Master: Arrow's Flight #3

by Casey Hays

  He takes my hand, his touch clammy. “Look. I’ve spent some time with these people now. Penelope and Aaron are great. All of them are, don’t get me wrong. But we don’t have to buy into their weird belief system.”

  “I know.” My voice carries a slight hint of exasperation. I don’t like his dictatorial tone. “But what about the things we’ve read?”

  He frowns. “It’s a book, Kate.”

  “Yes,” I agree. “And it speaks to me like nothing ever has.”

  He reaches for my hand. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed when this turns out to be nothing. How does Claudia’s idea differ from your own stories in your village?”

  I purse my lips, absorb his words. No rebuttal comes to me. But the conversation with Claudia sits with me, a gnawing presence in my gut that screams truth. Ian sighs.

  “I know you’ve been searching for something for a long time. I get it. Just . . . don’t believe the first new thing you hear.”

  He closes his eyes, suddenly exhausted, his head resting against the pillow. I study his pale face.

  “It’s the only new thing I’ve ever heard,” I whisper, and his eyes slowly peel open. “Are you so satisfied with this life, Ian? Do you have no desire to search for something more? So much so that you want to prevent me from it, too? Don’t you need something to make the ugly and senseless things of this life less painful? Something that makes life meaningful?”

  He seems to stop breathing, his eyes trained on my face. I hold his gaze, blinking once. Sweat crawls over him like an invading army of water, running down his neck to soak his collar. I take up the edge of a blanket and mop it away.

  “Ian, you’ve read the Scriptures. You can’t tell me you think they are only a book. And you can’t convince me that they haven’t spoken to you, too.” I pause, wipe another layer of sweat from his brow. “What are you so afraid of that you can’t consider believing?”

  He bites his lip.

  “Tell me,” I prod.

  He holds still for the longest time, and his voice is the smallest of all whispers when he answers.

  “I’m afraid it’s another lie.”

  His eyes dart away. I study him.

  “At least I’m not afraid to admit it,” he says, a clever smile trying to work its way onto his pale face. “Not to you.” He pauses, draws his legs up, and turns to lie on his side. “I keep thinking I shouldn’t be afraid anymore. I mean, you should have seen me dodging those bullets. They couldn’t touch me. Well, almost. It was pretty amazing.” He searches my face, his eyes dancing. “Why should I be afraid? What more proof do I need?”

  “No matter how fast you run, you’re only human,” I answer. “Eventually something will catch up with you.”

  I run my hand down the side of his face.

  “Look at yourself, Ian. You can’t be strong all the time. And if you stop fearing, perhaps there’s no point in hoping.”

  His bottom lip twitches, and he runs his tongue along its surface.

  “I’ve always imagined fear and hope as two ends of one burning candle,” I continue. “They race each other toward the middle . . . over and over. And for me, fear always wins.”

  With a deep-seated sigh, I fold my hands together and touch my lips to my knuckles. I feel Ian’s eyes on me.

  “If I had enough faith, I might be able to bury that fear. But not faith in just anything—faith in something real. Something that could beat my fear down.” I look straight at him. “I’m always afraid, Ian. It lives with me like a monster. I’m afraid of living. I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid of being afraid. It’s not about believing in anything anymore. It’s not about believing in the first new idea you hear. It’s about having faith in the right thing. Because when fear and faith collide—and they will—whatever remains in the leftover flickering flame is who you are in the end.”

  My shoulders sink with my final word, hoping he understands where my jumbled mind has taken me. He doesn’t move, his eyes lingering on my face.

  “I’ve never heard you say that before.”

  I shrug. “I know. But that book? It makes me think such things.”

  A candle flickers on a table next to us. His blond strands are matted to his forehead, the sweat glistening on his skin. I lean over him and push his hair away from his forehead. He catches me by the wrist, tugs me forward, and presses his lips to mine. The softness of his flesh, the warm sweetness of his breath ripples through me like a bubbling brook on a warm day. I sink against him.

  There is no trauma strong enough to displace the magic of our kisses. I’ve memorized them. I think now that if he’d only kissed me when I first woke—if he’d taken me into his arms while the bullets were flying overhead and I was crouching in fear against the wall—I would have remembered him immediately.

  He pulls back, but I lean into him, my forehead resting against his chest until his hand comes up to cover my head. His breath trembles, and I snake my arms around him.

  “I’m sorry, Kate. I shouldn’t be telling you what to believe. Or not believe.”

  I smile, spread my fingers across his damp chest. “I know. And it wouldn’t work if you tried. No one has ever been able to conform me.”

  He squeezes me once. I raise my eyes to look at him.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Hard to say.” He examines his wounded finger before quietly adding. “I guess I might be pretty sick.”

  I jolt upright. He gives me a wane smile followed by a strangled laugh that sends a shrill warning through my blood.

  “Please let Claudia look at you.”

  “She won’t be able to help me.” He coughs once, a strangled sound. “We don’t know what this is.”

  “I’m getting her.”

  I start to rise, but he catches my wrist, his voice pleading.

  “Stay with me. Please. I can feel the Serum working. Maybe it’s just taking longer because of the Eden-killers. But it’s never failed me. Let’s just give it until tomorrow. In the morning, if I’m not better, I promise I’ll let her take a look. I just need to sleep. Sleep will help.”

  I sigh with a shake of my head. “You are stubborn.”

  He gives me another weak smile. “Yep. That’s why we’re so good for each other. Nothing can break us. Right?”

  He gently pulls on my arm, and I let him drag me down to lie next to him. And we sleep.

  Chapter 21

  I

  dream of blood. It flows across the world, covering every inch of it in every place known to man. People swim in it—drown in it—furiously trying to rise above it, but they can’t. The weight of it drags them under. I can’t distinguish one face from the next, but I hear voices, and I recognize some of them.

  The images swirl out of focus, sway back into view, and I’m standing knee deep in a red pool. There are people all around me, bathing. They wash themselves, pouring the crimson liquid over their heads. I gasp in shock, repulsed by the idea, and I turn, try desperately to wade out of the pool. But a giant hand stops me, urges me to turn, to look more closely at the bathers. The blood runs over them in satin streams that drip off the ends of their robes. White robes, pure and clean. Their warm eyes smile out of shining faces. I see them clearly, but when I look up into the face of the one holding onto my shoulder, I can’t see him at all.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  His voice booms. “I am.”

  I’m jolted awake, the color red permeating every inch of my mind. I sit up, breathing heavily, and try to orient myself with the room. It’s still dark. I fumble at the table, find the candle, light a match.

  My clothes are soaked through, and in a panic, I run my hands over my body, expecting them to come back red. They don’t, and my eyes fall over the couch.

  Ian is gone, but the wet stain of his body coats the cushions. Noises come from the kitchen. I pick up the candle and move forward cautiously.

  “Ian?”

  He’s there, on his hands and knees, a small candle on the
floor beside him his only light. He’s cleared the space of all the debris, and he scrubs at the bloody floor with a handheld brush, his movements increasing erratically with each stroke. He only manages to smear the stain into the wood, forever marking it. A permanent reminder of what took place here.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” I whisper.

  He doesn’t seem to hear. I move into the room and drop to my knees beside him, setting my candle next to his.

  “Can I help?”

  He ignores me. His scowl grows deeper. I sit back on my heels.

  Except for the constant scraping of bristle against wood, the silence drags on for far too long. Ian dips the brush into a bucket of dirty water, sloshes it over the floor. Dark bubbles scatter. He scrubs.

  “Ian.” I take hold of his arm. “Will you talk to me?”

  He jerks out of my grip without looking up from his work. His face is a hard mask, and he scrubs even more vigorously. I begin to wonder if he’s awake. It’s very early—far from dawn—and shadows creep across the walls seeming to alter Ian’s dark mood even more. The atmosphere grows tenser.

  In the dim light, I study him. The wet stain on his back causes his t-shirt to stick to his skin, and droplets of sweat drip every few minutes from the end of his nose. His symptoms are worse. I place my hand on his back.

  “Ian—”

  “What!” he growls.

  I jump back. He stops scrubbing, chunks the brush. It skids across the floor and hits the wall with a solid thud. He sits back on his haunches.

  “What do you want me to say, Kate? I killed those men. There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “All right.” Panic settles in my chest, a steady pounding that floods my ears. So this is what prompts his behavior.

  He says nothing more for the longest time, his brow creased into an intense line, and my nerves grate against each other. The strange flickering is in his eyes again. It’s eerie, and in the candlelight, he looks raging mad. I hold still, my breath cautiously leaving my lungs.

  Finally, he exhales with the deep sound of hollow despair. He covers his face, rolls forward until his chest lies against his knees. I listen to the breath emitting from between his fingers. It’s the ragged sound of a beast. I long to reach for him, but I hold my place, waiting.

  In a flash, he jerks upright.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers, dropping his hands. “It’s just . . . this is bad. All of it. It’s . . . I mean, what they did to Claudia…” His lips tighten into a hard line. “And I— I was in a rage. I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to.”

  He tries to piece together his thoughts, but they fall from his lips in a jumble.

  “I’m a killer,” he whispers.

  When his eyes catch mine, sheer terror stares back at me. I inhale a quick breath as my heart tears under his gaze. Because I understand. I’ve seen the same look in my own eyes reflected back at me. He stands abruptly, thoughts storm through his head.

  “What have I done? What have I done? I didn’t have to kill them.”

  He turns away from me. I scramble to my feet.

  “You don’t know that.”

  He spins, spits his words at me. “No, I don’t. Because I didn’t even try to stop myself. I barely remember what I did. I just . . . did you see what I did to that guy’s head?” He holds up a fist. “With my bare hands? I—I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t—”

  Pain distorts his features. He balls his fists, shoves them up against his eyes. My lip trembles as he falls apart. I can do nothing. Nothing to take away the guilt he feels.

  “Jones was right.” His hands fall to his sides and hang limp against his thighs. “There is no self-control in me.” His voice carries a deadness to it. Slowly, he raises his eyes, bit by bit until they meet mine. “I took someone’s life. I can’t take that back.”

  My heart wrenches. I stretch a hand toward him.

  “Ian—”

  “No!” He shrugs out of reach. “Don’t you get it?” He points his thumbs at his chest dramatically. “I killed someone. I couldn’t stop myself. And you wanna know the worst part? I didn’t want to stop. Nothing in me wanted to stop. I didn’t have to kill them. I wanted to.”

  I step back, frightened by the edge in his voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this is what Eden made me become,” he snarls. “And . . . and . . . we don’t die in Eden. We don’t—”

  He cuts his words short, pounds a fist into his chest, and turns a wide circle. He runs both hands through his wet hair until they rest at the base of his neck. And then, like the ravings of a madman, he laughs—a guttural sound deep within. He tilts his head back to laugh at the ceiling, hands on hips. And I understand. There is no death in Eden, no way for him to process the death he’s experienced in such a short time—beginning with Tabitha. My heart grieves for him, and I take a step, reach for him. But he tenses, pulls away.

  “That’s it,” he whispers. “I’m a weapon.” He faces me, his brow wrinkles, and pain sears his expression. He closes his eyes. “Someone pulled a trigger inside me, and I exploded right on cue.”

  I study him, confused by his ramblings. He doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he steps in, lifts his hands to catch my face in them, his thumbs against my cheeks. He’s sweating profusely, and his fingers are slick where they rest against my jaw. I gasp quietly, a tiny fear sparking, and a voice inside me sounds off a warning.

  Something is wrong.

  His eyes are dark orbs in the shadows. I stare into them, frozen, my arms pinned at my sides.

  “I waited for you to wake up for so long, and when you did, you didn’t know me.” He steps in, bends until his nose bumps the tip of mine. His hands tighten against my jawline.

  “Ian—” I warn. I wrap my fingers around his wrists.

  “Shhhh.... don’t say anything.” His squeezes my face, and I catch a whiff of a bitter scent. My fingernails dig into his wrist, pulling downward. He doesn’t budge. I swallow.

  His lips graze mine—just barely—and the action is so soft, so adverse to his every other move. I hold my breath, terrified of him. This kiss lingers cold and passionless against my lips, and I know; this isn’t Ian.

  In that instant, he pulls back. A spasm jerks through his body. His eyes flood with fear, drowning out everything else. Just before they roll into the back of his head, they pierce me. And the blue vanishes into solid white.

  “Ian!”

  His hands slip away from my face. I wrap my arms around his waist in a futile attempt to hold him up. His body rolls with spasms, and a cry escapes me as I’m dragged down by his weight.

  The fall pins my left arm beneath his body, and it takes several seconds of struggling to set myself free. I clamber to my knees and crouch beside him.

  “Ian! Ian, wake up!”

  Terrified, I shake him, tears blurring my vision. Why did I let him talk me out of getting Claudia last night? Why didn’t I listen to my instinct?

  With a sob, I wrap my arms around his neck and press my face against his throat.

  The wound on the end of his finger is red and throbbing, and the raw, open flesh is putrid. The smell meets my nostrils full force. Astonished, I slide back, shove his shirt upward toward his throat. The wound on his chest is just as gruesome, oozing a yellow pus from within the red-raw center.

  “Claudia!” I scream her name. “Claudia, please!”

  Frantically, my hands crawl up Ian’s chest to take his face.

  “Listen to me, Ian.” I turn his head, pressing my fingers into his cheeks. “I came back to you. I came back, and you can’t go. Do you hear me? You can’t leave me! We’re in this together, remember? Together, Ian!”

  I crumple against him; he smells like death.

  “Kate?”

  A sure relief overcomes me when Claudia drops a hand on my back. She bends, presses two fingers against Ian’s throat to check his pulse.

  “He was acting strange.” My words are wet. �
�And—and then—he just fell.”

  Claudia kneels, a hand on his forehead. Behind her Sophia hovers in the doorway, rubbing at her sleep-ridden eyes.

  “Let’s get him to my room.” Claudia eases her hand under Ian’s shoulders.

  “What?” My voice shakes. “We can’t lift him, Claudia.”

  She frowns, the wide slit in her lip splitting at the motion. A small trickle of blood appears. She peers at me from her swollen face before she turns to Sophia. “Get a pillow and blanket.”

  Sophia, a candle in her hand, scurries away. I press my hand into Ian’s chest. “Is he going to be okay?”

  Claudia lays the back of her fingers against his skin. She looks doubtful.

  “He’s warm.”

  “He’s always warm,” I confirm.

  She frowns again. “Right. Then I don’t know. We don’t treat people from Eden.” Her voice reflects her worry. “Penelope has never been sick a day in her life.”

  I lift Ian’s hand to show her his wound. “This is the cause.”

  She leans in, shock contorting her features, and instantly covers her mouth and nose as the stench touches her senses.

  “When did this happen?”

  “A few days ago. It was an . . . Eden-killer he said. I roll his sleeve to show her. “They’re worse than last night.”

  “He’s not healing.” Claudia purses her lips. She takes his hand from me, examines it more closely.

  I chew on my thumb, nervous apprehension flooding me. Sophia returns, and Claudia eases the pillow behind Ian’s head.

  “He never sweats,” I nail her with my eyes to make sure she comprehends. “He’s been sweating all night.”

  “That must mean fever.” Her expression is full of anxious exhaustion. She checks his pulse again. “I’ll have to go for Penelope myself.”

  “What?” I stare up at her. “And you think they will simply let you bring her? For Ian?”

  “I don’t know, Kate. I won’t tell them it’s for Ian.”

  “They will take you, too,” I say. “And Ian will die anyway. What will Sophia and I do then?”