Bright Star (31 page)

Jackson swallowed. That was murder. Maybe he had been unclear about what to call the other incidents, but this was not unclear. Bright Star had committed murder. He didn’t understand. Even as his stomach churned, he could only reach out to defend her. “They’ve done nothing but intimidate, sabotage, create distrust. They were evil.”

Rush winced as he turned to his brother. “It’s not up to you to decide that, just as much as it was not up to her.”

“Tell me that they weren’t.”

“They were kids,” Rush answered. But he didn’t argue with Jackson’s assessment. They both knew the twins had been angry and destructive. They had been destined from birth to inflict cruelty and violence on themselves and others. But where Jackson may call them evil, Rush had to ask himself what the difference was between them and Bright Star. She led people to their deaths every day.

Not to die
. Her voice was stamped into his mind. It cut like a flashlight through the dark.
I don’t want any of them to die
.

Rush ignored the voice. Impossible to acknowledge when it had been such an incredible lie. If she thought the deaths would bring him around, she would use them. She killed two people, and somehow, she had prevented Rush from intervening. She killed two people.

“Jackson, get out,” Rush ordered with a lethal edge to his tone.

“What?” Jackson asked even as he stood looking around the room.

“Jackson get out, now,” Rush ordered again. Jackson left the room briskly, wondering if that had been his own will or a powerful suggestion.

My world, I said nothing when you allowed your Followers to drown beneath the ocean
.

They aren’t mine and I didn’t put them there
, Rush thought though his throat began to close and the pain between his shoulder blades became more pronounced.

And yet, you agonized over it. If you could have saved someone’s life and you chose not to, did you not murder them just the same?

“You led them there!” Rush roared. “You convinced them to endanger themselves.”

Bright Star materialized quickly before him. “I didn’t convince them, my world. You did.”

“I didn’t!”

“You did!” her voice went higher as she argued. Her eyes lit up the entire room. “Without their faith in you, the faith you have given them, without that would they have gone to the bottom of the sea with me? I am merely a Follower.”

Frustration pulsing through him, Rush contested, “You are not a Follower Bright Star, and what you have done is unforgivable.”

Her eyes went dim. Instead of hovering, she stood before him. She was still. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that what you’ve done has changed everything. You are right. Me allowing people to die could be considered the same as you murdering Destroy and Harm.”

Bright Star nodded warily.

“I’m already damned.”

“No!” A sharp protest bubbled from her lips.

“I’m already damned so I can forget saving my soul or anyone else’s.” The words were uttered calmly but they meant something profound. The gauntlet had been thrown and Rush knew that his anger, his proclamation could easily be ushering in the doom he had sought to avoid.

She reached out her hands and fisted them in his shirt. “You can’t do this.”

“It’s done,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You can’t!” she gasped, and leaned up to press her lips firmly to his.

With broad hands, he forcefully pushed her away. Her bad leg gave and her hip connected painfully with the edge of a table. Rush vanished and left no Energy trail behind for her to follow. Quickly, she lifted herself into the air and sped from the room. She had to find Point.

*

“Jackson, what I have to say to you is very important.”

Jackson didn’t argue. He just sat down in one of the four chairs in the small gray room. There were no windows and… no door. They were inside a Shift.

“Amazing,” Jackson whistled. He had been able to maintain a place inside of a Shift before, but it had been the size of a small closet, completely non-descript and had lasted for less than ten seconds. The Spartan quality of the room identified it as a Shift, however, he knew it to be a major feat.

“It won’t last very long,” Rush told him. “And this is the only way we will be able to talk safely.”

That sharpened Jackson’s wits. There was something Rush had to tell him. Whatever it was was of utmost importance.

“Bright Star will destroy you, Jackson,”

“Is that it?” Jackson asked incredulously.

Rush hurled a loosely formed Energy ball at the wall. Nothing happened. Like just absorbed like. “You have to promise that you will stay as far away from her as possible.”

“Rush, you should know better than anyone,” Jackson stated deadly serious, “I can’t be hurt.”

“Not physically, no,” Rush agreed. “But there are other ways, and she won’t hesitate to use them.”

Jackson did nothing to deny the implication that Bright Star had the ability or capacity to hurt him emotionally. “She has no interest in me,” was his bitter counter.

“She has an interest in everything I care about!” Rush returned in a frustrated shout. It wasn’t what Jackson wanted to hear. He knew that his and Bright Star’s relationship was only a bi-product of her relationship with Rush. “You have to be able to take care of everything after. You have to be steady and sane the way you have always been steady and sane. This thing is about to come to a head and I have to be able to depend on you. Stay away from her, I’m begging you.”

Then the Shift ended and they were back in Jackson’s bedroom

“Then why do you let her continue to do this? Why not let her die like you let the others die?”

Rush balled up his fist and with all of his physical strength he slammed that fist into Jackson’s jaw. His brother staggered, but that was it. He was stunned, and he stayed stunned longer than he felt the effects of the blow. He had only felt the sharp sting, then the pain was gone. But, though he no longer felt the pain, he felt a release. Something inside of him swelled, then popped and he had swung at Rush before he knew it. Rush jumped back in time to avoid the blow. But Jackson, in a smooth movement, lowered his shoulder and rammed his brother in the stomach, taking him down to the ground. Once Rush was on his back, Jackson drew back his fist to hit him, but found that he could not. As much as he struggled to bring his fist down, he couldn’t hit him.

“Let him go!” Rush boomed, his voice carrying down the hall.

Immediately, Jackson felt the grip on his arm release. As soon as it did, Rush put his palms flat against Jackson’s chest and pushed him over. He followed with a swift roll to raise his hand and punch Jackson again.

“You can’t hurt me!” Jackson yelled as he grabbed his brother by the throat and rolled over on top of him.

Then Rush went still. He just lay there beneath Jackson’s hands. Jackson’s rage took a moment to subside. It took a moment for what was happening to register. There was no pulse under his fingers. Shocked eyes fell to his brother’s face which had gone pasty in pallor.

A great wail went up in the walls and everywhere around him, in him, Jackson felt pain. It made his lungs and heart seize. It knocked him over until his mouth came open and he tried to wretch but found that nothing would come out. He had never, even when his parents died, felt the level of grief he felt at that one distinct moment. He rolled from side to side, holding his eyes and willing the sob to come out, but it never did.

And then, just as quickly, the suggestion lifted. It lifted from the whole house until even the walls and ceilings sagged in relief. Rush wasn’t dead.

Jackson’s brother stood up and looked down at him. “Bright Star can hurt you.”

Anguish; Pall

The grieving wouldn’t stop.

Black flags hung from every window. Every hall, every room went dim. The walls were damp and rapidly darkening with mildew. The air was stale and sour. Bowed heads. Hunched bodies in black cloaks shuffled silently through the halls. Usually in groups, the Followers cleaved to each other, giving support even as they struggled to make it from dusk to dawn. Sometimes, they would pass each other, acknowledge the red rimmed eyes, then feel their chapped cheeks stinging with new tears. Their hearts were broken, and they grieved without denial, without nuance, without pride.

The anguish bled into the world beyond the compound. The air outside for miles was both cold and heavy. It lodged like ice in the lungs. The sky was worn gray splotched with sooty clouds. The streets were lethargic with cars moving in slow processions. Bars, coffee shops, newsstands, subway cars, arenas even: silent. Silent. Silent. As if speech was a vulgar and unforgivable sacrilege. All of this, all of this even though the Followers knew, the
cosmos
knew, that in truth Rush was not dead.

Jackson felt it. A dull thud made his ribs too tight and too delicate to stop his lungs and heart from bursting out. His whole chest was sore from it. He hadn’t slept soundly in what felt like months. Every time he’d tried those first couple of days had just ended in him waking up to sheets that were dripping wet with perspiration. He was also aware that he had been sobbing uncontrollably. His throat was always dry and he found himself swallowing convulsively. His eyes always burned. They burned until moisture collected in the corners and spilled down his cheeks.

In his waking hours, Jackson hadn’t had the energy to report to the Service. His only desire had been to stare out of the window from his bed and watch the black clouds’ slow roll. When he didn’t report, they’d sent some men around to evaluate him. They had always monitored him closely. This change in his behavior would definitely put them on alert. Before, Jackson had not considered their perpetual presence and perpetual studies as invasive. Now, he hated them. He hated that they did not understand Shift any more than he could. He hated the humiliation he felt at their inability to truly comprehend the context of their own questions. He hated their limitations and the fact that they would never understand what was happening around them. Uncharacteristically and with anger, Jackson had used a Shift beyond any they’d known—one he wouldn’t have thought possible before the last few months—to ensure that their report would be satisfactory. He’d never used his Talents on those from the Service before. This time, he just didn’t care. He couldn’t go back. The pain wouldn’t let him.

Instead, he spent most of his time out of bed wandering aimlessly through the labyrinth halls of his home. Jackson noticed the change in the environment. The entire compound which had usually been sunny and warm appeared to have been washed in gray. Everything looked dull and neglected, listless. Sometimes there was no color. Jackson considered that it may have been some collective and subconscious Shift, but he hadn’t cared enough to investigate the phenomena. It suited his mood.

*

Rush had not intended for his Shift to have such a profound effect on this household. He had only wanted to show his brother the danger. Instead, he could not move through his own home without someone falling to their knees and clasping him around the waist. The extreme relief was in their eyes. It was in their words. It was in the strength of their holds and they worked both physically and psychically to hold him close, to reassure themselves that he had not been lost.

He still could not get used to the way they continuously reached out to him, even in their subconscious, just to be certain that he was there. Alive. Well. Alive.

Rush hadn’t wanted that, but here it was. He’d been trying to prove a point to his baby brother. It didn’t take him long to decide that the motive had not been worth the residual effects. He didn’t want this. God knew he didn’t want this.