by Ramy Vance
GoneGods be good—I was going to die after all.
I closed my eyes. And for a second, I went somewhere else.
I rewound to the moment I’d met Justin.
When you’ve lived hundreds of years, you become a daydreamer, a thinker. If you don’t, you go crazy—immortal life is just too long to live with human freneticism. And you gain an incredible capacity to disappear inside yourself. To remember the moments of your life with cinematic clarity.
If I was going to die remembering one moment, I wanted it to be when I met Justin. Not as Kat—not when I’d pretended to be his girlfriend walking toward him in the dining hall.
No, just as Isabella. Just as me, a mortal.
“What are you doing?” he’d asked.
I glanced up from where I sat in front of my microscope, squinting at the halo of fluorescent light behind his head. That was the first time we met: his shadowed head under the ceiling light, the two of us unknown to each other.
“Studying DNA,” I said. “Are you supposed to be in here?”
He half-smirked and leaned on the counter beside me. “Probably not.”
Now his face became real, and I understood he was the same guy I’d seen so many times in our dorm, walking with the five-foot-nothing freshman called Katrina Darling. Black-haired, blue-eyed, a little swagger. The same one I’d ascribed so many fantasies to: his coolness, how dashing he’d be if I were in trouble, the way he pushed his hair behind his ear.
Those blue eyes moved like the sea in front of me, and I almost forgot my annoyance at him touching the workstation I kept ultra clean. At him being here in the first place. Jaguar, I thought for the first time. Kingdom: Animalia. Genus: Panthera. Class: Mammalia. Species: P. onca.
“Are you a researcher?” I asked.
He laughed. A totally genuine, unaffected laugh right from his belly. “No—I’m just a guy who’s lost.”
That humility surprised me.
I stood. “Where do you need to be?”
He extended a crumpled slip of paper—a class schedule. “Room 114B.”
“Oh.” I led him out of the lab. “That’s an easy mistake to make. This is 114R, which is the research area adjacent to 114.”
He smiled. “My mistake.”
As we came into the hall, another guy who’d been standing there raised his eyes. He looked nervous, and avoided meeting my gaze. But he’d clearly been waiting for Justin.
“It’s 114B, man,” Justin said as he passed him pack the slip of crumpled paper.
The other guy booked it for 114B, and Justin started down the hall in the opposite direction.
I turned after Justin. “Hey.”
He glanced over his shoulder.
I pointed behind me. “Your class is that way.”
“It’s all good. Thanks for your help.” He passed down the hallway, and I stared after him.
What was that all about?
Later, I would learn that Justin wasn’t even enrolled in the class in room 114B. It was nervous guy who’d been waiting in the hallway. He had a severe stutter and social anxiety, and Justin—a passerby—was just helping him out.
Now, months later, I knew for certain that my fantasies about Justin weren’t all true. But he was kind. And if five hundred years had taught me anything, it was to keep the kind ones close.
↔
Empusa’s claws touched my jacket, and just when I thought this was it, a voice cried out. I knew that voice.
“Isabella!”
I opened my eyes, which blurred with tears. I wasn’t alone.
A thud vibrated through my ankle, and Empusa dropped me with another world-splitting scream. I hit the ground so hard I wasn’t sure if I’d been hit or she had, but when I looked up, an arrow stuck like a sign marker out the side of her head.
Another followed, the lethal arrowhead disappearing into her chest.
I turned my face left, blinking hard at the flurry of motion before me. The birds floated, circled, flapped, screeched. They dropped with arrows protruding from their bodies. They fell with their wings cleft by swords.
In the center stood a group of humans, their weapons gleaming in the quarter-light.
The World Army cadets.
As I thought it, one of them emerged from the fray with a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. His face was shadowed by the fresh moonlight, a white halo behind him, but I didn’t need to see his features to know who he was.
“Isabella—move!” he yelled.
I rolled off my back and dug my hands into the leaves as my feet sought purchase, pulling myself away from Empusa without one look back. Every fiber of me ached toward Justin, who was anchoring his next arrow in the heavy-duty bow.
Since when does he know archery?
Don’t ask questions, dummy—just move!
I finally got my feet under me, running toward him. He seemed to be aiming straight at me, but I knew he was focused past me. Even so, just before he loosed the arrow with a whistle, I strafed left.
Hey, he may have been good enough to hit Empusa twice, but I knew he hadn’t been practicing archery for more than about a month. I wasn’t about to risk it.
When I reached his side, I spun around behind him. “I got her with El Lobizon’s claw,” I breathed. “The birds are poisoned.”
“I know.” Justin nocked his next arrow.
I stared at the back of his head. Had he been watching me? Did he know what I’d done with the meat and the claw? But there wasn’t time to wonder, because ahead of us, Empusa had dropped to all fours, her mouth wide open in a hiss. Three arrows stuck out of her at odd angles, and a thin stream of black blood issued from each of them.
But she still hadn’t fallen. GoneGodDamn she was powerful.
“That’s her attack stance,” I said. “She’s about to come at us.”
“Not with an arrow in her face, she isn’t.” Justin drew the bowstring taut, and as Empusa launched into motion—well, I knew what I would be seeing in my nightmares for the rest of my mortal life—he let the arrow go.
It flew through the air in a perfect line, and like a perfect half-court shot, the glinting arrowhead disappeared into her mouth.
Just as Justin had predicted, her head jerked back, and her upper body with it. She slid ten feet across the ground before stopping in a heap, the arrow in her mouth jutting vertical into the air.
It was the perfect shot. A shot worthy of Paris the Trojan prince, or Katniss Everdeen. A shot that one in a thousand expert archers could make, and Justin had made it. Easily. That shouldn’t be possible, I thought, remembering the coin that he’d caught mid-air. I was both worried about Justin’s sudden abilities and grateful that he had them.
Before us, Empusa didn’t move.
Behind us, a whoop went up. We turned in time to see the rest of the birds drop to the ground in a pile around the World Army soldiers, who stood in the middle of what looked like a frozen forest. Around them, feathers glinted like icicles in the trees.
“That was ... Woah.” Justin dropped his bow to reach for me. I only realized when his hands went around me that my legs had given out like matchsticks.
I wanted to hug him. To tell him how crazy and stupid and reckless that was. To ask him when the hell he had learned to shoot like that.
But my autonomic system had taken over, and my lungs pressed air in and out with mechanical persistence. I had never hyperventilated before, and even as I realized what was happening, it was still a new, completely mortal thing. As a biologist I knew how much actual control mortals had over their bodies (much less than we liked to think), but it was still terrifying to experience.
“It’s OK, Isa.” Justin’s warm hands slid over me, his body a weighted blanket pressing around me. How was he so good at this?
“I—“ I tried between breaths. “I—“
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
So I stopped trying, allowed myself to be enveloped. To be held and comforted. And soon enough my
breathing slowed, normalized. I raised my eyes, found Justin looking down at me.
The same look as the first time we met.
“Back away from the creature,” came Sergeant Johnson’s voice from ahead. “Police are on their way.” He stepped past Justin and me, staring down at Empusa.
The two of us stood together, passing into the crowd of cadets, all of whom stared on.
“We got it good,” Johnson said, circling at a safe distance. “We got it good, boys.”
It.
Empusa had been a female. A she. She was a murderer who had deserved death, but I also knew what had been inside that file. Her directive. Empusa had been a pawn of the World Army. I felt sure, had she not been tasked with mayhem, the outcome of her release into Montreal could have been different. Better.
Which made this scene—her dead in the dirt, all the stymphalian birds hacked to pieces—almost too tragic to bear.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to Justin.
I expected him to want to stay, and I’d end up leaving alone or with him only after some cajoling. To his credit, he squeezed my shoulder and we stepped away from the crowd.
We walked through the forest together, my arms around his waist, and emerged from the tree line to the nighttime vista of Montreal. Below us, the city glittered with what seemed to me a bright-eyed sense of safety. Of security.
The world wasn’t fixed, not by a long shot. But there would be no more deaths—not by Empusa’s hand.
He turned to me. “Want to come back to the house and get cleaned up?”
I lifted my face and said with complete, innocent sincerity, “There’s nothing I want more.”
It was true; especially because we needed to have a serious talk.
Chapter 25
He had parked not far from Mont Royal, a short walk down the hill. By the time I climbed into Justin’s car, I could hardly feel my hands. And when the interior light flicked on, I found myself covered in blood.
My hands. My jacket. My pants.
He didn’t seem fazed. When he sat down next to me, he reached to set his hand at the back of my head.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t touch me. The blood is poisoned.”
His hand dropped. “Poisoned?”
“Arsenic. I laced the meat and blood with it.”
“So that’s why the birds were flying in figure-8s by the time we got there. Where did you get arsenic?”
“I made it in the lab.”
“I thought you were a biologist.”
“I’ve also lived five hundred years,” I said. “I know a few things.”
He nodded, didn’t question me any further. Justin started the car, and we drove toward the O3 house with the heat blasting, baking the arsenic-loaded blood onto my skin. I tried not to touch anything.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Know what?”
“Where to go—how to find her? How to find me?”
“Sergeant Johnson got a tip. We were on patrol, and we made straight for the trees.”
A tip. What a funny thing, that the World Army had unleashed Empusa and one of their sergeants would lead his soldiers to defeat her.
“From who?” I said.
He shrugged. “I didn’t ask. We just geared up and moved.”
“But how did you know how to fight her?”
Justin paused as the car came to a light, and we idled. “You know, I didn’t ask about that, either. We just grabbed the weapons that Johnson told us to, and he briefed us about how the fight would go down on the way.”
I stared at him, and he finally turned his face toward me. I could see his thoughts written all across it.
“You think I’m a drone,” he said. “That I just do what I’m told.”
I shook my head, but I didn’t open my mouth to deny it, either. I should have, but I didn’t. I turned back toward the windshield as the light turned.
“Isa,” Justin said.
“Light’s green.”
He drove, and we arrived at the O3 house in silence. When I stepped out of Justin’s car, he came around and tried to take my hand.
“I’m still bloody, remember?” I said.
“Right—let’s get you into a shower.”
I nodded, but I didn’t move.
“What is it?” He waited, his breath visible in white puffs as he watched me untangle my thoughts.
“Doesn’t Sergeant Johnson need you at the scene?”
“Empusa’s gone.”
“I know, but … he said the police were coming. We should have stayed.”
Justin stepped closer. “The threat’s gone. We can go to the station tomorrow and tell them everything we know.”
For the first time, I took in his clothing. He was wearing some sort of uniform with a logo on the breast. I nearly touched it, my fingers hovering over the outline. “The World Army. Does this mean you’re a recruit?”
“I’m a volunteer for now.”
I turned my eyes up. “For now?”
“Let’s go inside, Isa. It’s freezing out here.”
I didn’t move.
“I thought you wanted to come back with me,” he said, finally getting annoyed. “If you don’t want to talk about what’s really on your mind, I can take you back to your dorm.”
I stepped back, leaned against the icy car. Frigid metal seeped through my clothing, but I didn’t move away. “I’m afraid,” I said. “I nearly died tonight—and would have, if not for you. There are things I can’t tell you about my research, but they scare me. And you … you’re with the World Army.”
“I’m with you, Isabella.”
My sight blurred. “There’s a wedge.”
“What wedge?”
“Between you and me.”
He stepped closer. “I don’t feel a wedge.”
“I’m an Other,” I whispered. “You just killed an Other.”
“I killed an Other who was killing people. You haven’t killed anyone. You’re good, Isa.”
“I’ve done bad things. I’ve tricked humans—I tricked you. I made men love me and then left them. Where do you draw the line, Justin, when you already hate Others?”
He sucked air. “Hate Others?”
I nodded, the warm tear slipping down my cheek a brief comfort.
He came to stand in front of me, and his hands found mine. “Don’t,” I said. “The blood.”
“I’ll wash it off,” he murmured.
And I stopped resisting, because his hands felt like the heat off an oven. He pulled me away from the side of the car, and we stood pressed against one another in the driveway while he kissed my hair.
I cried. I finally, really cried. And the whole while, he stroked me and whispered I don’t know what, but it sounded like the most comforting story I’d ever heard. I didn’t want it to stop.
When the crying slowed, his fingers came under my chin and lifted it. “Isa, I don’t hate Others. I can’t—because you’re one.”
I let a single sob, and because I didn’t have blood on my face, I allowed him to kiss me.
It was the best kiss of my long, long life.
So we walked toward the house together, his arm around me. And as we came around the side and up the walkway, a voice spoke up.
“Justin?”
We stopped before the front steps as a petite figure rose from the stoop, her face shrouded.
I knew that voice. It had once been my voice, for a time.
Justin didn’t let go of my hand, but he very nearly did. He didn’t speak, either, as the figure stepped forward and the porch light flicked on.
“Well,” she said, surveying the scene from him to me. Her eyes lingered on me, then returned to him. “It looks like you’ve been busy.”
Katrina Darling was back.
Epilogue
If there’s one thing Serena Russo loves, it’s a snoop. They’re the easiest to blackmail.
Kilby finds her at her workstation, and he tries hard not to show his att
raction. But then, she encourages it: it’s a large part of his loyalty—of any man’s loyalty. And for as long as you’ve got it, you drink that milkshake dry.
“Dr. Russo.” His head pokes through her door. Requesting permission to enter.
Serena’s lips curl before she gestures him forward. “Come in, Kilby.”
He steps inside, seems to bodily unfurl when the door shuts. He isn’t good at playing the part of a low-level research assistant. He can’t fit into any of the lab coats properly, and they only reach his knees. He’s too bald to blend with the students. And there’s something about him…
Something eternally creepy. Humans and Others sense it at once.
They stare at one another for a beat before her hand sweeps across the length of her desk. “Someone’s been here.”
He nods. “I know.”
“Tell me what you know.”
She sits back, arms folded under her chest, while Kilby explains. He watched her leave for her lunch-hour meeting, mysteriously reappear after only a half hour with Steve Allman in tow, and make straight for her workstation. Then she disappeared inside for the next fifteen minutes. When Serena—the real Serena—came into the lab a second time, “that,” Kilby says, pressing a finger to her desk, “was when I knew.”
“Because there were two of me, Kilby? Was that how you knew?”
He doesn’t catch her tone of voice, or ignores it. He points to his wrist, where an old-fashion watch glistens under the fluorescents. “Time sped up.”
Serena nods, and he continues his narration. The fire alarm began, and he stayed where he was. He waited, crouched in shadow. Kilby has always been her best man when it comes to lurking.
“And out she came, wearing your clothes,” he says.
“She?”
“The sophomore researcher—the one studying the triple helix.”
“The encantado,” she says when he finishes. Serena sits up straight; she feels lit from the inside, her mind working fast. “How wonderful.”
Kilby looks confused. “The what?”
“It doesn’t matter.” That is, it doesn’t matter to Kilby. He’s just her eyes—not her intelligence. “She’s a snoop.”