by Logan Keys
I nod. “Yeah. Uh. Me too.”
I move my head from his comfortable shoulder to look up into his strange eyes. I’m very conscious of Jeremy in the neighboring room.
We are in section in the lower part of Anthem. The Skulls have set up in an abandoned warehouse, and they’d given Phillip a room, no questions asked. They admire him so.
The wolf had looked embarrassed by their regard. Right now, he looks like he wants to shake me and make sure I’m real. He looks like he wants to kiss me.
I blink quickly and step out of reach. Despite my bravado, I’m still a girl inside. I’ve only ever loved, crushed, whatever you call it, one boy. And he’s wanting to stab me with his pen.
The wolf cocks his head. “Does he share your feelings?” he asks, as if he’s realizing he’d read the situation wrong all along.
“Go ahead and leave whenever you need. We won’t hold you here.” I turn, tossing over my shoulder with meaning, “Thank you for helping us. Helping me.”
He gives a soft laugh and moves around restlessly. “So that’s it?”
I pause. “I suppose. We have work to do. I don’t want to make you feel as though you need to be a part of it. It’s risky.”
“What if I wanted to be a Skull?”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. I hold the door knob, and I twist it side to side.
He walks up behind me. But he won’t touch me again, I bet. Not unless I invite him to. I turn around, and like I’d figured, he backs away. It’s my move. An unspoken gauntlet has dropped.
Phillip’s expression is so earnest. “Make me a Skull. I’ll follow you, Crystal. Wherever.”
I’m more surprised by the fact that he means every word. I gape at him. He’d just saved my life. I should be following him.
Instead, I say, “Okay.”
Chapter 19
Dallas
Joelle is right about one thing. To get inside Bradford’s head, I’d have to meet him or see him. I can’t do it yet with someone I don’t know. I’d at least need a photo. Maybe that would work.
The dream walking is new. Newish. I’d developed it not long after the night we felt Tommy… leave.
We figured I’d somehow stolen this ability from Pike. He’d been haunting my dreams back when I was human and a guardian at Ironwood. He and his group had been terrifying me, and perhaps the skill of using someone’s dream had imprinted on me then. As a gift if you can call it that.
Or, I’d had it all along, and Pike never could visit dreams, but rather I’d pulled him into mine. That’s another theory. Like our powers are there, always, but invisible to us. Perhaps held in the ether between the supernatural and whatever plane we occupy.
This whole thing – specials with power, is strange.
I run into Shade on the way, and he’s asked me about it.
I’ve mentioned my abilities to dream walk. Should have kept it a secret, but I ask him now, “Can you do anything extra?”
He fans his fingers in front of his face before making them instantly disappear. “What you see is what you get.”
I rock back onto my heels and laugh, hard. I can’t remember laughing so loud in recent times, years even.
“What you don’t see, you get as well,” he says softly, and I sense his craving of companionship like a sticky thing against the side of my neck.
Loneliness feels like tasting hot, muggy air. Then something else bites into my middle, like butterflies that aren’t my own. I look at the lasers in his void, they are glowing more brightly.
“Oh,” I say softly, realizing. The sensation unfurling in my middle this time, isn’t my own.
“Oh,” I say again, and frown.
His teeth flash, and he chuckles. Shade is attracted to me. And sensitive as I am to his emotions, I sense it every way as if it were my own.
Then I wonder…
Someone being attracted to me as I am now is new.
The vampires aren’t interested in me other than what they can gain in friendship to Joelle’s second in charge. The men, even the brutal youths, steer clear of me, mainly because of my boiling hatred for them, even sans their humanity.
Some of their faces I remember from way back when Toby was their leader. They’d never touched me, true, he wouldn’t abide it, but they’d wanted to.
After losing Joseph, I’d placed a very firm, “Do not disturb” sign across my face.
Shade wouldn’t know my history. He’d only know me as I am now.
That’s sort of refreshing.
Still, I’m quite certain I have resting bitch-face, even with him. So, what could possibly interest the man-shadow?
“Don’t look so surprised,” Shade says, coming closer. “I saw you at the gates, and thought to myself, I’ve never seen such a beautiful creature in all of my life. Even before I got this charcoal mug in trade, I knew what a beautiful woman looked like.”
I frown further. Creature? I sigh. “Charcoal mug? It’s more like a void.”
I smirk, and then bravely, daringly, put my hands close to the swirl of nothing. I gasp at the cold feeling, but even as my fingers disappear, they touch soft lips, and a defined cheek.
Clenching a fist, I pull away, surprised, and sense his surprise, and then a deepening and sharpness of the butterflies at my middle.
“I’m sorry,” I say for no reason at all.
He’s breathing fast. “No one’s ever done that before.”
“What? Tried to touch you?”
“Not on my face. Not in a nice way.”
He’s going to think a frown for me is default at this point, but what a terrible thought Shade’s given me, terrible because someone had hurt him, I can sense a bone deep regret that only comes from dark pain.
Oh, how I know it.
“Do it again,” he breathes, in a plea, that I can sense he regrets in sounding so desperate, but I am already touching his face in answer. Anything to make him feel a little less of that sadness.
This time he lets me feel it all. The madness of being a shadow, of how there is flesh, but I cannot see it, and his laser eyes close, and he leans in to the sensation of my finger-pads touching, testing, caressing skin that is invisible to me.
Lost in the girlish wash of heat that moves over my skin, I wonder if a vampire can blush.
I close my eyes picturing a strong jaw, and a proud, sharp nose, and an eyebrow that is straight one moment, then raises into a question mark. Shade is no doubt gazing down at me now with a humorously dry grin because his full lips are u-shaped beneath my palm.
“I can see it,” I whisper in surprise.
“What?” he asks and cups a hand over mine, making me jerk away in shock.
My eyes snap open. I smile, finally.
“I can see it!”
“What do you mean?” His urgency makes me back away a step, as he crowds me, his usual gripping and annoying closeness, invading my space, making me feel defensive.
I cross my arms and smile again. My space claimed.
“I can see your face clear as day. I don’t know what it is. I mean I do, it’s the vampire thing. Call it intuition. I already could sense your emotions, better than most even. And now I can see your face just by feel. In my mind, I see it clear as day. You are quite handsome, Shade.”
“Are you sure?” His voice cracks with hope.
“Very. I…” our eyes tussle then lock. I toy with my hair then pull my hand down to my side. “It’s late,” I say seeing the sun fight for its place in the sky. “I have to go.” Shade doesn’t want me to leave, but I can’t stay. “I have a thing,” I try lamely, and before he can argue, or before my confused feelings can annoy me further, I sprint away at top speed.
While Shade might be fast, he doesn’t have time to see which way I go, and I change direction enough to make sure he doesn’t follow me.
Because I need to get away from a looming suspicion that those butterflies had not been his emotions after all. That they might have been mine.
And
because I need to be alone for this tonight.
Quick as lightning I wind up where I must, and Joelle doesn’t chide me, but I sense her impatience radiating inside of my head.
We meet where we had planned.
At Tommy’s graveside.
“Do you believe in God, Dallas?”
“You can see that I do.”
“And he made us? Even like this?”
I want to reach for her hand. Is she beyond that? Joelle had once been a child who needed such things. I see into her memories, she’s bouncing on the bed, and Tommy’s telling her to quit.
I want to reach out and hug her, hold her, do what you would for a child, but there is another Joelle that eclipses those memories, and I see her rushing through a forest, running with a pack of wolves, hunting with them. Bedding down alone in a cave; always alone.
Girl to wildling to queen.
So much in such a short period.
No. I think I won’t reach for her hand, because she needs to control her façade as well as I do.
Joelle is not a child anymore.
And I am not a lovesick girl.
She is waiting for my answer.
I say, “God made us. Then science made us like this.”
“And then man killed Tommy.”
I sigh. It’s true, but... Tommy killed Tommy. He was too good for this world to begin with. “If you want to sacrifice yourself for goodness, the world will let you.”
Joelle nods. “I’d like to say a prayer, but I don’t know where to start.”
“The Lord’s Prayer?”
“I don’t know it.”
I clear my throat. It’s been a while.
But the words won’t come. I can’t remember them but another comes. Tommy’s mother had a pillow in her room she’d stitched. Whenever I was hurt really badly, I’d move my fingers across the words. I wouldn’t ever forget them. Not ever.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Joelle pushes away errant tears but her face is stiff with a fierceness. “For thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
“Amen,” we both say.
“Let’s just be silent and stay a while longer,” she says in the smallest voice, and her careful use of the words make my throat close.
I nod.
Joelle moves and reaches for my hand.
We both hold on for dear life, and stare at the recently disturbed earth.
Before dawn, Joelle drops to her knees, still holding my hand. But it’s become sweaty.
We are both uncomfortable with the building light.
Joelle pulls from my grip and then digs the now claw-like fingers into the earth.
And that’s when I see it.
I touch her shoulder. “Joelle,” I say.
“What?”
“Look.”
She sniffs and rubs her eyes and follows where my hand points. A stone, across and to the right. It says, “Joelle.”
She rushes over.
She touches the stone and then brushes away dirt on her name. “Why?”
“They must have thought…”
“I was dead?”
Her eyes fill with tears and she looks away, lip trembling. “He died thinking I died. I guessed he had to have.”
I nod. What can I say?
She storms over to Tommy’s grave and sinks to her knees again, hands finding their holes from before and she lifts giant clumps, a sob escaping her throat in gasps. “He… wouldn’t… want…” Hiccups between words interrupt them, sobs, and deep breaths too. “This… we… need… to get him out of here… move him.”
I try to stop her. But it’s a weak attempt. I merely hug her shoulders while she digs. I know she is right. Joelle’s absolutely right. Tommy wouldn’t want to be here. He’d want to be…
I sit back and shake my head. The sun’s making it hard to think. “The farm,” I say and she nods. “He’d want to be at the farm.”
She keeps going, but I tell her, “Joelle, stop. Come on. We have to go.”
The sun is rising on us both… and we are not part of that life anymore.
Joelle finally gives up. Her shoulders slump, her chest shudders with what is left of her tears.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
“For being my friend. I… don’t have any of those left, now.”
I almost say how she’s found her mother again… but…
“She is not a friend,” Joelle says.
We make our way to our rooms.
Before she leaves me at mine, her face turns quizzical. “Do you think that somewhere in Anthem there are children… you know… of the leaders there, wondering how they got where they are? Wondering if they will be exactly like what they hate most?”
“I imagine.”
Her eyes grow cold. “I feel sorry for them.”
And Joelle leaves.
Chapter 20
Dallas
In my own dreams, I’m sweating over the stove, and the room’s too hot. I throw open the window and let the air inside. My red hair catches the breeze, and my dress dances around my knees. My apron, I untie and pull off. The roast won’t be ready for a long while.
I go to the sliding glass door and open it. A squeal fills the air as two children chase one another in a circle. One has hair the color of a faun, not quite red, and the other is like a halo of fire. They dance in the dusk. A warm and familiar voice is saying, “Hey beautiful,” from behind me, but I don’t turn around. I never do.
It’s him. I know it’s him, but even in my dream I don’t try to look.
Instead, I stare at the barn, at the pond, and the crops newly planted. Though this is dirty work, I’ve had my hair done, my toes are painted hot pink, and I’m planning on wearing my new bikini to the pond for a night dip.
My wish is that he’ll stare at the pale skin that shows, leagues of it, the thing is barely there. Got it from the mall on sale, and it’s sexier than lingerie, and the pond at night is dreamier than a romantic evening out.
He loves that pond.
And I love him.
The water’s always been like magic to us both, soothing away the day. It’s gonna help us make another baby.
Then like I know it will, the dream fades to black and white. The dancing children are the first to leave. They fade and disappear. Dark clouds build above, and it eats the gloam until there is nothing left but darkness.
And that voice, now it’s saying, “Don’t turn around. Don’t.”
And fear ebbs throughout me. I keep my eyes pointed outside. I know what he’s saying.
He’s a zombie. I turn and go into the kitchen, never looking toward the living room where he waits. At the edge of my vision, he’s swaying, lumbering back and forth.
I come back with a knife, but I can never face him. Not like this.
With each step toward the glass door to our backyard, everything changes. The house starts to slowly age, cobwebs, and moss bloom, and my outfit changes too. My hair that was floating around my head, lifts on its own and pulls tightly into a ponytail, and the leather eats away at the dress I’d been wearing until I’m me again. This me.
Dallas.
Not Daisy.
I go into the yard, and I brush past the rusted swing, and I walk toward the tall wheat that wilts away until there’s nothing left but clay dirt.
I cut a path through the now dead leaves, and I keep going and… going.
When I finally gain the strength, the courage to turn around, there will be nothing left, only a jungle of vines that have destroyed our house. My pond will be filled with algae, un-swimmable, a veritable swamp.
My dream turns into reality and I’m not even asleep anymore. I’m standing in the room. It’s day time, and I’m back in L.A.
“Where were you this time?” Joelle asks.
I startle. The rest of me shakes fully awake. She’s seen me sleep walk before, luckil
y just around the dark areas. Even asleep I’m careful of the sun.
Joelle said she’d walked too, or had, before.
“Nowhere,” I say trying not to flinch at the emptiness of my voice. “Just my own head,” I say.
She’d guessed it from the first. My abilities. That I’d had what Pike had had. The power to go to people’s dreams. She doesn’t have that, but she can talk to us either way.
I travel into the dreams of the sleeping. Vampires, humans, whatever. My travels are further each time. I’d gone into Joelle’s dreams that first time. She’d been sitting on her bed next to Tommy, spilling out her heart to him. Joelle’d seen me and had raged at me to get out of her head. But, later, she’d apologized that her dream self was still immature.
I get it.
Because my dream self gets her hair and toes done. And she buys bikinis. But our real selves are grittier.
Chapter 21
Dallas
“How’s those strings?” Shade asks with a shrug at my glare. “You guys are like a hive. The little queen bee sending you here and there. Tightly knit group of blood suckers, eh?”
“Jealous?”
He stiffens. “A little”
I laugh at his honesty.
Shade even smells lonely again, desperate. Like he’d worried I wouldn’t show, but I have, and it’s ebbing away a little at a time. I must be his only friend. He sweats the fear of disappearing into the fade, of being nothing one day, and he doesn’t want to be invisible any more than any other human. But is he human?
Maybe not.
I know I’m not. Not anymore.
“This is your last chance,” he says. “To turn back.”
“Why? Cause you think they’ll hurt me?”
Shade shakes his shadow head. “I won’t let that happen.”
“Good guy, huh? Chivalry and stuff.”
My heart, dead as it is, pangs.
I realize Shade likes me. Not just the attraction thing, but he seems to think I’m cool or something. It takes a lot of cues for me to read that type of thing on a man. But he does. He likes me more than just. I don’t have time for like. For love. I don’t have time to do anything but what Joelle’s asked me to and then I think and think on the deep thoughts, and dream and dream the terrible dreams, memories that prick my heart, and I manage to live with myself, barely, but we all die little by little every day, and I’m just trying at night like everyone else to come back from the dead.
