Crucified: The Rise of an Urban Legend (Swann Series Book 9)

by Ryan Schow

  No, it’s perfect.

  When we’re done, as we’re laying there catching our breaths and smiling at each other, he says, “I don’t know how I can make this work with you, but this is what I want.”

  “I know.”

  He lets out a knowing grin.

  “Is that because you saw the future?”

  “The future is a malleable thing, August, subject to change by the second. You are about to ask why that is and I will tell you. We influence the future. You, me, seven billion other people. Our thoughts, our intentions, the things we do on purpose and by accident, it all adds to the organic mixture that is our future.”

  “Meaning?”

  “What I did, what I’m going to do, it may have an impact on how this world plays out, what kind of future it leads us to, but I will tell you this, I will be with you because I am in love with you.”

  “Would you have been in love with me as Brayden?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say, without hesitation. “I fell in love with Brayden. You are the skin of someone else, but you are the heart, the spirit and the soul of Brayden James and that’s the boy I love.”

  “Are you sure?” he asks.

  “Positive.”

  “So what is it you are going to do and why will this have an impact on the future?”

  I tell him what I have in mind and he sits back on the heels of his hands, his face three shades lighter. He can’t speak. I dip into his head and it’s pure chaos. He wants this for me, but he wants it for himself as well. And he’s scared. How will I feel? What will this do to me? What am I hoping to accomplish?

  “If I can do this,” I tell him, “I may glean from him some sense of humanity.”

  “You think you are a God here, don’t you?” he asks. It’s an honest question, a real question, and one I’ve been wrestling with for awhile now.

  “Yes.”

  He is quiet again. Struggling. Clearly conflicted.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  We’re naked.

  “Yes?” August says.

  “Dinner in five,” his father says.

  “Okay, thanks,” August replies. He looks at me and I’ve got my eyebrows raised. When it’s clear August’s father has gone, he says, “So when you first brought me here, you gave my father bad news, broke his door and fled. Now he finds you crying at that same front door, and without explanation, you sneak off into the back room and get sexually dominated by his son. Is there even the slightest possibility you can do a normal dinner with the parentals?”

  “I can,” I say, getting up and getting dressed. “Let’s be clear, though, you got dominated by me.”

  “My God,” he says, his eye teeming with lust, “I love looking at you naked.”

  I look at him, then dip my eyes down to his privates and move the covers off him until he’s clearly exposed.

  “Ditto, baby.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The thing that keeps me normal at dinner is not that I’m on my best behavior, it’s that I’m thinking about the logistics of taking the bomb out of August’s head. More than anything, I expect my vacation to be upsetting—even more so than I’m prepared for—and I don’t want to “operate” on August with an unsettled mind. The truth is, some things you just have to do because they need doing.

  Suffice it to say, dinner is delicious and civilized, and it’s very clear to me that August’s step-mother, Lenore, is having a hard time being around August. She’s physically committed to her husband, but lately she’s been an emotional cheater. Everyone feels it. She can’t even hide it anymore.

  When dinner is over, I help with clean up, then we retire to the back patio where the four of us sit around a fire pit talking about life in Texas. When the conversation dies down and the evening chill sets in, August asks if I’d like to go lay down, and I said, “Yeah, I’m beat. The trip over took a toll.”

  August’s parents smile at me and Lloyd says, “Feel free to stay as long as you’d like,” which is his way of gauging my time here.

  “I’m actually going to leave early in the morning, so this might be good-bye, if that’s alright?”

  “It is,” Lenore says too quickly.

  “I’ll be heading out, too,” August says, looking at his father.

  We all stand and give the Hollywood consolation hugs before turning in to for the night. When we get to August’s room, I shut the door and say, “I’m taking the bomb out of your head tonight, if that’s cool.”

  “Is it going to hurt?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You have the Fountain of Youth serum?” he asks.

  “I didn’t bring it with me.”

  “I could die then?”

  “If it comes to that,” I say in my most reassuring voice, “I can save you.”

  I watch his next breath come from high in his chest. His features are pinched ever so slightly with trepidation.

  “Relax,” I say. “I brought fake Abby back to life when she died.”

  “But not Cameron?”

  “I could have if she wanted to come back—”

  “But she didn’t want that?”

  “No,” I say, regretfully.

  I abused her beyond repair, her famous father’s sexual indiscretion pushed her over the edge and she stabbed herself in the neck with a pair of her scissors. When it came time for me to usher her soul back into her body, she chose to move on.

  This was her choice and I don’t blame her, even though it still bothers me immensely.

  “Do you want to die?” I ask him.

  “No way,” he says.

  “Then you’ll have to trust me.”

  He thinks about it for a second, takes a deep breath then says, “Okay, let’s do this.”

  He lays down on the bed and it takes awhile for me to get in tune with his body, but when I do, I say, “Got it.”

  “What is it? I mean, how big is it?”

  “It’s up against your brainstem and it’s a low yield IED. It’s basically the size of a lima bean.”

  “Is it going to blow my head off if you do it wrong?”

  “You mean like Running Man?” I ask with an inappropriate giggle.

  “This shit isn’t funny, Savannah. I just got this head and body. I just got you.”

  “No, it’s low yield, so your head won’t be a blown apart cantaloupe. Hopefully it won’t go off before I can swallow it and detonate it.”

  Now he’s looking at me like I’ve completely lost my marbles.

  “It’s the only way,” I say. “Turn over.”

  “You’re crazy,” he says, rolling over on his belly. “Freaking certifiable.”

  “Probably,” I admit. “Now be quiet. Let me work.”

  “Be quiet for how long?”

  “Until I explode the device,” I tell him, my insides turning at the thought of using my body as a detonation chamber.

  “Okay then, silence it is. And if this doesn’t work, I love you.”

  Smiling, touched, I say, “I love you, too, baby. Now be quiet and let me concentrate.”

  It takes me awhile to make the frequency of my body match the frequency of his. The way the body comes apart in time travel allows the physical form to all but unmake itself, this is the way I make our bodies match. It’s the same way I teleported here. I all but unmake my thumb and forefinger while unmaking the flesh and bone around the bomb, and then—just like Draco first did with my body in Dulce—I reach into his flesh, remake my thumb and forefinger and get a hold of the small IED.

  I’m paraphrasing, of course. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, and it takes an incredible amount of focus. More to the point, I’m wired into August and he is in an incredible amount of pain as the device pulls out, but he’s gritting down and taking it like a man. Slowly, carefully, I try to part his flesh as I remove the device, and just as it is coming out of his neck, it explodes, knocking me back on my ass.

  Blinking fast, there’s a sudden, sharp pain in my
face and right eye. My ears are ringing, my equilibrium off. Pain is tearing through my right hand and my arm is completely numb to the shoulder.

  Logically I know the device wasn’t packed with C4, but holy balls this f*cking hurts! Looking down at August, there’s a ragged, fist-sized crater on his neck. It’s a bloody mess, not pretty at all. Through the fog of detonation, on the other side of the wicked ringing in my ears, I hear him moaning.

  The bedroom door starts rattling, and then it’s kicked in, wood splintering everywhere.

  I put my hand up (a few of my fingers just torn meat and hanging, obliterated bone) and Lloyd stops, unable to move against the force I have holding him. He sees my ruined hand and bloody face and the crater in his son’s neck and he starts to freak out.

  Unembellished pain is surging through the entire right side of my body. The stinging, stabbing pains in my eye intensify, and my ringing ear feels so incredibly hot, yet somehow I gather enough focus to close Lloyd’s eyes, mentally gluing them shut.

  I reach out, find Lenore, who is sitting on the couch paralyzed with fear. I secure her to the couch for her own good.

  Focusing past the pain, realizing I’ve been here before, I center my thoughts, narrow my attention to August’s neck. I lay my good hand on his neck and realize he’s got some problems with his nerve functions, and possibly his spinal chord.

  Oh, God. What have I done?

  In my head, I shriek out a distress call, then turn and check on Lloyd. He’s in the same place, still frozen with his eyes shut. He can’t see this. I can’t let him. A second later, Draco appears causing the room to flex at first, then settle.

  “Did I not tell you to be careful?” he mutters forcefully, moving me aside. Looking at my face and demolished hand he says, “Fix yourself while I work on him.”

  He moves quickly, unfurling his fingers, then sliding them into August’s head. When he pulls them out, he turns to me and says, “You made a mess of him,” to which I reply, “Can you fix him or not?”

  “I can, but first you need to heal yourself.”

  “Already on it,” I say through gritted teeth, though my face, hand and arm might as well be dipped in lava for the way it hurts.

  “Did you turn his eyes off?” he asks, looking over at August’s father.

  “Yes,” I say. “Mouth is shut, too.”

  Draco immediately switches to his full, four-armed reptilian form, then turns sideways and presses his two left hands to my arm and face. The burn intensifies so badly I can’t even scream, much less breathe. Then it stops and I stand there wobbly, but better.

  “What the hell?”

  “Wonder twin powers activate,” he says.

  Holy cow, Batman…did he just make a joke? “You know timing is everything if you intend to have a sense of humor.”

  “We need to do the same for him,” he says, ignoring the barb.

  When I move next to Draco, who is working on a face-down August, I brace myself as I see he is nearly wrist deep in August’s head. I place my hand on the side of August’s head where the bulk of the impact hit him and see my fingers are healed, but zig zagging this way and that, totally crooked because the bones were never set right.

  “What the balls?” I mutter.

  Without looking, he says, “We’ll fix them later. Right now he’s dying.”

  Resting my misshapen hand on August’s head, I pull out of my body and into the ethers where his soul sits there like a distant star, observing. I open a connection to the light and feel him. Not August…Brayden.

  I’m not going to let you die, I communicate with him.

  I don’t want to die.

  I brought the Doctor, he’ll help you.

  What is he?

  Our best chance at healing you, I answer.

  If you’re here, then who is in charge of your body?

  I am in both places, here and there. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t accidentally move on.

  I won’t. Just don’t make me.

  With that, I slide fully back into my body and feel Draco in full lizard form at work on my future husband and BFF.

  “If you are not in my mind, knowing what I’m knowing, seeing what I’m seeing and reading my thoughts for both reasoning and technique, then you are wasting my time,” he snarls, telepathically.

  “Do you have instant replay?” I ask.

  A searing heat stings the back of my eye, followed by a wave of hot, foul energy. I reel back, blinking fast and offended. Did he just throw a mini-tantrum on me?

  “I get it already, jeez.”

  I slide into his head and it’s like a tunnel leading only to his current thoughts. Everything else is blocked off from me. I’m not sure whether to thank him or be upset that he doesn’t trust me.

  In the end, I imagine I’ll thank him.

  As for now, I’m fully aware of what he’s doing, which is working microscopically to reattach several spinal nerve bundles through the fleshy dura mater and the thin layer below: the arachnoid mater. Under that, Draco’s mind is thinking, the nerve bundle attaches to the pia mater in the subdural space.

  Okay, so all of this means almost nothing to me in terms of biology or anatomy or whatever, but I know plenty because I’m essentially riding Draco’s thoughts, grasping his body of knowledge as if it is my body of knowledge. I feel how steady his hand is, how he uses microscopic tentacles in his finger tips to send enough heat and light to fuse the organic matter together.

  It takes awhile and it is exhaustive, but when he’s done, he bucks me out of his head and I gasp for air as my soul slams back into my body. I hadn’t realized how far out of my own body I’d gone to be in his.

  Using all four hands, Draco lays them across the back of August’s neck, presses an incredible amount of energy into the affected flesh and then shivers almost non-stop until he’s done.

  When he pulls back, he says, “Give me your hand.”

  I give it to him. Finger by finger, he breaks the bones where they’ve healed wrong until there are exactly seven clean breaks. If I told you I’m in tears and damn near clenching my teeth to death, would you think less of me?

  “You’re a lot tougher in battle,” he says, trying to retake his human form, but failing. When the bones are in place, I feel my body automatically working to repair them. With my good hand, I press it to Draco’s plated chest, shove what energy I have left into him to help him on his way.

  He seems stunned, his slitted eyes taking all of me in.

  “What?” I ask.

  “No one…no one has ever done that for me.”

  “Really?”

  He reaches forward and smothers me in a gentle hug that involves all four of his arms and honest to God, if you’ve got to be hugged by a walking snake with arms, Draco is the best reptoid ever.

  When he lets go, he pops out of existence and I release my grip on August’s father, his body sagging against the invisible restraints. He staggers forward, opens his eyes, can’t find the words. He sees me, sees his son. August is now moving back into his body, which is shifting in response.

  There is blood all over the floors and the bed sheets, but we are okay. Well, my hand is almost okay and I’m positively drained.

  “But I saw…” his father starts to say. Then he turns to me and says, “What did you do to him?!”

  “Took a bomb out of his head.”

  “Is that what exploded?” he asks, looking at the red spatter all over my face but seeing no wounds to justify this.

  “Yes.”

  “Your hand,” he says, looking down. It’s definitely bloody, but it’s straight again and working, albeit with a little clicking and popping that should be resolved in a few minutes.

  August turns over, feels his neck hesitantly, then looks up at me.

  “Is that thing gone?” he asks, delirious.

  “Yes.”

  “What thing?” his father asks. “The bomb?”

  We both say, “The Doctor,” at the same time, t
hen look at each other. In the other room, I release the bonds I put on Lenore, who decides to stay sitting down because she doesn’t know what just happened to her. I put into her head that she experienced a brief bought of paralysis. I lay into her the suggestion that it was probably just a fluke in nature and wouldn’t happen again.

  Looking right at August’s father, I say, “There are things in this world that you cannot know. You have an idea of what life should be like and these things I do stand in direct contradiction to them, which will most assuredly upset you.”

  “You mean like how a bomb can blow off your hand and half your face while killing my son?”

  “Yes.”

  “And seconds later there is only the blood residue of what just happened and you’re both fine?”

  “It hasn’t been seconds.”

  He checks his watch, mutters an expletive, then looks up at me and says, “An hour and a half? Ninety damn minutes?”

  “Do you trust me?” I ask, softly.

  “No,” he says, no hesitation at all, his eyes stamped down on me.

  “You will learn to,” I say.

  “I hope so.”

  When all the hoopla clears and Lloyd is sure August is okay, we both shower and clean up, and then we retire to bed, not imagining how either of us will sleep the entire night through. By some miracle alone, I manage. He’s not so lucky. When I wake the next morning, he’s finally just managed to fall asleep. In the kitchen, I eat for two, then return to the bedroom with August, shut the door as best as I can for it being broken, and sit on the bed next to him.

  “I have to go,” I whisper to him, my fingers on his head, gently rubbing the incoming stubble of hair. I lean down, begin kissing his cheek, then turn his chin towards me and kiss him on the mouth.

  Half awake, half bogged down by sleep, he kisses me back, then says, “When I was dead, I felt an incredible amount of peace.”

  “It’s like that,” I say, kissing him again. He barely manages to crack his eyes open, he’s that tired.