by eden Hudson
His touch burned like fire, but underneath that I could feel things moving, growing back together. My heart beat. Once. Twice. This time it didn’t stop. It got into a steady rhythm and kept going. With every pump, heat spread out from the center of my chest, down my arms and legs, up my throat to my face and ears, all the way around to the back of my head. The warmth forced out the cold and sunk in—all the way—until even my bones were warm again.
Then He reached up and touched my throat. The movement in my vocal cords was subtler than Him putting my heart back together, but I felt it. I felt it with my whole body and soul.
He put both hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the eyes. “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
The tears were running hot now. For a second I could barely get my shit together enough to breathe. I swallowed hard and wiped my eyes on the hem of my shirt.
“That supposed to be some kind of joke?” I asked.
He laughed a lot harder than the sarcasm called for. “I mean, kind of. But it’s how you finish, not how you start, right?”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Here.” He picked my John Deere hat up off the ground and slapped it on his leg to clear some of the dirt and ashes off, then held it out to me.
“Thanks.” I put it on and adjusted the bill. “So, was that the end of the world?”
“Nah. The last battle’s done, but that was sort of just the beginning. There’s a lot of work left to do yet. For both of us.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know what He meant.
Past the old fencerow, over by the Dark Mansion, Dad and Mom were standing together, looking my way.
“They have to go back,” He said. “Going to go tell them goodbye?”
Hearing that was like getting shot in the chest again. I reached up to pull down on the bill of my hat, then made myself stop. I shoved my hands into my pockets.
“I…” I cleared my throat. “I can’t.”
“They love you, Tough.”
Their eyes were cutting right through to my spine. Mom lifted her hand in a tiny, awkward wave. Dad put his arm around her and held her close.
“Am I going to see them again? When I die? The next time I do, I mean.”
“Yeah, but—”
All the tension went out of my shoulders at once.
“I’ll wait,” I said. I would do better. Be better. Then I could face them.
After a few long seconds, He said, “They don’t care about that. At all.”
I couldn’t force any words out, so I just shrugged.
“All right.” He took a step away, then stopped and gestured at Desty. Or Tempie. Whoever she was. “Take care of them.”
I took a long breath, filled up my newly healed lungs, then blew it up at the sky. I could feel the difference. It sounds so stupid, so obvious—that being alive feels different from being dead—but until you feel it, it’s impossible to understand how different it is. I was alive.
“I’ll try to,” I said.
“You always do,” He said.
He started to head back toward the battlefield.
“See you later?” I said.
He laughed. “Count on it.”
I watched Him go, all the way over to where my parents and Ryder, Sissy, Colt, and Tiffani had gathered beside the Dark Mansion foundation. Even from far away, I could see Ryder smirking at me. Colt nodded goodbye.
Sissy looked from me to Dad and back. She asked Dad something. I couldn’t hear her, but I knew what she’d said.
She took a step in my direction, but Dad grabbed her arm and said something. She looked from Dad to me and back again. Finally, Sissy nodded. Because that was it. For now.
When Dad looked my way, I gave him a jerky nod to say thanks. Dad nodded back and tried to smile.
Then my family went home.
*****
I never wanted to stop looking at where they’d been, but I made myself turn around.
She was still sitting over at the edge of the crater, shivering even though the temperature had to be getting up over ninety already.
It’s ridiculous how many things you wish you could say when you can’t talk, but then the second you get your voice back, suddenly your mind goes blank.
I whipped my shirt off over my head. It was bloody and dirty, but hopefully better than nothing.
I sat down next to her. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should touch her, so I just cleared my throat.
Even though I’d done it expecting a sound, my vocal cords actually doing their job surprised me. I jumped a little and so did Desty.
She sat up straight and wrapped her arms around her chest.
Game time. I held out my shirt. “I thought if you were cold— I didn’t know if you wanted something to cover up with or—”
Then I saw the nose ring. Tempie.
She took the shirt—slow, like she was in a daze—and pulled it on.
“Can I talk to Desty?” I asked. “Is she in there anymore?”
She stared at me for a second, then she wrinkled her eyebrows.
“I think…I think we are.” She nodded. “Yeah, we’re still one. Like, for good.”
“Can she hear me?”
“We’re one, not deaf.”
I glared down at my boots. “You know, even when I didn’t have a voice, Desty always got what I was trying to say.”
“I can hear you,” she said. “I’m saying I’m not Desty or Tempie anymore. It’s me. We’re me—one person—for good.” She sighed. “This is going to cause a lot of nomenclature problems.”
I snorted. That was Desty.
Her muddy hazel eyes stared off like she was trying to remember something. “When I was with God, He called me a new name. But it was right. Like that had always been my name. The name for both of us at once, I mean. Grace.”
“So, do you want me to call you that?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Grace.” I tried to think of something else to talk about so I didn’t have to bring up what I had to bring up next, but nothing came to mind. “My mom said you were…” I nodded at her stomach, not sure I could say the word. “She said you were pregnant.”
Desty—Grace, I mean—looked down at the ground. “You drank off somebody before we had sex that last time, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “Scout. She was there after I killed Jax and…” And every time I’d done something with Scout or any other girl could be chalked up to her being there and me being a sack of shit. “So…the baby, is it…still alive?”
For a long time, Desty stared at the ground, biting her lip.
“Bred in the bone the same, born in the flesh the same.” She swiped her hair out of her eyes, hooked it behind her ear, then looked up at me. It was a move I’d seen Desty make a hundred times, but with hair too short to do any good. “They couldn’t kill it. But it’s not just ours. It’s part Kathan’s, too.”
My fists clenched and psycho-screaming metal roared through my veins. “That fucking— Did he—”
“No, he didn’t touch me…Desty… He didn’t touch Desty. It wouldn’t work like that, anyway. I had to be—I mean, Tempie had to be—pregnant so we could become one, so I convinced Kathan to do it. And when we became one, the fetal cells did, too.”
“So, it’s…what?”
Desty shrugged. “Alive.”
I waited for the pissed-off to drain out of me before I said anything else.
“If you’d known about it before you left, would you have stayed?” I asked.
She shook her head.
That was a kick in the balls, but I nodded. You don’t stay with the asshole who cheated on you and almost killed you.
“I wasn’t that person,” she said. “Not then.”
“I probably wasn’t, either,” I said.
We sat quiet for a while, me staring at her bloody hand in the grass. I really wanted to pick it up, but I didn’t think she would let me.
“So, what now?” Desty asked.
“Well, I’m going to sit here and stare at the sun until my eyes shrivel up in their sockets, and just be glad it doesn’t set my ass on fire anymore.” I looked at her. “Want to stare at it with me?”
After a few seconds, she nodded. “Sure.”
I leaned my elbows on my knees. Desty scooted over next to me, pulled her long legs up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them again.
I tried to be a gentleman about it, but I couldn’t help it. I looked.
She caught me.
My cheeks burned, turning Whitney-red, but I pretended like I didn’t notice that I was alive enough to blush again.
I pointed my nose back up toward the sky. “You look great without pants on.”
“You look good without a shirt on,” she said. “No farmer’s tan or anything.”
I snuck a peek at her. She was smiling.
We just sat there. While the NPs and humans picked through the bodies looking for survivors, while Kathan burned in Hell, and while my family did whatever they were doing up in Heaven, we sat there and watched the sun climb up the east side of the sky.
After a while, Desty reached over and picked up my hand. Her fingers were cold, so I folded them into a ball and held her hand between both of mine to warm it up.
“What’s that?” she asked.
I cocked my eyebrow at her.
“The song you were just humming,” she said.
I thought about it for a minute. When I was finally sure, I said, “Something new.”
Acknowledgements
Tough Whitney and I have been sharing a brain for the last four years, and trust me, no one is as happy—and as sad—to see him go as me. We’ve both grown up a lot since I first started daydreaming about Halo. Neither one of us is the person we were when we started out, and thank God for that. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but we’re both in a much better place. Thank you for seeing this through to the end with us.
If you liked God Killer, then you should know that the best things about this book only exist because of several humans and NPs who helped me out along the way.
God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. What Colt and Tiffani did for each other, They did for me, and I’ll never be able to say how thankful I am.
My elite team of early readers and cheerleaders—Rebecca Barnes, Daisy C., Silvia d’Elena, Sara F., Invested Ivana, Michael Jarvis, Matthew Ramey, and Halee Bowser.
Also starring: Jay Michaelson as the phrase “suck-start a shotgun,” James Hunter as Addison’s El Camino, Tim McBain as the Holy Executioner’s middle name, and DJ Bodden as the still unfired TBG-7.
Op Daddy, Op Mommy, and Frank. Keep on writin’, writin’, writin’.
My family. They’re definitely crazy, but there’s no question Whom they choose to serve.
And my Joshua. I’ve been a creature of the night my whole life, but every day he reminds me how great it feels to stand in the sunlight.
About the Author
I am invincible. I am a mutant. I have 3 hearts and was born with no eyes. I had eyes implanted later. I didn't have hands, either, just stumps. When my eyes were implanted they asked if I would like hands as well and I said, "Yes, I'll take those," and pointed with my stump. But sometimes I'm a frog. A blue tree frog that sings before it rains, and I change colors. I sit on your shoulder and sing in your ear as I turn purple.
But I'm also a tattoo-addict, coffee-junkie, drummer, and aspiring skateboarder. I love you. Let’s be friends.
Hang out with me on Goodreads
Drop me a line: [email protected]
Take a look behind the curtain: WhiteTrashCappuccino.blogspot.com
Nothing Important Happened Last Night
Or, “Tiffani’s Last Shot”
A Halo Short Story
I didn’t catch Colt’s scent until I got to the northwest corner of the square. He was leaning against the brick wall of my bakery, hands jammed in his pockets. Just after 4 a.m. according to the bank clock. Still dark.
Before I went over, I checked my ponytail, shirt, jeans. Licked my lips—no blood. Not being able to look in a mirror has its drawbacks. I sniffed my arm. The scent of that grimy vamp-groupie from the cemetery was all over my skin. Not strong enough that a human could smell it, but I could.
Colt pushed away from the wall as I walked up.
“I was starting to think you were done coming by,” I said. It’d been almost a week. In five years, he’d never gone that long without checking on Tough. “You get stuck in a missile silo?”
“Yeah,” Colt said, forcing a smile. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.
I keyed in the code and opened the door for him, trying to ignore the grating feeling of unfamiliarity. This wasn’t right. Colt and I were—well, whatever the hell we were—but not strangers. This wasn’t how he acted around me. This was how Aaron had acted when he started working late with Marguerite, the very fertile secretary he eventually divorced me for.
I followed Colt into the bakery.
Stupid. How many times had I thought Colt needed to go find some sweet girl his own age to hang around like a lovesick puppy? It would be good for him.
“I’m going to get a shower,” I said. “Be right back down.”
Colt nodded and slid into our booth, the third from the door.
Before I made it to the top of the stairs, he was slumped in the seat with his head leaned back and his mouth half-open. Fast asleep.
I took a deep breath through my nose. Colt smelled like the outdoors, gun smoke and oil, tattoo ink— his usual scents. Except he hadn’t had a drink in nearly a week. And the smell of the cabin was so faint that I guessed he hadn’t been inside in a few days.
No hint of another woman, though.
I tried not to dwell on that while I washed the grime from my roll in the cemetery off.
*****
Colt must’ve heard me coming downstairs. He startled awake.
“Shit,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face. “Sorry I fell asleep.”
“It’s fine. Late night?”
“A couple of them.” He stood up and stretched.
Through the ripped-out armholes in his Lucky shirt, I watched the muscles move in his arms, chest, and stomach. Rangy and rock-hard, built just like his dad.
I headed back to the kitchen. Colt followed. He boosted himself up onto the counter by the cooling racks but didn’t say anything.
I put on my apron, sprayed down a sheet pan, then got out the dough knife and the cinnamon roll dough I’d sprinkled and prepped the night before.
“Mitzi and Jason are still planning on leaving,” I said, slicing.
After a few seconds of silence, I looked up. Colt was staring at the floor as if he could see through it to the center of Hell.
“Jason and Mitzi?” I said again, louder. “Stealing Tough’s voice and making a run for Nashville? The tryouts for that singing show are coming up pretty soon. If you’re going to do something—”
“I know,” Colt said. Then as an afterthought, “Ten days from now.” He was quiet again for a couple of seconds. “That’s plenty of time. Probably too much.”
“For what?” I asked.
That got his attention.
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to—I mean, I’ve got it handled. Don’t worry.”
I laughed. I grew up in a world where men had things handled. Things like letting the mortgage go into foreclosure to send the secretary out of town for nine months. You didn’t ask. You had a glass of sherry.
“Just tell me if it’s none of my damn business,” I said.
“Come on, Tiff, don’t be like that,” Colt said.
I threw the dough knife onto the counter next to the pan and started spreading out the slices. The vamp speed switched on and that pissed me off more. Colt was the only human since Shannon who I couldn’t control my reflexes around.
“Why bother coming by if you’ve already got the situation with Tough handled?” I opened the oven and slammed the pan in. “Could’ve saved yourself a trip into town.”
Colt levered himself down from the counter. “You never cared before if I was working on something.”
“Before, you always told me what you were working on.”
“Don’t do this today.” His voice was flat, cold, and as dead as I am.
“If you don’t want to be here, then get the hell out,” I said. “I don’t need you hanging around because you feel some sort of moral obligation.”
“Dammit, can’t you just act normal?”
“Tell me why you’re here and I’ll give you the best damn acting you’ve ever seen. I’ll bring you to tears with normal.”
Colt glared over my shoulder at the oven. He wasn’t going to tell me. He wasn’t even going to acknowledge that he was being an asshole.
“Door’s that way,” I said.
He let his breath out in a rush and scrubbed his hands across his face. “Please, Tiff. Just pretend like this is last week and everything’s fine. Just for today. I’ll never ask you for anything again.”
The heating elements in the oven clicked off to regulate the temperature. I chewed on my bottom lip.
There are a lot of specific smells that, together, make up sleep—blankets, stale sweat, serotonin, and for Colt, Southern Comfort. But I could smell that he hadn’t had a drink in at least a week. I took another sniff. He hadn’t had a shower since the last time he’d been in the cabin. Should’ve made it easy for me to pick up the scent of anxious sweat, vomit, and gunshot residue. I never would’ve missed those if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in worrying about him making time with another woman.
The dark circles under his eyes. “A couple” of long nights. Falling asleep as soon as he sat down in our booth. It was the compartmentalization. Colt was caught up in something bad, but whatever it was, he still considered the bakery safe. He trusted me—only me—and here I was telling him to get the hell out.
“Don’t do that,” Colt said. “Don’t smell me and then make up your mind.”
“Too late,” I said. “Want to watch some X-Files?”