The Bargaining Path

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  We walked through the day, constantly looking over our shoulders for Old Spirits or any of the varying creatures of the forest. Adam was very tired and could not move his hand from the wound in his stomach now. His face was ghostly white, and he was sweating profusely; it was obvious that he was succumbing to a lethal fever. Just as the sun made its first move in the direction of the horizon, I sat him down against a tree and ignored his protests that we keep moving for a few more hours.

  “I am fine, Brynna.” He told me somewhat angrily.

  “Oh, are you? That is nice.” I replied before walking away from him to grab a small, thick log, about fifteen feet in length, that had fallen. My own body was beginning to shriek in protest at my continued movement, but night would be coming soon, and already, I could see my breath billowing out from me in the air. I could not imagine how much colder it would get that night, but my all-knowing mind warned me that we would more than likely come very close to freezing to death if I did not figure out a way to keep us warm. My mind wandered back to a camping expedition I had taken with Violet's Brownie tribe, or whatever they are called. My mother had been required to attend many congressional hearings that weekend, for there was much discord in the public after eighteen government workers, some of whom were Senators, Representatives, or staff members who worked for those two groups, were discovered to be passing along top-secret information to various countries. The trials ran into the weekend, so Maura and I were left chaperoning this trip. On it, Violet had watched in rapt, almost gleeful interest as wilderness experts taught her and her friends how to build fires and even an easy “leaf-fort,” as he called it, but I found out later through research of my own that it was actually called a “debris hut.”

  With great effort, I lifted the log so that one end was stuck in the Y-fork of a sturdy tree. Then, I walked several feet and lifted the other end so that it was rested on the rotten trunk of a dead, blackened tree. I scanned all around for large rocks, and found many after a quick, feverish search. With several of those rocks, I secured the ends of the log on each of their foundations.

  “What are you doing?” Adam asked me in utter confusion.

  “I am building us a shelter.”

  “Well, it will not be very conspicuous, will it?” He informed me, “We have reason to believe from experience that there are Old Spirits lurking about in these woods, and you can bet our lives that they are searching for us. So, if your intent is to drape these blankets...” He pulled two small blankets from the pack I had taken, “…over that log, then I must inform you that we will be found, most certainly.”

  “Luckily, that was not my intention. Honestly, Adam, do you think me so foolish? I may be tired, but I am not tired to the point of being suicidal. Watch and learn.”

  For at least forty-five minutes, I walked around the woods, searching for as many sticks that were about three feet long as I could find. When I returned to his sight, he did not chuckle, but instead, laughed heartily; my face was obscured behind the huge pile in my hands. After a moment, the sound choked off, and I could almost hear the moan he refused to let out.

  “Tell me what you are doing, and I will help you.” He said quietly after a moment.

  “No. It is a surprise.” I replied airily, so that he knew I was merely saying that to keep him sitting down. He chuckled.

  “Fine. Have it your way. I am enjoying watching you work.”

  “Are you being perverted?” I snapped at him as I placed each long stick at an angle against the log. After they were all set up, I sighed heavily and stretched, but that caused more pain than it alleviated.

  “Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  I contemplated briefly throwing a huge handful of leaves at him. Instead, I ignored his comment.

  “Eat that pouch of dried fruit in the bag.”

  “You expect me to eat these lumps of sugar made to look like fruit pieces?”

  “I am sorry, are you on a diet? I do not wish to tempt you with sugar. I do apologize.”

  “If by diet, you mean that I avoid food that is borderline lethal, then yes, I am on a diet.”

  “Oh, God or Gods, you are such a stereotype of a woman!” I exclaimed, as I began to throw leaves over top of the structure. The sticks placed all along the sides kept them from falling into where we would be sleeping that night.

  “How about this?” I asked him, “Either you eat it, or you can sleep out here tonight?”

  “Alone?”

  “Of course, alone!” I replied, “Why would I give up sleeping in this luxurious shelter simply because you are a picky eater? Use your head, sir.”

  “I do apologize.” I watched him shove a handful of the fruit into his mouth and cringe. “By the one God, you humans have no sense of taste! Why must you season and sweeten everything!?”

  “You are such a drama queen right now, I am going to start calling you 'Violet.' Drink some of the bottled water, too.”

  He muttered something under his breath, and I stood up quickly so I could glare at him over the top of the shelter.

  “What's that, Violet?!” I snapped in absolutely undeniable aggravation.

  “I said nothing, my dear.”

  “That is what I thought.”

  The sun had long since disappeared by the time I had thrown all the leaves that were necessary on top of the shelter. Carefully, I maneuvered Adam inside and then followed him in to find that in the realm of makeshift shelters, I had constructed a penthouse apartment. It was large enough that I could sit up, and from the outside, it looked like nothing more than a pile of leaves. Before I had set up the sticks that comprised the walls, I had cleared out all the leaves and bugs that I had found, and once I was inside, I spread out one blanket so we would not have to sleep on the dirt.

  “Where did you learn to do this?” Adam asked me incredulously.

  “I went with Violet on a camping trip once. It was with this organization that she belonged to when she was younger. During that trip, they learned a lot about surviving in the wilderness, and one of the things that she loved the most was when one man built a shelter just like this. Though, I must say, mine is far better.”

  “I am not surprised by that. Brynna, I am most impressed. You truly are all-knowing, aren't you?”

  “All-knowing is a relative term, but I certainly do know much.” I smiled at him before extracting the bottle of water from the pack.

  “You must drink that. Your skin is very pale.” Adam told me breathlessly, and when he went to sit up, I laid him back down.

  “Have you looked at your wound today?” I asked him delicately.

  “No. Now, drink that water. You demanded that I eat and drink, and now I demand the same of you.”

  “You are demanding that I drink this?” I asked, as I raised his shirt.

  I tried to keep my face impassive. Believe me, I did. But my hand flew up to cover my mouth and my eyes widened when I saw it. Like rivers jutting off from a set point in every direction, red lines streaked from the wound. Dirt had mixed into it, so the blood covering his abdomen was almost black in color. My shaking hands went to touch the wound and then retracted, knowing that any more bacteria getting inside would surely end him; even one single bacterium falling inside would do it, I thought.

  Frantically, I tore through the bag we had taken, knowing that if they were wise (which past experience told me they were not) the Old Spirits would have brought with them at least a few items from a First Aid Kit. But alas, I had emptied the bag of all its contents; we had two bags of dried soup that required water to make, what remained of the water, a tiny flashlight that was being used already to light our makeshift shelter, and two blankets.

  “There were no other bags. This was all they brought.” I told him, “Either that, or I have missed something.”

  “No. You have not missed anything. They were hunting. While you were asleep, I watched them clumsily cut up a rabbit they had found and cook it for far less tim
e than what is recommended. At least we can hope that they are suffering the wildly unpleasant intestinal side effects of consuming undercooked meat.”

  “I would laugh, Adam, but at this point...”

  “I know, my attempts to lighten the mood are wearing thin. I do apologize.”

  “Aren't you in pain?” I asked him somewhat angrily, “How are you still this chipper? Judging by the look of it, it looks like you have balled up a mixture of mud, animal waste, and live staph bacteria and rubbed it into your wound. God, what about tents? How could they not have brought tents?”

  “I gathered that they did not expect to find us. It is very possible that they were only doing a sweep of the woods for one day only, and that they just luckily stumbled upon us.”

  “We walked for a very long time. Unless they had started searching immediately after the city was destroyed, they would not have found us in one day.”

  “After the city was destroyed, what else was there to do but search for survivors? Their blood-lust was strong. Apparently, it could not be satisfied by killing thousands of my people with a weapon that never should have been made...”

  He trailed off, seeming to have surprised himself for actually saying that, or for actually showing his true despair, even if it was for so short a moment that I would have missed it had I not been listening closely.

  “Adam...” I started.

  “No.” He held up his hand to stop me and shook his head, “I have tormented myself over it in my mind, for I deserve to be tormented. My people... So many innocent lives have been lost in this war. I never thought my people or my city could fall. I thought myself invincible. I thought us invincible. And now, here we are.”

  I had ripped off a piece of the blanket and poured water onto it. Without warning him, I pressed the soggy cloth to his wound as gently as I could, and still, I hurt him. His hand jerked out and grasped my wrist out of reflex.

  “It is alright.” I told him, “Just relax.”

  He released his grip and laid back, and he seemed to be soothed by the cold water against the wound.

  “Stay here. I think I saw that tree with the sap that your doctors told us has antibacterial qualities.”

  “The bacteria is already there, my dear.”

  “Then an antibacterial sap will kill it, my dear.”

  “Do not go out in the rain in search of a tree that only grows in the north.”

  “You could have just said, 'Brynna, you are mistaken. Those trees only grow in the north.' I am starting to realize why people become so angry when I am condescending and sarcastic.”

  “My aim was not to condescend. Well, maybe slightly, but not in a malicious way. I simply do not want for you to go out into this storm on my behalf...”

  I crawled out of the hut with ease because he had told me not to go. I heard a loud exclamation of incredulous exasperation and mild annoyance, which I promptly ignored.

  The rain was mixed with icy shards that projected downwards from the sky like tiny pieces of shrapnel. Looking all around me for signs of attackers—human, human-like, or otherwise—I quickly walked to the tree I had seen. I closed my eyes again, silently acknowledging that I was using my power in consecutive attempts to See, something that I had never done before. In this case, I was summoning my knowledge of the smells in Dr. Terry's office, where I had visited him multiple times for chats, but never for visits, as my health remained determinedly strong. One day, he had explained to me that Elixir was not the only magical healing plant that grew in the fertile soil on Pangaea. One tree, he said, bled sap every day when the sun went down. In the present, I raised my head up and smelled the air; from my knowledge that it could not have been that long ago, and by the way that there were still remaining particles of sunlight, as I liked to call them, clinging to the air that I could smell, it had not been that long since the sun had set. The tree I was standing in front of was gushing black, foul-smelling sap. I remembered that Dr. Terry had told me the sap smelled terribly. So two variables checked out: The sap only left the tree right after dusk, and the sap smelled badly.

  I did not have time to consider the other variables which I knew could spell disaster for Adam in theory. But by the gentle grasp of warmth within my chest, I knew that I had found a temporary solution to our debacle; I knew that warmth was my instinct telling me that the sap was exactly what I had been hoping to find.

  I placed my hand right up against the bark of the tree and let the sticky sap pour until a copious amount heavy in weight was there in my palms. Then, I hurried back to the shelter, which I had to awkwardly crawl into without using my hands.

  “Brynna, you are soaked!”

  “That happens when one goes out in a heavy downpour.” I replied quickly, “Turn over onto your back, and don't you dare make a lewd comment from that.”

  He chuckled, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “I would not have said it, but like a typical male, I would have thought it. And most scintillating thoughts they would have b...”

  “I am going to punch you square in your wound and then use this sap from the tree that only grows in the north on my own injuries.”

  That time, when he replied with his trademark chuckle, it was slightly more hysterical. I knew that not by the sound rising but by the way his body tensed and his hands came forward to grab the wound.

  “Do not touch it.”

  After lifting his shirt again, I dabbed two of my fingers into the rounded mass of sap in my hands. Pulling a small amount away from that mass resulted in long strings of the sticky substance following the lost portion all the way over to Adam's wound.

  “Does your hand feel better?” He asked me as I used my burned hand to rub the mixture into his injury.

  “It does, actually. Does your stomach feel better?”

  “Not yet, but it will. I insist still that these trees do not grow when the weather is this warm.”

  “So you think that I am poisoning you with some foreign sap? Or rather, uselessly rubbing common tree sap into your wound, which could perhaps worsen your infection or maybe cause a small shrub to begin growing directly out of your abdomen?”

  “There are no seeds in sap, so no growing could occur. You must try to avoid making such silly mistakes in conversation, my dear Brynna.”

  I turned my head on the side and frowned jokingly at him again. He grinned back at me.

  “That is enough. That is fine. Good.” He told me when I went to keep applying the sap, “You must use some, as well.”

  “No, you need it more than I do.”

  “This is plenty, what you have given me. Come. Turn so I can see your injuries.”

  “There is not much left, and the sap was already beginning to dry while I was there gathering it, and I am not going out in the rain again.” Absentmindedly, as I spoke, I helped pull him up into a sitting position. I was able to do so absentmindedly because it did not require as much physical effort now that he was in significantly less pain.

  “The effects of the sap are only temporary, are they not?” I asked.

  “They are.” He replied as he took some of the sap from my hands into his, “But still, you worry about my wound becoming infected...”

  “It is infected.”

  “My wound being infected,” He corrected himself, “But you worry not about suffering a similar infection of your own. May I move this?” He asked, and his finger looped underneath of my shirt up at the shoulder where my burns, I realized suddenly, were very violently stinging.

  “Yes. Well, I will just take my arm out.”

  The hairband that had been tying my hair back since we had left the city was now holding the front of my shirt closed, because I had used it to tie a large wad of the fabric right in the middle of my chest. My breasts were covered, but my stomach was exposed. I pulled the hair band off and quickly held the two sides of the shirt closed. Looking back at him, I murmured, “Do not be perverted,” only to find that he was already respectfully looking away. Car
efully, because the pain was growing worse every minute, I maneuvered my arm out of the sleeve and then pulled the shirt underneath of my arm so it could cover my chest again. The burn was spread from the very top of my shoulder down to the bottom of my shoulder blade, so Adam attempting to pull my shirt out of the way while also applying the sap to the burn would have been far too much trouble. Just removing that side of the shirt made the job easier for him.

  “Well, say something.” I said softly, because the silence and my new vulnerability were making me want to run from the shelter into the frigid hail and rain. “Talk about something, Adam. Let us discuss something.”

  “May I choose the subject?”

  “Only if it is a subject I wish to discuss.”

  “Alright, then. Tell me something about your life on Earth.”

  I looked back at him, and he grinned.

  “Here I thought you were going to ask my opinion on the state of affairs here, or this strange weather, or the healing properties of other plants in the forest. But alas, you went personal.”

  “And I sense that me 'going personal,' as you say, is not disturbing to you. At least, not right now.”

  “No. So, you want to know something about my life on Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hated spinach from the can. It looked like grass. Or seaweed. And it smelled terrible. I also only liked Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye because the narrative voice in my head was so humorously boyish. Boyish and ridiculous.”

  “You are so bitingly humorous this evening.” He told me incredulously, and I only grinned in response. His fingers lightly trailed over my back. “And how strange, I was not a fan of Salinger’s most well-known work, myself.”

  “You’ve read it?”

  “Of course. Like you, I do so love reading.”

  “Really?” I looked back at him, “I never could have guessed that.”

  “Do I strike you as uneducated?” He asked, sounding jokingly bemused. “I must work on that.”

  “No.” I actually giggled softly before immediately covering my mouth. I heard one of his soft laughs behind me and felt his breath on my back. “Do you have a favorite book?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Of course not. There are too many that have changed me or at the very least, affected me strongly. It would be like picking a favorite child.”

  “Exactly. I have tried to explain that very notion to many over the years, and none can understand.”

  “Have you?” I asked, looking back at him again. I tried to picture him, this fearsome leader, with his endless power and not well-hidden capability for terrible violence, sitting amongst a group of acquaintances, discussing his views on literature. The image did not fit him when I first constructed it in my mind, but then, slowly, I became accustomed to its strangeness and could accept it as true.

  “You are surprised by that.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just surprises me. Aren’t there things about me that surprise you?”

  “Oh, my dear…” He grinned, “You cannot even begin to know.”

  I blinked at him for several seconds.

  “Are you being perverted?”

  “No.” He laughed softly again, “For once, I am not.”

  “What about me surprises you? Just out of curiosity.”

  “Well, let us see… Your love for Penny and Violet. The way you care for them. The way you are so willing to sacrifice your own wellbeing for their sakes. That is a tendency far beyond your years. Your knowledge and wisdom, also so far beyond your years. Your ability to tolerate He-Whose-Name-You-Glare-At-Me-For-Mentioning…”

  I did glare at him, and his grin grew wider.

  “Your glare surprises me. It is intimidating.”

  “I hear that from people of all ages.”

  “I am sure you do.” I jumped and exclaimed loudly in pain when he massaged the back of my neck, and he startled behind me, moving his hands down quickly to grasp my shoulders. Several times, he apologized, his arms wrapped around me as tears of pain I could not fight fell from my eyes.

  “Oh, Brynna... Why did you not tell me you were in such pain?”

  His lips pressed delicately to my shoulder, and I startled; his lips had not made contact with any part of my body since they were pressed to my own while we were awaiting our deaths. My nerve endings remembered vividly his kiss; it had sent wave after wave of some gentle light throughout me, and that light had calmed me. It had pushed the fears of death I inherently had to the back of my mind, where they could not cause me any emotional discomfort.

  “I will be fine.” I told him somewhat brusquely.

  “I wish there was something I could do for you. I am still too weak to heal either myself or you. But if I could choose...”

  “I know.”

  “You know that I would choose you?”

  I looked back at him and nodded.

  “Strangely enough, yes. I do know that.”

  For several long moments, we looked at each other, knowing my acknowledgment of that was far more significant than we could realize then, and yet we both realized it. I understood that my feelings for him had completely changed. While I was being attacked, he had threatened my attackers with violence in order to stop them from hurting me. He had allowed me to sleep with my head on his shoulder while he kept watch. He had known my fear, and he had held me while the Shadows had swarmed around us, waiting so impatiently for their opportunity to rip us to shreds. Now, he was telling me that he was more concerned about my well-being than he was about his own. James had shown me many times that he would put my life before his, but never before had he been terribly wounded, and hanging on by the tips of his fingers to life. Only when one had reached that point, where the end was not only visible, but it was crystal clear, could a sacrifice for another resonate so profoundly.

  But in his eyes, there was more than just concern for my physical state. He knew that inside me, yet another tumultuous, category-five storm was wreaking havoc, leaving only destruction in its path. All day long, I had been focused on finding the group. When yet another day had yielded still more disappointment on that front, I had shifted my focus to another worthy goal: Building us shelter for the night that would keep us safe from our foes, human or otherwise. Disappointment had been trumped in that circumstance, as I had succeeded in constructing such a structure for our use. Now, when all was said and done, when it was just him and me, turning in for the long, cold night, I had nowhere left to run. The fear, disgust, fury, and self-loathing were hatching from their shells and beginning their hellish reign over me. If one believes that those emotions could not possibly overpower me or anyone else, then one does not know the effects of an experience like what Adam and I survived. The mind, or my mind, at least, focuses not on the picture as a whole but on many small fragments of it. I remembered my father beating me and saying that he would kill me if it would bring my brother back; my face throbbed, and I became aware for the first time that day that my left eye was swollen almost completely shut, and that my lips were too large and tasted sickeningly of metal. I remembered the pain of the thorn-covered vine; every slash or puncture-wound made by the vine or the thorns, respectively, seemed to burn in response to that particular memory.

  But the worst—the absolute worst—was the memory of the weight of that man's body on top of my own. For a moment too lucid to be believed, I could feel that weight, crushing my fragile bones and stealing my breath. I could remember vividly the fear that had been wailing like an air-raid siren in my heart and head. More than anything else, I remembered how hateful my inner-diatribe had become, and how that vitriol was not aimed at my almost-rapist, or Rich, or Tyre, or my father, but at me. Only at me, against all logic.

  I had not shot those men the moment I had gotten the gun. I had not fought Paul when he had appeared behind us. I had not kept my mouth shut. I had fought them even when I knew that doing so would increase the seve
rity of the pain they would inflict upon me. I had let myself fall into the same situation that I had promised myself I would never fall into again; I was being abused in the same way in which I swore I would never be abused again.

  Adam grasped my shoulders very gently, and yet my entire body jumped. My self-righteous tendencies sprung to life and began to wildly point their fingers at him in their evilly valiant efforts to quell the self-loathing I felt so strongly.

  Adam had been injured. Adam had not helped me fight. Adam had not helped us escape. Adam had not been able to move quickly enough.

  What did I do in response to those thoughts? Well, at first, I almost acted on the anger they prodded to life inside of me. But then, in a move so sudden that it shocked us both, I turned around and flung myself towards him. Instantly, my arms wrapped around his neck, and my face buried inside of them. I breathed him in; through the smell of his sweat, I could still smell his normal, intoxicating scent, and it calmed me.

  One of his arms was behind my lower back, and the other was up around my shoulders. Soothingly, he smoothed my soaking wet hair in the back. For a long time, he did not say anything. But my heart was beating so hard and fast against his, my breathing was becoming shallower, and my body was trembling even more severely now.

  “Shh...” He whispered in my ear, “You are safe now, Brynna. Do not fear them, for you are safe. Right here,” He tightened his arms around me, “You are safe. You are safe. You are safe.”

  No other words could have possibly mattered, and he knew that. My eyes that were squeezed tightly shut released, and I found that I was nodding, and my heart was calming.

  “He almost... and Dad was... and Dad…”

  “No, my love.” Because I was clinging to him so tightly, he was able to lift me while I was still attached to his front. After rising onto his knees, he moved us back so we could lie on the blankets, side by side.

  “No!” I was unable to stop myself from crying out when he went to let go of me.

  “I am not letting go. I am right here. I am staying right here with you.” He kissed my forehead, and then pulled away so I was looking at him. After our eyes had met, he placed his hand on my face, and whispered gently yet emphatically, “It was not your fault. None of it. Alright?”

  That time, when I nodded, I did so out of reflex, not because I truly believed what he was saying.

  “No. I want you to say it to me, out loud. Say, 'It was not my fault.'”

  “It...” I started, but my tongue seemed to swell, and the words became lodged in the back of my throat, choking me. “It... It... Adam, I can't say it!”

  I was so confused by my inability to say such a simple thing. Even if I did not believe something, I could still say it, at least under normal circumstances. I was frustrated, also, that I could not say such a simple phrase.

  “It is alright.” He told me, “It is alright, sweetheart. You do not have to say it now. But I want you to keep it in your mind, and I am sure that one day, you will come to see that I am right.”

  “It happened before.” I blurted out before I could stop myself. My hands actually flew up to my mouth; I could not believe that I had just spilled my darkest secret to him! How could I have said it? How could I have admitted it out loud to a man whom I had so hated mere days earlier?

  “Here?” He asked, and I could hear a slight tremor in his voice. He did not think that I could see it in the darkness, but his eyes became tinged with tiny flecks of red.

  “No.” I shook my head vigorously, “On Earth.”

  There was a heavy silence between us, and I could not stand it. The only way to rectify silence was to speak, so I spoke. I did not let his arms let go of me, nor did he try to let go of me.

  “And my mother sent him to jail, and there was a huge trial because of who she was, and he went to jail for a very long time, though I do not remember the exact number of years. I did not tell my mother about the episodes I was having, though I did not know even to call them that then. I just knew that I would lose focus and a sense of where I was and what I was doing, and by the time I came back around, time had passed. It was like...” I shook my head slightly as I tried to formulate the right phrases to explain it, “It was almost as though time did not exist in a straight line anymore. It jutted out in all these different directions, and every time I lost sight of the line I was on, I'd end up on some completely different line. So, she didn't know about it, and she said...”

  I stopped.

  “Go on, darling.” He urged me so gently that I could not help but continue.

  “So, she said that she had to run out, but just for a little while, an hour at the most. And Lucien had been asking all day to play in the pool, and she felt badly, so she asked if I would watch him. I had to make sure that I didn't take my eyes off of him for even a second. And I said I would. I never had those episodes during the day; I suppose that was because Michael had never done it during the day. And I didn't even feel it coming on. I didn't slip away; I fell, completely suddenly, into that place, whatever place it was...” I corrected myself quickly, “…whatever place it is. When I came back around, I saw that the sky was darker, and then... and then I saw... the blood in the water, and... and he was face-down, and then my dad was yelling, but first, Elijah and I had tried to bring him back, but his face was blue, and his eyes were still open a little, and I thought...”

  I stopped again.

  “I cannot say this.” I told him.

  “Yes, you can.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Brynna...” His hand grasped my face again, “You can.”

  I looked at him and realized that I believed him once again.

  “I thought that they would be very sad, but that they would understand.”

  He was silent for a very long time. My gaze diverted from his, wondering, in my paranoid, guilty, way, if he was judging me, and if he was judging me, whether his judgment ruled me good or evil.

  “But that is not what happened, is it?” He asked, and when I heard how gently he asked, I knew that there was no way that he thought me evil. If he felt the same way that my parents had, he would be speaking to me in the same harsh tone they used, or he would not be speaking to me at all anymore. He would not be able to look at me. He would have unwrapped his arms from around me. I knew the consequences of harsh judgment; I had experienced them for over ten years.

  “No. My father came home first, and he was screaming at Lucien to come back. Then, he was screaming at me. He had never raised his voice to me before. And my mother came home, and she was in shock at first, I think, and then she was sobbing so loudly, and screaming, too, but not words. And when she looked at me...” I almost cringed visibly as I remembered that look on her face. After so many years, after forgetting her otherwise, I could still remember that terrible look.

  “When she looked at me, all of that warmth, all of that concern, all of those promises she had made to help me through what had happened, all of it... It was just gone. Just like that, it was like all of that had never existed, and I was dead to her. I was dead to them both. My father started using me as a tool to physically expel his fury at Lucien's death and his frustrations in every other aspect of his life. My mother became a drunk who said but a handful of words to me over the course of almost thirteen years. Maura tried to be there for me, but I did not make it easy for her, which was most likely because I suspected her kindness as being an absolution.”

  “An absolution? For what did she need absolution?”

  “Michael was her husband.”

  “And she was blind to what he was?”

  “Oh, no, she was not blind.” I actually smiled to myself and laughed bitterly. “I suppose you could say that she was deaf. She would be in the house when it happened. You can imagine the racket I made. So Maura covered her ears.” I rubbed my eyes. “I should not be telling you all of this. It is ancient history. It is just a collection of sad, terrible events that truly do not mean anything now. All of this
pales in comparison to everything else. Look at us, Adam. We are in the middle of a war. Earth is gone, completely destroyed. Except for us 'lucky' survivors, everyone is dead. Billions upon billions of people—dead. And I'm complaining about a sick man and my parents, who acted as any parent would have...” When I looked at him, I frowned. “Do not pity me, Adam. Like I said, there are many other things over which we may grieve, and this is not one of them. This all happened a long, long time ago, and like I said, anyone would have reacted that way. He was their baby. He was the light of their lives, and if you had known him, you would understand. I understand. Really.” I nodded, “I can see why my father hates me, and I can see why my mother could not look at or speak to me. He was...” My throat clenched, but I took a breath and actually smiled, “He was perfect. I took away their most perfect creation.”

  “You did not deserve such cruelty. I do not doubt what you are saying about him; I can see that he had your love in abundance. But you did not deserve to be treated that way.” He told me, and his anger was not well masked, “Your brother's death was a terrible accident, but you never should have been left alone when you had suffered a trauma like that at such a young age. They should not have left your side for anything or anyone else in your world, mine, or any other.”

  “They should not have, but they did. God, I think of him so often, Adam. Not a day goes by that I don't see his face. Both of his faces, I should say. When I see his beautiful, vibrant, smiling face, it is always followed by the one after we pulled him from the water. I can still remember that he had the goggles around his neck, and he was wearing Spider-Man swim trunks... He had been so proud of those. When we had seen them in the store, he begged Maura to buy them. He had her wrapped around his finger. Well, he had all of us wrapped around his finger.” The tears rushed into my eyes so quickly that I could not stop them. Two trickled down my face, but I swiped them away quickly. “We need to change the subject. I cannot talk about him, don't you see? This is why. I cannot control myself when I talk about him.”

  “You loved him very much. I can see that. Brynna...” He brought my hands to his lips so he could kiss both. “You have my deepest sympathy and my warmest feelings of love. I am so sorry that you lost your brother, and that you have been forced for so long to believe that it was your fault.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that, Adam. But we need to talk about something else. I know that you think this is beneficial for therapeutic reasons, but I cannot discuss this anymore. Ask me something else. Or rather, let me ask you to explain something to me further.”

  “What is that?”

  “About the powers. All of them.”

  “The powers of the Four-Armed God?” He asked, “The evolution, as you all call it.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, there is much to tell. Is there anything specific that is puzzling you?”

  “There is much, but my power, specifically, makes me ask the most befuddling questions. What is it? Is it just this telepathy and these random moments of foresight? Or that random moment when I was able to control their minds back there?”

  “Brynna, you should not be asking what can you do with your power; you should be asking what can’t you do? I coveted and still covet your power because there is no limit to it. The mind is the epicenter of us all, though my more sentimental-minded citizens, especially those who are Ares, would say that it is the heart that is the epicenter. They would be wrong. When you venture into the minds of others, if you go far enough, you can read their hearts, can you not?”

  “Yes. I can.”

  “There you go. You have one of the powers of the Ares. Being one of us makes you strong like the Herculians. And the Dionysians… Well, there are so few of them, and you do not want what they have, anyway.”

  “They’re the ones no one talks about. I heard something about that once from some of the others. When I was working in the kitchen, Eugeneia told us many of your tales, but she was very vague about them.”

  “Yes. That is because all of us, but especially Eugeneia, try to pretend that they do not exist. They are in hiding. Most of them are amongst the Old Spirits now. I know there are none where we are headed, because the leader there simply will not tolerate them. They tempt others, Brynna. They prey on the weak. They prey on those who are grieving their lost loved ones by offering those loved ones back. They barter with those who have nothing to give, and those who have nothing to give barter with their lives. The Dionysians can only prey on the most desperate, and they can only grant the wishes of the desperate if the desperate can pay up a sum or complete some terrible deed on their orders. There is no denying it; they are all of the lowest moral caliber. They all simply prey on those who would do anything for something or someone.”

  “Well, I am certainly glad I have not encountered them. But how do they deliver on the promises that they make to desperate people? You said that they offer loved ones who have been lost to those who lost them. How can they possibly deliver on that?”

  His eyes met mine, and they were dark, perhaps darker than I had ever seen them. I shuddered slightly, and absentmindedly, he reached out and rubbed my arms quickly to create friction, thinking I was merely chilled by the cold outside.

  “They deliver because they are in league with darkness. They pull the deceased back from the Beyond and bring them back here. But they cannot, even with all their dark powers, bring the deceased back completely. They bring back fragmented souls. Shadows. And that is the most despicable part of their whole shady business: They cannot deliver, so they must trick and lie. They are merely gypsies, or genies: if you do not ask specifically enough, they will not deliver, and even if you do ask specifically enough, they do not tell you that they are incapable of delivering in the way that you wish them to deliver.” He paused for a long time, and I looked at him, studying the way his hard, masculine features were so utterly expressionless even though I knew a personal revelation was coming. And come, it did.

  “A very, very long time ago, when I had lost something so precious to me… In fact, this was the most precious of all things… In my grief, I sought a Dionysian. In disguise, I went deep into the underbelly of one of Tyre’s cities and found one who is known to be quite skilled. If anyone can bring back someone completely, it is him. But instead of bringing this person back to me, he took all the money I offered, and resurrected a shell. In the process, I stopped him, and sent this precious person back to the other side. And when I demanded to know, because I did not already know in my naivety, why he had taken my money when he could not possibly bring her back to life completely, he just laughed and said, ‘Because Rexprimus, never once did I promise you perfection; I simply promised resurrection.’ In my rage, in my grief, I blinded him. I would have killed him had I not been spotted by Tyre’s ever-vigilant citizens. I barely escaped, and her body was left behind.”

  “Who was it, Adam?”

  “That is unimportant, my dear.” He said, and he squeezed my hand to tell me that it was alright that I had asked. “The important thing is, because I was driven mad by grief, I abandoned my judgment, and by abandoning my judgment, I allowed that despicable creature to convince me he could return one I had lost to me. He was not sorry that he could not do it, and none of them ever have been. The Dionysians pride themselves on their ability to feel nothing in the face of another’s grief and desperation. In fact, they enjoy grief and desperation. It is a game to them. Plus, they feed on it. It is their life-source.”

  “You mean that they will die if they do not make those deals?”

  “Yes. They will wither away and die, and we would all be better off. But alas, we will never see the last of them. They are a resilient bunch. Evil is resilient, as you very well know.” He looked at me, “Now your people, on the other hand, were the most benevolent of souls, even with their endless powers. Yours is the power of all powers, as I have said. Whatever you want, you can make happen, because you can channel your knowledge and logic to make it happen. Y
ou can see backwards, forwards, sideways, up, and down… All possibilities. All outcomes. And you can see into minds, and further than that, you can see into hearts. That is why you are invaluable, Brynna. Well…” He reached out and grasped my hand gently in both of his, “That and so many other things.”

  “You are just so complimentary tonight, King Adam.”

  “It is not just tonight. I compliment you frequently, but you are always too angry with me to acknowledge it. You are always so spiteful that you simply respond with barbs that wound my old heart terribly.”

  “Yes, I am sure you are just mortally wounded by all that I say.”

  “I am. Alright, it is now my turn to ask a question, and the one I have in mind is one I have wanted to ask for a very long time now.”

  “Oh, boy…”

  “How long did you live alone on Earth? The first report I received of you stated that you were living alone in a sizeable apartment in the District of Columbia.”

  “I left home when I was eighteen. My father made me leave. My mother didn’t stop him.”

  “So, you lived on your own for four years? All alone?”

  “Yes. Do not sound so surprised. And actually, I was not alone. I had Penny there ninety percent of the time.”

  “And your parents never visited?”

  Dizziness throttled my brain as I remembered the pounding on the door in the middle of the night… The blood, the pain, the sickness… Everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay…

  “My mom didn’t.” I managed to say, but I had to close my eyes for a minute.

  “Are you alright? Have I said something to upset you? I am sorry, Brynna, I did not intend…”

  “No. This happens sometimes. I get dizzy and nauseous, and if we were still on Earth, I would assume that I was succumbing to a brain tumor or aneurysm, but since we are here…”

  “Let me see your hand.”

  He took it before I could reach out to him and pressed the tips of his fingers to the pulsing vein in my wrist.

  “Your heart beat is very quick. You are merely suffering another fit of panic. You never saw a doctor for this?”

  “I do not need medication, Adam. I can handle it on my own.”

  “No, not for medication. Did you not see a doctor so he or she could tell you that you were not dying?”

  “No. When I thought I was dying, I would just wrap myself in my comforter and try to breathe normally. Sometimes they would go away easily. Other times, they would last all night.”

  “And there was no one you could call? No one who would come see you through it?”

  “Well…” I said, remembering her voice, so soft, so gentle, and how I had been so confused and impressed by her ability to calm me so effortlessly.

  “Come on, baby. Come with me. Let’s go get some air.” And she would lead me onto the fire escape, where we would sit, smoking cigarettes, as I asked her as calmly as I could to just tell me about her day, her colleagues, her family, the traffic, the weather, anything, while my head was rested underneath of hers.

  “Turn on your side. That’s it.” And her thumbs would begin to knead in between my shoulder blades as her fingers tightened on my shoulders. I would actually expel a deep breath as she worked the tension out of my shoulders.

  “Let’s take a bath.” And she would take me into the bathroom and gently take my clothes off, cigarette hanging from her lips that had lost all their coloring because her lipstick was lightly covering the parts of my face or my own lips where she had kissed me.

  “Rachel.” I said to Adam.

  “A friend of yours?”

  I actually smiled slightly.

  “Yes. You could say that. A very good friend.”

  “Is that a double entendre, Brynna Olivier? Was this Rachel more than a friend?”

  “So what if she was?” I challenged him, and I began to feel my anger rising.

  “There is nothing wrong with that. Of course not. I was just unaware that you possessed such… proclivities, for lack of a better term.”

  “I like who I like. What more do you need to know? I love who I love, and at a time in my life when I had no one, I loved her, and I am confident that were she alive today, I would love her still. I was not interested in men at the time, or boys my own age, nor was I interested in women until she came to my door begging to take me out to lunch so we could talk about my mother. I knew who she was, because I had seen pictures on her website. She and a friend ran a very popular political website. So I assumed, of course, when things became physical between her and I that she was merely looking for a story. But I could not stay away from her, nor could she stay away from me. Every time I wanted to end things because I was afraid that she would betray me for the sake of a story someday, I couldn’t do it, and it lasted for three years.” In my peripheral vision, I could see that his eyes were utterly fixated on me. He was transfixed by my story. “I swore that I could never love anyone. I thought for sure that something was dysfunctional in me that would not allow me to love another person. But when I was with Rachel, I realized that I simply could not trust men, and I believed that I could not love them, either. But I know now that that’s not true. I am not a lesbian, Adam, nor am I a… heterosexual person. I am nothing. Or maybe I am everything. Or maybe I am nothing. I do not know. All I know is that I am Brynna Olivier. I am me.”

  “That is utterly beautiful.” He said to me, and when I looked at him to see if he was being sarcastic, I was stunned to see nothing but admiration in his eyes. “By the one God, you are the most fascinating woman I have ever met, Brynna Olivier. There is no end to your surprises. The variety of your life experiences, the tragedies and triumphs, both, have led to a depth of wisdom that startles even me.”

  “Startles?”

  “Yes. That is a compliment in every regard, Brynna. I have lived for years upon this Orb, and never once have I met someone, at the tender human age of twenty-three, who thinks, reasons, and feels like you. I do not know even many in their thousands who can be so wise so easily. It is shocking to me, almost jarring, that someone I have never seen before in all my thousands of years can exist. Rarities are more than rare at my age; they are unheard of, absolutely. And yet here you are. The only one of your kind with the Greatest Power. The last of the Athenes. The rarest of rarities.”

  “Oh, stop…” I said, and I could feel how warm my face was.

  “Yes, I know. You do so loathe compliments, despite how true they are. Let us return to your story, for there is a part of it that disturbs me, and it is that you said ‘were she still alive.’ What happened to her?”

  A chill came over me. I looked off in the distance, remembering one of her coworkers telling me through his tears.

  “She died.” I said, “To this day, I believe my father had her killed. When I told this story to James, I left out the part about my sordid affair with a female journalist, though to even call it that is an injustice. It was so much more than that. But I told James that Rachel had a story that was exponentially damning, and she had the proof to support that story. I told James that I thought she had found out about the end of our world coming as a result of my parents’ actions, and she had been monitoring the nuclear tensions closely at the time. Very closely. Like, she was about to infiltrate Europe through England, first, to get their side of the story, but I told her I would absolutely murder her before they could, so she did not go. But the story that she had was my story, and she had me to back it up. My goal was to destroy both of their careers, force them into bankruptcy and misery, and for my mother to drink herself to death and my father to jump out of the top floor of his office like those bankers in the thirties, but instead, I got my girlfriend of three years killed, and there was no proof to support that she had been murdered. She and her partner simply dropped dead on the same day, and the conspiracy theorists had a field day, as they say. Of course they did, but no one sensible would listen. I don’t know why
I am telling you all of this.”

  “Because you have told no one else, and you have just survived a traumatic experience during which you thought your life would end. No one would have heard this beautiful and tragic story, Brynna. But I want to hear it, and you want to tell me. So, go on.”

  “There is not much else to it. Two of my friends—my only friends—and I were investigating, trying to find evidence, because like some comic book heroine, I swore to avenge her. At first, I told my parents I would tell my story anyway, but they knew I was lying. They knew they had crippled me by taking her away. And do you want to know the sickest part of it all, Adam? My mother said to me…” I stopped and swiped at my eyes quickly when I thought I had felt tears. “And I will remember it verbatim for all of the days that I am alive, that she said, ‘We saw you skipping around town with her. Making a mockery of us. Humiliating your father and me. Shaming your brother by skipping around town with her like you didn’t have a care in the world. All your sick little dinner dates, all the times you were leaving movies or bars or wherever else people like the two of you go, all the nights they got pictures of you two leaving your apartment or going back to your apartment, and you were grinning like you didn’t have a care in the world. Like your brother’s blood isn’t still on your hands even after all these years.’ And she finished that long monologue, the first long set of sentences she had spoken to me in years with, ‘When will you understand that you don’t deserve to be happy?’ So, the sickest part of the whole saga is that I think they took her away not for the story we were going to tell, but because she made me happy. Somehow, she made me smile. And God, she didn’t have it easy. I certainly was not easy to get along with. She gave and gave, and I gave nothing back to her but distrust and mood swings. Of course, I was happy once in a while, but I was still so… broken. I don’t know. I was something. And the strangest thing is, she didn’t care. She didn’t love me any less. She got frustrated; she was human. But she never gave up on me. At her funeral, I thought of all the things I had wanted to say to her, and at the same time, I thought how pathetic it was that I was saying them to a damn headstone. To a damn pile of dirt and a damn buried casket. But I held it together. Until I got home, that is. And that is the second to last time I cried.”

  “What was the last?”

  “It was the first Christmas after she had died. She was always ahead of the game for Christmas. She started shopping for Penny on New Year’s for the following year. As I was putting the gifts that she had gotten out for Penny, I was smiling, and I had a few tears, but I wasn’t crying. I was just so happy, because they were so perfect, and I knew Penny would be so excited. It was on Christmas night, though, that I cried, because…”

  I remembered the ringing of the doorbell. The package on my doorstep. Looking up the hallway and seeing a flash of another woman’s red coat.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Adam. I suddenly do not feel right.”

  “Very well. Let us lighten the conversation. Tell me about Penny.”

  I smiled just at the thought of her.

  “My sweet little Penny…. Well, Penny was born as compensation for the child they lost, but my mother had no interest in her and my father started spending most of his time 'out of town,' so Penny became my responsibility. When I turned eighteen, they kicked me out, and after a week or so, she came to live with me.”

  “They kicked her out, as well?”

  “Essentially. She was giving them a hard time because she had become so used to me caring for her, so yes, I suppose they did kick her out, as well. She and I have been inseparable since the day she was born, and it has been my greatest honor to be the one who takes care of her. I didn't trust myself at first, but now...” I actually smiled, “I know that I am the only one who could ever raise her. She is headstrong, and smart as a whip, and so mischievous. God, my mother would have lost her mind if Penny had not come to live with me. I miss her so much, Adam. I can't wait to get back to her. I can't imagine what Violet is doing to her hair; Penny only likes pigtails, which are two ponytails on either side of her head, or two braids on either side of her head, or sometimes, wearing it down and curled. James has gotten rather good at the pigtails, but he cannot do the braids nor the curls, and neither can Violet.”

  “So, when we return, your first action will be to style your darling girl's hair?”

  “More than likely, yes. She will run up to me, hug me, and kiss me, and then ask me to do her hair.”

  He laughed and shrugged.

  “Well, at least the hug and kiss will come first. What about Violet?”

  “Oh, Violet...” I sighed heavily and smiled again, “She is so very headstrong, as well. But in her case, she goes against me much of the time. She listens to me because she knows that for better or worse now, I am essentially her only living parent, and she has forgiven me for leaving our mother behind, which is surprising.”

  “Why is that surprising?”

  “Because I would not have forgiven me for something like that.”

  “Do you not forgive yourself?”

  “Goodness, Adam, you do so love to discuss grim subjects.”

  “I do apologize. Tell me more about Violet. From what I have seen, she is a delightfully perfect fit for the picture I had of an Earthean, American teenager.”

  “Is that a positive or negative picture?”

  “Both. Delightfully both. I do feel that that age is spoiled and entitled...”

  “And you are one of many who feels that way. Violet is spoiled and entitled, but she is also eighteen, so I do not hold her accountable for that, at least not yet.”

  “I disagree.”

  “You do not think that she is spoiled or entitled?”

  “No, I can see that. By the way that Maxwell dotes on her, I sense that the entitlement will not be replaced by selflessness anytime soon.”

  “He does dote on her. She could get away with murder with him. Her and Penny.”

  “I am sure. However, I disagree with the fact that you do not hold her accountable for her flaws. I have seen and heard about your parenting methods. You most certainly do put her in her place.”

  “I do. And I am unashamed of that.”

  “Just as well. You should not be ashamed of showing the girl her way to adulthood. You give neither her nor yourself nearly enough credit; I seem to have gathered from the opinions of others and my own observations that she has matured quite a bit since coming here.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I do.” He nodded.

  “Well, that makes me happier than I expected. Not that it is you who has noticed it, just that there is a change to notice at all. I certainly notice her new interest in this boyfriend of hers.”

  “The young German gentleman? I say 'gentleman' because he is just that. His heart is as pure as the first snow of winter, Brynna.”

  I raised my head and looked at him.

  “Is it? I knew that his mind was, but his heart was slightly hazy to me. You know that if I can see into minds, I can see into hearts, but perhaps because I was so distracted by how clean his mind was, I could not see as clearly into his heart. But that is a relief to hear. I was worried.”

  “Only you could be worried by young love.”

  “King Adam, I never thought that you would be so sentimental. Surely you are not suggesting that I must turn a blind eye to their activities simply because the idea of young love is so very wholesome. Do you not have teenage pregnancies here on your precious Orb? Do you not know how freely teenagers copulate if there is not one to monitor the amount of time they can spend together?'

  “Of course we have had teenage pregnancies here. In Tyre's group, such things are met with the greatest scorn and sometimes, physical punishment. In my city, it was not something that people bended their shapes over.”

  I giggled softly, covering my mouth as I always did.

  “Did I say that incorrectly?” He asked with a slightly chagrined smile.
/>
  “Yes, but you were very close. The correct phrase is 'got bent out of shape over.'”

  He laughed, “Well, I was very close.”

  “You were. Tell me something about you.”

  Without missing a beat, he replied with:

  “I do not like apples with the red shell. I only like the ones with the green. They chop up nicely and cook without turning that disturbing shade of brown reminiscent of mold.”

  I lightly hit him in the chest and tried to fight the smile that was trying to form, but alas, it formed anyway.

  “You are so utterly hilarious, I might just die from laughter.” I informed him, “You have been alive for years and years. Surely, you must have a story or two.”

  He sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling made of leaves. My eyes were blinking slowly and lazily. Our shelter had become very pleasantly warm from the joined heat of our bodies. My entire body was relaxed, lying next to his, wrapped up in his arms. Despite feeling a very potent physical exhaustion, my mind was wide awake; I wanted very much to continue our discussion.

  “I suppose I could tell you about how I came to be leader of my people.”

  “Ooh, yes!” I replied with a grin, “I have been curious about that.”

  “Well, it all began with the building of Lumiere. It was the first great city. Before that, we had all lived in villages, some very large, some very small. But Lumiere was meant to be the place where most of our kind would live.”

  “Most? Was there a set criteria for who was allowed to live in the city and who was not?”

  “No.” He replied, “It was merely who wanted to live there, and who preferred staying out in the wilderness. So, your race and mine began discovering the joys of advancing technology at around the same times. Battery power, electricity, automobiles, telephones, solar and wind-operated systems, all of that. It was while I was witnessing all of these new, exciting things being built that I began to believe more in the minds of men and women than I did in the magical hand of the one God. Tyre, who had always been my confidante...” He trailed off, and then added in a tone that conveyed how the thought of this pained him, “He had always been my closest friend...”

  My eyes widened slightly; I was shocked to hear such a thing.

  “He would hear none of that. His fear that the one God would strike our entire race down and destroy our entire Orb drove every word and action he spoke and took. Our first attempts to build the city were sabotaged by him and the followers I had not known he was gathering. One night, when all of the infrastructures for all of the buildings had been built, he and his people burnt them all to the ground, and alas, we had to start from the very beginning once again. I was furious, Brynna. I did not question myself, nor did I think on it for more than an hour. I took him, a friend I had had for all the years of my some-thousand year old life, and all of his people, and sent them off. I had them escorted far away from my city, far off to the mountains. Now, he swore revenge, and I scoffed at such stupidity and melodrama, and continued to build Lumiere, which now lies in rubble. And of course it does; why would he not destroy it again, when he knows what that city meant to me? It is symbolic of my choice of the minds of my people over friendship, but it is also symbolic of a shining new age here on Purissimus, when we began to live both in aversion to our most basic principles, but also, efficiently and expertly. We have formed two separate races, him and me. First, there were only our like-minded followers in our separate kinds. Then, there were all of you joining either him or myself. I did not start this war, Brynna; you all merely fell from the sky right into it.”

  “But you knew we were coming. You knew about me before we had ever met. You knew that I would have the power of All-Knowing.”

  “Yes. I had many people on Earth. So did Tyre. We both had our eyes on you.” He grasped both of my hands, “And that is why I sent Maxwell for you. I did not expect for you to fall in love with him. How could I ever have predicted that? I knew only that your world was ending, and that you would perish there if I did not act, and at the time, I only cared about your continued survival because you are the only person who possesses the power of All-Knowing. I needed you because you can read into their minds, control them, if need be, and also, see forward, backwards, and sideways in time. But now, Brynna, I care not for your power. Now, I care only for you.”

  “How did you arrive at any point involving me when you were telling me the story of the almighty split of people here?”

  “Because these days, it seems that everything goes back to you.”

  Again, a faint glimmer of warm, innocent pride glowed inside of me.

  “Does it?” I asked with the trace of a smile, “Why is that?”

  “How could I know?” He cleared his throat, “And even if I did know, do you think that I would speak such things out loud? No, madam; I do not think so.”

  “Fine. Then, tell me something else.”

  “Like what? Would you like for me to tell you about my complicated love life, or my childhood, or the events that occurred over the many thousands of years that I have been alive?”

  “All three.”

  “Well, just like on your Earth, there have been countless wars. There have been cities built, governmental systems established, and cultures formed. Those cities, systems, and cultures have risen and fallen, to be replaced by newer, more exciting models. Whether it was war, tyrannical occupation, or simply natural extinction, new ways of life have always risen from the ashes of destruction. As far as my childhood, it was a happy one. I was born approximately three thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ on your Earth.”

  “Did you witness those events? Are they true?”

  He smiled at me, seemingly in awe of my powerfully driven thirst to know such fascinating things.

  “If you know, you must tell me! Then, I can know for sure whether the Bachums are right or wrong!”

  “And what would knowing such a thing accomplish?”

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “Nothing! But...”

  “Precisely. Nothing. If those events did transpire, then they are right, but their use of those events as a means of manipulation is still wrong. If they are wrong, and those events did not transpire, then their manipulations are still wrong.”

  “But perhaps I do not want to accomplish anything. Perhaps I just want to know!”

  “Well, unfortunately, I was very young, and my father and grandfather were responsible for watching the state of the worlds, not me.”

  “So there are other worlds besides this and Earth?”

  Though he tried to suppress it, he snorted through his nose at what I realized was, to him, an utterly ridiculous question.

  “I am sorry.” He said when I frowned at him in jocular irritation, but he laughed for another second, “The cosmos is vast, Brynna. It is mind-boggling, if one focuses for too long on its size. It has no beginning and no end. Of course there are world besides Purissimus and Earth! Otherwise, mile after mile after mile of space just goes completely unused! Wasted!”

  “Have you been to other worlds besides Earth?”

  “Certainly, I have, and none have ever mystified me as much as my dear Purissimus. However, I must admit, many have mystified me far more than your Earth, though certainly, your Earth was one of the Orbs most dear to me. Your kind is one of the most interesting races that I have ever observed.”

  “Well, that does not say much for the rest of the races.”

  “Oh, please...” He said, “Your race is utterly fascinating! So frenzied and furious you all have always been! So eager to fight, so eager to die. So utterly brilliant and yet possessing such a bottomless supply of rash foolishness! I marveled at your kind, at both the beauty and the ugliness of it. I was morbidly interested in the violent back-and-forth between times of peace and times of chaos. That is why, upon hearing that prophetic visions had been seen by so many, I immediately began to grieve your destruction.”

  “And yet, when
we landed here, you tried to kill us all.”

  “That is because your escape operation was infiltrated by people who have no right to breathe the air here on my land.”

  “Most of those people to whom you are referring, though I agree that they are possessed by a very strong and potent evil, had the vision themselves, and helped formulate the plan to hijack the ship and leave.”

  “Yes, and only the one God knows why such people, 'possessed' by evil, as you say, would find their way to salvation and end up here, wreaking havoc on my people. I do not like that you say 'possessed by evil,' as that makes it sound as though they have some choice. Richard Bachum, your father, that despicable little man, Paul... They all have a choice, Brynna. Every last one of us has a choice of whether we will embrace evil or good, so I do hope that your word choice there was merely an error in semantics.”

  I was momentarily stunned by his sudden irritation. Immediately, I wanted to fight back with irritation of my own. Instead, I replied calmly, knowing that if I were not so tired, I would have yelled.

  “Excuse you, but you make it sound as though the choice between good and evil is a simple ‘this or that’ decision, and that the life that follows such a decision is all black or all white. Neither the decision or the life that follows are one-dimensional, and you should know that from personal experience. Many have said that you have behaved in a way that was less than admirable. In fact, you senselessly murdering people in our campsite was not only less than admirable, it was evil!”

  “Was it now? Do not speak of such things without the proper story, Brynna Olivier.” He hissed at me, and his arms unwrapped themselves from around me. “I targeted those whose hearts were consumed with darkness. I consulted my most prized and competent Heart-Readers before striking your kind, and I will thank you not to insinuate for a third time that I did not only kill randomly, but that I killed innocents!”

  “Oh, will you pipe down?” I snapped at him, and I sat up abruptly. “You are making me want to go sit out in the rain just to get away from your tantrum. If I cannot use you as an example, then take me, for instance. I feel that I am an adequate sister to Violet and Elijah, an above-average surrogate mother to Penny, and a loving girlfriend to James. Or I was. I was a loving girlfriend to James, but I am not anymore, and that is...” I stopped, and rerouted. “However, I have done terrible things in my life. First and foremost, I left my mother behind to die on Earth, and I should not have.”

  The admission of my wrongdoing out loud startled me. Purposely, I kept my eyes away from his so he could not see how stunned I was by my sudden admittance of that fact out loud.

  “She may have cut me out of her life, and told me that she wished I were dead, but she did not deserve to die alone. I thought that my father was still on Earth with her, too, and that softened the uncomfortable feelings I originally felt on the matter; I thought that I had left two antagonistic people, whose said antagonism was partially responsible for the destruction of the earth, behind to die as consequence for their antagonistic actions. In short, I thought that I had exacted justice for all the innocent lives that would be lost for the mistakes my parents had made. I did that knowingly. I left behind the woman who gave birth to me, and she was only that, but still, she was family. That was, for the most part, evil. But am I evil? In my heart, one can see the evil actions I have taken in my life; they see what I did to my mother, my brother, and my family, in general. They see how I treated them. You can probably see that every time you look into my heart. Can't you?”

  “Yes. But...”

  “But nothing. Despite all of that, I think that I am still good. Even if, at best, it is a fifty-fifty split, as they say, I am still a good person.”

  He sat up, softened completely again. His hands grasped my face, and he leaned in to kiss my forehead. After his lips left my skin, he pulled away to look at me.

  “Of course you are, Brynna.” He whispered. “You are one of the best I have ever known. In your heart, I see darkness, certainly. But I see such beautiful light, and it is that light that pulls me to you. It is that light that has made me feel so strongly for you since that first moment I saw you, there in that field. Do you remember? I could not look away from you; my blood-lust fed on the darkness I saw in you, but it was killed swiftly by that light. I was fascinated by the contrast. You suggest that I do not know such contrasts exist, but of course I do. How could I not, when I am so captivated by the contrast I see in you?”

  “And do you not know that such a contrast also exists in you? I know it. After these past few days, I know that for sure.”

  “I know that the contrast is there, but that it is not fifty-fifty, as you say.” He said, “Darkness holds more sway over my actions than light.” His hands gently released my face, and he laid back down. The way that softness I had seen in him immediately dissipated was enough to convince me that the darkness to which he was alluding frightened him, and he did not want to show such affection for me out of fear that I would feel similar feelings, and we would grow any closer than we were in those moments.

  “Lie down here next to me, and tell me something else.”

  “You did not tell me about your love life.”

  “How interesting that you would remember that I had left that out. Your interest in the matter is very... peculiar. Also, it is most baffling. And fascinating.”

  “I am not interested.” I replied quickly as I laid back down beside him.

  “That is obvious. No, it is your turn. Tell me something.”

  “It is my turn? Are we trading personal information like trinkets in a gypsy market now?”

  He laughed again as his arms took their place back over me.

  “I suppose you could say that. Let us see...” He looked thoughtful for a moment, “Tell me about James Maxwell. How did you two meet?”

  “I do not want to talk about him.” I told him angrily and instantly. “I have told you that! You have explained that you did not mean me any physical harm but that you were banking on him taking me away from my family and handing me over to you. I am furious at you for wanting him to do that, but I am even more furious at him for agreeing to it! From the very beginning, from the moment he saw me, all he had in mind was handing me over. So, you want to know how I met him? I met him outside of a bar, where Reapers that you sent to ensure that I was taken had approached me disguised as two young men from a college nearby. James made me nervous, probably because I instinctually knew, even then, that his motives were unsavory at best, so I ran from him. One thing led to another, we killed the Reapers, and then embarked on this epic journey together. Over that journey, I...”

  “What?” He asked, “Tell me, Brynna.”

  “I fell in love with him, and I should not have! I should have known better. Maura tried to warn me about him. My father even told me that he was not who he seemed. I knew that James had been lying right after we landed here, when my father informed me that they knew each other, him and James. James had helped engineer the ship.”

  “And what did that matter?” He asked calmly. “What did it matter that he hadn't told you of his previous association with your father?

  “Because he had many times to tell me that, and he did not! He should have told me!”

  “Yes, he should have.”

  “All through that time we spent together, he was in contact with you. He knew that you all were here. He knew that you wanted me, so for months, I am sure that he stayed with me simply so he could offer me up to you as payment when you called his debt. Whenever you decided it was time for him to repay you for your help in the disposing of his wife's body, that is when he would have turned on me.”

  “I did not know how deeply you cared for your siblings, Brynna. Honestly, I did not know, and when I did know, I immediately told Maxwell that he was to keep you safe until I could convince you to join my side in this war. I did not want you to be delivered to me anymore. I wanted you to make the decision yourself, which I should have wanted fr
om the beginning, I know. I am sorry for that. Truly, I cannot apologize enough for the actions I took before I met you. I am sorry. I do not expect your forgiveness, for I do not deserve it, but I want you to know that I am sorry.”

  “I do know, and I have come to as much peace with your part in this that I am ever going to have. But with him... I don't know if I can find my peace with him. I was in love with him, I was honest with him, I relied so heavily on him, trusted him completely, and he lied to me. He lied to me for the entire year that we have been here.”

  “Has it been a year?”

  “Yes. Maybe even a little bit more than a year.”

  I looked over at him, and he was smiling.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I did not realize that so much time had passed, is all. Years go slowly when one is immortal, as you will come to notice, but since you have arrived, time has gone by in a whirl. By the one God… it is mind-boggling, that so many days have passed since the moment I watched your ship break through the sky.” Almost absentmindedly, he reached out, placed his hand on my face, and stroked my cheek with his thumb. “Now, you are very tired, and the best cure for your injuries is rest. However, I refuse to allow you to fall asleep being angry with me...”

  “I am not angry with you, and it is you who needs rest.”

  “Well then, we shall both rest.”

  “You know that if we both sleep, and they find us, we will be defenseless.”

  “They will not find us. From the outside, this merely looks like a pile of leaves, you said.”

  “But there is a chance that someone will suspect it. There is always that chance. And if they come poking in here with their guns, we are sitting ducks, as they say. And...”

  “We will be just fine.” He insisted, “We both have earned our rest. Tomorrow, we must continue moving. Tonight is the only reprieve we have. As much as I have loved talking to you, we both must rest now.”

  “I cannot. Already, I am beginning to feel my muscles starting to lock. If I go to sleep, they'll tense completely and tomorrow morning, I won't be able to move at all, let alone move both of us.”

  “I do not think that is true, my dear. I think that you are just stubbornly holding onto the idea that if you rest now, you leave us open to attack.”

  “Sure. Let us go with that. As you are the injured party, I suggest that you rest.”

  “We will take turns. If I sleep now, you must wake me in a few hours, and then you will rest. Do we have an accord?”

  I stared at him for a long moment.

  “Sure. Let us go with that.”

  “If you do not agree, I will not go to sleep.”

  “Fine! I agree. Now, please, for the sake of my sanity, go to sleep.”

  “As you wish.” He pressed his lips to my forehead, and said through a yawn, “I am only doing this because I am exhausted completely.”

  “Fine. Goodnight, Adam.”

  “Goodnight, Brynna.”

  After his eyes had been closed for a while, I burrowed my body further against his. I realized that he was not completely asleep when his surprise at my new close proximity to him was read by my intruding mind. But after that surprise had dissipated, his arms wrapped around me even more tightly, and his lips came down to kiss the top of my head.

  Though I was supposed to be staying awake and keeping watch, I fell asleep that night feeling in his heart both content and also, a very charming, very touching disbelief that I was there, allowing him to hold me and kiss me. He could not believe that I had dropped my guard and allowed him to see into the inner-world that bustled nonstop within me behind walls that lowered for so few.

  I know that shortly before dawn, he awoke, just so he could watch me. For a while, he watched for signs of my sleep being disturbed by nightmares. Then, he simply watched. From the most peaceful depths of sleep, I could hear his thoughts. I could see the image of myself through his eyes, and feel how he felt, seeing that image; he was transfixed by some beauty that he saw in me during those long hours. He did not understand why staring at my sleeping face, which did not shift in expression or change at all, really, could fascinate him so much. All he knew was that I was so beautiful.

  I would later tell myself that he was thinking all of those things because he knew that in sleep my mind was open and free to roam, and as a result, I would hear him. But after events transpired and moral merit was proven, I retracted that belief and accepted incredulously that he cared for me then, as deeply as one can care for a person. I had thought that I was the only one between the two of us whose feelings had changed, but after watching me being so horribly abused, and comforting me afterward, and listening to the stories I had shared that he knew I had not shared with many others, he could not help but care for me. In fact, I would daresay that he might have felt more than just affection and concern then. Perhaps we both felt more than that.

  When I awoke, he had fallen asleep again. I did not wake him, but I did pull up his shirt very carefully to check his wound. Already, the sap was wearing off and the infection was returning. After a heavy sigh, a fierce rubbing of my eyes, and a very ungentle comb of my fingers through my hair, I crawled out of the tent and greeted the overcast Pangaean morning.

  In case you had not noticed, I had given up smoking by this point, and yet that morning, all I wanted was a cigarette. The thoughts in my mind began as tiny seeds, but those tiny seeds were soon watered with unpleasant emotions and turned into towering dead trees with too many branches to count: Adam and I had kissed. James and I had only just broken up, and I had kissed, or been kissed, by another man. Even though we had kissed because we were trying to distract our minds from the fear we felt, knowing that we were about to die, I had still kissed him despite the role he had played in James's betrayal. I had dropped my guard with Adam despite the fact that common sense screamed in opposition to the idea.

  To put it simply, I was blaming James, but I was letting Adam slip by without any accountability. Sure, he had apologized. Sure, he had told me that after seeing me, he had reconsidered his original course of action, which was to abduct me, to remove me against my will permanently from the lives of those I loved most in the world.

  I crawled back into the tent and shook him roughly.

  “Wake up. We need to go.” I told him brusquely after his eyes had opened.

  Immediately, he called me on my change of attitude.

  “My, aren't we prickly this morning?”

  “Yes.” I replied curtly, “Now, let's go. I would like to find Penny, Violet, and Eli before the end of time.”

  I purposely did not look at him, but I could feel his eyes on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched his smile grow. I had expected an outburst of rage or a sliver of sadness, but of course, he had to react completely against my expectations, just for the sake of making me call into question my ability to predict the actions of others. I heard nothing in his mind but thoughts that detailed his slightly bewildered and very light amusement; it was as though I were a particularly peculiar attraction in the circus, which to him, the leader of his “advanced” race, I was.

  “We are different.” I told him angrily after I had packed up the blankets and slung the backpack onto my shoulders. He could walk by himself, but I knew that he would not be able to for long. “We are different, and all that happened last night was a mistake.”

  I heard him chuckle, noticing that that time, there was only icy condescension behind the sound. It seemed that I was not the only one rebuilding walls.

  “Yes. I do agree that it was.”

  “Perfect. We are in agreement.”

  “Yes. We are. My, how your heart makes a racket. You are very expertly keeping your thoughts quiet, but your heart is impossible to hide from me. You are not only angry and resentful of me, but you are angry and resentful of yourself. In fact, I think that you are angrier at yourself than me.”

  “Just shut up. I will not talk to you anymore. We are different, and any beliefs to t
he contrary are false. There can be no more of what occurred last night.”

  “I have already said that I agree. Now, please, if you are not going to talk to me, could you start now?”

  “Certainly.”

  With the dawning of a new day, things had drastically changed. But actually, they had not changed, they had merely returned to the state in which they had been before. I had forgotten all that he had done, but I remembered now and scolded myself for allowing those atrocities to slip away so easily, because it had been convenient for me to let them slip away.

  Later, when it became too painful for him to walk unaided, I put his arm back around my shoulders, which were not aching anymore; instead, they were positively twisting and writhing in agony. Ignoring that intense, extraordinary pain, I began to walk him along.

  “You break down defenses so you can prey on people weakened by your disgustingly cunning ways.” I found myself snapping at him suddenly.

  “Oh, here we go...”

  “Whatever information you are told, you use as leverage against those stupid enough to tell you. And last night, I told you those things, and now, you can use them against me.”

  “Why would I use...”

  “Because you do not want us here! You do not want my kind polluting the perfect air on your beloved Purissimus. That is why you wanted us to kill each other.”

  “I told you, this war must be fought because my kind and Tyre's kind, your kind and the Bachums' kind... we cannot coexist. You know it. I know it. This is not me sitting up in my tower, watching as the peasants and commoners fight and die below me. This is not entertainment, Brynna Olivier, and I would appreciate it if you would stop suggesting that it is! Your insinuations that I am this evil Roman emperor ordering my people to fight to the death, or that I, myself, kill randomly are truly beginning to infuriate me! And furthermore, how you can still think that I mean you harm after days of us being out here together...”

  “You need me to carry you!”

  “So, if I were well enough to walk, you think I would kill you? What do you think I would do, if I might ask?”

  “I don't know. I am not discussing this.”

  “Ah, let me guess. Maxwell was the one who told you that I prey on naïve people—women and men, alike—and order them to do terrible things on my behalf. I am a master and creator of chaos, and if I so choose, I can, at any moment, unleash chaos to destroy those who displease me.”

  “'Maxwell' did not have to tell me anything. But the description of yourself you gave is accurate. You do create and control chaos, and you do use it against those who cross you. I cannot believe that I allowed myself to tell you those things last night. When I said earlier that you use information as leverage against those stupid enough to tell you, I was grouping myself into that category of stupid people, as well. I just do not know why I was so stupid! I must have been tired, and I was in pain, and I just needed to hear someone's voice…”

  “You were also suffering terribly from the after-effects of being so cruelly treated by those men.”

  “I was not! They had nothing to do with it!”

  “There is no use denying it when you and I both felt it in your heart, Brynna!” He snapped at me, “Do not mistake me for a human. Do not lie to yourself, and pretend that I am as much of a simpleton as your dear former love. I suppose now that I have become the enemy, you are going to fall back in with him, are you not?”

  “Do I constantly have to be with a man?! I am not falling back in with him, nor am I falling in with anyone. I am going to take care of myself, just like I always have. I am going to take care of myself, Violet, and Penny, and forget all about this stupid war! I am not going to be Don's second-in-command. I am not going to be a tool in your toolbox that you can take out and use when you need me; my power is just going to be an annoyance that stays firmly stuck at the back of my mind, far from my consciousness. Hopefully, in time, it will disappear. Hopefully, in time, all of this will disappear!”

  “Brynna...” His voice sounded slightly softer.

  “You made him betray me! He is gone because I could never forgive him for what he did! He is gone, and I love him still, and he has probably already met someone else and forgotten about me! Violet and Penny are probably so afraid because I am not there, and he is not watching over them! They probably think I am dead, and Maura is dead! So now, they think that they have lost two of the most prominent people in their lives! Oh, God, Maura...” My voice broke, but no tears fell because I rubbed at my eyes again, “Oh, my God, Adam, I almost forgot. How terrible am I for that?”

  He had stopped us from walking and turned us so that we were facing each other. Still, I continued rambling.

  “All I can think about is myself, so they were all right! All I care about is myself! All I can think about is that man, Ray, and Rich, and my father, and I should not care, because nothing happened. The worst has happened to me before, and this time, I was lucky that it did not happen, and yet I cannot stop thinking about it! Why, Adam? Why can't I just let it go?”

  “Alright. Alright, darling. Come now.” He said gently, and he wrapped his arms around me. He was so tall and wide that my small body could almost be lost from sight if one were standing directly behind him and looking. I grasped his broad shoulders and closed my eyes, realizing all of a sudden that I was very dizzy and feeling rather sick to my stomach. My palms were sweating, and my heart was pounding again.

  “Adam, I think something is wrong with me...”

  “No. Nothing is wrong, Brynna.”

  “I feel like I am dying. Trouble breathing... Heart racing. Oh, no... This is not good…”

  “You are not dying.”

  “I am! That is why I feel this way! That is why I am saying these things. My mind knows that I am dying, so I am saying these things before it is too late, and…”

  “You are merely suffering another fit of panic, Brynna. That is all. Do you want me to keep holding you like this?”

  “Yes.” I answered automatically, “I should apologize, and I will. I don't know why, but my moods are very erratic. You must think that I am crazy.”

  “I think no such thing. You have been through far too much in these past days out here. Many of the bravest men I know would have broken by now, but you have not.”

  “Maybe I am breaking. Maybe that is why I keep changing from being a normal, decent, kind person, to being a crazed, spiteful...”

  “You need rest, a large meal, and several glasses of water. In fact, I daresay that you require something stronger than water, just to calm your nerves.”

  “Drinking alcohol after drinking water is counterproductive.” I informed him.

  “It isn't. As soon as we arrive at the village, I will make for you a strong drink, and prepare for you one of my many culinary creations, all of which are only mildly passable as actual, edible food, and then, I will carry you in and lay you down so that you may rest.”

  We began walking again.

  “The only part that you left out of that amazing scenario is a two hour long, very hot bath.”

  “Ah, of course! I forget how much you ladies love your baths. I will draw you a bath, and then all the things that I said earlier will follow.”

  I smiled, and my heartbeat began to slow.

  “That sounds better than anything I have heretofore heard, Adam.”

  “And it will be better than anything you have heretofore experienced; I assure you of that.”

  “I believe it.” I told him, and just like that, we were alright again. I looked up at him, and he looked down at me, and I found that we were both beaming for no reason whatsoever. Completely spontaneously, I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

  “I don't deserve your kindness after how I have just treated you.”

  “Brynna, you have carried me for miles, tended to my wounds, and kept me entertained with the discussions we have had. You deserve my kindness more than anyone I have met in my many-thousand years of existence,
especially when you easily could have left me as food for the Shadows in order to escape them. Or you could have just left me in order to return to your family more quickly.”

  “Well, I could never do that. On whom would I take my aggression out?”

  He laughed somewhat raucously, and instantly, we heard leaves crunching, sticks cracking, and to our left, we saw several trees fall. Our eyes changed over as we prepared for the assault of this suddenly-appearing threat.

  “Dark Giant!” He yelled, and we broke apart just as the Reaper, charging so speedily and furiously towards us, reached where we stood.

  We broke apart, diving out of the path of the creature. The second my back hit the ground, I turned myself over forcefully so my stomach was parallel to the ground and then thrust myself up so I was standing. The Reaper knew that it was Adam who was losing the blood that it had smelled from so far away. Since Adam was the injured party, he ran for him first. Adam, now with adrenaline pumping through him, was able to move quickly out of the way. But even adrenaline could not keep him on his feet, so after he had effectively dodged, he immediately crashed back to the ground.

  “Hey!” I shouted, when the creature went to charge him again. My hand had scooped up a heavy rock without my knowledge, and I chucked it hard, hitting the Reaper squarely between the eyes. It snorted and shook its head back and forth, before turning to look in my direction. It roared in a warning that I sensed was both its first and last, but still, I threw another rock. Now, the creature stood, a hulking mass over eight feet tall, and stormed towards me so quickly that even I had trouble getting out of its path in time.

  In fact, I soon discovered that I had not moved quickly enough, because the creature's clawed hand reached out, grabbed my wrist, which snapped clean in half in its death-grip, and yanked me back to him. Once my back was pressed to his massive, fur-and-armor covered front, it wrapped me in its arms so tightly that my breath was squeezed right out of my lungs, and I could not, for the life of me, draw in another.

  “Brynna! Brynna!” I heard Adam bellowing, and because I could not see him, my mind traveled so I could see through his eyes. He could not see me from behind the creature, but he was crawling quickly across the ground, ready to jump onto the creature's back and snap its head from its body even if the effort killed him.

  The creature was wearing some sort of necklace made from what appeared to be human rib-bones. One of them was poking into my cheek, scratching until blood was trickling from a long, horizontal cut right on my cheekbone. I did not struggle wildly; instead, I made several calculated movements. I jumped and brought my foot back so that the creature's knees almost buckled from one of my swift kicks to the groin. Better than the Reaper almost falling was the fact that his grip on me released slightly, and I was able to free one arm. I grabbed the bone that had been cutting into my cheek, ripping it from the necklace, and thrust my arm back so that the pointed tip jabbed quite perfectly into the Reaper's eye. It screeched, and fell forward, its mouth open. I had fallen from his grip onto the ground, and its weight dropped onto my ankle. With a cry of pain, I jerked my foot free, and kicked the creature in the face with the same foot. In response, the beast came forward quickly and sunk its teeth down wherever it could reach; once, it bit into the side of my abdomen; once, it bit into the back of my thigh, and once, it bit into my calf. Each time, I cried out in pain, and tears began to leak from my eyes, but that pain only drove my animalistic rage. All I could think was how violently I wished to dispatch the threat to my life and the life of the injured man for whom I was responsible.

  I flipped over onto my back and thrust myself up once again so I was on my feet. The creature lunged forward and tackled me again, its hard, heavy body crushing me into the ground. I felt one rib break, and then two more. This creature was breaking me into pieces; surely, I would soon be dead. Soon, its teeth would rip into my jugular, and it would watch as I choked on my blood. Then, it would pick apart my body methodically until it could string together a new necklace made from whatever remnants of me it could salvage.

  With one fist and then the other immediately after, I punched him, crying out when my fists were immediately bloodied and bruised from the impact on its impossibly hard face. Its eyes widened so that the whites were completely visible around the black. Its many long rows of fanged teeth snapped as it struggled to get close enough to me to deliver the final bite on the throbbing vein in my neck, the rapidly pulsing vein that it was watching in desperate hunger...

  “Adam!” I screamed, and somehow, I managed to move myself upwards so that the creature did not bite into my throat as it wanted to; instead, its teeth scratched down my chest, leaving several long, deep lines that immediately began to gush with blood. The scream that I could not hold back drove the creature to bite harder. “ADAM!”

  I felt my terror in both its full intensity and through a haze; the latter merely meant that I could see it from a distance, and realize that I was startled by how very strong it was. I screamed, and kicked the creature, whose face was so terrifying up close that my eyes squeezed shut by their own will to spare my heart from the harrowing sight.

  “ADAM!”

  I heard the roar behind me, and then saw Adam appear, wielding a gigantic stick wrapped in a thorn-covered vine. How he was able to lift such a monstrous stick when he was injured so severely, I did not know; there was certainly not enough adrenaline in our bodies to give us that much strength when we were so terribly hurt.

  The stick made contact with the Reaper's head, and it grunted in pain and collapsed on top of me. Another rib gave way to the weight, and I wailed in pain, and I am unashamed to admit that by then, I was crying. Or rather, I was screaming with tears coming rapidly down my face.

  The second hard knock to the Reaper's head did not knock it gloriously into unconsciousness. Instead, it knocked a new resolution to destroy us, the human-like annoyances, into its head. Its elbow came back, and pummeled hard into the wound in Adam's stomach, though the hit was not aimed there intentionally. Adam grunted, and collapsed to the ground, dropping the large stick onto his torso. While the creature was distracted, I took the opportunity to give one final push with all of my might. Its weight lifted, and quickly, I scuttled out from beneath it. Before it could become aware of my slight body being absent beneath it, I grabbed the stick out of Adam’s hands and swung. With every last bit of my strength, with no thought of the utterly excruciating pain that I could feel through every last millimeter of my body, I swung and swung that large branch until the creature fell to its side, passed out or dead, I did not know. Even once it was on the ground, no longer a threat to Adam or myself, I kept hitting it. I hit that thing's head until there was no longer a head to hit, feeling not a fraction of that pain anymore because all I felt was the euphoric bliss that always followed such a heightened adrenal response.

  “Brynna!”

  Adam's voice was a painful distraction, a nuisance in an otherwise sublime world of carnage and the infliction of great agony. But when he gasped out my name again, the blood-lust and euphoria were eradicated entirely; in fact, I wondered how they ever could have existed in the first place. I had just behaved barbarically, and I was sure, even then, that I could be forgiven for that. Still, my mind, rapidly moving between so many different thoughts and emotions, reminded me that on the ship, over a year earlier, I had screamed at Violet to suppress her urge to cause pain because we were not barbarians, at least not yet. Those had been my exact words: At least not yet.

  Adam was lying on his back, trembling violently with pain, cold, and as a result of his body's shutdown. My heart tried to lurch upwards, only to become stuck in a puddle of sickness that was thick like molasses. Tears rushed into my eyes as I realized that soon he would leave me. His beautiful green eyes would be blank, absent, devoid of all the annoying, arrogant stares, telling glances of secret knowing, and warm affectionate gazes that I saw looking back at me when my eyes met his quite often. His life that was thousands of years old
would be over, and his beloved Purissimus would be left behind. He would depart his world the way that I had departed mine, but to a destination neither of us knew or could even fathom. I was afraid for him, and he was afraid, too.

  “Born to be... a Warrior Queen... you are...”

  He laughed, and I laughed, too. As the sound left me, it immediately changed; another whimper escaped me, and I found myself grasping both of his hands in my broken ones.

  “You are... the strongest...” His voice faded out but then rose back to an only slightly audible volume when he spoke again, “You have done... more for me... than I deserve... You must go... Brynna... It is getting... colder... You must return... to them... You are injured... now... very severely... Bleeding... Bones broken... You must go... Doctor...”

  When his voice disappeared again, I managed to read his lips. He was telling me to find safety, to continue on. I assumed he meant with the war. In his last moments, he was reminding me that there was a fight to be waged and hopefully, won, if we were so fortunate. I was to utilize the power he coveted to aid Don in his quest for victory. But as soon as that thought crossed my mind, his hands were clasped tightly around mine, and he was shaking his head.

  “No. Live in peace. In safety... Brynna...”

  I had been wrapped in Maura's arms as she slipped away from me, and tears had been pouring down my cheeks. Sobs had been contorting my body into slight yet very painful convulsions. Tears were present in my eyes, but I was not sobbing, though I certainly felt great pain at the thought of his passing. I rested my forehead against his chest, and relished the shiver that passed through me when his hands came to wrap around me.

  “Please stay with me, Adam. Please...” I whispered desperately

  Many could ask after what he had done to me, after what I had learned from James, how I could have wanted to see his life spared? How could I care even slightly for him? But of course I cared, and of course I wanted him to live, so I was crying because I knew that despite everything that he or I wanted, needed, or deserved, that simply would not happen. After I looked up at him, I realized that he would die looking into my eyes as two tears escaped from them.

  “You would shed tears for me? When they... are shed... for no one... not even yourself... you would shed tears for me?”

  I nodded, and grasped his face in both hands. After my forehead was rested against his, I felt his hands run up my back to hold onto me tightly again.

  “Of course I will. Tears are being shed for you, and I can't stand them. I can't stand this. I can't stand the thought of losing you. Not now. We've come so far.” I actually smiled slightly. “Look at all we've overcome. Humans, Shadows, a Reaper, the elements... We have to make it back to them. We both do.” I laughed softly, weakly, as several more tears leaked from eyes. “No one will believe me if I tell them all that happened out here.”

  He laughed, too, but his eyes were closing. His breathing was slowing. Right before my eyes, his soul was leaving him. Right from my grasp, he was slipping.

  “I am not going to let you die, Adam. Do you hear me? I am not going to lose you now!”

  Resolve took hold of me after those words had tumbled from my mouth. My limbs shook with the need to lift him. My mind bellowed deafeningly to stop my tears and continue my trek. Ignore the pain, despite how utterly impossible it was to ignore, and keep going.

  Be clever. Be strong. Save him.

  “You listen to me,” I had lifted my head, and though the tears were still falling, my voice was firm, unrelenting. “Adam, you look at me right now!”

  His eyes wandered all around before they found my own.

  “I am going to get you onto your feet, and then you are going to drop your weight onto me. I am going to carry you on my back, do you understand me?!”

  I was barking at him forcefully. I was motivating him to stand for the second it would take for me to wrap his arms around my neck.

  “Even if it kills us both, I will get us back to them. Do you understand?!”

  His eyes were rolling back in his head, but still, I saw him nod. He could hear and comprehend my orders. He knew of my plan. When I pulled him onto his feet, he was able to support his weight for the second that it took for me to move around in front of him and wrap his arms around my neck. Then, his knees gave out, and he collapsed against me.

  At first, I was positive that we would fall. I cursed his muscle mass, which had always caught my eye, certainly, but was now just an inconvenience, and a painful one at that. My broken bones shrieked in a plea for me to stop, but I did not give in. Somehow, I knew that if we fell, I would not be able to get him back up. The second he hit the ground would be the chance for which his soul was looking to flee his body. As long as I had him on my back, he would live. As long as I was carrying him, Death's yearning hands could not snatch him away from me. His front was rested against my back, and I could feel the sporadic beats of his heart; I knew that his condition was fragile from those beats, but at least they were there. They might have indicated the very dire turn his health had taken, but they also indicated his continued life. If in his great agony and seductive desire to let go he could manage to keep his heart beating, then I could carry him. I could shoulder his weight and drag us along to safety.

  With those thoughts in my mind and after taking one deep breath, I stepped forward and moved us just five inches or so forward.

  “Alright...” I managed to gasp out, “We have our start, Adam.”

  Quinn

  The mood was somber, to say the least. Among the larger group, Pangaeans and Earth survivors, alike were grieving the loss of loved ones. The Pangaeans were also grieving their city that had been destroyed. I tried to see things from their point of view. I tried to sympathize with them, even. But I have to admit, and I can speak for Alice when I say this, too: We were having a hard time seeing Adam's people as being part of our team.

  It's completely against everything I believe in these days to call our group a “team.” Thinking that means I admit that the war was a game. We could not win without a team. If we fought the Bachums alone, we would die. That is only part of the reason behind using that term. The second half is that in only a few short years, we would be viewing our activities involving the war, meaning killing without reason, sometimes just for fun, and watching others die as we saved ourselves, in complete apathy. If I look back on that day, I can still remember the faces of the Earth people and the Pangaeans. Some were crying, and some were just staring straight ahead, eyes widened in the dark, and I don't just mean the night that had descended on us. We were all in the dark figuratively too, completely lost as to where things would go.

  Alice slunk up beside me and grasped my hand. My ears perked up as soon as her hand touched mine; I was listening for Violet, whom she had been consoling since our walk began. I couldn't hear her cries anymore, and after glancing back over my shoulder, I found that she was just walking along with her hands wrapped around Elijah's arm, gasping and hiccupping every couple of seconds.

  “How is she?”

  “How do you think? Well, you know, actually. We both do, don't we?”

  “Yeah.”

  Alice and I both knew just how terrible Violet's grief was because we had both experienced it. Just like Violet, we had both lost two parents. Maura was another mother to the Olivier children, and we all knew that. In fact, everyone in the camp knew, if their whispers on the subject were any indication. People had seen them together on the ship and during our brief stay at the campsite. Some had even noted that the relationship between her and Brynna was strained, though that was only speculation on their part. Still, everyone knew that no matter what her feelings had been, Brynna had been with Maura at the time of her death.

  Our people were talking a lot about how Maura was Daniel Olivier's wife. Brynna, Violet, and Elijah had won the respect of Don's people by contributing their equal share, being kind (or in Brynna's case, tepid), and working hard. They had long since proven their loyalty
to Don and Adam. They had proven that though they came from Daniel Olivier and his wife, they were not cut from the same mold at all. Two evil people had born four good children. I personally wondered if Maura was responsible for that goodness.

  So many other people believed that because she was Daniel Olivier's wife, she must have been as sick as he was. If Violet calmed herself down enough to listen, and if Elijah turned his attention away from his grieving sister for just a moment, they would hear the people talking quietly about that. They would hear the cruel things that people were saying. The question of deserving pain and death was coming up a lot; some people were saying that yes, she did deserve to die for marrying the man we all loathed so deeply, and others said that no one deserved to die in the amount of agony that they had heard Don had put her in. The latter group scowled up at Don, who was ushering along the woman we had found in the woods.

  “What do you think he's going to do to her once we get where we're going?” Alice asked me softly, and by the look on her face, I could tell that she barely wanted to know the answer. We had been in the lavish buildings where Adam had set us up, rallying together other survivors who would help us convince Don to let Maura go. We had only gone to do that after hearing her screaming. Now, we had to worry that the same would happen to this woman, who had young children relying only on her.

  “I don't know.” I answered quickly and gently, “But we should just be glad that he's not dragging her along the way he did last time. Her kids don't need to see that again.”

  “You're right. God, I hope he leaves her alone. Brynna was adamant about that.”

  “What makes you think that he'll listen to Brynna? Yeah, she's scary when she gets going, but...”

  “She'll make him listen! She won't let him hurt that woman! He's already killed Maura, who was basically her mother! I'm surprised that Eli hasn't killed him yet.”

  “You know, I am, too.” I looked over my shoulder and lowered my voice to almost a whisper. “I think he's planning something, though. I mean, he doesn't let that stuff slide. He protects them, you know? He feels like that's his job.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “I'm not saying he's wrong in believing that. I'm just saying that it's weird that he hasn't just gone after Don and those other guys yet. I would have thought that he would have handled that situation already.”

  “Well, we've been a little busy, what with grabbing whatever we could and running out of a city that was being bombed. Now, he's responsible for Violet and Penny. Brynn's not here. And they've exiled James, for whatever reason.”

  “I don't know, but from what I've heard, it's not good. He's carrying Penny, which is a good sign. But I think that's just because Penny wants him to carry her, not because Eli asked.”

  “Probably.” She sighed, and I watched her breath billow out into the air in front of her. Immediately, I shed my jacket and handed it to her, realizing that everything we had brought had been eviscerated in the mass explosion that had claimed the city. Once again, we would be washing the same clothes and wearing them every day. Something like that seemed so trivial, and yet I was thinking about it dismally.

  “I'm sick of stopping and starting.”

  The proclamation was a depressing one, to say the least. It was far too heavy to discuss at that time. But the words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them, and I avoided her eyes when she looked at me because I was so angry at myself for letting that statement slip. Given how her moods tended to go up and down without warning, I knew that saying something that summarized the sad way our lives tended to change at a moment's notice could set her off.

  Instead of crying as I expected her to, though, she only nodded, and stared straight ahead. After several moments of silence between us, she spoke.

  “This saga just keeps going on, doesn't it? I wonder if we'll ever be able to settle in one place. Maybe we'll be like those nomadic tribes forever. Moving around and all that, you know?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Well, obviously, I don't want that. I think we were spoiled on Earth but we didn't even know it. Some people stayed in the same house from the time they got married to the time they died. They stayed in the same state, the same town, went to the same stores, ate at the same restaurants... I'm sure that they went on trips to other places sometimes, but at least they had one home to go back to. We don't even have that anymore. It's hard to believe, if you think about where we were almost a year ago. If you think about the world before all of this, it's crazy, isn't it?”

  “Yeah.”

  I smiled slightly as I remembered one morning a little over a year earlier, when I had awoken on the first day of senior year. Obviously, I wasn't nervous about going to school, but for once, I was kind of excited. I was thinking about all the hype I had heard for the first three years of high school. I was thinking about playing in the Homecoming game and going to the dance with Alice. I actually wanted to go to prom. There was an after-party right after that went all through the night where you could win a car and a laptop, among other things like oil changes and a restaurant gift certificates.

  Of course, that hadn’t ended up happening, as you very well know. We had been on Christmas break when the world ended, and despite our many talks over that time, before the creature came, during which Alice had proclaimed that she wanted to win the GPS at the after-prom party so we could go on a cross-country road trip after graduation, I didn’t think about how optimistic we had felt at the time. I could barely remember that optimism. Somehow, I stemmed everything that had happened with the creature, the apocalypse, the terrifying trip through space, the time we had spent running from Adam's people, Tyre's people, and the Bachums' people, from that moment we had decided to just stay home because her parents were going out of town.

  For the first time in a long time, I wanted to cry. I wasn't going to, not while there were so many people around. Some men had tears in their eyes; how could they not after what we had just seen? How could we not cry after we had realized that any life we could have had in Adam's city was gone? I couldn't imagine how the Pangaean men were suppressing their tears, but then I remembered that our entire world had gone up in flames, not just one city.

  The point I'm trying to make is that I didn't want to cry even though other guys were. There was still a part of me that felt weird about it, like it was too feminine. When my parents died, I could definitely get away with shedding a few tears. On the ship, when there was so much uncertainty and when that wound of my parents' death was still fresh, I could cry then and not be looked down on. But now, after suffering so many setbacks and so many violent twists and turns, I knew that I needed to stay tough and strong not just for Alice, but for myself, too. Clearly, we were going to be experiencing those unpleasant turns of events frequently, and I needed to start getting used to that.

  “I don't like to think about Earth.” She told me softly. “I have so many memories of it, and all of them are so good. They are so comforting, in their own way. But it's hard to see that stuff, to remember it. It just makes me want to go home. God, we've done something that so many people dreamed of doing. We came to a different planet. And here we are, complaining about it.”

  “I know. But after everything, I think we can complain a little bit.”

  “After getting split up from the group eighty times and walking countless miles, trying to find shelter, yeah, I think we can, too. I know that we both wish that we could settle down, but I wish that not only because I want to have a stable, quiet life, but because I just want to know that you all are safe. You, Brynna, Eli, Violet, Penny, and James are my family now, and I just want to know every day that I don't have to worry about you guys.”

  “Well, that sounds like something she would say.”

  “Who?”

  “Brynna.”

  “Brynna would never say that out loud!” She laughed slightly and covered her mouth to hide the fact that she had allowed that moment of levity while everyone else was
experiencing such sadness. “But yeah, in her heart, that's what she thinks all the time, I know. Quinn...” She looked over at me again, and there was only seriousness in her eyes now. “Where do you think she is?”

  I didn't want to answer. I didn't want to think on that question for even one moment because everything, every dark, convincing impulse of my mind and every deep, instinctual feeling, told me that our friend had died in the explosion. There was no way that she and Adam had escaped, or they would have found us. Brynna would be able to track her family easily; her power would have led her to us right away.

  Instead of answering Alice, I just slid my arm around her shoulder, which was enough of an answer to her question.

  “If she’s dead…” Alice stopped, and started again, “Even if she’s not, we need to do something, Quinn. We need to stop sitting on our hands, waiting for other people to stop the Old Spirits for us. When we get to where we’re going, I am going to tell Don that I want to be on security with you, and then, we are going to convince him that it is time to end this. We are going to train everything, our bodies, our minds, and our powers. We need to help end this. It just needs to end.”

  “I know, baby. But…”

  “But nothing. If you won’t help me convince him, then I’ll do it myself. If you don’t want to go after them, then I’ll go alone, if I have to. Or I’ll go with the other people on security who want to go. But this ends. As soon as we come up with a plan, and as soon as we’re trained and ready, this ends. I will end it with or without your help.”

  “Baby…”

  I stopped us from walking and turned her so she was facing me. Her eyes were red, standing out against her pale skin, almost projecting heat into the cold darkness of the forest. Her stance on the matter was set, unwavering. There was absolutely nothing I could say to convince her of anything else. But I didn’t want to convince her that our place was not on the frontlines, because I knew that she was right. The time had come to fight back, and she and I could do it together. Somehow, I knew we could do it.

  “I go where you go.” I told her, and I could think of no other words that could possibly demonstrate my dedication to both her and this new cause that she was determined to take up. “Okay?”

  Those words seemed to be perfect, though, because a smile pulled at the corner of her lips and her hands wrapped around one of mine. When we turned to keep walking, her hands came up to hold onto one of my arms and her head rested against my shoulder.

  The words I didn’t think were powerful enough, or right at all, really, changed something forever between us. I couldn’t suppress the small smile on my face, and when she looked up at me, the fireflies in the forest, touched by the lightness in her heart, began to light up erratically, lighting the forest path for the rest of us.

  “Say it again.”

  I kissed her, holding my lips to hers for a long time.

  “I go where you go.”

  Everyone holding torches exclaimed loudly as the flames shot into the air like Roman candles.

  Violet

  I hadn't had anything to drink since the city had burned. Elijah tried to coax me into drinking water from the stream we had passed, but I pretended that I hadn't heard him. Crying since Maura had died almost three days earlier was draining my body of precious water, and the one chance I had to replenish it had passed for at least another day. Don seemed to know where we were going, or else his stops at places with water and fruit that he claimed were so out of our way were convenient stumbles. Apparently, he and Adam had always had a plan.

  After we settled in for the night, and the grieving crowd that was our now mixed group of survivors had started to fall into sleep one by one, I realized just how thirsty I was. Elijah was asleep, leaning against a tree in front of me, and Penny was asleep against James, who for some reason, was still tagging along in our group. I didn't raise the issue because I knew Penny had grown to rely on him. In my state of sadness, I couldn't afford to break my sister's heart by telling her that soon, James would be nothing more than a stranger to us. As soon as Brynna returned, she would make James leave us alone for good. Elijah had already tried, but Penny's attachment ran too deep, and neither of us wanted to be the one to permanently sever it. As usual, the heavy emotional work had to be done by Brynna.

  I cried even harder at the thought of her. Several of our people and several Pangaeans had died in the blast. The last I had seen her, she was standing in the doorway of the room where Maura had died, looking unsure of something, but resolved on something else. It sounds strange to say that, but I understood it; she was unsure of whether she was ready to die but resolved to stay with Maura. My sobs intensified, and I covered my mouth to hide the sounds. Getting yelled at for waking people up would certainly not help my mood. In fact, given how frazzled my emotions were, I would more than likely switch over from sadness to anger in a dangerously abrupt second, and people far and wide in our group knew the deadly consequences of that. Somehow, word had spread about what had happened up at the Bachum camp, and though it was greatly exaggerated in most cases with differing details of embellishment depending on who was telling the story, there was one aspect that everyone knew to be true: I had summoned some heavy natural force of the world with my emotions. That was one of the powers of the Four-Armed God, according to the Pangaeans. According to our people, it was a separate power of the evolution; it was an added perk, if you will.

  My grief was too strong to focus on deep matters of the universe, so I just buried my face in my lap and cried there. We had been sitting for hours and at first, Elijah and Nick had sworn that they would stay up with me until I fell asleep. Now, they were both snoring away, Elijah in front of me, and Nick behind me with his head hung forward to rest on my shoulder and his arms around my waist. I couldn't blame them for falling asleep. There was something draining emotionally about watching another city get erased from the world in a thundering explosion. Our whole world had gotten destroyed, and most of us had seen it happen in our dreams. Now, we had seen another harrowing, pseudo-apocalyptic event, but this time, we had witnessed it in real time. We had listened as the Pangaeans cried over the loss of their beloved city. We had all grieved people who were blasted away by the flames. Elijah and I were grieving Maura and worrying about Brynna. There was no guarantee that she had escaped the city. There was no guarantee that she hadn't stumbled upon the Bachums and been killed or captured. I had once possessed remnants of her gift, or at least I thought I had, and yet I couldn't channel any semblance of it now. She could close her eyes and find Penny, Violet, Elijah, James, and me, and yet I couldn't find her.

  After trying to locate her energy in the world by squeezing my eyes shut, I saw only black. I only opened my eyes when I heard someone kneel down beside me. When I looked over, I scowled darkly even as the tears continued to run down my face, because it was James that I was looking at.

  “Vi, I know you're mad at me, and I get it, okay?” I opened my mouth to retort furiously, but he held up his hand to stop me. “No, just let me say this. You're starting to look really sick. You haven't eaten or drank anything in almost three days, and we need to go find you some water, at the very least.”

  “I'm not...”

  “We don't have to talk, and you don't have to like it, but believe me, sweetheart, you're not going to be hanging around much longer unless we go.”

  We were immortal and ageless, but we could still die. People so often confuse the concept of immortality with the concept of invincibility. Even those gifted with that power, at least in popular comic book-lore, had their downfalls. We couldn't be stricken with cancer or other lethal, almost certainly deadly diseases, but we could still succumb to deadly conditions, like dehydration, starvation, freezing, and burning. We healed much quicker from things like that, but they could still kill us. James was aware that my anxiety had always revolved around different ways that I could die. He was playing on that fear to get me to go with him, for reasons I didn't know. Maybe
he wanted to kill me for almost revealing his secret to Brynna before he could. I doubted that, but maybe he wanted to yell at me.

  “Come on. If you want, I won't say anything, I promise.”

  “Fine. But the second you start trying to tell me why you did it, I am coming back here and taking my chances.” I took his hand, and he pulled me to my feet. “I don't want to hear your lies.”

  “Where you going?” Nick mumbled groggily, and a little too loudly. James and I both shushed him frantically. To the left of us, an older couple were sleeping beside their five grandchildren. The man's eye opened, and he frowned at us.

  “Sorry.” I whispered, and I meant it genuinely. He nodded and closed his eye again.

  “We're going to find some water. It's fine. Go back to sleep.” I told Nick softly. He looked between the two of us and then closed his eyes again.

  James made good on his promise not to talk. We walked along in the dark, both with our eyes turned over so we could see. On the ground, I could make out footprints from earlier distinctly. To a human, they would have been barely visible even in broad daylight. But to us, they were deep and pronounced, as though a towering, thunderous giant had stomped each in frustration.

  “How far away is it?”

  “We've still got a ways to go. About twenty minutes. Can I ask why you didn't just drink water earlier?”

  “Can I ask why you promised Adam that you would hand over my sister?”

  I couldn't help it. It just had to be said. Once that question had been spat at him, many more venomous queries followed.

  “Can I ask how you've been able to look at her straight since then? You've been with her for a year now. God, it's been a year, James! Can I ask how you were able to make her trust you like that, when you know how she is, when you know how she doesn't trust anyone, but especially men!? Can I ask how you were willing to trade any human being, not just my sister, who has a family that loves and needs her, over to someone when that person would more than likely be killed?!”

  “He never said he would hurt her, Violet. If he had...”

  “Don't even say that you would have said no! You owed him, and he was going to kill you if you didn't do what he said! Even if he had said that he was going to kill Brynna, you would have handed her over.”

  “I didn't hand her over! I know that it's terrible that I said I would. But you have to understand that before I fell in love with her, she was just some person. She was just somebody that he wanted, and I didn't ask why, but yes, I did know that it probably wasn't good.”

  “Exactly! See, this is why you should have just stayed quiet! You didn't help your case at all! How could you do something like that?! And now, she's probably dead! She probably didn't leave the city because she didn't want to leave Maura's body. After she knew that we had gotten out, she just turned around and went back! Either way, she's probably dead, so I shouldn't be blaming you for anything!”

  “Don't say that!”

  Now, he was the one who had raised his voice in anger. When I looked over at him in shock, I found that his eyes were widened slightly, but not in rage. I had scared him by saying that. He loved Brynna and couldn't stand the idea of her being hurt or worse. We stopped walking forward, but he continued to pace, running his hand over his head all the while. After another moment, he spoke.

  “Just don't say that, Violet. If you knew...” He stopped, unsure if he wanted to complete that thought out loud.

  “If I knew what?”

  I pressed him to finish his sentence just because I knew that doing so would pain him. With that provocation, he did, almost ruthlessly.

  “If you knew how everything changed... if you knew how the moment I saw her, how whatever ideas in my head about turning her over to him just disappeared. I thought they were still there. I thought I could do it, even after she and I faced the Reapers together. After we got here, he found me, and he kept pestering me to follow through on what I had promised, but I couldn't do it. I told him that I would, but I just needed more time. For some reason, he didn't ask me what I needed time for. I didn't have an answer to that question. You'd think with something like that, that if I stayed near her, I would get more and more attached and that would make trading her harder. He had to have been thinking that. That's true, obviously, but that attachment to her formed immediately, Violet. I went to that bar, and I was sitting in the back, and I couldn't stop staring at her. Once or twice...” He actually laughed softly, “She scowled at me, like, 'What the hell are you looking at, pervert?' She says that she doesn't remember doing it, but that she does remember seeing me before I actually talked to her.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you loved her from the moment you saw her? I might be young, James, but I can't be won over by stupid notions of love at first sight. Children believe in that. It's bullshit.”

  “I didn't say I loved her from the moment I saw her. I said that I was attached to her. I cared for her. I wanted nothing more than for her to be alright, and I would die if it meant she would live. Maybe that was my guilt. Maybe I decided I would die for her because I felt guilty about what I had considered, however briefly, doing to her. Handing her over to Adam would be the cruelest thing I could ever do, or would ever do, to another human being. When I saw her, I knew I couldn’t do it. There was certainly an attraction there, which disgusted me at first, because she's so much younger than me. The attraction was strong, too. Really strong. Like, strong enough to make me stick with her even when her constant disdain was making me want to glue earplugs into my ears with a hot glue gun. Or binge-eat my feelings.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and he smiled when I did, and continued to explain himself. I realized I was listening.

  “Despite all of that, a bond formed between us very quickly, and that bond was stronger than any stupid promise I had made to Adam. I was a coward, plain and simple, for not telling him outright that our deal was off. But I told him three days ago. I told him if he wanted to kill me for not following through on the promise, then he would have to. You can surmise why he didn't.”

  “Why didn't he?” We both sat down on the ground, and as I awaited his answer, I studied him intently. There was a sadness in his heart that I had never seen before, in him or any other person. The fear for Brynna was intermixed with a longing for her. It was vast, and tortuous, and miles deep. It rolled and swelled, grew still only to contract into a tight, painful, leaden weight in his chest. He loved her. He loved her so much that her absence and the possibility of that absence being permanent formed a separate entity in his body that was literally consuming his heart and sending out a signal to my prying power that sounded like a wailing siren. I think, even today, that it might have been killing him.

  But maybe I was just young and idealistic and blinded by my own adoration of him. Maybe that is why I thought and still do think that, even after everything that has happened since.

  “Why didn’t he, James?” I asked.

  He was quiet in response to my question, and I could see in the darkness that he was struggling to keep his emotions in check. After a long time, he shrugged and sniffled.

  “He doesn't want to hurt her.”

  “But Adam doesn't care about us. Do you think that he honestly cares about Brynna, or does he just want her to help him win against Tyre?”

  “Of course he wants her help. Her power is special, from what he said. Either way, I don't want him near her. I don't trust that he won't hurt her. He's been around a long time from what I've heard, and his people are afraid of him. You've seen that, haven't you?”

  I nodded, but didn't stew over the topic. I waited to see what he would say.

  “I'm sorry for lying to her. I only told her because I knew that Maura had told you, and that was wrong of me, too. My entire life has changed since she came into it, Violet. My wife and I hated each other literally from like, three days after we got married. We both just went off with whoever we wanted to go off with, and that was that. I shouldn't
even be telling you this, and she would kill me if she found out that I was, but I never had a shortage of girlfriends.”

  I didn't doubt that. Even on Earth, when he was much thinner, he was still almost painfully good-looking. His personality left a lot to be desired, but so few actually care about that.

  “Even when I met her, I was dating someone else.”

  “You were dating someone else and you left them behind?”

  “This woman I was dating had a husband and several kids.”

  “God, you should have just stayed quiet...”

  “I know that this little tale doesn't cast me in the best light but then, I already look like an asshole, don't I?”

  “Yeah, you do. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't quit while you're ahead.”

  “Am I ahead at all, really?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. So I might as well be honest. You're young, so you see me as being completely evil for what I did to your sister, whom you love dearly.”

  “Being young has nothing to do with it! God, I hate when people say that!”

  “It has plenty to do with it, Violet, but that's okay. That's normal. The point I'm trying to make with this story and that statement is that Brynna is, without a doubt, the love of my life. All those other women combined just don't measure up. That sounds crazy, like a complete exaggeration, but it's the truth. I know saying that she's the love of my life is cheesy and outdated, and saying things like that is completely unfitting of my personality, as you know. But that is the truth. That is the only truth there is. And she might be angry at me now, but if it kills me, I am going to make her understand. I am going to spend the rest of our lives making this up to her. I am going to have to gain her trust and prove myself to her all over again, but I want to do that because I want to be with her.”

  I will admit outwardly that I was moved by what he had said. Also, I secretly wondered if Nick felt that way about me. Besides that, I knew that I loved James like a much older brother. Sometimes, I even wondered if I loved him like a father. Now that my birth dad was out of the picture, I listened to James when he told me his opinions on whether or not I should do something. Sometimes, when I was doing something that I knew was wrong (like sneaking off with Nick, Alice, and Quinn in the middle of the night with little bottles of alcohol), I thought not only about the scolding that I would receive from Brynna but about how disappointed James would be. I didn't want to disappoint either one of them. In a way, they had become my parents. They were already Penny's parents completely, but now I was starting to view them that way, as well.

  “James, you know that I love you.”

  “I know you do. I love you, too. You drive me crazy, but I love you.”

  I smiled slightly and looked over at him.

  “Brynna adores you. Penny adores you. Elijah used to think you were cool, but now...

  We both laughed softly.

  “Yeah, I think I've pretty much shot myself in the foot where he's concerned one too many times.”

  “Definitely.” I agreed, “I can forgive you for what happened. Now that I'm thinking about it, you've had months to turn her over, and you haven't. It was just the fact that you kept it a secret, and you told Adam...”

  “After the first time, I never told him anything. I said I needed more time. I never once said that I would go through with it.”

  “Either way, you haven't hurt her. You've protected her all of this time, and I know that you really do love her. I know that, and she does, too, deep down. Once she gets done being angry, she'll forgive you. She's gotten better about that here of late. If someone's genuinely sorry, she tends to realize it. She's been accepting apologies a lot easier. But James...”

  “Don't say it. I know. I've been thinking it, too. But don't say it out loud. I can't even begin to think about that, about what it will do to all of us. I can't picture anything without...” He shook his head rapidly and blinked several times. “Let's just not talk about it, okay? Wherever she is, I know she's looking for us. Tomorrow, I'm heading out to find her.”

  “But if you leave the group, you'll never be able to find us.”

  “I'll follow your footprints. Don't worry about me. Just worry about getting to where we're going. I'll be fine.”

  “At least take someone with you!”

  “Jack, Ronnie, and Andrew are coming with me. I know I don't have to tell you this, but look after Penny. Don't take your eyes off of her. Even though these are Adam's people and they don't believe in the same crap that the cave-dwellers believe in, don't take any chances. I don't think that the Old Spirits only sacrifice kids, but still, you can't be too careful.”

  “You're right. I will. She's going to really miss you. How long will you be gone?”

  “For as long as it takes to find her.”

  I should have anticipated that answer but hearing it aloud didn't help to calm my rapidly beating heart.

  “But there are so many of them around.”

  “Who? The Bachums?” He tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “Yeah, I'm terrified of them, Violet.”

  “James, they just used a mystical weapon that had the effect of like, ten nuclear bombs!”

  “That's a little bit of an exaggeration.”

  “You know what I'm trying to say! They're not just crazy, extreme, religious people anymore. They've got the advantage. We thought that they would be too afraid to go into the city, but they weren't. Did you notice that they had a strategy and everything? They were attacking people in the parts of the city that the sun harness wasn't hitting? So, the people operating the harness and the people on the ground were synchronized. They're not just winging it anymore. They're getting smarter. They're learning how to strike us and actually cause damage.”

  “They've caused damage before. They burned down the house, if you recall.”

  “Of course I recall! Don't you understand, James!? They're winning! We thought it would be so easy to beat them, because we evolved and they didn't. But as it stands right now, they're beating us!”

  Quiet ensued between us, but when he looked at me, I saw a silent acknowledgment of the fact that I was right. The frown of deep thought that was on his face urged me to ask what was on his mind. But after he shook his head slightly, I realized that he wouldn't tell me even if I did ask.

  “I just need to find her. In the meantime, we need to find you some water.”

  We stood up and continued our walk towards the stream. A few rustles in the bushes startled me enough that I grabbed onto his arm and didn't let go. After we found the stream and I had drank enough water to abet the symptoms of dehydration that had begun to rear their ugly heads, I remembered another question that I had wanted to ask. Though caution would tell me not to ask it, I couldn't help myself. I was curious to see his reaction.

  “Do you think she's with Adam?”

  Darkness came over his features that had nothing to do with the pitch black night we were experiencing under the canopy of the trees. Because my eyes were turned over, I could see that his had changed colors abruptly, and only one guess was needed to decide what that color was. For a few minutes, I thought that he was not going dignify that question with a response. But as we walked back to where our fellow adrift survivors were slumbering, he looked over at me and said:

  “I don't know. But if she is, then I know he's taking advantage of his alone time with her to put all sorts of ideas in her head. You and I both know how intelligent she is, but when she's this pissed at me and this upset, he can easily make her think things that aren't true.”

  “But why would he do that? What does he care about the two of you?”

  After he laughed softly in bitterness, he answered me.

  “He doesn't just want her power, Violet.”

  Brynna

  The sun had been going down when I had begun to haul Adam along on my back. The trees overhead disoriented me by not allowing even a speck of light to shine through their cover. If I could only have see
n the moon, I would have been able to discern the exact time. Hours had passed, I knew. The potent blackness of the forest was not the only evidence of that; the way my muscles were pleading to rest told me how much time had passed, as well.

  When my legs literally gave out, and Adam and I both crumpled to the ground, I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that we were both going to die. I had failed Adam, because I had not been able to save his life. Failure had always been a fear of mine, but in this case, I was just too tired to dwell on it. I was too tired to beat myself up for once. Beside me, his body was still and rigid; with a jolt of terror in my chest, I realized it was possible that I had been carrying a dead man for hours.

  “Adam?”

  I turned him over onto his back and pressed my fingers into the unmoving spot on his neck where his pulse should have been visible, even if only slightly. His heart had slowed so substantially that at first, I did not feel even a shudder. After several long moments, I felt a weak beat. How he was hanging on, I did not know. I did not want to question how it was possible that he was still alive, I just wanted to be grateful for it.

  My cold hands were warmed in less than a second when they grasped his face. His fever was high, and for the first time, I noticed that he was trembling. I was wearing a zip-up hoodie (as I always was) over my ripped shirt, and though I was very cold as well, I knew that his need for warmth far outweighed my own. Though he would not fit in the jacket, I could at least spread it over him. After I did that, I rolled my eyes slightly as a thought took hold of me; there was another way to warm him. I hesitated before crawling on top of him and laying my head down where I could listen to his heart's final beats, despite how doing so would break my heart.

  I was so tired, and yet I ran two simultaneous counts in my head; one was counting seconds, and the other was counting the beats of his heart. The minute passed, and with slight horror, I realized that his heart-rate had barely scraped thirty beats. Some were so weak that they barely counted, but out of desperation, I counted them anyway.

  “Adam?” I asked after looking up at him. I tapped his cheek lightly, but he gave no response. “Adam?”

  My eyes turned to the heavens as a wave of anger went through me. I could not discern quite from where that sudden onslaught of fury came, but it had come, and there was no fighting it now.

  “Well, if you are like they say, then I hope you are just thrilled with this new development. He is the only chance we have, and if he dies, you will throw him into the fiery pits of your hell just because he did not agree with you. Now, I am not his biggest fan; certainly not. A part of me still holds onto that fury I felt towards him for starting this war. But the more I see them, and the more cruelty of theirs that I witness, the more I realize that this fight needs to be fought. But is that not always the justification? 'It had to be done.' My mother said the same thing so many times. Surely, she was regurgitating what she had heard from her moronic colleagues. All those 'accidental' bombings, all those senseless battles in that huge war that overruled everything else in the world, all that poison released into our little Orb. We never should have gotten involved. Look at what it did. Look at how many people died. The Earth is gone. And now, I am sitting here, justifying doing it all over again. There are plenty of weapons but way less bodies here, I think. It will be fought and won by one side either way, and one would think that it would end quickly, but apparently, it will not. I saw a fight that went on for ages. I saw him, too.” I looked down at Adam, as though God or the Gods would know to whom I was referring simply by following my gaze.

  “I saw him, and I did not know why. But in my heart, as I looked at him, I felt this great, powerful swelling of love for him. It was a force of nature; it was powered by a will of its own. I could not and still cannot discern whether what I felt was romantic love or just the love of a member of this community, as strange as that sounds. But that does not matter to You at all, does it? He has maybe fifteen minutes left on Purissimus, this place that he loves so much. Now, I cannot help but think that You are taking him away to punish us. You are taking our one chance of winning this war just because he does not believe in sacrificing children and forcing women into roles of submission, and in whatever else those freaks up there believe. And now...” I stroked Adam's face once, “Now I have to let him go. Then, I have to lie here and wait for my own death. We are far from our people, and if I do not die from my injuries, then I am sure that the Old Spirits or some creature that lives in this forest will find me. But I know it will be the Old Spirits; they will find me, and I have seen snippets of what they can do in my encounters with them. I will be unable to save myself, and James will be unable to save me, and Adam will be unable to save me. I am going to die terribly because you are taking him away.”

  My voice cracked, and I blinked furiously to keep the tears at bay.

  “I just want the course to change. I do not want us to die like this. I do not think that he deserves it, even after what he has done. He might be fearsome, and he might be a master manipulator, but he has a good heart. I have seen that, even in fragments. I know that wholeheartedly. I just need something, anything, that will change this. The lines of possible paths have conjoined. God...” I actually looked up at the sky, as pathetic as it sounds and as embarrassing as it is to admit it now, “I just need another path.”

  I do not know what I was expecting. Was the thundering voice of God going to come down from the heavens and instruct me on what to do? Or worse, was He going to tell me that after years of being so devoid of all faith in Him, that I was on my own? Both of those options would have been better than the noiselessness that followed my pleas. My vulnerability was making me believe in a phantom version of God that did not exist. I had addressed this being as the God to whom the Bachums prayed, and I certainly did not believe in that vicious, glorified warlord. I did not believe in anything, when I thought about it...

  There was the option of attempting to crawl away from Adam, to try to make it back to the group on my own. Even if I had not been so exhausted and even if my body had not been so broken, I would not have done that. After all we had been through together, I could not stand the thought of leaving him. After I had shed tears for him and his fate, I could not bear to let him pass from this world to the next, even if he would never speak a word of farewell to me before he went or even open his eyes to look at me.

  “God or Gods...” I whispered after my head had laid itself back down on his chest. “Please help us.”

  Even asking for help from a higher power in which I barely believed made me want to wash my mouth out with some foul-tasting plant. I did not beseech the assistance of anyone, let alone some deity or deities that, if they existed, probably were not listening anyway.

  But just as I was silently scolding myself for that moment of weakness, a single leaf fluttered down right in front of my eyes. It flew sideways in a sudden burst of wind that rippled the trees, and I jumped up, stunned by my willingness to follow what was more than likely just a fallen leaf from one of the many trees that surrounded us.

  Something was pulling me forward, some internal faith that had risen to life inside of me quite randomly. Either that, or the undeniably absolute terror that he would die drove me to follow just one leaf blowing in the wind. It seemed so trivial, so silly... and yet so significant, so world-altering. Behind me, Adam murmured in his heavy state of unconsciousness; I knew that he had said my name. I looked over my shoulder, and felt those terrible, persistent tears rush into my eyes again upon seeing him. From far away, even more so than from up close, I could see that within minutes, he would be gone. His pale skin seemed to glow with illness even in the darkness, and even though his sweat had stopped, I could almost feel the heat from his skin reaching me where I stood; my heightened senses and my fear of losing him allowed that.

  Hearing him gasp out my name had driven the urge for me to turn back and stay by his side. I feared that if I strayed too far from him, he would have gone by the time I retur
ned. But still, my heart seemed to be pulling further from him while simultaneously beating rapidly in protest because my feet were carrying me away; the confusion registered and rose to frustration as I slid through a brush of the lethal spike-throwing flowers that Andy had warned James and me about at a time that seemed so long ago. Perhaps it was my imagination, but the thicket of them seemed to pull away from me as I walked.

  The second I had cleared those deadly plants and several higher standing, less threatening ones, the light of the full moon nearly blinded me. A gasp rose in my throat but I covered my mouth to force it back down.

  There was no way the beautiful sight before me could possibly be a trick of the Shadows. No lethal creature could ever replicate such astounding, strangely innocent beauty. A lake whose surface was not rippled by the light, crisp wind was in the center of a large clearing. The trees of all kinds did not appear random in their vast collection anymore; here, their potent colors were faded into a soothing mix of different shades of evergreen by the perfectly round moon that hung in the sky like a last beacon of hope, which in a way, it was. The water still retained its color even in the bright light of that moon. Somehow, I knew that drinking it would have mystical, rejuvenating effects. Somehow, I knew instantly that I had found what was my last—and perhaps only—way to save Adam.

  I hurried back to him, and my body did not even whimper softly when I began to drag him along. That time, I did see the barb-flower trees separate for me. It really had happened, and for a moment, I stopped and stared at them, perplexed as to how and why they would separate for me. By clearing the pathway, they had spared my life. Even after I had pulled Adam to the shore of the lake, I looked back at them over my shoulder, and actually whispered my thanks.

  “Adam?” I said gently, after I had turned back to him. I flipped him onto his back and cupped water into my hands. “You have to drink this, okay?”

  Even in his state, he opened his mouth and allowed me to pour some of the water in. When I went to take another handful, his hand reached out and wrapped around my forearm. When I looked at him in confusion, he shook his head and grunted once as his chest heaved forward.

  “Oh, my God... Adam?!” I exclaimed, but he continued to lurch forward, his hands flying up to grasp the wound. I flung them away and pulled his shirt up only to see thick, green pus oozing from the wound that had turned an even more disturbing shade of black as the time it had been left untreated continued to pass. Red lines ran up his stomach in all directions, and I looked up at him, realizing that I had done more harm than good, I had killed him, I had only caused him more pain before what would have been a silent, unfeeling death...

  But then, the lines seemed to reverse. The wound closed slightly. The heat from his body cooled. And then, after all the telling signs of his lethally deteriorated condition had vanished, his eyes opened.

  At first he was squinting, and I wondered briefly if he was puzzled as to why I was hovering over him looking like I had been “pulled through a hedge backwards,” as Maura would say. But when he blinked a few times, I realized that the reason for his look of bewilderment was actually the result of his vision being blurred.

  “It's Brynna.” I told him softly. I grasped his chin and turned his head to both sides to see how the light from the moon affected his pupils. They contracted as they were supposed to and internally, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I know it is you. I could not...”

  “Just be quiet. Take a minute and get your strength back.”

  “Very good line... flattering and complimentary...”

  Even though I was observing his wound closely to determine how severe the remaining infection was, I took a moment to frown up at him in slightly annoyed consternation.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Going to say something flattering...”

  “That is okay. I do not need your flattery.” I realized that that sounded very rude and abrupt so I added hastily, “But I appreciate it. You need to drink more of this water. It has certainly done you some good, but not nearly enough. You are still very sick...”

  I moved over to the water's edge, but just as I sunk one hand in (and watched in rapt fascination as the two ends of my broken wrist reattached painlessly, and the circular bruise around the entirety of my wrist from where the vines binding my hands had been so tight erased itself,) he grasped the other.

  “You cannot! Sacred!”

  “Adam, you are still very sick. You will be able to walk for a little while longer, but I do not know exactly how far.”

  “It is alright. It is fine.” With a grimace and slight moan of pain, he heaved his body up into a sitting position. “Come along, darling. We need to move away from here.”

  “Why? Are you tempted to drink the 'sacred' water and actually heal yourself completely, which as you know is the intelligent, sensible thing to do? I understand that you have your reservations about doing that because of some fabled...”

  “Please do not insinuate that what I have just said is a fable. You would care very deeply if I insulted your beliefs, would you not?”

  With more strength than I realized was still in my body, I pulled him towards me and then up onto his feet.

  “I have very indecisive beliefs, so no, I would not care. Don't touch that.”

  Because he was still in some pain, his immediate reflex upon standing was to grasp the wound. But when I ordered him not to do it, he held onto my hand instead. After I had rolled my eyes, he chuckled and began to walk us along.

  “You cannot drink it.” He informed me, “You are in very severe pain, but you are not dying. You can only drink the healing water if you are dying.”

  “I was not going to drink it anyway. By instinct, I knew that I could not. Though it did heal my wrist.” I held it up to show him, and he smiled slightly. “Also, I am glad to see that you are leading us somewhat.”

  “Really? I am surprised that you wish to be led.” When I did not reply, he suddenly turned serious. “You are very tired. I should be carrying you now.”

  “You are still too weak to carry me, and I am fine. I do not need to be carried by anyone, least of all you.”

  “You are colder to me than you were before. I remember very distinctly the tears you shed for me. Obviously, those tears betrayed that you care for me very much.”

  There was something unrecognizable in his tone. I had heard it before, every time we spoke at the house or in the city. It was cold, taunting, and so disdainful that even I was surprised. I wondered if the water from that healing pond had mental side-effects.

  “In fact,” He continued, “I would not be surprised if your tears were shed because of some level of romantic interest in me. When I say that, please know that I am not kidding. I know of your feelings, Brynna Olivier.”

  My temper flared, and I could not stop myself from pushing him in the chest with both hands. He grabbed onto me to keep from falling backwards, but after a dangerous seesawing motion where he stumbled forward and I leaned backwards, and vice versa, we crashed onto the ground. If I had landed on top of him, I would have been pleased to know that I had caused him at least a small level of pain when my slight weight crushed against his wound. Unfortunately, he had landed on top of me.

  My body had steeled itself for the impact of his weight, so I barely felt any pain when he landed. Instead, I felt only that rage still. My feelings were certainly justified, though don't we all believe that? I could not understand why he had teased me so cruelly with something as serious as my feelings. I could not begin to fathom why he had felt it was necessary to call me on such things after I had exhibited that vulnerability with him. After I had saved his life not just by finding a conveniently-placed, “sacred” lake filled to the brim with healing water, but also by carrying him for mile after mile, day after day, he had the nerve to speak so spitefully to me, and for reasons that I could not possibly guess.

  With all of the force left in me, I slapped him hard across the
face. As you know by now, I am very fond of slapping. Sometimes, even I cannot resolve conflict with just words. Like an angry bull, he exhaled through his nose. I awaited the moment when he hit me back but instead, he just grasped my wrist firmly in one hand.

  “Get off of me!” I screamed, partly because I was furious that he would grab me, but also because his weight on top of me made me feel dangerously closed in, like I was suffocating inside of a locked trunk. My other hand flew up to hit him. When he grasped that wrist, too, I started to swing my feet up, hoping to hit him hard between the legs. But all he did was maneuver himself so that his legs were holding mine firmly against the hardened earth.

  “Adam, stop it!” I thrashed once to the side and flung my head upwards to try to hit him. He dodged easily. “Adam, let me go!”

  Behind the spiteful glint that I saw in his eyes, there was great pain. Something about what he was doing to me was not entirely malicious, though I certainly could not discern his reasoning with any ease. My heart was pounding quickly, and my brain was transmitting frantically jumping, blurred lines; I could not see his intentions. By the way he was holding me down, though, I could gather that he was not merely trying to keep me from hitting him again.

  I had to believe that he was trying to assault me, or at least scare me. Neither of those options seemed to fit the way that terrible look of consternation lingered in his eyes...

  “I am dangerous.” He snarled, only after I had given up fighting. “I have done far more evil in my life than any man in possession of a soul should. I feel no remorse for that. I will never regret the things I have done.”

  “Let go of me!”

  “Never again will you shed tears for me. Never again will you feel such pain on my behalf. I have said that I am not a danger to you, but I lied; I am. You will shield your heart from me. I prefer your loathing to your love. Is that understood?”

  Fury unrivaled by the mythological beasts of the same name (of which there were thousands, according to popular lore) sent savage vibrations throughout me. I itched to scratch his skin, but in what way exactly, I was not sure. Did I want to claw at his face to leave bleeding scratches through his eyes, or did I want to tear my nails down his back as his powerful body ground against mine and his hips thrust him deep inside of me with raw, sensuous impact...

  “You are saying this to protect me.” I blurted out, just to distract myself from the heavy, dense heat that had suddenly resonated between my legs. After a moment, I managed to summon whatever semblance of self-control could be had under those circumstances, and the scowl was able to reemerge on my face.

  “I have never wanted any parts of you, Adam! My tears were the result of exhaustion. How could you ever think any differently?!”

  But why did I suddenly feel so aroused? He was holding me down, he was growling his words at me in a sickeningly forceful command. Succumbing to a spell that his powers made available to him was an option. Perhaps he was bewitching my mind and body to bend to his will. I was very tired, and I was vulnerable, admittedly, after losing Maura and James both, in those two completely different ways.

  “Why are you doing this?! I saved your life! I have not left you behind! I have carried you this whole way when I could have abandoned you! You said that yourself! So let me up, Adam!”

  “You crave my touch, Brynna Olivier.” He whispered breathlessly, and he lowered his head so that his mouth hovered dangerously close to mine. Whatever guard he had so quickly built quickly dropped, and I was able to see in him a desire that matched and maybe even dominated my own. I could read his mind because his defenses were down for the count; he was trying to scare me. He knew that we had grown too close. I had cried for him when I did not cry for many people, because I had developed feelings of romantic interest in him, and those same feelings, which had bloomed to life inside of him so long ago, back when I had first came into his sight, were driving him now. He was pushing me away to save me. If we continued on the path down which we were travelling, he would be unable to let me go. His heart would be mine, and he would fight for my own. He had seen, and remembered clearly even though it physically hurt him to do so, what they had done to me when they thought that I was only of slight importance to him. If they knew that he felt such strong affection for me...

  On his firm chest, I could feel the heat of fever his infection had caused was returning, and I wanted to rip his shirt from his body and feel his bare skin pressed against mine.

  Drunk, my mind was drunk on the sweet, painful lust for him...

  “You want me to show you just how powerful the pleasure is that I can bring you.” His thumb trailed over my lips, and I realized only distantly that he had freed my arms. “I want to show you. God, I have never wanted anyone this way...”

  “Adam...” I whispered, and my hands grasped his face because I knew that he would kiss my palms. When his lips pressed so tenderly to them, circular scintillations cascaded from the spot where they touched, down my arms, through my chest, and down my stomach to rest heavily where I soon placed his hand. “Just shut up and touch me.”

  In one jerking movement, he had unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down. My eyes closed, but when I felt the cold air of the forest night on the bare skin of my legs, I opened them again to see him sliding his hand under the hemline of my black thong.

  “You must leave me. You must, Brynna. Please...” He only managed to gasp that to me before his lips were drawn to my bare chest. I did not remember him pulling my shirt off, but I was lying, bare-chested, beneath him.

  His words were a ruse, a great deceit, and I was not surprised that the great manipulator was able to lie so effortlessly. I was surprised by how easily I was able to see through his plea into the true message beyond. The opposite of what he was saying was what he truly wanted.

  I had begged James to leave me. Toxicity in my heart and soul had been the reason for my warning. Every relationship I had ever forged had been weakened or totally destroyed by how distant, cynical, or downright cruel I could be. James had not run, and maybe he should have, for both of our sakes. I had grown to love him so much, and I still did, even as I prepared (and yearned) to make love to another man, one who could easily snap my frail body in two if I angered him greatly. Associating with him guaranteed my swift rise to the top of our enemies' hit list. My life expectancy would drop dramatically.

  I knew all of that, but was I truly willing to risk my life for him?

  His hand rubbed me swiftly, perfectly, and an even more intense glow of warmth flowed down to meet his touch. With strength that was far too much for him, he pulled me to him so I was seated in his lap with my legs on either side of his torso. As he moved my hair away from my face with both of his blood-soaked hands, I grasped the firm, rocky muscles of his upper arms. When he leaned forward, I turned my head to the side and felt his cracked lips press lightly to my throat. He kissed me again and again, his lips traveling all the way up to my ear.

  “Tell me you are sure.” He whispered.

  In the majority of cases, “I am sure” follows those words with no effort or second thought. The same way most people answer that they are fine when another inquires about their well-being, most people are able to reply that they are certain when asked, even if they are not.

  Adam requested that affirmation from me, and instead of answering, my heart faltered and a small gasp escaped me. My eyes rose to meet his, and tears brimmed there for him to see. My lips parted again, and my mind urged me to say the words, to tell him that I was certain of my desire for him, and unafraid of the consequences of what we were about to do. My voice protested those words at my heart's behest, and as a single tear ran down my face onto his thumb that had risen to meet it and wipe it away, I shook my head.

  “After what happened...” I started, but his finger pressed to my lips gently. In his eyes, I saw no hurt, regret, or offense. I saw only concern for me. There were so many reasons why I stopped us that I did not know where to begin to explain. By stoppi
ng me before I could force myself to speak, he was telling me that it was alright for me to avoid that explanation. For his own sake and mine, he did not need or want one.

  I pulled the remnants of my shirt on, but after that, he finished dressing me. His eyes whose allure almost pained me stayed fixated on mine as his hands pulled my sweatshirt back onto me. As he pulled the zipper up, I tried again to say something, but he shushed me gently before saying:

  “I understand, my beauty. I prefer it this way. As much as I want this, and I do more than I could ever possibly say with any coherency; my desire for you is that strong, that I cannot even form the right words. But I cannot. We cannot. You know why as well as I do. But by the one God, I will swear that if this were a different world, one in which you would not suffer from my love, I would love you until the day I left this world, vibrantly, passionately, with no room for you to doubt anything, least of all my devotion to you.”

  I nodded, pressed my forehead to his, and stroked his cheek with my thumbs on both sides of his face. His fever was returning, and after muttering about doctors and the night becoming very cold, I helped him onto his feet again, and we continued on in silence for a good long while.

  Above my head, I could see the sky through the trees; the stars were shining through the clouds just barely. The moon was concealed completely.

  “Things will never be the same between us now.” I whispered so softly that I wondered if I had actually intended for him to hear me. Though he smiled, and even gave me one of his distinctive chuckles, I could tell that he was as saddened by what I had said and as unsure about what our relationship would be from then on out as I was.

  “You must promise me that you will not tell James.”

  After a minute, he did promise. I could sense that he wanted to say more on the subject of James, and when I opened my mouth to ask him why, he answered before the question had even come to completion in my mind.

  “Envy will always be there now. But I know how deeply you love him. He is one of the reasons why you could not say that you were sure. He is one of the reasons why I did not continue. I would gladly steal you away from him, but not while your heart still belonged to him.”

  Because he had been so honest with me, and laid his heart out for me to see with great hesitation and uncertainty, I knew that even though emotional revelations and deep intimacy were two common roadblocks in situations with others that were capable of provoking hives to spring up all over me, I had to offer him some deep, truthful feeling of my own.

  “I was not pretending to want you. I wanted to, even though I do not trust you, James, or any other man right now. Even though I want to stand on my own feet again. I say that, and yet I know that as soon as I see him, after what you and I have been through out here, I will fall right back into his arms and forget what he did.”

  “And you should. I will hate myself later for saying this, but you should forgive him, Brynna. He loves you. He has redeemed himself from what he was. As much as it sickens me to say it, to convince you to return to the arms of a man whom I despise, I know that he is the man you love. He will not hurt you. I am almost sure of that now.”

  I nodded.

  “There is one more thing that I want to say.”

  “Yes?”

  “I should have said this already.”

  “What is it?”

  He turned my head so I was looking at him and pressed his lips to mine. That kiss was quick and gentle, but had such deep, resonating passion and feeling that I nearly fell into him as my legs went weak beyond all physiological explanation.

  “Thank you for saving my life.”

  He spoke so tenderly that a surprisingly soothing chill tickled my ears. A smile took hold of my lips for the first time in what felt like so long. That peculiar feeling of love surged in my heart for him, quite inexplicably.

  I could not explain it, and that was alright.

  Quinn

  Even though I had wanted to stay with Alice at our new home in the forest, I left to search for Brynna with James, Elijah, and three of James's friends. Adam had many allies, and one of them was a woman as old as he was who housed a large group in a massive village deep within the woods. When we arrived, she had met Don and immediately inquired as to where Adam was. When Don shook his head sadly, she had gasped softly, looking for a minute like she was going to cry, but then, she snapped herself back into professional-mode and continued to go about welcoming the rest of us, albeit with a much smaller smile on her face. First, she instructed her people to show us to our houses, and then she pointed Don in the direction of the large stone structure that was the town's makeshift prison. Alice and I watched as Don hauled the woman we had found off, shouting over his shoulder that her children were to be kept in separate cells from her.

  “Brynna will help her when she gets back. She'll convince him that they're alright. They're not with the Bachums anymore.” Alice whispered in reassurance that was barely convincing. Her sweating hand took hold of my own.

  “He better not hurt her. He already killed Maura because he let his little interrogation get too far out of control.”

  “I didn't do anything. I didn't.” We could hear the woman telling Don, and her voice was on the verge of breaking now. “Please just let my children go.”

  It was easier to refer to her as “the woman” and not by her first name. By referring to her ambiguously, we were able to pretend that Don's cruel acts towards her were being carried out on a shadow, a thin wisp of smoke, a delusion... That type of thinking would become commonplace over the following years.

  Don had told us that after he had allowed James to free the woman and her children from their cells in the jail under Adam's massive house, they had been calm until the blasts began. Then, they ran off, and he had heard her screaming for one of the men we knew to be one of Tyre's most devout followers. Others had heard her doing that, not just Don, or else I wouldn't have believed it in the slightest. She had obviously prearranged with her daughter that if they were captured, she was to take her brother and run. Don had been so preoccupied trying to catch the woman that he had ignored her children, at least at first. Her daughter made it all the way to the woods before Don’s goons caught her.

  “She tried to run away.” He told us of the woman, “She was yelling for Paul. We all know what he's done. There's no debating this. She was sent here. We were supposed to find her!”

  The evidence was shaky at best, but Don needing only a shred of belief that someone was guilty in order to hold them as prisoners (and subject them to awful things that will go unmentioned) would also become common very soon.

  Somehow, we were able to force that woman (and the mental images of whatever Don was going to inflict on her) far away to the darkest reaches of our minds. Instead, we turned and walked up the wide dirt path before us that was lit with moving yellow lights. Upon looking closely, I found that the lanterns beside the path were filled with fireflies. Alice actually giggled slightly at the sight; it was so fantastical, almost like something out of an old children's story. After I had wrapped my arm around her shoulders, she rested her head underneath of mine, and we walked along like that with the rest of our group.

  The Pangaean people who were leading our group along stopped us to explain the housing choices. We decided as a group that families would take the larger homes, and couples like Alice and I would take the ones that had one bedroom and one bathroom.

  “Fine with me.” Alice muttered beside me. “At least we won't have to sleep outside in tents again.”

  “I know, right? We'll have running water and a kitchen again. Plus, we'll be living completely alone this time.”

  She beamed brilliantly and clapped her hands in an unprecedented show of intense joy. Once again, we were restarting our lives in another place, but at least we were still living. After Don's house had been burned down, everyone in our group had been uncertain of where we would end up. For a minute, it had looked like those who Don had deemed dispen
sable would be left behind. Now, we had all safely arrived and were ready to start over. Like everything else on Pangaea, the forest village was almost too beautiful to be believed. In the twilight, the lights from the firefly lamps glowed warmly, and the trees with the houses perched high in their branches lined the pathway as far as I could see.

  “Here you go.” The Pangaean man told Alice and me kindly when we stopped at a particularly nice looking house.

  “Wow.” Alice said, absolutely beaming in delight, “This one is really beautiful. Thank you!”

  “Mr. Abba told us that you are good friends with his... What did he call her? His second, or something similar to that? Something with command?”

  “Second-in-command?” Alice and I responded simultaneously, and with similar looks of shock.

  “That is it.” The man told us with a smile. “His second-in-command is not here yet, he says. But you two are her good friends. He asked that I give you one of our best. Enjoy.”

  With that, he walked away, completely unaware of the bombshell that he had just dropped on us. As we climbed the stairs crafted from logs to the reach the porch of our new home, we were silent in our separate efforts to process the information that had just been given to us.

  “I...” Alice started, “I am shocked by this.”

  “Maybe he wasn't talking about Brynna. She isn't the only one who hasn't gotten here yet.”

  “Yeah, but she's the one who we're friends with. What the hell?” She had started to walk into the darkened house, but I had grasped her wrist to stop her. “What?”

  “I have to carry you inside.”

  A grin tugged at her lips, erasing the grimace of confusion that had been there only a moment earlier. When I scooped her up into my arms, she actually laughed so loudly that the people going into their house directly across the pathway and on either side of us looked over.

  “Sorry!” She called to them through her hysterical laughter. “I'm not sorry!”

  By then, I was laughing, too. I carried her inside of our house, and after fumbling around in the dark for a few minutes, we managed to find a lantern in the back of the room we were in.

  The house was already fully furnished, which saved me the trouble of having to build furniture; I had no knowledge of making furniture, though Alice and I had said that it would be me who would be responsible for that task. There were already curtains hanging around each of the windows, which saved Alice the trouble of having to sew them. There was a kitchen with a wood-burning stove in one corner, and after venturing in further, we found a door that led to a set of stairs. When we went down those stairs, we found that we were in a cold room underneath of the house.

  “It's like a walk-in fridge.” She realized aloud, “How does it stay so cold?”

  “Look around the walls. This is that stuff that Don made from that one tree in the forest. Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah! It gets cold when it's left in the dark. God, that's still cool. No pun intended.”

  I laughed, and started to crawl back towards the stairs; the room was very small, and we both had to crouch down in order to get in and out of it.

  “There is no way we'll ever have enough food to fill this whole thing up.” I said after we had gone upstairs again.

  “We can hide bodies, though, so that's a plus.”

  “I was wondering how we were going to keep them fresh. Good call, babe.”

  We were both chuckling again as we continued to explore our new home. There was one large bedroom, where we would be sleeping. The bathroom was just off of that room. Being friends with Brynna had its perks because besides the master bedroom, we also had two more.

  “Do you think if we take the beds out, we can change it into something else?”

  “We shouldn't take the beds out! What if we have company? What if Violet and Nick come over and stay the night, or something?” She protested.

  “Why would Violet and Nick spend the night when Violet lives right next door, and he lives with Tom and Mike right across the way?”

  “Maybe they'll want somewhere to stay overnight. You know Brynna won't let him stay over in Violet’s room.”

  “Oh, Brynna, and her weird old-fashioned ways.”

  “That's not old-fashioned. I'm not saying that I disagree with her. But they'll probably come over here. We can still use those rooms for other stuff. I mean, look at how much room there is in here.” She gestured to the second bedroom that was right next to ours. “I can do yoga in here right in front of that huge, amazing window.”

  “Whoa... This extra space is not going to be your yoga room. This is going to be my weight room.”

  “You don't have any weights!”

  “You’ve never done yoga a day in your life! I'll make some weights.” I replied, and we were both cracking up again.

  “You’ve never lifted weight a day in your life!”

  “Yeah, right! I had to lift weights for football all the time. There were rules, Allie!”

  “Oh, as if you actually lifted weights! When I had softball practice, I always walked by the gym, and we’d all peek in at you, and you’d always be drinking Gatorade and trying to do pull-ups or push-ups. ‘Trying’ being the key word there.”

  I gaped at her, stammering as I tried to come up with a sufficient response. Finally, I settled on:

  “Jeez, stalker.”

  “You know it.”

  “Well, fine, maybe I didn’t lift weights for football like I was supposed to. Maybe I should apologize for having such an epic body that my coaches had no idea that I did nothing in the Gym but drink Gatorade.”

  “And try to do push-ups and pull-ups. Sadly, I might add.”

  “Well, don't you want me to keep myself in such good shape? By actually lifting weights.”

  “Of course I do. I mean, honestly, I guess it’s a good thing for you to have a weight room, especially a weight room with a bed in it. Then if I ever get mad at you, you won't have to sleep out in the living room. You can sleep in here!”

  “Oh, I would be the one getting kicked out of the room? I don't think so, punk. I think you'd be the one coming in here and sleeping.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Yeah, it is!”

  She zoomed forward and pressed her lips to mine hard, and together, we fell backwards onto the bed in the yoga/weight room. If I look back on that now, I shake my head slightly, because after all that we had been through over the previous days, we were only focused on each other. We were still so selfish. In the houses around us, people were mourning their losses, of loved ones, of homes, of their leader. We were giggling hysterically about having our own home and speculating wildly on how we would use all the space. I know this seems redundant, and that I have said it before, but after everything that has occurred over these years, I can't help but chide my younger self for being so self-centered. I can see now why things turned out the way they did.

  Later, Alice and I were in the kitchen, cooking a barely passable stir-fry made from orange cabbage, onions, green peppers, and the oversized purple broccoli.

  “We need potatoes.” I told Alice.

  “No, we don't.”

  “Yeah, we do. And butter.”

  “Yes, let's get down with the carbs, baby.”

  “They brought potatoes and butter to us! We need to use them!”

  “Or we could just try to be healthy. Weren’t we just talking about staying in shape? Would you like some Gatorade, too? Would you like to pretend to do push-ups while I cook?”

  I laughed hysterically at that, literally doubling over and holding my stomach.

  “We need to stay like we are now. Look at us.”

  “Yeah, we look sick. Put the damn potatoes in, spazoid.”

  “Did you just call me spazoid?!” She exclaimed through her own hysterical laughter. “I haven't heard that since like... Oh, my God, I don't think I've ever heard that.”

  When the knock came, I walked away, still chuckling to myself when
I heard that she was still laughing. After opening the door, my spirits dropped, as I received a rough dose of reality. James, Nick, and Elijah were standing there, though Elijah and James were standing as far away from one another as the small space on the porch would allow. Guiltily, I looked away from them without giving away why; I pretended to be looking back at Alice but instead, I was erasing the smile from my face; their animosity towards each other was disturbing, considering that they had been getting along so well before, but there was an air of ridiculousness to it that I couldn't deny, and that always made me laugh. They were like two stubborn children. When I looked back at them, I had my head back in the game.

  “We headin' out?” I asked them.

  “Yeah. We were coming by to see if you were coming with us, but obviously, you are.”

  “Come in.”

  Alice came out of the kitchen and hugged each of them without a word.

  “I don't care about it, James.” She said suddenly when her arms were around him. “I might not be able to read minds like Brynn, but I can tell what you're thinking. And I don't care about what happened.”

  “Yeah, you and my sister both. All of a sudden, Violet doesn't care, either.” Elijah replied bitterly. “I can promise you, Brynna will still care. You two can forgive him, but she certainly won't.”

  “Eli...” Alice muttered, and she grasped his hand. “We can't afford this right now. Don't you see that? We need to pull together to find her. We've been through so much together, and we're family now. All of us. You have to agree with that. Don't you agree?”

  “I agree that you two are family. He was, until we found out what he had done.”

  “Don't try to reason with him right now, Al. Just let it go. We need to get out of here. The longer we stay here and argue, the smaller our chance of finding her gets.”

  “Alright. I've got dinner on the stove, but I'll put it away until later. Unless you guys are hungry...”

  “We shoved some food down before we left, but thanks. And Quinn, maybe...” Elijah looked over at me, and I didn't realize what he was trying to say before Alice did. When I looked at her, her expression had soured and her hands had flown down to rest on her hips. When her head cocked to the side, James, Nick, and I raised our eyebrows and turned away, preparing for the blowup.

  “Are you trying to tell him that I shouldn't come? Are you asking him discreetly to tell me to stay put, Elijah Daniel Olivier? Because I'm a girl, I'm not allowed to come with you to search for Brynn?! And I take offense to the fact that you're asking him to ask me instead of just asking me directly! What is this?! The Bachum camp?! Am I not allowed to speak for myself?!”

  “Whoa!” Elijah exclaimed, “Dude, it's not like that! I was just wondering if you would stay behind and keep an eye on Violet and Penny? Obviously, I'm not going to ask Quinn to do that.”

  “And why not? That sounds distinctly like babysitting, which has always been a ‘girl job,’ and going out on a brave and daring rescue missions sounds distinctly like a ‘boy job!’ Also, you were asking him to ask me to stay behind. You were going to suggest to him that I shouldn't come!”

  “Maybe I was.”

  “Bad move, dude.” Nick shook his head slightly.

  “Yeah, it is a bad move, but thanks for standing with me, assholes!” He admitted begrudgingly, “She's giving me the crazy eyes!”

  “I'm about to give you a crazy foot up the ass, if you ever do something like that again. Yes, I will stay behind to look after Violet and Penny. I will bring them my wonderful stir-fry that will now include all of Quinn's potatoes and butter.”

  “What?! What did I do?!”

  “You turned away when you knew the claws were going to come out. You should have joined me in my feminist rant.”

  “You know who would have joined you in your feminist rant?” James asked somewhat impatiently. “Brynna. Let's go, gentlemen. The other guys are waiting for us. Xena, Warrior Princess, you're with me on the next one, okay?”

  “Thank you.” Alice replied with a smile.

  Despite ourselves, we laughed. Once again, James was able to bring levity to the situation we found ourselves in. In the times that were the darkest, he was always able to bring a little light.

  I remember distinctly thinking how that ability would completely disappear if he lost Brynna forever. Even if they were never a couple again, he would not be able to live. But if she had died, in the fire, in the woods, at the hands of an Old Spirit, or a creature, he would never forgive himself. I knew by looking at him, at how pale, sickly, and tired he looked, that if he lost Brynna, he'd never be the same.

  When I kissed Alice goodbye, a chill went through me. I could sympathize with James completely, because I knew that if I lost Alice, nothing would ever be the same for me, either.