by Melinda Metz
Max laughed, shaking his head as if she were a child. “There are a lot of girls who’ve said exactly those words to a lot of guys. What makes you think you’re any smarter? Now, tell me where the Stones are, and I’ll be out of your way.”
Slowly Liz’s brain regained some of its ability to function. The Stones. This was about the Stones. He’d said it twice now.
She narrowed her eyes and studied him. Yes, he looked awake, but she’d never seen his eyes so hard or his jaw so tight before. This wasn’t Max standing in front of her, not really. It was the consciousness. The consciousness was trying to manipulate her emotions to get her to reveal the location of the Stones.
Liz was half relieved, half disgusted.
“I don’t know where they are,” she answered. Which was true. Not that she would have told the consciousness where to find them if she had.
“If you’re thinking that you can change the way I feel about you by keeping me around, you’re wrong,” Max said harshly. “The longer I’m with you, the more clear it is to me that we could never have been anything more than short-term. My abilities, my capacities are so beyond yours that I’d never be satisfied by you.”
It’s not Max, she told herself. It’s not him. But the words cut her to the bone.
“Tell me where the Stones are, Liz,” Max pressed.
The sound of her name on his, no, its, lips sent a shudder through her. “I don’t know!” she screamed.
Then the Max thing blinked and crumpled to the floor, lifeless.
Max fought against the ocean of auras above him. He had to break to the surface. He had to get to Liz.
But he wasn’t strong enough. The auras bore down on him with the pressure of billions of gallons of water, pushing him deeper and deeper into the consciousness, farther and farther away from Liz.
“Liz!” he screamed with his mind. “Liz!”
But there could be no answer.
Max shot images out at the closest beings, images of pain and violation, trying to express how it felt for his body and brain to be used without his consent.
He felt some flickers of sympathy from the most distant beings. Clearly he was being kept away from any that might be tempted to help him. Then an image filled his mind—a picture of him using one of the Stones of Midnight to open a wormhole and return both Stones to his home planet. This image was immediately followed by another one—Liz’s stricken face.
The image of Liz multiplied, each vision of her a knife slicing through his soul. The message was clear. Either Max returned the Stones to the home planet, or he would be made to hurt those he loved again and again.
Max let out a howl of fury. He hurled himself at the auras above him, using every ounce of energy and determination to fight his way through. He had to get out, find Liz, tell her he was sorry, tell her he loved her until his throat was raw.
But there were too many of them. Billions to his one. When they slammed him back down, he didn’t bother trying to get up again.
Alex snapped his combination lock shut and headed down the hall. Whatever transformation had happened to him in the wormhole hadn’t worn off. He was still getting looks from every girl he passed, looks that made him feel edible or something. It was kinda freaky. And very cool.
He caught sight of Maria turning the corner. She smiled when she saw him, and when she got closer, she started to fan her face.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said in a breathy voice. “Whenever I’m near you, I just turn all hot and swoony.” Her eyelashes fluttered, and she dropped into a half faint.
“I’ll have to start carrying those, whatdoyoucallems,” Alex said as he caught her by the shoulders and pushed her upright. “Smelling salts.”
Maria giggled and smoothed her blond curls behind her ears. “You better. Otherwise you’re going to start getting sued by hundreds of girls who injure themselves fainting at your feet.”
Cracking a grin, Alex crooked his arm around Maria’s neck. “I want you to know that even though I’m a babe and everything, you’re not going to have to slap me around again,” he said, growing serious. “Anything that needs to be done to shatter the consciousness, I’m there.”
Alex was still a little embarrassed by the way he’d abandoned the group when they were gearing up to go head-to-head with DuPris. He’d gotten so caught up with his newfound babe-magnet status, he’d forgotten what was important. At least until Maria had pulled him out of a theater in the middle of a date and reminded him.
“I know that,” Maria said, looking him directly in the eye. “We all know that. Hey, everyone’s entitled to an occasional screwup.” She shrugged, lifting her hands. “If I’d suddenly become a sex goddess, I’m sure I would have been as big an idiot as you were.”
“Gee, thanks,” Alex replied. Arlene Bluth winked at him as she headed by. Alex winked back. Winked. Who did that?
“I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” Maria said in a rush. “Why not take advantage of what life gives you? I mean, life is short. Very short.”
“Uh-huh,” Alex said, trying not to laugh as Maria babbled.
“Unbelievably short. Like that.” She tried to snap her fingers and failed. “Too much moisturizer,” she muttered. “Anyway, you know what I mean. Short.”
Her voice was starting to tremble, and her blue eyes were shiny with unshed tears. Whoa. Talk about going from zero to sixty in three seconds.
“Short, yeah,” Alex answered, deciding that agreeing was a good strategy. “But Maria, you’re only sixteen. I mean—”
“And how old was Adam?” she exclaimed, her voice getting shrill. “For him life isn’t even short. It’s over.”
Alex’s stomach turned as he flashed on the memory-of DuPris taking Adam down. Poor Adam. That’s what this was about.
Alex took Maria by the arm and led her into the stairwell. She was about to lose it, and there was no reason for her to have to do it in public.
“What happened to Adam was horrible,” Alex said quickly, trying to get Maria to listen to him before she entered the totally incoherent stage. He held both her wrists and tried to make his voice sound soothing. “But Maria, that doesn’t happen to—”
“Liz’s sister died,” Maria interrupted, seeming to grow smaller in front of him. “People our age die all the time. It’s not just Adam.”
“But—”
“I used to think there was all this time,” Maria said, a tear spilling over. “Huge amounts of time. I even thought you could control time with your mind—how stupid is that? I thought if you concentrated, you could stretch one minute out forever—see the tennis ball slowly coming toward the racket, you know?”
Actually, Alex didn’t, but he let her go on. Maybe venting would help. Besides, interrupting hadn’t worked so far.
“But now I know that you can’t control time. Time controls you,” she babbled, tears trembling on her eyelashes now. “And there are so many things I want to do. God, so many things.”
Alex shoved his hands into his pockets and felt around. He didn’t have a tissue or anything, of course. He ripped a sheet of blank paper out of his binder and handed it to Maria. He figured it was better than nothing, but she crumpled it up in her fist and kept on talking.
“It’s so stupid to want things,” she continued, looking around her like the answers were on the crappy concrete walls. “Or make plans. Or—”
“Wait. Hold up,” Alex said, firmly this time. “Go back to the part about the things you want to do. Tell me some of them.”
If he could get her to actually say something specific, he might be able to turn this around. Whatever it was she wanted to do, he’d help her do it. Start her own aromatherapy business or track down Brad Pitt so she could kiss him just once. Whatever it was, he’d probably only have to work on it for a couple of days. He loved Maria, but the girl did have sort of a short attention span. She’d forget about her mission the second another animal hit the endangered list.
Maria leaned against th
e dusty wall and slid down to the floor, arms wrapped around her knees. “There’s no point in telling you,” she said.
“Come on. I’ll be your best friend,” Alex teased. He sat down next to her, pulling his long sweatshirt down to cover the butt of his baggy pants. “Whatever it is you want, I’ll help you figure out how to get it.”
She snorted and covered her eyes with her hands. “You can’t,” she answered. “I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting … and Michael still doesn’t love me. At least he doesn’t love love me. And I just don’t know if I’m going to live long enough for him to actually figure out that … that … he should. That no one else is ever going to care about him as much as I do.” Tears coated her cheeks and hands, and there were little smudges of makeup under her eyes. “Even if we both live to be a hundred, I don’t think he’s going to get it.”
She pressed her forehead against her knees. Alex stared helplessly down at her crazy curls, his heart going out to his friend. This was way out of his league. He’d known she had a thing for Michael, but he hadn’t realized that she had fallen heart and soul for the guy.
“If he doesn’t get it, then he’s a fool,” Alex told her, putting his hand on her back.
Maria snorted a laugh. “Unfortunately we both know that’s exactly what he is.”
Liz’s heart gave a little flutter as Trevor sat down across from her at the cafeteria table. She wasn’t fooled into thinking he was actually Max, but it still affected her to see him.
“How’s it going?” she asked, trying not to look at him. “Any trouble?”
“Nope,” Trevor said, sliding his cafeteria tray into place in front of him. “Isabel told me Max is pretty quiet in class, doesn’t really volunteer, but knows the right answer if he’s called on. The information the Kindred gave me to study before I came here covered way more than what I needed to know to be a good high school student.”
“I bet,” Liz answered, looking past him at the door to the hallway. She was relieved when she spotted Maria, Alex, and Isabel coming toward them. Talking to Trevor one-on-one would be no problem if he looked like Trevor, but it was too painful this way. Every time she glanced at him, she was slammed by the memory of her encounter with Max that morning.
Not Max, she reminded herself. The consciousness.
“What’s shakin’?” Alex asked hypercheerfully, clearly having appointed himself group morale booster. He sat down on one side of her, and Maria sat down on the other, Isabel sliding onto the bench next to Trevor.
“There’s something I need to tell you guys, but I want to wait for Michael to get here,” Liz said, playing with the cap on her water bottle.
“You’re going to cut an album and you want us to sing backup?” Alex joked. But his voice had gone down several points on the cheerometer, and Liz knew that he knew her news was of the not-good kind.
“He’s coming,” Isabel said, lifting her chin in the direction of the food line, where Michael was just accepting his change. She carefully spread a layer of grape jelly on her turkey sandwich, then added dollops of ketchup. Her blue eyes were focused on the sandwich as if it was the most important thing in her life. Clearly she’d picked up on the not-good vibe, too.
“Liz has something to tell us,” Maria blurted out before Michael’s butt got all the way into the seat next to Isabel’s.
“What now?” Michael said, sounding resigned.
“When I was visiting Max this morning, he woke up,” Liz said.
“What?” Isabel said, her eyebrows shooting up.
“Wait,” Liz said, lifting her hands before Isabel could get too excited. “At least I thought it was him. Then I realized he was being completely controlled by the consciousness.”
“How?” Isabel demanded. She picked up her sandwich, then put it back down as if she couldn’t remember what it was for.
“He said some un-Max-like stuff,” Liz answered, avoiding Isabel’s gaze. She didn’t want to go into it. In fact, she wanted to forget that it had ever happened. Not that that was possible. His words—its words—were seared into the flesh of her brain. “The consciousness wants Max to return the Stones. I don’t think it’s going to give up until it gets them.”
Michael and Trevor exchanged a glance that sent a chill down Liz’s spine.
“If the Stones are returned to the home planet, it’s over,” Trevor said with a serious doomsday tone. “Without them we have no chance of shattering the consciousness.”
“Then we have to keep Max from finding them,” Alex said, rubbing his hands together. “Simple, right?”
“Yeah, but you haven’t seen what Max can do when the consciousness has control of him,” Liz said, her stomach feeling as heavy as lead as she remembered how consciousness Max had once brutally attacked DuPris. “He’s … dangerous.”
Isabel dropped her head into her hands, and Liz immediately wished she hadn’t said anything. She knew it was hard for Isabel to hear everyone talk about her brother like this. But it was all, unfortunately, true. And it wasn’t Max’s fault.
“Then we need two teams,” Alex said as he leaned back in his chair. “One team will keep working on a way to annihilate the consciousness, and the other …”
“The other can hang with Max and take him on a wild-goose chase,” Maria finished, perking up slightly. “We can make the consciousness believe we want to help it find the Stones and keep it distracted.”
“We are so on the same wavelength,” Alex said, crunching into a nacho.
“Huh. Go figure,” Michael said, rubbing his chin.
“What?” Alex asked, his brow scrunching up.
“You two came up with a good plan,” Michael deadpanned. “Didn’t think it was possible.”
“Oh, very funny,” Maria said.
“I’ll be on the distract-the-consciousness team,” Liz volunteered, raising her hand to shoulder level.
“I’ve got to be on the other one,” Trevor said, leaning his elbows on the table. “No way would the consciousness accept that I’d be willing to give it the Stones.” He took a sip of his Lime Warp and grimaced.
Michael tossed him a couple of packets of hot sauce. “I’ll work with you on trying to figure out what we can do with the two Stones we have.”
“Just give me a chance to sew some sequins on a leotard, and you can call me your lovely assistant,” Maria volunteered. She glanced at Liz. “Unless you want to switch,” she said. “I get the feeling the consciousness wasn’t exactly, um, nice to you.”
Best-friend telepathy. It almost never fails, Liz thought. “Thanks. But I keep thinking about that day in the hangar, when Max was Max again, totally Max, just for those few seconds. If that happens again, I want to be there.”
God, did she want to be there. She needed something from the real Max to make her stop thinking about what had happened that morning.
“I do, too,” Isabel said quickly. Liz knew that the two of them were thinking exactly the same thing—please, please, please let me have one real moment with Max.
“So, Michael’s the only one who knows where the Stones are, huh?” Trevor asked Maria. They sat side by side on the hood of Michael’s big old Cadillac, waiting for him to teleport back to the desert so they could get to work.
“Yeah, I guess he figured it was safer that way,” Maria answered, coughing as the wind kicked up a sand cloud all around them.
At least it’s nothing personal, Trevor thought. It’s not as if Michael told everyone except me. Although Trevor wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it had gone down. He knew helping kill DuPris had gone a long way toward winning back Michael’s trust. But he wasn’t sure if his brother had gotten over the fact that Trevor had used their relationship to try to get close enough to one of the Stones so he could bring it to DuPris, back when Trevor still thought DuPris was almost a god.
“You look like him, you know?” Maria commented, leaning back a little so she could study his face. “Same eyes. Same hands. Same basic build. You even h
ave some of the same expressions—like the raising-one-eyebrow thing.”
Trevor raised one eyebrow at her, and she smiled. “Looking like him, that seems to be a good thing by earth standards.”
“Oh yeah,” Maria said. Then a faint blush colored her cheeks. Trevor always noticed stuff like that—blushes, teary eyes, rapid breathing. The way the human body responded to emotion fascinated him, although the sensations could be almost creepy when he felt them happening to himself. “I think I see him coming back,” she added, jerking her chin toward a mesquite bush.
“You’re right,” Trevor agreed. He could see a network of veins forming. Blood began to rush through them, then muscle and bone began appearing, followed by the internal organs until Michael’s body was whole again except for two empty eye sockets.
“This is the part that makes me eww,” Maria confessed, shuddering slightly as she squeezed her eyes shut.
“Something about me makes you eww?” Michael asked as his gray eyes solidified.
“Many things,” Maria answered, peeking to make sure Michael was all intact.
Why don’t I believe that? Trevor thought, catching the little swirls of pleasure that had appeared in Maria’s aura as Michael teased her.
“So I have the Stones. Now what do we do?” Michael asked, slapping his hands against his dusty jeans.
Trevor shrugged. “Basically we’re trying to find a way to boost their power,” he answered. “But I have no idea how.”
“Maybe we could each hold a Stone and then connect, and see if the two Stones are more powerful when they’re linked through the connection,” Michael suggested.
“First you’d have to see how powerful they are when you use them together unconnected,” Maria said. She slid off the hood and grinned. “Hey, I sounded like Liz for a second. Go, science girl.”
She’s so adorable, Trevor thought. So bouncy. Bouncy hair, bouncy personality. He shot a glance at his brother. What was the guy’s problem? Didn’t he notice how attractive Maria was?
