by Tim O'Rourke
But I didn’t have time to worry about whether I’d been wrong or right to say what I had to Calix. And besides, he had deserved a little bit of pain for what he had put me through since arriving in Shade. For groping my arse at every opportunity, for watching me in the shower, kissing me, and just generally being a complete and utter dickhead. Pushing thoughts of Calix from my head for the hundredth time since arriving in Shade, I headed away from the outlines of the figures that had been drawn on the wall. Placing the box on the floor some distance away from the wall, I turned around to face it. I drew my gun from the holster and tried to remember what my uncle had told me. He had said that I had to take off the safety. He had pointed to what looked like small switch. I slid it sideways with my thumb. Uncle Sidney had then said it was simple, all I had to do, once the safety was off, was point and pull the trigger.
With my arm outstretched before me, elbow locked, gun held tight in my fist, I pointed the gun at the head of one of the weird-looking figures that had been drawn on the wall. Screwing one eye shut, I squeezed down on the trigger. The gun seemed to explode in my hand, my arm recoiled violently upwards. Brick and plaster showered down from the ceiling above and I screamed.
Over the sound of the gunshot ringing in my ears, I heard the sound of clapping, followed by laughing. I spun around, gun raised again.
“Don’t shoot, me,” Calix smirked, stepping from the doorway and into the building. Mocking me, he raised his hands into the air. “I give up! You can take me. Just don’t shoot me, Mila.”
“Very funny,” I said, turning around, my cheeks glowing red. Why did Calix have to be watching just as I had nearly blown my own head clean off? “What are you doing out here anyway? I thought you’d run off to lick your wounds.”
“I’ve sorted things out with Rush,” Calix said. “It was just a misunderstanding.”
“It didn’t look like just a misunderstanding to me,” I said, taking aim with my gun at the wall again. I wasn’t going to let him put me off. “You nearly smashed Rush’s face in.”
I squeezed down on the trigger again. My arm recoiled, but not so much. The bullet still screamed wide, thundering into one of the nearby window frames. Splinters of wood and brick dust exploded up into the air. I looked at the jagged window frame and couldn’t help but think of my own bedroom window and the scratches and claw marks around it. In my mind’s eye, I saw those scratches that zigzagged all the way down my back.
I felt Calix’s hand close over mine, the one that held the gun. I snatched my hand away. The gun suddenly fired again. A bullet ricocheted off the stone floor and into the wall. Red brick dust shot up into the air like a spray of dried blood.
“For fuck’s sake,” Calix berated me, grabbing the gun from my hand. “You’re going to get yourself killed – or worse, kill me.”
“Give that back!” I shouted, snatching for the gun. He placed it behind his back. I made another grab for it, but Calix grabbed me instead, pulling me close.
“Let go of me!” I shouted, twisting violently in his arms. “Or I’ll tell Rea.”
“Tell Rea what, exactly?” he sneered, pushing me away.
“I know what’s going on between you two, and I don’t think she would be very happy if she knew that you couldn’t keep your filthy hands off me,” I shouted.
“You sound like you’re jealous,” he said, taking my gun from behind his back.
“Jealous?” I scoffed. “If you really think that then you’re even more stupid than you look.”
“Think what you like,” Calix huffed. “But standing and groaning and moaning like some old witch isn’t going to make you a better shot. It isn’t going to protect you from the werewolves.”
“So you admit that I was right then and there are werewolves in Shade,” I said.
“There might be, but it ain’t the werewolves that you should be scared of,” he said.
“Who then, if not the wolves?” I asked.
Without saying anything, Calix raised my gun and fired over and over again at the odd looking outlines sketched onto the wall.
Chapter Nine
The bullets thundered into the heads of the thin-looking people with the stretched hands, which had been drawn on the walls. When the gun was empty, Calix tossed it through the air at me, and I caught it. He caught my stare with his cool blue eyes.
“Do you want me to teach you to shoot or not?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything. The seconds ticked away.
“Suit yourself,” Calix grunted, heading across the room to the door.
Thinking of the wolf-man that had sprang up to my window, and suspecting that he would return again, I knew that however much I disliked the idea, I needed Calix’s help. “Wait,” I called out.
He stopped at the door and looked back at me, one eyebrow cocked.
“Yes, I need your help,” I said, the last of my pride slowly ebbing away. “But no touching… no groping me, okay?”
Calix said nothing. He took off his coat, hanging it from one of the broken pieces of glass that jutted from the window frames. As usual, Calix wasn’t wearing a T-shirt beneath his coat. The rows and rows of black unreadable writing seemed to ripple across his taut body.
“Do you always have to strip half naked?” I said as he came toward me.
“Frightened I might turn you on?” he said.
“You don’t frighten me, Calix, and you definitely don’t turn me on,” I said.
“So what does turn you on?” he asked, picking up the box that Morten had given me. He removed the lid.
“I’m not telling you,” I said.
“I thought it was werewolves that got you going…”
“Why do you say that?” I cut in, thinking of what might or might not have happened between me and that wolf-like man last night.
“Because you haven’t stopped babbling on about them ever since you showed up in Shade,” Calix said, peering not at me, but into the box. Then quickly changing the subject, he added, “Where the fuck did you get these bullets from?”
“Augustus Morten gave them to me – the gravedigger…”
“I know who he is,” Calix cut in. “But why did he give you these?”
“So I could practice…”
“Practice what?” Calix said. “Blowing the gun up in your face? These bullets are, like, a hundred years old. They’re not fit for shit.”
“Do you think Morten gave them to me to kill me?” I gasped, wondering if I’d thought wrong about the healthy mistrust the gravedigger and I felt for each other.
“Why do you think Morten would want to kill you?” Calix frowned.
“Why did he give me those old bullets?”
“Because the old sod is going senile, that’s why,” Calix said, placing the box down and sliding it away across the floor with one sharp prod of his boot. “What does a gravedigger know about guns – about killing?”
“How many have you killed?” I asked, watching him take six bullets from the belt he wore about his waist.
“Killed what, exactly?” he asked.
I took a deep breath and then said, “Have you ever killed a Beautiful Immortal?”
“Have you?” Calix smiled, taking hold of my hand that held the gun.
I instinctively tried to pull away, but he had hold of my hand tight. “Let go,” I said.
“Don’t cry your eyes out,” he grinned. “I just want to show you how to load the gun…”
“I’m not crying!” I shot back.
“Look, you’re gonna have to take that stick out of your arse, because this isn’t going to work if every time I get too close you freak out with excitement,” Calix said.
“I know how to load the gun, thank you very much,” I said, snatching the bullets from him and sliding them into the chamber. “I think I have that figured out.”
“That’s all you have figured out,” Calix said, gripping me by the shoulders and spinning me around. He faced me toward the sketches on the wall at the far end
of the room.
I felt his body pressed close to mine as he reached over my shoulder, taking hold of my arm and raising it, aiming at the wall. I couldn’t help but tense up.
“Relax,” he whispered in my ear.
“I am relaxed,” I said, his breath against my neck, making my skin suddenly tingle.
“Drop your shoulder a little,” he said, his face now flush next to mine.
I could feel the stubble that covered the lower half of his face against mine. It felt coarse and prickly. It made my skin feel like it had when waking to find Calix kissing me. From behind, I felt one of his legs slide between mine. I tensed up again, thigh muscle locking tight. He kicked my legs apart. “You need to get your stance right. Keep your legs apart.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I whispered, screwing one eye closed, taking aim at the outline of the strange-looking figure in the distance.
“Now who’s the tease?” he whispered, raising my arm a fraction, helping with my aim.
I felt my heart quicken as I slowly squeezed down on the trigger.
“Nice and slow,” Calix whispered into my ear.
My heart raced faster.
“Real slow,” he whispered, his voice soft against my ear. “Make the gun part of you. Make the gun nothing more than an extension of you – of who you are…”
The gun roared in my fist as the bullet screamed from it. As if in the very same instance, a puff of brick dust exploded from the head of the drawing on the wall at the far end of the room.
“Perfect,” Calix whispered, turning me around to face him.
With my heart still racing and our faces within kissing distance, I felt Calix slide one hand down my back, over the scratches hidden beneath my hoodie. I blinked, and in that moment of darkness I saw myself taking the wolf-man into my arms, into my bed…
I slipped from beneath Calix’s arm. Holstering my gun, I ran toward the doorway.
“Where are you going?” Calix called after me. “That shot was perfect.”
I ran back to the top of the hill, then down the other side of it. I leapt over the stile and dropped down into the narrow track. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Calix standing alone on the crest of the hill. The shadow he cast was long and black, stretched thin like the outlines of those people etched with chalk on the walls of that remote brick house. Turning, I ran back toward Shade, for I feared that if I stayed with Calix, he would have kissed me, and this time I might not have wanted him to stop.
Chapter Ten
I raced back along the path and into the park. Thunder suddenly roared in the distance and lightning flashed behind the rolling storm clouds that now filled the sky. I passed the closed schoolhouse, the swing, and ran toward the cottage on the opposite side of the park. With the gun bouncing off my thigh and heart racing, I pushed on. Not once did I look back. Not once did I take the briefest of glimpses back over my shoulder to see if Calix had come after me. Why would he? Why would I want him to? As I drew near to the cottage where I now lived, I started to slow. There was someone huddled in the doorway. It was hard to see exactly who it was, as the late afternoon shadows had drawn long. The tree in the front garden did little to aid my view as the old branches swept back and forth in the growing wind. Who had come to pay me a visit? The butcher? Or perhaps another of the vacant-looking villagers who blamed me for the death of Annabel?
I pushed open the front gate and headed up the path. I stopped halfway. The figure standing at my door turned around to face me. The collar of their coat was turned up. Whoever it was peered from over the top of it at me. It was Rush looking back at me. Turning to face me, he smiled. Now that smile I would’ve recognised anywhere. It was kind and endearing. I needed to be with someone who was going to be kind to me right now. But was his smile so disarming that I had forgotten how I suspected that he had perhaps lied to me about how long he and the others had been in Shade?
“Hey, Mila,” Rush smiled.
I smiled back at him as I fished the front door key from my pocket. “Hi, Rush. What are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing. You looked pretty upset yesterday after the quarrel between me and Calix.”
“It was more than a quarrel,” I said, sliding the key into the front lock and pushing open the door. “He punched you in the face.”
Rush put his fingertips to his mouth as if suddenly remembering how hard his brother had hit him. I couldn’t help but notice how the split in his lip had healed already. Perhaps Calix hadn’t hit Rush as hard as I had first thought. Rush stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He followed me through to the kitchen. The lights and electricity were still out, so I lit three candles and placed them about the kitchen. Another boom of thunder rattled the old windows in their frames. The sky sparked with lightning and the kitchen momentarily lit up in strobes of blue, purple, and white.
“This place is as warm as toast,” Rush said, warming his hands near to the stove.
I peered into the bottom of it and could see that the coals Calix had piled into it yesterday were now nothing more than glowing embers.
“Here, let me refill it for you,” Rush said, scooping up the sack of coals and shaking some into the bottom of the stove. A puff of black dust shot up into the air, making me cough and my eyes water. “Are you okay?” Rush asked, placing the sack down again.
“I’m fine,” I said. “It was just the coal dust…”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, looking at me with his keen eyes. “You look kind of rattled.”
And I was rattled. I was more than rattled. I felt like I’d been shaken up, spun around, then dropped from a great height. If I were honest with myself, I felt as if I were being unravelled somehow – unpicked at the seams. How did I even begin to tell Rush how confused I felt? I wanted to ask him if he had lied to me. I wanted to know what had really happened between me and that wolf-man last night – or even if he had really been there at all. But how could I even begin to explain such a thing to Rush? Worse still, how could I tell Rush that, even though I disliked Calix, I’d had to fight the urge to let him kiss me – for me to kiss him – as he taught me how to fire the gun? Rush and I had kissed, we had shared a moment only just the other night. If there was any man in Shade that I had wanted to share such things with it had been Rush. But as I now stood and looked at him just feet away, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. Sure, he was hot with the sexiest smile I had ever seen, but could I trust him? Did something else lie behind those come-to-bed eyes and kiss-me smile?
“Why didn’t you tell me that Annabel had an identical twin called Clarabel?” I said.
Rush looked momentarily surprised by my sudden question. “Didn’t I?”
“No, you didn’t?”
“Is it important?” he asked.
“It is to me.”
“Why?”
“Because those children had been put in my charge…” I started.
“Clarabel was sick, wasn’t she? Away from school?” Rush said. “You would’ve met her soon enough.” Before I’d had a chance to say anything more, Rush quickly added,” I know what this is all about. Why you look so miserable and confused.”
“No, you don’t. You really have no idea what I’m thinking about,” I sighed.
Rush came forward around the edge of the table, and took my hands in his. They felt coarse and strong. “You still feel guilty about what happened to Annabel, but I thought we talked about this the other night. I told you that you weren’t to blame for what happened to her. And I was telling you the truth.”
“Did you tell the truth about everything?” I said, sliding my hands from his.
Rush frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“The night you first led me to this house, you said that you hadn’t known the woman that once lived here. You told me that she had died many years ago. But the other night you said that you had known her and that her name had been Julia Miller. You said that she had
travelled from Switzerland with you. Why did you lie to me about that?” I asked.
Rush stared at me. He didn’t look angry by what I’d said, if anything he looked a little hurt. “It was never my intention to lie to you, Mila. But the night I first brought you to this house – the night you arrived in Shade – I didn’t know you. You were a complete stranger to me. I didn’t know – none of us knew why you had really come to Shade – and we still don’t.”
I looked up at him. Had I been too harsh – too unbelieving of him and suspicious? He was right in what he had just said. I had kept a certain amount of truth about myself from him. I had told him I came from Twisted Den, when really I had come from Maze. I had told him, Rea, and Calix that I‘d had to leave Twisted Den and my boyfriend because I was in danger there. But the truth was that I had never even been to Twisted Den. The closest I had come was driving around the outskirts of it as I made my way to Shade. And even though Rush had taken the time to comfort me the other night – even though he was the only person who really believed I was not responsible for the death of Annabel, I hadn’t shown the same faith and trust in him. Rush still had no idea who I was or why I had come to Shade, and here I stood accusing him of lying to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning away.
Rush gently cupped his hand around my chin and turned my head to face him again. “Will you stop saying sorry the whole time, Mila,” he said, voice soft. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“But I do,” I whispered, knowing that if I were to ever tell the truth about why I had come to Shade and who I had come searching for, the time was now. “I’m the liar here, not you, Rush.”
“What, you lied about seeing a werewolf?” he said, but not in the accusing tone I had used on him.
“No, not about the werewolves,” I said, shaking my head at him. “That much is true. I have seen a werewolf. It comes here – to the house each night and sits at the end of the garden path.”
