Death, and the Girl He Loves

by Darynda Jones

  “But you just said—”

  “Pix.” He pressed his mouth together, searching for the right words. After a moment, he said, “There are too many prophecies, too many accounts, to dispute that part. Too many predictions from your other ancestors, from the other prophets up the line. What I’m saying now is, a lot was left out.”

  “Like what?” I asked, trying to squelch the disappointment sinking into me.

  Grandma put her hand on my arm. “We have been scouring the archives since you left. Looking for clues. On how to stop this. On how to help you. On how it all ends.”

  “And?” I asked with more hope than I’d wanted to.

  “We can’t find anything that explains how you do it. They only say that you do. Over and over and over. You just do.” She patted my knee. “In all fairness, Pix, the prophets before you may not have been able to see how you do it.”

  Granddad bent his head.

  “There’s more,” I said to him. “I can tell.”

  He kneeled beside me, put his hand over Grandma’s. “It’s just that, there’s something else we never realized until recently. It never occurred to us.”

  “Okay.”

  “All the prophecies, every single one of them, talk about events through history, give accounts of things that came to pass decades, even centuries ago. They all lead up to the present time, but they end at the same time. They talk about the dark days leading up to the war, the trials and tribulations you overcome, your going into hiding, the dissention in the church when you do so, and then it just says you come back to where it all started and you stop the war before it ever begins. In the blink of an eye, it just stops.”

  “I don’t understand. Everything just stops?”

  “Everything. There isn’t another word anywhere about what happens after. It’s as though—”

  “As though they couldn’t see any further,” I said, filling in the pieces. A soft shock wave rippled through me. “Like the world ends and there’s nothing left to see.” I looked up at him.

  “Sweetheart, they all say the same thing. They all say you’ll stop this.”

  “Granddad,” I began, but stopped before my voice broke, trying for once in my miserable life to quell my fear, to hold it at bay and not start crying like a schoolgirl who spilled her Kool-Aid on her new dress. I felt Jared’s reassuring caress at my shoulder. “Granddad, you don’t understand. I saw how the world ends.” I scrubbed my face with my fingers before continuing. “I don’t stop anything. My own visions have proved that.”

  Every time I thought of all those visions, of all those deaths, I started down the dark and lonely path known as hyperventilation. Panic tightened my chest.

  Grandma took my hand to draw me back to her. “Pix, you were destined to stop this the moment you were born.” Her eyes shimmered with emotion in the low light. “You will succeed. We know it. We just … we don’t know how. And we don’t know what comes next.” When she looked up at Cameron, her eyes were filled with tears. I was clearly missing something.

  “What are you trying to say, exactly? What could be worse than all this?”

  Cameron stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets and kicked the floor at his feet before speaking. “They’re saying there’s no more. It all ends.”

  “Yes,” I said, growing annoyed. “I got that part.”

  Jared spoke then. “They’re saying, there are no more prophecies. And since you are the last prophet, they’re saying they don’t know if you survive.”

  Their meaning dawned and I nodded slowly. “So, you’re worried I’ll die trying to stop this war.”

  Grandma bowed her head. “We just— We’re not sure how to take the fact that there are no more visions. How to interpret it.”

  “A grain of salt,” Granddad said. Still kneeling before me, he rubbed my knee reassuringly. “We have to take everything with a grain of salt.”

  I could try to do that. I really liked salt.

  “After all of our searching in the archives, we found something in your father’s belongings.”

  They pulled out an old journal. I’d been through the box before and didn’t notice it, but at the time I’d been looking for official documents like birth and death certificates, anything on my paternal grandfather.

  “Was it Dad’s?” I asked.

  They glanced at each other uncertainly.

  “We aren’t sure how your father came across this book,” Granddad said, “but he had it among some other things that belonged to your grandpa Mac. And Sheriff Villanueva confirmed that there’s blood on it.”

  “Blood?” I asked as I took it from them, noting the brown stains that must have been the dark red color of blood at one time. My fingers tingled when they touched the leather cover, and a wave of electricity started at the tips and traveled up my hands. It was not a comfortable feeling. Brooke leaned over for a better view.

  Before I could ask any more questions, someone called out from overhead. “Is anyone down there?”

  We turned to a deep male voice and watched as a man descended the stairs, his heavy footsteps against the wooden slats causing dust to puff around him and fall over the sides.

  “We’re here,” Granddad said, his brows drawn in curiosity.

  “They told me where to find you.” The man ducked past the cement ceiling, a huge smile on his face. “I’ve come to join the fight. Where do I sign up?”

  “Mac?” I asked, my voice soft with astonishment. “Grandpa Mac?”

  He stepped off the last stair and waited, let me absorb the impossibility of his presence. We all stood. My grandparents seemed just as astonished as I was.

  “What are you—? How did you get out?”

  The last time I’d left Mac, he was sitting on the other side of a glass partition and we were speaking to each other through the intercom system at the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas. We’d pressed our hands to the glass and he let me see what happened to him. To his wife, too. My paternal grandmother. She’d died the day I was born, protecting me. And he went after the men who tortured and killed her, took every single one of them out before finding her lifeless body tied to a chair. Though he was only trying to get his wife back, he’d taken the law into his own hands and killed people in the process. But the prison sentence he received because of it did nothing to evoke remorse. He would’ve done it again if he could have, would have killed them all again, he hated the monsters that much. But he did it out of love. An extreme devotion to the woman who stole his heart at a sock hop in ’53. They’d taken her from him, and that was not an easy thing to forget.

  His teeth flashed a movie star smile. “I broke out,” he said, pleased with himself. “Told you, I came to join the fight.” Mac was tall but thick, his build solid. He had graying red hair with about a week’s worth of scruff on his chin. It made him look rugged and kind at the same time, but that smile was straight from Hollywood.

  My utter amazement, my absolute astonishment took a backseat to the relief that flooded my entire body. I didn’t know why, but his presence was as welcome as rain after a seven-year drought. As a direct descendant of Arabeth, he knew things that my maternal grandparents didn’t. He’d grown up with the prophecies, had studied them from the time he was a child. He even had a touch of the gift himself, though supposedly the visions were passed on only to the females in the line.

  I stepped to him, trying to contain my glee. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” he said. His face resembled my father’s—the red hair, the soft gray eyes, the scruffy jaw—so much so, I wanted to touch it, to run my hands over his stubble.

  Without waiting another moment, he pulled me into his arms and hugged me to him.

  “Mac,” my grandfather—my other grandfather—said at my back. I looked over my shoulder as Mac shook hands with him first then my grandmother while keeping me locked in his embrace. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, it has,” Mac said. “
I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done.” He gave me a hard squeeze and kissed the top of my head.

  “It was our pleasure,” Granddad said. “I can assure you.”

  “And these are my friends,” I said, a tad ecstatic. I took turns introducing them, not quite sure how to introduce Kenya, but when I got to Jared, Mac’s expressions change. Jared’s did, too. A knowing air came over their faces. A recognition.

  Jared held out his hand, but Mac stepped back a little and gave him a once-over, offering him the most devilish grin I’d ever seen. Then he took Jared’s hand in a firm shake, as though thanking him. As though grateful.

  “We’ve met,” he said to me.

  “Yes, sir,” Jared said, matching Mac’s attitude, devilish grin for devilish grin. “We have.”

  “I owe you for this,” Mac said, indicating his surroundings.

  “It’s a present.” Jared gestured toward me. “For that one.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked them, burning to be let in on the secret.

  But apparently Cameron knew more than the rest of us. “That’s what you were up to last night,” he said to Jared, his lids narrowing. “You broke him out of prison.”

  Several soft gasps echoed in the room as Mac’s expression confirmed Cameron’s suspicions.

  “He sure did,” Mac said.

  Jared lifted one shoulder, dismissing the whole thing. “I just set into motion a series of events that would give someone who was, say, very alert the means to slip by a few guards unnoticed.”

  “You really escaped from prison?” Brooke asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did,” he said to her, “with a little help.” Then he planted a resentful gaze on Jared. “But really? The garbage collections? You couldn’t come up with a better escape route?”

  Jared quirked one brow. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Now that you’re here,” Granddad said to Mac, “can you tell us anything about this journal?”

  Mac’s smile faded when he spotted it. “Lucas found it.”

  Lucas, my dad. “Was it yours?” I asked. “There’s blood on it.”

  We’d stunned him. He didn’t respond for a long while, then he said, “That would be your grandmother’s blood.”

  Every muscle in my body grew rigid.

  “I found it stuffed into the waistband of her pants when I found her.” His eyes watered with the memory. “I had no idea whose it was. I figured she’d found it and hid it from the men who took her, so I put it in the floorboards of the house after the shoot-out that night before the cops got there. I didn’t think I was going to survive. I didn’t want to survive.” It took him a moment to gather himself. I laced my fingers into his and he looked down at me with a love I was certain I didn’t deserve. My grandmother had died protecting me. How could he get past that? How could he love me still? “When I was recovering in the hospital,” he continued, “handcuffed to the bed, I told your dad where to find it. I was never certain if he did or not.”

  “What is it?” Brooke asked, angling for a better view.

  “Sadly, I had no idea why Olivia stashed it. It’s just a bunch of drawings. Nothing important that I could tell. But you,” he said, setting me at arm’s length, his expression stern. “You can figure it out, I’m certain.”

  I shook my head, but he took my chin into a soft grip.

  “Do you think I escaped prison to watch the world end, Lorelei?” When I shrugged, he said, “I’m here to watch you succeed, Pix. I can feel the doubt inside you, but there is none inside me. Not an inkling.”

  I wanted to list all the ways I was going to fail him, to fail them all, but now was not the time and we were interrupted anyway.

  “We’re going to head out,” a man said through the basement opening. Mr. Gibson, an elder member of our church, took a few steps down and poked his head through the opening. “Glad to have you back, Lorelei.”

  “Thanks, Mr. G.”

  Granddad called up to him, “Don’t key my truck again.”

  “Bill,” he said, seeming exasperated. “I only keyed Vera’s car. I had nothing to do with that picture of Satan on your fender.”

  They were clearly kidding, but it caused a quake of regret inside me. Granddad sensed it and put an arm around me to pull me closer.

  “Don’t you dare, Pix,” he said softly at my ear. “Doing the right thing is not always the easy thing.”

  I nodded, pretending to brush it off, pretending to agree.

  * * *

  Exhaustion set in soon after people started leaving. Betty Jo wrapped me in her bearlike embrace before heading out. I didn’t want Brooke or Glitch to leave, but they seemed dead set on doing that very thing. We all promised to see each other at school the next day, because in my grandparents’ excitement, they reenrolled me. I tried to look excited when they told me, but when they laughed softly to themselves, I realized how badly I’d failed. And even though they said I didn’t have to go since the world was about to end and all, I decided I wanted to go. I wanted my old life back, even if it was only for a few hours.

  Normally at such a time, everyone would be staying the night. Brooke had her own bed in my room and Glitch always slept on the floor with a sleeping bag. Before I’d left for Maine, even Cameron would stay over, keeping watch from my window seat. Jared was now living in the apartment behind our store. His closeness made me feel safe and a little giddy.

  But I had Kenya to think about now. She could take the extra bed in my room. Cameron disappeared without saying a word and Jared kissed my cheek congenially before going to his apartment behind the store.

  I got the feeling my grandparents wanted to talk to Mac alone. Grandma made coffee as I gave my two grandfathers a quick kiss on the cheek before they headed into our living room.

  “I want you to get some rest,” Grandma said as I gave her a kiss, too.

  “I can’t make any promises, Grandma. My new roommate is a party animal.”

  Kenya’s expression deadpanned as she followed me up the narrow stairs.

  “I mean it!” Grandma called out to us.

  “Me, too!” I called back. “If you hear dancing and a live band, just ignore it.”

  I had yet to reacquaint myself with my room. It was just as I’d left it, only cleaner. My peach-colored bedspread lay rumple-free atop its twin bed, the one that used to house a canopy when I was a kid. The other twin bed, the one my grandparents bought for Brooklyn, sat against the far wall, its thick comforter also crisp and rumple-free. My computer sat on the white desk Granddad had put together for me when I was in middle school. Everything in its place. Walking into my room was different. Warmer. More welcoming than even my grandma’s kitchen.

  I missed my friends already, so imagine my thrill when they showed up on my fire escape. I startled when a smiling face appeared out of the darkness. Then another. Glitch put a finger over his lips to shush me while Brooke gestured me forward.

  I unlocked the giant window and Brooke and Glitch crawled inside. Holy cow, I loved having my own escape route.

  Jared stood behind them. “Got room for one more?”

  Narrowing my eyes on him, I said, “I thought that good-bye felt a little fake.”

  He grinned and ducked inside. Even Cameron came in, cranky disposition and all.

  My gang was back together. Life was good.

  “We need a plan,” Brooke said, doing a 180 into Seriousville. “If the world is ending in three days, we’d best be figuring out how to stop it.”

  I had to agree with her. “If you have any new light to shed on the subject, I’m all ears.”

  “We have to figure out who this Dyson guy is,” Kenya said, clearly on top of it. “What do we know about him?”

  Unfortunately, not a lot. Dyson was the only name we had to go on, the one the descendants of nephilim gave us when they’d come after me. They said Dyson had sent them, but they also indicated that he was the man who opened the gates in the first place.

  It
was so weird to think of Kenya as being on my side after all the crap she put me through. I still wasn’t quite over it. “You could have clued me in,” I said to her, my every word dripping with resentment, “when you pulled the switchblade on me.”

  Brooklyn gasped. “You pulled a switchblade on her?”

  A mirthful smirk flashed across Kenya’s face. “Like you’ve never thought about it.”

  “Good point.”

  I played along and looked at Brooke in astonishment. “You’ve thought about pulling a switchblade on me? What kind of a best friend would do that?”

  “Not so much a switchblade,” she said, her forehead crinkling in thought. “But there was a paring knife close by one time when we were arguing. Illicit thoughts danced across my brain.”

  “Brooke!”

  “Only for a second,” she said in her own defense. “And they didn’t involve me actually stabbing you. It was more of a love poke.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hardly any blood.”

  I hid a grin. “Okay, then.”

  “So, this guy?” Kenya said, picking up where she left off. “The one who’s supposed to open the gates? What do we know about him?”

  I riffled through my backpack and brought out the drawing once again. “This is pretty much it,” I said, handing it over.

  She studied it. “Those nephilim that came for you, they said his name was Dyson?”

  “Yes.”

  We weren’t getting anywhere very fast. Keyna could study my drawing all day, and the only thing she’d come away with was eyestrain. I took it back from her. She glared.

  Brooklyn scooted closer to me. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Unless you’re thinking that we’re all going to die screaming, then probably not.”

  She patted my leg and gestured toward my drawing. “It’s an image.”

  I looked down at it. “Yep.”

  “No, it’s, you know, like a picture.”

  Her meaning sank in. “Brooke, I drew this. I can’t go into something I’ve drawn.”

  “So, you’ve tried?” she asked, her tone challenging.

  “Well, no, but only because it’s ludicrous.”

  “How do you know?” She drew her legs underneath her and leaned toward me. “How do you know until you try?”