My spine tingled. It got stronger and stronger—my hands turned cold and started to shiver, like a freak-out might be moments away, but I breathed deep and calm and soon the shivering subsided.
Ash gasped.
“What?” I said, opening my eyes, startled to see that we were still sitting beside the riversea.
“I feel something,” she said. “Like . . . a smell that’s not a smell. Or a sound that’s not a sound.”
“Another sense,” I said. “Right?”
She nodded. “I can see things. Almost. They’re there, in my peripheral vision, but they move when I turn to look at them. Like I can’t ever quite catch up.”
“You’ll get there,” I said. “You’re still coming out from under the spell.”
I had done it. I conjured up an emotion, and I used it to help Ash. I’d made her stronger. And the weird thing was, I felt stronger too. More confident in my ability. Strengthening her had strengthened me.
Thunder boomed in the distance.
“Storm coming,” said a woman with a shopping cart, picking up cans from the trash, accompanied and assisted by a small flock of gremlins. “Heard about it on the radio just now.”
“Thanks,” Ash said, with a smile.
“Here,” the woman said, shuffling over, and handed us a battered old radio, the size of a book. “Found this in the garbage. Looks like hell but works fine. Full battery. Got one of my own already.”
“Thank you,” I said. She could have sold it, gotten a moon cake or two. My people were the kindest and most generous in the city. It was baffling to me, how anyone could hate or fear us.
“Solomon,” Ash said, when the woman was gone.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. For . . . everything.”
“Psssh,” I said.
She took my hand and held it. “I’ve got you. I may not have anything else, but I’ve got you.”
“Likewise.”
Lightning lit up the sky.
Thirty-Five
Ash
Thunder sounded. I’d counted the time since the lightning: six seconds.
Rain began to pelt my windshield. I was parked in my driveway, savoring the silence. After our trip to Red Hook I’d dropped Solomon off under the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, at his—characteristically bizarre—request. That had been hours ago. I’d driven all the way to Albany to get more photo paper, developer, stop bath, fixer.
I sat there and watched the rain get stronger. I didn’t want to go inside. Didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wondered if in Solomon’s magical world there was a way to teleport directly into one’s bed and sleep forever. Or if somebody could put me in a coma so I’d never have to deal with humans ever again.
My phone vibrated in my hand. Unknown Number flashed on the screen.
I almost didn’t answer it. Everything would have happened so differently, if I hadn’t. But I did.
“Hello?” I said.
Static. Someone yelling in the background. Finally: “Ash?”
“Solomon!” I said. “Where are you? What number is this?”
“I wasn’t sure if I had your number right.”
Metal clanged, wherever he was. A loud buzzer sounded. I started to get a bad feeling. “Solomon. Tell me where you are.”
“I’m in jail,” he said, and laughed, not like it was funny, but like he could hear how ridiculous the situation was. “I’m breaking the rules right now. I already used my one phone call. But these people are pretty bad at their jobs. They just left me in the hallway where the phone is. I could make all kinds of calls. What’s the number for the Psychic Hotline, do you know?”
“In jail?” I said, too loudly, before my rational mind kicked in and I dialed back the panic. If I got upset, so would he. Emotions were contagious like that. “What happened?”
“I ran into Bobby,” he said. “At Fairview Plaza.”
“Oh, honey, no,” I said. The little psychopath who almost set me on fire—there was no way that interaction went well.
“He started it.”
“It doesn’t matter!” I said.
“Anyway I beat the shit out of him.”
“Solomon, you—”
“They’re coming,” he said. “I gotta go. I called my aunt but she didn’t answer. So I don’t know what they’re going to do with me.”
“Don’t tell them anything until you have a lawyer,” I said, finally thankful for all the awful cop shows my mother watched, which I’d absorbed by osmosis. “They have to provide one for you, even if you can’t pay for it. Better yet, just don’t speak. To anyone. I’m coming. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
“Breathe, Solomon. Don’t get stressed.”
“I’m not stressed,” he said. “And I’m not sorry.”
I had to chuckle at that. At his strength, his bravery—his ignorance, his naïveté. And then there was a harsh boom, as someone slammed the receiver down. It rang in my ears like thunder.
Thirty-Six
Solomon
For most of the day it was almost like everything was normal. We walked; we ate; we talked to strangers. Only a few charred tree skeletons gave any indication that anything unusual had happened in Darkside the night before.
The thunder endlessly booming in the distance should have been enough to set us on edge. Keep us from getting too comfortable. Like the storm was toying with us, biding its time, waiting to rush in and flood us out.
One minute we were in the central market, trying to decide which noodle vendor to go to, and the next minute we were running for our lives.
I noticed the first watcher when we stopped at a citrus cart. Ash was picking through bright pink oranges, and I caught a woman staring at her. She wasn’t wearing ultramarine, so I didn’t think she was a threat. Which just goes to show what a shitty bodyguard I make. But Ash was hooded, and she’d hardly ever been photographed, so I didn’t think we needed to be so on our guard.
The second one wasn’t wearing ultramarine either. She owned the salamander cart we stopped at, looking for the shed skin of a rainbow hellbender, which supposedly helped calm the mind and strengthen othersider abilities. The woman whispered something in the ear of her domesticated baboon, and it hurried off.
And I got very, very scared.
“Ash. We should go,” I said.
She looked around carefully. “Are we in danger?”
“I think we might be.”
Smiling like happy idiots, we turned and started walking.
“Place is packed,” she said. “We can’t run.”
“Neither can they, at least.”
Everything went great, for a solid eleven seconds. And then someone yelled, “Hey, Princess! There! It’s the princess!”
And everything went to hell.
Ash just kept walking. But people stopped, pointed, stared. And out of nowhere stepped three men in ultramarine.
“Your mother’s a monster lover!” someone shouted. Someone else shouted at them to shut up.
Fear. Hate. I felt it all around us. And I felt it inside me as well.
I would have loved to have summoned up a bunch of peaceful, happy vibes to calm them all down, but calm seemed impossible right then. All I had at hand was hate. Anger. But maybe I could use that to throw them off-balance. So, trying my hardest not to try—I focused on it. Felt the tingling up my spine. Let it take hold of me.
And then . . . I pushed it out. Let it fill the air. Aimed it for the faces that frightened me.
Shouting swelled, all around us. Faces reddened. Weapons were drawn. Rage confused people, muddied the waters of who they were mad at.
“On three,” Ash said, slowing down alongside a spice cart.
“Mm-hmm.”
“One,” she said.
“Two,” I said.
“Three,” she said, and seized two huge brass bowls of powdered lightning bugs, slammed them together, tossed them high.
A cloud of bright blue dust filled the air, and we vanis
hed into it.
Thirty-Seven
Ash
Lightning turned the night bright blue, lit up the long, flat, plain-looking building that was the county jail.
I hadn’t even known where it was; that’s what a sheltered life I’d led. But I’d mapped it on my phone and found it, behind where the match factory had been, beside the giant domes where the county kept its mountains of rock salt for snowy winter roads. I’d driven by it a hundred times in my life at least. Ignorant, every time.
I sat in my car and tried my best to think clearly. Why had I come? What was I going to do? They wouldn’t just hand Solomon to me. According to the cop shows, if he was charged with a crime, they’d keep him overnight and in the morning he’d go before a judge who would either set bail or keep him in county until his trial came. And even if he wasn’t, Child Protective Services practically had an all-points bulletin out on him—they’d probably hold him until a social worker could inspect him in the morning.
I had come because I couldn’t not come. Because Solomon was in trouble, and I had to help him. Even if I didn’t know how.
The rain got harder. Louder. I didn’t have an umbrella.
I turned off the car, silencing the punk rock singer of Destroy All Monsters! midshriek. I looked around for something that could shield me from the rain, and found a giant sweatshirt across the back seat.
Solomon’s. I could tell by the smell. A man’s smell, but there was more to it than that. He was there, somehow—Little Boy Solomon, a shred of the child he had been. Before his brain broke, before the world began to betray him. I breathed it in. The smell opened up something—a doorway to memory—but I didn’t have time to go through that doorway, not just then.
I opened the car door. Wind made it difficult, drove rain in stinging slaps against me. I stepped out, slammed the door shut again, held the sweatshirt over my head. It didn’t do much good with the wind so strong, pushing the rain so it seemed to come at me sideways. I walked toward the front door to the jail. A single bare bulb was lit, above the entrance.
When I was halfway there, the door opened. And I stopped. Because Mr. Barrett came out the door, with his arm around someone.
Around Solomon.
Mr. Barrett was smiling, saying something to someone back in the jail, but Solomon’s face was twisted up with agony.
I took off my hood. I let the rain punish me.
In nightmares, for the rest of my life, I’ll see that face. So much pain, so much fear. Little Boy Solomon was back. The Solomon with the big muscles and broad shoulders was gone. Forgotten.
Oh god, Solomon, I thought. What has you so afraid?
And the really awful thing? The proof of how being an artist and being a bad person are all bound up together? My first reaction, my gut instinct, the only thought that popped into my head: more than anything, I wanted my camera. What I saw on Solomon’s face, in that instant, it would have been the most perfect photograph I’d ever take. Pure emotion, captured on film. The truth I’d been hunting for.
I thought about calling out to him. Yelling his name. But fear paralyzed me. Fear and a little voice that said, Stay hidden. Don’t let them capture you.
Thunder burst overhead, like God knocking at my door.
Thirty-Eight
Solomon
Thunder burst. Rain began to fall. We did not stop running. Through crowded, noisy streets, down narrow, lonely alleys. Long after we knew we lost them. I’d never run so far before in my life, and although Ash had gotten a ton of bad-ass warrior training once upon a time, she’d also spent four years sitting still. So I don’t know where all that stamina came from. Fear, partly, but more than that. From our clasped hands, I think.
Ash and me, we made each other better.
Finally, we arrived at the stable where we’d left Maraud. The place had the sweet coffee stink of dragon droppings, and under that the smell of bleach.
“Cops stood by and watched,” the attendant said, talking to her coworker, when she handed me the reins.
“Watched what?” I asked, wishing immediately that I hadn’t.
“Attack on the Underbridge,” the woman said. “Biggest one in ten years, they’re saying.”
Radha. Connor.
“Hundreds of Destroyers,” the stranger continued.
She looked at me. I looked back. Both our faces were rigid masks.
We didn’t know each other. Maybe she was an othersider; maybe I was a Destroyer or a sympathizer. Maybe we would have been friends; maybe we hated each other. But we were both scared.
“Thank you,” I said, and smiled, and she smiled back.
Ash switched on the little radio the woman had given us. Steered the dial through a sea of static until we arrived at a polished voice saying—
Multiple eyewitnesses report hearing the attackers call out for the Refugee Princess, who they believe was in hiding at the shantytown, and who may have been the target of the raid. . . .
All the air went out of me.
“We abandoned them,” I croaked.
I tried to say something, and couldn’t. Tried to take a breath, and couldn’t. Collapsed into coughing.
“Let’s go,” Ash said. “Solomon, let’s go.”
Thirty-Nine
Ash
Solomon stopped and began to cough, and somehow that helped me regain control. Shook me out of my paralysis. I took a step forward through the rain, and then another. I still didn’t know what I was going to do, but I had to do something.
Mr. Barrett came down the steps, into the rain, and Solomon followed. Looking for all the world like a pig going to slaughter, one who knew exactly what was waiting for him. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He wasn’t cuffed. That had to mean something. He was free. Neither one of them seemed to notice the rain. Neither of them had noticed me, in the darkened parking lot.
It’s true that Solomon was unstable. But why was he so afraid of Mr. Barrett? And why had Mr. Barrett come to get him out of jail? There was no way Solomon called him. Why was he here?
There was something about this, I told myself. This moment. The truth I’d been after was inside it somehow. I knew it. I could feel it.
“Solomon!” I called, stopping.
They stopped too.
By now I was close enough to see that Solomon was crying. I hadn’t noticed with the heavy rain streaming down his face. And he was shivering.
“Ashley,” said Mr. Barrett, his voice firm, bossy, used to being obeyed. “What are you doing here?”
“Ash,” Solomon said, or anyway his mouth made the shape of the word. I couldn’t hear him.
“It’s all under control, Ashley,” Mr. Barrett said. People only ever used my full name when they were trying to make me feel small. “Go home. We’ll call you tomorrow.”
Movie heroes always know what to say. I didn’t.
With a strangled cry, Solomon ran. He pushed past Mr. Barrett, ran past his car—which I hadn’t noticed when I pulled in—and ran to mine. Pulled the handle. It was locked, but he pulled it again and again.
“Ash, please,” he called.
“Don’t do something stupid, Ashley,” said Mr. Barrett. “Solomon is very sick. We got lucky—one of the guys at the station knew Solomon, gave me a call, and I was able to get the charges against him dropped, but only on the condition that he—”
“Ash!!” Solomon wailed.
I was not interested in anything Mr. Barrett had to say. Maybe he was right, and I was doing something stupid. But I couldn’t not do it. I couldn’t let Solomon go home with him. I fumbled in my pocket for the key fob, and unlocked the door. Solomon scrambled inside. Very calmly, very slowly, I turned away from Mr. Barrett and walked to my car.
“Ashley,” he called. “If you leave with Solomon, there will be consequences.”
I opened the car door, and I heard a new sound in Mr. Barrett’s voice. Fear.
“For god’s sake, Ashley! You can’t—”
/> I slammed the door. Locked it. I didn’t care what he thought Solomon needed. I started up the car.
“Drive,” Solomon hissed. “Fast.” Mr. Barrett was walking toward us, and he had completely lost his Good Guy Composure. I put the car in reverse and the lights lit up his face a bright, angry red. I slammed my foot on the gas, turning the wheel in a wide arc, and then put it into drive without braking. I fishtailed away.
When we were out on Route 66 and the miles between Solomon and Mr. Barrett piled up, he finally spoke. “Oh my gods, Ash,” Solomon said, “thank you.”
“Any time,” I told him.
Wind howled.
“What the hell do we do now?” I asked, but it was a rhetorical question. Neither of us knew the right answer. Probably there wasn’t one.
Forty
Solomon
I howled. So did the wind.
Nothing made sense. I knelt in the mud and looked at my hands, watched them shiver. Black stars bloomed and burst in my peripheral vision. The world felt like it was about to crack down the middle. Shatter into a thousand pieces.
The last hour, the last day, the last several weeks—all a blur. Maraud had run at full gallop through the pouring rain, all the way to the Underbridge. I’d climbed off, told Ash to take her to a safe place nearby. Couldn’t have the Refugee Princess showing up. Cops might take her into custody, or Destroyers still lurking in the crowd might snatch her up.
And then I entered the crowd, weaved my way through the chaos of ambulances and police cars and weeping and rage. I recognized people, thought about stopping to ask what had happened, but the only thing that really mattered was confirming Connor and Radha were okay.
“Solomon!” someone said, and clapped a hand on my back, and I whirled around with my fist cocked back until I saw who it was.
Destroy All Monsters Page 15
