by Bre Hall
“But you’ve talked to people,” Ren said.
“Yes,” he said. “But have they ever answered back?”
“Sometimes,” she said, thinking back to their recent trips to Richards. She could remember Alfie commenting on what Richard said and Richard making a snide aside.
“Directly?”
Richard’s asides could have been just that, asides. Ones she mistook for conversation. But she still didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. Not just yet. She needed something more. Something cementing.
“Prove it,” Ren said.
“What?”
“Prove you’re not really him.” She folded her arms tightly over her chest. “Prove he’s really gone.”
“Are you sure you’re ready for that?” he asked. “It could be too much right now.”
“Do it,” she said.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
She nodded, her bad eye stinging as she remembered the pain brought on by the broken glass of the accident. Her arms shook at her side. Her voice quivered. “Prove it.”
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. Then, as if a veil was falling in slow motion, the vision of Alfie—olive skin, slight crook of his nose, trademark Hawaiian shirt, bendy legs—began to dissolve. It was replaced by something different. Someone different. Pike was shorter than Alfie, but only by a few inches. His build was stocky and his hair, a soft, strawberry blonde color, fell to his shoulders. He wore thick-rimmed, octagonal shaped glasses. He looked about seventeen and like he could throw a good punch.
She stumbled away from him, from Pike. She wasn’t just seeing the truth sitting on the edge of her bed, it was simultaneously playing out in her memory. Like seeing Pike had unlocked the truth of that hot summer night. For the first time, she saw what really happened as the Beetle stopped rolling, coming to rest upside down. She turned her head, as if she were back in Grams’ car that night, her left eye on fire, and saw, through blurry vision, Alfie hanging limply against his seatbelt, face covered in blood, eyes opened slightly, dead blue eyes staring right through her. She heard herself scream, the way she had when she saw him. She felt the glass as she unbuckled her seatbelt and landed on the overturned ceiling of the Beetle. Felt the sticky, hot blood as she shook Alfie’s shoulders, touched his face, begged him to wake up, wake up.
She pulled herself out of her memory and looked at Pike, his thin lips pulled into a taught line.
“Say something,” Pike whispered.
She searched for the words. It wasn’t a lie. Alfie wasn’t locked away somewhere until she freed herself from Peter and the others. He was gone. Replaced. Her best friend was dead. Had been for all that time.
Pike stood and walked across the room to her. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder, his thumb moving in slow circles over the fabric of her t-shirt sleeve.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” Pike said.
She swatted his hand away. “I don’t even know you.”
“But I know you,” he said. “And I’m so—”
“Don’t,” she said, her voice rising. “You had no right to pretend to be him. You had no right to trick me.”
“We were just trying to keep you safe,” Pike said. “Meredith thought if you believed Alfie was still alive you wouldn’t be as vulnerable. You’d be more focused when Peter came back. We were just trying to do what was best.”
“And you thought this was best?” Ren asked, stepping away from Pike, moving toward her door. Pike started to speak, to explain, but she couldn’t hear him, she was screaming internally. Alfie’s dead, Alfie’s dead, Alfie’s dead. He’s never coming back.
“Ren, are you okay? You look ashen,” Pike said.
She didn’t say a word to him. She just turned and ran quickly out of the room. She practically floated down the stairs, grabbed the keys to her dad’s pickup truck by the door, and rushed out into the cold October air. She sprinted, barefoot, across the gravel driveway and into the garage.
She didn’t care anymore about Meredith’s wishes for her to stay inside. She didn’t care that Peter was looking for her. She had to go. She had to get out of that house, out of that town. Wynn’s always-present breath on the back of her neck was wrapping around her like a straitjacket. One more second there and she would go insane.
The truck roared to life, and, flooring it like Ida, she took off down the driveway. One glance in the rearview mirror revealed Pike just opening the door. Good. Try and let them catch up. She punched on the radio—some static oldies station—and turned it up full blast. She didn’t care that it was mostly white noise. She would listen to anything as long as it drowned out the sounds she heard in her head. Her own screams. Shattered glass beneath her knees. The crack of Alfie’s bones as she shook him so hard his head flopped like raw bacon.
She clipped the edge of the fence at the end of the driveway before she turned the truck left, away from town and toward the river. Beyond that was another town, then another, and another. She wanted to be far away from Wynn. Far away from Richard’s Antiques and the school and Alfie’s house. She wanted to end up somewhere that didn’t remind her of him. A place where she could start completely new.
A mile down the road, she was sick of the radio’s static. She leaned over to change the station but popped immediately back upright when another car honked at her. She had swerved into their lane. She jerked the wheel back to the right and the car passed, flashing their headlights at her. It was then she realized she hadn’t even turned the truck lights on. She flicked them on and immediately slammed on the brakes.
Someone was standing in the middle of the highway.
The pickup truck’s wheels locked and she fishtailed across the asphalt. Her hands cranked the wheel to keep the tires straight, but she overcorrected and the vehicle jumped into the air as it began to roll.
chapter
26
A SHUDDERING PULSE LEFT REN’S body. The blackhole suck of weightlessness. The numbing silence of absolute nothingness. Ren blinked. Stared straight down at the ground, several feet below her. She was glued to the driver’s seat of the pickup, an invisible force holding her in place. Telekinesis. She had used it without even meaning to.
As she held the truck in mid-air, her mind trembling from the overexertion of power, the person she had almost plowed down stepped into view. Black ringlets bustled on top of his head. Cigarette smoldering between his lips. Her blood drained, her body the frozen tundra.
Her scowl nailed itself to Peter.
Peter tipped his head to one side and the truck flew sideways, out of her control. It hung over a freshly plowed field for a short moment before she lost her grip on levitating both herself and thousands of pounds of vehicle. It crashed to the ground, the hood of the truck crunching against the dirt and fell on its side.
Seatbelt-less, she slammed into the driver’s side door just as the air bag blazed past her, bursting out from the steering wheel. Her head hit the shards of glass from the window that had scattered everywhere in the fall. A thick slick of blood slipped down her face. She could smell its sharp, iron scent. Could taste the saltiness on her lips. Dropping a few feet in her dad’s pickup wasn’t exactly fun, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been if she hadn’t been able to stop the momentum. Training in an underground room with Meredith was over. Ren’s practical field work had begun.
Footsteps approached. Peter’s laugh, deep, sinister-almost, crawled into her ears. Ren ground her teeth, narrowed her eyes on the darkness outside the cracked windshield, and rubbed her fingers together, feeling not just the friction, but the electricity between them.
“I have to tell you this, Ren.” It was hard to tell whether he was a few feet away or one hundred. All she knew was that he was not so close that he could stand up on the toes of his canvas sneakers and peer down at her through the passenger window above. Good. She’d need the advantage of surprise. “I was going to make this as pain-free as possible. I was going to turn a bit soft. F
or you. Just this once. But you just keep fighting back.”
“You lied to me.” Sparks of blue bloomed beneath her fingertips. “You lied to me about everything.”
“I showed you your past,” Peter said. “I told you who you were. I wouldn’t call that lying, would you?”
“That doesn’t matter. You’ve killed me before. Over and over again. I’ve seen it. You were the soldier in the cotton fields, the man on the Dublin street, the bootlegger staggering out of the woods. You even tried to kill me at the beginning of the summer, but you got my best friend instead. The person I cared about more than anything in this world. No more, Peter. It all ends tonight.”
“You’re right, it does,” Peter said. “With your soul more intact than it ever has been, you should finally pass on to the afterlife for good.”
She shook her head, even though she knew he couldn’t see her. “You made a mistake, telling me everything, because this time I’m ready for you. I’m going to stop you.”
Peter cackled. “Your little levitation trick is only going to get you so far tonight, Ren.”
She listened closely to Peter’s footsteps. His shoes scraped against the cold ground, the rubber in the soles squeaking every other step. With every step forward, someone cranked up the volume on a radio, until it was booming so loudly, she burrowed an ear into her shoulder. He stopped just short of the truck. She could see the white tops of his sneakers through the cracked windscreen. He was quiet. Ren held her breath. Even the wind stood still. Was he waiting for her answer? Waiting to taunt her even more? To hear her strained voice beg him not to hurt her?
Peter’s fingers slid under the driver’s side door, wrapped around the roof just inches away from where Ren laid. He began to tilt the truck upright with superhuman force.
Ren didn’t have much time.
She aimed her fist at the driver’s side door as soon as Peter’s torso came into view. She clenched her fingers and the electricity beneath them rocketed away. It hit Peter square in the chest. He grunted as the shock launched him off his feet, sending him back. She didn’t see where he landed, because without Peter to hold up the truck, it crashed back down on its side.
Ren sprang to her feet and flung open the passenger door above her. She shimmied up through the opening and stood on top of the overturned vehicle. The headlights were still on. They barely illuminated Peter from several hundred yards away, where the shock had hurled him. He staggered upright. Slipped in the dirt. Fell back down.
“How about that trick?” Ren shouted across the field as she slid over the roof of the truck and landed in the ruts of plowed earth. “Will that get me far?”
Peter, finally stable on his feet, stepped forward, brushing the curls from his face. He chuckled. “Not far enough, I’m afraid.”
A high-pitched whine—a screech so loud it rattled her ear drums—filled the air. Two flashes of silver light plunked into the field like pillars. They flanked Peter on both sides and, as the noise ceased and the light faded, were soon revealed to be two Auxilium. One of them she recognized as Joe, her father’s so-called farmhand, the man she’d found lurking in Meredith’s parlor. He had probably been looking for the safe room that day. Or something that would speed up the process of killing Ren. The woman she knew was Beverly. The creep from Roast. The one who had been there that day at Peter’s for a meeting Ren accidentally overheard.
All three of them stood across from Ren, wings stretched out from their shoulder blades, reaching several feet above their heads, the tips nearly dragging along the ground. It was the first time she was seeing an Auxilium in full form.
Her good eye shot from Joe—his ebony skin making him almost invisible apart from the whites of his eyes—to Beverly—her wings emblazoned with what appeared to be diamonds tacked along the concave edges. Finally, her gaze fell on Peter. Even though she hated him for killing her lifetime after lifetime, for making her fall for him meaninglessly, for every lie he’d ever told her, she couldn’t help but notice how incredibly dazzling he looked with his wings splayed out. Humans had mistaken Auxilium for angels, but any depiction of the celestial soldiers of God she had seen looked nothing like these winged creatures. Angels had fluffy, white wings. They were soft. Auxilium wings were sharp. Translucent, like skin stretched over bone. They looked more like bats or vultures. Ready to strike. To kill.
Still in awe of the Auxilium, Ren stumbled backward. She extended her arms out at her side, fists closed, trying to feel the sparks deep in the lines of her palms, but only infant zaps of blue escaped her. That’s why she wasn’t supposed to take on the Auxilium so soon. Meredith had been right for once. Ren wasn’t quite ready. Even after the extra boost from Ida’s life.
Ren backed away slowly. Stalling. Planning an escape. She had to make it to the grove of trees that ran along the back of the field. She knew the area better than they did and was sure she could lose them in the woods. Make it home.
Peter laughed. “I’ve seen that face before. It’s the same look you had the night of your car accident, when you saw your little friend get killed. You’re afraid, Ren. Admit it.”
A heat flushed over her at the mention of Alfie. Anger from knowing Alfie wouldn’t be back. Not in the flesh. They’d never pluck out vintage gems at Richard’s or go swimming in the river or sit alone at their lunch table, her yacking away, him reading, pretending to listen. She turned slowly back to Peter, eyes narrowing on him. It was his fault Alfie was gone. Everything was Peter’s fault.
A sizzle pop of electricity rocketed through her skin. She stepped forward. The power within her was the loaded Glock Grams used to keep under the driver’s seat of her Beetle. Loose. Unpredictable. Without her controlling them, slices of electricity shot out from her fingers. Zapped the pickup truck’s engine, which ignited to flame. Another volt set fire to the grass next to Beverly. Her focus shifted off of Ren for just a moment. A moment Ren could use. As Beverly gawked at the inferno, Ren aimed her fist at the woman’s black bob. A thick streak of electricity shot out of Ren and hit Beverly in the middle of her forehead, the force knocking her off her feet, launching her backwards into the darkness.
Peter didn’t dally. He broke into a sprint and barreled over the field, half running, half flying. She took a wide stance and welcomed the hum of electricity burning in her fingertips. All she had to do was aim and shoot. With a strained battle cry, Peter lunged for her, his wings fanning out behind him. She was just about to blast him with a fiber of electricity when a high-pitched scream filled the air and a fury of light showered down, separating Ren from Peter.
As the light faded, a pair of translucent wings unfurled to reveal Meredith’s bouncy blonde curls. Before, Meredith had always seemed so stiff, tight beneath her neatly-pressed suit jackets with sharp-edged shoulders, but as Ren saw Meredith in her true form for the first time, she looked relaxed, regal almost. As if concealing her wings had caused physical pain.
“Leave this one to me,” Meredith hissed.
Peter flashed a narrow-eyed, devious smile, like the one Ren had seen the first day they met at Richard’s shop. He said to Meredith, “I wondered when we’d be meeting again, my old friend.”
Ren lifted an eyebrow at Meredith, who replied to Peter with a snarl. “We’ve never been friends, Peter.”
“Good.” Peter bent his knees, ready to lunge. “Then there’s no reason to continue any of these pleasantries.”
Without warning, Ren shot a bolt of electricity over Meredith’s shoulder toward Peter. He leaned to the left just as it blazed past him. The blue streak of light faded as it continued across the field behind them. Peter grinned, then kicked off from the ground and collided with Meredith in a blinding silver light, taking their fight into the air, away from the field and from Ren.
Joe stalked toward Ren. Slow. His eyes unyielding. Ren bounced on her toes, keeping her knees slightly bent, loose. She ignored the sound of leaves rustling wildly in the row of trees that lined the edge of the field a few hundred yards a
t her back. The electricity in her veins was demanding focus, precision. She let a string of its current trickle out of her fingertips, but she held it in the air nearby. With her mind, she curled the long strands into a tight, fibrous ball. She slung the ball at Joe, followed by a short burst of raw electricity to double the impact. He ducked beneath the ball. It passed over his shiny, bald head in a blaze. When the second burst powered toward him, he leaned out of the way. It clipped the top of his wing, damaging it, but not enough.
While Joe beat the small plume of smoke out of his wing, Beverly slowly rose behind him. The rustling in the leaves had stopped in the trees, but she could still hear something moving. A thunder grumbling over the uneven earth.
Ren readied another ball of electricity just as Joe broke into a sprint, moving quickly, then Beverly, too, was stumbling towards them.
The ground beneath Ren trembled, and a bone-chilling growl ripped through the soundwaves. She whipped her head around just in time to spot a sack of muscle sewed into the body of a gold and black spotted leopard coming straight for her. Unless a leopard had escaped the Wichita Zoo and made the sixty-mile journey southeast to join in their fight, the cat had to be Pike. The Alfie imposter. The shapeshifter.
Ren squatted down just as Pike launched his animal self over her head and pounced onto Joe’s wide chest. Pike knocked the Auxilium to the ground and they both slid over the dirt. Pike raised a paw, claws gleaming, to swipe at Joe, but at the last second, Joe rolled out from under him. Shot straight into the air. Disappeared with a screech, a blast of blinding light.
“That was easy enough,” Ren called to Pike.
Pike hunkered down in the field, his ears laying back flat as he turned his head toward Ren and let off a warning growl. Her good eye followed his gaze as he flicked his soft nose skyward, where Beverly, wings bent in flight mode, screaming straight toward Ren.
“Shit.” Ren popped quickly into the air, levitating. She sailed high above Beverly. Aimed her fist at her. Squeezed. A vein of crackling blue light shot out, but Beverly corkscrewed away, dodging the current by an inch. Ren didn’t wait a second before she released another spark, this time hitting the Auxilium’s left wing. It sent her crashing into the burning truck. She rolled in a heap of wings, arms, and legs off of the truck bed and into the field. Pike took off in a sprint and pounced on the fallen Auxilium.
