Rebels Rising (Dark Rebels, #1) (2 page)

“I guess it keeps people like Lindsey Gunn and Peter Faulk happy.”

Who were they? She knew as suddenly as she questioned that. Lindsey was the resident mean girl and Peter her boyfriend. They were the couple
du jour
and had ruled the school with their money and looks and clothes and their petty cruelty. High school tyrants, well—where were they now?

Lindsey had reduced Janine to tears in a bathroom once, had smiled sweetly while she mocked everything about her. Krista had tried to defend her, her own rage threatening to suffocate her—how dare Lindsey screw around with her best friend that way! Things had not worked out though, and she had had to lead a sobbing Janine out and home.

A rush of friendship filled her, and she smiled at Janine. They had been through a lot together, they were best friends, and it was not Janine’s fault that she was going crazy or something.

The cafeteria loomed ahead, and the smell of pizza hung on the air. The two girls looked at each other and burst into laughter. “It just figures, right?” Janine asked.

“It does.” Krista began snapping her fingers and singing lines from an old Alanis Morrisette song. Janine groaned and tried to hush her. “Stop!”

“You loved Alanis when we were kids! Say it! Say you loved Alanis!”

They playfully wrestled a bit at the entrance to the cafeteria, both of them laughing and tickling the other. Krista sang louder just to be annoying, and Janine finally wrapped both hands around her mouth and pretended to choke her until she stopped.

“Okay, you win,” Krista said into Janine’s palm. “Let’s go get some soggy boggy pizza.”

***

T
he next few days passed. Krista went to class, sat through the lectures, and did her school assignments, but her mind was always somewhere else. She went to the gym to work out every evening; she had to, it was a near compulsion that she could not deny, and she did not mind.

Running on the treadmill helped to clear her mind. She had gone back to her dorm that night and dug the blouse out only to find not one grain of sand on it anywhere. Terror had hit her, hard, but so had rationale.

She had reasoned that she had been sleeping so hard that she had translated part of her dream into waking life, and had somehow hallucinated (dreamed) the sand on her body. That had comforted her, allowed things to go back to normal, sort of.

She had begun noticing things lately. Like the guy across from her in the gym right now. He was always there when she came in, working out and watching her intently. At first she was flattered, thinking he wanted to ask her out, but after a day or two it began to creep her out. He never made any weird moves on her or tried to approach her, but he was always there, always. If she stayed two hours so did he, if she went at eight, or six, or four it did not matter—there he was.

He did not work there; she asked. He was too old to be a student, unless he was a few years behind, and while that was possible, Krista doubted it. Luke was for the best and brightest. There was something about him that made her think of a goon from a movie: he had a dull look on his face, only his eyes ever seemed to have any life in them, and they merely looked dark and strange.

Maybe he was a teacher’s aide or associate professor? She never saw him anywhere else on the campus, just in the gym. He seemed to be a permanent fixture there, and while his workouts seemed to be okay on the surface, there seemed to be no reason for him to be there, except to watch her. That was totally stupid and she knew it (why would he do that?), but still the feeling that he was watching her, checking her out, and not in the I-want-to-take-you-to-dinner-way, but assessing her like a doctor or something stuck with her.

Her dreams were also causing her problems. She would wake up in the middle of the night, rolling over with one hand held high in the air to ward off a blow that never came. Janine would be tucked into her own bed, not hanging over Krista’s with a gun in her hand.

Krista had woken up the night before with her mouth dry, her heart pounding, and that guy’s voice ringing in her ears, urging her to run, run and keep on running. She had actually gotten out of bed and begun hunting for her running shoes before it hit her how dumb that all was. Where would she go?

To the house on the cliffs,
that inner voice answered.

She had ignored that and gone back to bed. Janine had rolled over, yawning hugely, and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing, I just thought I had to use the bathroom but I guess not.” It was a lame excuse for her behavior, but it seemed to satisfy the other girl because she rolled back over and began snoring lightly.

Now, standing in front of the gym, her duffel in her hand, she peered through the glass. There he was, Captain Stare-A-Lot, and he was already looking through the windows at her. Krista bent down and pretended to tie her shoe, turning her head just slightly to see if he could still see her.

He had looked away and she seized her chance: she took off running down the long street in front of the gym. The college had no fraternities or sororities, only the same uniform brick dorms that stood in neat rows on the grassy lawns that led to the quad where the academic buildings stood.

The parking lot sat beyond it. Cars stood about in the spaces, their surfaces gleaming dully beneath the thin winter sunlight. Where was she going? She had no idea of what was off the campus, as she had never left it before.

The gates loomed ahead. Not thinking, she dropped her duffel and climbed those tall and wide things. At the top was razor sharp wire; it sliced into her hands, and she had a thought,
Why would they put that on a college campus?
, before she leaped down to the other side.

Her breath was fast but steady, and her hands had already stopped bleeding, but there was a long slice in the sole of the shoe on her right foot. It flapped and gaped as she began to walk, then run.

A long wail rose up behind her, and she knew it for what it was: an alarm. They were letting others know she had jumped the fence! It was preposterous, she was an adult—she was eighteen and in college, she could go where she wanted to, only the alarm kept growing in intensity.

The shrill scream of it banged into her skull, made her want to drop to her knees and cover her head, but she kept running because she knew, knew, that to stop would mean death. She fled down the deserted streets, past the tract houses on their withered yards.

This was the landscape of her dreams, and she wondered if this were just another dream, if she would wake up in her bed with Janine grunting at her to be quiet. Just when she was convinced that was exactly what would happen, a long black car slid up beside her, and the man from the gym leaped out. He grabbed for her arm, and she barely managed to twist away in time.

He chased her, and the car did too. Terrified and lost, Krista darted between two of the houses and leaped a fence. The backyard was empty of life, the grill rusting and the swing set sagging into a pile of metal and plastic. It was weirdly empty, as though it had been built but nobody had ever lived there.

She jumped into the next yard. Her pursuer grunted and grabbed at her ankle just as she landed on the top of the fence. For a moment his fingers closed around her flesh and she screamed— this was no dream—he had sweaty palms and a strong grip, and he tried to yank her back down from the fence.

She flailed her arms to keep her balance and kicked with her free leg. Tearing herself from his grasp, but not for long, she landed on her feet already running, and she heard the sound his heavy body made as he landed behind her and began the pursuit again.

Desperate, she grabbed a bicycle, a child’s toy that was barely tall enough to stand at her waist, and turned around with it already swinging in an arc from her shoulder. Blood erupted from his nose and mouth, bright arterial spray staining the air, and horror made her drop her weapon and back away.

That was a mistake. He shook his head and growled, “You are going to pay for that one, you little bitch.” His usual lax expression had been replaced by one of pure anger. That rage washed over her, her heartbeat accelerated, and her breath caught in her throat as she understood the facts in front of her.

He was going to kill her!

She staggered backward, her feet seeking purchase in the slippery grass. She landed on her bottom, the dirt making a squelchy sound as she hit. He came closer. His teeth were huge and white, blood smeared those squares, and he drew closer, his dark eyes glowing with an almost feral light. His hand lashed out, connecting with her head. Stars exploded in her vision and she fell backwards, but her foot came out and landed in his groin.

His hiss of pain was gratifying, but she did not wait to see if that dissuaded him. Instead, she grabbed him by his large ears and banged her forehead against his. The crack that sounded out was sickening, and her vision darkened once more, but she fought that blackness back and grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling viciously.

His hands jerked up and reached for her throat. Krista realized what he was doing an instant before he could throttle her, and she twisted to one side, heaving him away from her and getting to her feet.

His hand came down hard between her shoulder blades. It felt like she had been hit with a sledge hammer. She went down to her knees, but she got back up, her feet already moving. His hand came out again and he grabbed her thin tee shirt, holding her so that she was running in place like a broken marionette.

Krista twisted around just in time to catch a hard blow to her jaw. She began to slide into darkness, her body slumping toward the earth. For a moment, she was certain that what she saw hovering over her attacker’s shoulder was brought on by head trauma.

It was a young man with hair as black as sin, dark eyes, and skin that had an odd sheen to it, a glimmering light that reminded her of a pearl. That he was there was strange, the large black wings protruding from his shoulders, beating high above his head, even stranger.

He dove at the man who was about to kill her, his hands hooked into claws and his feet jackhammering away. Her attacker went flying across her body, his shoes scraping along her cheek, and she flipped over onto her belly, her hands shoving at the dirt.

She got up, her eyes opened wide and her mouth hanging loose. The winged man was beating the gym nut against a tree. Bits of bark flew about, a few dead leaves drifted down, and harsh gasps of air came from the two men.

Sick and frightened, Krista began to back away. She ran into a body and spun around, her fists coming up in a defensive gesture. Janine stood there, her pink rimmed eyes looking into Krista’s. “Janine! There is a guy with wings!” It was the first thing that fell from her lips. She was stunned, and at the end of her ability to comprehend what was going on.

Janine smiled, but there was nothing friendly about that smile. “You should not have run away again, Krista.”

The gun’s barrel was dark, large, and blank. The thing looked too large for Janine’s hand, and for the first time, Krista saw the nail polish on those fingers: pink, chipped from biting near the ridge of the nails, and flaked at the cuticle. The finger on the trigger was steady though, as was her hand.

“Shoot that guy!” Krista yelled.

“No, I am not going to shoot him.” The gun pointed right at Krista. “I think I’ll just shoot you and save everyone some trouble.”

“Why are you doing this?” Her heart was beating so fast that she could barely breathe, so her words came out in a rush and died on an exhaled gasp of air. “Janine, we’re best friends!”

“I know, and being killed by your best friend sucks. But that is the way it is.”

“Why?” She was beyond confused. Her thoughts were snarled and tangled, her body was telling her to run, to fight, but her mind was telling her there was no way this could be real. Janine was her best friend! They had even had their birthday parties together for years! They had shared everything, even makeup and clothes and secrets...this had to be a dream, it had to be!

“Goodbye Krista,” Janine’s finger tightened slightly on the trigger.

Krista reacted. She swooped in, her hands going out and shoving into Janine’s narrow chest. The gun went off with a hollow bang that sounded as lifeless and flat as the rest of the world appeared. Janine went down and Krista kicked her, a hard cruel kick to her ribs. “Kicking a friend when she is down is sucky, I know, sorry.” The words made her laugh hysterically even as she said them.

There was a whooshing sound from above, and Krista looked up toward the leaden sky. The winged man was back, but now his wings were white. He reached out as he flew past, grabbed her by her arm and hair, and lifted her off the ground.

“Ouch! Hey! That hurts!”

“Death would hurt worse.”

Krista’s scalp begged to differ; it felt like it was going to be ripped right off her skull at any second. The winged man went over the fight going on, and she saw that she had been wrong. His wings had not changed colors; the black winged one was still down there.

He delivered a hard blow just as they swooped overhead and more blood flew. Gym Nut went down in a crumpled heap, blood spilled across the ground, and from behind them came more of those flat bangs, and air whizzed past Krista’s arms and shoulders.

“Janine is trying to shoot us!”

“You don’t say,” he said. “I never would have guessed.”

The black-winged guy flew up to them. He looked just like the one holding her, and he grabbed her other arm, shouting, “Hurry!”

“I am going as fast as I can! She’s heavy!”

“Are you calling me fat?” Krista shouted. Her head ached and she wanted him to let go of her hair, but as they rose up higher, flying over the rooftops and trees, she was suddenly afraid that he would let go and let her land down there.

“No, we have just never flown with a non-flyer before. We did not know how hard it would be.” At least the black-winged one was nice. She was still miffed though. They landed, not far from the edge of the ocean, and Krista rubbed her aching scalp and stared at them.