ARC: Cracked (5 page)

Can I really afford not to? There’s an entire society trained to kill me and I have no clue. Not to mention some very pissed-off demons.

And besides, it sounds like a lot of fun. Oh, and I won’t have to kill Chi. That’s a plus. Of course, it also means I won’t get to kill the girl. Minus.

But Mom’ll be happy.

Hmmm
.

“Hello?” a girlish-boy voice warbles from the lobby, calling my attention back to the present. I watch Jo and Chi from where I crouch behind them and their eyes meet. “Hello? Anyone there?” The guns and globes go down.

“Uri?” Chi calls out.

“Chi?” It ends on a squeak.

“It’s fine,” Chi assures me.

Jo is already striding forward, out into the lobby. Well, as best as she can “stride” on that damaged leg. “Uriel Green, what are you doing here?” she demands as she disappears around the corner.

“Errr – gugh, ah…” Uri stammers. Jo must be treating him to the death stare. “I, uh, thought Chi was here.”

“That didn’t answer my question.” It’s a scolding growl, like the one Mom used on me when she found me… well, suffice to say she was angry. Chi and I come around the corner and there stands a beet-red boy, as shamefaced as a puppy who piddled on the floor. He has floppy, brown cocker-spaniel hair and paws too big for his body. I’d put him at twelve or thirteen, just barely sticking his toes in the puberty pool. No match for Jo’s glorious fury. She’ll eat him alive – not literally of course.

Unfortunately.

“Hey, buddy,” Chi calls out.

“Chi!” The relief that floods from the boy would drown a lesser man. Chi takes it in his stride and claps hands with him.

“Whatcha doing here?” Chi asks. It’s the same question Jo asked but without the undertone of impending violence. That makes all the difference and now Uri is bubbling to speak.

“I wanted to see you fight, and, you know, be your backup.” Then he hurriedly adds, “Not that you’d need it!” There is a low growl from Jo and Uri inches away from her and points at me. “Who’s that?”

“A Beacon I rescued,” Chi says too casually. Uri provides all the awe and hero worship Jo did not deliver.

“Wow! Really?” The boy blinks at me like I’m a fascinating zoo animal, then looks to Chi like he’s a rock star.

“That smear over there is all that’s left of the demon I toasted.” Chi points and Uri’s too overcome to speak. He just gasps excitedly and dances around the slime pool like he has to pee.

Jo snorts in disgust. “Can we go? Those demons might come back with friends. Besides I would like to make it back before someone notices we’re gone. I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life in detention.”

I’m pretty sure I hear Chi mutter “Spoilsport” under his breath. By the death beams shooting from Jo’s eyes, I’m guessing she heard him too.

“Come on, Meda,” Chi says. “You can ride with me.”

Jo opens her mouth, but I beat her to it. “Where are we going?”

“Home, to the Templar headquarters and Crusader school,” Chi answers.

“Wait, Templar like the
Knights
Templar?” I’m a well-educated monster. Home-schooled, of course. I don’t play well with others.

“Exactly.” He smiles, happy I’ve heard of them, I guess. “We’re still around, only the Templars are a secret society these days, we–”

“
Secret,
Chi.
Secret
society,” Jo cuts in, flinging her hands into the air.

Chi rolls his eyes. “She’s a
Beacon
. We can tell her.”

“You don’t even know that! You’re just assuming.”

“She was being hunted by demons. Demons hunt
Beacons
. Plus I found her in an insane asylum. You know Beacons often end up in insane asylums because their genius is confused with insanity.”

“You know who ends up in insane asylums even more often?” Jo asks, sharply sweet. “Crazy people!”

Chi continues as if she hasn’t spoken, but I see his lips tighten. “We can’t just leave her here. Besides, look at her. What do you think she’s going to do – wipe out the entire school?”

Cue innocence! My sweet lashes flutter against my helpless cheeks, my useless hands wring the edge of my guiltless, blood-soaked nightgown. My lovely lips quiver over my pearly white teeth.

Jo isn’t buying. “Demons do all sorts of crazy stuff. It could be a trap.”

Damn, that gimp bitch is a hard sell. Chi hesitates; is he seeing reason instead of my harmlessness? I reach out a gentle claw – err, hand – and place it on his forearm, tugging his attention from her smarts to my lovely-little-girl helplessness. My lower lip trembles and I hear Jo snort in disgust. Now for the pièce de résistance!

“You…” Faux-brave sacrifice always chokes me up! “You can leave me behind. I–” deploy waterworks, hard swallow “–understand.”

He crumbles, my tiny tears beat him down like powerful waves. “No,” he says. “You’re coming with us.”

Victory! Take that, you clever cripple!

He turns towards her. “We’ll test to make sure she’s a Beacon as soon as we can.”

What? Gulp.

Grrrr.

A draw.

FIVE

The mention of the Beacon test dumps a few more pebbles on the “risk” side of the scale, but not enough to outweigh the opportunity. Whatever the Beacon test is, it’s obviously something they don’t have with them, or that girl would no doubt whip it out and zap me on the spot. Or whatever. In any case, I can disappear or, better, make it disappear before it becomes an issue.

They say curiosity killed the cat, but I am unconcerned. I am smarter, though slightly less evil, than any cat.

Jo rummages in the office and comes up with a first-aid kit for my face. She wipes my cut with all the gentleness of a marauding invader and slaps it with a Band-Aid, sharing the happy news that I won’t need stitches. My shoulder smarts, but I don’t mention it – and not just because her bedside manner sucks.

We exit the lobby, tromping down the crumbling cement stairs. The other nurse I’d been so eager to play with, Gideon, is bound, blindfolded and stashed in the shadows. I can smell his fear – it’s a good thing I’m already full.

“Where are you guys parked?” Chi whispers. I’m not sure who he’s afraid will hear us. The insane asylum is located in the foothills of North Carolina, about thirty minutes outside of Marion, aka Nowhere, NC. Prospective asylums always seem to make the neighbors scream in protest.

“I parked next to you,” Jo answers.

“Me too,” pipes Uri.

“Well, that makes it easy,” Chi says and we take off down the twisting black drive, an odd parade. A grungy young man, a girl in a blood-soaked nightgown, a prancing puppy and a cyborg.

The asylum is right off the highway, albeit back a half-mile at the end of a long drive. The unkempt property is lined with a chain-link fence entangled with thorny vines and saplings from the encroaching forest. The gate blocking the drive is chained closed, but as we get closer I see recently cut metal shine silver-bright among the rusty links. My rescuers must have cut it to get in, then draped the chain to make it appear as if it still held the gate closed. We stop to unwrap the chain, Uri rushing forward, eager to help.

“Geez, you must be freezing!” Chi says to me as we wait. I’m not, even though it’s only mid-March. The cold never bothers me when I’m filled with the hot soup of bad souls. Nevertheless I make a show of shivering. Chi strips off his leather vest and I hold it as he peels off his hoodie, pulling his shirt up with it. I get an eyeful of carved six-pack abs and bite back a whistle. Demon-hunting must be good for the physique. The looks of an angel and yet all it makes me want to do is sin.

I catch Jo’s expression. I’m pretty sure she’s thinking the same thing.

Interesting.

Chi tosses me his hoodie and I put it on, trying not to let on that my arm hurts. It’s still warm from him and a little icky with demon blood, but so am I – on the inside. He slips his vest back on over a plain white tee, and we take off again to find our getaway cars.

Our getaway cars are, in fact, getaway motorcycles, the big American kind with high handlebars and lots of chrome. Three are parked right in a row, tucked into the shrubs lining the highway. The leather jackets make sense now, and the patches on them obviously marked them as bikers, had I been paying attention. A black cross in the middle lined with red. Night’s Knights arches across the top, and underneath Mountain Park MC.

Upon closer inspection there are actually only two motorcycles and one giant tricycle pretending to be a motorcycle.

“Motorcycles?” I whisper.

“Crusaders were knights, cavalry – the closest thing we have these days,” Chi explains, waving at the bikes.

“Plus they’re small enough for a Crusader to teleport, can go places cars can’t, they’re cheaper and the mileage is great,” Jo adds wryly. “The Crusaders have a stable of cars too.”

Motorcycles. I could crush them in my little hands, pop them as if they were balloons. Quite possibly I could eat them, though passing them might be uncomfortable. I could probably outrun them. But Human Meda yelps and whimpers.

“Aren’t motorcycles…
dangerous
?”

Bahahahahaha.

“Not if you know how to drive one.” Chi winks.

Jo turns to Uri, “Speaking of which, you don’t even have your license yet.”

“Well, no, not exactly…” He shoots SOS eyes at Chi.

“Aw, come on, Jo. You and I were sneaking out on our bikes when we were much younger–”

Her death glare is back, killing his words. “And, if an adult had caught us, we would have been chewed out.”

“So you’re an adult now?”

“One of us ought to be.”

“Says the girl who snuck out to fight demons.”

“I did not–” Jo starts, then clamps her jaw and takes a breath. “Put on your helmet, let’s go.” She climbs on the tricycle. I guess they gave her an extra wheel since she’s short a leg.

“You sure you want me to wear my helmet?” Chi taunts. “You might choke the next time you bite my head off.”

Jo doesn’t dignify that with an answer and instead guns her trike and roars off. Chi actually doesn’t wear his helmet but passes it to me. I put it on and climb on behind him. I’m pretty durable, but concrete and I have faced off before. While I didn’t die, I wouldn’t say I won, either. Chi waits as Uri gets situated on his bike and we follow.

The whistling wind steals my attempts to talk, so I give up and think instead. Any lasting effects of the soul-drunk are long gone – there’s no brain-cotton cocooning me from my thoughts now.

Like any fatherless child, I’ve wondered about the man responsible for the glory that is me. Needless to say, it’s disappointing to learn he’s the kind who’d probably eat his young.

I’ve always known I’m a monster. My skin is as tough as sheet metal, my bones are almost impossible to break. I can run faster and jump higher than any Olympian. My strength is unreal. And let’s not forget, I eat people (though I was exaggerating about the whole motorcycle thing).

But somehow it’s different, knowing I’m not just any monster, but the walking embodiment of evil. Though again, I still shouldn’t be shocked. Not with the things I’ve done. My conscience is such a pathetic, silent thing I had to share off Mom’s like a parasite, sucking the goodness out of her because I have none of my own.

Mom knew. I don’t know how much she knew exactly, but she always knew I was different. Bad. She watched me for signs of wickedness, for violent tendencies. The Hunger. She was never surprised when the naughty traits appeared but she was always dismayed. I guess she didn’t know how much of my DNA soup was going to come from dear old Dad’s pot.

It makes sense now, why she wanted to wait until I was older to tell me. She didn’t want to tell her grade-schooler she was a child of evil. Maybe she thought if I knew I was half-demon, I’d give in to the demonic side. Use it as a justification to do all the naughty things I dream about.

Not a bad idea…

Chi’s spinal column is inches from my mouth. It screams, “Bite me!” I don’t, though. He’s driving.

I wouldn’t anyway, now that there’s a good chance he isn’t going to kill me – or try, rather. Mom only wanted me to kill people who deserved it, and my morality’s flexible enough to toss in self-defense (and everyone knows the best defense is a good offence… my morality is almost a contortionist). There were reasons why I should only kill people who deserve it, but they don’t matter to me anymore. Only for her sake do I try to launder my dark and dirty soul, keep it as clean as my nature will allow. I try, I really do, but it’s getting harder, without the bright light of my mother’s goodness to shine on the stains. It’s why I came to North Carolina, where my mom grew up, to try to feel closer to her, to try to find some truths, maybe even some family. Because even if she did lie, Mom’s sin against me is minuscule compared to mine against her… but I don’t want to think about that. I scuttle away.

What other secrets did you keep, Mom?
Is my father really dead? What would it mean if he’s not? Mom kept me from him for a reason, but was it to keep me safe or to keep the world safe from me? I just don’t know.

I asked about him, of course, especially when I was younger. She always refused to answer, but the questions alone were enough to fill her face with shadows. I imagined some sort of tragic love story caused that look, but now I see it was more likely a horror.

I don’t like to think what it meant, then, raising me.

The miles fly, street lights zinging past. Occasionally I see the sparkling silver mist of a ghost. They always lift their heads like startled deer as we pass. Somehow they know I can see them. I look away; I don’t want to deal with any of their baggage now.

We head further west on I-40, into the mountains. I pay close attention to our route. As a demon, it seems prudent to know where the demon hunters hang out.

The air grows colder as we climb. Chi wears gloves but his arms are still bare. If he was a regular human his arms would have frozen off by now. As it is, he takes turns tucking one arm then the other against his chest.

We take I-74 into Waynesville, then even further into the mountains on Highway 23. We wind through the giant metropolis of Sylva (population 2,435, the sign proudly proclaims), then on to one twisty mountain road after another. The sky starts to lighten behind us and Jo’s tail-lights slow. She pulls to the shoulder and we join her. Uri as well.