Twisted (#1 Deathwind Trilogy)

by Holly Hook

Tommy and I sit in the yard for a long time. The sun gets low on the horizon.

  It’s almost set completely when Dorian comes out and sits beside us, handing us sandwiches. He says nothing. Instead, he stares into the fields and darkness across the road, probably trying to vanish into them.

  It’s somehow soothing, not saying anything. Besides, there’s nothing to say.

  The lights come on inside Dorian’s house. Nobody comes out. They're leaving us alone. I'm glad for it. There's nothing Dorian's parents can do, anyway.

  A single engine sounds in the dusk, growing closer. It’s too light to be a fire truck. No sirens blare.

  My heart leaps. “Tommy, you might want to hide in the house. Just in case.”

  He does.

  It's Uncle Cassius's car, complete with the cracked headlight that makes it look like a pirate. He pulls to the side with the crunch of gravel.

  He’s here even after he betrayed me. How many others has he helped Madeline turn?

  But I'm running to him as soon as he opens his driver side door.

  Here he is. My uncle.

  I stop a few feet away from him. He stands against the passenger door like he’s afraid the car’s going to roll away from him.

  “Allie,” he breathes. “I've been looking all over for you. I checked the hotel yesterday. I checked the park. Everything. I even went to the police station last night. They said they hadn’t seen you. I’m glad that you’re all right.”

  “The police station isn't there anymore.” I need to tell him what I had to do. He has to know what he’s helped cause. He’s not leaving until he gives me some answers and I know that the people of Evansburg are really safe.

  I barely hear my own words. They're underwater.

  Uncle Cassius releases me. “I know.”

  He stares at me with a look that's begging, begging that the truth isn't what he thinks.

  He needs to hear it. “Uncle Cassius, we had to save everyone in Evansburg from the Deathwind. Do you know what we had to do?”

  I tell him right there on the side of the road. I stare at his feet as the words shoot from my mouth. I’m angry. I even think about telling him that I could turn evil, but I hold that back. This is bad enough.

  “Allie. Stop. I understand what you're saying.” His words quiver.

  “What else were we supposed to do?” I back away, clenching my fists. “I don’t get you. Why did you go off and help some crazy woman you don’t even know? She’s the reason we’re in this mess. The reason I had to help destroy Evansburg.”

  Uncle Cassius flinches. “Allie…”

  “So are you going to run off and tell her about me?” I ask. “Tell me it’s all complicated again?”

  “Cassius. We have to go. Now.”

  It's Madeline, leaning out of the passenger seat of my uncle’s car.

  I stiffen. She’s poking her head out from around him. Her gaze lands on me and hardens.

  He brought her here. Hid her from me. She just heard everything I said.

  I suck in a breath. I’m so mad I can’t speak. I want to run back into Dorian’s house and never speak to him again.

  But I have to get my answers. I have to make sure Evansburg is safe. From the Deathwind, at least.

  “This is important,” Uncle Cassius says to her.

  “We have to go,” she demands. “I need to see Evansburg, even if we just drive through.”

  “But my niece--”

  “Now.” She's begging, not commanding.

  Uncle Cassius looks at me. “You and the Dorian kid need to come along with us. We'll explain everything on the way to town.”

  I suck in a breath, holding back my yells. My insults. I’m quaking with anger. Madeline just heard my confession and it’s all because he hid her from me.

  I wave Dorian over. Thankfully, his parents don’t come out after us. They must not have heard the car pulling up since their house is so far back from the road.

  We cram into the backseat of Uncle Cassius's car. Madeline looks away from us, gripping the dashboard. Dorian glances at me and comes to life, shooting me a silent question: what the heck are we doing in the same car as her?

  “Later,” I whisper, willing my pulse to stop roaring in my ears.

  Uncle Cassius starts the car and we’re off. I claw at my jeans and force myself to breathe normally.

  But Madeline's somewhere else right now. She wrings her hands and looks ahead. She seems...scared. This isn't the same woman I saw at the old barn.

  My gut screams at me that something's very, very wrong.

  More wrong than I imagined.

  “Explain,” I say. “I really want to know why you did this to me and my uncle, Madeline. Because neither me nor Dorian enjoyed what we had to do.”

  She shoots up and stares at us both. “You’re lying about that. They only reported one tornado. And none of the new Outbreakers have that kind of power. I make sure of that.” She shakes her head. “Allie, you couldn't have obliterated Evansburg. Damaged some of it, yes, but not...not what they said on TV. They're talking possible EF5 damage there. I haven't made a single new Outbreaker like that. And I won't.”

  She's babbling. I have more of a level head than she does right now.

  “It's the truth,” Dorian says. “That’s what happens when me and Allie merge. It's not something we can control. We've gone through it twice now.”

  “Dorian!” I glare at him. I was content to let Madeline think I was lying.

  “Merge?” Madeline whirls around again. Her eyes are shock. “I've never heard of-“

  “Neither has anyone else,” he says. “It was an accident the first time. And the second time, they put us together right outside Evansburg so we’d destroy it. Do you know what can happen after an Outbreaker does something like that? I’m in huge trouble.”

  “God.” Madeline stares down at her jeans. “I still hope that you’re lying.”

  Oh.

  Dorian told her the truth because he’s still holding out hope that Madeline has the cure. That she can make him human and he won’t go bad.

  I know better. It’s a mistake. Now she knows we wrecked the town she grew up in. If she does have the cure, she’s not going to hand it to us now.

  Madeline’s quiet now, staring out in to the dusk. Thinking. Maybe even plotting her revenge on us. Uncle Cassius does the same. The silence gets heavier, the air thicker.

  The car rolls over a bump. The darkness gets deeper outside. Stars wink at us. Or laugh. I'm not sure.

  We're headed to Evansburg.

  The thought's a fist to my stomach.

  We're going to see what we've done. Up close.

  I grab the edges of my seat. “Someone. Say something.”

  Madeline sniffs. It's not allergies, either. “My town is gone. What do you expect me to say?”

  I can't take it anymore. “Then maybe you shouldn't have put me on that altar and let the Deathwind drill its way into me and turn me into this. Then this wouldn't have happened. And isn't death and destruction what you want? I mean, hello. Your victims turn into tornadoes every time it storms. I think you're just upset that you can't have the Deathwind attack the people in town anymore.” There’s no point in hiding what I know anymore. It’s all out in the open.

  Madeline turns in her seat so fast that I jump. Her face contorts into a monster. She's anger. Frustration. Rage. “I'm trying to save lives!”

  Dorian and I fall back into our seats.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Dorian says at last. “That’s what me and Allie had to do.”

  Madeline stares us down. Her eyes shine with anger. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Let me explain. I meant to the night before last, but you ran away from us.”

  I sigh. “That’s because you tried to turn Tommy.
We weren't staying for that.” I leave the rest off. I'm all too aware of Uncle Cassius tensing in the driver seat and how long he’s gone silent.

  “Please. Give me ten minutes. That's how long we have until we're in town.”

  Town. Or what's left of it.

  I'm glad it's dark out now.

  “Okay.” I look at Dorian. I can barely make out his features in the dark.

  Madeline eyes Dorian. “You know about the town of Mobley, correct?”

  “Yes.” He nudges me. “I used to live there. If you're talking about that thing where the goddess ripped the Outbreakers out of their bodies, we covered that yesterday. Allie knows the story now.”

  I glance at Dorian. So we were right about the Deathwind. It wasn’t just some stupid guess. “So that force you control is those released Outbreakers. We figured it out.”

  “True,” she says. Her voice is tense, like she wants to wring both of our necks. “Here’s how it all started for me. I used to be a regular human being. An Oklahoma state trooper, actually.” Her voice longs for the past. It’s something I understand.

  Madeline doesn’t look like a former police officer. She’s tiny. Delicate, almost. I can’t imagine it.

  She continues. “I had no idea that Outbreakers even existed. Then three years ago, we got a call that there was a robbery at a gas station in Mobley. The local police needed our assistance.”

  “So you went.”

  “Yes. We arrested the two men who were holding up the store. I thought nothing of it at the time, even though I did think it was weird that everyone in Mobley had brown eyes with black flecks.”

  I try to imagine Outbreakers calling for help from normal people. Well, I guess if guns were involved, they'd have to just like anyone else.

  “I remember hearing all the police sirens,” Dorian says. He sits all the way up. “I was watching cop cars fly past my house. It was the day before they evacuated the town. And I remember my parents telling me about the Marathon getting robbed. I forgot about that until now.”

  “I thought that was all there was to it,” Madeline says. “The robbery had nothing to do with what happened to me next, but it was the reason I had to go back to Mobley the next day. I needed to interview the owner of the gas station. I got to Mobley late in the afternoon. The Marathon was closed. When I went to the police station, I found out that the whole town was empty. Everyone had left.”

  “They evacuated us in the morning,” Dorian said. “The mayor's girlfriend must have done her goddess thing late the night before.” His words drop away. He must be remembering it all. The loss of his friends. Everything that happened that awful day.

  Madeline nodded. “I was returning to my car to radio my colleagues when it happened.”

  The air in the car gets heavy. “The Deathwind appeared,” I say.

  Her eyes cloud. “Right there in the street. I was an easy target. Nobody was around to see it happen.” Madeline squeezes them shut. She’s pain. “It struck me. Threw me to the ground. I thought I was going to die. But then I woke on the sidewalk hours later. And I had the memories of those poor released Outbreakers. I could see that goddess reaching for each and every one of them. I could feel the way they all broke apart and flew away. They no longer had their bodies, but their energy was still there, trapped in the atmosphere with nowhere to go. And when I stood up, I realized what I now was.”

  “A new Outbreaker,” I finish for her. I swallow. It hurts.

  Madeline pulls out a tissue and blows her nose.

  “And then what?” Dorian asks. There’s no trace of anger in his voice. He’s as transfixed as I am.

  Madeline collects herself. “Not only was I a new kind of Outbreaker. I had a link with the Deathwind. I know what it wants. What it needs. It couldn’t leave Mobley without attaching itself to someone, and I was its ticket out of there. It wanted me to find others for it to turn, so its energy could come back into the world like it was used to.”

  “Why couldn’t you say no?” I ask. We’re getting close to Evansburg. I recognize that farm off the road, the one with the light on its silo. I’ve got to keep talking. I can’t let myself think about it. “I would’ve given it the finger.”

  “I did, at first,” she says. “It wanted me to turn my fellow officers. So I had to quit my job. I had to keep them safe. Then, I tried to run from it. I even moved back here to Evansburg to live with my father, but the Deathwind followed me. And then my transformations started. It was luck that we live out in the country. No one got hurt when I changed, but that fear never went away. I came to dread the spring. But over the next year or so, I learned to control the transformations. I could decide when they happened. I could even control what I did as a tornado. It wasn’t easy.”

  “But why are you turning people?” I lean forward in my seat. I’m shaking. I need an answer for this. An explanation. Anything. “Does misery just love company or what?”

  Up ahead, red and yellow lights whirl. Everything else is darkness. We’re almost there. Uncle Cassius slows the car down. Takes a breath. “Allie, look at the floor. Don’t look up until I tell you.”

  Madeline turns again, blocking my view before I can. Perhaps she doesn’t want to look at what lies ahead, either.

  “Because the Deathwind is unstable. It’s losing its patience. I waited too long to do what it wanted. It’s not going to stay contained for much longer.”

  “Unstable?” Dorian asks. “Like a crazy person?”

  “No,” Madeline says. I don’t miss the defensive tone in her voice. “It’s unstable because it’s there in the atmosphere when it shouldn’t be. The goddess in Mobley upset a balance, and I have the job of putting it back in order. Every time I turn someone, the Deathwind gets a little weaker. Eventually, it’ll go away forever. But if I don’t keep up fast enough to make it happy, it’s going to explode. And unleash its full power.”

  This sounds bad. Worse than bad. “Its full power?” I ask.

  Madeline takes a deep breath. “Allie, you and Dorian formed a monster tornado when you merged if you’re telling the truth. That’s the energy of two Outbreakers put together. The Deathwind still has the strength of over a hundred. Do you comprehend what I’m telling you?”

  Uncle Cassius drives over something lying in the road. It clunks. Debris. I keep my gaze to the floor.

  “You’re saying,” I choke out, “that this Deathwind or whatever is going to turn into a giant tornado if you don’t turn over a hundred more people?”

  Madeline nods. “It won’t just be a tornado. It will be the greatest one in all of history. And the destruction of Evansburg may have sealed it.”

  Chapter Twenty