Dust and Roses: Book Two of the Dust Trilogy (8 page)

“I’m going to kill a girl today.” I said
that to myself when I woke up on Saturday morning. No matter how many times I
said it, it didn’t feel real.

I was grateful to Hollis for coming with me
to face Rose. He didn’t have to, especially when the others had been so firmly
against him helping me. There was no way I could do it on my own. If Fletcher
knew what I was about to do, he would never look at me the same way again. He
could never know.

I’d told my parents that I would be
spending the day exploring downtown with Imani. Mom was so happy that I was
finally doing something normal with a friend besides Fletcher. If only they’d
known what I was really up to. I hated lying to them but how was I supposed to
say
“Oh by the way, I’ll be taking the train to Crescent City to kill your
birth daughter. Have a great day.”
?

Hollis wore jeans and a trench coat with
no shirt underneath. Maybe he didn’t even own a shirt. I’d only ever seen him
bare-chested. I knew the coat was to cover his wings just in case. He wasn’t
yet a full-grown Aswang so he was still learning how to control his wings. They
would pop out and retract any time they felt like it. Above ground, around
Humans, that would pose a definite problem.

We sat in the lobby of the train station
waiting to catch the morning train to Crescent City. Everson Woods was right on
the border of Oregon while Crescent City sat on the border of California so the
ride wouldn’t be long. Still, it left plenty of time for us to talk and get to
know each other better. Hollis had given me Rose’s address and a list of things
she did every single Saturday.

At birth Rose had been taken from my mom
and dad and placed with my birth parents. Unfortunately, my birth parents had
been murdered during the massacre, so she was living with the couple who had
adopted her. It would have been nice to see what my biological parents looked
like at least.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked Hollis. “We
can’t just walk up on her and . . . you know.” I couldn’t make my mouth form
the words “kill her.” How was I supposed to do that anyway? I’d tried my best
not to think about it. I had no idea what I was going to do.

We stood on the platform as the train
slowed to a stop. My knees wobbled underneath my dress. I doubted my legs would
be strong enough to carry me onto the train. What the hell was I doing? I was
no murderer. Well, I was, but I had no intentions of doing it again.

At least the day was bright and sunny, a
nice contrast to the relentless thunderstorms.

Hollis pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Her Saturdays are always the same. In the mornings she goes to this elementary
school to do volunteer tutoring for small Humans who need extra help. Then she
has violin lessons. After that she meets her friends at the Smoothie Bar, then
at night she goes out to dinner with her parents. That’s it. The same thing
every Saturday.”

“That’s all she does?” She really was an
Angel. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but I’d thought about it. I
envisioned her hanging out with her multitude of friends, because surely a girl
who looked like her would be popular, and then going to parties at night.
Rose’s life seemed pretty tame. Not that much different from mine, minus the
volunteer work.

The train came to a screeching halt in
front of us. The doors slid open. The other people on the platform moved past
us and toward the doors, but my feet stayed planted as if stuck in wet cement.

Hollis placed his hand on the middle of my
back and pushed me forward gently. “Come on.”

Finally, I took a deep breath and stepped
forward.

 Hollis garnered prolonged stares
from some passengers. He did look strange. He was bigger than the average
teenage boy and the trench coat in mid-March was plain weird. Hollis didn’t
seem to notice the stares. I imagined he was used to them.

We found an empty row and sat together,
Hollis taking up most of the seat, but he let me have the window. He leaned in
close to me. “Our best bet is to catch her walking from her house to her violin
lessons or from her violin lessons to the smoothie shop. That’s when she’s
alone.”

I gulped.
Catch her
, as if she were
prey and I was the predator. I guessed it was like that. With one hand I
squeezed my fingers on the other hand until they hurt. “How do I—how do I do
it?”

He shrugged. “However you want. You’ve
done it before.”

My stomach churned at the thought. I
couldn’t do her like Bailey—slashing my claws across her throat and chest until
she was a bloody pulp. I could never do that to anyone again.

“Make it as quick and painless as
possible. I can help you corner her, but you have to be the one to finish her.”

Finish her? Why did he have to say it like
that? “Do you know where your Gemini is?”

He ran his fingers through his hair
watching a family of three settle onto the row in front of us. “No.
Unfortunately I haven’t come across mine yet. Most of us haven’t and most of us
never will. My father doesn’t seem to understand that.”

The train lurched forward. This was
happening. We were in motion, moving toward Rose. “Does it make you nervous?” I
asked. “The fact that your Gemini can sneak up on you at any time and kill
you.” For all I knew, Rose could be in Everson Woods at that very moment
looking for me.

Hollis scrunched his face. “Nah. I don’t
think there’s a Giver I can’t take, no pun intended. The fact that I haven’t
been getting sick or weaker is a good thing though. That could mean fate wants
me to live. You know they . . . the Givers, expect us to fail, right? They
think they can take us out. They think fate will choose them over us because
they’re so good and we’re evil, which isn’t true.”

He was right. That was exactly what the
Givers thought.

My phone rang, sounding a hundred times
louder than usual. Imani. She had been acting different around me since the day
she’d come to my house so I needed to take her call to make sure we were still
good. “Hi, Imani.”

A lot of background noise came from her
end. “Hey, where are you?”

How could I explain this? There was no way
to. I hated to lie to my friend again, but I had no choice. “I’m on a train
with a friend. We’re headed to this little antique shop right outside of town.”

Was that believable? That was
so
not believable. What teenager spent their Saturdays going to antique shops? Why
did I say that?

“An antique shop? Okay. That’s . . .
different. Well, I was just seeing if you wanted to hang out later this
afternoon, but I guess not.”

She wasn’t at home. I could tell by all
the other voices I heard. “Where are you?”

“Hold on.” She lowered her voice and it
sounded as if she were moving away from the noise. “Don’t judge me, all right?
Lacey asked if I wanted to go to the spa with her, Trista, and Marley to get
facials, massages, manis and pedis. It sounded amazing so I didn’t want to turn
it down, especially when Trista’s paying.”

Poor Imani. She was having to spend the
day with the queen bee and her hive. I couldn’t think of anything worse than
that, except for what I was about to do. “I’m sorry. I’m sure the spa will be
fun though, so try to enjoy it.”

“Um, it’s actually not that bad hanging
out with them. At least not as bad as I thought. Lacey’s okay when she’s in
chill mode.”

That comment pierced through me. Imani
could not become friends with Lacey. Lacey was not going to steal my only girl
friend away from me. I needed her more than Lacey did. Lacey could be friends
with anyone she wanted. “Let’s do something tomorrow,” I said quickly.
“Anything you want.”

“Okay. How about we check out a movie? I
haven’t been to one since I moved here. There’s a lot of things I want to see.”

I felt a sense of relief that she had
taken me up on my offer. “You got it. The movies, your choice.”

Someone shouted her name in the
background. “I got to go. They’re ready for us. Talk to you later, okay?”

“Later.”

I’d kind of forgotten that Hollis was
right there listening to everything. He stared straight ahead, but of course he
had heard the entire conversation. “You like your life? Your Human life?” he
asked.

I hadn’t been prepared for that question.
My life wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, but it wasn’t complete torture either. It
could be a lot worse. “I guess I do.”

“You would never live in the lair?”

There was no beating around the bush. I’d
rather die than be stuck underground with them. It was a hard thing to say to
someone though—that I’d rather die than live their life. “No. I like my
freedom. I want to go to college and have friends, Human friends, date whoever
I want, have a career, get married. I can’t do those things in the lair.”

Hollis thought that over, then nodded.
“There’s no worries in the lair, though. We’re taken care of. We have
everything we need. You don’t have to worry about getting your heart broken or
friends betraying you. We don’t do that to each other.”

I turned back to the window. A row of
identical-looking houses rushed by. “The friends I have now don’t betray me,” I
said quietly, although I was slightly hurt that Imani was hanging out with
someone whom she knew had been horrible to me. Was that betrayal? I wouldn’t hang
out with someone she hated.

 The Taker life was all Hollis and
the others knew, so they had no idea what they were missing out on. Me, on the
other hand, I stood by what I’d said. I’d rather die than live in that lair.

Hollis shifted uncomfortably. “This is
stupid,” he muttered.

“What’s stupid?”

He gestured around the train. “This. The
way Humans travel. It takes for freaking ever. When I need to go somewhere, I
wait until night fall and fly. I get wherever I need to go within minutes.”

“Well we can’t all be lucky enough to have
wings.”

The rest of the trip was silent until
there were fifteen minutes left of our ride. Hollis turned to me again. “How do
you know this girl is your Gemini?”

“Fletcher told me.”

Hollis frowned. “How could he tell you? No
one can identify your Gemini but you. It’s an inner feeling.”

“Rose told him. You know when they
were—hanging out.” The truth of the matter was I had no idea what Fletcher had
been doing with Rose. It was confusing. He’d kissed and embraced her, but he
claimed to do that all for me. He’d said he needed to get close to her so he’d
know whether or not she was coming after me. “She said she’s been close to me
before and she got the feeling.”

Hollis faced forward again. He looked as if
he wanted to say something else, but didn’t. I was glad because I needed time
to gather my thoughts.

When we got off at the Crescent City
station, the sun was higher in the sky and the air was much warmer.

 Hollis checked his phone. He had
this whole trip mapped out already. “There’s a bookstore within walking
distance where we can wait. There are tables right in front of the window. We
can sit there and wait for her to pass. She goes to her violin lessons at two.”

My legs weakened again. “Okay.” But I had
no idea how I was going to do this. Bailey had been one thing; she deserved
what she got, she’d pushed me to kill her. Rose didn’t deserve this.

The bookstore was busy, filled with
parents corralling their little ones who ran back and forth between the kid’s
reading section and the Lego Blocks station. Hollis and I milled around reading
the backs of books until a table in front of the window became free.

Hollis flipped through a sports magazine
he’d grabbed from a shelf, not really paying attention to what was on the
pages. “What are you thinking?”

My stomach rumbled loud enough for the
both of us to hear. I should have eaten breakfast, but I was too preoccupied.
“I’m thinking about Rose. About how she doesn’t deserve this.” Rose had done
nothing to me. Sure, my parents really belonged to her. She seemed like the
perfect girl. But then there was Fletcher. He had kissed her and she’d kissed
him back. That annoyed me, but none of that was really her fault.

Hollis flipped another page. “Do you
deserve this? Do you deserve to become a Wendigo? To be thrown into the sixth
tunnel? Do you think you deserve to die?”

My answer to all those questions was
no
.
“What was it like for you the first time you killed someone?”

He tossed the magazine on the table. “I’ve
never killed anyone. I’ve never needed to.” Hollis frowned, obviously offended
by my question.

I had just assumed he had killed because
of what he was. “Oh.”

“Why do you think I had?” He narrowed his
eyes at me. “You still think those things about us, that we’re vicious animals
who kill for no reason. We’re not.”

He had a point. I shouldn’t have assumed.
Hollis might have eaten dead bodies, but they were already dead. That was the
way he fed himself when he was away from the lair. “It’s just that day when you
guys wanted me to kill Lacey. You acted like it was nothing. You said Humans
were expendable. I guess that made me feel like you guys had killed before.”