Dying Breath
Kory M. Shrum
Copyright © 2016 Kory M. Shrum
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
This book is dedicated to my new family.
The Benedictos:
Francis, Eileen, and Steven.
Patricia and Neil.
Tita Alex and Uncle Craig.
Joey, Tophet, and Aunt Helen.
One of the best parts about marrying Kim was inheriting you.
Thank you for all the love and kindness you’ve shown me.
Chapter 1
Maisie
The truck slides to the right, hooking around a huge boulder. Desert sand sprays in a swooping arc through my open window and into my face.
“Slow down!” I cough and fumble for anything to grab ahold of. After groping air, I snatch the seatbelt dangling over my right shoulder. I miss the snap twice before I hear the reassuring click. The belt hugs me against the scalding seat.
Mom doesn’t slow down. The truck bounces over another medium-sized rock, axles creaking, and the wheels pop up and skid. I don’t think anyone is supposed to drive through the desert like this. There should be roads, right?
“You’re going to kill us!” I scream.
“We have to lose her.” Mom’s blue eyes cut to the rearview mirror. Blood is smeared across her right cheek and I can’t help but stare at it, fixated on the way it fills the creases around her mouth as she speaks. If she flicks out her tongue, she’d taste it.
Maybe she already does.
I look at my own hands. Blood everywhere. It’s crusted under my fingernails and a bright crimson half-moon lines each of my cuticles.
My father’s dead body slouches between us, oozing blood. It pools on the seat, soaking the side of my jeans. Most of him rests against Mom. But his head is barely attached and it flops, threatening to snap free and tumble into my lap at any moment. It’s freaky and gross. Looking down at my blood-soaked jeans and grubby hands isn’t helping my nausea.
I’m going to puke.
“Shit.” Mom’s focused on the rearview mirror, watching the road behind us more than the empty desert ahead.
I turn toward the open window between our seats. Beyond the bare truck bed, the black Mustang gains on us.
Jesse’s coming.
But not for me.
She wants Dad’s head, to blow him up and make sure the crazy bastard never wakes up again. Mom wants the exact opposite—Dad alive and Jesse mutilated beyond recognition. And here’s me stuck in the middle.
You thought your family was dysfunctional.
Dad’s oozing blood reaches my skin. It’s sticky against the back of my knees. My stomach clenches for the billionth time, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Mom’s jerky driving is probably to blame. I open my eyes and find a fixed point on the horizon. A white building in the distance squats between a beautiful blue sky and orange sand.
I focus on that building and draw in deep breaths.
Dad’s body is starting to smell.
It’s the heat. It’s collecting in the black dashboard and seats. The hot air blowing through the truck’s open windows is no help either. All of it makes Dad’s body putrefy faster.
Mom calls up her power. Through our mental connection or whatever you want to call it, I feel her power before I see it. It’s like a blast of arctic air. Like the air conditioner kicked on and is pumping its guts through the dusty vents in the dashboard.
Phantom snakes, twin coils of black smoke, unfurl from Mom’s abdomen. If she even grazes Jesse with this smoke, Jesse’s dead meat.
I glare at Mom.
She sees me glaring. “I have to stop her.”
No. An impulse to protect my sister overwhelms me, blocking out my conflicting urge to puke in the overbearing heat.
I’ve got to do something. Say something.
I’m not brave like Jesse. Jesse would leap across Dad’s dead body and attack Mom. Maybe pull her hair or shove her out of the car.
I could never do that. Of the fight or flight impulse, I’ve got more flight in my veins. When danger shows up, everything inside me says, run away! Run away!
“You don’t have a good shot. You’ll probably kill me, and if you do, we’ll all be dead.” It’s all I can think to say. “She’ll use her shield to block you anyway.”
With a frustrated hiss, Mom retracts her power.
I should’ve known self-preservation would do the trick. Mom wants to kill Jesse—and probably me too—so she can absorb our powers, but the moment she does she’ll die. Her body will have to reboot in order to absorb our abilities. If Mom offs me, she’ll be a sitting duck for Jesse. All Jesse would have to do is walk up and finish her.
That’s probably the only reason I’m alive right now.
If Dad were alive, I might already be dead. The second he decides he wants my power, my ability, I will be dead.
It’s only a matter of time.
“You have to wake him up,” Mom barks. She yanks the steering wheel, and the nose of the truck cuts a sharp right. The vehicle slides as it corrects itself. The white building disappears and now there’s only blue sky. Nothing to focus on.
“No.” Vomit burns in the back of my throat. I swallow it down.
“Damn it, Maisie.” Mom grits her teeth. “We need his help to fight her. Wake him up!”
“We don’t have to fight.” I place one hand on my stomach and the other on the door to brace myself. “We can share the power. We were supposed to share it!”
I think of Monroe and his deep, infectious laugh and his sweet eyes. He had puppy dog eyes, like Winston, Jesse’s pug. More importantly than being the kindest man I’ve ever met, Monroe told us the truth about our powers and abilities. Back at his house in Louisiana, back before my parents caught up to us, he told us we were never meant to use our powers against each other.
We were supposed to work together. The original twelve powers were to be shared by the people chosen to wield them. By the partis—some weird, ancient name for what we are and what we can do.
But Dad made a mistake early in the game. He killed another partis, and it broke the connection. It severed the link between all the abilities and the only way to unify the power and save the world is for one person to collect all the powers inside themselves.
We’ve been killing each other ever since.
Monroe tried to change that before Dad killed him. He reestablished the link between me and Jesse and me and Mom. We can share the twelve powers between us if only I can get her to listen.
Mom doesn’t understand. She’s been fighting forever, since before I was born. I don’t know what to say that will make her stop seeing Jesse as the enemy.
“She’s a liar.” Mom’s face softens with pity. “Whatever Jesse told you was a lie.”
“It’s not a lie, and Jesse wasn’t the one who told me.”
Jesse’s Mustang hits the back of the truck, and we lurch forward. Bad timing, Jess. How am I going to convince Mom you’re one of the good guys with you running us over?
“Do you think she’s going to let him live?” Mom’s burning eyes cut to Dad’s body. “She’s going to kill him. For good.”
“If he ever wakes up, do you think he’s going to let you live? Or me? He’s a monster.”
“Maisie!” Mom reaches across Dad’s body and slaps me. She’s never hit me before. Not once. Not ever.
I cup my burning cheek and look at her like she’s grown two heads.
She looks as shocked as I am. “What did s
he do to you?”
“What’s he done to you?” I snap back. I uncover my cheek. I want her to see the mark she’s left. She flinches like I knew she would. “Since when are you the crazy abusive one?”
Her hands wring the steering wheel.
“Leave him,” I beg her.
“He’s your father.”
And a monster.
“We need him.”
I snort. “How feminist, Mom.”
“You know better.” Mom scowls at me. “You know she’ll kill me. It’s why you woke me up.”
Why you woke me up—
My anger dissipates. The battle we just escaped replays in my head. Less than an hour ago, my mother was killed. She collapsed dead on the hallway floor inside the abandoned military base where Jesse wanted to have our last stand. When Mom was killed, I bent over her and blew into her nose, waking her up in that special way I do, because…because she’s right. Because I knew Gideon, Gloria and Jesse would overpower me. They would kill my mom and make me watch.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Mom isn’t perfect. She’s a borderline horrible person. She’s selfish and cruel. She has this self-destructive streak I’ll never understand.
But she’s my mom.
She’s always loved me. She’s always told me how much she loved me. How special I was. How much she wished and prayed for me. And she’s always protected me—until now.
The silence makes Mom think she’s won.
“Whose side are you on?” Her expression is haughty again. “It’s either her or me.”
My fist tightens around the seatbelt pressing against my chest.
Whose side am I on?
The longer I don’t answer, the more Mom’s face pinches in betrayal. “This isn’t you. Jesse did this to you. She turned you against your own mother.”
“No—”
“We have to kill her. It’s the only way to protect your father until—”
My temper explodes. “What about us? What about protecting us?”
“He won’t hurt us,” Mom says, but I know that voice. It’s her he will never hurt you while I’m alive voice. But my mom won’t always be alive. She was dead an hour ago. She’ll probably be dead again before the day is over.
Jesse’s Mustang whips around the side of the truck. The driver’s side window rolls down, and there’s my sister, all wide-eyed and freaked out.
She casts her shield. The shimmering purple light covers me and part of the truck. She looks as surprised as I am she can do it. That’s Jesse for you. She never seems to realize how awesome she is.
“Jump!” she screams. Her brown hair falls across her face, and she frantically wipes it away.
Jump? Out of a moving truck?
“Jump! I’ll catch you!” She has to scream over the sound of sand, wind, and roaring engines.
Jump. But not jump and bring Dad’s corpse with you. Dad’s corpse isn’t even in the shield.
She wants me.
She wants me more than she wants Dad’s dead body.
Because she loves you, a voice whispers through my mind. A voice I haven’t heard in a long, long time. I thought it was because I was with Jesse and Rachel. Their power dwarfed my own.
I’m stronger now because you are.
A weight lifts from my chest. I thought you’d given up on me.
Never.
With an angel on my side, it seems less insane: jumping from a moving car. I throw my door open and reach for the release on my seatbelt.
“No!” Mom cuts the wheel hard to the right, slamming the side of the truck into Jesse’s Mustang. An invisible, angry hand rips away my door. Sparks spray into the cab as metal scrapes metal. Stray shards sting my cheeks. I cover my face, hoping my arms and legs stay inside the cab and won’t be ripped off too. That would suck.
I open my eyes, and Jesse’s there, keeping up with us. The side of her Mustang looks like it was stepped on by a huge boot. Through the open window, she’s shouting.
“I’ve got you! Jump!”
“Fuck off!” Mom screams. With one flick of her hand, the Mustang’s two front wheels are lifted off the ground and thrown back into the air.
It’s so unexpected I gulp air, gagging on the stray sand. It feels like scraps of sandpaper go down my throat. Mom didn’t have the telekinetic power until she killed Rachel for it and already she’s using it to kill my sister.
“No!” My screaming doesn’t do anything to stop the Mustang from flying backward, and then dropping back to Earth like a bomb.
The black car rolls head over tail before slamming into the side of a boulder.
No! No!
Jesse’s car explodes on impact, the black muscle car disappearing in a plume of fire and smoke.
“Oh god, no. Jesse, no.”
I blink back tears, hanging out the open side of the truck. My mother’s unforgiving fingers bite into the flesh of my upper arm, trying to drag me back inside. But I can’t look away from the burning wreckage.
I’m desperate for a sign, any sign Jesse survived.
I don’t get one. It’s only fire and the mushroom cloud darkening the blue sky as Mom speeds away.
My sister’s funeral pyre.
All that’s left of her is a swirling, black blaze.
Chapter 2
Jesse
I’m reaching out for Maisie, begging her to jump into my arms and away from her crazy mother. Then the horizon disappears. Impossibly, the car goes up which is a super weird direction for a car to go. The front wheels lift until it’s a clear blue sky in all directions.
I start to rise out of my seat as if the gravity is turned off and I’m floating.
It makes me think of when I was a little girl and dreamed about flying. I’d hold my arms out and run through the yard making airplane sounds with my lips.
But gravity kicks back on and the car plummets.
Be careful what you wish for, right?
Jesse! Gabriel’s scream cuts through my shock at being airborne. Shield!
Purple light spreads over my body, cocooning me the moment before the car slams to a stop. The sound of crushing metal is swallowed by boom!
An orange supernova engulfs my cocoon. Flames dance over the surface, along with swirling smoke—like ink in water. The leather seats and dashboard. The blinking clock. All of it’s swallowed in the plume. I can’t feel the heat, and that’s probably a good thing since I’d totally be a melty marshmallow a second from falling off the stick.
A second explosion makes metal scream and my shield ripples again. Man, what if it fails? Are my eyeballs going to liquefy and ooze out of their sockets like they do in the Tales of the Crypt movie? Gross. And I don’t think I’d look so great with a bald head. No thanks.
“Gabriel?”
Wait it out.
Ha! Like I have a choice. Even if I wanted to crawl out of the burning car, I wouldn’t know which direction to crawl. I can’t see anything but black smoke and fire.
I fall back against the shield with a sigh. I remember Maisie’s terrified face, her desperate wiggling fingers as she reached out for me.
So much for my plan. I was going to get Maisie, hurt Georgia enough that she couldn’t follow us, take Maze back to the base where she’d be safe with our friends, and then come back and finish off the current contenders for Worst Parents of the Year. But nope. Instead, I had to watch Georgia whisk Maisie away. Again. Dammit.
If anything happens to her—
There’s time, Gabriel whispers.
There’s time.
I repeat this over and over until the smoke thins, and certain shapes come into focus. I recognize the warped plane of the dashboard first, though it’s about as solid as a chocolate bar left in the sun. The crispy seats appear next, the interior padding exposed and burnt. A pool of metal glistens in the seat. The buckle, I realize. The seatbelt buckle melted.
I’m sitting in a car that’s hot enough to melt the seatbelt buckle.
As
soon as the driver’s side window appears, I start to shimmy out of it, drawing my shield in close to my body so I can squeeze through.
I hit the sand. Even with the shield, it’s jarring, and I cough on impact.
Nothing feels broken. In a few places on my arms and face, there’s the itchy burn of healing. Scratches, probably, sealing themselves shut with the healing power I inherited when I killed a psychopathic jerk named Jason.
I army crawl away from the wrecked car until I’m far enough away that a second explosion won’t blow my butt off. I like my butt. It’s always got my back. I can’t go leaving it behind at the first sign of trouble.
When I drop the shield, the heat knocks me back. It’s more than desert hot. Heat wafts off the burning car. I stand, brush the sand off my pants, and start marching away.
In every direction, there’s only distance. A couple of white buildings sit spread apart. A few miles back I can see the military base where I left Ally, Gloria, and Gideon.
Alive, Gabriel assures me.
“So you keep saying,” I tell him. But everyone I cared about was dead. I saw it. And frankly, I’m getting super tired of watching the woman I love die. I’ve done it twice now.
Thanks to Maisie’s gift, they’ll be up and moving soon. I hope.
I search every direction until I spot the plume of sand thrown up by Georgia’s truck. They have miles on me.
“Well, fuck.” I scowl at Gabriel where he stands in the middle of the desert. In an expensive suit and tie. Weirdo. “This is lovely.”
“You need a vehicle.”
I glare at him. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
His brow scrunches. He never gets my pop culture references, and I’m not in the mood to educate him.
“Do you see a car?”
“Yes,” he says. He turns and points.
“That’s a cactus. Uh, humans don’t drive those. Given the pointy parts. They’re also rooted to the earth, and generally, lack propulsion of any kind.”
“No,” he says and extends one slender finger. “There.”
I squint at the horizon. At first, nothing but heat shimmering on the sand and the half-buried road stretches out before me. Then I notice the squat white building he’s pointing at. “The house?”
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