I move his hand to my breast and plant it there. I feel his hot skin through my shirt. My stomach goes cold.
I can feel his sudden hesitation. His attention shifts there, and he stares. His grip loosens very slightly on my throat, enough that I can suck in a few long, desperate breaths. Already, needles are repairing my windpipe.
“You do what you want?” I choke, eyes squeezed shut. “Are you going to rape me?”
His hand disappears from my breast; a moment later, he lets go of my throat. I hear him stumble to his feet.
I sit up woozily, still gasping for breath, and open my eyes. He’s taken a few steps back and is crouched next to the shotgun, staring at me, wide-eyed.
“I don’t want to,” he whispers petulantly, as if I’ve tempted him with something forbidden.
I grip my throat to steady my breathing and cope with the pain. My whole body is shuddering with relief. “Atavism, right? Returning to baser instincts? Your ancestors raped to reproduce. Why should you care? You do what you want, right?”
He shakes his head, and now he is angry. “I’m not . . . I don’t. Not that.”
“You’re no rapist,” I fill in.
He nods.
“What about the alley monster that ripped your guts out? Are you just like it now?”
He shifts uncomfortably, eyes not leaving mine.
“No, you want to be as powerful as it was, so you can defend yourself from it, but you don’t go around tearing open bellies for fun, do you?”
His jaw tightens. “You . . .” He pauses, staring at the ground, gathering his thoughts. “You said she was in denial. About me. Now you’re in denial that I’ll hurt you.”
“No. No, you know what? That’s not even the worst part.”
He watches me.
I look down at my claw hand as I massage my throat. “I’m fighting the implication that I’ll lose myself. I’m convinced that I’ll stay the way I am, even if little bits of memory go missing. Nothing can steal that.”
He moves toward me a little, dragging the shotgun along behind him in the leaves. “It did!” he insists, voice ragged, eyes wide. “It stole me!”
I stare at him, momentarily overcome by a wave of pity. Then I shake my head. “No.”
He moves again, even closer, becoming angry.
“You still remember the alley. You remember being helpless.” My voice breaks. “You remember first death, don’t you?”
We stare at each other.
“Those memories are still there, and you can even still access some of them. More, if you would try. Don’t buy into this atavism bullshit. Your brain architecture has barely changed; it’s the trauma.” I choke, shake my head, fight back tears. “People aren’t supposed to go through things like this. You shouldn’t be able to feel a bullet go through your head, and then remember it the next day. You’re coping, that’s all, by retreating inside yourself.”
“It’s hard,” he mumbles, looking away. “It . . . hurts.”
“We’ll find a way,” I whisper earnestly. “You and Ron and I, we’ll keep each other sane. Just give us a chance, and you’ll see that you don’t have to become anything you don’t want to.” I swallow hard, then grin. “Because if you have to, that means I have to, and I just won’t accept that.”
His gaze slides to the gun, and his grip on its barrel tightens. “Prove it.”
A shudder runs through me. “What?”
“Prove that second and third death don’t take anything away.” He lifts the barrel end of the shotgun a little off the ground, and looks at me. “When your head grows back, we’ll see how much you remember.”
The hamster wheel starts spinning real fast. “Why induce that now when we’ll inevitably have a chance to see it happen?” I force a casual shrug. “I’ll eventually get my head destroyed in some fight or accident. Why rush things?”
He’s staring at me.
Time for another gamble. I crawl to him across the leaves and sit in front of him, our knees touching, my claw-hand coming to rest on his thigh. “There’s more important battles for us to fight at the moment,” I whisper, looking into his eyes, trying my hardest to impress upon him how little I want to go along with his bullshit right now. “We have to go back to Earth and stop the invasion. After that,” I shrug, and lightly place my other, human hand over his on the shotgun barrel, wow his skin is hot, “who knows what’ll happen.”
He swallows hard. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
I can’t help but grin. “I think so.”
“You’re not very good at it.”
“I don’t get much practice.”
He nods, staring over my shoulder into the woods, and something coherent returns to his eyes. He’s left behind that disconnected, primitive persona, at least for the moment.
“I can’t function unless I know for sure,” he whispers. “But you might be right. I . . . I can remember something that might mean you’re right.”
I blink, eyebrows rising. “Oh?”
He hesitates, meets my eyes, looks away. “. . . Kazu.”
“. . . bless you?”
“Kazuma, but my mother, I can hear her calling me ‘Kazu’.”
And then it hits me. “That was your name?”
He nods, hesitates, nods again. “My name was— is . . . Kazuma.”
I can’t help the grin spreading over my face. “Oh my God, that’s awesome!”
He lifts the gun barrel a little more, stares at it, looks at me. “So we’ll see if, when your head grows back a second time, you can say, ‘my name was Eden’.”
I try to push away from him but his grip is on my shoulder again, and he’s wrenching the shotgun closer to my head. I shriek and swipe at his face with my claw hand but can’t reach and metal presses against my right temple, he reaches with a bloodied toe for the trigger well, I’m begging him incoherently to stop but his eyes are hard—
click
He’s forgotten to chamber a round.
He looks confusedly at the gun.
click
I wrench free of his grip, grab the barrel with both hands, and try to pull it free. He has a tight hold on it and won’t let go. Already I can see he’s realizing what he has to do, and his hand reaches forward to chamber a round.
So I let go of the gun and bolt, headed uphill, freshly-healed and pumping with adrenaline.
BLAM
A tree’s bark explodes inches from my head, and a few fragments whizz past my ear.
As I run, I calculate. The gun was fully loaded with six rounds as I stood on the cliff with Tedrin. One went into and through his skull. Assuming he didn’t fire it at all between finding it down here and saving me from the dragon, he’s used two shots since then — one to kill it and one just now on the tree. That leaves three more shots. If I can duck and weave long enough to get him to use them, then even if he brings me down with the last one, he won’t be able to blow my brains out. That is, unless he thinks to look in my backpack for spare ammo— Or were there extra rounds in the stock shell-holder—
There’s a faint blue glow ahead, over the next rise. I’m so close. A risk occurs to me, but between time needed and the potential—
Quick rustling behind me, hurried footsteps in the leaves only a few yards back, damn I’d forgotten how fast he is—
So I take my gamble. I slip out of my backpack’s straps, grip it hard, and throw it off into the woods. Suddenly I’m lighter than air, and pick up speed. Maybe it will distract him. If he catches me, at least he won’t be able to reload ammo from—
BLAM
My knees bloom in agony, and I hit the leaves like a truck into a wall. I tumble a little, not sure if I’m rolling uphill from my momentum or downhill from gravity.
His grip closes on the shredded back of my shirt and starts to lift me.
I swipe backward with my claw-hand and feel it sink into flesh. He roars and lets go, backs away. I glance back and see that I’ve gouged four bloody tracks down the side of his
face. One missed his eye by microns, and he’s squeezed it shut. The other eye is enraged, and he brings up the shotgun to beat me with it.
I roll sideways and hear the stock crack against the ground. “You’re buying me a new gun!” I shriek at him as I come up on my feet, knees wobbly and painful but functional. He swings again, sideways, hoping to catch me in the stomach. I catch the stock with both hands so that it only knocks into my hip. Then I reach for the forend, klik klak to chamber a round, hook my claw hand into the trigger well, and
BLAM
Tedrin’s side explodes open in a cloud of red needles, and he goes down with his arms wrapped around his middle. I’m left standing with the shotgun in an awkward grip, gasping for breath.
“That’s what you get for swinging it so the barrel points at yourself, moron,” I mutter, and start uphill again. I check the stock ammo holder and find it empty, but I don’t want to turn back and look for my backpack when I’m so close to the stone. I still have one round, which I chamber, and after that, the gun will make for a good club.
“Don’t follow me!” I call over my shoulder. “Not until you’re ready to drop the—”
Rustling behind me, and I barely have time to curse my stupidity—
He slams me to the ground and starts wrenching, trying to pull me apart at the seams. The gun is pinned underneath me. Muscles start to tear in my back. I scream high with frustration— Tedrin has a hand around the gun and his finger slips into the trigger guard—
BLAM
We both cry out in surprise as the shot tears a furrow in the leaf-strewn ground. There’s a roaring in my ears, or maybe it’s Tedrin making that sound, a terrifying rumble growing steadily closer and closer, and this repeating bleat, like beeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeep—
Then Tedrin is off my back, and what a relief that is, and I’m coughing blood. He’s torn into my throat. I can’t breathe. There are hands on me, turning me over.
Ron stares down at me, hair mussed, eyes wide with confusion and fear. “Are you okay?” she all but screams in my face, and then looks up at Tedrin. “What the hell is going on?”
I sit up, still gripping my bloodied neck, and I clutch at her shoulder. I’m trying to ask her how she got here, how she found us, when I see a motorcycle lying behind her. Jesus Huckleberry Christ, she decided to visit the demon dimension on a motorcycle. I can’t decide which baffles me more, where she found it or why neither Tedrin or I thought of the same thing. I could have been riding around the plains on a four-wheeler all this time—
“I heard shots!” she cries, still clutching at me. “Are you okay? What the hell is—”
There’s my backpack hooked in with the saddlebags; she must have found it on her way up the hill. I scramble past her, gun in hand, wrench open one of the pockets, and pull out my box of ammo. The cardboard is wet with blood and water, but the rounds are relatively dry. I wipe each carefully before loading.
Tedrin’s jabbering about brain matter and memory, while Ron watches him warily. They both look sharply at me when they hear me loading rounds. One, two, three— “That’s not necessary,” Ron says hurriedly, “let’s calm down and talk—” four, and Tedrin starts toward me as I load the fifth. I hurriedly chamber it and look warningly at him as I load the sixth.
“Stop it!” Ron shouts, moving to stand between us. “Stop it, both of you! Somebody tell me what the hell is going on!”
I fill the stock ammo holder with nine rounds and stand up, turning to face the two of them, gun aimed at the ground. “There’s a stone up there that destroys things made of needles. I can use it to protect the city, but I’ve been too busy babysitting your mind-fucked boyfriend to retrieve it.”
“She blew my head off!” he shouts, pointing past Ron at me. “And she threatened to tell you I’d raped her!”
Ron raises both eyebrows at me.
I heave a sigh. “Believe what you want, you useless fucking bitch!” I try to get around her, to get a clear shot at Tedrin. He starts forward, fingers elongating into spikes
“Calm down, both of you!” Ron has to physically place her hands on my chest and his and push us apart. “I heard something about a stone that can protect the city?”
“She’ll use it to kill all three of us!” Tedrin puts in, pushing Ron’s hand away in annoyance. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m made of needles, and she’s wanted to murder me since we met!”
I look pointedly at Ron. “When you found us, which of us was on top of the other?” I swipe a hand through the drying blood on my neck and hold it out toward her, and press it closer when she flinches. “Huh? You like it? Want to know what other things he tried to do to me?”
Tedrin holds out the front of his ragged, bloodstained sweatshirt. His recent stomach wound is hideously purple and only barely closed. “Who do you think did this to me?”
Ron presses both hands to her face and screams at the top of her lungs, “SHUT UP! BOTH OF YOU, SHUT UP! CALM THE FUCK DOWN!”
“Oh, fuck this.” I start walking uphill, shotgun in hands, backpack forgotten. “Do me a favor and go fuck each other,” I instruct over my shoulder. “I’ve got a goddamn planet to save.”
“We can’t split up!” Ron insists desperately. “We can take the motorcycle!”
I keep walking. “Where did you get that thing?”
“. . . found it.”
I roll my eyes and wave a hand dismissively. “Whatever. I’d rather walk. You’re in charge of Japanese Psycho.”
I hear her suck in a shuddering gasp, and look back. She’s staring at my hand — my claw hand.
“Oh, this?” I stop and hold it up so she can really experience how horrific it looks. “It’s not pretty, is it? It’s not pretty when you permanently fuck up someone’s life.” I try to wiggle the individual claws and discover that I can’t even do that; they’re one huge bone. “I can never type over a hundred words per minute again, but maybe I’ll get into parkour—”
Ron just stares at me, eyes wide and frightened.
“What?” I demand, taking a step toward her, uncomfortably aware of the gun in my hands. “Feeling guilty?”
She shakes her head a little and whispers, “Did something happen?”
I blink at her. “Uh, yeah. A couple things.”
“You’re . . . different.” She swallows, hands rising as if to calm me. “Something’s wrong with you.”
Cold envelopes me, though I try not to let it show. My grip tightens a little on the gun.
Tedrin barks out a laugh. “Wow. When it’s obvious enough for Veronica to catch on—”
“Shut up, Tedrin,” I snap, which only amuses him more. “I’ve been through a lot this past week,” I tell her snidely. “I know you weren’t paying attention.”
“You didn’t used to be like this. You weren’t . . . mean.”
My jaw drops. “Excuse me? Do you not think a little sarcasm is warranted in this situation?”
“You joked around, yeah, but not . . .” She looks to Tedrin. “What was it you said about personality changes?”
“Ohhhhhh no,” I mutter, starting to jerk the gun around in a not-safe way, unsure of whom I should point it at first. “He doesn’t get to be right. You two don’t get to feel superior, not after what you’ve put me through.”
“No one is trying to be superior!” Ron cries. “I want to help you! I want to understand!”
I will not be able to safely leave this spot as long as she’s talking and he’s staring at me like that. I feel the safety with my knuckle; it’s still off. My heart is pounding.
“This isn’t what I was expecting,” Ron moans, hands pressed to her mouth, staring at the ground. “Tedrin had a few theories, yeah, but you’ve changed so much since—”
I raise the gun like a flash and
BLAM
Tedrin’s knees are shredded. He goes down in the leaves with a rattling scream.
Ron shrieks and starts toward him. She isn’t even looking at me.
I disc
over that chambering a round is extremely hard when your claw-hand can’t actually grip the forend. I hook a claw-tip into it and pull as hard as I can; the round chambers.
BLAM
The blast spins her sideways, turning her right hip into jellied red. Blood spatters my face and hands. Ron is howling. In five seconds, I’ve neutralized them both.
I start uphill, switching hands in order to chamber another round. Their cries of slow healing are like background noise.
The top of the hill seems to go on forever, but I finally crest it and behold the pass. There, fifty yards away, surrounded by an increasingly barren stretch of rocks and sand, is the stone. It glows like a pulsing beacon, hidden from the savannah by an outcropping of rock. As I approach, chills run up and down my skin, needles rearranging themselves in panic. My guts roil with excitement.
The pedestal is twenty feet tall, built of brick-like rock segments that curve upward in an elegant pattern. I set the gun down at the bottom and start to climb. Even without my claw-hand, it would be easy going; the bricks practically form steps.
And there, right before my eyes, is the solution.
I reach for it with my human hand and my fingers close around it. The stone is the size of a chicken egg, neither hot nor cool. As I lift it from its place, it stops pulsing and glows gently, like a night light.
I have to hold it at arm’s length as I climb back down; any closer to my chest and my needle-shoulder starts to freak out painfully. My face itches where thorns have repaired my nose and lips.
Only when I reach the bottom can I really stop to admire it. On closer inspection, the stone is glass-like, its powerful contents shifting fluidly just under the surface. By appearances, it should be extremely delicate; I’m terrified that my hand will crush it. Yet as I carefully, and then forcefully, squeeze it, I can no more affect it than I could an egg of marble. I tap and scrape it against the stone pedestal and can’t even scratch the surface
I have to test it. My thoughts turn to the savannah; let’s see what happens when an ex or giraffe comes after me.
“That was a shitty thing you just did,” Tedrin calls from the treeline.
I roll my eyes as I turn to face him. “Would you figure yourself out already? One second you’re the Missing Link, ready to tear my throat open, and the next you’re mad because I shot you two on my path to saving the world?”
Eden Green Page 17
