by eden Hudson
Gritty dirt stuck to my tongue. Blood pooled around me, soaking into the dry ground. I hurt everywhere, a deep throbbing ache.
Mines. Of all the damn things, mines. I couldn’t have picked someone with a little less familiarity with explosives?
What the fuck is wrong with you? Ryder said. His flickering image stood looking down at me, shaking his head. You think all this is just for funsies? I told you, he doesn’t want you here. Get. The fuck. Out.
My fingers curled, scratching little lines in the dirt. My body shook. Took me a minute to realize that the shaking was me crying.
It hurt. Worse than the pain from the explosion. Worse than the broken glass sea. Worse than the razor wire. I was the last person Colt wanted to remember? Well, he was the only person I wanted to remember. I wanted to feel how I felt when we were together, when I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I was old enough to be his great-grandmother, when I wasn’t wishing he would fall in love with someone good enough for him, when I wasn’t regretting the last vamp groupie I’d had sex with while imagining it was his body, his skin, his kiss.
Damn it, Colt. My voice sounded as if it had been ripped apart by the explosion. I pressed my face to the ground. For years, I’d told myself that all I wanted was to be left alone. I had lied to myself for so long that I started to believe it. But Colt had come along and slipped right past my walls, dug himself into my chest so deep that I was never getting him back out. I’m not leaving.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and one remaining knee and crawled.
Colt
Somehow I make it back to the arsenal and stow the rifle. My hands are shaking and slick with sweat. I wipe my palms on my jeans. I feel sick, like the black noise has solidified in my stomach and it’s pulling me down.
I killed a guy. Six hundred yards, no suppressor, no cover, no chance for him to defend himself or for Mikal to defend him. I straight-up murdered him. A human.
Part of me wants to cry like a baby, go curl up by Sissy and Ryder’s graves and never get up again. The rest of me knows I can’t.
“Stick to the plan,” I say.
Even though it hasn’t dropped below ninety since the beginning of June and I feel like I’m on fire, a shiver rolls down my back.
I lock the rifle case, set it up in its spot, and head outside. For a second, I just stand there staring at the cabin. There’s a bottle of SoCo on the dresser in the bedroom.
“Shit.” I scrub my hands across my face. I can’t drink. That’s why I put the bottle in the bedroom—so I’d be less likely to go after it. Alcohol holds back the black noise, but it also dulls the lines. I have to be able to see the lines to get the sword. If Mikal comes after me today— And why wouldn’t she? She has to know it was me. Who else would murder a guy just so—
My stomach pitches, but there’s nothing in it. I left what little I was able to eat back by that fence at the edge of Dark Mansion property after I took the shot.
I start walking. I don’t even think about taking the Explorer until I’m out of the trees and across the Hickses’ pasture. Just as well. They’ll be looking for my vehicle, anyway.
By the time I make it to the bakery, the bank clock is flashing a quarter to four. The door is locked and the place is dark. Tiff’s out hunting.
I know the code. I could go in. It’s safe in there. I can shut everything out when I’m in there, just be with her, surrounded by everything that makes her Tiffani.
But I don’t touch the keypad. I put my back to the wall, shove my hands down into my pockets. The heat from the bricks soaks into my skin and makes my shirt stick to my back, but I can’t stop shivering.
I shouldn’t have come here, shouldn’t be dragging this to Tiffani’s door. It’s not her fight. But I miss her. Fuck, I miss her. I haven’t touched the bottle in a week, haven’t been by to see her in at least that long. I can’t go through with this if I can’t see her one more time.
Just let me tell her goodbye. That’s all I want. Please, God, just let me tell her goodbye.
Then there she is, coming across the square. It’s like I prayed her into existence. And even though everything is awful, even though I’m a murderer, and this is probably one of my last few hours as a free man, I grin. Five years Tiff and I have been hanging out, and I still can’t help but smile. Seeing her is like being able to breathe again.
“I was starting to think you were done coming by,” she says. “You get stuck in a missile silo?”
The smile freezes in place. I have to look down at the sidewalk.
“Yeah,” I say, but I can’t make it sound like I’m joking, too.
Tiff stares at me for a second, then turns and punches in the code. The metallic chink of the deadbolt opening sounds exactly like the action on a Tac-Ops Tango 51 sniper rifle.
She holds the door for me. I flip the lights on and head straight for our booth.
“I’m going to go get a shower,” Tiff says. “Be right back down.”
I nod and slide into the seat. Sitting is such a relief. It feels like I’ve been on my feet for days.
My eyes slip shut. Tiff will be back in a second. She’ll lean against me for warmth, and I’ll feel her beside me. Everything will be all right for a little while.
Tiffani
It took six unlucky guesses before I got good enough at spotting the land mines to drag what was left of my body through the rest. By the end, there really wasn’t much left to drag. An arm, part of my chest, my head.
When I came to the edge of the minefield, my body regenerated again. I stood, then took a second to light up again. Looked around while I waited for the cigarette to sooth the shake from my hands.
Ryder was gone, but Mikal and the creature were still up ahead. Crossing the minefield had closed the distance between them and me. Now I could see a leash running from the creature’s neck to her hand. It wasn’t begging for mercy at her feet like I’d thought. It was clinging to her legs, licking her red spike-heeled boots.
I took a step closer. Colt?
The creature was him, a barely recognizable version. It was as if he’d been burned alive. His skin and bones formed grotesque, inhuman shapes. All over his body, open sores oozed infected pus. He was naked, his hair was matted and dirty, and his penis was unrealistically enlarged, disfigured, and throbbing.
Mikal saw me. You came to fight me for this piece of shit?
His name is Colt, I said.
The dog’s name is whatever I say its name is, she said, jerking on the leash. It belongs to me.
I took a drag off my cigarette and held the cherry up like the Smoking Man to watch it burn. A ghost of Shannon flitted through the smoke. Colt whimpered as if he’d been kicked and tried to hide himself.
You don’t want this filthy slut, Mikal said. No one does. Not the way I trained him.
He’s not your damn dog, I said.
Mikal smiled. Yes, he is. Watch. Beg, Colt.
The creature scraped his face across the toe of her boots.
Please, Mikal, he croaked.
Tell me what you want, she said.
Please hurt me.
Tell me why you want it, Mikal said. Tell her why.
The creature shuddered.
I need it, he said to the ground. I need to be punished.
Good dog, Mikal said. Then she looked at me. You see? The dog needs pain and humiliation to be satisfied. You can’t give him what he needs.
I’m done screwing around, Mikal. I dropped my cigarette and stopped concentrating on it. It disappeared before it hit the ground.
Mikal laughed and dropped the leash. A spiderweb of glowing red lines appeared around her, dotted with mixing bowl-sized drops of blood. She reached into the blood-drop at her hip and pulled that flaming sword out.
Colter Whitney’s burning angel versus Halo’s own ice-bitch? Mikal took a step toward me. I’ve been waiting for this.
I shuffled through Colt’s knowledge banks for heavy artillery. The word thermobaric vibrate
d in the air.
No! The creature that was Colt turned toward me.
Mikal looked over her shoulder. Sit, Colt. Stay.
He obeyed, but he twitched and squirmed. His hands reached out as if to grab, but then pulled back. He couldn’t disobey her.
Good dog, Mikal said. Then she turned back to me, her tar-covered wings stretching out to their full span, trying to intimidate me.
RPG-7. Information poured from Colt’s consciousness into mine along with that word again, thermobaric, and a litany of warnings. FAE. Non-nuclear nuke. Shoulder-mounted shitstorm. Mini-Hiroshima. Too close, too close, too close.
That sounded like what I was looking for.
Ready to go to Hell, Tiffani? Mikal asked.
I pictured the launcher on my shoulder. When it appeared, the surprise of its sudden physical weight threw me off balance. Another thing I’d never felt in a mind before. I planted my feet and shifted my shoulders until the launcher rested against my neck.
Mikal charged. Time slowed. I watched the long, sculpted muscles of her upper arm bunch as she swung her fiery sword at my throat. Individual tongues of flame reached for me. Their heat blistered my chin, neck, and chest.
The instinct to get away from the fire was overwhelming. I stumbled backward, forgetting for a second that I couldn’t die here.
Damn it, this isn’t real, I snapped. It can only hurt.
Mikal laughed. But it can hurt a lot.
She thrust the sword at my chest.
I aimed the rocket launcher and fired.
I didn’t get to see the warhead hit. The moment I pulled the trigger, Colt’s mind forced me to drop the launcher and run in the opposite direction. The words too close, too close, too close pulsed in my ears. Behind me, Mikal screamed, furious. Then all sound disappeared.
Something heavy hit me in the back. I threw my arms out to stop the fall, but my head bounced off the ground.
Everything was fire. My skin crackled and hissed. I opened my mouth to scream, but my lungs shriveled. I could feel the tiny air sacks popping like bubbles in my chest. My bodily fluids boiled until the pain inside matched the intensity of the inferno surrounding me. The pressure built in my head until I felt my skull crack and explode. Brain matter filled my throat and mouth. I gagged.
I needed to scream, cry, writhe in agony, but I couldn’t move or make a sound.
Far away, past the pain and animal terror, I realized I was babbling nonsense, begging for it to end. But I couldn’t be babbling and unable to speak at the same time.
This wasn’t real. I had to remember. I’d mesmerized Colt. Somewhere along the way I’d lost control. He had taken over. This felt real, but it wasn’t.
The realization dimmed the intensity of the pain. I could feel the thing that had knocked me down lying on top of me. A body. His arms were wrapped around me, shielding me from the blast.
Colt. My throat tried to protest when I spoke, as if my vocal cords were actually brittle and burnt. I forced my consciousness to swell and wrestle control away from him. It’s over, Colt. Stop.
The holocaust receded. The weight disappeared from my back. My body regenerated.
I stood up and dusted my clothes off, more out of habit than necessity.
Sizzling pieces of flesh and charred clumps of feather littered the scorched ground, a hand here, a chunk of wing there. A leg in a melted red boot.
At my side, Colt was that diseased creature again. He looked up at me without standing. Through the facial deformation, it was hard to tell what his expression meant.
You know me, Colt, I said. Remember me.
His form shifted from the diseased thing to that black-haired little boy. Baby fat cheeks and dark blue-green eyes like his father’s. He just barely dared to look up at me through his bangs, and I remembered thinking whenever Shannon brought the kids by the bakery what a shy kid Colt was. Ryder and Sissy had never met a stranger, but Shannon could barely get Colt to look at people when they talked to him.
Mom’s friend, he said. Ms. Cranston.
As I watched, Colt changed again, grew sinewy teenage muscle, all arms and legs and feral righteous fury. The boy screaming in the woods the night I had tried to talk Danny out of the war.
NP bitch, Colt spat. Too scared to fight because you sold your soul? Hell’s coming one way or the other, vamp. Being a coward ain’t going to stop it.
Then he grew into his body, filling out into the man waiting for me back in the real world. The rage and battle-stress cooled, but that unnerving feral spark had rooted itself in his eyes. That was never going away.
Tiff. He smiled. It was short and self-conscious, but it was my smile. The one he smiled just for me.
I reached out, but Colt shifted again, back into the reeking, diseased creature. He cringed down into the dirt to get away from my touch.
Don’t, he growled.
I grabbed the thing that was Colt and pulled him to his feet. Wrapped my arms around him. The super-smeller recoiled in disgust, begging me to get away. Stinking pus oozed onto my skin. His mutilated erection throbbed against my ribs. I kissed his mouth and gagged on the rotting sickness.
Colt shoved me and I stumbled backward. Yellowish, infected tears dripped from his eyes and slid down his distorted cheeks.
Can’t you take a fucking hint? he screamed.
I crossed my arms.
I’ll come back here every damn day, I said. I’ll cut myself to pieces on the razor wire and crawl across the broken glass and get blown up by mines and fight that bitch every damn day. And you know what, Colt? I’ll win. Every. Damn. Day. You take the fucking hint.
Getting thrown out of Colt’s mind and back into my own was like exploding to the surface of the ocean after a deep, deep dive. I even gasped as if I were still alive and needed the oxygen. My body and soul and mind ached like open wounds.
We were on the bakery floor, next to the bathroom. I was straddling Colt’s lap, had his face clamped between my hands. I made myself let go.
For a second, Colt just stared at me. Then in one violent movement, he hugged me and pushed his face into my neck. His whole body shook, choking on the sobs.
I ran my fingers through his hair. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said again.
“I’m so tired.”
“Let me get your side closed up. Then we can go upstairs and lie down.”
“But it’s never going to end.”
“No, probably not,” I said. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. He was right. “But you still need some rest. And we have to stop the bleeding.” I stood up and pulled him to his feet. “Come on.”
PART III: RESIST OR SERVE
Tough
I clenched my teeth. Ground them a little. I groaned—just an exhale without the sound. That felt so damn good.
Scout had been right about making her blood stronger. It felt like I’d shot up enough tranq to kill a werewolf. Where was this when I was alive? I would’ve killed myself to get this high.
Actually, I did kill myself to get this high. I snorted. Then I started laughing.
I scrubbed my hands across my face, hard. That felt good, too. But fake. Masturbating instead of having sex. It’d take care of the horniness for a minute, but it wasn’t enough to last. I wanted Desty’s hands on my face. She was always touching my face while we had sex. The last time she’d talked to me the whole way through, swearing everything was going to be okay, and even knowing it was all lies hadn’t stopped me believing her.
I could feel her breath on my ear.
“It’s good, isn’t it? I told you.” Not Desty.
I opened my eyes.
Yellowed, nicotine-stained walls. A shelf full of dusty glass ducks wearing bonnets. Harper’s parents’ trailer—which was now Scout’s trailer.
Scout’s body was pressed to mine. She stretched up on her toes and rubbed her cheek against my face. I felt every bristle of my stubble
scrape across her skin. She took off her shirt. Helped me get my jeans off. Then she was kissing me.
“…need a condom. Not that I don’t trust you, Tough, but you just fed, so you’re sort of half-alive again.” She looked down at my fly, then back up at me. “Everywhere.”
Shit. This is not going to work if you don’t stop talking.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got some. Just a sec.”
She disappeared down the hallway. I took a deep breath, felt it puff up my chest until it was as full of fuzz as the rest of me.
Plenty of time to leave. Plenty of time to pretend like I was the good guy, the guy who could do the right thing once in a while, the guy I wanted to be whenever I was with Desty.
Reality was trying to jam its way into my brain through the high. I shut my eyes and ground my teeth again. My thoughts cut down to one-word feelings—Good. Buzz. Full.
Soft, warm hands rolled a condom onto my dick and I pushed into them, trying to stay with that heat. She ran her hands up my chest and down across my back. Even though I knew it was Scout, I wanted more.
So this was how it was going to be. I was going to fuck Scout even though she was jailbait and Harper’s little sister and so much like a little sister to me that I hadn’t even realized until now that she was hot. Later on, I’d go fuck somebody else. Why not? Everybody knew that was all I was good for.
I used to be this guy who didn’t sleep around—even though Mitzi would wind me up until I couldn’t take it anymore then leave me for a few days or a week or two weeks with no idea when she was coming back. Back then, I could do it because I might be a trick-ass man-whore the whole town talked shit about, but at least I didn’t sleep around. I had my friends and I had my music and that had been enough.
Before that I’d just been this kid who didn’t want to die yet. Was that so Goddamn much to ask?
It was weird to realize I’d never thought that word before. Goddamn. That was wrong. Sinful. Worse than all the other cuss words because it was taking His name in vain. Pissing all over Commandment #3. Dad probably would’ve said that thinking it was worse than anything else I’d done so far. Except throwing away my eternal salvation to become a vampire. Thinking that—Goddamn—it was like I could feel myself get colder from the inside out.
