The Breakers Code

by Conner Kressley

  Pictures started playing in my mind. At first, the images didn’t make any sense. My mother and Dr. Conyers running from an exploding building, a red door with a crescent moon slamming shut, a woman falling off a cliff and into the rocky sea below.

  Then though, I saw myself. I was in Chicago. It was the night my father died. I was in the back of an ambulance with that horrible pink blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Mom was with me, and Dr. Conyers. But that wasn’t right. I didn’t meet Dr. Conyers until I came to Crestview. I would have remembered that.

  “No one can know!” Dr. Conyers said pacing. I was a mess of tears and shivers.

  “Of course not,” Mom answered, pacing in circles on the pavement. “But she’s just a girl.”

  “Which is exactly why it has to be done,” Dr. Conyers answered, chancing a glance at me. “If they find out about this, that it’s already happened, there will be no stopping them.” She walked closer, putting her hand on my cheek. “We have to do it, for her.”

  The thing I knew, I was in the car with my father. It was right before the accident. The Beach Boys had just started playing on the radio. But this time, I was driving. That wasn’t right. Why was I driving?

  Oh God.

  It all opened up to me now. I had begged him, pleaded even, to drive home that night. “I’ll have my license in a year!” I had said. “All the other dads let their daughters drive.”

  He had let me. It was true. I remembered it all now. I had been driving. I, not my father, lost control of our car. I ran off the bridge that night. I killed my father.

  The visions left with my revelation, replaced instead by a thick sickness in the pit of my stomach. My mom, my mothers, took the memory away from me. They didn’t want me to have to live with the memory of killing my dad. They-

  “I killed my dad,” I choked out, realizing all the reasons they did what they did. They didn’t just want me not to know. They didn’t want anyone to. I had killed someone. All I had done, all everyone had done to stop the prophecy from happening, it was pointless. It was over before it started. I was the Bloodmoon. I had always been the Bloodmoon.

  Two days later, with the rush of everything still fresh in my mind, I sprinkled my mother’s ashes off the bridge in Chicago where I had lost my dad. He was down there somewhere, and now, at least they could be together again. It was where she belonged, where she would have been happy.

  I had made the trip with Owen and Casper. It was amazing how much leeway Echo and the crew at Weathersby gave me now that they thought I wasn’t the Bloodmoon. Or maybe they felt bad because of all that I had been through. Either way, for the first time since I could remember, I could ride the open road without worrying that someone was following me.

  We were halfway through Tennessee, along some farming town named White House (which reminded me so strongly of Crestview that I winced a little) when Owen pulled onto a back road. Casper was asleep, as was his nature, or else he would have probably asked what was going on. I was glad for that, at least. This was going to be hard enough without having to explain it to him beforehand.

  When I shook him awake, we were pulled over alongside a dirt road. There was nothing on either side of us except empty barren fields. Corn would have been there if it were a different time of year, stretching up toward the heavens. But right now, it was just vacant space.

  In front of us, a cherry red Dodge Dakota sat. The keys were in the ignition and there was a bow on the top.

  “What’s going on?” Casper asked, getting out of the car to join Owen and me.

  “It’s yours,” I said flatly.

  “Mine? You’re giving me a truck?” He asked, looking it over. He walked over to the truck and opened the door. Inside, was a suitcase full of clothes and a duffle bag full of money. Sitting beside them, splayed out so that he could see, was a driver’s license and social security card. “You’re giving me a truck full of crap to start a new life with?” His tone was anything but playful. He slammed the door and turned back to me, his teeth gritted and his eyes fierce. “What the hell is this?”

  “Owen, could you give us a minute?” I asked. Owen nodded and went back to the car.

  Once we were alone, I continued. “It’s the only way, Cass. This-this isn’t the place for you. You’re a good person, and you could live a good life.”

  “This crap again?!” He yelled. “How many times do we have to go through this Cress? I want to be here. I do. I don’t-I’m not gonna leave you, not ever. Why can’t you understand that?”

  He kicked at the dirt. Casper wasn’t the type to get mad, but I was pushing his buttons.

  “Things aren’t like before, Casper,” I said, walking toward him. A breeze caught his hair, and sent it flying in flame-colored curls.

  “No. They’re not!” He said. “Your mom is dead; really honest to God dead. She’s not coming back. That means us, me and you-We’re all we’ve got”

  “That’s exactly why I’ve got to do this,” I said. Tears ran wet down my face. “You’re the only family I have left. You’re the only piece of who I was, who I am, that’s survived this whole thing. If anything ever happened to you, I’d die.”

  Another thought entered my mind, a darker one. If anything ever happened to Casper, that might just be enough to send me over the edge, to nudge me into becoming the awful thing the prophecies talked about, the awful thing that I know knew for a fact was meant to describe me.

  “So you won’t let anything happen to me,” Casper suggested. “You’re a badass superhero now, in case you hadn’t noticed. Besides, you think I’d fare any better if something happened to you? And that’s exactly what I’d be thinking, Cresta. I’d be driving this fancy truck, thinking my best friend in the world was dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  Now he was crying too.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he sniffed. “The scary part is over. We won,Cress.”

  “I killed my dad,” I said in a low voice.

  His face twisted confusedly.

  “I did,” I said. “My mom, my moms , hid the truth from me. But I was the one driving. It was my fault. He died because of me.”

  “I’m sorry. Cress,” he said, and walked toward me.

  “No, you don’t get it!” I yelled. Casper stopped in his tracks. “I killed my dad. I killed somebody! I’m the Bloodmoon!”

  “No,” Casper shook his head. “That’s not right. That’s not what that meant. You didn’t mean to hurt your dad. It’s not…It’s not…Is it?”

  I didn’t answer. Casper rushed me, scooping me into his arms. They were safe and familiar and, if I not for what I had to do, they might have actually made me feel better.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” he whispered. “We’ll get in this truck, and we’ll drive until they can’t find us.”

  “They’d find us, Casper. We had a seer with us and they tracked us down in a day.”

  “Then what are we gonna do? I’m not gonna let those bastards hurt you!”

  “They won’t,” I pulled away. “They don’t even know. Nobody knows, and that’s how it’s going to stay.”

  “What about Echo. That dude’ll dig the truth out of you. You can’t lie to him,” Casper answered.

  “Owen thinks that, since I can manipulate the shade, I’ll be able to fake him out.”

  “Owen?” Casper asked, looking back toward the car. “You told Owen?”

  “Of course, I did,” I answered.

  “Dammit, Cresta! You know who he is. You know what he is! He’s the dragon. You can’t trust him, especially not now.” Casper’s hands went to his hair nervously.

  “I do trust him, Cass. He won’t hurt me.”

  “Well, forgive me if I don’t have your eternal optimism, but I don’t want to see him standing over a body bag with you in it!” He started to pace. “No! I will not leave you. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you want. If you won’t leave, then I’m not leaving either.”

  “I knew you would say that, Cass” I lean
ed up and gently kissed his cheek. “That’s why I’m not giving you a choice.” I turned to Owen. “Now. Do it now.”

  What?” Casper seemed shaken, but he was quick to pick up on what was going on. “You’re gonna make your boyfriend mindwipe me?” He shook his head. “Cresta, no. Don’t do this.”

  Owen neared and Casper’s voice took a turn for the frantic. “Cresta, please don’t do this to me! You said I was your family. Don’t take me away from you. Cress…”

  I didn’t answer.

  “What am I gonna do without you?” He asked.

  “That’s the point,” I said, with my back still turned to him. “Anything you want. You can live a normal life. You can finally have everything you deserve.”

  “I just want you,” he said

  When he yearns for you, don’t turn him away.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think about that now. This had to happen.

  “Cars drive on roads,” he told me. “Cars drive on roads!”

  I turned back to him.

  “Where are my hands, Casper?”

  A slow heartbroken smile spread across his face. “Hands in pockets,” he said.

  “Hands in pockets,” I repeated.

  Somehow, that seemed to settle him. He looked to the ground, gathered himself, and looked back at me. “Will I remember anything about you?” He asked, tears making his green eyes shine.

  “God, I hope so,” I said, crying as fiercely as I ever had.

  Owen was in front of him now, his blue eyes drilling into Casper’s.

  “If you hurt her,” he started through clenched teeth.

  “I love her,” Owen said. “More than I ever imagined was possible. There’s nothing in this, or any future that could make me do anything but love her. As a Breaker, as a friend, I promise you.”

  Casper looked back at me. “Cress…” He said, but that was all. There were no proclamations, no goodbyes; nothing except those green eyes that had become as familiar to me as my own. And they were all I needed.

  “I know,” I reassured him. Because nothing we could ever say could encompass even a piece of what we were feeling. “I know.”

  I couldn’t watch as Owen did it. I couldn’t bear to see Casper’s face drain of any knowledge of me, and there was no way I could have watched him look at me as though I was a stranger. I waited in the car. When Owen was finished, and we were driving away, I watched my best friend in the whole world stumble confused in my rearview window. It would be difficult for him, but he’d be okay. And maybe that was enough. Still, there was a piece of me that hurt, and a bigger piece of me that wondered what on Earth cars would drive on now.

  “You did the right thing,” Owen said, as Casper faded out of view.

  “I know,” I said, but there were still tears in my eyes. “It’s just gonna take some time.”

  “About what he said back there,” Owen started, pursing his lips. “Everything happened so fast, and we never really got a chance to talk about it. But I would never hurt you. Nothing, nothing in heaven or hell could change that. I swear. I don’t care what some prophecy says.”

  He looked at me, fire lighting his blue eyes.

  “And don’t you ever start believing that garbage about you. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You’re the love of my life. You’re the reason I’m even still alive. And you’re going to do great things; great things.”

  He reached across my lap and took my hand.

  “Forget the Bloodmoon and the dragon. We’re Owen and Cresta, and that’s a hell of a lot more impressive.”

  I leaned in, and kissed him. He was right, of course he was. Still, there was a voice in my head that repeated Wendy’s words.

  There is but one path, Cresta Karr.

  “What do we do now,” I asked, squeezing his hand.

  “When I was a kid, back when they thought I was going to die, my mom used to beg the Council of Masons for a way to stop it. She’d beat the ground and ask for prayers or blessings, anything that would help. But they never did anything. They kept calling me a fixed point. And they said that ‘One could sooner cut a star from the sky than change a fixed point.’ But I did, Cresta. I changed it. My mom changed it. So, we’ll do what I did all those years ago. We’ll do what my mom told me to do.”

  He turned to me, a smile as loving as a kiss but as unyielding as steel graced his face.

  “We’ll lie to the stars.”

  The End

  Author’s Note

  Thanks for checking out THE BREAKER’S CODE; the first book in the FIXED POINTS series. Be sure to check out the upcoming installments, available soon, and get in touch with me. Can’t wait to hear from you!

  The Series Continues!

  Book 2: The Breaker's Promise

  Book 3: The Breaker's Ultimatum

  Book 4: The Breaker's Resolution

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