Dead End

by C. P. Rider

  "I've always been an overachiever." He turned away from the mirror and looked at me. "Don't go."

  "Why not?"

  "It's dangerous."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "The things you can do," he said, "there are people on your side of the Divide who will try to use you for their own purposes. You have to be careful who you trust."

  "Was it heavy for you? That last statement?"

  "Heavy?"

  "Yeah, because it felt a little like irony to me." I snickered.

  Aedan shoved away from the sink. "You know what? Go if you want to, but don't subject me to your Dad joke puns. That's cruel."

  "My puns are great. But, if it bothers you, don't worry; I won't pun-ish you anymore."

  It was dumb, but I laughed myself silly to spite him as I rinsed off the last of the lather, tucked a towel around me, and shoved the curtain all the way aside. My fingertips looked like raisins and my skin was raw from the scrubbing, but I smelled better.

  "Good thing we're in the bathroom, because I might barf after that last joke."

  "You can't barf. You aren't even real."

  He zoomed over to me. Not walked, not ran, not floated. He zoomed. "I am real, Maria. You can bet on that."

  My heart started flipping around in my chest the way it always did when he was too close. Why couldn't I hate this guy? It really wasn't fair the way his eyes glimmered, and that dimple in his cheek deepened whenever he looked directly into my eyes.

  I cleared my throat. "I meant you aren't corporeal."

  He stepped into my space, put his face in mine. "Not here, but I am very corporeal. And you and I have unfinished business, so no kissing other people."

  "We are not together, and I will kiss whomever I damn well please."

  "Oh yes we are together. More than you know." He leaned in to kiss me, and I let him because I'd been thinking about that kiss back in the motel bathroom and I wanted to see if what I'd felt then was real or imagined.

  Aedan's mouth was soft and cool, and even though I knew it was a trick of the mind, that there was no way I could be feeling anything from him, my pulse reacted as if he were standing in front of me. I was suddenly very much aware that I was only wearing a towel and less than half of my normal skin surface after all those showers.

  "Be careful at that party tonight," he said. "Watch out for the chimera. I hear those things are nasty."

  "Wait. How did you know about the chimera? Are you spying on me again? Aedan? Aedan?"

  He winked at me and disappeared.

  21

  I couldn't decide if it was when the telepathic girl in the cropped top told everyone what color panties I was wearing or if it was when the shirtless drunk boy with pyrokinetic abilities burned the sleeves off my top, but somewhere between 8:15 and 8:20 p.m., I realized this party sucked.

  "Maria, you made it."

  "Gilda?" I squinted through a haze of blue smoke flowing from the nostrils of a guy with what appeared to be steel spikes for hair. As far as I could tell, his special ability was being a human fog machine.

  I waved my hand to clear the air, and came face to face with Gilda and her two-cheerleader entourage.

  "Enjoying the party?" She said it with a smile so plastic I thought I heard it crack.

  "Yeah, sure." A pair of ripped-up boxer shorts floated past my head and I recoiled. "There's definitely a lot going on."

  "You're not used to hanging around other Elites."

  These guys were Elites? Huh. I'd expected them to be more impressive, I guess. Like Samuel. The abilities I'd seen tonight were more like tired party tricks.

  "You look nice," I said.

  Gilda wore a tight gold minidress with matching heels so high they didn't make sense. Her makeup had been applied by either a makeup artist or a fairy godmother, and her orange hair was in perfect ringlets down her back. Not a strand out of place.

  It really was too easy to hate her.

  "Thanks, Maria." She looked me over. "You look nice too."

  I stopped myself from smoothing the non-existent wrinkles of my off-the-shoulder sundress. I did look nice. The olive green made my skin look brown and healthy. I'd put my hair up in a tight bun and even worn my favorite gold hoop earrings. The ones so big I could wear them as bracelets.

  The sound of an air horn drew my attention to the DJ table.

  The DJ, a humanoid guy covered in gray reptilian scales, made the air horn sound again. Only thing was, he didn't have an air horn. The sound was coming from his nostrils. What the heck was with these people and weird nose tricks?

  One more piercing honk and everyone, excluding myself and Gilda, let out a sort of battle cry in response.

  I blinked. "What was that about?"

  "Chimera must be close by," Thing One said from behind Gilda. She sounded as excited about seeing a chimera as I felt about it, which was … not at all.

  "Don't worry, Tamara. If she gets too close, Zack will take care of it." Gilda seemed very sure of this. "He told me he's been running drills in his backyard."

  "He passed out ten minutes ago," Thing Two said. "Ethan and Harper are practicing their telekinesis on him."

  "Zack is helping the Bradford twins?" Gilda sounded doubtful.

  "It's more that he's not putting up any sort of resistance to them building a rock wall around him."

  "Why are they doing that?" I asked.

  "They need the training. Right now they can't lift more than five pounds, and the only way they can get stronger is with practice." Thing Two rolled her eyes. "And duh, also, because it's fun."

  It didn't sound fun to me, but maybe I was missing something.

  "Look." Thing One pointed to a pile of dirt that had erupted into a volcano a couple hundred feet from us.

  "Chimera?" I really hoped I was wrong. The opening at the top of that dirt pile wasn't small.

  Gilda stomped over to where a guy with a crew cut, and a letterman's jacket with more patches than the number one cookie seller in a Girl Scout troop, was sprawled inside a half-formed stone crypt of sorts.

  "Wake up, Zack." She grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket.

  "Ten more minutes, Mom," he mumbled.

  "Now." Gilda used that deep voice again—the one that had made my head hurt yesterday.

  "Siren." Thing Two, whose real name I'd found out was Ava, gestured toward Gilda with her chin. "In case you were wondering what her ability is."

  The only siren I knew about was a mythical creature that lured sailors to their death with her voice. I wondered what bizarre Dead-Ender twist Gilda's siren ability had.

  "Lemme sleep," Zack murmured. "Just a little nap."

  "The chimera is here," Gilda said.

  Her voice made my teeth hurt as if all the nerves had been exposed to cold air at once.

  "I thought sirens had beautiful voices," I said.

  "Some do," Thing One—Tamara—said. "Not this one, but some do."

  "I got it, Gilda. Get off my back." Zack pushed to his feet, toppling one side of the rock wall. A confused look crossed his face as he patted his jeans. "Where the hell are my boxers?"

  Ethan and Harper snickered.

  "Nice." He swung around too quickly, tripped over the other side of the rock wall, and landed in the dirt. He flopped onto his back and squinted up at the rock-levitating brother-and-sister team who were now cackling with laughter. "Thanks a lot, assholes."

  He somehow managed to push himself to his feet.

  "Are you sure this is a good idea?" I sidestepped Zack as he weaved through our small group. "He seems too drunk to handle a chimera." Not that I knew what it took to handle a chimera, but if I was guessing, I'd have said Zack was not the guy for the job.

  "I told you," Gilda said, "he's been training. Now, come on. We don't want to miss this."

  Gilda, her entourage, and I made our way to the front of the crowd. There had to be thirty teenagers gathered there, drinking beer and waiting for the chimera to show up. For most o
f them, though, I was pretty sure the main draw was the beer and not the chimera.

  "Move." Gilda used her siren voice, so people listened to her and stepped aside.

  I rubbed my temples. I was going to have a headache tomorrow.

  Excited murmurs moved through the crowd.

  "She's here." Gilda's eyes lit up. "This is going to be amazing, Maria."

  I followed her line of sight and swallowed a yelp.

  The creature that burst out of the dirt volcano had to be twenty feet tall. It was crimson, had a lion's head and a goat's body, and long, scaly arms and legs. It looked like a sunburned gecko on steroids.

  That was pretty unusual, but the weirdest part of all was her "tail." A black-and-red-banded serpent-like creature protruding from—cohabitating in? —the place where her tail should be. Its diamond-shaped head hissed and spat at the spectators.

  Holy crap. Cindy hadn't been kidding. "That is definitely a chimera."

  "Duh," Tamara said.

  Zack planted himself around thirty feet from the chimera's toes and stared the creature down like it was high noon in the wild west. If a tumbleweed had rolled past, I wouldn't have been surprised.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to watch me tame this chimera?"

  A few people from the crowd clapped, and a group of guys dressed in letterman jackets gave some spirited backslaps and hoots from the far side.

  Zack put his hand to his ear. "I. Can't. Hear. Youuuuu."

  The crowd erupted in applause and cheers.

  As if he were a pro wrestler hyping the crowd, Zack ran along the front row, giving high fives to everyone he passed. When he reached Gilda, the girls, and me, he stopped and moved closer, one brow raised as he looked me over.

  "Hey, aren't you that chick from the Other who took out those worms the other day?"

  "Yeah." I had no idea where he was going with this.

  "That's pretty hot." His breath smelled worse than exploded limpid worm goo. With every exhale, it was as if he were releasing demonic entities from the pits of Hell.

  "Uh, thanks?" I backed up a step.

  "God, this is pathetic. Even for you, Zack." Gilda put her head in her hands.

  Ignoring her, Zack stepped into my space. "Hey, girl, are you really an earthmover?"

  "Well, yes, I guess I—"

  "I know you are. Because you are officially rocking my world." Zack winked and smacked me on the butt. "Cool earrings."

  Oh hell no. He did not just do that. I narrowed my eyes, hands balling into fists at my sides. The earth beneath my feet rumbled softly. I couldn't hear it with everyone yelling, but I felt it.

  I took a deep breath and tried to think calming thoughts.

  "If you've finished making an ass of yourself, Zack, could you do your job and handle the chimera?" Gilda inserted her siren ability into her tone. "Now."

  "Get off me, woman." Zack clapped his hands over his ears and scowled at Gilda before giving me another wink.

  Surprisingly, the creature had not moved any closer during all this. She seemed fascinated by Zack's antics; her fire-red eyes tracked his every move.

  "Let me show you posers how it's done." Zack did a full body shake as he faced the beast. I assumed this was to loosen up his muscles, though I wasn't sure for what.

  "Oh good, he's not dead yet. I was worried I'd missed it," a deep voice to my right said.

  I knew that voice.

  "Samuel? What are you doing here?"

  "I could ask you the same thing." He looked entirely at ease, so casual it was as if he'd been standing beside me all night long. "Did you not hear anything Cindy and I said about the mountain chimera?"

  "I did."

  "Yet you came anyway." He motioned to the crowd around him. "Was it everything you hoped for and more?"

  No. Not even close. "It's been … interesting."

  Damn Aedan. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for his stupid mouth. And my pride. But mostly his mouth.

  Zack began bouncing on his toes.

  Samuel grinned. "Yes. He's shadow boxing. Things are about to go south."

  "Nothing is going south," Gilda snapped.

  "If you think Zack can pull this off, you're as delusional as he is," Samuel said.

  "He's an Elite," she replied, as if that explained it.

  "What exactly is his ability?" I assumed it was something other than being an insufferable ass, though he was pretty good at that, too.

  "He communicates telepathically with animals," Gilda replied.

  I waited for the rest. Surely that wasn't the extent of what he could do. The guy was about to take on a twenty-foot-tall lizard monster with a freaking snake for a tail.

  "You're waiting for her to tell you what ability he has that would enable him to handle a chimera, aren't you?" Samuel murmured, keeping his eyes on Zack as he spoke.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Yeah, there isn't one. Unless drunken bravado is an ability."

  "So, that's it? He just going to talk? The way he acts, I thought he could at least throw fire at it or something."

  "It'll be fine." Gilda glared at me. "Everything is fine."

  Zack strutted over to the chimera, speaking to it as he stomped around. Although I couldn't hear what was said from this distance, given his posture, attitude, and state of drunkenness, I'd bet every word overflowed with arrogance.

  "On a scale of one to ten, ten being royally, how screwed are we?" I asked Samuel.

  "Us? Maybe a three. Zack? Royally plus ten."

  The chimera's tail wagged slowly back and forth as Zack drew closer to it. The serpent head flicked out its tongue.

  "See, I told you it would work." Gilda said, looking pleased.

  Zack pointed to the ground. "Down, beast."

  The crowd oohed and aahed as the chimera slowly lowered herself to the ground and released a loud yawn.

  "You've got to be kidding me," I whispered.

  "It's not over yet." There was a thread of glee sewn into Samuel's words. "Wait for it."

  Zack turned his back on the creature, shot the crowd a movie star smile, and assumed a superhero pose. "See, I told you I had it all under contr—"

  The chimera lifted a red-scaled hand the size of a twin mattress and backhanded drunken Dr. Doolittle across the lot, sending him headfirst into the DJ table with a loud crash.

  "Wow. He did better than I expected." Samuel reached for his ax.

  The chimera threw her head back and let out a deafening screech. Samuel gritted his teeth, dropped the ax, and slapped his hands over his ears. The chimera's cry had my ears ringing, so I could only imagine what it had done to someone as sensitive to sound as he was.

  I scooped up the ax, gripped his muscled forearm, and pulled him along with me as fireballs began raining down on our heads.

  22

  Every time the chimera screamed, Samuel bent over and dry-heaved, which slowed us down. This was a problem because the chimera's screams were not the most dangerous thing about her, and, I was beginning to think, neither were the fireballs.

  The beast raised herself to her full twenty feet and stretched out her hands. Fire erupted from her left palm, shot ten feet into the air, arced, and splashed into her right hand.

  "What is she doing?" I yelled to Gilda. She was on Samuel’s other side. Her sidekicks were puffs of wind on the horizon.

  "Getting ready to attack," she yelled back.

  "She hasn't attacked yet?"

  "With those wimpy fireballs? No way. She's just warming up."

  Wimpy? The last one hit three ATVs and left nothing behind but a smoking hunk of tire.

  "Samuel, you have to run." Gilda was careful not to use her siren voice on him, which I thought was uncharacteristically nice of her. I'd expected her to have ditched us by now, but she'd stayed when everyone else passed by.

  "Please, Samuel," I said. "We have to move faster."

  He grunted and hurled himself forward, shambling over the dusty scrub like Frankenstein's monster,
Gilda and I running alongside. Even in those ridiculous heels, she outran me. Samuel moved like an athlete, and it was becoming an effort to keep up with him, too.

  "Did anyone get Zack?" I puffed out the words.

  "Couple of his football buddies dragged him away," Gilda replied. "I checked. Everyone is out of there."

  The siren surprised me at every turn. Just when I thought I had her pegged as shallow and insincere, she did something that made me rethink my opinion of her. It was confusing.

  "Why is the chimera attacking now? Did Zack really make her that angry?"

  "No." Gilda leaped over a large rock. "Zack is annoying, but he's not enough to provoke this sort of response. There's something else, something she wants enough to come into town to look for it."

  "We can't let her reach Dead End." It would be catastrophic. The limpid worms were bad enough, and they weren't a sliver as intelligent as the chimera had proven to be.

  "Can you do something?" she asked. "With your ability, I mean?"

  I glanced over my shoulder. The chimera was following close behind, though at a leisurely pace. Probably thought she had all the time in the world to deal with us puny beings. "She'd have to stop long enough for me to dig a hole. Or we could lure her into a hole I dug, but at the rate she's moving, I don't think there's much I can do."

  "So, we just need her to stop?"

  "Well, yeah, but even then I'm not sure I could pull it off."

  Gilda and I quit talking, instead putting all our energy into running for a couple of minutes. If I were her, I'd have twisted my ankle by now, but she didn't seem to have any trouble at all. Was that part of her siren ability, running in high heels?

  "It's not as if digging holes is the only thing you can do," she said.

  "Yeah, I can also half-ass stabilize rippers," I muttered.

  The chimera had paused to dig under a tree, so the three of us took the opportunity to catch our breath.

  "Looks like she found a snack." Samuel indicated the chimera with a head flick as he jogged back to us. "You guys are slow."

  "Maybe we're tired from hauling your heavy butt around," I said.

  Gilda frowned at Samuel. "Why does Maria think the only thing she can do with her ability is dig holes and stabilize rippers?"