The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (98 page)

             
“You are not.”

             
“You do not know what I am t
hinking. You also do not know what I can hear inside of him.”

             
I was not sure if he could hear Donovan's thoughts or not. I wondered if perhaps Adam was right and I
was
lying. Maybe Donovan did not feel that strong urge to take revenge on my sister. Whatev
er the case, I refused to take the chance. I had to end his life. Though a part of me sympathized with him and wondered if maybe he could be saved from his violent lust, I could not risk his recovery. I could not see him walk around, healthy and whole once
again, after the fear he had struck in Penny.

             
“There it is.” Adam whispered. I was startled to find that he was right behind me. “You cannot bear to see him live for you wish to enact your own final form of justice. You wish to dispatch a man from this r
ealm whom you feel does not deserve his life. You accuse me of playing God. How very hypocritical of you, Ms. Olivier.”

             
“Go away!” I shot at him furiously. I had raised my voice so that it thundered authoritatively around the room. I was sick of his calmn
ess. I was sick of his constant analysis of me.

             
“You cannot do it while I am standing here. You know that you are wrong.”

             
“I am not wrong! I am doing this for Penny!”
             
“You are doing this to feel that you have taken action against a morally depraved man.
You suffered great pain at another man's hands as a child. Now, you wish to kill poor Donovan because you were unable to kill your uncle. You think I do not know of your weaknesses, Brynna Olivier. But I know them all. You are doing this to assert power o
ver men like them for it is men like them that took your own power.”

             
I looked back at him, the flame from the lantern beside me crackling in my eyes.

             
“How are you able to read my mind? How do you know all of that, Adam?!”

             
“It is not your mind that I am
reading; it is your face. Your eyes tell dark stories of your terrible past. I find it very...” His hands ran down my arms and I shook him off furiously, “
intriguing.
”

             
He was right only partially. A large portion of my decision to kill Donovan was motivat
ed by my fear for Penny's safety. But the other part, the
larger
part, wanted to kill him for what he had done to those women. I wanted to avenge the violent deaths that could have been my own. I wanted to avenge the repulsive act those two women had been
subjected to, for I had suffered it myself.

             
“You are weak in that sense, my dear Brynna. Your fire both strengthens and cripples you. It is almost pathetic, in a way. It is certainly a fascinating paradox in my view, at least.”

             
Now, his barbs were flying
. Whatever minimal pain I had inflicted on him with my cutting rejection and my bluntly honest assessment of his ways was driving his words. He wanted to punish me
for my harshness towards him.

             
I found myself laughing. I covered my mouth lightly to suppre
ss the snort that always seemed to follow such hilarity.

             
“I must have cut you so very deep, Adam. I am aware that you thought yourself unable to feel pain. I wondered that myself, actually. Now, I know that you feel. Not only do you feel, but it was me th
at was able to hurt you. Now, I know that I have power over you.” I smiled to myself, “For whatever reason, I am able to shatter your armor.”

             
He chuckled softly and squeezed my shoulders more tightly than perhaps he intended. His mouth pressed to my ear a
nd he whispered:

             
“Do not flatter yourself, my dear. I hold your life in my hands. I hold your secrets very close, even those that you do not know yet. I can shatter
your
armor just by making a fist. Do not forget that.”

             
As he drifted away from me, I look
ed down at the maimed man before me with fury boiling to frenzied life in my chest. I hated Adam. I hated Donovan. I hated Don. I hated those raucous, partying buffoons stomping and screaming above my head. I hated Dad. I hated Mom. I hated Maura. I hated
Michael.

             
I brought the pillow down and held it over Donovan's face; I strengthened my grip as he thrashed wildly. He had found his strength somehow in the moment of his death, though by then, it was useless to him. It did not come close to matching my own
. His hands flew up to claw at my arms as he attempted to weaken my grip. Even after his body went slack and his chest deflated the air his lungs had been holding, I did not move.

             
“Your fire...” Adam said again from the doorway, “It lights your way, of co
urse. But it also casts a great darkness.”

             
I merely looked down into the face of the man I had just killed as Adam finished his thought in a whisper:

             
“
A shadow.
”

             
His final two words rang in my ears long after he was gone.

XXX

             
“Did you hear that
Donovan died last night in his sleep?” Rachel asked me the following morning.

             
“I did.” I stirred the pot of water boiling in front of me, showing no discernible emotion in response to that piece of news.

             
“They're saying he was just injured too severely.
He went peacefully. Didn't deserve it, if you ask me.”

             
“No. He did not.” I looked towards the end of the room where James was playing a game of cards with Frank, Quinn, and the rest of security detail. They were not making another trip to the campsite tha
t day and the little farm work they had volunteered to do had already been finished. We were chopping, mincing, stewing and baking the fruits of their labor.

             
James's eyes met mine several times throughout the morning. In them, I saw a recognition, a suspi
cion that would be voiced at the earliest convenience. That night, I was sure he would question me about Donovan's death.

             
I could not understand how most people found it so difficult to act coolly and rationally after taking a life. My face did not betray
the slightest indication of what I had done. I did not jump nervously or flinch upon hearing the news of Donovan's death. I simply acted as I always did. I simply emptied my mind of what I had done.

             
Above all else, I felt no guilt. Because of that alone,
I should have worried. I should have acknowledged then that Adam's assessment of me was correct. I should have begun trying to morph my frigid heart into whatever it had been before. But then, it had always been so cold.

             
“So, did you do it, Brynna?” Jame
s asked me that night.

             
I screwed up my face in mild confusion and continued to brush out my wet hair.

             
“Did I do what, James?” I asked calmly with a high note of curiosity in my voice that was only just convincing enough.

             
“Did you kill him?”
             
“Who? Donov
an?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“No. He died in his sleep.” I replied easily, “You know that if I were to kill him for what he did to Penny, there would be nothing left of him.”

             
“Are you lying to me?”

             
“That is rude, James.”

             
“Maybe so. But are you?”
             
“No.”

             
“Are you sure?
”

             
“God or Gods, yes!” I exclaimed in frustration, “How can you even ask me this? How can you even suspect me of doing something like that?”

             
“Because Donovan was a disgusting excuse for a human being and he wronged you when he went after Penny. That's how
.”

             
“I was here with you all last night. I was asleep. Nature just took its course with him. What I find so very odd is that we cannot accept that. We are so used to strange and unsavory circumstances that we cannot accept that a man met his death in his s
leep.”

             
James sat down beside me and grasped both of my hands.

             
“I know you weren't here with me last night. You were gone for an hour.”

             
My heart plummeted but I did not show even a hint of that new discomfort on my face.

             
“So, let me ask you again: Did y
ou kill him?”

             
I stared at him for a long while. After several minutes had passed, I shrugged in apathy. I was not sorry.

             
He nodded and broke his hold on my hands.

             
“That's what I thought.” He muttered as he laid down in bed beside me.

             
“So what now?” I
looked over at him and awaited an answer.

             
“Now, we can only hope that they don't find out. Otherwise, we're out on our asses. We're going to be feeling around in the forest, looking for a place to live where they can't get at us. You didn't think this thr
ough at all, did you?”

             
“I did. More than you could know.”

             
I crawled up behind him and wrapped my arms around his middle. I kissed his shoulder and laid my head down.

             
“Everything will be fine. I covered all the bases, as they say. Given their lack of a f
orensic investigator, they will never know that I was there. Even if we had an entire crime scene investigative team, they would find nothing. Alright?”
             
My hands were rested on his chest. His came up to grasp them.

             
“You're sure?”

             
“Positive.”

             
“Alright,
then.”

             
“You're alright with this?”

             
After he had turned over to look at me, I saw a steely ice hanging about in his normally warm brown eyes.

             
“If it had been you, I would have destroyed him. There would have been nothing left of him.”

             
I smiled slightly
and climbed on top of him. My hair was hanging in my face and he moved it away as I leaned down to kiss his lips gently.

             
“I know.”

             
Nothing more came of Donovan's death.

XXX

             
We passed our free time in the ways that most living in normal circumstances
would. Our housemates became more like friendly neighbors; we spent an abundance of time with them, getting to know their families and their back stories. Every person had an interesting story to tell, I found.

             
Penny made friends easily, as she always had
. It took time but eventually, I was able to leave her in the care of others. However, despite my fragile trust in the people around me strengthening everyday, I would not leave Penny alone with males, even those that had children. James assured me gently
that the chances of the unthinkable happening to Penny were slim but still, I could not risk it.

             
Violet saw Nick more often than I was truly comfortable with. Though the young man was quite gentlemanly towards her and me, I could not help but suspect that
their relationship was physical. James, once again, assured me that I was mistaken. His theory was that I was still guilt-ridden over breaking my long-held principles regarding men with him. As a result, I believed subconsciously that Violet was making a
mistake that I had long taught her never to make.

             
He was wrong about that theory, at least somewhat.

             
I had absolutely no regrets when it came to James. My feelings for him had long since surpassed my need to pull away. To put it bluntly, I was hopelessly
, desperately in love with him. How could I not have been? We had survived the end together. When the burden of our new lives began to wear one or both of us down, we pulled together and carried the weight. As a child, when I had pictured relationships, I
had always just seen the sexual aspect. As you can imagine, I was thoroughly disgusted by such stunted, out of place images of two people allowing such intimate closeness, both physical and emotional, to one another. But I understood suddenly that when one
was in love, one was able to achieve that closeness without any shame or fear. After so many years of shuddering in discomfort every time I pictured having a physical tryst with a man, I believed in the normalcy and true romance of the act.