Twins (11 page)

No reply. More heat. Talk about coming full circle. Back in foster care. Her uncle gone and her father gone. Her mother gone, Ella gone, Mary gone, Sam gone.

Sam. Oh, Jesus, Sam …

A shock of tears suddenly erupted from Gaia's eyes. She froze in the center of the sidewalk and dropped to one knee. She stared down at twenty years' worth of blackened chewing gum and shattered glass in the cracks of the pavement as her tears gathered on the ground.

I'm so sorry, Sam. I'm so sorry for everything I did to you. You know that, don t you? Please tell me you know that, wherever you are now. I can't think of you too often, Sam, because then the guilt … the guilt would be … but you understand that, don't you? You understand that there's a place for you—a separate place just for you that I've locked away in my brain and my heart that no one can ever touch—that I can't even touch, do you understand that? Are you listening, Sam? Can you help me off this street?

Legs swirled by her from every side, swiping her shoulders and her back.

“Goddamn druggies,” someone spat.

“Get a job,” somebody else barbed. Two boys howled with laughter.

She should have pounced on them. She should have jumped those asshole boys and ripped them
apart. But she was too hot. And unless the sidewalk was going to give her a push, she wasn't capable of moving fast enough. She raised her head into the blur of colored lights and looked for a sign of any kind.

And then she saw one. Two, actually. The most beautiful signs she had ever seen. Two green signposts sticking out under the red streetlight just like it was Christmas.

Eighth Street and MacDougal Street.

It was a miracle. Eighth and MacDougal. Around the corner from Washington Square Park—the closest thing Gaia had to a home now. Somehow she'd guided herself home without even really knowing it And Ed's was only a few more blocks from here. Maybe God had been listening?

She felt a burst of renewed energy and immediately broke into a jog, cutting across MacDougal Street and stumbling into the park like she'd just broken through the finishing tape of the New York City Marathon.

WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK HAD NEVER
looked more beautiful. The trees rustled gloriously from the strong winds, and the arch was lit to perfection, shining like a bright white beacon signifying that Gaia had in fact made it home. It was
deserted but thoroughly unthreatening, as if all the skinheads and junkies had decided to give the Village bohemians and the NYU students a much-needed night off.

The chess tables were empty at this time of night, but they were the ultimate sight for Gaia's painfully sore eyes. She stumbled to the tables, plopped herself down on a stone seat, and slid her hands back and forth across the board, savoring the tactile taste of the familiar.

“Gaia
…”

“Ed?” Gaia popped her head up from the table. Someone had whispered her name. She hoped that perhaps Ed had come to her, understanding through deep emotional telepathy that her legs and feet were nearly out of commission and that he needed to meet her halfway. She looked around her, searching through the round bushes and the angular branches of the trees, but there was no sign of Ed.

“Gaia,” the voice whispered again. “Please.”

The whispers were anxious and short of breath. She didn't know how she could have thought it was Ed. It was a girl's voice. A girl in trouble. Perhaps not every park-dwelling scumbag had gotten the memo about taking the night off. Gaia's spine snapped to attention as she pricked up her ears like a predator and chased down the voice with her eyes.

There, in the clearing by the brick rest rooms. A young woman's form shivered in silhouette as her hands reached out to Gaia, beckoning her with quick snaps of her wrists. “Jesus, hurry,” the girl moaned.

Gaia didn't waste another moment. She jumped from her stone seat and raced toward the desperate voice, cranking every ounce of energy out of her wobbly legs, leaping two park benches and landing with a flat thud on the higher level of the park.

“I can't see you,” Gaia said through deep, winded breaths. She staggered the rest of the way toward the voice. She'd forgotten just how painfully tired her muscles were. She hardly had the energy to be a hero. But her old instincts were still intact, and that was encouraging. Whatever Loki had done to her, her obsessive savior complex was still fully functional. “Come into the light where I can see you,” she said.

The girl did as Gaia asked and stepped into a spike of light that cut through the branches from the street-lamps outside the park.

But when Gaia saw the face, her chest went numb. Every ounce of strength that was left in her heart began to crumble.

The vision of fiery red hair seemed to melt what was left of Gaia's defenses. Long, tangled red hair. Red velvet lips. A curvy form in a skintight black miniskirt and a black Nirvana T-shirt … There was
no way she could be standing there, yet she was. These two basic truths were in such pure contradiction, Gaia wasn't even sure what to think. So she simply chose the truth that made her happier. The impossible one.

“Mary?”

“Gaia, hold on to me, okay?” Mary Moss begged meekly. She was shivering hard and holding on to her stomach.

Gaia was motionless and speechless. Her brain was still in a holding pattern, trying to wrap itself around this impossible encounter.

“My stomach,” Mary complained. “My stomach feels like it's going to explode. I think I'm hurt bad. Hold me up.”

Mary began to collapse. Gaia thrust her arms under Mary's to give her support. Once she had touched her, once she could feel how real she was, a huge wave of elation was unlocked. She wrapped her arms tightly around Mary and took deep inhalations of her spiced rose perfume.

“Mary, I don't get it,” Gaia whispered into her ear, wetting her thick red hair with tears. “How is this happening?”

“I've missed you so badly,” Mary said, breathing out with exhaustion as she gripped Gaia's shoulders. “So badly, it hurts. I wish you hadn't let me die. I wish you'd saved me.”

Gaia pulled away, stunned and appalled. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Mary said, wrapping her arms tightly around her midsection, cringing. “You know you could have gotten to me in time. You could have saved my life. But you didn't.”

The words seemed to hover over Gaia's ears, forming a chain that wrapped around her neck like a cold steel noose and hanged her from the trees. “Don't say that,” she begged in the near silence. She was choking on every word, gasping for a decent breath. “Please don't say that.”

“Then save me this time,” Mary moaned urgently.
“Please.
Don't let it happen again.”

Suddenly Mary's entire body arched backward into a rigid pose of sheer agony. She let out a protracted rattling scream as the tip of a blade jutted straight through the center of her stomach. Gaia's eyes darted down to the knife, only to see it pulled out of Mary's stomach and plunged back through her again. And again.

It had happened so quickly. Instantaneously. Without any warning. Gaia was left frozen in place, her feet nailed to the ground as she watched Mary dying right before her eyes. There had been no time for action in this lightning-quick moment. No time for anything but shock.

Mary lurched forward, grasping at her wounds with one hand and flailing the other hand out, trying
to latch onto Gaia's arm. Gaia grabbed Mary's hand and squeezed it as tightly as she could, kneeling to the ground with Mary as she doubled over.

“I'm so sorry, Mary,” she whispered. She didn't know what else to say. She barely even understood what she was witnessing. All she knew was that somehow she'd failed again. Once again Gaia had only looked on and watched as her best friend was murdered.

Mary didn't speak a word. She glued her pleading eyes to Gaia's as blood trickled from her mouth, and then she collapsed in a heap on the grassy rocks.

Gaia let out a loud, involuntary blip of a scream, but it was cut short. Cut short by what she saw next. The man who had been standing behind Mary, holding the knife. Somehow Gaia hadn't even considered him until she looked up at his face.

The face with the vacant blue eyes and the shiny, sadistic grin. The face of the apparently immortal Josh Kendall.

Of course. Why would it be anybody else? Josh was the Grim Reaper. Gaia's own personal angel of death, tag teaming with Loki to kill anyone she loved.

“What do you see, Gaia?” he asked cryptically, maintaining his smile as he held the knife to Gaia's face. “You want to tell me who you were just talking to?” He hesitated for a moment, searching Gaia's eyes curiously. His question made no sense to her. Not that
she would have answered him, anyway. She was too busy assessing the wisest way to kill him. He might have somehow survived a gunshot to the head, but that was nothing compared to what Gaia could do to him.

Josh lunged at her with the knife. Gaia hadn't expected it. He lunged hard and fast, aiming straight for her chest.

She felt her heart lurch at the swing of his knife. Yet another in this new flood of alien experiences. The unexpected shock to her system left the slightest gap in her reflex time. It was enough of a delay for Josh to nick her shoulder, but Gaia managed to dodge more serious injury, latching onto his arm and flipping him hard against the grassy rocks. The wicked landing knocked him out cold, and Gaia dove back down next to Mary.

Only there was no Mary. Mary was gone. Her body had melted into the bushes. Another living nightmare, like her mother? But she'd seemed so real. The confusion was piling on so quickly, Gaia could hardly keep track of what had confused her in the first place.

“Gaia … Help me …”

Oh God, not another voice.

He groaned in pain from behind her. But this voice she knew instantly.
His
voice. The one she'd been working overtime to drive from her head every other minute. His beautiful voice was speaking to her now, strained and muted by suffering. “Gaia, I need you….”

She wanted to turn around, but some part of her already knew she would regret it. She knew she would be permanently damaged by whatever she saw, whether he was real or not. But still, how could she not look? How could she possibly miss a chance to see him again? Even if he was a ghost.

That's what they had to be. All of them. Ghosts. Gaia was seeing ghosts. Apparitions of the people she'd killed with her own negligence or ignorance. They seemed to obey none of the laws of nature, but they were too real to be dreams. It made perfect sense. How could these poor souls possibly be at rest when they never should have died in the first place? They'd all died for one reason and one reason only. Gaia Moore. And all she had to offer for their deaths was a long list of useless apologies.

“Gaia, can you help me?” he begged again from behind her. “Will you look at me? Please.”

She had no other choice. How could she deny him anything? Even if he was a ghost. She turned slowly toward his meek and desperate voice, and then she looked straight at him. His tormented image burned holes in her eyes. Her first impulse was to vomit.

Sam Moon's face was hollow and gray. His eyes and mouth were contorted with a look of unfathomable pain, like a living Rodin sculpture-an agonized, tortured soul. Smoke rose from the two black holes at the center of
his chest as he reached his hand out to Gaia and fell to his knees.

“Gaia, please,” he moaned. “Don't let them hurt me anymore.”

Everyone has some limit for pain—some point at which the pain becomes so great that it can hardly be felt anymore. And looking at Sam Moon, both dead and alive at the same time, Gaia had reached her limit. She'd retreated from her own body into some underground emotional bunker, leaving only her frozen skin and bones to witness this horror. She couldn't speak to this ghost. To speak to this ghost would be to make it real, and that was something her heart simply refused to do.

Two more shots rang out, and Sam's body shook from the impact as he collapsed on the ground. And then … thank God … his body, like Mary's, disappeared.

Gaia dropped to the ground, hoping to touch what was left of his ghostly image, but she was given no time to mourn him. Two more shots rang out from a silencer as two thick holes erupted in the tree next to her face. And there was nothing supernatural about the shots. They were quite real. She turned just in time to see Josh Kendall marching toward her with his nine millimeter thrust out, firing again and again in a succession of whispered blasts.

Move, Gaia, move.
Another frustrating delay in reaction time as she dodged the gratuitous spray of bullets, rolling to her right. She turned to the bushes
to run for cover, but standing there in front of the bushes … was Josh Kendall. With his knife.
How the hell …?
She turned right back around to escape him, but coming up fast from behind her still … was Josh Kendall. With his gun.

Gaia looked in front of her and behind her again, and then she froze. Complete paralysis from head to toe.

Two of them. Two Joshes. One with a knife and one with a gun.
Okay, now I'm hallucinating. Or else I'm seeing more ghosts.

Maybe Josh Kendall was haunting her….
No way.
But if Josh was a ghost, then why were there still bullet holes in the trees? And why was her shoulder still bleeding from where he'd cut her?

But if they weren't ghosts, then what rational explanation could that leave? Other than the most obvious answer: Gaia had finally lost her mind. She'd been traumatized to her limit, and now she'd finally cracked. Maybe that's what it took for her to feel fear. A full-on psychotic break.

And apparently her psychosis had done the trick because as the two Joshes closed in on her, she began to feel something that was probably in the realm of terrified. She was unable to stave off the panic now. Unable to breathe or focus. She could barely move. It was taking control of her. She couldn't suppress that heart-racing hollow buzzing.