Estranged (7 page)

This was all too much. Lecia, the
darkness, the pain... With labored breath, Kalei asked,
“Why?”

Lecia leaned forward and rested her
head on her hands. “We don’t know.”

Kalei clenched her teeth.
She felt hot tears building in the sides of her eyes. She thought
to herself,
So it was the darkness,
huh?
Some negative emotion-feeding
thing
that wasn’t a
thing had taken away the three remaining people she loved in this
stupid world... “This is all so friggin’ pointless.” She angrily
brushed the tears out of her eyes with the heel of her palm. “They
didn’t deserve to die by this bullshit.”

“
Oh yeah. I’m so sorry
about your parents— and your sister. You know—”

Kalei was pissed at Lecia’s thick
head. “Not them!” She paused as she was reminded of the loss of her
first family. “Not just them... but my nieces.” She sniffed
defiantly. “And my husband.”

“
Your husband?” Lecia’s
voice was painted with confusion as her eyebrows met. “I heard
about the attack on your house, but all the reports said there were
no casualties. Well— that is— except for you. Fenn and the girls
were taken into SWORDE custody.”

CHAPTER THREE

Introductions

The revolving door had deteriorated to
nothing more than a twisted frame and a pile of glass. Kalei
stormed past, heedless of the shards that tore at her bare feet.
The only thing she could feel right now was rage.

The foyer was large— more like
immense. The ceiling rose at least forty feet above Kalei’s head,
inlaid with delicate artisanal moldings and bearing a ragged,
gaping hole where a chandelier once hung. The marble floor was
cracked directly below the cavity, and all around the walls were
dirty and missing chunks of plaster with a few scattered paintings
hanging at odd angles. On the back wall, four elevator doors stood
in silence with so many dents and scratches in their tarnished
metal that Kalei doubted they still functioned.

After casting a glance over all this
rotted grandeur, Kalei spotted someone sitting at the desk off to
her left. Whoever it was either was very short or was sitting in a
very low chair because all she could see was the top of their
head.

She crossed the room and discovered he
was short. Or rather, he was a kid. A kid who looked to be no more
than ten years old, lounging with his feet up on the counter. She
couldn’t believe it. Lecia had told her this place was SWORDE
headquarters, but instead, she found an abandoned hotel with a lazy
brat. She wanted to kill Lecia for this sick prank, but the girl
was already long gone on some deranged mission. Kalei approached
the worn marble counter, her anger growing like a ball over fire,
expanding with the heat until it threatened to explode.

“
Where the fuck is
SWORDE?” she demanded.

The boy calmly took his feet off the
counter and set down the book he had been reading. Despite his
short stature, he looked somewhat stately in his tailored suit. A
brown and black silk tie tucked neatly into a well-fitted,
chocolate-colored vest, and a white dress shirt sat beneath it all
and covered his arms down to his wrists. A matching brown jacket
hung on the back of the chair, and the entire ensemble stood at
odds with the boy’s black, springy hair.

As his hand released the book, Kalei’s
attention was drawn to his exposed fingers. A surge of energy
spiked up her neck, and Kalei’s head involuntarily jerked to one
side to release it. As soon as the rush was gone, more bursts began
to arise in her arms, in her legs, in her fingers... Kalei clenched
her fists and tensed her muscles, doing her best to suppress the
energy that accompanied a fierce urge to grab that small boy’s
hand. Seeing the dark rectangles in his nails didn’t help her
battle. Knowing that he was Estranged, her mind worked to justify
the innocence of grabbing that hand for just one, small high... But
Kalei needed her mind clear. She needed to make sure her family was
okay.

Kalei pulled her attention away from
the hand and looked at the boy’s face instead.

The boy met her eyes with a calm,
scholarly gaze and answered, “This is SWORDE. May I help you?” His
voice was composed and quiet, despite the slightly higher notes his
youth added to his formal accent.

Kalei found the child-playing-grownup
to be insulting. “Yeah, fucking right. A brat sitting in a hotel?
Do you think I’m an idiot? We both know this isn’t SWORDE, so tell
me where SWORDE headquarters is!”

The boy studied her for a
moment, then his chin inclined slightly as recognition lit in his
eyes. He said, “Ah, I know who you are.” He leaned back in his
chair and interlocked his fingers across his small abdomen as
though he were a professor examining a new student. Kalei’s
attention was once again drawn to those hands, both sets of digits
fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. The aching desire in her
heart strained to be fed by just
one
touch... Kalei clenched her
fists harder and felt all the muscles in her arms ache as she
fought against the impulse. Her head jerked again to release a
fresh influx of energy.

The boy continued, “If I have judged
correctly, you think you know all about SWORDE. When you were an
officer of the law, you saw us quite nearly every day, calling upon
the Wardens to deal with the Estranged incidents as they popped up
throughout the city. It must have been quite difficult for you to
let someone else protect the citizens of Celan while you stood by,
tasked with keeping the curious onlookers out of harm’s way. As I
recall, you have submitted an application to SWORDE every quarter
since you joined the force, am I correct?”

The surging energy and Kalei’s anger
coalesced into one massive rush, and her ears became overwhelmed by
a drawn-out shriek, like metal dragging against metal. She slammed
her fist into the marble counter, pouring all of her pain and
emotion into the blow as she yelled, “How the fuck do you
know!”

“
Didn’t he tell you?” said
a voice from the other side of the foyer. “You’re in SWORDE
Headquarters.”

She turned around and saw a man in
full SWORDE uniform step out from one of the elevators. Despite
being covered from neck to toe in black, his helmet was off so she
could see his sturdy, masculine face topped with light, short cut
hair. Next to him stood—

“
YOU!
” Kalei’s lips twisted into a snarl.

The teenager with the flowered nails
stood beside the uniformed man. She was furious to find the young
man here, to find him fraternizing so calmly with a Warden. To have
him address her in such a condescending manner. Kalei started
forward but then stopped herself. She was still wary of him after
their last encounter on the street. Her parents’ murderer and his
companion casually stopped where they stood just outside the
closing elevator doors. The door screeched and rattled as it slid
along a broken rail until finally it came to a stop with a
resounding bang.

Kalei was the one who broke the
silence. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“
I’m the Director of
SWORDE.”

“
Like fuck!” Her head
twitched violently. “Where is Fenn?”

“
He isn’t any of your
concern anymore.”

“
You let me think he was
dead!”

His reply was a flat, emotionless
statement. “It’s better that way.”

A harsh, heavy sort of pain grabbed
and dragged at Kalei’s chest. “Is it? Is that really what you
think! What about the girls? What about their dad? Does he even
know what happened?” The darkness pulled even harder. She bent over
and clutched at her screaming heart. “The fuck ...” she finished
weakly.

Kalei heard hushed whispers echoing
off the cold walls. She looked up and saw two women and a man at
the edge of the foyer, just inside the hallway. One of the women, a
tall, black-haired lady in a SWORDE uniform, was whispering to her
shorter, casually dressed companion. All three of them watched
Kalei closely, as though she were a new act in a show. More people
began to press in behind the first three, but Kalei didn’t pay
attention. She was more interested in the hands of the second
woman. Her small, exposed hands. They had what looked like a black
raindrop on each nail. Another set of hands behind her had zigzags;
yet another had what looked like eyes.

Unable to control the impulse, Kalei
lunged at the small woman. Yet she hadn’t made it more than a foot
before she relentlessly tore her eyes away from the woman’s hand
and planted her feet on the cold marble to halt her momentum. The
sudden reversal threw Kalei onto her backside.

Denying herself the hand
and
the high
released a massive backlash from the darkness. It ripped
through Kalei’s body like so many razorblades pushing though her
veins. She screamed out as she tried to contain the furious slicing
that ripped at every muscle, every bone, every— curling up in a
ball, she resisted a growing urge to reach for the hand again, just
to be rid of the battle.

She heard the murderer’s footsteps as
he approached. She saw his feet stop at the edge of her vision.
“You’re an Estranged now. If you see Fenn, he will die.”

Kalei lunged at the teenager, this
time not holding back. “I’ll fucking kill you!” But before she
could make contact, his companion grabbed her wrist and redirected
her momentum, using it to spin her around and pin her fist to her
back. Then, with a tremendous amount of force, he cut her feet out
from under her and slammed her into the ground. Kalei thought she
heard her jaw crack as she hit the unforgiving surface.

The teenager hadn’t moved a step. He
said stoically, “You’re welcome to kill me. But you
can’t.”

“
What? You don’t think I
can find a bullet big enough?” Kalei struggled and twitched beneath
her captor’s grasp. “Don’t worry. I’ll find it, and when I do, I’ll
slaughter you all!”

Unfazed by Kalei’s screaming, the
young man stated, “It’s not a bullet.”

Kalei grew still for a moment. She
retorted, “What?”

“
There is a way to kill
Estranged, but it’s not a bullet.”

Kalei snarled, “Too scared to tell me
what it is? Tell me and I’ll kill you right now!”

“
I already told you, you
can’t.” Kalei’s head twitched violently and smacked into the
ground. A sensation like an icepick tearing through bone shot
through Kalei’s jaw, confirming it was cracked. Dazed, she heard
Flower-boy continue, “Get yourself in check.”

The teenager was already retreating
from the room when Kalei called after him as best she could through
her swelling jaw, “Where tha fugh is Fenn!”

Without turning or changing his
stride, he casually replied, “You’ll know when I’m
dead.”

The teenager left the
foyer.

Kalei’s captor and the boy from the
desk escorted her to one of the rooms on the second floor. The boy
explained that she was not a prisoner; she was free to come and go
as she pleased.

The boy told her, “When you feel you
are ready, we can teach you how to control the darkness. Or, you
can go live in the district as you were, pursuing highs and living
out your days as you please. In either case, the choice is
yours.”

Kalei stopped glaring at the uniformed
man to turn her attention to the kid. At this point, her jaw was
fully swollen, and it felt as though half her face was being
pounded over and over again with a giant hammer. The growing
migraine didn’t help anything either. Kalei kept her mouth shut and
snarled at the boy.

He replied, “Terin didn’t lie to you.
There is a way to kill Estranged, and we can teach you that as
well. But that knowledge is restricted to those who become Wardens
of SWORDE, for your own safety. If you accept our offer, you are
welcome to become a Recruit in our program.”

Kalei opened her jaw just wide enough
to mumble, “Go to Hell.”

They shut the door behind
her.

The room was large. Where she stood
could have been considered a living room, and a door off to her
left suggested a bedroom. Kalei’s eyes swept over a stately, wooden
coffee table snapped in two and leaning at an odd angle against the
near wall. A sofa was buried in a small mountain of its own guts;
foam, springs, and feathers strewn about like a day-old pile of
snow after Christmas. All around the room were smaller piles of
glass and ceramic shrapnel where the mirrors and artisanal pieces
of the room had met abruptly with the floor and other hard
surfaces. On a table against the right wall, a single crystal glass
stood among the ruins of the other whiskey glasses and decanters,
which had once made up an elegant set. In its day, this room had
been grand. Now, it was a cage for animals.

Kalei didn’t know why they
put her in this room. She didn’t care. She just needed
–
a hand
– No. She
just needed time and quiet to sort out the chaos that raged through
her.

Kalei charged through the
room, heedless of the various kinds of shrapnel that dug into her
bare feet. Then Kalei dropped down into the far right corner, where
she put her back against the two walls where they met. For a
moment, she watched the pair of doors opposite her, the front door
and the bedroom door, wary of the possibility that someone might
come out to...
I don’t know, but I’m sure
I wouldn’t like it
. Then her head twitched
violently, and in a burst of energy and emotion, her fist reached
out and slammed into the wall. Infuriated, frustrated by these
impulses, Kalei clenched her unruly fists and watched the knuckles
strain against her skin. She waited for a count to three. Then, she
counted to ten. After that, she pulled her knees to her chest,
clasped her hands together in front of them, and bent her head
forward to rest in the quiet space she had created. Once there, she
bid her body to be still.