Paranoia (The Night Walkers) (21 page)

I turned back and faced the road. It took about thirty seconds longer than I’d hoped, but finally I heard the words I’d been waiting for.

“What do you want me to do?”

As we neared home, I had Mason call my mom’s office to make sure she’d gone into work like I hoped. Her office line didn’t have caller ID, and when she answered, Mason said he’d gotten the wrong number and hung up. It was all I needed to know. We had to have the house to ourselves today.

We drove to Audrey’s house first. I knew Delilah and Mason could make it home on their own from my place, but I needed to know that the little girl was safe with her parents before I tried something that could end up killing me, or else let Darkness take over.

When we arrived at the address Audrey had carefully recited, Delilah and I walked Audrey to the front door. She hugged us each tight, then rang the doorbell.

Her dad was in mid-sentence when he pulled the door open and saw her.

“Audrey!” He reached down and crushed her against him, picking her off the floor as tears ran down his cheeks. I heard a clanging sound from the kitchen and her mom stepped into the hallway. Neither of them looked like they’d slept since I’d seen them last. Her mom’s short blond hair was ratted in bunches on one side and every one of her long red nails had been broken or bitten off.

She ran forward and grabbed Audrey’s face in her hands and stared at her, then kissed her cheeks. In between sobs, she repeated four words over and over: “You’re here. You’re safe.” Meanwhile Bubba, the crazy Chihuahua, ran in circles around their feet and barked.

Delilah grabbed my elbow and with a smile pulled me back toward the van. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Now it’s my turn.”

Before we got to the driveway, I heard Audrey’s dad yell out “Wait!”

He released Audrey to his wife and jogged toward us. I expected him to grill me for answers that I couldn’t give him, but instead he just wrapped one arm around me and one around Delilah.

“I have no idea how you brought her home, but you—I just—” Drawing back, he closed his eyes and tried to contain his emotion. “Thank you. That’s all … just thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I smiled. Somehow bringing this girl back home had healed a small piece of the scar left by my dad’s sacrifice. What we did for her … it mattered.

And that mattered to me.

When we got home, it was nearly eleven in the morning, but we were all too anxious about saving Finn to even think about how tired we were. Jack and Mia parked the vehicles in front of my house and we got our stuff—and Chloe’s body—out of the van.

“You sure you have everything under control here, kid?” Mason watched Jack lead Finn into the house. He and Delilah wrote down their contact information, and I gave them mine in case they had any more trouble.

“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” I said. At least, I hoped so …

Delilah hugged everyone, and then hugged me again. “Thank you again.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mason stuck out his hand and I shook it. “You have somewhere you can get rid of that van when you get home?” I asked.

His mouth split into the widest grin I’d seen on him yet, and it caught me by surprise. “My buddy has a wrecking yard. We’ll take care of it.”

I laughed, and Jack came back outside to shake Mason’s hand with a wry grin. “Could be good to have a friend like you.”

“Anything you need. Any time. I mean it.” Mason lowered his chin and stared hard at Jack, waiting. He didn’t let go of his hand until Jack nodded and said, “I will definitely keep that in mind.”

We put Finn in my room and Chloe’s body on the couch. It only took us a few minutes to set things up. I knew exactly what I had to do. The only thing I didn’t know was if I
could
do it.

I pulled Jack aside while Mia and Addie made some food.
“I need you to promise me something.”

He looked over at the kitchen, then back at me and waited for me to continue.

“If when I come out of this you think I’m a threat to my mom or any of them
… i
f you think I’m not in control or I’m gone—”

“You sure you want to do this?” Jack looked like he was trying to decide whether to talk me out of it.

“Yes.” I didn’t hesitate. “I’m stronger now, with Addie’s help … and Finn is family to me.”

“I know. I’ve seen it.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, you’re the only one I’ve ever seen control your other half like you do now. You’re stronger than any other Divided … including Dad. Plus, your other half—he seems more rational lately, or something.”

“Thanks?” I didn’t feel like Jack had answered me, and it made me nervous. “But if I’m a threat … ”

“What I’m trying to say is … what I said before, about you being dangerous for Addie? I think I was wrong. You’re different. If anyone can do this, I think it’s you, Parker.” Jack smiled. “I may be the smart one, I may have gotten the looks and the charm … but I think you’re the strong one.”

I laughed. “A few guards back there might have disagreed with you.”

“You know what I mean.” The smile faded from his face and he nodded. “But, yes, if it doesn’t turn out the way we hope … I’ll make sure you can’t hurt anyone.”

Addie brought me a bowl of eggs, but her hand was shaking so hard I was afraid she might drop it.

I took the bowl and swallowed two bites. “Thank you.” I was talking to Addie, but I glanced back at Jack, and he inclined his head in my direction.

Food was the last thing on my mind, but anything that might give me a little extra strength would be good right now. I scarfed down the bowl and then went to set up in the bedroom. My brain still felt much improved since Addie had helped heal the breaks … but the last six hours had been draining, both emotionally and physically, and I could imagine fresh new cracks already forming. I could only hope the new damage wouldn’t be the difference between success and failure.

I broke one of Mrs. Patrick’s stolen sleeping pills in half. After Finn swallowed one half, I took the other. I didn’t want to take the chance of one of us not falling asleep no matter how exhausted we both were. We’d put a sleeping bag on an air mattress on the floor, and Finn was already tied up inside it.

“Are the ropes still necessary?”

“Do you really think there’s anything that can make us trust you after taking over Finn’s body?” I raised one eyebrow.

Finn’s shoulders hunched forward in defeat. “Fine.”

I walked back out to the table. Everyone was sitting silently, staring at their half-empty plates.

“We both took our pills, so I’m going to go lie down. In a few minutes, come see if we’re both asleep. If we are, take out Chloe’s IV.”

There was no response. I looked down at Jack and he answered without raising his gaze, but I saw the muscle in his jaw flex. “Got it. Be careful, Parker.”

“I promise.”

Mia stood up, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry about your dad.”

“Thank you.” I smiled and patted her back. “Maybe someday you could paint me a picture of him?”

Her eyes welled up with tears and she took a deep breath before answering. “I’d like to be able to do that.”

Addie walked me down the hall, both her hands wrapped tight around mine. “Is this as dangerous as I’m afraid it is?”

I didn’t answer right away.

“The truth, please.”

“Yes.” I kissed her cheek before looking in her eyes. “But it’s Finn.”

It was all I could say and really all I had to say. There was nothing that Addie and I wouldn’t do to save him, and we both knew it.

She wrapped both arms around my waist and buried her face against my chest. I pulled her in tight, kissed the top of her head, and smelled her hair. When she looked up, I kissed her softly and whispered, “I’ll do everything I can to come back to you, and to bring Finn with me.”

“You better. And by the way, I was happy to find out about Jack being your brother. Having a brother is … it’s the best.” Addie smiled, gave me one more light kiss, and walked backward toward the table.

“He probably doesn’t like you dating his sister, you know,” Finn said when I went back into the room. “That’s got to be weird. My brothers are very protective of me.”

“Shut up.” Once I’d gotten a good look in Finn’s eyes, I flipped the light switch. Other than for the sunlight peeking around the very edges of my curtains, my room was dark.

Then something dawned on me. “Both Cooper and Thor are your brothers?”

“Yes.”

“You have a messed-up family.”

It was at least thirty seconds before I got a response, and Finn’s voice sounded heavy with medicated exhaustion. “So do you.”

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I picked up the camcorder on the desk out of instinct. It had been one of my better ideas. I wrapped it up in its power cord and put it in my bottom desk drawer. Whoever I was when I woke up, I wouldn’t need it anymore.

I lay down on my bed, closed my eyes, and got ready to deal with Darkness.

twenty-eight

In spite of how drugged Finn had sounded, I must have fallen asleep quicker than he did because I was in the Hollow and waiting. I’d actually been hoping to have a few minutes alone there before I got sucked into whatever madness awaited me in Finn’s brain. Everything inside my own head was quiet and still. I didn’t know what that meant, but with Darkness, it probably wasn’t good. I mentally tore down the wall I’d trapped him behind and even though I could feel him watching, he didn’t immediately come out.

“Are you seriously giving yourself the silent treatment?” My voice echoed through the white vastness around me. “Because that’s just messed up.”

He appeared, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of me. “You haven’t even begun to see messed up.”

“You know everything that’s going on, right?”

The look he gave me was full of so much disdain it was like he’d smacked me.

“Okay, you do.”

“Why should I care if you save your little friend?” Darkness held more fury and challenge in his eyes than I’d seen in a long time. Locking him away had seriously pissed him off, even more than I’d expected.

“Because you feel my emotions too.”

“I don’t care as much about emotions as you do.”

“Sure you do. It’s just all the negative ones you pay attention to.”

Instead of responding, Darkness seemed to be trying to bore holes in my forehead with his stare.

“I think I owe you an apology,” I said.

He blinked.

“You’ve been telling me for a long time that we’d be stronger
together, and all I’ve ever done is fight you and lock you up behind walls. If our positions were reversed—as you’ve made so abundantly clear to me—I’d be furious, too.”

Darkness looked confused. “You can’t trick me, you know … I can hear your thoughts.”

I sat down in front of him. “Then look close, because I’m not trying to trick you. I know better than that.”

He sat perfectly still for a few seconds before saying, “Go on.”

“Okay, it’s like this. If we come out of here and you’re in control, then Jack is going to kill us.”

“Because you told him to.”

“True.” I held my hands out in front of me, palms up. “But still, it’s what will happen. Here’s the other part that you may not have thought of. If
I
come out of here in control, then we live … but it probably means we didn’t save Finn, which is not what I want.”

“Wait … you don’t want to be in control?” Darkness frowned.

“I want to take your suggestion and do what you’ve been trying to do all along. I want to try to become one again. Both of us together, good … bad … whatever. Permanently.”

“Why are you changing your mind?” He looked more than suspicious.

“Because I realized that fighting with you doesn’t make me normal. It makes me abnormal.” I rested my elbows on my knees. “The things you want are instincts and needs. You have no morality and I don’t always agree with you, but sometimes you
are
right, and you’re always strong. The trick is to know that sometimes your instincts will win, and sometimes my moral code will win, and a lot of the time we’ll make mistakes. And all of that just makes us human—or Watcher, or whatever the hell we are.”

“How eloquent,” Darkness said, but his expression was blank and unfortunately, I’d never been able to read his mind. It was like my part of the brain didn’t have access to his part. I really wasn’t very happy about the whole set-up.

“So … what do you think?”

Before he could answer, we both got sucked into the suffocating, solid black nothing that happens when a Taker and Watcher get stuck together.

The weight of it was oppressive, and my lungs didn’t feel like they could expand like normal. It was a very good thing that I wasn’t claustrophobic, because this situation would be the worst nightmare for someone like that. I took a breath, then two, and then opened my eyes and tried to find the people I knew were stuck in here with me. There should be two, but I could only feel one.

I focused, trying to pull Chloe out of the nothing. Pull her out to where I could see her and feel her. My brain ached and I could feel Darkness withdrawing from me. He hadn’t decided yet. I needed him to be all in, or I’d never be able to do this.

My brain stuttered. I was asking too much. It couldn’t keep up. I shifted my focus to myself instead. Maybe if Chloe could see me, she’d come forward. I wished I’d spent years training on how to control this, like most Watchers had. It was still so new and difficult for me. I put all my energy into making myself visible; my nonexistent hands shook with concentration, and then there they were. I lay down on my back on … nothing really, but it felt solid, and I took a moment to catch my breath. I ran my hands over my face and when they came away, there was blood on my fingers.

My nose was bleeding … not good. There’d been a shift in my brain, but Darkness was still keeping himself apart.

“Come on. I may kill us if I keep doing this on my own.”

No response.

Rolling onto my stomach, I reached out for Chloe again. Now that I was visible I could breathe a little easier. I pictured her body in my head, her eyes staring at me from over the steering wheel of their family’s car. I pictured her here with me, but it was so hard and my head was pounding. The pain crashed in waves over me, tumbling me and carrying me down until I was drowning in it. Every cell in my body was being ripped in half from my effort, but I would not give up. I couldn’t even though I was reeling. Still, I reached out for her again and again. It was like the world’s worst game of tug-of-war, except the rope was attached to the inside of my brain.

Curling into a ball, I yelled as loud as I could and gave one final yank on the thread—and there she was. Chloe, her mind and body as one in our inky surroundings. It was definitely progress. She looked down at her body and then at me.

“Good lord, what did you do to yourself?” She scooted closer and her expression seemed torn between triumph
and dismay. Reaching out one hand, she gently touched
the side of my face. My ears were bleeding now too.

I could finally feel Finn, but like a whisper in the background, he was barely there. I couldn’t even get ahold of him to pull. How was I supposed to win this battle by myself?

Lying back on the ground, I wrapped my arms around my head as if the pretend pressure from my arms could push my brain back together. No matter how hard it was. No matter how bad it hurt. I could never look Addie in the eye, could never live with myself, if I didn’t do everything—
every single thing—
that I could. Even if it killed me, I had to try.

It was Finn. There were no other options.

Reaching out with my mind, I tried to grab him, but he was like smoke. A wisp here and there and then gone. I tried again, again, again. I tried until even my hair seemed to vibrate with the effort, and then I tried again. I would
not
give up on him. There were instants where I almost had him and then I heard screaming. Chloe was screaming. I tried again. My heart threatened to break through the wall of my chest. But I tried again. I would not give up on Finn. I couldn’t.

I rolled onto my side and reached again. Chloe was shaking me and shouting my name. I opened my eyes, but everything was foggy. I couldn’t lift my head. I couldn’t speak. I had nothing left.

“He’s here.” Chloe leaned over me. “You brought him here, but you can’t … you’re bleeding so much, Parker, and he’s not responding. I don’t know what will happen to us if you die in here—with us like this.”

Next to her I could see the top of Finn’s head. He was lying on the ground. I’d done it. I had them both. Now all I had to do was separate their minds … and I couldn’t do it.
I had the will, but no part of my body was reacting to my commands anymore. I screamed at my body inside my head. Finn was right there. All I had to do was pull them apart somehow. I was capable of it. I knew I was.

But I had nothing left.

I was nothing anymore.

Still … it was Finn.

Screaming in agony, I reached out with my brain one last time, knowing it might be the last thing I ever did, and mentally tried to pull them apart. My brain transformed into one massive stick of dynamite. The more I pulled, the more fuses appeared; it was just a matter of time before I made the wrong move, lit a match, and it was over. Still,
I held on to Finn with my mind and pulled with everything
I had left. My body was convulsing and Chloe was screaming and all I could do was pull.

Then something changed. My body stopped shaking as Darkness began moving through my brain, snapping off the fuses and removing anything that might spark. He fixed that damage I’d been doing to us. When he was done, I heard him speak.

“I’m trusting you not to let me down. I hope that moral code you’re always talking about makes you keep your promise.” He sounded tired, resigned. My efforts had drained him as well.

And then my body surged with life and strength. I sat up and my ears and nose stopped bleeding. Using our combined focus, we pulled with our mind … my mind. We were one. We were whole.

And we were crazy strong—but maybe still not quite strong enough.

I found a crack in Finn’s and Chloe’s merged minds and burrowed in until I filled the tiniest of crevices between them. Then I pushed. Finn’s body thrashed about on the ground and Chloe curled up in a ball and screamed, over and over.

I prodded, shoved, and pushed harder and harder until I didn’t know if I could do any more. I couldn’t catch my breath. It was too much—even with Darkness. Like I’d been warned, this was impossible. As I began to withdraw, my chest felt like a vacuum of agony. My brain filled with shattering echoes of pain.

Then, in one instant, I saw Finn plastered across the walls around us. A million images and memories from him rose to the surface … and then one by one began fading away. His wide grin the first time he’d blocked my goal at practice. The time he’d worn a pumpkin over his head on Halloween night and insisted we call him “The Great Orange One.” His expression when I finally told him I was a Watcher—and he believed me. Every image slammed me with new pain.

He was my best friend. I couldn’t—I
wouldn’t
lose this fight. I gathered all my focus and held tight to the memories, the images, gripping them all in my mind and letting them play out.

And then I felt it—the tiniest budge between Finn and Chloe. A tiny slip, like his mind was recognizing me, fighting beside me to retain the memories. A glimmer of hope filled me with determination and I visualized forcing every memory of Finn into the crevice between him and Chloe, pelting the miniscule crack again and again. It widened bit by bit under the assault until, finally, I could force all my focus into one massive ball of energy, squeeze it between them, and shove their minds apart with every ounce of strength I had left.

The last things I heard were horrific screams from both Finn and Chloe. Then everything disappeared in one blinking moment of the brightest light.

I sat bolt upright in bed. Jack was beside me, and he was on me in an instant, shoving me down and pinning me to the bed. I tried to struggle, and the urge to fight him off was intense, but my brain was pudding and I had no will left. I relaxed back and he leaned over me.

“Who are you?”

“We’re one. I’m myself. I’m … whole.”

“How can you prove it?” His eyes were piercing, his expression stuck midway between ecstatic and terrified.

“I guess the fact that even though I want to throw you against the wall right now, I’m not, is going to have to work for the moment.” How could I prove that the other half of me hadn’t taken over my body? I couldn’t. He’d always been me—I just hadn’t realized how much of me. Jack’s weight on my chest was getting to be too much. “Could you please get off? I can’t breathe.”

Jack’s mouth curved up, but I could see he was still hesitant. He leaned back and rubbed the top of my head. “Welcome back, little brother.”

I groaned and stretched. Every piece of my body and brain throbbed with pain … but I’d survived when I really shouldn’t have, thanks to Darkness. “Call me that again and I’ll deck you.”

He chuckled. “I’d like to see you try.”