Michael (3 page)

“Crap,” he said, walking out of the enormous house onto the porch. It seemed like only minutes ago, he had been having breakfast with her. And Kreios…. But that was a different world.

So where did Kreios go?

More questions, and lots of them.

He walked on with them for a time, down the steps.

“Where’s Kim?” He looked around.

He was on the floor of the great valley again. Only moments ago he had carried the lifeless body of his true love…right across these very steps.
True love? Do I know what that is?

He shook his head, trying to clear up his thinking. “All right. Where is she?” He looked around for signs in the grass, on the path, skillfully processing divots and pebbles and skids and filing them against the database of his demonically shared memories. “Come on, Kim. Where are you?” He kept walking.

Down the path he went, following thousands of years of inherited instinct and looking for something more solid. A bent blade of grass…a broken twig…even a partial footprint. But there was nothing that said
Kim
.

At length he found himself breaking out into the clear area at the top of the cliff. If he was looking for signs of activity, here there were plenty. He could sense it all, and it was like walking into the overpowering stench of a field of dead. He could see with his mind’s eye innumerable historical instances of this very type of thing, and it swept over him and drove him to his knees. He couldn’t help gagging; it was so real.

All the decisions he’d made—whether with good intentions or bad—were tallied up before his eyes and it was like that old Hebrew legend:
Mene. Mene. Tekel. Upharsin.
And he could hear what it meant; that he had been weighed in the scales and found wanting. And perhaps a lesser person—
what am I, a man or a boy?
—would have crumbled into tears, but Michael Alexander didn’t. He simply stood to his feet, numb. Overwhelmed. He looked out on the lake below, the mountains in the distance. He stood now just past the boulders near the edge of the cliff.

“Michael?” The voice was right behind him.

He spun, instinct driving him instantly into his fighting stance, fists up in the guard.

“What are you doing here?” It was Kim.

He let out a breath and relaxed, forcing his arms down to his sides. “Looking for you.”

Kim’s face showed flashes of unbridled rage. “Murderer,” she breathed, her eyes flashing.

Michael’s eyes widened in comprehension. “No…no, that’s not true—”

“How can you say that?” her eyes filled with tears, her fists clenched at her side.

“Kim, I mean—”

“Shut up! Just shut your mouth!” She wiped at her eyes. “You killed my best friend!”

“Kim—”

“Traitor! Bastard! Murderer!”

Michael grimaced.
I guess this is where it starts.

She stalked closer to him and looked up at his face. “I want to kill you!” She was pointing her finger at his chest. “I should push you off this cliff. You don’t deserve to live. You are a…” She stuttered—face flushed.

“Kim, listen to me. Airel is alive.”

Her jaw dropped. Then she stepped back from him, shock spreading across her face. “Liar!” she hissed. “I don’t believe you!”

“Kim, trust me. I am all those things you said I am. I have to live the rest of my life knowing what I did to her. But I’m telling you the truth—she’s alive.”

Kim looked like she was dizzy, and her eyes darted around as if a torrent of different emotions were pouring through her.

“Kim. Can I take you to her? Let me take you to her.”

She eyed him warily. “Why should I trust you?”

He shrugged, harrumphing. “I’ve got no reason for you to trust me, Kim. None at all. Like I said, you were right. I am a traitor and a murderer. And I am a…a bastard. You don’t know how right you are about that. Are you going to follow me back to the house or not?”

“How ‘bout not,” she said, crossing her arms and cupping her elbows with her hands.

I can see how this is going.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you head back, now that we’ve found each other, and see for yourself. I’ll wait here for a bit and let you two have some time. You probably need it. I’ll probably see you in the kitchen by the time I get back. I bet she’ll need something to eat anyway.”

She sniffed at him. “Whatever.”

“That’s our Kim.”
She’s probably going to make me regret saying that.

Kim turned and sprinted into the woods like a cat.

“It’ll be dark soon,” he called after her. “Better hurry.” He had decided to take his time getting back, coming dark or no. Maybe try to see if
El
would answer a question or two…

Before Michael could articulate a single question in his mind, watching Kim scurry off, he felt something new within him, a kind of draw to light and warmth. It was magnetic, and as he opened his heart and mind to it, he was surprised at how the light seared his mind, how the warmth burned him, it felt good to be truly honest about all that he was.

But what he was was ugly.

Then he could see what was happening. It was El.
He’s here, somehow, right now,
he thought panicking, and, completely opposite to everything he had ever known or been taught, without really choosing to, he fell to his knees right there in the dirt.

It felt then to Michael that everything made sense: that he really had more in common with dirt than he had ever dreamt. He felt low, and his decisions paraded before him, accusing him in a strangely familiar voice:
“Manipulator. You manipulated Airel.”

Is that me?
he wondered.

“You got close and lied to her, charmed her, fully intending to kill…and then you stood by and did nothing until it was too late…and then, dear boy, what did you do? Something very, very selfish…and very, very risky indeed, did you not? Yes, you did. And you know why you wrote in the Book, don’t you? Yes, you do…. You didn’t do it for Airel; don’t kid yourself. You did it for YOU.”

Michael collapsed, his face in the dirt, weeping, trying with all his heart to argue, “No! I did it for her; I love her! I love her with all my heart! More than my own life!”

“Nevertheless, you stood by and watched her die…”

Truth was hard to come by. He didn’t really know up from down. “But it wasn’t too late! I made it right!”

“Did you?”

Michael was silent.

“…or have you made it worse? Some things cannot be undone.”

He felt like he was going crazy, talking to voices inside his own head, begging El like a dog. That one fact, that he felt like begging his sworn enemy for relief, filled him with shame and regret. All he could do was hope that what he had done would work out in the end…that she could forgive him when she saw who he really was.

CHAPTER IV

STEAM.

Ah, that feels really, really good.
I stood under the shower of near-scalding water, washing the cold and grime from my body, my eyes closed.

All kinds of things were running through my head. Given a little distance from Michael, I felt like I could think more clearly. As the smell of lake trout and death rinsed away and fell from my body, the fog in my mind also dispelled, leaving a pristine clean. One thing was pretty clear already.

Michael and I had unfinished business. A lot to talk through, I mean. What had happened between us was life and death. It wasn’t just some stupid interpersonal friend drama resulting from someone flapping their gums about a rumor overheard in the girls’ locker room. I guessed the best way to say it was that I needed answers. Like yesterday.

She
expressed it perfectly.
“Caution.”

And
She
was right, I had to admit. This girl wouldn’t be making any rash decisions in the future. Especially about Michael. I also had to admit things had gone too far too fast.
Well, probably.
It was pretty obvious, anyway, that I didn’t really know him or what he was capable of, in just about every direction. For the first time I could see that I had acted like a love-struck teenager, letting all my rationale go out the window when it came to Michael. Anyway, I needed more time, so I resolved to be unresolved about things until I had more information.

What if that confuses him?
“So what?” I asked the shower tile, scrubbing shampoo into my scalp for the third time.

It was weird. I was thinking of new slogans for the shampoo I was using.
It’s the kind that gets out the worst smells! Even death!
I was still a little punchy. I sighed heavily and rinsed.

It had been about an hour.
He might be back by now,
I thought, and that made me more nervous about him than when he picked me up on our first date. Why? Because now I knew him better. There was danger and desire roundabout him, and that did weird and conflicting things inside me. It pushed and pulled at the same time.

I turned the water off, turned to grab for my towel and then realized the bathroom door was cracked open. I had left it closed.

“Ohmygawd!”

I gasped and covered myself with the towel, looking toward the sound of the voice. Could it be? I saw an unkempt mop of red hair. “Kim!”

“Airel…”

I could tell she was going to cry. I wanted to run to her but that would have been a little awkward. “What are you doing here? Are you all right?”

“Am
I
all right? How about you? Are you really alive?” she said.

I found myself blushing. “Stop looking at me.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t believe it.” Kim rushed forward and hugged me hard.

“Kim!” I held her for a long moment, starting to cry again. My head hurt from all the crying. I had to get ahold of myself.

“Knock knock!” It was Michael, his voice coming from out in the bedroom.

“Oh my gosh! Stay out there!” I shouted, a hint of irritation in my voice. “Kim!” I said, turning back to her.

She got the message. Best friends are good at reading in between the lines. She winked at me and ran out, saying, “We
are
gonna talk later.”

I heard her verbally abusing him out there and I smiled. In a minute she shouted back at me through the door, announcing that they would meet me down in the kitchen whenever I was ready. I said, “Okay,” and breathed a sigh of relief.

After Michael and Kim left me in peace, I felt the pulling again. Part of me was still broken and I wasn’t sure what would fix it. Or if Michael would even be involved in that healing.

Anyway, why should
I
be the one to feel bad?
“Exactly,” She
said. I wasn’t the one who had declared war. They had.

I toweled off and began to wring and brush out my hair. Horrible dark jokes clattered in the back of my mind. How could I be so beautiful? I was dead an hour ago. I shrugged it off and kept brushing.

Remembering who I was made me think of Kreios. Where was he? When I reached out in my mind for him, all I got back was silence. Blackness. Was he even alive? Why was I alone? Why had he been taken from me when I needed him most?

And who was Michael?
Yeah, really
. It was there nagging me in the back of my mind, but if I opened that door, what if I didn’t like what I found there? Did I have to go there? He had lied to me about his past and who his dad was. What else had he lied about? Had he really planned to kill me?

How can a girl know and be sure about love when she’s not sure who, precisely, she loves? Everything I thought I knew about him—that he was gentle, strong, beautiful and flawed, funny and serious, perfect and broken—how much of it was true? And considering what he had lived with… what he had to do to be the son of Stanley Alexander…I couldn’t begin to make sense of it.

In the end all of it made me want to be in his corner. There was something unexplainable about my attraction to him. Sure, it was physical. That was the attention-getter for everyone, right? But there was also a deep mystery to him; something both compelling and unknowable. That was the hook in my jaws, and it had been there since that fateful day I had spilled my coffee.

I tried to shrug off the deep thoughts and dressed in cargo pants, hiking boots and a dark blue tank top. I would be ready to hike out to the cliff later. Hopefully. I had to find Kreios.

I also figured my life, my school, my friends outside of Kim and Michael were all gone now. Everything was different now.

I had been shoved violently out of the nest, just like that baby eagle I had dreamt about. I sighed. So much about life was just impossible and huge. Would I learn to fly before I hit bottom?

Would I ever see my parents again? Would it be safe? For them? Was it better if they thought I was dead?

My head ached.

My chest ached too, but I refused to look at the scar in the mirror or touch it. I knew it was there and it made sure I did. It throbbed endlessly, pulsing with my cleaved and restarted heart.

But now I was ready for my day.

“Ready for anything?” She
asked.