by Ching, G. P.
When all was told, the medicine woman sat back on her heels and stroked the beads around her neck. “I have dreamt of this.”
Raine’s eyes widened. She’d expected Willow to think she was crazy like the men in white uniforms who’d taken her to the hospital.
“I dreamt that Kótyangwúti, Spider Woman, the creator of all things, crawled down her web into my home. She has the body of a spider but the head of a woman. Kótyangwúti wove me a story from her web. First, she fashioned a child, then tore him in two. Half she put under a basket woven from bad spirits and the other half she put on top of the basket. The one on top she made whole again, a new child. I saw others, strange Kachinas I’d never seen before, join hand in hand with the child. Together they faced the bad spirits, battling under the basket. I saw a great uprising and many lost souls. Spider Woman told me to pray, for the fate of many people lies in the hands of a few, including the torn child.”
“What does it mean?” Raine asked.
“I think Cheveyo is our torn child, body from soul. If your story is true, I think his body is in the underworld and his soul is wandering. Spider Woman is our intercessor between the heavens and the underworld. I believe the rest of the dream means we cannot intercede. Cheveyo has an important role to play. If he saves himself, he’ll save others as well.”
“But, Willow, we can’t just leave him out there. He needs to know how sick he made me. He has no idea the damage he’s doing to the boy he’s in.”
The old woman shook her head. “Rest now, Raine. Trust me. What Cheveyo needs is space to make mistakes and to learn from them.”
“But—”
She rose to her full height, which wasn’t impressive. “If you want to help, pray for the good Kachinas to come to him, for guidance.”
Raine watched Willow leave, heart heavy for Cheveyo and the boy he possessed. She hoped the medicine woman was right. But she also prayed for her own health because as soon as she was strong enough, she planned to find Cheveyo and try to help him.
For now though, the sickness was overwhelming. All she could do was sleep.
Chapter 14
Dead and Gone
Cheveyo needed a doctor, or else the boy he’d possessed did. In the bathroom mirror of room twenty, Jaden’s puffy face reflected his internal turmoil. His stomach churned ominously. Throat red and swollen, each breath was painful. After the first few days possessing his body, Cheveyo rarely heard from the boy. Jaden seemed to sleep more and more at the back of his skull, but Cheveyo needed him to wake up now because, as sick as he was, he worried the boy had caught the flu, or worse, might be going into anaphylactic shock from the peanut butter sandwich he’d had for lunch.
“Jaden! Jaden, wake up!”
Grmph
“Are you still in there?”
Why … are you … doing this? the small, raspy voice bubbled groggily at the back of his brain.
“Thank God. Listen, dude. Are you allergic to something?”
No.
“You don’t look so good.”
Tired…
“Jaden?”
Gone again. Cheveyo frowned and pulled Jaden’s lower eyelid down to inspect the red rim. Definitely something wrong with this body.
“He’s dying.” The snake woman’s voice came from outside the bathroom.
Cheveyo poked his head through the door, swallowing his apprehension. On the dingy brown bedspread, the beautiful blonde woman perched in a golden gown, her pearly white wings curled angelically behind her. As frightening as her snake form was, this one was equally disturbing. Too attractive. A terrible beauty.
“What’s happening to him?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, the corner of her mouth lifted. “You’re killing him, idiot. A human body isn’t built to house two souls. All of his metaphysical connections are frying like eggs on a Phoenix sidewalk.”
“Should I jump?” he rasped. His throat protested, blazing with every word.
She uncrossed her legs, rose, and paced the small room. “There’s been a shift in the air. The Soulkeepers are close.”
“The evil ones?”
“Yes. The boy we seek is among them. Dane. Once you possess him, let the others take you home with them. Then you strike.”
“Strike. What do you want me to do?”
“No questions!” she snapped. She waved a hand and the table and tea appeared again, the scent of cinnamon rising from the steaming cup. “All will be revealed in time.”
Cheveyo lowered Jaden’s aching body into the chair.
Too tired to lift the cup, Snake Woman brought the brew to his lips for him. “You will do as I say or you will never have your body back. You will spend eternity cocooned in rotting flesh. You must trust me.”
Cocooned in rotting flesh. So, he was killing Jaden. Guilt plowed into him. What had he done to Raine? Would Jaden even live through this? Great Spirit help him, he was confused.
“Drink.” Snake Woman raised the cup to his lips again.
The familiar warmth spread through him, warming him to his toes. “Thank you,” he said.
She set the cup down and rubbed her hands together. “I’m afraid your host is not long for this world,” she said. “But we can’t waste time finding a new one. I’ll have to lure Dane to you.”
“Should I go to work at the restaurant?”
Snake Woman snorted and shook her head, gesturing toward his arm. “You won’t make it.”
From fingertips to wrist, the boy’s arm had taken on a grayish hue. Cheveyo tried to wiggle the fingers, but nothing happened. Jaden was dying, and Cheveyo would be locked inside. He widened his eyes in panic.
“Imagine if he died, and they buried you inside his rotting body.” She chuckled.
Cheveyo gasped. “No. Please no.”
As if his fear gave her pleasure, she cackled even louder. “Don’t worry. You’re no use to me buried. Dane and I go way back. You lie down on the bed, and I’ll bring him to you.” Grinning wickedly, she turned toward the door, and as she did, her dress transformed into a tight Devil’s Canyon T-shirt and short shorts. She tucked her wings away inside her back and pulled her hair into a high ponytail.
He collapsed on the ugly comforter as the door clanged shut behind her. Jaden’s body weighed a thousand pounds. What if she left him here to die? What if he couldn’t get out? He closed his eyes, and held perfectly still aside from the warm tears that flowed easily down Jaden’s cheeks.
* * * * *
“Flagstaff is a quaint little town for a place teeming with demons.” Dane peered into the window of a fudge shop, thinking the smiling face on the sign was pitifully misinformed about the day.
“Yeah, I highly recommend a return trip when we’re not hunting flesh eaters. Do you want some? I’m sure evil can wait for peanut butter fudge.” Ethan’s lopsided grin reflected in the glass.
“Who could eat at a time like this?”
“I don’t know, the turtle bars look delicious.” He shrugged and continued down the boulevard, discreetly scanning a woman waiting for a bus for signs of the unholy.
Dane pulled his sunglasses from his back pocket and put them on, catching up to Ethan on the sidewalk. What should he look for? The rumor was Soulkeepers could sense Watchers. Could he?
“You never really answered my question in the car. Why did you tell your parents about me? That I was gay?” Ethan didn’t pause or make eye contact. The question was casual, matter-of-fact.
Dane cleared his throat. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s the truth, right?”
“Yes. It is the truth. I would never lie to anyone about being gay, but that doesn’t mean I offer that information to everyone. If you knew your parents wouldn’t be receptive, why tell them?”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Dane tried to answer honestly, but the truth, when it came to Ethan, wasn’t entirely clear to him. “I guess I just wanted them to know. It’s important to me that they accept you as you are.”
“Why?”
Ethan stopped short. “You did grow up in Paris, right? You do understand that your parents will never accept my sexual orientation. If you think they will, you’re dreaming.”
“It’s not okay. They shouldn’t feel that way.”
“Yeah, but now that they know, they won’t want me around anymore, Dane. They probably think I’m corrupting you, trying to lure you into my dark and wicked ways.” He shook has head and groaned. “You should have just let them go on believing what they wanted to. If you hadn’t confirmed it, your parents might never have known for sure.”
Dane rolled his eyes and continued down the sidewalk. “Who cares, anyway? My dad effectively kicked my ass out of the house. I’m eighteen; I can be friends with whomever I choose.”
“Hmm.”
“Hey, stop analyzing it. We’ve got work to do.”
“Don’t put me off.”
“It really doesn’t matter, okay. It was just the truth, and I was offended for you by what my dad said. He’s hateful. I was retaliating.” They walked on in silence, although he hoped Ethan was still looking for the Watchers because he wasn’t seeing anything through his fog of emotions. Mind racing with unexamined thoughts, Dane followed robotically.
After a good six blocks, Ethan stopped short again. This time, he turned so sharply that Dane almost walked into him. He lifted his sunglasses and grabbed Dane’s upper arms.
“I’m only going to say this once, so listen up,” he muttered.
Dane swallowed, blood pounding in his ears.
“I think you told your parents because you wanted to gauge their reaction. Now, you might have done that because you don’t want to be a farmer when you grow up, or maybe you don’t want to deal with your father’s illness, and you wanted to push them away. But there’s another reason you might’ve done it.”
“What?” Dane’s voice cracked.
Ethan seemed to notice for the first time that his fingers were digging into Dane’s arms. He took a small step back, releasing his shoulders. “I’m your friend. We’ve been friends since the day I nursed you back to health in Eden. I’ll always be your friend. But God help me, Dane, if I have to find out you’re gay from someone else, I’m going to kick your ass.” He gave him a push in the chest and turned on his heel.
“Wha—?” Dane started quietly, but Ethan was half a block ahead already. Of course he wasn’t gay. He couldn’t be gay. No Michaels in history had ever been homosexual. Why would Ethan think he was gay? Unless, Ethan was attracted to him. It made sense. They’d spent a lot of time together, and there were feelings, special feelings. Feelings he didn’t really understand. But Dane couldn’t think about that because being like Ethan wasn’t an option. It wasn’t who he was supposed to be. Not that it was wrong. He wasn’t a homophobe or anything. He supported Ethan, after all.
He tried to catch up with Ethan to explain but stopped short when he realized he wasn’t sure what he would say. His brain was filled with half sentences. How could he make him understand?
“Going somewhere?” the voice of his worst nightmare rained down from above. Auriel dropped from a fire escape onto the sidewalk beside him.
Dane tried to scream. Nothing came out but air. He turned to run, but her hand snatched his wrist, holding him to her. Ice water pumped through his veins. Auriel was the Watcher who’d influenced him sophomore year and tortured him in Hell. Not again. “Get away from me.” In a panic, he twisted his weight, forcing her backward into the sun. Watchers hated the sun; it drained their powers.
To his horror, she didn’t release his arm. Instead, she paused in the light, basking in the golden rays. “I’ve eaten well recently. Even the sun can’t bring me down.”
“Ethan!” Finally, his voice cooperated.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Ethan’s horrified expression, too late. Auriel folded him into her body and raced down the alley away from Ethan. She was ridiculously strong. Within her grasp, buildings flew by in a blur, her superhuman speed making him all but invisible to the passersby on the street. When the Desert Days Motel came into view, he thought he must be hallucinating from the terror. Was it possible she was taking him back to the same motel they’d started from, the one place no Soulkeepers would be because they were all out looking for the Watchers? She halted her run near the pool, conveniently empty of guests, and muscled him up the stairs to the second level.
“What do you want from me?” Dane whimpered. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”
“Oh no, I have bigger plans for you, human.” She pushed open the door to room twenty and thrust Dane inside.
Coming from the bright Arizona sun, Dane’s eyes struggled to adjust to the dark room, but the rank scent of death and decay hit him immediately. He blinked to adjust his vision. When his sight returned, he screamed and backed against the wall.
“Jesus!”
“Not here at the moment,” Auriel said. “Haven’t seen him in ages.”
Flies buzzed around the gray and bloated body on the bed. The obviously dead boy’s eyes had glazed over—open, milky, staring toward the door. What had he been waiting for?
“Touch him,” Auriel commanded.
Dane glanced at her and then at the dead boy. “No!”
She laughed. “Oh, come on, Dane. Don’t you want to meet the new Soulkeeper?”
That brought his head around. Auriel was positively giddy. She’d killed Cheveyo, and now she wanted to torture Dane by making him touch the body. He shook his head and pressed himself against the wall.
Auriel snatched his wrist, squeezed until he yelped in pain, and dragged him toward the bed. “As much as I’d love to play the ‘I don’t want to’ game with you, we are running out of time. Touch him!”
“Please, no.” He dug in his heels to no avail. His fingers moved closer and closer to the gray boy’s face. The corpse moved. A cloudy eye rolled in the boy’s head, and a finger twitched.
Dane flailed, fighting with everything he had. He expected he would pass out soon from fear. Instead, his entire body lurched, and a weird calm gripped him from the inside out. Everything slowed. A fly buzzed by, the wings stirring up dust in the air. His breath came and went in long draws.
She lowered his hand, and his palm connected with the dead boy’s face.
Worms. That’s what it felt like. The wriggly crawl of a million tiny bugs writhed through his fingers, inside his wrist, up his shoulder, and rooted in his brain. His body shivered. Auriel released his wrist.
It worked, a voice said from inside his head.
“It worked?” Dane repeated, although as a question. He furrowed his brow at the new weight inside his head.
What the hell? the boy’s voice said, panicked now.
“Don’t be so surprised, Cheveyo,” Auriel said. “I told you I would bring you a new body. Now we wait for lover boy and put our plan into motion.”
The boy’s scream inside Dane’s head came on like the worst migraine he’d ever had.
Chapter 15
Bait and Switch
Dane couldn’t comprehend what was going on, but based on experience, knew better than to ask Auriel. In the back of his brain, something—the voice, the boy—twisted like a sheet in the wind. The soul screamed painfully loud, but as Dane concentrated, he imagined a door in his mind’s eye—a big, heavy, steel door. He imagined himself pulling it closed, and when it was entirely shut, he was alone in his head again. A thought crossed his mind that it was not supposed to be this way, that Auriel had another plan for him gone wrong. But the idea was gelatin, jiggling and formless in his cranium, rendered moot by his pressing anxiety. He would remain silent and play along.
“He’s here,” Auriel said around a face-splitting grin. “Remember, Cheveyo, follow the plan. I will come to you again before they take you.”
The door blew in, torn off its hi
nges, and slammed against the far wall. Dane shielded his eyes from the resulting barrage of splintered wood. When he lowered his hand again, Ethan stood in the gaping hole, eyes as black as his T-shirt, jaw clenched, and hands balled into fists. A menacing wind coursed through the room.
“I will end you!” Ethan bellowed at Auriel. The splintered wood shot across the room at her along with a barrage of Eden’s throwing stars.
With a smirk, Auriel grabbed the dead boy and twisted into a column of black smoke. Boy and Watcher dissolved. The weapons landed harmlessly in the wall behind where she’d stood, cutting through the sulfur stench that lingered there.
“Are you okay?” Ethan was on him in an instant. He ran his hands down Dane’s arms, checked his face, his neck. “Did she hurt you? My God, you’re pale.”
“I’m fine.” Dane grabbed Ethan’s wrists to ease his inspection. The feel of his hands skimming over his skin was too intense. He couldn’t handle it. “I’m okay.”
Ghosts fleeted across Ethan’s dark eyes, tortured memories or visions gone unspoken.
Before he had time to think what he was doing, Dane pulled his friend into a tight embrace. “It’s going to be okay, Ethan. She’s gone.” Slowly, the tension bled from his shoulders.
“I thought you were taken, or worse, dead,” Ethan muttered. He whipped around toward the bed and grabbed his forehead. “Shit, the Watcher took Cheveyo.”
Cheveyo? Dane stepped away from Ethan and rubbed his temples. A splitting headache was coming on again, the voice inside him pounding on the steel door. Maybe this thing, this soul inside his head, was Cheveyo, but right now it felt like a tumor. He didn’t want to alarm Ethan, but he needed help.
“What’s going on, Dane?” Ethan asked nervously.
“I need to see Grace. Now.”
“She’s patrolling. Can it wait?”
“No.”
“Come on, man. What’s going on? Don’t leave me in the dark here.”
The jackhammer in his skull wasn’t getting any quieter. “I don’t think Auriel took Cheveyo.”
