Rising (26 page)

I sink down in the corner, shaking. In
the room below, the television spouts the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme
song, and I hear Abe’s young voice as he tries to sing along. Gabe lifts his
eyes from his sleeping brother and looks at me. In that moment, I know that he
knows.

“Wow,” I say in a voice that sounds so
completely fake, “that was pretty intense.”

“Are you hurt?” Gabe’s voice is soft.
Distant. But his eyes. God, his eyes are burning.

I look down at myself and realize with a
start that I’m still wearing my blood splattered clothes from the night before.

“We ran into some angels last night. The
fighting, it got…bloody.” My voice is still a ridiculous fake chirp. “But no,
I’m fine. Rain’s fine. Okay, probably mentally scarred for life, but I got him
out in one piece.” I’m rambling now, building a weak shield of words to protect
me from Gabe’s stare. “We really need to talk about this Totem thing. They’re
going to get themselves killed if we don’t—”

“I thought it was pity.” Gabe’s voice
registers barely above a whisper. Mother Nature must want in on this drama,
because a cloud moves in front of the sun, cloaking the room in shade.

Gabe’s eyes drill right into me. “Those
looks you always give me.”

“Gabe,” I whimper. I’m glad I’m already
sitting on the floor. My knees feel so weak.

 “But it was guilt,” Gabe says. “It was guilt.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The
cloud moves away, and the sunlight comes streaming back. But not enough. Never
enough.

Gabe stands up and carefully rights the
IV pole, checking that the IV and catheter lines are still connected to Tarren.

“We’re out of Fentanyl,” he says. “I
need to get more.”

This is worse than him yelling at me. He
must know this.

“I can get it,” I say.

“You know how to pick up heavy sedatives
on the street?” Gabe arches an eyebrow. His voice is sarcastic, but there’s a
dangerous edge on it. His aura is dark.

Yell at me,
I think desperately.
Scream. Make me
cry.

Gabe grabs the key card from the table.
“Watch Tarren. I don’t have any contacts around here, so this may take a while.”

If I wasn’t so damn hungry maybe I could
think of the right words. It’s not as if I haven’t practiced this moment a
thousand million times in my head, always searching for a way to make Gabe
understand. The heater kicks on, and I feel the vibration of its loud cough
through the floor.

Gabe walks to the door but stops with
his hand on the handle. He doesn’t turn around, just asks in that poison-soft
voice, “Was I in on it?”

I swallow. “Your plan was to strap every
weapon we owned to your body, rush Grand, and pray that he tripped.”

Gabe laughs. He actually laughs. “Yeah,
that sounds like me.”

“I had to make Grand believe I was
switching sides,” I tell him. “It was the only way to get close enough.”

Gabe reaches up and touches his ribs. Reds
and oranges ripple through his aura when he makes the connection.

“It wasn’t just the draining,” he says
in a voice gone low to gravel.

“You had to believe too,” I say.

Gabe shakes his head. “No fucking way.
There’s nothing you could have said, done.”

“You did,” I croak. “I made you
believe.”

I don’t need to see his face to watch my
words wound him. The reds in Gabe’s aura turn crimson.

“I wasn’t supposed to hold on for so
long. It wasn’t supposed to be that close.” My last words are a whisper. I’m
not sure if he even heard it.

I wait, staring at Gabe’s thin
shoulders, at the coat I bought him that hangs on his skeletal body.

“Uh-huh,” he says and walks out of the
room. I watch the door close.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I console Tarren
as I carefully unwrap his bandages. “This thing with me and Gabe, you can’t
blame yourself. You’ll want to go all Tarren-guilt over it, but I won’t let
you. This one is mine.”

For once in his life, Tarren doesn’t
argue.

In the room below, I listen to the silly
lyrics of a kid’s cereal commercial and then a sharp back and forth between
adult voices. Raven’s father suggests that the family continue on to his
parents’ house in Lincoln, Nebraska. He thinks Raven is just as likely to show
up there as come back to the motel. Her mother is adamant that they stay put
until Raven is found. She conclusively wins the argument by dissolving into sobs.

The inner layers of Tarren’s bandages
are sodden with pus and a somewhat horrifying green phlegm. The smell coils in
my nose, bringing tears to my eyes. When I arrive at the last layer of bandages,
I have to press my fingers outside the wound and slowly peel the bandage back,
bringing flakes of melted black fabric with it.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I hiss even
though Tarren’s long lashes never even tremble. Thank god for serious knock out
juice.

I drop the wet mess of bandages into the
trashcan along with my stained latex gloves, and then I stand over the bed and
try not to freak the hell out any more than I already am. The burn is raw and
red around the edges, and the black fabric that was once a part of Tarren’s
shirt is now hardened, almost like a shell of plastic embedded into his skin.
The next step of his care is debridement, but that’s…fuck, that’s terrible.
Gabe needs to be here. Dr. Lee needs to be here. I’m even desperate enough to
take Lo.

The latex gloves are stubborn as I push
my fingers into a new pair. My hand travels to the nightstand, to the scalpel
that sits in its Dixie cup bath of alcohol. I watch my hand bring the scalpel
forward. Am I really going to do this? Can I really do this?

Francesca explained exactly what I
needed to do, but there are words, and then there’s…cutting Tarren. I lower the
scalpel, have a mini-panic attack, and lay the blade almost flat against the black,
burned mess of fabric and flesh.

Deep, deep, deep breath. “I’m so sorry,”
I whisper and begin to gently scrape away.

My brain wants to go anywhere but here,
so I let it wander down the twisted path of my new, post-Gabe world. 

“I think I understand now,” I tell
Tarren, “how you can drown in secrets.” My hand is trembling, glowing, but I’m
in control. Little black flakes speckle the towel beneath Tarren’s body. The
scalpel reveals red, angry flesh and slick purple muscle beneath the charred
surface of Tarren’s wound.

I have to find her.
Tarren’s words echo in my head. I see
again those golden strands rising in his aura. That sadness. For me.
Pegasus.

I’ve been so wrong about him, tricked by
his scowls, by those frosty eyes he hides behind. He put the distance between
us, but I was the one who imagined barbs and landmines along the path. I
thought his coldness was hate or indifference, never fear.

I’m the last one left.
I remember again all those colors, that
agony in Tarren’s aura as he spoke those words. My world tilts off kilter as I
see myself exactly as I must look through his eyes. Another sister – another
person to protect, another person to be lost, another wound to forever fester.

I have to do something for Tarren.
Something worthy. It comes to me, like a kiss of serendipity. I kneel besides
the bed, so my face is even with my brother’s. Then, I break the one promise
I’ve ever made to him – the only thing he’s ever asked of me.

“I forgive you,” I say. “For all of it.
Everything you’ve done and everything you will do, even if you have to kill me
one day.”

I finally understand. Tarren will only
kill me if I represent an imminent danger to another, if I lose control of the
monster. This isn’t, as I’ve always believed, a cruel threat that forever
divides us. This is Tarren’s promise of protection. I think of Rain, of kissing
him, of touching that multi-colored aura of his. Tarren won’t let me hurt Rain.
He won’t let me hurt Gabe again or anyone else. In this crazy moment of
emotional overload, I’m absurdly grateful to him for that, for being strong
enough to pull the trigger if it has to be done.

***

Four hours trickles by. I’m convinced that
the clock is toying with me, that the minutes have colluded to overstay their
welcome, and the hours are too hung over to show up for their shift. Gabe texts
me every hour. No Chuck Norris jokes. Just two words –
Everything fine.
No
indication when he’s coming back, if he has the drugs, if there’s any chance he
might at least let me explain.

Raven’s dad is out looking for her
again, and her mom has mercifully decided to take Abe to see a movie. I’ve
given the scarecrow clerk at the front desk a second prepaid credit card, which
will last us the week if we need it to. I silently thank Lo again for the extra
cash he gave me when Gabe got injured.

Another text pings on my phone.
Everything
fine

But it’s not,
I think at the phone.

I need something to do, some
distraction. I spot the remote on the nightstand and idly flip through the TV
channels. The reality shows I remember from my normal life just six months ago
have figured out how to reproduce. They swarm the channels, a never-ceasing
parade of tears, confessions, and increasingly ridiculous competitions. I stop
at a local news station where a blocky-headed anchor discusses the fallout from
my pet store rampage. I watch with a growing ache in my stomach as a perky
field reporter wrapped in a colorful red scarf interviews local townspeople of
Peoria. The word “monster” seems absurdly overused. An older woman with large
round glasses breaks into tears as she speaks into the microphone.

“Who would do this? What kind of monster
would murder innocent animals?”

I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my
arms around my legs. The anchor’s face is all concern and sadness as she
absently pats her scarf back into place. A police sketch fills the screen that
looks nothing like me. The woman in the sketch is no younger than 30. She possesses
cruel eyes and a bitter mouth. Gabe takes a particular pleasure in showing off the
sketches he has inspired. He and Tammy used to compare to see which of theirs
was the most outlandish. Now I have an entry into the game.

I should turn the TV off, but I don’t.
The anchor discusses how the story has gone viral. PETA and several anonymous
donors have offered money for any tips that lead to my capture. A local child
has written a poem for the dead animals, and it’s gotten over 60,000 likes on
Facebook. The broadcast ends with a short story on the police officer Rachel
killed. His memorial on the morrow looks like it will be well attended.

I sit glassy-eyed, trembling as the
broadcast ends, replaced by a fast food commercial for a new mega burger filled
with more beef patties and bacon than ever before. I finally lift the remote
and turn off the television.
Monster, monster, monster.

Gabe’s been gone too long. Something is
wrong. I’m now entirely positive I shouldn’t have let him go out thieving by
himself in his condition. I stand up to get my coat. Tarren moans. The
sedatives are beginning to wear off. Dreams flicker in his aura, and I see
movement beneath his eyelids. Rosy hues of pain rise in his aura, and his
fingers close on the sheet.

I go to his duffle bag and open up the
side compartment where he always keeps his battered copy of
The Odyssey.
It
belonged to our mother, Diana. Gabe has told me how she used to read it to her
children at night after tucking them into bed. I think about what that must
have been like, to fall asleep to the tales of sirens and cyclopses and a man
trying so desperately to find home.

I drag a chair close to Tarren’s side of
the bed, though I still keep an arm’s distance away. I’m already weak with
hunger, and if his aura starts jumping again, I’ll need as much space between
us as possible.

Tarren mumbles something that might be
“damn it to hell” or “do a shell”.

I open the book, careful not to tug too
hard on the loose cover, and read from the very beginning about how Odysseus
washes up on shore barely alive. This kind of thing apparently happens to
Odysseus a lot. His is not a good life.

As I read, I keep an eye on Tarren’s
aura and watch the red grow deeper as the minutes pass. I continue reading.
Odysseus keeps losing his men, but not yet his hope.
Give it time,
I
think, and my phone dings.

On way back,
Gabe’s message reads.

“I thought it was Mom at first,” Tarren
whispers. His voice is hesitant, slow and dry as sandpaper. “Reading.”

“Nope, just me,” I say lamely.

Red, red, red. Tarren’s aura is a shrine
to pain. He clutches the sheet in both hands. I look away, but that doesn’t
help. I hear the hiss of his breath through his clenched teeth.

“Gabe’s on his way, bringing something
for the pain,” I tell Tarren.

“Are we in a forest?” Tarren asks. At
least I think this is what he asked. His words stick together, and he could
have said, “Are we the farthest?”

“We’re in a motel room in Peoria.”

“Hurt?”

My throat is suddenly as solid as rock.
“Yes. You got hurt.”

A vein throbs in his forehead. “F…fire.”

“You ran into a burning building to save
me. Why did you do that Tarren? Why the fuck did you do that?” My voice cracks.
I want to throw something, punch something, break this chair I’m sitting on
into kindling.

“How…bad?”

When I don’t answer, Tarren cracks his
lids open and brings his arm up. He stares at his bare skin, his eyes tracing
the scars. He doesn’t say anything, and his aura is so overwhelmed with pain
that I can’t even guess at his thoughts.

Something tugs in my brain – a tiny
shiver of recognition as my mind reaches out to reunite the connection that was
so brutally forged.

No, No, No, No! Stupid Pixie Girl.
I should have known, should have never
trusted…

I leap from the chair, putting myself
between Tarren and the door, gun in one hand, dagger in the other.

It’s time that we spoke
.
Gem’s gentle words ring in my mind from just beyond the
motel door.