by Casey Hays
He nods toward the path in front of us. The corn parts; we walk and walk and walk, and a barn appears out of nowhere. Painted above the door is a symbol.
A star.
A sudden flash of familiarity courses through my brain.
“I’ve seen this before,” I whisper.
Kane drags open the heavy door on its rolling frame and disappears inside. The symbol burns itself into my mind. I follow him.
“He’s in bad shape,” Kane says out of the darkness.
I look. Kane’s shadow looms in front of me. I focus on his back, keep our mantras linked. He walks through the barn, past five stalls, and out the back. On this side, there’s a house. He spreads an arm toward it.
There’s a man on the porch… smoking.
“What do we do?” Kane asks.
This is my dream. I don’t want this man here.
I lift a hand and brush the man out of my way, he disappears in a vapor. I walk—straight through the front door. Kane follows.
“He’s up there,” I say.
I know this. My dream has found him. And so, Kane finds him too.
Stairs. I start up. But I look back over my shoulder. Kane seems so calm. Too calm. I want him to be erratic, and then I don’t, so he stays calm. I face the top of the stairs.
I stop outside the first bedroom door. I don’t see anything at first, but then… I step in and kneel by the bed, my hand grazing the thick softness of a quivering blanket. Whatever is under there spasms at my touch. Slowly, I pull the blanket away, already certain who I will see.
Curled in the fetal position, shaking uncontrollably, Rylin doesn’t see me. I dip low, push a swath of hair away from his forehead. Only then does he look up.
His skin is pale orange, the veiny markings only black outlines under the surface. His eyes are black, like simmering charcoal with small bits of red seeping through narrow cracks. But I know the minute he recognizes me. His fingers grab my wrist, squeezing.
“Why are you here?”
He screams in agony, dropping my hand and rolling to his stomach. Blood seeps through the back of his shirt. I lift it, and underneath are bandages, wrapped tight across his upper back and around to the chest. I draw back, alarmed. His wings are gone.
“He’s dying,” I whisper. I flick my gaze up, and Kane is behind me.
“They punished him,” Kane’s voice is flat. “Like they will punish me.”
Tears sting. I rise, grabbing a fistful of Kane’s shirt and tugging him to me.
“They will not punish you,” I say through gritted teeth. They hurt, but I clamp them tighter. “They will not.”
“Can you take him?” Casually, he gestures toward Rylin. “Like you took my helmet?”
Our mantras sing, holding us in this pattern of comprehension. We know this is a dream; we know it’s real. Tears trickle over my cheeks in streams.
“I don’t know.” My heart thuds, and the tears turn to sobs. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Kane scoops me close, his hand pulling my head into him. I smash my face into his chest, weeping, wetting his shirt with my sorrow. Sorrow that this is only a dream. It’s only a dream.
It’s a dream.
A dream.
But it isn’t.
“Why would they do this? Why?”
“Because they have to punish,” Kane says softly. He eases me back, cups my face. “Pull him through.”
“I can’t. I can’t do it.” Panic lifts up and spreads its wings like a crow on the prowl for death. I tug fistfuls of his shirt, pulling him toward me. “You bring him.”
“There isn’t time. He’s dying.” He says it too calmly. “It has to be you.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” Suddenly bold with a boldness I don’t own, I claw my fingers deeper into his shirt. “I’ll take you both.”
“I don’t know,” he says, dubious. “Have you done this before?”
“I’ll take you both.” My voice is hard. My mantra grows loud. “This is my dream. I say how it goes.”
This is my dream.
My dream.
It’s only a dream.
Not real. Not real.
But it is.
“I can take you both.”
My mantra growls—loud, but Kane’s begins to fade. He says something, shakes his head. I can’t hear him. I’m losing him. I cry out, but I can’t even hear my voice inside my own head.
All at once, I’m thrown to the ground. I push up against a hurricane force that shoves me down again, my face in the dirt, the pungent, mud-caked hay of the stall sticking to my cheek. I push to my hands and knees. How did I get here?”
I run. Out of the barn. To the house. Up the stairs. Rylin is there, shivering and blood-stained. A smear of blood graces his cheek, thick and sticky. The song in my head screams horrifyingly loud. I cover my ears and hit the floor.
“Stop!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Shut up, shut up. Shut up!”
Silence. Breath heaving, I sit back on my heels, scan the room. Kane is not here, and Rylin is as still as death. I steady myself, use the bedpost to pull myself up.
“Kane?”
Nothing.
“Oh no,” I whisper. I turn a panicked circle. “Kane!”
“Jude…”
Rylin’s whisper. Barely audible. I go to him, fall on my knees, lean my ear close to his mouth.
“You shouldn’t h-have o-opened the d-door.”
His words are a raspy sting. I run a hand over his forehead, my tears falling on his dirty face. My tears leaving tracks. My tears.
“I’m taking you with me,” I whisper.
A puppy yips at my feet. His round eyes expectant.
I tell it to come, and it will.
Tell it to come.
Tell him to come.
Tell him to come, and he will.
This becomes my mantra.
I wrap my arms around him—tight. The object I want to come with me. My song waits silently on the edge of my mind. I call to it. Tentative, it moves close.
“Come with me, Rylin,” I whisper. “Come with me. Come with me. Come with me.”
His mantra is weak, but it stirs enough for me to sense it in my blood. The mantra is everything. I sweep it up, twist it together with mine like two branches of the same tree. He is not strong enough to help me, and he is not a puppy or a flower… or a helmet. This will not be easy.
Eyes squeezed tight, I soar on my song, Rylin’s faintly holding on. A flash of light, searing pain. My body tears in two.
“Let go.”
The voice battles inside my brain.
“Let go and save yourself.”
“No!” I screech. And I hold on to Rylin until my arms ache and my head pounds and my body cries in agony.
Right before I break into a million pieces, I see Kane in the doorway.
No!
***
Bright light.
It hurts. I shield my face.
“Jude?”
Frankie’s voice is timid, lacking her usual bold courage.
“The light, Frankie. Turn off the light.”
“Uh… it’s not on.”
Through my fingers, I peek up at her, but even that hurts. Blindingly so. I cover my face to protect myself. The light only magnifies, burning me.
“It’s you, Jude.”
Frankie’s voice again. It doesn’t sound quite right. It echoes like she’s in the mountains, reverberating off rocky clefts. I try to look at her again. She shields her face under the tent of a blanket, barely peeking out, and the imagery in my mind pieces the whole scene together as a camping trip. I sit up, my eyes adjusting. She fuzzes into my line of sight. We aren’t in the mountains. Frankie pulls the blanket closer in around her face.
I lift my hands adjusting my eyes to their brightness. It’s me, all right. My arms, my fingers, my feet, all if me… bathed in bright, hot light. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. Everything is white… even
my hair.
A pungent scent hits my nostrils. Iron and mint. I wrinkle my nose.
“What’s that smell?”
Frankie says nothing. But one cautious finger emerges from the blanket and points at something on the bed behind me. I turn, taking in the lump that takes up half of the bed. Curled under a bloody blanket, a tuft of red hair poking out one end, Rylin shivers uncontrollably. And it all comes flooding back. I peer at Frankie.
“Am I dreaming?” This needs to be established. Right now. Slowly, Frankie shakes her blanket-clad head.
I untangle myself from the fear that threatens to freeze me up and scramble to my knees to peel away the blanket.
“Oh, my gosh. Jude it’s—”
“Call for help.” I cut her off. I check for Rylin’s pulse. It’s there but faint. He sweats profusely, and his skin turns more ashen gray with every passing second. Frankie stands frozen in shock, and my urgency turns to irritation. I snap at her over my shoulder. “Now, Frankie!”
She comes to life and leaps for the phone.
“Rylin?” My hand is on his cheek, my lips close to his ear. “Rylin, can you hear me?”
A low moan shudders him, and I release a trembling breath. I barely hear Frankie’s frantic mumbling in the background, then a click as she hangs up the phone and comes to my side. She stands apart, unsure what do to with herself.
“They’re sending medics up from the lab.”
She clutches her makeshift hood into place under her chin, shielding her eyes from my light. My tears are so hot, burning my cheeks. I cling to Rylin’s sickly, orange-pale hand. It’s a ghastly horrible contrast to my overwhelmingly bright fire.
His tee shirt, filthy and torn, clings to his body, and in the light, I can see the bloody bandages peeping through the torn fabric. He’s bleeding out right through them. I bite my cheek, holding back more tears.
“This is insanity, Jude.” Frankie hovers behind me, her voice too quiet. And still, her words pound inside my skull. “Rylin just appeared out of oblivion. You did this. It’s…”
Her voice trails into some place where unbelievable things live, and I examine the evidence before me. I did this; I brought Rylin to the casino. But before that, someone helped him. I lay a tender finger against the edge of the soiled bandages. Someone wrapped up his wounds and took him to that farm.
The farm with the star-shaped image on the barn.
Follow the signs.
Rylin trembles again; I pull the comforter up, tucking it around his frail body. Rylin…frail? How can this be? He’s strong and beautiful and confident. This can’t be real.
Maybe I am still dreaming.
I shift, looking for my key. The dip my knee makes in the mattress causes the chain to drizzle down and pile up against me. I pick it up and string it around my neck, and it’s as solid as ever. I’m not dreaming.
“What’s taking so long?” I hiss. Frankie merely shakes her head. She can’t pull her eyes away from Rylin’s broken body.
“Did they… take his wings?”
I don’t want to face this, so I nod quickly and settle in, huddling my body over his protectively. It’s all I have to offer, and I feel helpless and angry and broken myself. My fingers brush over a bump just below Rylin’s hairline. I ease the red locks away, and another fresh wound comes into view—a line of broken flesh where a tracker was embedded. I run my thumb over the area where the device was recently ripped free. Someone definitely helped him.
The Contingent was tracking him… and doing who knows what else to him. No wonder he didn’t come back.
“Where did you find him?” Frankie asks. My light has faded slightly, and she pushes the blanket off her face an inch.
“A farm. There was a star on the barn.”
“Do you know where?”
“No.” I say. Frankie steps closer, taking a cautious peek at Rylin, and sits carefully on the edge of the bed. “I left Kane behind.”
My heart beats like an out of control wildfire, and I’m suddenly exhausted. I don’t need sleep, but it’s all I want to do right now. I can’t look at Frankie hidden inside the blanket. An unreasonable guilt nags at me.
“You’ll find it again,” Frankie assures.
Rylin moans.
“Where are they?” I pull my knees in, restlessness consuming me. I’m about to pick Rylin up and carry him down to the lab myself.
“They’ll be here,” Frankie whispers. She chances laying a hand on Rylin’s hip, and her face shifts with empathy.
My eyes fall over him. I let go of the reins holding back my tears.
Twenty-eight
Everything is a blur ensconced in white light cascading from an overhead bulb in the lab’s operating room. At least five masked technicians and several nurses surround Rylin where he curls on his side on the narrow, padded table. It’s a whirlwind of activity, hands flying everywhere, voices shouting out orders. One of the nurses starts an I.V. and settles an oxygen mask over Rylin’s mouth. His lids flutter open, a peal of agony escaping him before his voice falls off into sobs, his body wracking with tremors.
I stand just outside an exam room, numb. My hot palms press against the cool observation window where students sometimes gather to witness presentations of procedures. Tonight, if any students were here, Rylin would be on display, and what a lesson they would learn. I can hardly stand to watch, but I can’t peel away either. Beside me, Frankie is as still as stone, unblinking. It’s been a hell of a ride. I’m sure there’s plenty we could say to each other, but we don’t.
My breathing echoes loud inside my ears, my heart beats double-time, and the tears? They won’t stop streaming. I don’t know how to stop them. I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know how to take away the misery he wallows in. I want to do all of those things, and I can’t. Isn’t it a conundrum? I was able to pull him through space, and I have never felt so helpless.
Frankie lays her hand over mine against the window. I hardly feel her touch.
A surgeon arrives, holding his scrubbed and sanitized hands in front of him. He passes us without a word and makes a backward push through the swinging door and into the short hall that leads to this operating room. On the other side of the window, we see him reappear through a far door. A nurse holds out a pair of sanitized surgical gloves; the doctor quickly slips into them and moves to the table. Rylin has grown silent, still as death, and for a split second, I panic. The doctor mouths a silent order, and two masked and gloved techs carefully turn Rylin onto his stomach, adjusting him into a face rest. He’s been completely tranquilized by whatever heavy duty anesthetic they just gave him. And he said it wasn’t possible. Inside my head, I hear his words. Have you ever tried to knock out a Fireblood?
He’s naked from the waist up, the rest of him covered by a thin sheet. His wounds have been cleaned and padded around the edges, but the wounds themselves have been left uncovered for the surgeon’s scrutiny. I can’t see them from here, but I imagine giant gaping holes. Another sob catches in the back of my throat.
The surgeon skims a chart a second nurse holds in front of him that contains Rylin’s vitals. He leans in close to examine the wounds, and that’s the last thing we see. A third nurse steps to the window, gives us a curt nod, her eyes sympathetic above her mask, and slides the shades closed.
I don’t move, my hand stuck like glue to the window, staring straight into the white lines of the vinyl shades, willing them to reopen. Moving means facing reality. It means talking, telling my side of things, explaining what happened. I’d rather not. Talking breaks the spell I’ve been walking in since the medic team finally arrived in my suite with a loud and urgent bustle, sweeping around my bed, knocking me out of the way to get to Rylin. Talking means facing the truth—that this isn’t a nightmare.
It’s real.
“Jude?”
Frankie touches my arm with a nod. I turn. Petra makes her way up the hallway toward us. She’s wrapped in a thin, blue shawl, her arms crossed and pinning it
into place over her body. Her hair, usually wrapped tight on top of her head, hangs long, framing her face.
She sidles up next to me and leans a shoulder against the window. I move off, leaving a wet handprint behind on the glass.
“You may have very well saved Rylin’s life,” Petra begins.
“Did I?” I sink into a chair, an anger nagging me. I point toward the operating room. “You call that salvation? They took his wings!”
She blurs out of focus behind a fresh sheet of tears. I’m not mad at her. She didn’t do anything. But I have to be mad at something. She tilts her head, compassion written all over her face, and I see her own tears. Frankie moves off quiet as a mouse, leaving Petra and I alone. This is between us. The conversation that is about to happen is for us. With an exhausted sigh, I drop my face into my semi-bright palms. I can’t take this. I just can’t.
My own seat jiggles when Petra sits beside me. She doesn’t say a word. She simply places a hand on my back and gently rubs.
“You got to him in time, Jude,” she finally whispers. “And I am amazed and so full of respect for what you’ve done.”
I can’t even be grateful for her compliment. Who cares what I’ve done? If Rylin lives, he will never be the same, not ever again, so how can she begin to think I got to him in time? I didn’t. I was too late.
“How can this be happening?” Nausea teases my stomach, and I clutch the arms of the chair to staunch it. “Why did he have to go to that damned hearing?”
Silently, Petra slinks an arm around my shoulder and hugs me close. I don’t object, the whole weight of my body falls against her. It’s the most comfort I’ve felt all day.
“He did what he thought he had to do.”
“He didn’t have to. He could have told his father no.”
“Jude–”
“I know Mr. McDowell is dead, Petra.” I pierce her, a sharp stab of knowledge. “He’s dead, and now Rylin could die, and I’m so angry at myself for not stopping him from leaving the penthouse that morning.” My words stumble out of my mouth in a jumble of blubbering. “If I had begged him harder or been more convincing or…or tied him to a chair…”
I burst into tears.
