by eden Hudson
I took a step closer. Colt?
The creature was him, a barely recognizable version. It was as if he’d been burned alive. His skin and bones formed grotesque, inhuman shapes. All over his body, open sores oozed infected pus. He was naked, his hair was matted and dirty, and his penis was unrealistically enlarged, disfigured, and throbbing.
Mikal saw me. You came to fight me for this piece of shit?
His name is Colt, I said.
The dog’s name is whatever I say its name is, she said, jerking on the leash. It belongs to me.
I took a drag off my cigarette and held the cherry up like the Smoking Man to watch it burn. A ghost of Shannon flitted through the smoke. Colt whimpered as if he’d been kicked and tried to hide himself.
You don’t want this filthy slut, Mikal said. No one does. Not the way I trained him.
He’s not your damn dog, I said.
Mikal smiled. Yes, he is. Watch. Beg, Colt.
The creature scraped his face across the toe of her boots.
Please, Mikal, he croaked.
Tell me what you want, she said.
Please hurt me.
Tell me why you want it, Mikal said. Tell her why.
The creature shuddered.
I need it, he said to the ground. I need to be punished.
Good dog, Mikal said. Then she looked at me. You see? The dog needs pain and humiliation to be satisfied. You can’t give him what he needs.
I’m done screwing around, Mikal. I dropped my cigarette and stopped concentrating on it. It disappeared before it hit the ground.
Mikal laughed and dropped the leash. A spiderweb of glowing red lines appeared around her, dotted with mixing bowl-sized drops of blood. She reached into the blood-drop at her hip and pulled that flaming sword out.
Colter Whitney’s burning angel versus Halo’s own ice-bitch? Mikal took a step toward me. I’ve been waiting for this.
I shuffled through Colt’s knowledge banks for heavy artillery. The word thermobaric vibrated in the air.
No! The creature that was Colt turned toward me.
Mikal looked over her shoulder. Sit, Colt. Stay.
He obeyed, but he twitched and squirmed. His hands reached out as if to grab, but then pulled back. He couldn’t disobey her.
Good dog, Mikal said. Then she turned back to me, her tar-covered wings stretching out to their full span, trying to intimidate me.
RPG-7. Information poured from Colt’s consciousness into mine along with that word again, thermobaric, and a litany of warnings. FAE. Non-nuclear nuke. Shoulder-mounted shitstorm. Mini-Hiroshima. Too close, too close, too close.
That sounded like what I was looking for.
Ready to go to Hell, Tiffani? Mikal asked.
I pictured the launcher on my shoulder. When it appeared, the surprise of its sudden physical weight threw me off balance. Another thing I’d never felt in a mind before. I planted my feet and shifted my shoulders until the launcher rested against my neck.
Mikal charged. Time slowed. I watched the long, sculpted muscles of her upper arm bunch as she swung her fiery sword at my throat. Individual tongues of flame reached for me. Their heat blistered my chin, neck, and chest.
The instinct to get away from the fire was overwhelming. I stumbled backward, forgetting for a second that I couldn’t die here.
Damn it, this isn’t real, I snapped. It can only hurt.
Mikal laughed. But it can hurt a lot.
She thrust the sword at my chest.
I aimed the rocket launcher and fired.
I didn’t get to see the warhead hit. The moment I pulled the trigger, Colt’s mind forced me to drop the launcher and run in the opposite direction. The words too close, too close, too close pulsed in my ears. Behind me, Mikal screamed, furious. Then all sound disappeared.
Something heavy hit me in the back. I threw my arms out to stop the fall, but my head bounced off the ground.
Everything was fire. My skin crackled and hissed. I opened my mouth to scream, but my lungs shriveled. I could feel the tiny air sacks popping like bubbles in my chest. My bodily fluids boiled until the pain inside matched the intensity of the inferno surrounding me. The pressure built in my head until I felt my skull crack and explode. Brain matter filled my throat and mouth. I gagged.
I needed to scream, cry, writhe in agony, but I couldn’t move or make a sound.
Far away, past the pain and animal terror, I realized I was babbling nonsense, begging for it to end. But I couldn’t be babbling and unable to speak at the same time.
This wasn’t real. I had to remember. I’d mesmerized Colt. Somewhere along the way I’d lost control. He had taken over. This felt real, but it wasn’t.
The realization dimmed the intensity of the pain. I could feel the thing that had knocked me down lying on top of me. A body. His arms were wrapped around me, shielding me from the blast.
Colt. My throat tried to protest when I spoke, as if my vocal cords were actually brittle and burnt. I forced my consciousness to swell and wrestle control away from him. It’s over, Colt. Stop.
The holocaust receded. The weight disappeared from my back. My body regenerated.
I stood up and dusted my clothes off, more out of habit than necessity.
Sizzling pieces of flesh and charred clumps of feather littered the scorched ground, a hand here, a chunk of wing there. A leg in a melted red boot.
At my side, Colt was that diseased creature again. He looked up at me without standing. Through the facial deformation, it was hard to tell what his expression meant.
You know me, Colt, I said. Remember me.
His form shifted from the diseased thing to that black-haired little boy. Baby fat cheeks and dark blue-green eyes like his father’s. He just barely dared to look up at me through his bangs, and I remembered thinking whenever Shannon brought the kids by the bakery what a shy kid Colt was. Ryder and Sissy had never met a stranger, but Shannon could barely get Colt to look at people when they talked to him.
Mom’s friend, he said. Ms. Cranston.
As I watched, Colt changed again, grew sinewy teenage muscle, all arms and legs and feral righteous fury. The boy screaming in the woods the night I had tried to talk Danny out of the war.
NP bitch, Colt spat. Too scared to fight because you sold your soul? Hell’s coming one way or the other, vamp. Being a coward ain’t going to stop it.
Then he grew into his body, filling out into the man waiting for me back in the real world. The rage and battle-stress cooled, but that unnerving feral spark had rooted itself in his eyes. That was never going away.
Tiff. He smiled. It was short and self-conscious, but it was my smile. The one he smiled just for me.
I reached out, but Colt shifted again, back into the reeking, diseased creature. He cringed down into the dirt to get away from my touch.
Don’t, he growled.
I grabbed the thing that was Colt and pulled him to his feet. Wrapped my arms around him. The super-smeller recoiled in disgust, begging me to get away. Stinking pus oozed onto my skin. His mutilated erection throbbed against my ribs. I kissed his mouth and gagged on the rotting sickness.
Colt shoved me and I stumbled backward. Yellowish, infected tears dripped from his eyes and slid down his distorted cheeks.
Can’t you take a fucking hint? he screamed.
I crossed my arms.
I’ll come back here every damn day, I said. I’ll cut myself to pieces on the razor wire and crawl across the broken glass and get blown up by mines and fight that bitch every damn day. And you know what, Colt? I’ll win. Every. Damn. Day. You take the fucking hint.
Getting thrown out of Colt’s mind and back into my own was like exploding to the surface of the ocean after a deep, deep dive. I even gasped as if I were still alive and needed the oxygen. My body and soul and mind ached like open wounds.
We were on the bakery floor, next to the bathroom. I was straddling Colt’s lap, had his face clamped between my hands. I made mysel
f let go.
For a second, Colt just stared at me. Then in one violent movement, he hugged me and pushed his face into my neck. His whole body shook, choking on the sobs.
I ran my fingers through his hair. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said again.
“I’m so tired.”
“Let me get your side closed up. Then we can go upstairs and lie down.”
“But it’s never going to end.”
“No, probably not,” I said. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. He was right. “But you still need some rest. And we have to stop the bleeding.” I stood up and pulled him to his feet. “Come on.”
PART III: RESIST OR SERVE
Tough
I clenched my teeth. Ground them a little. I groaned—just an exhale without the sound. That felt so damn good.
Scout had been right about making her blood stronger. It felt like I’d shot up enough tranq to kill a werewolf. Where was this when I was alive? I would’ve killed myself to get this high.
Actually, I did kill myself to get this high. I snorted. Then I started laughing.
I scrubbed my hands across my face, hard. That felt good, too. But fake. Masturbating instead of having sex. It’d take care of the horniness for a minute, but it wasn’t enough to last. I wanted Desty’s hands on my face. She was always touching my face while we had sex. The last time she’d talked to me the whole way through, swearing everything was going to be okay, and even knowing it was all lies hadn’t stopped me believing her.
I could feel her breath on my ear.
“It’s good, isn’t it? I told you.” Not Desty.
I opened my eyes.
Yellowed, nicotine-stained walls. A shelf full of dusty glass ducks wearing bonnets. Harper’s parents’ trailer—which was now Scout’s trailer.
Scout’s body was pressed to mine. She stretched up on her toes and rubbed her cheek against my face. I felt every bristle of my stubble scrape across her skin. She took off her shirt. Helped me get my jeans off. Then she was kissing me.
“…need a condom. Not that I don’t trust you, Tough, but you just fed, so you’re sort of half-alive again.” She looked down at my fly, then back up at me. “Everywhere.”
Shit. This is not going to work if you don’t stop talking.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got some. Just a sec.”
She disappeared down the hallway. I took a deep breath, felt it puff up my chest until it was as full of fuzz as the rest of me.
Plenty of time to leave. Plenty of time to pretend like I was the good guy, the guy who could do the right thing once in a while, the guy I wanted to be whenever I was with Desty.
Reality was trying to jam its way into my brain through the high. I shut my eyes and ground my teeth again. My thoughts cut down to one-word feelings—Good. Buzz. Full.
Soft, warm hands rolled a condom onto my dick and I pushed into them, trying to stay with that heat. She ran her hands up my chest and down across my back. Even though I knew it was Scout, I wanted more.
So this was how it was going to be. I was going to fuck Scout even though she was jailbait and Harper’s little sister and so much like a little sister to me that I hadn’t even realized until now that she was hot. Later on, I’d go fuck somebody else. Why not? Everybody knew that was all I was good for.
I used to be this guy who didn’t sleep around—even though Mitzi would wind me up until I couldn’t take it anymore then leave me for a few days or a week or two weeks with no idea when she was coming back. Back then, I could do it because I might be a trick-ass man-whore the whole town talked shit about, but at least I didn’t sleep around. I had my friends and I had my music and that had been enough.
Before that I’d just been this kid who didn’t want to die yet. Was that so Goddamn much to ask?
It was weird to realize I’d never thought that word before. Goddamn. That was wrong. Sinful. Worse than all the other cuss words because it was taking His name in vain. Pissing all over Commandment #3. Dad probably would’ve said that thinking it was worse than anything else I’d done so far. Except throwing away my eternal salvation to become a vampire. Thinking that—Goddamn—it was like I could feel myself get colder from the inside out.
Son of a bitch. Somewhere along the way this had turned into the kind of low that made people slash their wrists. I needed to feel my way back to good. Teeth grinding. Head buzzing. Somebody hot pressed against me.
Scout. Seventeen-year-old, illegal to feed off of, definitely illegal to fuck for another three months Scout. Harper’s little sister Scout. Following me around since I helped Mom in the nursery at church Scout.
We didn’t even make it to the bedroom. We stretched out in the hallway with her on top.
I shut my eyes and tried not to think, tried to just focus on the sensation overload. She wasn’t anyone. Just another body. My hand slid up her smooth, soft stomach. Her breasts. I could feel every one of her skin cells.
My fingertips bumped warm metal and Scout moaned. I opened my eyes. She had her nipples pierced. There was more metal in her bellybutton.
I had to look.
Yeah, she was pierced down there, too.
So much for the little sister angle. That’s some straight-up porn star shit right there.
I wished I could shut off the voice inside my brain.
What did you expect? Some innocent little virgin? Where do you think you live, dumbass?
I slammed my head backward and hit floor. The thud rippled through my skull like bass from a subwoofer. That felt good, but it was gone too fast. I did it again.
She grabbed my head to stop me, but thank fuck she didn’t say anything. Warm hands on my face. Heat surrounding me. Legs clenching my hips. A body to come with. That was it. Nothing else.
Desty
As tired as I was, as soft as the bed was, and as cool as the air was, I couldn’t sleep. Cycling into REM in a bedroom surrounded by fallen angels who wanted to torture and kill me, just down the hall from the alpha who wanted to use my sister and me to take over the world, just didn’t sound that appealing. So I laid awake on the softest mattress I had ever touched, under a downy comforter, on top of silk sheets, jumping every time I heard the mansion’s central air click on.
My thoughts kept swirling around in the same torturous patterns, finding new flaws, picking apart old ones, listing all the reasons everyone I’d ever loved had been right to leave me behind.
I missed Tough. I really, really wanted to hate him, but all I could freaking do was miss him.
The really pathetic thing was I couldn’t even be mad at him. The harder I tried to convince myself that Tough was the bad guy, the clearer his face after he killed Jax became. It wasn’t Tough’s fault. Everything had fallen apart around him. When your world shatters, you need someone strong. Someone with a spine. Someone who can help you fight back. Doormats need not apply.
Finally, I got up. The on-suite bathroom, in keeping with the luxury of the rest of the mansion, was all glass and stone-tile. The shower had six different shower heads—all of which spit out water that was practically boiling as soon as I turned it on.
It felt like everything from the past week was clinging to me. I undressed and stepped into the water, hoping it would burn the top few layers of my skin off.
Try and try, but you can’t wash off what’s inside. A line from one of Tough’s songs.
I shut my eyes and leaned into the spray. You really couldn’t—wash it, run away from it, ignore it. It didn’t matter what you did. When you looked in the mirror, it was still going to be you. When I got out of the shower, it was still going to be me. Coward. Idiot. Sperm dumpster.
God, it was no wonder everyone thought I was so naïve. Just get a guy to stick his dick in me and I would pour out my heart at his feet like a needy child.
I smacked the stone wall of the shower, then pulled my fist back and punched it. I had never hit a
nything that hard before, not even in Self Defense/P.E. in high school. The pain razored through my knuckles and down into my wrist. I winced and checked to make sure I wasn’t bleeding.
Good one, genius. Breaking your hand should help. I cradled it against my stomach.
My wrist brushed across the bellybutton charm Harper had given me so Tough’s next feeding wouldn’t kill me. A little red grenade, hand-picked by Scout to remind me what I was.
Before I could think about it, I grabbed the charm and ripped it out. Blood trickled down my stomach. A second later, pain flashed and spread across my skin like heat lightning through clouds.
The mansion’s air conditioning clicked on again, shocking me out of my doom spiral.
A vent on the bathroom ceiling blew directly into the shower. I almost laughed. Only in a fallen angel’s lair could you experience the luxury of cold air on your burning face while you took a steaming hot shower.
Okay, I need to stop wallowing in self-pity for five seconds and think about this logically. Not everybody got to self-destruct. Somebody had to pick up the pieces and soldier on.
Tough wasn’t the villain here. It wasn’t even Scout. Possible Fatigues and the rest of the foot soldiers could be terrifying as heck, but all they were doing was looking for a means to an end. Wasn’t that all I was doing? Wasn’t that the whole reason I’d come after Tempie in the first place?
Well, here I was. I’d found her. If I really wanted my sister back, I could have her. All I had to do was agree to become the Destroyer with her. That could be my means to my end. I could find out what exactly Kathan wanted from us and how he expected us to achieve it, I could read the texts he’d talked about that explained commanders, and then I could negotiate. In exchange for my cooperation, I could get him to promise to free Tempie and me when the last battle was over, maybe even convince him to leave Tough and Colt alone. It wasn’t like Kathan would care about the people in one little farm town once he had control of the entire planet. There wouldn’t be any reason to keep fighting.