“Is that the guy from the article?” Ketchup asks.
“Yeah, I think so.” I flip through the rest of the pages and quickly realize there’s a pattern. Some random article about a man or woman, and then their obituary. “They’re all dead.”
“Who are they?” Ketchup asks.
I shake my head, not recognizing a single one of them. “Did Annabelle… kill them?”
“Did Zander?” Ketchup counters.
I honestly don’t know. Did these people deserve it? What if they’re Eroi? What if they’re Godlings? I drop the papers into my lap and look up at Ketchup. “What do we do with this?”
He shrugs. “I have no clue. It’s not really useful unless we know who these people are and why they were killed.” He takes the papers from me and pulls out his phone. “I’ll take a picture of each one so we can look into it more later.”
“Did you find the phone?” I ask.
“Sorry, nada. They must have it with them.”
“That’s risky to take it with them when they’re training with David. What if he found it?”
Ketchup snaps picture after picture with his phone, but he still manages to say, “I’m sure they’re smart enough to lock it up in the car or something. David won’t find it. Even if he did, I’m positive Isolde is smart enough to make sure it doesn’t lead back to her.”
“True.” That actually makes me feel a little better. When Ketchup hands the papers over to me, I stick them back in the envelope and secure it to the bottom of the drawer. Ketchup helps me up as soon as everything is back in place.
We don’t bother playing 007 on the way back to the car. We’re already late for Laney’s party, anyway. I don’t feel much in a party mood at the moment, but I know she’ll be upset if we don’t show up. Ketchup seems even less thrilled about the party. I’m sure putting up with Laney’s constant freaking out while I was out of school made him want to hang out with her even less. Trying to make up for it, I snuggle against his shoulder. His sour expression mellows, and he draws me in closer.
By the time we pull up to Laney’s house, we’re both in a better mood. Maybe whatever Zander was hiding isn’t as big of a deal as we thought it was. Nothing has started falling down around my ears so far. Maybe I should just trust him to handle it.
The gate to the backyard is propped open, but before we start through it, Ketchup pulls up. “Dang, I left my phone in the car. I’ll be right back.” He drops a quick kiss on my cheek before dashing back to his car.
Since I don’t feel like bursting into the party solo, I lean against the side of the house to wait. I close my eyes for just a minute. Tonight’s activities were pretty draining. I know Ketchup will be back in just a minute, but another voice startles me out of the moment.
“No, I haven’t had many chances to talk to her lately,” Noah says in a hushed but forceful tone. “She’s still weak physically, and she’s back to work. Add in her training, and the fact that I can’t get more than five seconds alone with her without Ketchup crowding in… I’m doing the best I can.”
He stops talking, presumably listening to a reply. I’m completely stunned. Who else could he be talking about but me? That feeling of something not being quiet right my first day back at school returns like a punch to the gut. Why is he so keen on talking to me without anyone else around? What did he say about my training? He shouldn’t know anything about that!
“I know we don’t have a lot of time, but you have to trust me. I know her. I know what she’s capable of. I know where her loyalties lie better than you ever will.”
If he says anything else, I miss it, because about that time, Ketchup starts jogging back from the car. He opens his mouth to say something, but I frantically wave at him to be quiet. Thankfully, he’s familiar enough with all this cloak-and-dagger craziness not to question me. He slips up next to me soundlessly, but when I try to listen in again, all I hear is the faint melody of Laney’s favorite band drifting from the back of the house.
Ketchup looks down at me, not sure if he’s allowed to speak, but clearly confused. “Noah,” I say. “He was on the phone with someone, talking about me… talking about my training and running out of time and where my loyalties lie.”
“What?” Ketchup demands.
I can only shake my head. “I don’t know. What was he talking about? Who was he talking to?”
Ketchup doesn’t have any of the answers, but he is positively livid. Looking down at me, I know before he says anything that there will be no point in arguing with him. “No more playing nice with Noah. I wanted to put an end to this the day you went back to school. No more, Van. We’re finding out what Noah is hiding, and we’re doing it my way.”
Chapter Fifteen: The Piercing Cry
(Zander)
I never knew what exhaustion really was until tonight. Completely empty, I push the front door shut behind me and have to stop myself from falling against it. It was tempting to just follow Annabelle back to her apartment and crash there, but I have to be at school early in the morning for a meeting with my coach. As much as I don’t like Van spending time with David, it was nice to have him not harassing me constantly about what I did to James.
Apparently, he got bored of only having one student to throw around. I wish he hadn’t dragged Annabelle into it, though. Even though she is an excellent fighter, she wasn’t built for brute force. I couldn’t hurt her like I did James, either. When I fought James, it was nearly two hours of the most brutal fighting you could ever see. I lost track of how many of my bones were broken, or how many of his. I healed myself repeatedly, sucking up the pain and storing it until it simply burst out of me. I’ve never held that much pain again, and nothing David did tonight brought me back to that level.
He wants it, though, desperately. I worry how long it will take before he finds something that will either cause me to really suffer, or force me to inflict that kind of pain again. David isn’t the most patient master. Rubbing the back of my neck, I drag myself down the hall. I’m ready to drop. Thoughts of a dreamless sleep carry me toward the stairs, but a shadow across the back door makes me go rigid.
The Eroi jump to mind immediately, followed only a second later by thoughts of the Godlings coming for me themselves. My heart and breathing are racing before I come out of my panic and stalk soundlessly toward the back door. My hand is on the doorknob when the shadow crosses again, pacing, arms moving anxiously in a manner that’s all too familiar. Sighing, I pull the door open without fear of being attacked.
“Oscar, what are you doing here?”
His eyes snap up to mine, intense as always. “Your questions about the promise and Emily and Paolo made me start thinking. There is too much that I never got to ask her. I may not know everything. Some things she didn’t like to talk about. It wasn’t a happy time, or a part of her life she liked to remember.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“But you got me to thinking.”
After waiting a full minute for him to continue, I lose my patience. “And? How did all that thinking lead to you escaping the hospital and coming here?”
“Because you can’t find Emily without me.”
“Wait, what?” I stare at him, not sure I understand him right. “You’re actually going to take me to see Emily? I thought…”
“I’ll take you,” Oscar snaps, “but I won’t talk to her. I won’t. You can try, but I’m not talking to her at all.” His fists ball up, and the veins in his neck bulge. I’m too tired to deal with an erratic Oscar.
“Fine. You don’t have to talk to her. I’ll do it on my own,” I assure him. “Just tell me where to find her, and I’ll go tomorrow after school.”
“No. Tonight.”
He has to be kidding me. “Why tonight?”
Oscar’s eyes narrow. He steps toward me, blocking the moonlight, casting his entire face into menacing shadows. “Because I am here tonight to show you the way. You won’t find her on your own.”
I ignore the
smart-mouthed comments about GPS and Google Maps for the sake of getting this over with before I pass out from exhaustion. “Fine. Lead the way.”
Once again, Oscar just stares at me. I don’t bother asking what his problem is this time. An unusually long stretch of silence later, he finally says, “Aren’t you going to get your keys?”
“What? We’re driving?” He made it sound like we were going on a hike through the desert to some hidden cave out in the wild. If she lives at an easily identifiable location, why can’t he just give me her street address? “Never mind,” I say when Oscar just stares at me like I’m an idiot. “Meet me around front. I’ll be there in a second.”
I trudge back into the house and grab my keys, but nearly jump out of my skin when I almost collide with David coming inside. I’d completely forgotten about him.
“Heading out?” David asks.
“Yeah.”
“To?”
“Annabelle’s,” I lie.
David’s head tilts to one side. “Rather late, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
I step around him with my stomach in my throat and burst out onto the porch before he can say anything else. As I march toward the car, I can only hope Oscar has enough sense not to be standing in the middle of the driveway waiting for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if David was watching me right now. Hitting the unlock button a few seconds before I reach the truck, I’m almost given another near-heart attack when I find Oscar already sitting low in the passenger’s seat. I don’t bother asking how he got there.
Pulling out of the driveway, I turn in the direction of Annabelle’s.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Oscar says.
“Not if I’m trying to cover my tracks with David.”
Oscar scowls at me, but only says, “Turn around when you can. We’re heading toward the campus.”
That news gives me an odd mix of emotions. The last time I was anywhere near the University of New Mexico campus was the night David took me out to a club and made me play his version of speed dating. The point was to make me more comfortable with acting on impulse, but it ended with two rather enthusiastic girls trying to convince David to let them take me back to their dorm room. I shift uncomfortably at the memories of that night and follow Oscar’s instructions without a word.
By the time I pull up to the dorm parking, I’m more than a little anxious. Oscar is fairing even worse. I can’t tell whether he’s more furious or scared, but neither one is a particularly safe emotion for him. I’m beginning to regret leaving the house.
“I’m not going any further,” Oscar says through a clenched jaw.
“Fine. Just give me her apartment number.”
Reluctantly, he does. I start to get out of the truck, but a practical thought stops me. “Oscar, I don’t have a parking permit, but if anyone comes by checking, just duck down. I’d rather get a ticket than have something… happen.”
Oscar hunkers down and mumbles something I can only hope is agreement. I walk away from the truck, praying he’ll stay out of trouble. The last thing I need right now is to get wrapped up in an investigation of why my crazy brother is outside the hospital in the middle of the night, attacking security guards because they tried to ticket my truck. I’m really regretting leaving the house by the time I make it to Emily’s door.
I lift my hand to knock, but pause when I consider the fact that it’s after midnight and I have no idea whether or not she has roommates. Not sure what to do for a moment, I just stand there. Oscar won’t be happy if I go back without having talked to her, and I probably look like a creep just standing here. Plus, I’m so tired I’m likely to fall asleep if I don’t do something.
Screw it. I knock on the door and wait.
Imagine my surprise when the door opens almost immediately. A tired, but fully awake young woman peeks out at me, strands of blonde hair trailing out of a ponytail in various spots. She smiles, but it’s weary. “Hey, Zander. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You know who I am?”
“Of course I do,” she says as she pulls the door open and gestures for me to come in. She puts up a hand to cover a yawn that stretches her jaw. “Oscar talked about you and Van all the time. He really loves you both. Plus, the white hair is hard to mistake. You look a lot like him, you know?”
I don’t respond to her last comment. People told me that all the time growing up. Before, when Oscar was mostly sane, and someone I looked up to, I didn’t mind people saying things like that. I don’t want to be mistaken for him anymore.
“Emily, I’m sorry for bothering you so late…”
She waves off my concern. “I was up anyway.”
“I need to ask you a few things about Paolo and what he might have told you.”
Emily crosses the tiny living room and curls up on the couch. She motions for me to do the same. When we’re both seated, I ask, “Oscar has told me as much as he remembers, but do you know if the people helping Paolo were Eroi or Godlings?”
Shaking her head, Emily says, “Even as much as Paolo confided in me, he never told me who either group was. I only learned Enzo’s name by chance.”
“Who is Enzo? Oscar never mentioned him.”
“I don’t think I ever got a chance to mention him to Oscar. By the time he started asking me about Paolo and everything that happened, Oscar was very unstable. He was obsessed with finding the truth and figuring out how to stop anyone from hurting the people he loves. When I found him consumed by the pain coming off that poor, abused dog that was brought in and realized what he was, things were already moving so fast.”
As I watch Emily, I can see how much talking about this hurts her. Oddly, though, not in the way I would have expected. Anyone who knew Oscar in the months leading up to my parents’ death was terrified of him. He was unpredictable and violent when confronted, which was pretty much what happened every time he came home.
I don’t see that in Emily. There is compassion in her eyes. Understanding, maybe. I realize in that moment that she probably knew more about what Oscar was going through during that time than anyone else. She tried to help him. That was why Oscar was so angry with her. She said she would help him, but he believed she failed.
“Anyway,” Emily says, breaking into my thoughts, “Enzo was a friend of Paolo’s. I only met him the day before Paolo died. I got out of class early and went over to Paolo’s dorm to see if he wanted to get some coffee with me, and I overheard them arguing. My Italian wasn’t great at the time… it still isn’t, actually… so I only caught parts of the conversation, but I heard Enzo say that Paolo needed to decide where his loyalties really were. He stormed out after that and nearly knocked me over.”
“Was he a part of the group that was trying to help Paolo learn to control his hunger?” I ask.
Shrugging, Emily wraps her arms around her knees. “I’m not sure. When I asked Paolo about it, he said he’d met Enzo right after whoever those people were who started teaching him.”
“Did Paolo ever practice any martial arts? Or was he overly religious?”
“He was a devout Catholic, but there were times he talked about promises and prophecies that didn’t sound church related. He didn’t say much about it, so I don’t really have any details to give you. I don’t remember him doing any martial arts, but we usually only had a few hours a day together.”
Before finding out about the Eroi version of the promise, her comments might have led me toward the Godlings, but it could be either one now. “The prophecies he mentioned, Oscar said you knew there were two versions, that each group had one, but neither one was right. What else do you know about that?”
“Not much,” Emily says sadly. “Paolo never even showed me the actual prophecies, or whatever they were. He just told me how they each had one, but they said the opposite of each other. He didn’t understand what it meant. When I suggested both groups were simply fitting it to their own needs, not telling the whole truth, he agreed. That’s the only time we ever d
iscussed it.”
“The techniques this group taught him to control his hunger, what were they? What did he do when he got in a situation that was hard for him to handle?”
Emily’s expression turns thoughtful as she considers her answer. “It wasn’t anything showy. I remember one time toward the end when we went to a carnival. A little boy fell off a booth he had climbed onto when his mom wasn’t looking. The poor kid broke his arm, but Paolo was able to carry him back to his mom without hurting him. It was a strain for him, but he was breathing differently, focusing, embracing his hunger for what it was and controlling it.”
“What do you mean, embracing it?” I ask. Her words remind me of what Ivy said the last time we spoke. She said I had to accept her presence and not block her out.
“I’m not sure,” Emily says. “I just know he talked to me about learning not to fear what he was. He tried to accept that he was different and meant to fulfill a purpose of some kind, and his hunger was a part of that.”
Frustrated, I know that could be rhetoric from either group. The idea of acceptance sticks out, though, taunting me. What if Enzo was Eroi? Even if he was, did that mean they ordered the hit on Paolo? What if the Godlings saw him meeting with Enzo and decided he couldn’t be trusted? My immediate reaction is despair, thinking I’m no closer to an answer than I was before coming here, but I think I just need some time to process everything.
“Is there anything else you can remember? The tattoo, maybe?”
Emily shakes her head. “I never saw the tattoo myself. Paolo only mentioned it to me once. He thought it looked like a snake, but I don’t know the meaning behind it. I got the impression from Paolo that he would find out at some point if he proved himself to the people helping him. To find it, you’re probably going to have to go to the highest ranks of either group.”
Wicked Glory Page 12
