The Last Revenant (Book 1): The Crash (20 page)

I tested the word underneath my breath, and I knew that even if I was wrong, it was closer than anything I had fooled myself into believing thus far. “Juno...”

“Tess...” Chris peered at me while footsteps moved towards the kitchen, followed by the sound of Rick's voice.

“It’s over here. I keep it in the wine cellar.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

We both scrambled to look for a hiding place as the doors above us opened. I saw Chris run into the corner and I squeezed behind a wine rack just as the first pairs of feet hit the ground. I could just barely see Ryan through the shelves as he hobbled into the center and spit.

“So this is how you plan on spending the end of the world, huh?” He picked up a bottle from in front of me and Rick swiped it back. If he had paid close enough attention, he might have noticed that one of them was actually the tip of my pistol aimed at his kidneys.

“The end of the world as
you
know it is completely subjective. When one ceases to exist, the next one begins.” He looked at the bottle for a moment before putting it back. “But it never hurts to get a good buzz going.”

“Trust me,” said Ryan. “No amount of booze is gonna save you when this thing is out there hunting us down. And when it’s tearing out your lungs right in front of you, you’re not gonna care if it's subjective. It’s gonna hurt.”

I tried to stand still and keep my breathing as quiet as possible. I was glad to hear Kyle move them along.

“Who cares? Where is this thing?”

“Over here,” said Rick. He led them to another part of the wall that was just out of sight.

“And you’re sure this is gonna work?” asked Kyle.

“No. You came to me, remember? But apart from an industrial strength explosive, this is probably your best shot. The distillation process can yield a highly flammable liquid with a low flash point. All you should need is a spark.”

“Great,” said Ryan. “So if the damn thing burns, we might actually have a shot at this.”

“Why wouldn’t it burn?”

“You would know if you met it.”

I held my breath as they dragged a pair of white buckets past me and back up out of the cellar. They were gone, but I didn't want to leave my hiding spot. If even a quarter of what I had pieced to together was true, then nothing good was waiting for me up on the surface. If Knox really was looking for me, regardless of who or what he had sent to do the job, I'd be better off staying still forever. I felt like I would rather hold up in that tiny cave underground and forget everything else even existed.

Chris shuffled out into the open and called for me, careful to keep his voiced hushed as to make sure we remained hidden.

I slowly squeezed myself back out from behind my shelter and stared at him. He held on to Zach's M4, the blue ribbon still tied around the butt stock. It meant more to me than I could have ever explained, and for some reason the sight of it made me realize how different we really were.

Chris had been right. He was a solider and I was a survivor, and the things that I would have to survive would only change with time. Up until that moment, I had been running away from my problems, but sooner or later they would catch up to me. Maybe that was the biggest difference between us. Where a solider like Chris faced his fears head on, I ran. I turned the other way to survive another day. How long could I possibly expect myself to keep that up?

He lifted a hand only to stop, seemingly unsure. He must have known at least part of what I was thinking. He had always been good at that. He remained at the ready while my posture proved anything otherwise.

I shook my head.

He already knew. He grabbed my hand and I tried to block back tears. “Tess...”

I was barely holding on by a thread. I knew my eyes would be red and it was obvious I was about to break.

He made sure to keep me his the whole time. “It's okay.”

That's when I lost it. That's when it all came undone. All the worries, all the hurt, the exhaustion, the anger, the training, all the fear—all of it out and into the open for him to see, to bear witness at how much of a coward I'd been trying my absolute best to hide. I fell into his arms and let the streams go. I couldn't keep it in any longer. I was terrified. I didn't want to go back up. I didn't want to face my fears. I didn't want to go.

He held on to me for a moment while the footsteps continued upstairs. It was more than I deserved. When they finally died down, he gently pushed me back by the shoulders and held on. “We can do this.” He wiped a tear from my cheek and I felt like such a goddamn child. “You can do this.”

I nodded and took a shaky breath, already putting on the familiar mask. He had no idea.

“Come on.”

We waited at the foot of the entrance and listened as intently as we could. It sounded like the front door above us had opened and closed, and we gave it a few extra seconds before risking it.

Chris gently swung the doors open and marched back up into the kitchen.

I wiped my face and followed close behind, bringing my pistol up at the ready. I couldn't hear anything, but that didn't mean everyone was gone. We split off. I tiptoed through the kitchen and towards the living room when a younger man stepped into the doorway and stopped dead in his tracks.

He stared at the gun in my hands and watched it shake while my finger hovered over the trigger. My eyes must have still been puffy. What could he have possibly thought of the sight—a sad, scared little girl pointing a gun at his face? He was young, probably just a little bit older than me and his short, trim hair fell just onto the top of his forehead. He must have just gotten it cut. He had never said anything. I had no way of knowing there had been more people in the room.

Rick's voice peeped in from just the other side as we held the rigid poses, our muscles tense. “I'll be back as soon as I help them fix this mess. Try not to touch anything.” A few steps bounced in, followed by more silence. “Hey, are you listening?”

I stared at the boy in front of me. I could only guess what was going through his head.

He finally decided after another unbearable second. “Yeah.”

More footsteps followed by the front door closing, then the sound of a car starting and driving off from outside.

I peered into the pale eyes in front of me, my own thoughts almost blank. I wasn't ready. I started to lower my gun when the body in front of me was pulled back like a whip and thrown to the ground. I ran into the living room to see Chris knock a fist across the boy's face to keep him there.

He kept the M4 trained down on him. “Don't you dare fucking move or I will put you down. Do you understand me?”

I reached for Chris's hand, but he pushed me back violently. The boy tried standing up and protesting, his words muffled with a hand pressed against his bloody nose.

I watched Chris bring the gun forward and tense, about to shoot. I lunged in front of him with my arms up, shielding the about to be corpse from view. “Stop!”

“What the hell are you doing?” He tried to clear the rifle up over my shoulder, but I kept myself in his line of fire.

“Don't do it.”

“Tess!”

“You can't kill him!”

“If anyone finds out you're still here—”

“NO!”

An arm grabbed me from behind and brought my pistol up to the side of my head, immediately moving us back towards a wall. The kid screamed past my ear, his breathe hot on my neck. “DROP IT!”

I watched the muzzle of the assault rifle hover in front of my face as Chris crept closer.

“Let her go—”

“I don't know who you are—”

“And you're not going to! Now drop her the fuck down!”

I winced as the pistol barrel scraped itself across my scalp. I struggled to push him off, but he was stronger than he looked. He had covered my hand over the gun and kept my finger hovering over the trigger. I wouldn’t be able to stop him from shooting.

The gun suddenly broke free from my skin and was redirected towards Chris.

I needed to move.

I knocked the hand to the side and swung my head back as hard as I could, connecting with hard flesh before grabbing the base of his palm and bending it towards his forearm to force a sharp
pop.

I freed the pistol from his limp fingers as he fell to his knees and grabbed a hold of his broken wrist. I pointed the firearm at him just as his head shot away from me in a flash of light, the back of his skull flying across the wall behind him. I looked back to see Chris with a waft of smoke slowly drifting off the muzzle of his gun.

My ears rang with the intensity of bricks being forced into my head over and over again. I somehow managed to look at the blue ribbon tied around the M4's stock and the innocence that it had meant to me, then onto the dead body in front of the wall. The kid's face had been deformed, but the entire back half was gone. I peeled my eyes off of the carnage and dropped my gun. The two didn't belong together. That wasn't what it was supposed to be used for.

He didn’t have to die.

All the training, all the time I had spent with Chris, everything—what the hell had it been for?

I felt sick. My head was spinning and it was like somebody had stuffed me inside of an oven. I saw Chris's lips move but no sound came out. I ran out through the front door and dropped down onto my knees a few meters into the field and threw up. I clenched my hands around dry roots until the world stopped shaking.

I barely had to move my head to see a small pair of bare feet stop and press down the dead blades of grass in front me. I slowly looked up to see a young woman with black orbs for eyes and sharp points for teeth that ground into each other as she smiled. The ringing quickly died down and it forced me to realize her short, quaint, childlike laughter was sending a chill through my soul.

“I found you.”

She smiled again and I noticed the scars around her lips. She had been gnawing on her own flesh, but I was sure the faded blood stains across her mouth didn’t belong to her. She was what nightmares were made of, a monster wrapped in the soft and pale clothing of a young girl’s skin.  Her eyes were as dark and smooth as marble, forcing my blood to run cold as my reflection bounced back from their endless depths.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe I was so close to a monstrosity and I was still alive. There was no mistaking it. There was no doubt. It was Juno.

“Jessica…”

I flinched at the sound of my name as she lifted a claw like hand with elongated fingers.

“Where’s mother?”

I trembled and tried to gouge my brain for an answer. I didn’t understand. I had to steel myself to let the words out. “I-I don’t know.”

She furrowed the thin lines of her eyebrows and placed her nails against my chin, tilting my head up as I struggled to stay still. “Don’t lie. I can feel her.”

I slowly shook my head from side to side and I could feel the hard points of her fingers draw blood near my throat. I couldn’t remember the last time I had started to cry from utter fear. “I’m sorry...”

She cocked her head to the side, but stopped there as a single nail reached down underneath my shirt and pulled the necklace back up for her to see. I expected the killing blow to come at any moment, the rage, the hatred manifest itself on her face and then through her arm as a swing across my eyes. But she smiled. Her voice danced like a playful nursery rhyme. “I know what you are...”

I could hear Chris run outside, the metal ring of the strap clinking against the M4 as he brought it up again.

“Don’t you fucking touch her!”

I didn't dare move to see.

The monster in front of me merely scoffed at the threat and kept her focus solely on me, then down onto the silver trinket again. “This belongs to mother...”

Mother...

My thoughts fell back onto the woman I had felt each time I had slipped away and relived moments of her life. The necklace didn't belong to Juno, it belonged to her mother. It belonged to the witch. The words left my lips when they shouldn't have. “It's not yours...”

Juno scowled at me and threw her open hand down across my face faster than I could react.

I pulled back, but I wasn't quick enough to dodge the fine blurred points that pulled against my skin and separated my tissue from the rest of the world. I instantly fell back and pressed a palm against my cheek and over an eye. I could feel the warmth immediately seep over onto my fingers and down my chin as the underside continued to burn. I thought I had gone blind.

Chris yelled like an animal and opened up on her. I throw my head underneath my arms as a hail of bullets flew over me and into Juno's chest. She flung her arms forward in defense but quickly began to buckle underneath the onslaught, the sound of each impact ending in a hollow
thud
as hot slugs of metal cut into her body.

The percussive bombardment suddenly ended with a subtle
click.
My exasperation was only drowned out by a bloodcurdling scream that managed to shake glass, a sensation so piercing that it felt like someone had sharpened two knives together inside of my stomach

I took my hands off my ears and peered at the inhuman shape above me. She was torn and tattered, and I could see large indentations in her body where each bullet had pierced her flesh and came out the other side with gaping holes. I stared, mortified, as her flesh slowly began to mend itself back together.

Chris continued to yell for me. He pulled me up by the arm and dragged me back into the house while Juno slowly stood up from a kneel. He threw me to the floor and swung the front door forward just as she slammed into it, almost knocking him over. I watched as he struggled to keep it from moving and his boots began to slip on the hardwood floor, the subtle realization hitting my mind. She was stronger than him.

“Tess!”

I scrambled up to help him as he started to yell from the exertion and pushed on, vein’s popping out from underneath his skin. After a quick burst of strength, he finally managed to close the door and flicked the deadbolt. We quickly backed away as Juno started to slam into the thin barrier from the other side, the paint and wood cracking at the points of impact. She stopped just as I thought it would break altogether, the lack of motion haunted by my broken nerves and heavy breathing.

I wiped the blood from eyes. “Where is she?”

My question was quickly answered when the delicate fixture exploded off the hinges into a dozen pieces and flew into my shoulder, knocking me off balance and making me skid towards the wall.

Chris rushed forward, not even making it a single step before Juno grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up off the floor in her cold vice. She moved faster and stronger than any human being ever could with words that were poised like a toxic bane.

“You’re pathetic.”

Chris desperately tried to pry her hand off and it was all he could do as she slowly squeezed the life out.

“Why do you even try?”

His face started to darken from the excursion. He wouldn't be able to last any longer. She would snap his neck and snuff the soul out in an instant. I could feel his existence teeter on the brink. I instantly grew cold, but I could feel the warmth radiate from his body. I could feel the energy swell up in his navel and become dwarfed by my own. I wouldn't let it happen. I wasn't going to let him die.

“Stop...”

Juno looked over at me and she felt it. I knew that she had felt it to. I stumbled up from the floor with my palm stretched out ahead of me, dust and debris gently rolling off my shoulders. She glared at me as the room began to shake.

“You’re too weak.”

The necklaced burned white hot and threatened to melt its way towards the center of my heart, but I put it aside. I redirected the pain onto everything in front of me. I could feel each board and nail in the room vibrate with increasing intensity, every square inch of material buzzing with the thoughts of movement. The rumbling stopped abruptly and I took it all in. I mimicked the words. I had already known what it should feel like. I barred my teeth and struggled to hold on to it all as blood pierced my vision.

Let me show you.

I pushed forward and the entire front half of the building tore itself away from me in an instant, every single piece of woodwork and stone flying past my body in a wrecking blur. I pushed Juno away and stabbed her like a spear with the invisible force, her body tumbling end over end within the cloud of destruction.

I fell to my hands and knees in exhaustion. Every limb felt completely hollow and brittle, devoid of all energy. My chest felt like it was about to cave in, but I strained to look up and take in the sudden destruction in disbelief. Everything that had been on the far side and above the foundation of the building had been strewn about into an unrecognizable mess a few meters out into the field. It was like a directional bomb had gone off, just barely sparing Chris from the mayhem. It shouldn’t have been possible, but I had done it. I had done it because the witch had shown me how.

Chris forced air into his lungs and coughed out my name. He managed to stand up and reach out for me, but I immediately pulled back and tried to get some distance. I stared at the cuts on his face as he struggled to control his breathing. Now he knew what I was. Now he knew why I had always ran.

“Tess, wait—” He tried to grab my arm and I shoved him away. I never should have let it go.

“Get the fuck away from me.” I took a step past him and fell onto the dirt, completely missing the flooring that had used to be there just a few seconds earlier. I scrambled to get back up and run away, just barely making it a few meters until he bear hugged me from behind and pinned my arms against my sides.

“Stop! Just wait!” He brought me off the ground and I swung my legs, kicking the air as hard as I could.

“Get the fuck off of me!”

My resistance slowly melted away as the pile of rubble in front of us began to move, the small pieces rolling down first as a weight began to shift underneath. My mind struggled to piece the sight together until it hit me.

She wasn't dead.

Chris was still the first to react, his threat assessment on overdrive. “Tess, she’s too fast. We won't make it.” He let go and I turned to see his familiar face, but it was different. He couldn’t have been the same after what he had just seen me do. “I need your help.”

I tried to pull away, but he grabbed on again and held on tight. I shook my head. “I can't...” I could feel things that he could only dream about, but I didn't know enough. I couldn't control it. I couldn't help. “I don't know how.”

He didn't waste any time. He pulled me along and back into what was left of the house. He swiped my pistol off the floor and then led me down into the wine cellar, only to look around at the barrels around us. I didn't understand how getting trapped was supposed to help us.

“What?”

He put a finger to his lips before pointing me into the corner and letting me know. I scrambled to do as he instructed when Juno hit the floorboards above us, sending dust down and forcing me to shield my eyes. I could hear her foots steps bleed into the kitchen and I begged my hands to move quicker. I threw my head under my arms as the door above us suddenly splintered into pieces and she dropped down.

Chris brought his pistol up only to have it swiped away from him in the blink of an eye. He quickly drew his sword and swung it at her face, the blade whistling as it cut through the air. She effortlessly blocked it with both of her forearms and stopped it halfway through her limbs.

He pried the sword loose and stabbed her in the chest, pushing her back until the length of the blade pierced a wooden barrel. The flammable liquid gushed out and pulled around their feet while he kept her pinned to the side. “NOW!”

I dragged my lit lighter towards a blanket crammed into a bottle of alcohol and it immediately caught the flame, but Juno hissed. She burrowed a claw up into Chris's shoulder and brought him to his knees, though he managed to hold on. He continued to keep her still as another claw pierced his abdomen and he cried out in agony.

I could feel my hand start to burn, the slowly detonating fire bomb primed to go, but I couldn't do it. Not to Chris. He screamed as Juno twisted her hands and finally kicked him away and out into the clear. She grabbed the handle sticking out of her body just as I threw the flaming molotov at the woodwork and set her ablaze.

She started crying out in pain, a sound so defibrillating that I had to put a hand in front of my face just to see where I was going. The flames danced over her skin, warping it into a darker shade than black anywhere the heat began to lick her flesh.

I grabbed Chris and pulled him out of the cellar, up into the kitchen and out into the open living room when we tripped over a secondary explosion that sent flames shooting up from in-between the cracks in the floorboards. My muscles screamed in agony as I strained to pull him off the ground and out of the house. We fell to the ground a few meters from the perimeter as the whole structure began to go up in flames.

I readjusted my grip on his arm and kept pulling. We were both out of breath, but I refused to stop. I barely made it a few more meters from the burning building when he suddenly dropped again and I gave in to follow suit.

I rolled him over onto his back and looked at the damage. Two splinters of wood as big as my forearm had buried themselves into the side of his leg, one of them just missing his ankle. Both of the tips were still smoldering.

“Chris…” I could feel my eyes start to water from the smoke as I hovered my fingers above the shrapnel in his flesh. I didn’t know what to do. Anything I could think of bounced back with a deadly repercussion. He would bleed out if I tried to pull on anything, and jagged, torn sections of his body hung open as blood surrounded the open wounds on his shoulder and side. He was dying right in front of me. He grabbed my hands before I could start to apply some pressure.

“Go.”

I stared at him in disbelief, but he cut me off before I could even argue.

“I can still slow her down.”

I glanced back over at the burning building. A tower of pitch black smoke billowed out over us and into the pristine blue sky. She had to have been dead. There was no way she could have survived that.

“No.” I returned to the strain on his face. The pain overrode everything. “You're coming with me.”

I stood up and peered at the horizon before my gaze finally caught what I was looking for, the blurred silhouette of Arrino just a few miles away.  I would never be able to drag him that far. I wiped the blood that started to sting my eyes again and slung the bolt action rifle from my back. I aimed at the town and took two shots in its general direction, the sound of the larger caliber rounds echoing off into the distance.

“What are you doing?”

I threw the gun to the side and took off my shirt and got to work on ripping it into strips while in my tank top. “I’m getting help.” I took a length of the cloth and brought it over his shoulder until he pushed me off again, finally realizing.