened my grip as he thrashed wildly. He had found his strength somehow in the moment of his death, though by then, it was useless to him. It did not come close to matching my own. His hands flew up to claw at my arms as he attempted to weaken my grip. Even after his body went slack and his chest deflated the air his lungs had been holding, I did not move.
“Your fire...” Adam said again from the doorway, “It lights your way, of course. But it also casts a great darkness.”
I merely looked down into the face of the man I had just killed as Adam finished his thought in a whisper:
“A shadow.”
His final two words rang in my ears long after he was gone.
XXX
“Did you hear that Donovan died last night in his sleep?” Rachel asked me the following morning.
“I did.” I stirred the pot of water boiling in front of me, showing no discernible emotion in response to that piece of news.
“They're saying he was just injured too severely. He went peacefully. Didn't deserve it, if you ask me.”
“No. He did not.” I looked towards the end of the room where James was playing a game of cards with Frank, Quinn, and the rest of security detail. They were not making another trip to the campsite that day and the little farm work they had volunteered to do had already been finished. We were chopping, mincing, stewing and baking the fruits of their labor.
James's eyes met mine several times throughout the morning. In them, I saw a recognition, a suspicion that would be voiced at the earliest convenience. That night, I was sure he would question me about Donovan's death.
I could not understand how most people found it so difficult to act coolly and rationally after taking a life. My face did not betray the slightest indication of what I had done. I did not jump nervously or flinch upon hearing the news of Donovan's death. I simply acted as I always did. I simply emptied my mind of what I had done.
Above all else, I felt no guilt. Because of that alone, I should have worried. I should have acknowledged then that Adam's assessment of me was correct. I should have begun trying to morph my frigid heart into whatever it had been before. But then, it had always been so cold.
“So, did you do it, Brynna?” James asked me that night.
I screwed up my face in mild confusion and continued to brush out my wet hair.
“Did I do what, James?” I asked calmly with a high note of curiosity in my voice that was only just convincing enough.
“Did you kill him?”
“Who? Donovan?”
“Yes.”
“No. He died in his sleep.” I replied easily, “You know that if I were to kill him for what he did to Penny, there would be nothing left of him.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“That is rude, James.”
“Maybe so. But are you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“God or Gods, yes!” I exclaimed in frustration, “How can you even ask me this? How can you even suspect me of doing something like that?”
“Because Donovan was a disgusting excuse for a human being and he wronged you when he went after Penny. That's how.”
“I was here with you all last night. I was asleep. Nature just took its course with him. What I find so very odd is that we cannot accept that. We are so used to strange and unsavo
ry circumstances that we cannot accept that a man met his death in his sleep.”
James sat down beside me and grasped both of my hands.
“I know you weren't here with me last night. You were gone for an hour.”
My heart plummeted but I did not show even a hint of that new discomfort on my face.
“So, let me ask you again: Did you kill him?”
I stared at him for a long while. After several minutes had passed, I shrugged in apathy. I was not sorry.
He nodded and broke his hold on my hands.
“That's what I thought.” He muttered as he laid down in bed beside me.
“So what now?” I looked over at him and awaited an answer.
“Now, we can only hope that they don't find out. Otherwise, we're out on our asses. We're going to be feeling around in the forest, looking for a place to live where they can't get at us. You didn't think this through at all, did you?”
“I did. More than you could know.”
I crawled up behind him and wrapped my arms around his middle. I kissed his shoulder and laid my head down.
“Everything will be fine. I covered all the bases, as they say. Given their lack of a forensic investigator, they will never know that I was there. Even if we had an entire crime scene investigative team, they would find nothing. Alright?”
My hands were rested on his chest. His came up to grasp them.
“You're sure?”
“Positive.”
“Alright, then.”
“You're alright with this?”
After he had turned over to look at me, I saw a steely ice hanging about in his normally warm brown eyes.
“If it had been you, I would have destroyed him. There would have been nothing left of him.”
I smiled slightly and climbed on top of him. My hair was hanging in my face and he moved it away as I leaned down to kiss his lips gently.
“I know.”
Nothing more came of Donovan's death.
XXX
We passed our free time in the ways that most living in normal circumstances would. Our housemates became more like friendly neighbors; we spent an abundance of time with them, getting to know their families and their back stories. Every person had an interesting story to tell, I found.
Penny made friends easily, as she always had. It took time but eventually, I was able to leave her in the care of others. However, despite my fragile trust in the people around me strengthening everyday, I would not leave Penny alone with males, even those that had children. James assured me gently that the chances of the unthinkable happening to Penny were slim but still, I could not risk it.
Violet saw Nick more often than I was truly comfortable with. Though the young man was quite gentlemanly towards her and me, I could not help but suspect that their relationship was physical. James, once again, assured me that I was mistaken. His theory was that I was still guilt-ridden over breaking my long-held principles regarding men with him. As a result, I believed subconsciously that Violet was making a mistake that I had long taught her never to make.
He was wrong about that theory, at least somewhat.
I had absolutely no regrets when it came to James. My feelings for him had long since surpassed my need to pull away. To put it bluntly, I was hopelessly, desperately in love with him. How could I not have been? We had survived the end together. When the burden of our new lives began to wear one or both of us down, we pulled together and carried the weight. As a child, when I had pictured relationships, I had always just seen the sexual aspect. As you can imagine, I was thoroughly disgusted by such stunted, out of place images of two people allowing such intimate closeness, both physical and emotional, to one another. But I understood suddenly that when one was in love, one was able to achieve that closeness without any shame or fear. After so many years of shuddering in discomfort every time I pictured having a physical tryst with a man, I believed in the normalcy and true romance of the act.
We bonded over the most trivial things. We laughed so often that outsiders and passerby more than likely believed us to be consistently high on the Peace Fruit. I had not laughed with such frequency in so many years. The muscles in my face protested the constant assault of smiles and giggles at first but then, they adjusted to the lighthearted nature of mine and Jame's time together. My heart followed a similar path: I was beginning to drop my need to disdainfully tear down others as I wallowed in the misery and woe of the world. I was beginning to see things through a lens of beauty and idealism, however foolishly. James aided me in accepting that new outlook just as he came to grip it firmly himself.
In short, I felt so blissfully alive, for perhaps the first time in my life.
“What about this one?” I asked him one night. I was pressing one finger lightly against the tattoo over his heart. “That's very...”
“I know.” He sighed heavily and shook his head in overly dramatic shame. “I like to say it's simple.”
I laughed and swooped my hair back so that I could observe the tattoo more closely. I was perched on his middle, straddling him and adjusting my glasses so that I could see the details of his embarrassingly ridiculous tattoo.
“That is a nice way of saying, 'It is very old and poorly designed.'”
“Excuse me, madam, I designed this tattoo myself.”
“Oh my God...” I covered my mouth to hide my slightly chagrined smile. “Are you serious?”
His face broke into a grin and he chuckled softly.
“No. Of course not. I walked into the shop, flipped through one of the books for five minutes and chose this one.”
“So you must have been young, then?” I asked, “Like eighteen?”
“Forty one, actually.”
The boisterous giggles that took hold of me almost erased the look of consternation that he was trying so valiantly to keep plastered on his face. As I covered my mouth and struggled to stay upright, his hands grasped my hips, holding me firmly so that I did not fall off of him.
“This right here,” He touched the tattoo, “is most certainly not a laughing matter. This is a cautionary tale to warn young people like you against drinking heavily with your friends and wandering into a tattoo shop at midnight. Seriously, that story is like the new-age Hansel and Gretel. You should be terrified right now.”
“Stop!” I exclaimed, grasping my stomach as I only laughed harder. “You are right, though! It is the worst tattoo I have ever had the displeasure of viewing!”
“I don't need to translate that into regular people-speak but I might anyway.”
The tattoo in question was a tawny owl wearing dark-rimmed glasses. The location was curious, considering that a design placed over one's heart would generally denote some overly emotional sentiment. If James had tattooed one of his many girlfriend's names there, though that surely would have been very stupid, I might have understood. But a brash caricature of an animal seemed out of place over his heart that I knew to be so very large.
“I was looking at it earlier when we were...” I trailed off, spinning my hand by my head as though that somehow signified “having sex.” James mimicked the awkward hand gesture and then we were both laughing again.
“You were looking at it? While we were doing that? Am I off my game today or something?”
“Just because I was looking at it doesn't mean that I was not paying attention to what you and I were doing. It just caught my eye and I found myself unable to tear my gaze away.”
“And you thought, 'My boyfriend has the greatest taste in ink...'”
“No. I thought, 'That is a strange place for a tattoo whose existence was clearly born from whimsy.'”
“You like that one. 'Born from whimsy...'”
“I do, indeed.”
“What do you think I should have gotten there? My wife's name or something?”
“That would be both obscene and doltish, so no.” I replied, shaking my head rapidly. My choice of words seemed to amuse him because he was chuckling softly once
again.
“This is no laughing matter, James Maxwell.” I said in jocular scorn, “Are you unaware of the fact that it has been proven to end relationships when one of the people in said romantic binding tattoo the name of their partner on their person?”
“Don't get me wrong, I love the alliteration, but do you want to cite your source on that? Because I think you're wrong. I'm sure there are other reasons that the relationship ends.”
“Ha-ha, I know you are being blithely sarcastic. I'm sure there are other reasons as well. But there is a causal relationship between the two events, at least in my humble opinion.”
“Your humble opinion? I don't think that I need to tell you that what you just said is an oxymoron.”
We were laughing again.
“Alright, lady, you want me to explain every drunken night I spent in tattoo parlors. I want to know about yours.”
“I only have three tattoos and believe me, the stories are not that interesting. Plus, I was stone-cold sober when I got each and every one of them, so the stories you have requested regarding drunken nights would simply not be truthful.”
“I never asked for stories regarding,” He stopped, “whatever it was that you just said.”
I grinned in over-the-top triumph.
“Yeah? That face? 'Ha-ha, I got you?'” He asked before sitting up quickly and pressing his lips to mine hard. “I'm treading very close to a dangerously personal topic, aren't I?”
“What makes you say that?” I asked calmly, though internally, my insides were beginning to swell in anxiety. He was right; the stories behind each of my tattoos were very personal.
“Because you're starting to get that sketchy look in your eyes like I am treading very close to a dangerously personal topic. Either that, or you're about to go on a killing rampage.”
“Oh, look at you. You know me so well.” I made an effort to smile at him and shrug, “At another time, my dear, I will tell you all about them. Just not tonight. Besides, my ink does not rival that lovely bespectacled avian creature that is cemented so glaringly on your chest.” I walked my fingers over it, smiling in genuine amusement once again.
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 60