A Chosen Life

by K. A. Parkinson

  And now he had Bastian too.

  However, stronger than her ridiculous envy lurked the dread of what his very existence meant. It was completely irrational, unfair, and downright stupid—he didn’t choose his fate—but she resented him being born. The Legend of the Ninth Chosen had been told for centuries. Why did it have to come to pass in her lifetime?

  She’d fought creatures that would scare the pants off the toughest grown men, but they’d all been small battles or preplanned reconnaissance missions to find out the movements of the Dark and send the information back to the Guardians.

  The Final Battle stories also went by the name of Armageddon—the war to end all wars. Maybe Tolen’s mother had been right. Maybe Macy wasn’t strong enough for what was coming.

  She glanced again in the mirror, making sure Bastian was still asleep and not focused on her thoughts.

  She had a decision to make. Either she could accept the will of the Balance and help Bastian train the Ninth—which in turn would also, hopefully, help save the world—or she could continue to hate the kid, be scared and jealous of him, and make his life even more miserable than it already was.

  But could she?

  Could she face the Shadows again? Was she strong enough? Even if facing them ensured the success of the Ninth and could possibly save the world, she wasn’t positive she’d be able to do it. The Shadows were miles ahead and yet the drain on her life force was already frightening, and it would only get worse. She knew the closer she got to them the weaker she would become.

  She shook her head, squared her shoulders, and peeked at Tolen from her peripheral vision. Well it wasn’t as if she really had much choice. Without the Ninth they were all doomed anyway. And Shadows or no Shadows, she was not going down without a fight. She might as well have the Ninth on her side when that happened. She made a face. Well, once he was actually trained how to fight.

  She pictured the look on Bastian’s face if he knew her current thoughts and scowled. He’d be grinning ear to ear.

  Even if she did choose to do the right thing, she had no idea how to even talk to him. She’d never had to relate to someone her own age before—especially someone raised to be human. Jeez, she was the human and he knew more about being one than she did! She ran a hand across her eyes.

  “Are you tired?” Tolen asked softly. “I can drive for a while if you tell me where to go.”

  He’d been so silent, leaning against the window, that she’d assumed he’d fallen back asleep. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Um, no. I’m good.”

  Tolen pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “I was beginning to wonder if he ever slept.” His tone was calm, measured, and she could tell, forced. Considering the fact that his mother had been so sick, and he’d been the one with the job, Macy figured he was used to being independent. He didn’t like the fact that she and Bastian had seen him lose control, seen his weakness. Despite his quiet nature, he had an ego. Macy’s lip twitched.

  Tolen watched her expectantly, waiting for a response—he looked wary, like he was worried his effort to appear normal would blow up in his face. She bet his act did a good job of fooling normal humans, but he didn’t fool her. She’d spent too many years fighting the Dark, the master of all deceptions, to believe his careful disguise.

  She tapped the steering wheel. Bastian had told her not to provoke the kid. Well, if there was one thing she knew how to do well with humans, it was act. She had pretended enough around them that two could play at this game.

  Here goes nothin’. She cleared her throat noisily and answered as casually as she could. “Yeah, Bastian . . . ” She peeked at Tolen’s eyes, wondering how his Watcher’s eye worked. Obviously, he wasn’t the same as Bastian, yet he could see some things. She realized she was staring and quickly looked back to the road. “Full-blooded Watchers don’t need to sleep a whole lot. No one really knows why. Maybe it has something to do with the importance of their job.” She shrugged and glanced in the mirror at Bastian. “It’s been almost four days since he last crashed.”

  “Really?”

  Macy nodded.

  “Wow.” He kept his eyes on the road, but every once in a while he glanced over at her.

  It felt awkward, like he’d never really talked to a girl before. She wondered if it was true. After seeing all those girls stare at him, she assumed that at some point he had to have talked to them. Hadn’t he? She mentally shook her head. Maybe that’s not how it worked. It wasn’t like she had any references in the romance department to go by. Bastian’s stories were never romantic, almost always tragic, and not one included the proper way to flirt. Not that she wanted to flirt with the kid.

  She cleared her throat again, quieter this time. “I know. It drove me nuts when I first joined him, but eventually I realized it comes in handy.”

  “Have you been with him a long time?” he picked at a spot on his jeans.

  Macy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, glanced in all the mirrors again, and licked her lips. “Ten years.”

  “Wow, you were young when you were Chosen.” His eyes were on the road, barely interested, but she hesitated before she answered. These seemingly innocent questions could lead into dangerous territory.

  “Six.”

  Tolen turned toward her, eyes wide. “It seems like a lot to put on a child.”

  She leaned her head back against the seat. “The Dark doesn’t care about age.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair.”

  Macy chuckled humorlessly. “Is life ever fair?”

  The corner of his mouth lifted, but the smile was filled with too much pain to be genuine. “No. Life isn’t fair.”

  The Jeep sputtered and Macy stepped on the gas pedal to rev the engine.

  “Did Bastian teach you how to fix cars?”

  “No.” Her fists tightened on the wheel. She sensed what the next question would be before he asked it.

  “Where’d you learn?”

  She reminded herself that to him this was small talk, something to pass the time and take him away from the gravity of their situation. He wasn’t really even paying attention to the answers. He had no idea what kind of memories the question would stir, what kind of horrors she had locked away. She tried to think of a simple answer that wouldn’t lead to more uncomfortable questions, or even force her to lie, but she couldn’t come up with anything.

  She shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “My dad loved to tinker with cars. It was his hobby. When I was Chosen, Bastian said I needed a hobby—something to do between training and fighting. He would have liked it if I had picked something more girly, but my interest in auto-mechanic work has come in handy.” She felt proud of herself for her calm tone; inside she was screaming.

  “Do you still get to see him—your dad?” Tolen’s tone held a hint of envy.

  A horrible ache ripped through her chest and the words came out harsher than she intended. “My parents are dead.”

  She heard Tolen’s sharp intake of breath and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. Chagrin and empathy laced the words, for a moment his careful facade slipped, and she realized that he knew exactly how she felt, not only because of his experience with his own parents, but because he was the Ninth. His Watcher’s eye made him sensitive to the thoughts and emotions of everyone around him . . . everyone, because as the Ninth he was responsible for everyone.

  She suddenly felt like a kid who just realized she’d showed up to school without her pants. All her thoughts were exposed to a guy she barely knew. It was one thing for Bastian to know, he was like her father, but Tolen? Nuh, uh, no way. This is not cool!

  “I’m sorry . . . ” He cast a cautious look her way before dropping his chin and pinching the bridge of his nose. In that moment she saw something else in his eyes, something under the anger. Need. He wanted to hate her and everything
she stood for, but deep inside, this troubled kid needed acceptance from someone, anyone for what he was.

  Her heart thudded in her chest and pity swelled in her heart. Chill, just chill. The kid didn’t know what he was capable of. He didn’t know he could sense thoughts yet.

  She twisted her hair on her finger. “It’s okay, Tolen. You didn’t know.”

  “There’s a lot I don’t know,” he mumbled.

  He looked so broken. An unfamiliar wave of sympathy washed over her.

  “Hey, in the glove box there’s a bag of suckers. Wanna get a couple out for us?” She needed the sugar if she was going to go ahead with the thought that had taken root in her head.

  Tolen pulled open the rusty glove box and took out a plastic bag filled with suckers. “Only purple ones?”

  Macy shrugged. “I like purple.”

  He pulled the wrapper off hers and handed it to her before unwrapping his own. He stuck it in his cheek. “You said back at my house that they help regenerate your life force. I assume that’s like code for ‘gives you a sugar rush’?”

  Macy snorted. “Sure. Sugar recharges our batteries—if you want to call the life force batteries. Whenever you use your gifts, it drains your physical body, which in turn, affects your life force. Sugar sort of helps get your energy back. Bastian loves Lucid with ‘unrefined’ sugar. I think it tastes like crap.”

  “Me too.”

  “Wait until you try one of his sweetened meat-cakes. You’ll barf the first time, I promise.”

  Tolen laughed softly—a pleasant, comfortable sound. He was still protecting his real feelings, but she could feel him relaxing, allowing himself to settle into the conversation. “Thanks for the warning.”

  Macy glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He’d been through a lot. He was tougher than she’d given him credit for.

  “The Dark is after me specifically. That’s why my mom hid everything from me. I can feel it.” He pulled the sucker out of his mouth and twisted the stick between his fingers.

  It was random, way off subject, and Macy could tell he’d been thinking about it for a while. Her smile disappeared. She glanced at Bastian again, wishing he would wake up. Tolen was about to go onto ground she wasn’t sure she could share.

  “What am I?” His blue eye flashed, intensifying the frustration he obviously felt. He didn’t look at her, as if he didn’t expect her to answer, and was just throwing the question into the universe.

  She clenched her teeth and turned her eyes back to the road, not sure whether she could, or even should respond.

  They passed slowly through a small town with several squat derelict buildings. She felt the Balance shift and looked out her window. Something black and hairy hunched in the shadow between two buildings. Its red eyes gleamed threateningly from the edge of the shade. Grateful they still had half a tank of gas, she pushed harder on the pedal and the engine groaned.

  She cast a quick glance at Tolen and then wished she hadn’t. His hands were clenched into fists in his lap, his eyes hard. He was working to maintain the smokescreen, but it was thinning, his need for more truth was stronger than his desire to hide.

  What was she supposed to say?

  “That’s a long story you should already know.” She wished she could take it back when his face fell and he turned back to the window. “I’m sorry Tolen, I . . . ”

  “It’s okay. You’re right. If my mom had told me, I wouldn’t be pestering you.” He threw the remains of his sucker out the window and met her eyes for a brief moment. “I did try.” He ran a barely trembling hand through his hair and the words tumbled from his mouth. “I tried to get my mom to tell me the truth. For years, I begged and pleaded. Then one day, my tenth birthday, I lost it. I’d finally gotten old enough that I could see how ridiculous her excuses were—and I came completely unglued. I wanted a birthday party, a real one with friends. I wanted to go to a fun park like the kids did on TV and play games. You know, all the good stuff.” He chuckled cynically. “She told me we couldn’t afford it. I thought it was a lie. I’d seen her taking cash from a box under her bed for years. Little did I know it was her life-savings and there really wasn’t much left.

  “I ran outside to the park behind our apartment complex. The one I’d only been allowed to play at late at night or early in the morning when it was deserted. I headed toward the tallest tree I could see.”

  Macy’s palms started to sweat, slickening her grip on the wheel. She could feel where this was going and she wished he would stop talking, but he seemed to be speaking without really thinking, letting things out he’d obviously held in for years.

  “She chased me, but I found the angrier I got, the faster I could run. Before she could catch me, I launched myself at the tree and it swept its branches down and lifted me high in the air, far away from my mother. I shouted ‘I hate you!’ down at her on the ground. Those three words sent the tree into a frenzy. It started swinging its branches at my mom. One of them slammed into her head and knocked her ten feet away . . . ” his voice cracked. “I was horrified. The tree stopped moving and I climbed down and ran over to her. I can still see the blood gushing out of her head. I-I thought I’d killed her, but her eyes flew open and she looked around. People were rushing over, shouting and pointing. She reached up, put her hand over the gash, grabbed my arm with her other hand and started running. I don’t remember much after that. We spent a few weeks hotel jumping before she finally took us to Green River.” He sighed. “I never stopped wanting her to tell me the truth, but I could never let myself get that angry again.”

  He barely paused for breath. “Things were better in Green River. She tried to let me have a kind of normal life. Dane came along and even though I was awkward and shy and eventually got labeled the town freak, I was pretty satisfied with my life. All except for the part that I had no idea what sort of experiment went wrong to make me able to do what I could. As I got older, my mom got sicker. Every time I’d slip and ask a question or make a comment about our wacked out life, she’d get all pale and clammy and I remembered my tenth birthday, so I’d bite my tongue. I tried harder to control my anger . . . ” His voice trailed off.

  Macy swallowed, her eyes on the road. She was such a hypocrite. She didn’t understand Tolen’s life any more than he understood hers.

  They were both misfits in their own ways.

  She reached over and touched his arm, an action that surprised her almost as much as the reaction of her Kuna when her fingers met his skin. They tingled with heat—a pleasant heat. How strange.

  He looked at her hand and then up into her eyes. The confusion on his face had to mirror hers. Did he feel it too? He held her gaze longer than should be comfortable. In that moment she felt something shift between them. He didn’t hate her anymore, but in that he must have also seen what she saw. That sometimes hate was better than like. The people you liked had a lot more power to hurt you. She pulled her hand back and turned to the road, her face warm.

  She cleared her throat to cover the awkward moment. “I guess we both have things in our past we’d like to forget.”

  He looked down and shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Look, I’m really sorry for what I said earlier. I should have kept my mouth shut. Bastian always tells me I need to think before I speak. I just don’t listen.”

  “It’s okay.” He gave her a tiny smile and turned back to the window.

  “Wait., Tolen.” He half glanced back her way. When the tiniest bit of light touched his eyes she made her decision without caring about the consequences. If the situation were reversed, she wouldn’t be nearly as patient as Tolen was being. He was used to being in the dark, left to wonder. Maybe she could show him that not everyone wanted to keep secrets from him. She bit the side of her lip. Well, she’d still keep just one. “I’ll tell you what I can,” she paused. “But there are some things I’m not allowed to.” His ey
es narrowed. “Not yet,” she clarified.

  He looked up. “‘Need to know’ right?”

  It reminded her of their conversation by the river. He’d said then that he was sick of secrets. It didn’t help her feel better that he understood.

  “Right. Sorry. Bastian has his reasons. He wants you to know, but he’s a firm believer that timing is everything. He doesn’t want you to know some things until he feels you’re ready.”

  “Like what I am?”

  “Well, I can tell you what you are. There are just some . . . details I’m not allowed to say.”

  His eyebrow rose slightly.

  She looked his way and shrugged an apology. “I remember when I was Chosen. Six is young enough that I still believed anything an adult said.” She gave him a crooked smile. “You’re old enough to be skeptical, but I promise everything I’m about to tell you is the whole truth.”

  She looked at him from the corner of her eye again. His hands were clasped in his lap, his knuckles white. He held in a lot. He was way better at control than she was. She started to wonder if she would have better control if she had almost accidently killed one of her parents, and then shuddered away from the thought. “I’ll start with the basics. The first things Bastian taught me.”

  He nodded. “Sounds fair.”

  His careful mask had never fully returned. He looked at her expectantly and she took a deep breath. Well, the cat was already out of the bag—or the Raksasha already had the scent, as Bastian would say. Now all she could do was run with it.

  “The first thing you need to understand is the life force—or what humans call the soul.”

  “The life force is your soul?” He looked at her, his face skeptical.

  “Yeah—don’t look at me like that. You’re thinking in human terms, humans don’t understand the true strength of one’s soul. The Hidden call a soul the life force for two reasons. Number one, it is the intelligence put into your physical body to give it life—it will still exist when your physical body dies. Number two, that intelligence was created with the immense energy to power and control the amazing machine of your physical body. Energy is the driving force, the strength needed to guide you. Make any sense?”