Jonathan smirked, but the humor was short-lived. His father was talking about the future as though he would have one.
“I guess we’re pretending,” Jonathan said, his face growing grim. “I’ve been telling myself I need to get back up, help Rylee, but even if I could, this fight is over for me. I’m not going to get the chance to ask Mr. Fedora anything.”
Douglas’s eyes grew heavy; his entire being more conflicted than Jonathan had ever seen him when he lived. Jonathan figured that he must have hoped they would avoid reality a bit longer.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Jonathan said. “This game … it was always rigged. I knew it never mattered how many times I won.”
“Son, I know you’re tired,” Douglas said. “But do you truly wish this to be over?”
“What difference does it make?”
There was only compassion on Douglas’s face, and he was careful when he spoke. “Jonathan, I know what it is to wake up each morning and secretly hope that today is the day that your best will just stop being good enough. So that you can fail the world knowing you never gave up. I know how that unspoken wish can taint every step forward.”
Jonathan looked away, suddenly aware of just how well his father knew him.
“I’ve felt it growing heavier as you carry it, son, and there isn’t any shame in it. Before your mother told me she was pregnant with you, I had carried it for quite a while.”
Jonathan swallowed and turned to look at the wall, the vault door, then back to Jess. “My intuition was afraid of you, locked you in the dark because she knew you weren’t a part of me,” he said as he watched her. “That isn’t all she put in here, is it? It’s everything I tried to keep separate. Everything that was a part of me that I didn’t want. Everything I tried to keep away from the people I cared about—it all got locked in here with you.”
His father nodded. “Heyer never gave you a choice, son. The alien placed you on a road, knowing you would accept that someone had to walk it. You’ve never believed you were the right tool for the job, only that there was no one else.”
“We don’t need to talk about this,” Jonathan said. “Yeah, a part of me wants to bow out. It doesn’t change the fact that I lost.”
“No, son,” Douglas said finally. “You have decisions to make. Heyer… he tries to protect you from the complexity of it all, makes it seem that your only choice is whatever is best for Mankind. When he told you that you couldn’t trust yourself, you believed him. You’ve been a train wreck of indecision ever since.” Pain burdened Douglas’s face and he trailed off. “But I am your father, and right now, I don’t give a damn about anything other than what is best for my son. The one kindness I can give you is the time and space to make choices that are truly yours.”
“What choices?” Jonathan asked. “You keep talking like what I decide now matters, but what decision can I make now that is going to change the fact that I’m unconscious and Grant is coming to stomp my head in?”
“You aren’t done,” Douglas said, his voice having grown louder than he’d meant. “Unless you want to be.” He closed his eyes. “I see one path for you to make it through this, and every step of it is a decision you don’t want to make. Every choice will have a cost. But I’m not going to make you endure another second of these decisions just because an alien says you don’t have a choice.”
Jonathan studied his father. There was no joy in his expression. Whatever path he saw that Jonathan could not, his father truly didn’t know if what it would take to live through the day was worse than death for him.
“Tell me how,” he said. “And I’ll make the damn decisions.”
Slowly, his father nodded. “It’s not easy to know where to begin,” he said. “Some things will be far more difficult than others. Maybe it’s best to start with what you already know you’re avoiding.”
At the corner of his vision, Jonathan saw Jess was no longer passively listening from the truck hood. Her attention had become unblinking, focused on Douglas—almost like he’d threatened her. Seeing the change in her, Jonathan realized that his intuition was reacting to his own reluctance to hear what his father had to say. He gently raised his hand up to her, shaking his head that she was not to intervene.
“You have weapons you aren’t using, son,” Douglas said. “You’ve only scratched the surface of the bond, tapped into it unconsciously as an act of desperation or a thoughtless reflex. It’s like you’re starting an engine and then refusing to give it gas.”
Jonathan, feeling as though the statement was obvious, threw his hands up. “It’s not that simple. If there was a switch I knew how to flip on and off—trust me, I would flip it.”
“That’s the problem,” Douglas said. “The bond isn’t a weapon like Excali-bar—it isn’t designed to be picked up and put down when you’re done with it. You have to let it become a permanent part of you. Surrender to it.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Stop seeing a contradiction where there isn’t one.”
“Dad, I can’t lie to myself and believe it.”
“Youth,” he said, shaking his head. “Son, ever notice how simple relationships seem when you are standing outside of them? It’s only when you’re involved that everything appears so damn complicated. Everyone tries to convince themselves that the truth is so hard to find whenever it fails to be what they want it to be.”
Jonathan tongued the side of his cheek, letting his dad know how unhelpful he’d found the statement.
“How often do you watch your roommate fawning over Paige?” Douglas asked. “Do you find it a mystery that she doesn’t seem to ever pick up on it?”
“Not a mystery, she doesn’t see it because she doesn’t want to…” Jonathan trailed off as he saw Douglas nodding at him knowingly.
“Look, the warning Heyer gave you about the bond’s effects would have done a mind job on anyone. It gave you reason to be guarded against every feeling you had for Rylee, but instead of ignoring the bond’s manipulations, you’ve been ignoring everything.”
“How the hell…” Jonathan had raised his voice, but restrained himself. “How am I supposed to know what I should or shouldn’t ignore?”
“I’ve seen how the bond is affecting you—the levers it pulls on,” Douglas said. “You miss her and don’t know why, you know in your core that you would protect her with your life, you want only for her to feel loved and safe. If you were a father, you would have recognized those feelings. Parents feel them when they stand over the cribs of their children.”
Douglas tilted his head then, and smiled.
“But the bond didn’t force you to respect her ingenuity, her brains, her skill as a fighter. It didn’t make you laugh with her when she joked. And it certainly isn’t forcing you to trust her. I don’t think Heyer fully knew what he was talking about. The truth made you feel those things.”
Jonathan’s face was uncertain. “Dad, that can’t explain… if the bond is manipulating me into feeling that she is my child, how could I possibly feel so much…” He grimaced, his head tilting awkwardly. “Tension?”
Douglas snorted at the question.
“Oh, that’s funny?” Jonathan asked. “If you’re right, it goes beyond disturbing.”
His father shook his head. “Kid, relax. The implant might be able to pull on your parental instincts, but it can’t brainwash you into seeing a daughter you know you don’t have,” he said. “As far as the ‘tension’ goes, I’m not convinced the bond can take all the credit—it hardly takes an alien implant for men your age to be blinded by completely normal hormones. It’s a condition called having eyes.”
Jonathan looked at his father as though he must be joking.
“Jonathan, every man you’ve introduced to Rylee has reacted to her,” Douglas said. “Why would you be so different?”
Jonathan thought for a second before shaking his head. “No. Rylee said that when we first met it was as though we coul
dn’t control ourselves.”
“Maybe. But, for whatever reason, that hasn’t been true for you. The moment you felt any affection for her, you became a conflicted mess—have hardly been able to make a decision about a damn thing since. You couldn’t tell her to go—told yourself excuses and half-truths while you waited for it to be too late. You couldn’t tell her about the bond—even though keeping her around forced you to resist it. Frankly, everything you’ve been doing contradicts itself.”
“I…” Jonathan strained through the words. “Realize that.”
“Do you?” Douglas asked. “Because if getting out of your own way is all it takes to get through this, you have to wonder: do you truly want to get through this?”
Jonathan thought about what his father had asked. It took a moment before he replied. “Rylee… she told me the truth—why she came here. Still, there was one thing she didn’t say. I felt it, when our minds were bridged. It was vague at the time, but as I got to know her, I saw what was really killing her inside.” Jonathan closed his eyes. “She needed something, anything, she could trust. The bond’s effects tricked her into believing she’d found it. When I forgot her….”
Jonathan trailed off, closing his eyes, before he continued:
“The only difference between Rylee and I, is that I never had so much to lose. I think she was happy—happy in a way I’ve never truly felt—before Heyer took it all away from her. He hollowed her out. But finding something to trust, to hold onto, gave her something back. I couldn’t take from her the one thing that seemed to….” He opened his eyes and found his father waiting. “Rylee wears joy like a mask now. But not when she looks at me.”
A moment of silence followed, and Jonathan saw his father considering his words—growing skeptical.
“Hmm,” Douglas said. “Here I was thinking this had more to do with the neighbor.”
Jonathan’s face became bitter as he looked away. “Just because I didn’t want to hurt Rylee didn’t mean I could be everything she wanted. I didn’t want to hurt either of them.” He gave a deflated shrug and closed his eyes.
“So, you resisted the bond,” Douglas said. “Because what? You were afraid of the pain it would cause if you divided your affections? Or was it that you thought what you felt for Leah was real and what you felt for Rylee was manipulation?” He scratched his head. “I’ve got to be honest here kid … if it’s the latter, I think you’ve got things ass-backwards.”
“Yeah….”
He didn’t want to look at Leah, was afraid of what he’d see if he put her under a microscope. It pained him enough that he’d run from it, wished he could go back to a time that he didn’t have to think of her with doubt. His father waited, seeing that his son was not exactly leaning into the wind when it came to considering Leah wasn’t what she seemed.
“You can’t ignore what she is because it isn’t what want you wanted her to be,” Douglas said.
“Am I a fool?” Jonathan asked.
His father hesitated a moment before he spoke. “No. I admit, it was the little brother that made it hard to believe Leah was anything other than what she seemed. But you don’t have the luxury of ignoring the signs now, son. Leah’s photographing Rylee’s journal, moving in next door only two days after you went to the hospital… and let’s face it, she’s been far too accommodating. She caught you in what appeared to be a straight lie about the girl sleeping in your bed, and she didn’t demand an explanation?”
Douglas’s words softened and slowed as he saw that every word was weighing on his son. “Jonathan, Leah makes a lot more sense when you look at her through the lens of an agent. She’s just a little too attractive, too accepting, too perfect. You want to trust her because she’s been buying that trust—being whatever you needed her to be from day one. You’ve seen how perceptive she is, how she always seems to see through you, always knows when you’re holding back. Leah is….” He sighed. “Well, frankly, she is like a therapist probing at a patient.
“You say Rylee needed someone to trust? Leah saw the same weakness in you months ago. She’s been trying to crack the lock on your vault by exploiting it ever since—but Jonathan, all she is after is what you’ve been hiding in here.”
“Stop,” Jonathan whispered.
“Jonathan,” Douglas said tersely. “I know everything in you wants to give her the benefit of the doubt. But pull yourself outside of it all. Ask yourself what you would tell someone in your shoes.”
“Enough. Look, I get why you are telling me this, and yeah, they’re crap choices, and I’ve been ignoring them. But none of this is so unbearable that a father would weigh it against the life and death of his son.”
Douglas pursed his lips, nodding before closing his eyes and letting out a long breath. “I guess you aren’t the only one avoiding things.”
When his father opened his eyes, he studied the vault door. Jonathan turned to look as well, found nothing about it had changed, and wondered why Douglas’s gaze was suddenly lingering there.
“You know,” his father said, “when I was first locked in here, I was roommates with all the anger you walled away. You used to be afraid of it—knew that if you gave it what it wanted, it would change you forever.”
“I remember.”
“But you let it out, took it as your ally—that was the cost paid to keep fighting. It was a first step, but I don’t think Heyer realized how quickly this would all come to a head. He didn’t have time to turn you into what he needs you to be.”
“Dad?” Jonathan asked. “What are you saying?”
Douglas held up a hand, asking for patience. “It took Heyer years to break down the encryption that would have kept our minds apart. He didn’t go to all the trouble so I could give you a pep talk,” he said. “He did it because he wants me to tell you the one thing he couldn’t. He doesn’t understand—it won’t be enough.”
“Tell me what?”
“It was not long after I’d been implanted that Heyer took an interest in me. He said I had a rare talent for killing beasts—that he wanted to help me to see how far that talent could go. He spent years training me to engage the Ferox. After all that time, I believe, I was the old man’s only real friend in the world. He isn’t prone to emotion, but my death hurt him.” Douglas swallowed, looking at the floor. “Friend or not, he needed something from me, and had I lived, the day was coming that he would ask it of me. I realized it the day he gave me that chain.”
“Doomsday?” Jonathan asked.
“He never said it, not in words, but I knew him too well by then. Heyer needed a monster, a man deadly enough to kill his brother.”
“He wasn’t willing to do it himself?”
“Maybe that was a part of it—I can’t say for sure. Malkier came through the gate without any warning. I didn’t realize who he was, thought him an Alpha Ferox at first. I was suspicious, because I couldn’t detect the presence of the portal stone—he’d cloaked it from my awareness somehow. But the first time I hit that bastard, I knew I wasn’t dealing with a Ferox—not even an Alpha could be that powerful,” Douglas said. “Knowing who he was didn’t matter. Heyer had put all that time into me, but I was still no match. Anyway, when I died, whatever Heyer had planned fell apart.” He looked at Jonathan, his eyes conflicted. “But … I never had anything near the strength you have, son.”
Jonathan nodded, but didn’t understand why his father was telling him these things. He held his questions, knowing his father would get there—that whatever he was getting at was hard for him to say.
“You see that?” Douglas pointed to the canvas covering the old truck. “I meant to give it to you, when you were old enough.” He smiled sadly. “It was going to break down on you—give you all sorts of trouble. I wanted to teach you how to keep a car running.”
Douglas walked to another canvas and Jonathan knew what lay beneath it before he’d even pulled the cover off. The truck’s engine, suspended off the ground by a hoist.
“I didn’t want
to protect you from everything, Jonathan. There were problems I planned to put in front of you,” he said.
He gripped the chains that held the engine in the air. Jonathan remembered how he had done the same as a child, on the day of Douglas’s wake.
“I fought to stay alive because I’d had to hope I could keep the Ferox from being one of them. I partnered with Heyer, let him turn me into the monster he needed, because I wanted you to have a future you didn’t have to fear. But no matter how many of them I killed…” His father trailed off as he let go of the chains. “I didn’t have enough time to fix this for you. Now, the Borealis I failed to kill is coming for my son.”
Jonathan saw the guilt in his father—knew that he felt he’d failed him. “Dad, I know you did everything you could.”
“No.” Douglas’s eyes screwed shut, and he shook his head. “Just listen, son. He brought Grant here as an assassin. He tried to weaken you, to make sure Grant would succeed, but he doesn’t want to engage you himself. Now, perhaps he fears a confrontation with you will lead to his fathering another child. But I don’t think that is why he is keeping his distance.”
“But why?”
“He is an Alpha Ferox with a Borealis implant just like Heyer’s, he is thousands of years old—damn near invincible,” Douglas said. “And I think he’s afraid of you.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
JONATHAN STARED BACK at his father. After the one blow he’d taken from the Borealis, he was unable to imagine how Douglas could get the idea that Malkier feared him. Yet, there was something off. The alien was invincible for all intents and purposes. So, why would a father, hell bent on avenging the death of his son, go to so much trouble to give that satisfaction to someone else?
“Heyer said that Echoes the Borealis—you—hurt him,” Jonathan said, his eyes narrowing. “You weren’t prepared, didn’t even have the bond…. Are you saying that Heyer broke down the wall between your memories and mine because he didn’t know how you did it?”
The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2) Page 54