Falling (3 page)

“Your head,” the boy with elf eyes murmurs as he puts me
into a car. Then, “this is, um, awkward.” He can only get me half in. I hear
his steps moving quickly around the back of the car. He opens the opposite door
and pulls me the rest of the way across the back seat.

“Thank you,” I say. I want to touch the blue glow around
him. This will soothe the pain inside of me. Not pain. Hunger. Great, gaping
hunger. I am shivering, still sweating. The strap of my bra has fallen to my
elbow.

“Do we, uh, have a blanket in the trunk or something,
Tarren?”

“Get in the car.”

I hear sirens. They sound closer than they could possibly
be. Just like I think I can hear the boy’s heart thudding in his chest, but
that can’t be real.

“Yeah, it’s a warm night. She’ll be fine.” The door by my
head closes. I flinch at the sound. After a moment it opens again.

“Seatbelt.” He leans over me, grappling with the buckle
under my back. His heart is a drum.  I hear the whoosh of air in and out of his
lungs. I smell him, the sweat on him, the damp of his clothes. Glowing spirals
of blue cloak his body like colored steam. I must touch the color. I am moving
my arm, dizzy with even this effort but desperate. He is so close. My hands
grow hot. Something is happening to them. The skin of my palms is puckering,
splitting open.

“There we go.” The boy is gone. The door closes. I keep
reaching up hoping to catch any lingering wisps of the glow. The skin furls
back over my palm, seaming itself up into a dark X across the center. The car
is moving. Every breath smells like blood. I’m giggling like a maniac, but only
in my head. I shove my hands under my body, because this will somehow help. I’m
still burning to death, by the way.

The driver whispers to himself, “We had him. We had him.”

The one with the backwards ball cap and elf eyes says,
“Look, we got her; that was the whole point.” He turns to look at the driver.
“We’ll kill Grand some other time.”

The driver doesn’t say anything, but the color ratchets
around him, bright along the edges. I close my eyes, but I can still feel the
skin pulling away from my palms again.

“Your eye is swelling up,” the passenger says.

“I’m fine. You?”

“Ankle. Just twisted it a little. I’ll throw some ice on it
whenever. No cops behind us. We need to switch our plates when we stop. Ditch
the guns too. We left shell casings. Damn shame, though.” The passenger pulls a
gun from his belt, hefts it in his hand. “My guy went through a lot of trouble
to get this baby. Not that you care. Anyone can get Glocks.”

“Put that away,” the driver says. “We’ll cover cleanup
later.”

The passenger turns to stare at me. I watch the delicate
shades of blue pulse around him.

“We should probably get her a shirt,” he says. The driver
doesn’t reply, but his eyes flick up to the rearview mirror when we stop at a
light.

After a while, the elf turns to the driver and asks, “Is
there any way this isn’t going to totally fucking ruin her life?”

I can’t stop shivering. My body jerks, so that I fall back
painfully onto the buckle. The fire is starting to separate. There’s the part
ripping up my bones and evaporating my blood, but there is something entirely
different lifting out of the flames. This is an exquisite hurt, all neural and
twitchy.  It’s hunger, but not like a hunger I’ve ever known before. This
hunger is cutting me wide open with a song, carving out its own channels in my
brain and snuffing out the human parts of me.

I think that I am going to die, and I don’t want to, except
that I do, because Ryan is dead, at least I think he is, but maybe he isn’t,
because he can’t be. He can’t be.

The hum of the car seems so loud, and the passing street lamps
blaze like sudden flares in the night.  We leave behind the highway and then
the street lamps and then the other cars. I cry, but these are silent tears,
hot by the time they tip over my chin. We sail through the night for a long
while, and the tears eventually dwindle. All that is left is the hunger growing
louder and louder in my bones.

Eventually, the car stops. The driver gets out. The door by
my head is wrenched open. He grabs my shoulders and pulls. The seatbelt digs
into my hips, and I cry out.

“Damn,” he mutters. He grabs my wrists in one hand and pins
them against the back of the seat while he leans over and undoes my buckle. The
passenger side door opens.

“Jesus, where are we? You gotta piss?”

The driver pulls me roughly out of the car. I hit the ground
and curl my legs into my chest. There is only the hunger and the pain and the
shadow of Ryan lingering behind the trees that edge each side of the road.

The driver pulls a gun from his waistband, and I am not
afraid. The amber glow is so bright around him that it looks like some sort of
unnatural fire. Everything is fire. I stare at the scar running along his jaw
and recognize him. The enforcer of Avalon levels his gun at me. The blood
stains across his shirt and jeans are already turning dark. In his eyes I see a
cold that I would never be cliché enough to call arctic except that I can’t
think of anything else. There’s a lot of blood on him.

“Tarren, no!”

Pant legs intrude into my visual field.

“She’s infected. We have to do it now while she’s weak.”

“One shot Tarren. She only got one shot. She’s like…a hybrid
or something.”

“We can’t take the chance.”

“Yes we can, because, uh, because you could use her in your
research. She could be, like, the key. The hybrids are always the key in, you
know, stuff.”

“We’ll take the body back to Lo’s lab.”

“Cold hearted bastard! She’s blood.”

“His blood.”

“Our blood. She’s our blood Tarren.” The elf boy’s voice has
gone harsh. “She’s our family, and you can pretend that you don’t care about
anything anymore, that you’re suffering the weight of the entire world on your
shoulders, but you’re just afraid. Fuck you. I’m not moving.”

“You done?” The gun doesn’t move.

“Yeah.” The elf takes a shaky breath. “I mean no! She could
help us. Think about it.  She’ll get strong. She’ll get fast. She can fight
with us. We can…”

“And the hunger?”

My protector turns and looks at me. I can hear how fast his
heart is beating, the faint rush of blood as he clenches his fists. The light
around him swells. So blue with sudden streaks of lavender lashing across. The
song. They act as if they can’t hear the music flowing in hot torrents all
around us.

“We’ll buy her rabbits,” he says finally.

“She’ll lapse and feed on humans.”

“No, she…”

“THEY ALWAYS FEED ON HUMANS.”  The enforcer’s voice echoes
into the trees. He pulls in a deep breath. “You know that. She is Grand’s
daughter. He’ll come after her again and by then she’ll be strong. I’ll take
care of it. Just get out of my way.”

“I’m on fire,” I say for no reason. I lift myself up to my
elbows with difficulty. I don’t know which one I want to prevail. A bullet
would be quicker than this slow burn.

“No.” The legs in front of me step a little wider. “No,” the
elf says again. “We’ve crossed a lot of lines, but I’m not going to let you
cross this one. She may feed on humans one day, maybe not. Until she does,
she’s an innocent, and we don’t kill innocent people. Not today. Not ever. She
deserves a chance; I don’t care who the fuck her parents are. If she crosses
over, I’ll kill her myself, but not today.”

The enforcer keeps his gun steady.  “Gabe,” he says.

“I’m not moving.” Gabe spreads his arms. “If you’ve got to
kill her, then do it, but I’m sick of this shit. You kill me first, ‘cause
killing innocent people is what bad guys do. I’m not a bad guy, and I’d rather
be dead then see you turn into one.”

I hold my hands out in front of me and stare at the new dark
slits running through my palms.

“Am I a monster?” I whisper. “Is that what this is?”

“No,” Gabe looks at me over his shoulder. “Well, kinda, but
we’re going to help you. We’re family.”

Tarren lowers his gun. A slow descent.

Some time passes — at least a few thousand years of us
trapped in that blood-smelling car.

I try not to think, and the pain makes this easy. It crowds
out Ryan’s face, and the man with his needle poised, and the enforcer with his
scar and his gun and his Rorschach-splattered shirt.

“…might be cracked,” Tarren’s voice is soft.

“Dr. Lee can bind it.”

“Wouldn’t do much good anyway.”

“Come on Tarren, he’s seen…” Gabe’s voice cuts out quick.
“Well,” he stutters, “just be careful with it.”

“It’s the least of our worries.”

My spines seizes up, and I bite my lip hard, but not hard
enough to stifle a low moan. Gabe twists in the passenger seat. He clutches the
headrest with both hands and peers at me.

“I’m sorry Maya,” he says, and then he slumps back against
his seat. “Don’t look at me like that,” he mutters to Tarren.

* * *

The boys huddle outside the car, their heads ducked together
in whispered argument. I lean my cheek against the window while the blinking
neon light of the motel sign washes over my eyes.

If I concentrate, I can catch their words.

“..won’t make it through the night unless she feeds.”

“We have to keep moving. Grand will want her back. He’ll
track us.”

“Uh, last time I checked he was minus a hand. I think he
might have other things on his mind. She’s in trouble. We’ve got to hole up for
the night.”

“Go get her something then. You’re better at picking locks.”

“Like hell! You’ll blow her brains out as soon as I turn my
back.”

“I won’t kill her unless I have to.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“On Mom’s grave?”

“Why do you always say that?”

“Cause I know you’ll keep it.”

“On Mom’s grave.”

* * *

“I know how this looks,” Gabe, he of the backwards hat, says
as he comes round the bed. “You know, with you and the bra, this
less-than-stellar motel room and well, these cuffs, but they’re just a safety
precaution.”

I lie on the bed, propped sideways against the headboard and
squeeze my eyes shut as Gabe binds my wrists together behind my back with a
plastic tie. He steps back quickly and lets out a breath. I am still holding
mine. The melody of hunger is filling up my head. A thin trickle of blood runs
out of my nose, and there’s nothing I can do even if I cared.

There are other people near. I can sense them, the different
ebbs and flows of their energies. I hear a TV chattering in the next room.
Upstairs, a woman cries beneath the spray of a shower. It all blurs together, a
loud mess of noise and smells and frantic tugs in my brain that I can’t even
begin to parse. Gabe is talking, offering a cup of liquid. It smells rancid.

“It’ll help,” he says.

Tarren leans against the far wall, arms folded across his
chest. A gun sticks out of his waistband.

“Am I going to die?” I ask in a thin little girl voice.

“Not today. Come on now, drink this.” Gabe puts the cup to
my lips.

The liquid is rusty on my tongue, but I swallow. It sits
uneasily in my stomach.

“Keep it down,” Gabe says.

My stomach clenches, but the nausea passes.

“Good,” Gabe smiles. “That’s real good.”

“They all drink water,” Tarren says.

“That was tap water. I’ve never seen any of them drink tap
water,” Gabe replies. He sits on the bed next to me, tips the cup to catch some
water on a cloth and then carefully cleans the blood and dried vomit off my
face.

I stare at the glow as it rotates on a slow current around
his body. I realize that it is made up of many different delicate, shifting
shades of blue. Pale purple filaments blink in and out of existence.

Gabe looks me over for a long time, and I focus on his eyes.
They are a warm brown like caramel. I dig deeper, discovering tiny gold flakes
caught up in the caramel mix. There’s mischief in those sparks of gold, and
through the fog of pain and the implosion of my universe, I suddenly feel like
I know him. Something in his face seems so sad and so real. He said we were
blood, but I don’t understand what that means.

He speaks. “Look Maya, I wish you could know how sorry I am,
we both are, that this happened to you. You’re probably freaking out right
now.” Gabe takes off his cap and runs his fingers through his wavy hair. “It
shouldn’t be like this. We should’ve been able to protect you.”

He waits, but I am too immolated to answer. I turn my head
to gaze at the headboard, at the initials scratched in the wood.
BJ was here

“Look, I’m running out to get you something that’s going to
help,” Gabe continues. “Something for your uh…thing. When I get back and you’re
feeling a little better, we’ll explain everything. Maya…things are going to be
different for you, but Tarren and I, we’re going to take care of you.”

Another pause. I’m not sure which one of us he expects to
fill the gap. BJ was where? Here? Lying against a headboard with his hands
cuffed behind his back? Body on fire? Boyfriend gone, gone, gone, gone?

Gabe is speaking again. “That thing before with the gun;
don’t worry about that. Tarren won’t hurt you, I promise. I know that probably
doesn’t mean much, but…” Gabe kneads the visor of his cap. The glow, his aura,
is beautiful, and I think that I can see his pain — faint scarlet hues —
reflected in the shifting colors around him. “...well, it’s the truth. God,
that’s lame.” The last part is a mutter.

Gabe waits for something. He keeps waiting. Finally, he puts
his hat back on. “We’ll explain everything. Soon.” He gives Tarren a long look
before he leaves. Their eyes say something to each other that I cannot fathom.
I feel Gabe’s weight lift off the bed. The door opens and closes.

I let out my breath and feel the skin unfold back down against
my palms. My wrists are sore from straining against the handcuffs.