Through Glass (35 page)

“I will go first, you follow me. No matter what happens, Lex, just run straight ahead. Travis should be waiting for you in between the green and red bleachers.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke, instead her eyes scanned the sky around us, the bright lights offsetting the black into an odd green color.

“And if he’s not?” I asked, my chest tightening as I looked at her.

“Then it was nice knowing you,” she answered as she looked away. My teeth ground together at what we were about to do.

She said nothing, simply ran onto the field with her gun out in front of her as I followed and burst out on the green grass. We had barely taken two steps in before the gun fire started, but I could tell automatically that it wasn’t the same beams of light that both Bridget and I held in our hands, these were bullets.

“Run!” she screamed as she turned to fire at them, bright beams of light shooting from the barrel of her green gun. Her face was tangled in fear as she yelled. Shot after shot fired from her gun.

I didn’t argue, I merely turned and bolted to the faded red and green paint of the bleachers seeming like an angel’s gate. I had almost made it when I heard Bridget scream behind me. The scream turned into a deranged yell of anger.

I turned at the noise, my eyes widening at the bright red blood that seeped over her arm and down her back. She continued to fire at the dozens of attackers that lined the stands around us, but her arms were lowering, her strength leaving.

I didn’t hesitate, I turned and raised the green weapon still in my hand, pulse after pulse of light flying away from me as I fired at everyone I could, doubting I was hitting much of anything. I backed myself into the shadow of the bleachers, shielding myself from any possible attack.

“Come on!” I yelled at her, my voice barely audible amongst the bangs from the guns that still surrounded us.

Bridget picked herself up and ran toward me, her shoulder still seeping blood.

“Are you all right?” I asked the second she was close enough to hear me, but she said nothing, only walked right past me and into the arms of Travis who came barreling around the corner with his own gun in his hands.

“Bridge!” he yelled. “What happened?”

Again, she said nothing. She just slumped into him, her body sagging at the blood loss.

“I’m sorry, Tee. I didn’t think they would use real bullets.” Her voice was soft as she wrapped her arms around him.

“It’s okay, baby,” he sighed, his voice soft as he pressed his lips against hers.

I felt the intake of my breath, hoping no one had heard it. The two held each other for a moment and I watched, unabashedly at their intimate moment. They were lovers, a couple. They meant something to each other and they had risked it all for me. That knowledge was sharp like barbed wire in my heart. Travis wasn’t alone, not really. Yet, he still risked everything for me. They both did.

“Let’s go,” Travis sighed, his arms tightening around Bridget as he led her toward what was unmistakably a door in front of us.

“No, Travis, no,” Bridget sighed, her voice pained. “I can’t go.”

“You can go,” Travis said, his arm still around her as he led us closer to the door, as the yells of the army behind us approached.

I lifted my gun and turned toward the light that filtered through the opening behind us, expecting them to burst through at any moment.

“I’m bleeding, Travis. If I go, if I bleed out…” Bridget whispered, her voice soft as she pleaded with him.

“It’ll be fine…” Travis said, his voice hard as he continued to move us forward. My eyes darted back and forth, dark shapes were coming into view as they prepared to follow us into the dark.

“No, Tee, it won’t be. You don’t have any way to stop it, to heal me. They will infect me…”

“They’re coming,” I whispered, more to myself than to them, knowing they wouldn’t hear me even if I spoke up.

“They turned to ash, Tee. You were right. Abran is using them and if we both leave, we will never know what’s going on,” Bridget said, her hands clinging to Travis’s bloodstained shirt.

“I can’t let you do that, baby,” Travis pleaded, his tears distorting his voice. I looked away, feeling uncomfortable for watching his heart break. My own heart beat heavily as I watched them, as my own traumatizing good-bye replayed for me.

“Please,” Bridget said and I could hear the pain in her voice, the loss at what she was doing already engulfing her. “I left a phone in her backpack. I can watch him from the inside. Just stick to the normals.”

“I can’t leave you.” I turned toward them at Travis’s voice. His forehead was pressed against hers as tears streamed down their faces.

As they said good-bye.

I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t bear the clenching pain my heart experienced at seeing such love and tenderness.

“They will kill you here,” Travis whispered against her skin, his last plea pointless and unheard.

I turned away from them, back to the opening, my eyes straining through the dark as I tried to see.

“No, they won’t,” Bridget mocked, the deep lie painful on her soft voice. “You left me behind and I hate you because of it. They won’t kill me, they will use me. And I will let them, for your sake.”

I kept my eyes trained on the dark as she spoke, my gun pointed through the shadows of the bleachers just as a dark shape darted out from the light. My finger pulled the trigger out of habit as someone emerged from the shadows. The dark shape fell to the ground immediately.

“Guys,” I moaned as I backed away from the opening, my feet sliding past where Travis held Bridget in his arms, where he slowly lowered her to the ground.

“I love you, Bridget.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered, her words almost lost through the blast as my gun fired again. “Now, go.” Bridget smiled and pressed the green gun into my brother’s hands, her eyes pained and tight.

Travis backed away from her as he pressed his thumb to the pad near the knob, the door swinging open with a soft beep.

I bolted through the door, my heart breaking as he looked back, as he closed the door on his heart. I wanted to beg him to stay with her, to just let me go, yet I could tell by the look in his eyes that any pleading would be hopeless.

I followed him as he plunged himself into the darkness, his feet pumping as we ran across the dimly lit parking lot of the school they had held me prisoner in. I could hear the shouts filter through the massive wall they had built and a tornado alarm going off as they warned everyone of what had just happened. I wasn’t sure what they were warning them of, however; the hotter who had escaped or the Tar who walk in the light among them.

We ran until the darkness took us, a beam from the flashlight Travis held in his hands the only thing keeping us safe. I was careful to stay close to him, close to the light. Even with that I couldn’t ignore the way parts of me tensed and others relaxed merely by being in the dark. Like it was familiar.

I cringed at the thought and followed Travis as he led us into a dark alley. He handed me the flashlight quickly and then his hands plunged into his pocket for a small disc. It looked like a breath mint box that I used to carry around; white on the top and bottom with metallic edging around the edges. He tapped it once and the thing erupted in light, the bright circle illuminating the disgusting brick walls we were now surrounded by.

We stood still as we watched the light, my breath slowing and my exertion leaving me.

“Are you okay?” I asked softly, not knowing what else to say or even if it was the right thing.

“Bridget is loyal, she will be okay.” His voice was deep, so much of his pain rippling out of him.

It hurt me deep down to see him hurting, to see the stress and sadness in his face. Before I knew it, I had stepped closer to him and wrapped my arms around him.

I clung to him until he moved away, his face sad and unreadable.

“What are we going to do now?” I whispered to the bright alley around us. The small piece of sanctuary was all we could expect from now on, until the light gave out.

“We have to stop Abran. I have worried for some time now that his experiments on the Tar were more than just to find new ways to kill them,” he answered, his voice growling in anger, stopping me.

“More than just killing them?” I asked, my brain moving faster than my words.

I pulled away from him slowly and my eyes narrowed curiously. Testing different ways to hurt, to kill. That’s what he pictured when he looked at me, what he was going to do to me, what “testing” he would accomplish.

“Yes, ways to defeat them. To become stronger than them. He wasn’t supposed to experiment on the survivors, but he found a way around it…” Travis stopped, the muscles in his jaws working as he looked around us, almost as if he expected the blackness to hold the answers he needed. “That guard, Jamie. He was not a Tar. He never was, but he turned to ash...”

I swallowed the bile that had risen in my throat, willing it to stay down, but knowing it was useless. I had just turned two men to ash, men who had been mutilated into something more. More than what he had planned to do with me. I was only a monster in his eyes. However the others had been people; living, breathing humans.

I looked toward the gun slowly, the cold piece of painted metal suddenly felt like lead in my hands. It was more than that, though. It wasn’t that the gun had malfunctioned…

“He was a Tar…” I said, my voice a whisper.

“Somehow, yes, and I suspect Abran made him that way.”

“But why? Why would anybody do that?” I asked, my chest seizing at the very thought. My eyes flickered away from Travis to the darkness that surrounded our orb of light. Fear clenched through me at the thought that someone might be standing just outside of it.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, his voice distant. “Attack them, defeat them and become greater than them. I have some ideas, but this is so much deeper than what I had originally thought. There is something more to it, something I am missing. I know Abran, he hates the Tar more than anyone. But to become them? I didn’t think anyone would see that as progress.”

He ran his hand through his hair and looked around him, stress leaching off him as all his ideas swirled around only to increase his stress. “I need to find out what Abran has planned,” he said into the darkness, his voice getting swallowed up by the black that surrounded us before he turned back to me.

“Any thoughts on how to start doing that?” I asked, the sarcasm in my voice mixing awkwardly with my fear.

“I need to find out what these things are, Lex.” Travis rushed toward me, his hands wrapping around mine as he lowered to my eye level, his brown eyes digging into me. “More than what I have seen, more than what the others have said. I need to find the answers before you turn; before it’s too late for you and for everyone. Before Abran leads his army against them.”

“His army? What are you talking about?” I shrieked, everything in my body tensed. Travis’s grip on my hands increased, something I was sure was supposed to be comforting, but it only put me more on edge.

He looked at me for one more moment before he dropped my hands, his shoulders stiffening as he straightened himself. A jitter of fear trailed up my spine. I watched him, waiting for the worst to come. “In one month, we were supposed to empty out their main compound. What we believe is the Tars storage facility, where they turn the humans they have captured. I don’t think Abran wanted to just clear it out any more. If I had to place my best guess, right now, he is looking for supplies.” Travis spoke very slowly, his eyes unfocused on something behind me.

I listened to his words and tried to make sense of them. I had heard of this attack on the very first day when I’d sat with Bridget around the fire. She had spoken of it like a war, as if it was the ending to everything. The way Travis spoke, it was more like it was the beginning.

“That man, he stood in the light. He turned to ash. What’s to say he couldn’t change into one of them? Abran gets rid of one enemy, only to reveal another.” Travis’s voice was hard as he began to pace within the small circle of light we stood in. I watched him as he moved, his hands clenching and unclenching, the movement only adding to my own stress.

“He wants to rule where the Tar does now? Take over the world?” I whispered, my voice awed as everything began to make sense.

“Well, not that simplistic, but yes, that is the general idea.” Travis didn’t even look at me, he simply continued pacing with his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke.

“He can’t do that!” I practically yelled, the fear that had only been increasing inside of me supercharging my emotions.

“He will. In one month.”

Travis stopped pacing to face me, his eyes boring into mine as he watched me. I stood as still as I could and tried to regulate my breathing as everything pumped through me. I met Travis’s eyes, the hard lines of my face increasing at the determination I saw mirrored back to me. We needed to stop this.

“We need to get to Blood Rose. Abran won’t be able to contact them and tell them about us, about you,” he said simply. “They will have enough people to fight and stop this. We need to get there and stop this before it is too late. It may be foolish, but we need to do something to stop him.”

Travis turned from me, the light still held in his hand as he moved to walk out of the alley and toward what I did not know.

“Travis?” I asked, needing more clarification.

He turned toward me slowly, the light in his hand casting odd shadows on his face. His face was haunted as he smiled, the light making him look more wicked than I knew he was.

“Let’s start by getting Cohen back.”