A Girl Called Dust (17 page)

I placed the empty bowl on the table
beside me. I had spent so much time thinking about how Mom and Dad weren’t
really my parents that I hadn’t given much thought to who my real parents were
and where they might be.

“Anyway,” Hollis continued. “That’s why I
had to come and get you. I took your sister by mistake. I think your smell had
rubbed off on her, but still I should have known better. I’m still learning.
Anyway, Father wasn’t happy. I’m old enough to have this position, so I can’t
make these types of mistakes. Anyway, he says you’re a mix between a Banshee
and a Wendigo. I think we’ll call you a Bandigo. It has a ring to it. I’m going
to give you this book, and I want you to look these things up and learn about
them. Everything in this book is a fact. It’s not like when you goggle things
and they may be wrong or right.”

“Google,” I corrected.

“Whatever. Don’t bother with it. Forget
everything you’ve ever learned about any sort of mythical creature and learn
from that book.”

The book was the size of all my textbooks
put together. How on earth was I supposed to read all that?

Hollis placed the book on my lap, and my
legs hurt immediately from the weight of it.

 “I know this is a lot, but you have
to accept this and learn really quick. I mean, all of us are learning about
ourselves and how to use whatever powers we have, but you’re farther behind
than the rest of us.”

“Behind?”

“Yeah. Think about how Human children know
about tigers, penguins, cows. They know what they look like. What they eat.
Where they live. That’s how all these creatures need to be to you. This is
basic stuff that we’ve been learning since birth, so yeah, you’re behind.”

I ran my fingers over the golden cover,
feeling completely hopeless. “Hollis, I feel like there’s something else you’re
not telling me.”

Hollis stared at the wall for a moment and
then leaned in close to me. “You’re in trouble. That means we’re in trouble.
There’s another Wendigo, or something pretending to be a Wendigo, out there
killing people. It’s not you. Father said it can’t be you because you don’t yet
have the strength to kill like that, but you will as you get closer to your
eighteenth birthday. That’s only a year away.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do,” Hollis said firmly. “Your taste
for flesh, meat. How you scratch at the floors. How you act when you’re
sleeping at night. You’ve always known there was something different about you.
Every day you live, you’re getting closer and closer to becoming a monster.
Eventually you might have to go where the rest of them go.”

“Where’s that?”

Hollis stood. “That’s enough info for
now.”

“Wait! No, what does that mean ‘go where
the rest of them go’?”

 “Read up. I’ll be back soon.” He
left me alone again, and I stared at the tattered book cover for a long time. I
opened it up to the first page. The word TAKERS was etched across the paper in
fancy script. I turned to the next page and read softly to myself.

“Takers are beings that take life from the
world. They live primarily underground. They never kill unnecessarily, only to
eat or to protect themselves. Young Takers begin to exhibit behaviors on or
around their thirteenth birthdays, with their strengths and powers being full
formed by the time they turn eighteen. Takers used to live thousands of years,
but as their powers have diminished, their life spans have dwindled down to
nearly that of a Human. Rarely do they live past the age of one hundred.”

The book was divided into three sections:
Takers, Givers, and a small section labeled Legends. I flipped through the
pages and found that the creatures were listed in alphabetical order, so I went
to the Banshee first. I grabbed a stray pencil and notebook from a table in the
room. Writing things down helped me remember them better. There was one page,
front and back, about the Banshee. I jotted down the important things that
stood out to me.

-Female
messenger spirit and an omen of death

-Woman
of the fairy world

-Generally
dressed in white or gray robes

-They
announce death

A flood of thoughts rushed through my
mind. I was always thinking about death and the ways people could die at any
given moment. I had seen that purple color around Ms. Melcher before she
disappeared. Was that a sign? Did that mean she was dead? These things meant I
wasn’t crazy after all. I was a Banshee.

There was a paragraph on how to kill a
Banshee. Why did the book have to include that? To kill a Banshee for good, you
had to grind her bones into powder, or else she would keep coming back to life.

If I read the book from cover to cover, I
would have been reading for a year. I flipped to the Ws at the back of the book
to find Wendigos. The illustration showed a horrid creature. Tall and lean with
protruding ribs and gray, furry skin. Was that what I was going to turn into?

Wendigos

-Always hungry

-Crave Human flesh

-Exhibits traits of both a Human and a
monster

-Never satisfied after consuming one
person. They are always on the hunt for more.

I gulped. I was going to become one of
those? Was Hollis right? As I got older, was I going to eat people? I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.

When I’d had enough of reading about
Wendigos, I looked up Vetalas and Aswangs. According to the book, Vetalas were
hostile creatures who could bring back the dead. They were capable of causing
madness and lived between the realms of life and death. I wasn’t sure what that
meant. They could see the present, past, and future. I couldn’t imagine being
able to do all that.

Aswangs didn’t sound any better. They were
shapeshifters with leathery wings. They robbed graves and ate dead bodies. They
fed on small children and lived among Humans. I shuddered. They were monsters.
We were all monsters. They had tried to dress it up and make it seem like we
weren’t so bad, but we were.

If I’d known all those things about Wes
and Hollis before, I would have been much more terrified.

One thing I noticed about all the Takers I
read about—we thrived on death.

Hours later, a girl came in carrying a
tray—at least I thought she was a girl. She had a Human girl’s body but the
head of a bird. Her face was covered in white feathers, and where her nose
should have been sat a yellow beak. Her hair was short, white-blond, and
slicked back, while her eyes were large, brown, and birdlike. “Take a picture,
it’ll last longer.”

I looked away. I had been staring, but who
wouldn’t?

She wore a tank top with gold sequins that
formed the shape of lips. She placed the tray on the nightstand beside the bed
and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “So you’re it, huh?”

I had no idea what she meant by that, so I
said nothing. She stood over me, looking me up and down. “I don’t see what the
big deal is.”

People where making a big deal about me?

“What are you?” I asked finally.

“A Harpie.”

Harpie. I hadn’t come across that in my
reading. “What horrible things do you do?”

She smirked. “Been doing a little reading,
huh? Sweetie, you don’t get to judge us.” Without warning, she ripped the
covers from over my body. “I think we’ll go with the thigh.”

Before I could react, she had pulled a
small blade from her pocket, pulled my dress up, and cut into my thigh. Her
motions were quick and fluid as if she did that every day. I screamed and
attempted to push her away as she inserted something that looked like a dull
dime.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted
as pain throbbed through the injured area. Feeling lightheaded, I stared at the
bloody opening in my leg.

“Relax and stop being such a baby.” She
pressed her index finger against the spot, and it healed immediately. I saw no
scar, but there was still a tiny sting. “It’s a tracking device so we can find
you whenever we need to. We all have one. Name’s Cadence. Welcome home.”

“This isn’t my home. I’m not living here.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you say so.” Then
she wiped the blood from her blade and stalked out of the room. I didn’t like
Cadence.

A few minutes later, Hollis came in
carrying another bowl. Jumping up from the bed, I grabbed the empty tray
Cadence had left behind on the nightstand. I hurled it at him. “You stay away
from me. I mean it.”

He frowned, watching the tray clatter on
the ground inches away from him. “What are you doing?”

I backed up against the wall, remembering
how strong he was. If he attacked me, I couldn’t do anything about it. “I read
about you. You eat children. I can’t think of anything worse than that.”

Hollis placed the bowl on a metal cart,
and his shoulders slumped. Swirls of steam rose from the bowl. “That is one
characteristic of an Aswang, yes, but that doesn’t mean we all do it. I’ve been
trained since birth to control things like that. I’ve never once eaten a child,
and I never would.”

I wanted to believe him, but I didn’t even
know him. How would I know if he were lying to me? “What about dead bodies? The
book says you eat those too.”

His face fell. “Sometimes when I’m on a
hunting mission looking for someone and I’m away from home for a while . . .”

“Oh my God!” I almost gagged at the
thought.

Hollis shrugged. “What? It’s not like I’m
killing anyone. They’re already dead, and I have to eat. We only take what we
have to.”

I could picture him digging freshly buried
bodies from their graves and feasting on them or maybe snatching bodies from
funeral homes. I didn’t want to know how he acquired dead people. “Get out of
here and stay away from me.”

He stepped toward me again. “Stop looking
at me like that. Have you ever eaten anyone? What if I assumed you’ve eaten
people just because of what I read in a book? How would you like that? Besides,
did I hurt your sister? I didn’t eat or harm her, and when I found out she was
the wrong one, I put her back in one piece. We were very nice to her when she
was here. She’s not one of us. We didn’t have to be.”

Paige had said they were nice to her. She
didn’t even seem like she had been afraid. “Hollis, I’m sorry, but this is all
new to me.”

He nodded, took the bowl from the cart,
and handed it to me. “I understand. Eat.”

I took the bowl from him, and we both sat
on the edge of the bed. The food tasted better than it had the first time.

Hollis watched me eat. “How much did you
read?”

I had read so much my eyes had begun to
cross, but I hadn’t even put a dent in what I needed to cover. “Some,” I
replied. “I’m sorry, Hollis, but you can’t sugarcoat the fact that we’re
monsters. We do horrible things, myself included. How can you be okay with
that?”

“We don’t do horrible things. We are what
we are. We do what we’re supposed to. We don’t hurt anyone unless we absolutely
have to, and we definitely don’t hurt each other, so you don’t have to worry
about that.”

Once my bowl was empty, he took it from
me. “Get some sleep. We have a lot to show you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I don’t want to be here
tomorrow. I want to go home.”

“You are home. So, you’ve been fed.” He
pointed to the table beside my bed. “You have water, and the bathroom’s over
there,” he said, pointing to the other side of the room. “That should be all
you need for the night. Yell if you need anything. I won’t come, but yell
anyway. I’d appreciate the noise. It gets a little too quiet around here.”

I wanted to throw the water pitcher at his
head as he made his way toward the door. A clunking sound let me know that I
was locked in for the night.

That night I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t even
if I wanted to. My mind was wired and crammed full of information as I flipped
through the book. Trolls, Ogres, Gremlins—things I’d only seen in scary movies.
I tried to stay awake to read more, but the need for rest won. With the book
open on my lap, I drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Twenty

The next morning, I woke up to a steaming
bowl of mush sitting on the nightstand. The mush tasted like oatmeal, and when
I was done, I wanted more. I also wanted to shower and change out of the
nightgown I had been wearing since Hollis had taken me from my bed.

After eating, I went back to the book. I
was in the middle of a chapter about demons when the door was flung open.
Hollis came in with Wes on his heels. Ignoring me, the two of them went to the
table, which contained several monitors stacked on top of each other.

Wes tapped the keyboard, and the monitors
switched on, each showing a different scene.

I closed the book and sat on the edge of
the bed. “Good morning to you too.”

Hollis glanced at me over his shoulder.
“Oh, I thought you had some sort of aversion to talking to evil child-eating
beasts.”

So he was still sore about the night
before. Wes laughed. “Look, Hol, it’s almost lunchtime. That’s my favorite
part.”

Wes, the Vetala. Hostile spirits who can
see the past, present, and future. They control and read minds.

Wes chuckled again and then turned to me.
“I can’t tell the future yet. I’m still working on that.”

“What?” I stood up, my feet chilled
against the cold steel floor.

“You’re thinking about me. I read minds.
Obviously you know that. And I’m not going to use mind control on you, so don’t
worry. We don’t use our powers against each other.”

“I want to leave now.”

Wes kept on as if I hadn’t said a word. “I
know all the terrible things you’ve been thinking about us. Well guess what.
You’re not perfect yourself, Bandigo.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Think what you want about me, but there’s
nothing worse than being what you are—weak,” Wes said bitterly.

I glared at him. “How can you say that?
You don’t even know me.”

Hollis scoffed. “We know you better than
you think.” He tapped one of the monitors. “We’ve been watching you for over a
year.”

“What?” I walked over to the monitors, and
sure enough, each screen showed a different part of Everson High. One showed
the cafeteria filling with students. Another showed the teachers’ lounge. A few
hallways, the empty gym, and the library were displayed on others. Everyone
went on about their business, completely unaware that they were being watched.
The thought of them viewing my life like it was some TV show made me feel
weirded out and violated. “What the hell? You know how creepy that is?”

 Wes nodded. “We don’t just watch
you, we watch everyone at that school. It’s better than TV. It’s like our very
own reality show.”

“We’re not your source of entertainment,”
I said through gritted teeth.

“Whatever,” Wes said. “Anyway, you are
weak. You let that girl with the yellow hair walk all over you.”

Hollis nodded. “She’s an interesting
character.”

I gulped. Had they really seen everything?

“Shut up!” I shouted. “You don’t go to
school. You have no idea what it’s like, especially for a girl like me.”

Wes grinned at Hollis. “Look at that. She
can’t stand up to the yellow-haired girl, but she can stand up to us.”

Hollis leaned back in his seat, resting
his hands behind his head. “That girl’s awful. If I were you, I would just eat
her and be done with it.”

I marched over to the door and yanked on
the handle. The door wouldn’t budge, as if it were welded shut. I banged on it
with my fist. “Open this door. I’m leaving.”

“It’s not locked,” Hollis said. “You’re
just not strong enough to open it.”

“Sit down,” Wes added. “You’re not going
anywhere.”

The only thing I wanted to do was get away
from the two of them.

 I was angrier with the fact they’d
watched me be a total loser and also that they were right. I knew I needed to
stand up for myself, and I couldn’t take one more person stating the obvious.
It was easier said than done.

For a whole year, these creeps had been
watching and judging me. “Hey,” I said to Hollis. “If you’ve really been
watching me all this time, then you knew what I looked like. Why’d you take
Paige? She looks nothing like me.”

“He was dr—” Wes began.

“Quiet,” Hollis snapped.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Drunk? You
were
drunk
? If you’re going to be soaring through the night kidnapping
people, don’t you think you should at least be sober? What if you dropped
somebody or crashed into something?”

Hollis punched Wes in the arm. “He doesn’t
know what he’s talking about, and I’ve never been drunk. Look!” Hollis pointed
to a screen focused on a hallway, where Ranson dangled some poor kid upside
down while his friends looked on, laughing. Nice way to change the subject.
“That dude’s my kind of guy.”

I felt like smashing all their monitors,
but instead I got back into bed and buried myself underneath the covers,
waiting for this all to end.

That night I sat up in bed reading as much
as I could. Just as I was reading an interesting bit about fairies, the door
creaked open, and a man slunk into the room. My muscles tightened at the man’s
intimidating appearance. He wore a black hooded cloak, while his face was
completely covered in a black mask, and I wondered what type of creature was
hiding underneath. The door shut behind him with a bang, and I immediately felt
more trapped than ever. Who was this person, and what was he doing here?

He moved leisurely toward me, stopping a
few feet from my bed. “Come with me.”

“What?”

He squared his abnormally broad shoulders,
and I could only imagine how strong he was. “You’re going home now.”

I closed the book and clutched it tightly.
“Oh. I thought Hollis said I had to stay.” Although I would never admit it, a
small sliver of me wanted to stay. I was finally getting some questions
answered. I had only made a small dent in my reading.

“You’re leaving. You’re not who we thought
you were. You’re not one of us.” His voice was deep with menace yet familiar.
Hollis and Wes had said they would never hurt me, but I didn’t get the same
vibe from this . . . whatever he was.

I frowned. “But what, what about all the—”

“All the what?” In one swift motion, he
was on my bed and leaning over me. How had he moved so fast? His eyes, the only
part of him not covered, shone a bright blue. “You haven’t exhibited any
powers.”

“But I think about death all the time, and
I saw the purple haze around my teacher.”

“So you’re depressed and you have
cataracts. The children here fly and shape-shift and heal wounds with just a
simple touch. They perform all sorts of fantastical feats. Surely you’re not
comparing yourself to them.”

“I—I don’t . . .” No, I couldn’t do
anything even close to what they could do.

He touched my chin with his gloved hand.
Every body part was screaming at me to move away, but I didn’t want him to hurt
me.

His eyes peered at me like I was a wounded
puppy, but his sympathy was only pretend. “Oh, poor girl. Did you think you
were special? That you were some kind of magical creature? Well, let me assure
you that you’re not. You’re just a regular girl. Now the girl you were switched
with at birth, she is special. Dear, you were only a placeholder. You’re just a
baby they grabbed from some random cradle and threw in her place.”

I swallowed hard as his words cut my core.
The man seemed angry with me, but I didn’t understand why. I hadn’t done
anything to him. I hadn’t asked for any of this. Hollis had brought me here and
told me that I couldn’t leave.

The man’s gaze pierced me like ice-cold
daggers. “You’re not important. You’re just what your classmates call you.
Dust. I’m taking you home where you belong.”

How did he know what the kids at school
called me? Had he been watching me on the monitors too?

Before I could protest, the man placed a
large hand over my eyes. When he took it away, I could see nothing. I groped in
the darkness. He had blinded me.

“What did you do? What did you do? Fix
it!” My heart raced with panic.

“Hush. It will wear off in an hour or so.
You are not one of us, so I couldn’t possibly let you see where we live.” Next
thing I knew, his arms were underneath me, carrying me toward the door.

I screamed for help. The man squeezed me
so hard I thought my bones were going to be crushed. “No one’s going to help
you. Make another sound and I will put you out.” I believed him, so I shut up.

He hauled me down what felt like a long
hallway. I tried to listen for signs of others. There was no sound except for
the rhythmic tapping of the man’s feet against the ground as we walked. A door
scraped open, and I was slammed by a cool blast of wind. Before I could adjust
to the change in temperature, we were up in the air, and minutes later, I was
thrown onto my bed.