Ignited (13 page)

He was keeping things from me, I knew that. What I didn’t understand was why. Was he protecting me from the what-ifs, from the near death and life altering events in my life, or from something else, something bigger? The uncertainty of what it was he thought he needed to protect me from scared me, but I wouldn’t give up asking. I wanted to know everything, no matter how traumatizing he thought it might be. Eventually he would tell me. I hoped.

And I hoped I would handle it.

My grumbling stomach in the morning made a trip into town for food my first priority. For some reason, Nathan insisted on checking out the shed first. It wasn’t big enough to fit a car inside its walls, so I wasn’t interested in the least. I followed anyway, prepared to be the nagging thorn in his rear if he dallied too long.

Or to rescue him if the thing caved in on him. The stained wood siding was splintered in places, and I swore the walls were swaying in the breeze. Its squeaky hatch lifted like a small garage door, and I took a step back, fanning the particles of dust and wood chips that were launched in the air.

“Bingo,” Nathan said as he darted inside.

I wondered what he was so excited about, until I saw the array of weapons in front of me. That explains it, I thought as I followed him inside.
He was such a Rambo kind of guy, I should have expected this.

Hand-crafted wooden counters were built along two walls. Every inch was covered in an assortment of guns, knives, and other weapons I had no name for. Nathan reminded me of a kid in a candy store as he inspected the collection.

I ran my hand over a few knives on the counter by the door. Most of them looked like normal knives of varying sizes and shapes, but one of them stood apart from the others. I held it up in the sun and turned it side to side as I admired it. The blade sparkled in the light.   

“So, this is your stash?” I asked Nathan.

“Mine and a few others.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Oh hey, be careful with that one.” He crossed the room and gingerly took the knife from my hands. “This one has been cast in diamond. It’s the deadliest kind of weapon to my kind.”

I stared at the sparkling flecks on the blade. Tiny diamonds. “What makes it so deadly?”

“Not sure. Someone at one point figured out that diamond kills our non-human part. We’ve been coating weapons with it ever since. These weapons are very rare and much desired.”

“Your knife is coated too, isn’t it?”

He looked surprised I had noticed that, and nodded his head. “I’ve had it for a long time.”

“Is that what makes the bodies vaporize?”

“Vaporize?” He sounded amused by my word choice. “Yes, the only weapons that can dissipate our souls are the coated ones. Anything coated in diamond will work.”

Dissipate our souls?
Sounded heavy.

I eyed the knife as Nathan set it on the counter with the others. “Can non-coated weapons kill you?” I asked.

“Yes, but it’s harder. Our bodies heal faster and are more resilient than human bodies. It’s possible to kill us if you do enough damage, but the body won’t
vaporize
unless diamond is used. Diamond is preferred because it’s easier, there’s no cleanup, and it’s a guaranteed kill. Even if all you do is wound us, we’ll die later, even from a superficial scrape.”

I snapped my hand back, eyes wide as I looked at Nathan. “Can it hurt me?”

“No, only those of us that aren’t entirely human.” He glanced at me warily as he turned away. “So don’t come anywhere near me with that thing.”

I smiled at his retreating back. He need not worry. I had no plans to touch anything diamond again. Its safety record with humans was not something I wanted to test. 

“Maybe I’ll teach you how to use a few weapons while we’re hiding out here,” Nathan said offhandedly as he surveyed the rest of the shed.

I was about to tell him how bad of an idea that was when he spotted what he was looking for, and crossed to the corner with an excited whoop. He lifted a dusty black sheet from a large oddly shaped object, revealing a motorcycle that had seen better days. It was one of those sleek crotch rocket types, with chipped red paint, a rusty tail pipe, and a flat tire, but Nathan was very excited to see it.

“Old friend of yours?” I asked as I approached for a better look.

“Very old friend,” he said as he circled the machine, rubbing his hand over the seat.

“Yeah no kidding,” I scoffed, but he didn’t notice.

I recognized the look in his eyes. He was in man-on-a-mission mode. “Where would I have put the key?” he muttered under his breath as he crossed to the nearest counter. “Ah-ha!” He snatched a set from a hook on the wall and jingled them as he turned.

“Uh…” I pointed out the rear flat tire before he got too excited.

He frowned and dropped to his knees to inspect it. “It doesn’t look punctured or anything,” he observed, and swept his gaze around the shed. “I have a pump around here somewhere.”

“It looks like you have a variety of everything in here. You know, there are reality shows for people like you. There’s also places you could get help for your...uh, problem. ”

He squinted at me. “I’m prepared.”

“Yeah.” I surveyed the weapons cache. “To fight an army. Or take on the Zombie Apocalypse single-handedly.”

I knew I was getting bitchy, but come on, I was hungry. There was no way that motorcycle would make it out of the shed, let alone down the mountain to civilization and food. I wanted to tell him to stop wasting time playing with the worthless piece of junk, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t hear that as the friendly inspiration I would intend it to be.

At least he picked up on the hint that I wanted nothing to do with motorcycles and weapons. He sighed, crossing to me. “Alright, come on.”

Back in the cabin, he rummaged through the drawers in the kitchen and produced a notepad and a small mini-golf pencil. He handed them to me with instructions to jot down things that we would need to stay there for a few more days.

“What are you going to be doing?” I asked when he turned to leave.

He paused in the doorway. “Getting our ride into town ready. Unless you’d rather walk?”

He darted outside without waiting for a response. Not that I had one. I wasn’t about to tell him he was wasting his time. If there was one thing I had learned about Nathan the past few days, it was to never, ever challenge him. I decided to let him figure out on his own that even he had limits. Then I would stand back and enjoy witnessing the fallout.

Even more enticing than watching Nathan fail at something was the idea of food, and I had a shopping list to make.

The cabinets were mostly empty. There were a few plates, and cups, and some silver ware, but no food, aside from a few packets of hot chocolate and a bottle of creamer that was cemented into one hard lump. Food topped the list. I added shampoo, soap, and toilet paper. There was no washer, and I wondered how we would wash our dirty clothes. Maybe we would just buy new? I wrote down
laundry detergent or new clothes
with a question mark. I would have to ask Nathan about that one. 

Satisfied with my list, I headed outside to see if he had given up yet. Half way to the shed, I heard an engine roar to life and quickened my pace. I found him inside, straddling a completely different motorcycle, with fully inflated tires and a polished tailpipe.

I leaned against the wall, secretly impressed, and observed Nathan’s excitement.
Boys and their toys
, I thought, my grin widening. It was nice to see him acting his age for once. Odd, but nice. And, well, he looked mighty fine on a motorcycle.

I waved when he spotted me over his shoulder. With visible reluctance, he killed the engine.

“You did it,” I said cheerily. “Now we go shopping?”

“Not quite.” He grimaced as he stepped off the bike. “You have one more job to do first.”

Crawling into a hole in the ground under the shed had not been on the short list of jobs I had considered. Yet that was where I found myself.

I was going to kill him when I got out of there.

“You see it?” he called from behind me.

“Yeah.” I grunted as I pulled myself forward on my elbows. I yelped when a cobweb tickled my nose, and swatted at it. If a spider crawled on me, God help me, I would lose it.

“Let me know when you got it,” Nathan instructed.

I cursed him under my breath as I inched forward. Reaching my arm out, I gripped the satchel with my fingertips, and wiggled it closer to get a better hold on it.

“I got it. Get me the hell out of here!”

Per my orders, his hands had been on my ankles the entire time. Now, his grip tightened and he pulled. For a brief moment, I thought I would be stuck, and die buried under the shed in a cold cobweb-infested tunnel. Then I saw daylight. I pushed myself up and hurled the bag at him.

“Thanks.” He opened the satchel and peered in. 

I grunted as I surveyed the now ruined clothes I was wearing. “Next time don’t bury your emergency money stash in a groundhog den. How did you get it down there anyway?”

“I didn’t.”

The look I gave him portrayed the
no shit
in my head loud and clear. He was too big to fit in there, which was why he made me do it. Obviously, someone small had put it in there for him. If we didn’t need the money to get food and clean clothes, I would have told him to bite me when he asked me to do it. Not that he had given me a choice in the matter.

Now, with a scowl on my face, I brushed at my mud-caked, spider-ridden hair. “Probably should have had me do that before I showered last night. Now, I need another one.”

He looked me over for the first time since I emerged, and finally saw how dirty I had gotten. He bit on his lip and, if I weren’t mistaken, I’d swear it was to hold back a laugh. 

When I looked in the mirror, I saw why. If it weren’t so gross and I wasn’t so pissed off, I would have found it funny too. My face was streaked in varying shades of brown and I couldn’t even tell my hair was blonde from all the mud in it. Worse, I pulled a cobweb out of it. I jumped in the shower as fast as I could, not waiting to see if any spiders crawled out next.

I was far too hungry to linger, and finished once I had the mud scrubbed off. Again, I had forgotten to bring clean clothes with me. Wrinkling my nose at the muddy mess on the floor, I wrapped a towel around me and cracked the door open. With the coast clear, I darted to the chest beside the bed. Keeping one eye out for Nathan, I rummaged through the clothes, looking for something suitable to wear in public.

I had about given up on finding anything small enough that I wouldn’t look like a bum when I reached the very bottom and glimpsed something girly. With a smile growing on my face, I uncovered two petite blouses and a pair of jeans that looked close to my size. They were vintage, cute, and just my style.

After reassuring that Nathan was nowhere in sight, I slipped the jeans on. They were a near perfect fit. I pulled on a striped pink and brown long sleeved blouse because it was the girlier of the two, and that was exactly what I needed after the past few days.

I ran to the bathroom to hang up the towel and stopped in front of the mirror to mess with my hair. Without a dryer, I was forced to pull my hair back in a loose ponytail again. Still, for the first time in days I looked and felt like a girl again. Not even the hideous scar could wipe the smile off my face as I rushed outside.

Nathan was admiring the motorcycle, glanced up, and did a double take.

“I found a stash of girl clothes,” I beamed as I tugged on the hem of the shirt, peering down at it. My smile only faltered when I looked up and saw Nathan’s face.

He stood frozen, staring at me, his face ashen, eyes wide and haunted.

My cheeks burned. Was it the clothes? Did they belong to someone he knew? Of course. This was the Kala’s cabin. They must have belonged to someone he knew. Far too late, I realized I probably should have asked him first.

I was about to say something when he cleared his throat, pulled himself together, and all traces of anything weird having happened vanished. If I hadn’t seen the brief look on his face, I would have never known. But I had, and it was going to bug me.

“That’s good,” he said, handing me my backpack, the picture perfect example of indifference. “Now we won’t stand out so much.” He straddled the motorcycle, strapped on a helmet, glanced back at me, and nodded at the backpack. “You’re going to have to wear that.”

I hesitated, torn between asking him what had happened and pretending that I hadn’t noticed. He handed a second helmet to me. This one was smaller; a girl’s helmet. I decided to let it go, slung the bag over my shoulders, and put the helmet on.

Nathan moved my hands out of the way and tightened the straps for me like he was on autopilot. That was when I knew. He had a girlfriend—and I was wearing her helmet and her clothes.

“You ever ride before?” Nathan asked.

I shook my head, the helmet weighing down on my neck.