ARC: Crushed (21 page)

Chapter 25

Typical damn Jo, come to stop the monster from taking another human life. She could have picked any time to “catch” me, but no, she would choose now, just like with damned Annabel. I try to pull the red rage from the world. To calm myself. I wanted her to find me.

But not right now!
the Hunger roars.

“I could say the same to you,” I retort, trying to bite back the beast.

Jo’s eyes widen slightly at my accusation, but trust her for an instant comeback. “Yeah, well, you forgot to leave a forwarding address,” she says sourly. “Are you coming in?” She waves the gun, motioning me into the room, but not in a threatening way. At least not to me – Phearson goes even paler.

Jo hasn’t seen Armand, as he was pressed against the wall behind me as I pushed the door open. I decide now’s probably not the best time to reintroduce Jo to my evil friend. I flick a finger for him to stay put before I step into the room.

“How’d you get in here anyway?” I ask, still trying to calm my hot Hunger. The final guard is tied and gagged in the corner of the room. He whimpers and writhes and it’s all I can do to keep myself in check. Jo sees my discomfort and bends to whack him on the side of the head with her gun. He goes limp.

“Once I found out where he was moving to,” she nods toward Phearson, “I stole a key off a maid and have been hiding here, waiting for him – and you – to show up.”

Clever, classic Jo. Sneak in before the place is guarded. She’s ruining the kill I’ve been planning for weeks – classic Jo again. My tone is ferocious. “A little convoluted, no? But of course, no challenge is too great to stop me from taking the life of an ‘innocent’.” I wave at the sleazebag.

She draws back at the accusation. “That has nothing to do with it.”

But I barely hear her. The soft
pant, pant
of Peter’s breath seems screamingly loud. A harsh little sound; it’s like I can hear each air molecule as it’s dragged into his throat. It tugs at my attention, pulls it, drags it. Kidnaps it. My prey sits in his chair pumping the smell of terror into the room and the scents, the sounds, the expression on his face is mesmerizing.

Jo claps her hands and I start.

“Really, Jo? I’m supposed to believe you thought this was the most convenient time?” I wave around the heavily guarded apartment, to the three-hundred pound man lying bound in the corner, the serial-killer rigidly stiff in the wing chair. “It’s like you sit around coming up with ways to thwart me.”

“Are you expecting me to apologize?” she asks in amazement.

I snort. “I’ll come back with you, Jo, but things are going to be different. I’m not going to let you or them boss me around.” I turn a feral face on Phearson, and his terror makes my shrivelled heart swell. “I eat when I want and you – or anyone – can’t stop me.”

“Meda, that’s not why I’m here.” Jo waves the gun in her exasperation and Phearson cowers.

“I’m not the Crusader’s pet. I’ll work
with
them, but not
fo
r them.” My eyes are on Phearson, and my head weaves a little, side-to-side, in that snake-like way it does when the Hunger takes over. “You can’t save him, Jo,” I whisper, but it’s more for Phearson’s sake than Jo’s. For my sake, really, so that sweet scent of fear ratchets up until it’s all I smell.

“Dammit Meda, I’m not here to save Phearson,” Jo snaps, frustrated.

I lick my teeth, glass-smooth and sharp and Phearson screams behind his gag. “Prove it,” I say taking a sliding, creeping step towards him.

Jo lifts her arm and shoots Phearson three times in the chest.

Holy shit!

He jerks, and lets out a startled, strangled scream that ends in a gurgle. I can only imagine the look on my face when I turn to Jo. It must be spectacular, because even recent homicide doesn’t stop her from snorting when she sees it. She lowers the gun and, if it weren’t for the smog of gunsmoke burning my nose, I wouldn’t believe what I’d just seen.

No, scratch that. I still don’t believe it. I’m too shocked to even leap for the soul as it pours from his carcass.

“Now that you’re paying attention,” she says, sharply-sweet. “Maybe you’ll listen. I didn’t come here to save him.”

I can’t… I don’t… I nod.

Jo’s tone becomes deadly serious. “I came to save you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I sputter.

Her words come quickly. “If you turn yourself in, we can convince the Crusaders to not punish you as harshly. It’s the only way.”

The Crusaders. Of course. I snort. “Lower my prison sentence for good behavior?”

“Prison sentence?”

“Yeah. You can’t say the Crusaders are real happy with me right now.”

“Meda, they aren’t going to put you in prison,” her words come out slowly, as if they are almost gagging her.

“Nice try, Jo. I hardly bet they’ll hail me as the prodigal daughter.”

Jo’s eyes are enormous in her drawn face. “No, no Meda.” Her words pour out quickly, and the panic in her face finally sinks in. Her words stumble over themselves, and they don’t really make sense. “Meda, the Corporates… Meda they’ve been looking for an excuse for months. I couldn’t tell you, I should have, I know now, but I didn’t then… I’m so sorry… and when you stole the beacon map and ran away, you gave them what they were looking for.”

The hair on the back of my neck rises. I’ve never seen Jo like this. “Jo, calm down, you’re not talking sense.”

Her runaway train of words comes to a ragged halt. She swallows.

“Meda,” her voice is forced-calm. “You’re to be killed on sight.”

Chapter 26

I’ve had my share of surprises in life. Discovering my need to eat people. Learning my father is, literally, the embodiment of evil. Finding out Mom was some kind of superhero, and, only slightly less shocking, that she had a secret, long-distance boyfriend.

And yet, they all suddenly fade compared to this new knowledge that I’m being hunted by the very people I thought would keep me safe – the good guys, the elite society I still somehow thought I would become a member of. My response is as eloquent as I can manage under the circumstances.

“Gah-huh?” Try not to judge.

Jo sounds calmer, but I can’t focus on her face. Panic has made the room go fuzzy. “They haven’t followed me,” she says, her hands out-stretched like she’s calming a wild animal. “They don’t know I know.”

“Gaaaaah?” I might be sick.

She talks rapidly, probably trying to get it all out before I faint. “You’re a threat, Meda. The Corps have always thought so – they’ve wanted to take you out from the start. And with how badly the war is going…” She makes a frustrated sound. “It’s not
fair
. The demons just get reborn if we don’t purify them and, in these battles, there’s just not time. We lose more and more people each week, while they–” she waves her hand in the air, off topic. “Anyway, when they saw what you could do magically – and that you couldn’t be controlled through possession – the Corps started to convince the other chapters that you’re too dangerous to let live.”

My mouth just dangles open.

“The Sarge has been standing up for you, but once you ran away… And the Beacon Map, Meda? You stole the Beacon Map! What the hell were you thinking?”

The Corps wanted to take you out from the start.
My brain is catching up. “Wait,” I cut her off. “How long have you known the Corps wanted to kill me? Since before I left?”

Her compressed lips are all the answer I need.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” The implications of what she’s saying are becoming clear. Panic is making my mind whirl. They have the Beacon Map, they want to kill me, I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die. “You don’t think I should have been told that they were planning to execute me?”

“I begged you to behave, Meda. Why do you think I was all over you? Like I care if you punch the crap out of Isaiah. They were all watching you, looking for any justification–”

“I thought I’d be sent to detention, not the guillotine!”

Jo’s mouth tightens. “I should have told you. I see that now.”

“
You think?
”

She sticks her chin up. “I’d planned to, the night you left.”

When she came to my room and left the key. This all could have been avoided if I’d just stayed put and listened to her. I want to punch myself in the face. Her, too.

And every bloody-damn Crusader on the whole bloody-damn planet.

“And I’ll tell you everything from now on.” Her tone is solemn. An oath. “I promise. Perfect honesty.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?”

She doesn’t like what she’s about to say, but she did just promise honesty. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” It hits me. “You doubted my loyalty? Not three months ago
I almost died for you
.”

“No,” she says quickly. “I don’t doubt your loyalty – to me. But your loyalty to the Templars?” She sticks up her chin, unafraid, as always. “Yes, I was worried. Can you honestly,
honestly
say for sure that you’re loyal to the Crusaders? That you wouldn’t have freaked out, run away or taken some kind of revenge if you’d known they were considering your… elimination?”

Seeing as I ran away, stole the beacon map, almost killed Jo, and now stand over the body of a planned homicide, a believable defense isn’t quick to appear on my tongue.

And, besides, that’s only the half of it.

Fortunately she keeps talking. “Look, I know how they treated you, I saw it, and you had a hard enough time dealing with it. Would it have made it easier if you had known that even those in charge didn’t want you there? That, in fact, some of them wanted you dead? I don’t like everyone who’s a Crusader, and I certainly can’t say we never make mistakes. But our mission is important, vitally important. Despite all their flaws–”

Which currently includes wanting me dead.

“–the alternative isn’t an option.” She finally takes a breath. “Giving up and letting the demons win.”

She finally pauses and I open my mouth, then shut it. Perfect honesty, she’d said. I think of my state of mind when I left. I think about what I almost did. “I don’t know,” I finally say.

She has no idea what I’m talking about.

I clear my throat. “Whether I’m loyal to the Crusaders. I don’t know.”

She smiles slightly. “I do. You are, Meda. You’d never hurt us, hurt
me
, like that.”

I think now about her constant strain. Her weight loss. Her reaction when I made that joke about being tired of everyone trying to kill me. The tightrope she walked for weeks trying to keep me alive. And I did everything I could to make it as hard as possible for her. She pleaded with me to behave, but I couldn’t be bothered. She asked me a hundred times.

What do I say? What is there to say?

“How do you know all this, anyway?” The best I can come up with.

“I’ve been spying on their meetings for months,” she says.

I blink. “Months?” I manage. How could she have been spying on them for months and I not know about it? I was there. The building was heavily guarded whenever they were in session – not to mention it was held on the fourth floor. It’s not that I don’t think Jo’s a badass, but
I
got caught, and let’s be honest – the girl’s only got one working leg, and wasn’t exactly tearing it up in S and C.

“I’ve been faking it.” She must think that’s some sort of answer. “My leg,” she clarifies. “I’ve been faking it so I’d be allowed constant access to the infirmary. And so they wouldn’t suspect me of being capable of scaling the building to spy on them.”

“
What?
”

“My leg’s fine, Meda,” she snorts. “Well maybe not
fine
, fine, but no worse than it ever was. A little better, actually, I think. From all the physical therapy I had do to keep up my cover.” She shrugs like what she’s saying isn’t completely shocking.

The truth explodes, highlighting the dark corners of my rotten brain with brilliant light. I thought she met up with Chi every evening – because that’s what she wanted me to think – but instead she was going to the infirmary. Her failures in S and C were famous, so it seemed natural that she would need to go to the infirmary for treatment. Jo’s a cripple, incapable of climbing a rope for pity’s sake; they would never suspect her of climbing out a small window in a second-story stairwell, scaling the side of the building, and hanging outside of the fourth floor windows to spy on them. It’s absolutely brilliant.

And utterly heart breaking.

I think of her humiliation in S and C. I think of the rope climb and how I ordered her up that rope and was so horrified when she gave up. The bullying from the other students because they thought she’d get Chi killed, the constant lectures from the faculty, being sent to the Headmaster’s office.

Being thrown out of the Crusaders.

And she did it all for me.

How did I ever get a friend like Jo? Not because I deserve her. I’m like a lazy man who won the lottery: completely and utterly undeserving, and yet without the grace to give the prize back.

My mom was able to pull the same trick somehow – catch me being bad and somehow make me want to be good. What is it about love, whether it be motherly love, or friendly love, that has the ability to devastate and uplift all at the same time? I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so small and so large all at the same time.

But I don’t say any of these things to Jo. I don’t know the words to give her, and she wouldn’t know how to accept them anyway. It’d just embarrass us both.

So instead of demonstrating my change in words, I do it in action. Complete honesty she said, the least I can do is give her the same. And that means not sneaking around with the enemy.

Without a word, I reach out and swing the door completely open, revealing my monstrous compatriot. They’re both completely taken by surprise, the expressions on their faces almost exact mirrors of shock.

Jo reacts first. Before I can even think to stop her, she swings up the gun and shoots twice,
pop pop
, dead-center of a shocked and frozen Armand.

As I stand there, mouth open, it occurs to me that, in hindsight, maybe I should have used a
few
words.