Shine (38 page)

I sopped up the blood with his shirt, catching all but a few drops before they stained the seat of the car. The cuts were still bleeding, but slower than before.

“I’m guessing you released the shades, aye?” he said, hissing as I wiped too hard. “Why didn’t they disappear, since I was there?”

“Because I asked them not to. Long story.”

“Short story: You saved my life.”

“And you saved mine.” I started to shiver uncontrollably—remembering Aidan’s red-eyed rage, and imagining the switchblade plunged hilt-deep in my gut.

I made myself talk, trying to joke, of all things. “I can’t believe we almost got offed by a bunch of bampots.”

“Aye.” He nodded, maybe in approval at my Scottish slang. “Not what I was expecting.”

I picked up his jacket from the floor, nudging aside the bolt cutters. “Do you want this on? It’s cold out.”

“No, it’ll get bloody. I need a new shirt first.”

“Maybe we should call the police,” I said.

“Whoever finds those eejits will do it for us.”

“And then what? Your blood is all over that place.”

“I dunno, a’right?” His voice shook. “We almost just fuckin’ died. I am
not
stopping this car.”

Right. Escape. First things first. Good thing we had our wallets and passports so we didn’t need to go back to the B and B. I even had a change of clothes in the trunk from last night’s shade incident.

“What do we do once we get across the border to Northern Ireland?” I asked him. “Will we go to Glasgow?”

“Maybe. I dunno if it’s safe at home.” He shivered, his whole body jolting. “I dunno if anywhere is safe anymore.”

I cranked up the car’s heater, then leaned across the center console to rest my head against his shoulder. Partly to warm him, but mostly because I needed his touch. I could still smell the blood on his skin, and the bitter tang of fear in our sweat.

“I’ll never forget Aidan, trying tae use my knife to hurt you.” He released a low growl. “Nothing ever felt so good as smashing those bolt cutters into his face.”

“You really whacked him. I think you broke his jaw.”

“That was the idea. If I’d hit him that hard in the forehead I could’ve killed him. But I would’ve done it, if that’s what it took.”

Though the position was less than comfortable, I kept my head on his shoulder, unable to sit up straight if I’d wanted to. My strength was completely sapped.

Zachary brushed his fingertips under my chin, as if to confirm I was still there. “I wish I could believe in the Druids’ Otherworld, where people go when they die here, where they can live another life.”

“And then come back to this world when they die there, over and over again. It does sound comforting.”

“Except for one thing.” Zachary’s fingers wound in my hair. “This is the only life I ever want.”

Near the Northern Ireland border, the motorway became a smaller road, and the blacktop turned to a speckled macadam. I tensed, remembering tales of violence and mistrust, guards dismantling cars at the border to check for bombs.

As we went through a traffic circle, both our phones bleeped, making us jump. Simultaneous text messages.

I pulled out my phone. Was this a warning from MI-X? A threat from Nighthawk or the DMP—or worse, the Children of the Sun? Zachary thumbed his phone on, keeping an eye on the approaching traffic light.

WELCOME TO THE UNITED KINGDOM
, said the message from my cell-phone carrier.
DIAL +1 AND THE TEN DIGIT NUMBER TO CALL THE US. LOCAL CALLS DIAL +44 AND NUMBER.

I sighed with relief. “I thought entering Northern Ireland would be more dramatic. Guards and guns and big dogs.”

“Not anymore. Just text messages.” Zachary let out a soft curse. “But if we use our phones now, anyone tracing our lines will know we’re in the UK.”

“Someone like the DMP?”

He nodded. “Or Nighthawk.”

“Gina will freak if I don’t check in. She’ll call your dad and have him send Scotland Yard out looking for us.”

“Good luck to them, finding us.” Zachary turned right on a road that would take us southeast, toward the Irish Sea.

“Isn’t the airport in the other direction?” I asked him.

“Exactly.”

Twenty minutes and three towns later, we stopped in Warren-point, an incredibly cute waterfront town on Carlingford Lough. The downtown was adorned with Christmas lights, and its festive atmosphere almost let me forget we were on the run.

Still bloody from his wounds, Zachary stayed in the car while I checked us into a hotel, wearing gloves to cover my own bloodstained hands. At the pharmacy across the street, I bought first aid supplies and a long-sleeved rugby shirt for Zachary—dark reddish brown so that his blood wouldn’t show. I noticed a huge change in accent from the Dublin area, plus lots of the “hiya” I’d grown to love from Zachary.

In the cramped hotel bathroom, he held an ice pack to his bruised left eye and cheek while I cleansed his wounds, which had stopped bleeding.

After his tenth wince, he remarked, “Ever notice in the movies the hero gets shot or stabbed and doesn’t complain, but when the beautiful girl is nursing his wounds, he can’t stop flinching?”

“That’s because of adrenaline, and Hollywood.” My face warmed at his indirectly calling me “beautiful.”

He lifted his arms and held still while I wound the bandage around his chest to cover the two cuts. I pressed the last piece of tape on his back, smoothing it against the material.

Zachary lowered his arms and looked over his shoulder at me. “Now that the shades are gone from inside you, d’ye think we could end this not-touching-each-other shite? It’s frankly killing me, as sure as any knife.”

As an answer, my fingers slid up, over the unbroken skin of his bare shoulder. Zachary turned and pulled me close, tensing with pain but uttering no sound. He ran his hands ran down my back, then up under my shirt. His palms pressed against my ribs, and I savored the feel of his once-forbidden skin. Nothing inside me shrieked, and nothing hurt. I was all me again. All his.

Zachary stood and tugged me out of the bathroom, toward the bed. The urgency of his grip made my pulse leap, and I wanted nothing more than to feel the weight of his body on mine.

But I stopped short, almost throwing him off balance. “Wait.”

“Why? Are you all right?”

“Not really.” I rubbed my upper arm. “I still feel wrong, after the
shades. They’re not in me anymore, but it kinda feels like they’re, um, on me. Maybe if I take a shower—”

He released my hand. “Go.”

“I’ll be quick.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

The hot water was just what I needed. Cascading over my scalp and shoulders, it chased away the last shadows of clamminess. I rested my palms against the sandy-tiled wall and let the flood caress the back of my neck, loosening the tension from the last twenty-four hours of—well, almost dying.

A knock came at the door.

“Yeah?” I heard the door open. “Forget something?”

“Aye.” A sliver of curtain peeled back, enough to show one of Zachary’s vibrant green eyes. “I forgot how hard it is to think of you in the shower.”

I shifted back, the water now between us, blurring his image. “There’s not much room in here.”

“Aye.” He stepped inside, putting half his body under the spray. The lower half.

I lifted my hands. “Your bandage’ll get wet.”

“Aye.” He took my wrists and moved forward, pinning me against the hard, slick wall, arms above my head. Then he kissed me, settling himself fully under the stream of water that flowed from his skin onto mine, its path unbroken by air or space.

With my hands in his grasp and his name on my lips, I could believe that nothing—not even time itself—could tear us apart.

Later we fell asleep lying tight together, arms and legs entwined, making up for the hours apart, for everything that had almost been stolen from us.

So when Zachary began to stir in his sleep, I woke instantly.

“No!” He shuddered all over, then his legs jerked, his knee slamming my shin.

I hissed in pain and knew I’d have a bruise. “Zachary.” I set my hand on his chest, then jerked it away when I felt his heart pounding, like it wanted to burst the bonds of bone and skin and bandage. In the clock radio’s electric-blue glow, I saw his face covered in sweat, soaking the hair at his temples.

“Stop.” I tried to keep the panic from my voice, but his arms were tightening like a boa constrictor. “You’re hurting me.”

“Don’t go,” he cried. “Come back!”

I pried one of his arms off me, enough to squirm over to slap on the bedside light.

He still didn’t wake, just flailed, snarling. I ducked before his fist could connect with my face. It slammed the pillow.

“Zach, it’s me.” I grabbed his slick, goose-bumped arm. “It’s Aura.”

He stilled, then his eyes fluttered open.

“Aura.” He half sat, jerking his head to scan the room. Then he sank back onto the bed with a wordless groan.

“It was just a dream,” I told him, wondering if it was the same one he’d been having for months.

“Sorry.” Zachary pulled a corner of the sheet to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. “The nightmares stopped the last few weeks, or I would’ve warned you.” He drew his thumb over the edge of the fresh bandage on his chest. It had stayed in place, despite his thrashing.

“Can you tell me? Is it about last summer?”

He stared at the ceiling, breath heaving. “I can. But I’m not sure I
can
. If I have …”

“You do have the strength.” I lay on my side facing him. “Let me help you. Start with the dream.”

He was silent for several moments, then he swallowed hard. “The room’s blank white. So quiet.”

“Who else is there?”

“No one.” He pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m alone.”

“Are you afraid someone might come in?”

His whisper twisted. “I’m afraid no one will ever come in again.” My stomach grew heavy as my mind seized a terrible new possibility. I’d pictured him beaten, burned, half-drowned. All the things I’d heard about governments doing, especially to noncitizens.

But I’d never imagined … nothing.

“Zach, did they—leave you alone?” I couldn’t say the word “isolation.” I knew from Gina’s civil rights cases that solitary confinement was the cruelest torture of all. It drove prisoners mad.

“Aye.” Now both hands covered his face, trembling. “How long?”

“Weeks.”

My hands formed useless fists around my pillow. “Why would they do that?”

“After the witness ghost disappeared—the one who saw me with Logan—the DMP tested me, to see whether I could talk to ghosts.”

I ached with guilt for inadvertently helping Tammi Teller pass on.

He continued. “There was a post-Shifter intern who told them how the test ghost screamed and cried when it couldn’t get away from me. The DMP shipped me off to 3A that morning.”

“And that’s when they put you alone?”

“Aye. My room was comfortable enough. I had books.” He drew his thumbs along the ridges of his eyebrows, wincing at the bruise on the left side. “No TV or video games or music, because of the wires, I suppose. And no mirror in the bathroom, or anything else that could be made sharp.”

“What about food?”

“They’d slip it through a slot in the door. I’d wait for hours just to see the fingertips of the person delivering it. They wore white rubber gloves. I once tried to reach through to touch them, and they—” He rubbed the fingers of his right hand. “I never tried it again.”

“Zach …” My tears started to flow. I took his hand and kissed his fingers, as if I could travel back in time and heal his pain.

His face contorted as he watched me. His other hand gripped the sheets so hard, his knuckles grew white. Then he turned his head away quickly and fixed his eyes on the wall. “I stopped eating. At first it was a
troscad
, a hunger strike to shame them, but then I just wasn’t hungry. I was nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“I didn’t feel real anymore. I didn’t know who I was.” His hand went slack in mine. “And when I did, I wished I’d been on that plane.”

“Oh God, Zachary,” I choked out.

He closed his eyes. “I would fantasize what it would’ve been like, to be snuffed out so quickly and mercifully.”

“Don’t say that.”

Zachary tensed again. “You told me you wanted to hear.”

“I do! I’m sorry.” I clutched his fingers. “I want to know everything.”

“Are ye certain? Because it’d be easier to stop.” He dragged his nails over the bandages on his chest, like he wanted to rip out his own heart.

“No, please keep going. What made you decide to live?”

He turned his head toward me, and when he opened his eyes, they shone clear and wet. “You were the only real thing in that place. On the days when I felt so daft I couldn’t remember my own name, I knew you were out there. I knew you existed, even if I didn’t.”