Rivals

by David Wellington

  He dropped to his knees and curled his arms around himself, trying to shake off the pain. Eventually he could breathe again. Eventually he could think. He looked down and saw that he was still intact, all his parts accounted for. The beautiful costume Lucy had made for him, though, was ruined. Parts of it were burned, and in some places it was still smoldering. The front was full of holes.

  He stood up, more angry than he’d ever felt before in his life. The wrath inside of him was like white fire. He turned to look for his sister.

  Maggie was standing nearby, leaning against the side of a white construction trailer that had been partially trashed. She was wearing her field hockey uniform—the same costume she’d worn when she committed all of her crimes. It was fitting, he thought. They were dressed for the part. They were supposed to be here, supposed to fight. That was what was expected of them.

  “Where is she?” Brent demanded. “Where’s Lucy?”

  “Don’t have an aneurysm, baby bro,” Maggie said. She looked bored.

  Bored. She had the gall to be nonchalant at a time like this. He would pound that blasé look right off her face, he would—

  “She’s just over here,” Maggie said, and walked around the side of the trailer. “I stashed her in the shade so she wouldn’t even get sunburned. I’ve got no reason to—”

  Brent stomped around to the back of the trailer and saw a coil of wire on the ground. It looked like someone had been tied up with it, but there was no one inside the coil. Lucy’s leg braces lay on the dirt next to the coil. They were twisted out of shape and one of them was broken in half.

  “Oh,” Maggie said. “That’s strange, she was here a minute ago—”

  Brent hit her with everything he had.

  Chapter 48.

  Maggie reeled backwards, her jaw erupting in violent agony. She staggered and nearly fell, one hand grabbing at the ground behind her. She hadn’t expected him to come at her so fast.

  She cleared her head and started to get up, but he was already on her again, smashing at her face with a vicious left hook. She spun around, just trying to get her balance, and tripped over her own feet. She landed face down in the dirt, coughing and gasping for breath.

  He kicked her in the back of the head, hard enough to force her face into the soil until she couldn’t see or breathe. She tried to control herself, tried to hold back the pain, but her body rebelled and tried to breathe in. Her mouth filled with loose wet dirt and her brain started to scream in panic.

  That wouldn’t do.

  She had left a ten pound sledge hammer propped up against the glaring white side of the trailer. Her left hand flailed out and felt the rough wood handle. As he stomped on her head, pushing her down deeper into the dry earth, she got a grip on the hammer and swung it around blindly behind her, just hoping it would connect enough to startle him.

  Instead it caught him in the side hard enough to knock him five yards through the air. She twisted around on the ground and spat up dirt as he bounced off a patch of hard-packed dirt corrugated with tire tracks. In a split second she was up, standing with her feet well apart in a solid stance, grasping her sledge hammer with both hands.

  If she could catch him before he had time to get back up, before he—

  —but he was fast, so fast. He came at her out of her blind spot, holding a length of iron rebar like a samurai sword. He swung wide and low, his blow intended to catch her in the stomach. She just had time to bring the sledge hammer around to parry his strike. Metal hit wood with enough force to send painful vibrations all the way up Maggie’s arms.

  “You’re quick,” she said, as she stepped backwards, breaking contact.

  “Faster than you,” he said, bringing his bar up for another attack, this time aiming at her head.

  She caught the attack just in time, catching the iron bar in the angle between the handle and the metal head of her sledge hammer. The rebar dug a nasty gouge in the wooden handle, but in return it bent in his hands, forming an obtuse angle. He pulled back to try another swing. She was ready for it this time, and rather than parrying his blow she ducked under it and swept his legs with her hammer, spilling him onto the ground.

  “I’m still smarter, apparently,” she said, dancing backwards and bringing up her hammer. She swung it back behind her head and started to bring it down—except the damage to the handle must have been worse than she thought. The heavy head went flying to ricochet off the side of the trailer with an ear-shattering clang.

  He laughed bitterly as she stared at the length of wood in her hands. She noticed, however, that what she was left with was a two foot long club with a sharp and jagged end. She switched up her grip and stabbed downward with what had become a pointed stake, intending to drive it right through his heart. It worked on vampires.

  The jagged wood splintered and shattered against his tough skin. The handle split right up the middle, driving inch-long splinters into both her palms.

  He groaned in pain—the impact would still have hurt him, she thought—and raised his iron bar as if to ward her off. She kicked it out of his hands and then jumped up on top of the trailer.

  He roared and slammed into the side of the trailer like a bull.

  It was working.

  He was made enough now. He was pissed off enough to not be able to stop himself, when the time came. When he had her down and defenseless, he would not just tie her up an wait for the police to arrive. Oh, no. He wouldn’t be able to help himself—he would take this to its logical conclusion, and kill her.

  Which was exactly what she wanted.

  She needed an end to this. She needed to stop running. She couldn’t make excuses for her behavior any more, couldn’t forgive herself for the things she’d done, and—

  “Come down,” he shouted, and hit the trailer again.

  “Why don’t you come up here and make me?” she told him.

  As she’d expected he grabbed two handfuls of the metal side of the trailer and hauled himself upward, threw his body into the air to come crashing down right next to her. The impact caved in the metal roof of the trailer. She stepped backwards and leaned to the side to avoid his flying fists.

  She couldn’t let on that he was being set up. He had to believe he had no choice. He had to think she was fighting back as hard as she could. So she stuck out her leg and let him trip over it, let him fall face forward onto the trailer’s roof, denting it further.

  He pushed himself upward on his arms. She aimed a kick at his face but made it just slow enough that he would see it coming. He grabbed her foot with both hands and twisted, and she went flying. She hit the roof of the trailer with her back and it hurt. It hurt a lot. She cried out. He loomed over her, his hands balled into fists so tightly his knuckles were white.

  She reached down, grabbed the metal roof with both hands, and tore.

  The roof had been damaged when they started fighting. It had come close to caving in every time one of them hit the other. It couldn’t take any more abuse. As she’d thought it might, the roof collapsed as she pulled and twisted at it, spilling them both into the trailer’s interior.

  She saw him slam against a side wall, his head flopping against his shoulder. She hit a desk that caught her right in the small of her back, folding her in half the wrong way. The incredibly painful way. She felt her vertebrae pulling apart, felt every muscle in her back screaming as it was stretched beyond its limit.

  She shrieked in agony and flailed around her with her arms and legs. Leaning over to one side she struck out with both fists and one of them went right through the trailer wall. She could have freed it easily, of course, but she saw him standing up. Saw Brent watching her.

  She made a show of pulling at her arm, trying to get her fist out of the hole she’d made in the wall. As he came closer, his shoulders tight, his head slightly bowed, she rolled her eyes in simulated panic.

  This is it, she thought. This is my last chance.

  Stop me, Brent. If you don’t, the darkness wil
l win. It will take over completely and there will be nothing left of Maggie Gill. There will just be the villain.

  Finish me off.

  Chapter 49.

  Brent watched Maggie struggle with a sense of profound detachment. That wasn’t his sister with her hand stuck in the wall. It was some evil creature that didn’t deserve to live. Who knew what she had done to Lucy? He wouldn’t put anything past her anymore. She’d had a chance to redeem herself. She’d had plenty of chances, and she had refused every time to do the right thing.

  He felt like something enormous and powerful and right was growing inside of him. A creature of pure light, of justice. Whatever he might do to Maggie was less than she deserved. He looked down at his feet and found a broken computer monitor lying there, its cord twisted around it like a broken tail. Its screen had cracked in a million pieces, each of them triangular and sharp like a tooth. He plucked one out of the broken machine and held it in both of his hands.

  “Come on, then,” Maggie said. “What are you waiting for?”

  Brent wondered as much, himself. He took a step toward her and he felt like he was getting stronger with every moment that passed. When he brought the shard of glass down his arm would be strengthened by the sheer correctness of the act.

  He lifted the glass knife over his head. She had stopped struggling and seemed to be just waiting for him to strike. Perhaps she had come to accept that this was necessary. The fitting end to their rivalry. Their sibling rivalry.

  How could we turn out so different? I can’t believe you are my father’s daughter, he thought, and started to bring the weapon down on her head—

  —and caught himself in mid-swing.

  But you are.

  “Dad,” he said out loud. “Dad wouldn’t—”

  “I killed Dad! You should avenge him,” Maggie said. Her eyes were filling with tears, he saw, and that made him feel very strange. “You should do it for him.”

  “Did you—did you find him in there? In the cylinder?” Brent asked. His own voice sounded like it was coming from someone else’s body.

  “Yes! He was still there. So I took him out and buried him. Out in the desert where the FBI can’t dig him up to study his corpse.”

  Brent felt as if he were watching her from above, as if he were floating up near the ceiling looking down at her—and at himself. His body was down there, frozen in place, as if time had stopped for it. “Was it… bad?” he asked. “I mean, was he all messed up?”

  Maggie turned her face away from him. “You don’t want to know.” She sighed. “You can’t do this, can you? You’re not strong enough.”

  “He asked me not to fight so much with you. Right before he died. And here we are, doing exactly what we always did.” Brent shook his head, and below him he saw his body shake its head, too. He could feel the piece of glass cutting his fingers and he let it go. It crashed on the floor and the noise was loud enough to jar him, to make him blink. Suddenly he was back in his own body. It hadn’t been real, he knew. He hadn’t ever left it. He’d just gotten so worked up, so angry it had felt that way. He wondered if that was how Maggie felt all the time. Now he was back in his body the thought made him shiver. “Just tell me where Lucy is. Tell me what you did to her.”

  “And then what? You’ll let me go?” It didn’t sound like she even wanted that. But then, what did she want?

  “No,” he said. “It’s gone too far for that. I’ll turn you over to Weathers. He promised me he would get you the help you need.”

  “How absolutely gracious of him,” Maggie said. And then she pulled her hand out of the wall. She hadn’t really been trapped—it had been an act. But why? Brent was still trying to figure that out when her foot came up and smashed him across the face.

  “I’m sorry, bro, but only one of us can leave here today,” she said. He was still spinning around, trying to figure out where she was. Then she just appeared out of his blind spot and grabbed him, picked him up and threw him through the wall of the trailer. “If it has to be me, then so be it!” she called as he sailed through the brilliant desert sunlight. He hit the side of a boulder with his face and dropped in a heap.

  A moment later her hands grabbed him under the armpits and she hauled him upright—just to throw him again. He hit the side of a bulldozer hard enough that it rang like a bell. His vision blurred and his brain felt like it was spinning inside his skull. He needed to get his bearings, he knew, he needed to get up on his feet and be ready for her before she—

  With no warning at all she hit him in the chest with a rock as big as his head. The breath exploded out of him and he saw little lights go shooting through his vision. She hit him again, this time in the stomach, and pain blossomed inside his abdomen as something vital burst open. Instantly he could feel his body putting itself back together, felt his guts grow warm and then hot as they tried to slither back into their appropriate places. But he was sagging to his knees and he knew if she hit him again he wouldn’t be able to get up.

  She hit him again. And again. His head slumped forward and she smashed the back of his neck with her rock. This was all it would take, he realized. She could kill him this easily, by grinding him to a pulp, one blow at a time. He felt as powerless and insubstantial as the faint warm breeze that played through his hair.

  She’s stronger than you, Weathers had told him. He was faster, but that didn’t matter if he couldn’t get up on his feet, if he couldn’t dodge her attacks. He saw the rock coming toward his face and he tried to weave over to one side, but he barely moved enough that the rock caught his cheek and ear instead of his nose. The pain was just as intense. The noise of bones breaking was just as loud in his inner ear.

  She lifted the rock again, lifted it high in both hands. She was going to bring it straight down on the top of his head, he knew. It would be the last thing he ever felt. Everything would go black, and it would finally be over.

  “Wait,” Lucy said.

  The rock didn’t come down. Brent had thought maybe he’d just heard Lucy’s voice in his own head, as a kind of hallucination, but apparently Maggie had heard it too. She dropped the rock and it thudded in the sand.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she asked.

  Brent’s eyes weren’t focusing very well. He looked over to his side and saw Lucy standing there, but there was something wrong with the image. She wasn’t wearing her leg braces, he could see that much. Well, no, of course not—he’d seen them, they were twisted out of shape and one of them was broken. But Lucy couldn’t stand like that without the braces. Her legs were different lengths—she should only be able to balance precariously on one foot. Instead she was standing in a classic fighting stance, her feet braced against the ground.

  There was something else weird about her, too. She looked kind of… well, green. Green light was flickering on her shoulders and the top of her head. It disappeared as he watched it. His eyes were starting to reshape themselves, to heal from the injuries Maggie had given him. He could see a little better now.

  “I got tired of being a hostage,” Lucy said. “When you tied me up, you wrapped that wire around my leg braces. It was easy enough to slip out of them, though I think I might have messed them up a little.”

  “No,” Maggie said. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  Didn’t what? Brent wondered.

  “I had to crawl, but that was alright, it wasn’t—” Lucy’s mouth twisted in a nasty grimace. “Wasn’t—wasn’t far. Excuse me for—for a second.” Then she reached into her own mouth and grabbed something. She pulled it out with a grunt. A double length of wire with assorted bits of hardware dangling from it.

  No way, Brent thought. She just pulled out her own braces!

  “I think my teeth just fixed themselves,” Lucy said. “That felt… weird.”

  “You did,” Maggie said, sounding horrified.

  “Uh huh,” Lucy told her. She dropped the twisted bits of wire on the ground and then wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans. “I did.
”

  Chapter 50.

  “Would someone please tell me what just happened?” Brent asked.

  Maggie spun around and saw her brother kneeling on the ground next to her. There was blood on his face but he looked a lot better than he had a minute earlier. Then he’d been about to die—now he was seconds away from getting up and starting the fight all over again. And now there were two of them—two people on Earth who posed an actual threat to her safety and freedom.

  Whatev. I’ll just have to kill them both, the darkness said.

  “Your little friend went inside the cylinder,” Maggie explained. “She went to the well of green fire. It might have killed her, but it didn’t. You know what that means?”

  “I think so,” Brent said.

  “Um, excuse me,” Lucy said, walking toward them. “I don’t want to break up your little moment, but it seems to me we’ve got some business to attend to over here. I mean, if you’ve got a second. If it’s not too great an inconvenience.”

  “What on Earth are you talking about?” Maggie asked, turning to face the girl again.

  “I need to kick your ass,” Lucy said, and hit Maggie across the mouth with a right hook that sent her spinning backwards. Brent tried to grab her as she fell—maybe just to help her up, but probably to try to subdue her. Maggie threw herself to the side to avoid him and landed on a pile of construction tools.

  I’m stronger than they are. They’re just kids, the darkness said. I’m smarter than they are, that’s for sure. She looked up and saw the two of the approaching her. Wait for them to come closer.

  Her hands moved through the pile of tools, looking for weaponry. They found what they needed.

  Lucy must have seen what she was doing. “Be careful, Brent, she’s got—”