Deviate

by Tracy Clark

  “Because,” Dun said, his normally kind, almond eyes widening with agitation, “we just saw Finn.”

  I was already in motion, dumping clothes out of bags and gathering up what was most obviously mine: jeans, a sea-green T-shirt, and basic athletic shoes. My heart was on fast-forward. I tossed a black T-shirt to Giovanni. “Did Finn see you?”

  “I was waiting for Mari outside an—an underwear store—and he spotted me. We had, like, a full-on conversation,” Dun said, throwing up his hands. “It was kind of unavoidable.”

  “Oh my God, I should have never let you go out there, Dun,” I said, motioning to him. “Look at you with your long black hair and brown skin. You look like some kind of six-foot Native American God plopped in the middle of Ireland.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to let Mari go alone,” he said defensively. “All this talk of aura-sucking killers. That would have been completely unchivalrous of me.”

  Giovanni was pulling the T-shirt down over his chest. I glanced away. “Does he know you’re with Cora?” he asked. “Does he know where we’re staying?”

  Mari threw up her hands. “Yes, indeed. I invited him for tea and scones, you—”

  “Actually,” Dun jumped in, “Mari threatened him.”

  This stopped all of us in our tracks.

  Mari beamed.

  “Yeah,” Dun said. “Told him that while she was aware he could suck the life out of us, if he ever came near you again, she would kick his ass before he got the chance.”

  I closed the bathroom door but yelled out to her. “Mari! He could’ve killed you!”

  “It was kind of sad, actually,” Dun said. “I always liked Sir Shamrock. He looked like crap, too.”

  Giovanni huffed.

  “Don’t feel bad for him,” my mother said with unusual ferocity. “They killed my husband.”

  I opened the bathroom door and tossed the robe on the bed. “Finn didn’t.”

  Why I’d defended him, I didn’t know. It was too quiet then and everyone’s eyes were averted but Giovanni’s. “No,” he said, his blue eyes tearing into me. “He nearly killed you, instead.”

  “He walked away,” Mari said. “Tail between his legs, dejected, like a sad little aura-stealing puppy. But before he did, he said to please tell you something…”

  Biting my lip, I waited to hear his message.

  “He said he was wrong. He said, ‘This tale does have an end.’”

  All the breath left my body. Feels like a tale with no beginning and no end.

  Only pure strength of will stopped me from sinking to my knees. Finn hadn’t changed his mind. He was going to let himself die. As an act of love, I’d done what I could to save him once. I was powerless now. Why’d this have to be the tale of my first love? He’d always be another of my ghosts. I’d have to find a way to let Finn go, to release him from my heart, or be haunted by him forever.

  “Dun and I ran around for a while to make sure he wasn’t following us,” Mari said, snapping me back to the present danger. “We returned when we thought it was safe.”

  “They have freaking superpowers, Mari! And Finn showed zero ability to control it. It’s never safe. Don’t forget that.”

  “You have powers, too.”

  “Yes. My ability to pull memories from objects is really going to help us.” Sarcasm wasn’t the best tactic with Mari, but she and Dun didn’t seem to get how dire our situation was.

  “That’s your sortilege, child?” my mother asked, astonishment clear on her face. “Uncanny.”

  “Why?”

  “Mine is to transfer memories into objects.”

  Our sortileges were opposites on a pole. A warm feeling of connection wound through me. My silver aura emulated that, reaching across the room for my mother.

  Mari zipped closed her backpack and carried it to the door. “My power is to be awesome. But you already know that.”

  “I knew that,” Dun muttered, a crushed-berry hue creeping into his cheeks and his aura.

  Within minutes, everyone had a backpack with meager supplies and a few personal items. We piled into the elevator and watched the floors tick slowly down to the lobby. Dun broke the uncomfortable silence. “I once heard that they put mirrors in elevators so people would be less impatient.”

  “I see the mirrors and I’m still impatient,” Mari said. “How are the mirrors supposed to help?”

  “Because people are entertained by looking at themselves.”

  “We’re all entertained by looking at you,” Mari told him.

  All I saw in the four-sided, mirrored box was what looked like an army of us, multiplied into infinity, and shimmering with colors: silver sparks and too much yellow. Too much fear. I wished we were an army. We needed to get to the car and get as far away from Dublin as possible, which, in a country the size of Indiana, was no easy feat. And an island to boot. Clancy was as slippery as smoke, and if he knew where Finn was, he could find us too easily.

  “The two of you can’t stay with us,” I said again. “I won’t let you.”

  “You can’t stop us,” Mari said over her shoulder. “We’re in this together until we can get you away from all this nonsense.”

  “Where do you suggest we go? My dad is dead. I can’t go back to California. They’ve probably got someone watching to see if I do. I tried to tell you that nowhere is safe until—”

  “Until they’re all dead,” Giovanni said, grimly.

  “We’ll get you all to Chile. Mami Tulke will know what to do. We’re family, and family’s got your back. Besides, I have an Aztec god as my bodyguard,” she said, smiling up at Dun. I wanted to flick the back of her hard head.

  The elevator chimed and the doors slid open.

  White light filled my vision.

  Twelve

  Finn

  There was fear in their eyes. Fear of me. A skinny Irish git who’d never hurt anyone on purpose. Cora had obviously told them what I was. It twisted my gut into a pathetic sack of coiled dread. Well, Mari may have attempted to conceal her fright, but I could hear the staccato of fear in her voice when she boldly threatened me. I had to respect her for that. Seeing her and Dun only confirmed my resolve; I’d never want to watch a person’s eyes pool with fear before me, then empty, as I drained the life from them.

  I carried my supplies: two small cans of paint, two brushes, some favorite foods and…whiskey. The lack of human energy would kill me eventually, but I wasn’t going to die without food and whiskey and the guitar on my back. I was doing a service to the world. Why should I suffer any more than I would? Call me a coward, but I had no idea how painful it might be to die from needing the life force of others. Hunger, dehydration, fire—those forms of death had to suck. Drowning never scared me. Sailing, like music, was my passion. I could die doing that and die happy.

  However, dying because I had no spark in me, no inner flame to keep me alive—well, that I didn’t fully know. I had a taste of it, to be sure, after I took from Cora and refused to take from another. It felt like my every cell was frostbitten. Every bone was hollowed of its marrow. The need choked off all good feelings. It felt like the icy breath of death was blowing on my embers. I’d go cold from need. At least the whiskey would warm me some before I died, and the food would be a reminder of the pleasures of life.

  I’d starve to death on my boat, just a different kind of starving.

  And what did it mean? That I had no light of my own? Why would there be a need for a breed of humans who could only plug in to others’ wattage and take? I was pointless.

  I walked through the coastal town of Dún Laoghaire, where my boat was stored at the yacht club. I’d left a note for my parents, telling them that I’d gone west, to the Cliffs of Moher. Perhaps they’d figure I’d jump from the knuckles of the craggy cliffs. Maybe I’d fooled them and could sail away to die in my own way. Though fooling my mother was not a task easily accomplished. I kept a watchful eye out for my parents as I approached the marina.

  Hopef
ully, they wouldn’t give Mary a hard time. Poor woman was obviously charged with the onus of watching my bedroom door. When I’d crept out in the early hours, I’d discovered her leaning against the wall in the hall, sound asleep on her duty. I’d blown her a kiss and hurried past.

  People walked along the harbor and I mixed in, taking in my last sight of the ocean from the vantage of dry land. The breeze kissed my skin and I inhaled a ragged, salt-filled breath. Loading my provisions on board took all of five minutes, then I got to work removing every item in the boat with its previous name on it. If my parents suspected where I’d gone, I didn’t want it to be so easy to find.

  The white paint easily covered over the letters I’d stenciled on the hull when I first got her. Amber. People assumed it was named for some girl, but the truth was, I got the idea after a crusty Polish fisherman told me a Lithuanian legend about the goddess Jurata, and how she fell in love with a fisherman. This angered her father so that he changed her into sea foam and destroyed her underwater palace made of amber. Baltic amber that washes in from the sea is said to be the ruins from her palace. I figured I’d name the boat in homage to what the goddess lost for love and because she is ever-present in the foam of the sea.

  For the new name, I’d chosen a green paint that was the closest approximation to the eyes that haunted me. Free-handing the script helped to tick the time away. The meticulous work gave my restlessness a hub to spin around, each brushstroke a meditation. I lost myself in the curve of Cora’s name until a chill passed over me, raising my hairs and making my hands shake. I wasn’t certain whether the ghostly shiver came from within or from the brackish wind whispering that the sun was sinking.

  I asked myself, for the hundredth time, do I really want to die?

  No matter how many times I asked, it came down to choice. I wanted to be normal, but I had no choice in that matter. I was a killer. If the choice was between my death and the senseless deaths of innocent people, then it was no choice.

  I slipped my arms into the supple sleeves of my leather jacket and stood on the undulant dock, admiring my paint job. At sunset, I’d be carried away by Cora. I sipped Jameson from the bottle, the vaporous tawny liquid doing its best to warm me from the inside. Intense shivering rattled me again. It was definitely not the ocean breeze. I recognized this chill.

  Because the customs of a sailor should always be observed, I christened the Cora with a liberal pour of whiskey and tipped some more into the gray sea—a gift to Manannán mac Lir. He once gave the gift of a golden cup that broke if three lies were told over it and was repaired by three truths. I always loved that idea, being put back together by truth.

  The buildings and hotels of the waterfront I kept to my back as I sailed out of the harbor. My eyes were fixed on the eternal sea. As I stood and stared, a line from an E.E. Cummings poem came to mind:

  For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It’s always our self we find in the sea.

  My epitaph.

  The craft took to the waves like she was eager, bobbing easily on the water as I sailed northeast. Howth dipped ahead on my left, its lighthouse winking at me, and beyond that, the Irish Sea. I lost myself in the motions of sailing, of handling my rig, of the elements and movement. My last dance with the sea.

  It’s not every day that you get to attend your own death like a guest. Rolling out the good memories of school chums and mischief, the sweet taste of strawberries and kisses, how laughter was a wild eruption, how falling in love felt like dropping and flying all at the same time. I held a smooth green apple and smelled it. I played my guitar, the notes louder in the cupped hands of the boat, the ocean calming as if it were listening intently to my song. I supposed it was.

  Hours drifted with me. A countdown.

  I played until my hands shook so violently that I couldn’t keep a chord. That was one of the sadder moments; letting the last note—a fitting D minor—rise up and carry away behind me with the wake of the boat.

  Every life leaves a wake.

  Numbness spread slowly through my arms and legs, creeping like a sluggish, cold wind up my extremities and into my torso. It started as a vague longing that blossomed into intense need. The way a man in the desert aches for water, or the drowning lung clutches for air, that was my desire for the presence of an actual person.

  The sun set on my trembling body and I lay there, humming a new, unfamiliar tune, and staring at the vast sea of stars. One of the things sailors know that those whose feet are firmly fixed on soil do not is that there are times in the still of night out on the ocean, when the stars and water reflect so brilliantly, you find yourself floating in the vast expanse of limitless distance and limitless time. It’s not small you feel, but enormous. You are the center of the universe for one infinite moment.

  It’s possible that feeling like death made me morbidly poetic.

  A powerful wave of nausea and trembling hit. I imagined that, to the wind, I must look like another pitiful, quaking leaf barely clinging by a thin, dry vein.

  I wrapped myself in a plaid blanket, the tartan of the Doyle family, and pressed my shaking fear and ravenous hunger against the solid curve of the boat. Hot tears slid from my eyes and I swiped angrily at my face. I wanted to be valiant. I wanted to be a man about this business of dying. But how do you fall into the stars when no one will be there to catch you?

  As I fixed my eyes on the constellation Boötes, I set my thoughts on Cora.

  Around her, I’d felt warm and comfortable, like I could drop every preening, false affect and just be me. Our time together was a contradiction. Everlasting and short. When I first saw her, it felt like the universe had been holding its breath, waiting. And when we met face-to-face, it sighed a breath of eternity. I loved her like I loved my music, because it was a part of me. Was she a part of me because I had sipped her aura like syrup? That conflicting thought made me lie there and question if I understood love at all.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been lying on the seat of the boat, staring up into the night sky. I’d drift off, weakness so heavy that it was the arms of giant gods, grasping me, pulling me down. Each time I came to for a brief moment, my first thought was of Cora. Each time I slipped under, her name was on my lips. I wanted the memories of her light and sweet love to carry me from this place.

  Thirteen

  Cora

  I gasped, instinct pressing me against the back of the elevator, away from the brilliant white light.

  “Hello, pet,” Clancy Mulcarr said to my mother with a slimy smile. Flanking him were two men I’d never seen. Their bulk filled the doorway, trapping us inside. “We were just coming to collect you.”

  “Finn,” I said, more an accusation. How else could they know where to find us?

  “You need not be worryin’ your pretty curls about Finnegan,” Clancy said, bitterness spiking his words so they stung. “He’s got a date with death, he has.”

  All breath left me. Death.

  Before I could react or act, Giovanni’s left hand swiped the air and my mother skidded sideways like a chess piece, right into me, knocking my chin with her head. He stood defensively in front of both of us, ready to protect.

  But before he could, Giovanni clutched his chest and bowed forward toward Clancy like a servant. His beautiful silver aura raged and swirled—a whirlpool of sparks in front of him, as he fought the pull. I felt the yank of Clancy’s aura stab into my own chest. Surely my mother was being attacked as well. She whimpered with her arms crossed over her heart and tried to turn away from Clancy, toward the corner of the elevator.

  I’d never conceived an Arrazi would have the power to take from three of us at once.

  Without word or warning, Dun’s body sprang forward, black hair spreading like a skirt, and he slammed a punch into Clancy’s face. Clancy stumbled backward onto the floor, grasping his nose.

  Mari thrust something at me behind her back. I grabbed the small black cylinder with one hand and my mother’s hand with the other. I knew exac
tly what it was and how to use it. My father had made sure I knew. I never told him I’d stopped carrying one long ago.

  Mari shoved through the elevator doors, with me and my mom behind her. As we passed, I sprayed the closer of the two men in the face with pepper spray. I tried to hit Clancy with a shot. He lurched to grab me, and I slipped forward into the stinging mist. We rushed toward the doors at the front of the hotel. My eyes and face burned from the pepper spray. My mom’s hand remained clasped in mine as I pulled her like a child. Clancy cursed in Irish as we bolted away, past shouts and scuffling sounds, causing everyone in the lobby to gasp and point. I dared a look behind me.

  Through watery eyes, I could see the other man had snagged Mari by the arm, pulling her roughly toward the elevator. “Not her! I don’t care about her!” screamed Clancy, coughing and pointing at us with blood dripping from his nose into his white mustache. “Them!”

  Dun crashed into the man holding Mari, knocking them into the mirrored doors of the elevator. Shards of glass cascaded around them, raining onto the polished floor. The man lost his grip on Mari and she darted in our direction with Dun following.

  My eyes weren’t on them running toward us but beyond them. I watched, helpless, as Clancy used his power to weaken Giovanni to his knees. His mouth hung open like he was fighting for air. I screamed.

  Dun whirled around to see what I was screaming at as Mari crashed into my mother and me and pushed us out through the glass doors into the fading sunlight. As good as it felt, as unbelievable as it was that we might escape, I fought to get back inside. I had to help Giovanni and Dun. Mari held tightly to my wrist. “Mari, let go! Clancy will kill them!”

  I wrenched free from her grasp and reached the door to go back inside. I couldn’t imagine them taking Giovanni—or what they’d do to him if they let him live. His first impulse had been to protect my mother, to protect me. Now he needed protecting. But before I could open the door, Dun and Giovanni spilled out of it, breathless and frantic. Giovanni limped with one arm draped over Dun’s shoulder as we ran aimlessly through the streets of Dublin.