Crossed (12 page)

A sinking, sick feeling curls in my stomach. “Jo, where have you been?”

The shudders turn to violent shakes. She doesn’t turn around.

“Jo.” I take a cautious step forward. “Jo, what have you
done?
”

She jerks, whipping the back of her hand across her eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” she says dully. Then stronger. “It had to happen.”

“Jo—’

“Someone had to do it.”

“Do what?” I take another careful step forward, until I could reach out and touch her. “You’re freaking me out, Jo.”

She turns suddenly. “You came back this time, but one day you won’t.” The words bubble from her lips. “Or maybe I’ll die first. Or Chi.” Something occurs to her, and her eyes widen. “The Sarge?” She asks. I shake my head and she covers her mouth. Then, she slides her hand from her mouth hesitantly to ask, “Headmaster?”

I shake my head again. “All of them.”

She bites her hand, the tears welling. Then she shakes her head, breathing heavily. “This is how it is now. Don’t you see? We’re losing. They’ll just keep picking us off one by one. One day you won’t come back. No one will ever come back.”

Her eyes are begging for absolution, but I still haven’t puzzled out for what. Her cold hand wraps around mine, hard. “Not unless we do something about it.”

“What have you done?” I whisper.

“We could cut their army in half.” The anger leaves her and her words are almost gentle, as if that will somehow spare me the hurt their meaning will cause. “We could even the odds. To free the souls, all we need is a demon guide. A demon guide oath-bound to the Crusaders.”

She says it softly, as if trying to convince me. As if it’s a hypothetical and not a done deal. I know where Jo has been. I know what she has done.

She sold her soul to the devil. Jo will be our demon guide into hell.

“No.” I jerk my head violently. “No, no, no.” As if I can un-make-it, unravel this disaster by the sheer strength of my refusal. But I don’t own the universe; I don’t rule it, as much as I would like to. Surely even I could do better than this. “No.”

The gentleness in her voice tells me it’s real more than her words. “Someone had to do it.” The words are damp and a tear hits my hand. Not mine. Never mine.

“Dammit, Jo, what were you thinking?”

Her grip tightens on mine and she speaks fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Think about it, Meda. I’m oath-bound to the Crusaders. I swore dozens more—” She holds out her arms and I see now, all the slices on her arms where she poured out her blood for her promises. “
Voluntary oaths
. I got the idea from when Armand became a Crusader. No matter what happens, no matter what I . . . become . . . I can’t betray the Crusaders. I’ll lead a squad, and a half-dozen of us will wipe out half their army—’

“And what about you?” I explode in a fiery rage. “What happens to you?”

“My soul will be released with all the rest. I’ll be redeemed.”

“Assuming you survive long enough,” I say it nastily.

She pauses for a beat. “Assuming I survive.”

“And if you don’t—or can’t—free the souls you’ll be tortured in hell for all eternity. The demons’ plaything. How do you think that’s going to go, the lone Crusader in hell?”

She doesn’t answer.

“And what do you think that’s going to do to me? To Chi?”

She hunches forward slightly, as if I’d punched her. “You were going to die anyway! Don’t you get it? We all were.”

“Yes, Jo, but what about after? The only upside to this shit-deal of being a Crusader was avoiding the pits of hell. You just threw that away!”

She looks away. “It’s already done.”

“It’s not though, is it?” I say nastily, trying to hurt her as she has hurt me. “You’re not a demon yet, not until you die. Do you really think Graff is just going to go along with this? The Sarge might have but she’s
dead
.”

Jo flinches at the reminder.

“Graff’s not going to believe you won’t spill our every secret once you’re in the hands of the demons. He’ll lock you up in a padded room for the rest of your life to keep you from dying. You sold your soul for nothing.”

“I
can’t
spill Crusader secrets,” she holds out her scarred arms.

“So you say. So you
think
. If there’s
one
weakness in your spell,
one
loophole, you’ll spill every—’

“I won’t!” she screams. “It’s still me! I would never betray—’

“You won’t have a choice,” I say harshly. “And anyway, it’s not me you have to convince.”

“Yes, Meda, it is.” I don’t get it, not right away. She lowers her bloodied arms. “I need you to help me.”

“Help you?” I repeat, still not quite understanding what she is asking. When I do, anger roars up from the pit of my soul. Of course. Jo’s transformation won’t be complete until she dies.

Jo must die.

“Help you?
Help
you.” I laugh, I laugh and laugh though it’s not the slightest bit funny. Nothing may ever be funny again. “Help you
die
.” I jerk my hand from hers and turn on her. “You push and you push and you
push
, Jo! You do whatever you want and don’t give a damn about anyone. I joined the Crusaders for you;
I married Armand for you
.” I’m in her face, snarling. “You have been my greatest weakness since the day we met,” I shout.

She doesn’t back down. “You’ve been my greatest strength.”

I pull back, slapped by her unabashed love.

“Do you know why the Sarge let me be in your squad?” she asks softly. “You may have noticed everyone else is kick-ass—the finest specimens the Crusaders have to offer to protect our Beacon-Demon-Crusader. Then there’s me. The cripple.” She says it without any heat or self-pity, merely as a statement of fact. “I noticed, so I asked. Do you know what the Sarge said?” There’s a fatalistic light in her eye, an eerie sort of glow born in the heart of an underdog suddenly found to be indispensable. “Because I can influence you.” She smiles, that eerie light gleaming brighter. “I’m the angel on your shoulder.”

I struggle to find my rage. “In that case, don’t you think becoming a demon was a bit of a misstep?”

“Someone had to do it.”

“Stop saying that!” I scream at her.

“And I need you to finish it.”

‘“Finish
it
.’” It’s my turn to use the damn air quotes for once. “Finish it.” You mean,
kill you
. Say it. Say ‘kill me.’”

She regards me steadily. “I need you to . . . to kill me. I don’t trust Graff not to lock me up in a padded room, like you said, and I don’t . . . I don’t want Chi to do it.”

I laugh again. “But I can? You’ll make me do it? Because, God knows, the monster has no feelings.” She flinches. “That’s what I’m here for, to do the dirty work. I can do it and sleep like a baby.
This
is what you think of me.”

She has no comeback. That’s when I realize Jo’s hardness is missing. Her bones have been pulled from her body, the tough parts, the gristle, the chewy connective tissue that makes Jo the fearless bitch are gone. All that remains is a brittle shell, a Jo-shaped exoskeleton, and the wrong step would crush her like a beetle, mash her squishy bits out her eyes.

“Can’t you understand?” The words are soft and tattered. “At least a little bit?”

“No.” I’m appalled at how small my voice sounds, how young. “I can’t, Jo.”

When she inhales her breath stutters and catches, as if trying to make its way over a strangling lump in her throat. We stand in a silence that somehow feels enormous. A gulf has erupted between us, filled with the horrible thing she has done and all the horrible things I have said. I can’t understand her, but then I never could and it never stopped us before. I reach out and take her hand.

I may lose my best friend, but it won’t be today.

“I don’t have to understand your reasons, Jo. I just have to understand my own. You’re my best friend. That’s reason enough.”

The breath caught in her throat explodes in a shattered sob. She covers her eyes with her hand. “I’m so scared,” she admits.

“Me too.”

My admission seems to galvanize her and she straightens, rubbing her hand across her eyes. “I wrote a letter.” She slips an envelope from her pocket and looks down at it, tapping it in her hand. “To explain to the others. To explain to . . . to Chi.”

“You’re not even going to tell him?”

She wipes the tears from her face. “Why, so I can do this again?” She waves back and forth between us with a wet laugh. “And anyway, we don’t have time. Crusader Chan saw me, I know he did. He’s going to wake them. You have to do it now, before they realize what I’ve done, before they stop me. Us. Before Graff—” her voice cracks. “It can’t be for nothing.”

“We have a few minutes, Jo. It’s,” my tongue trips over the word, “not going to take long.”

She swallows, her eyes hollow. “I’m scared,” she finally admits in a whisper. “I can’t face him. I won’t go through with it if . . . if he . . .” She shakes her head, her throat too clogged.

“You should tell him.”

Then she shakes her head again. “No.” She wipes her palms across her cheeks. “And anyway, I’m coming right back.”

“You’ll be different.”

“I won’t.”

“Jo.”

She looks away. I debate waking Chi myself but stop myself. They get to make their own choices about their relationship. He should understand that.

Instead, I take the letter from her and tuck it into my pocket. Then she draws in a breath and reaches behind her, to something tucked into her waistband at the small of her back. She presses that cold and heavy something into my hand. Instant revulsion lets me know what it is before I look down, the way my skin shudders and pulls, as if would peel away from my bones to escape it. The coldness of it, even after being tucked up against Jo’s skin, is more than surface deep. But the distance of it, the impersonality of it makes it better, the one case where I don’t want to enjoy it.

“Meda . . .” She looks like she doesn’t know what to say, or she’s trying to draw up courage. “You are my very best friend, and I will love you until the day I die.”

“Given what we’re about to do, you know, that’s not such a big commitment.” I joke because that’s my way, and she sticks out her tongue, because that’s her way.

Then we hug, which is neither of our ways, but is the way of best friends. And that is what we are, best friends, until the day we die.

And who knows? Maybe beyond.

And then I lift the revolver and shoot my best friend in the head.

ELEVEN

In hindsight, perhaps I should have picked a less graphic spot; I’m not sure Chi will ever recover. Thankfully the rest of the Crusaders, drawn by the gunshot, arrive to hold him until he calms down. They dragged him down to the carpet, a Crusader on each arm, and another basically sitting on his chest. Generally he’s no match for me, but upon seeing Jo’s body, he gained some kind of crazed-mom-whose-baby-is-trapped-under-a-truck super-strength.

Of course, they hold me down, too. Fair enough, I did just shoot Jo.

“What the hell is going on here?”
demands Graff, once we’re pinioned to his satisfaction. They arrived to find Jo’s dead body in the living room and Chi bellowing like a wounded bear as he chased me over the furniture while I flapped an envelope at him screeching “Read the letter! THE LETTER!”

“Jo sold her soul to help us.” The words tumble out as fast as I can make them. It’s not easy as I’m pinned face-first into the carpet. “She’s coming back.” I shout this again louder for Chi’s benefit. “She’s coming back! She swore a ton of oaths—look at her arms—and she asked me to kill her. She wants to lead us on a mission into hell to release the souls. I swear, she asked me to kill her. Read the damn letter!”

There’s an audible gasp and the Crusaders holding my arms loosen their grasp slightly in their shock, and I’m able to twist around just enough to see Chi’s face.

I wish I hadn’t.

Chi, at his heart, is a happy guy. As stolid and sweet as a beloved golden retriever. He has a solid faith in humanity, in God, in the future. Even when things go badly, even when all the Crusaders in the field died, he’s able to accept it with equanimity.

He cannot accept this. The blood has drained from his face and he looks as pale as a corpse. He sinks to his knees in a slow collapse as if he was a hundred years old. He swallows thickly, and his eyes take on a detached blankness, as if his brain has checked out, unwilling to accept the truth.

“Is that true?” Graff’s voice is hoarse. I don’t look at him. I can’t take my eyes off Chi’s wretched form.

Graff’s question seems to flick a switch in Chi. It’s as if the world has paused, and now it picked up in double time. “No!” Chi screams at Graff, struggling against the restraining hands. “It’s not true. It’s not true.” With a heroic lunge he pulls himself free of the Crusaders, but instead of lunging at me, he lands on his knees by Jo. His hands hover over her, like he doesn’t know where to touch her. Finally, he gently runs his hand over her bloodied hair, his touch as light and hesitant as a butterfly.

“It’s all in the letter,” I say quietly, and nod to where it had fallen in my struggles. Graff bends to pick it up and he, too, looks like tonight’s work has aged him. He reads it, then gives it to Puchard, who was sent for. Graff nods and the Crusaders release me. Evidently, whether Graff agrees with what Jo did or not, he believes it to be true. The letter makes it through the Crusaders assembled. I take it from the last one and kneel down next to Chi who sits slumped on the floor next to Jo’s corpse. The rest of the Crusaders have already moved on and are clustered together discussing options. Jo’s body is just another body; Chi’s broken heart is just another casualty of the never ending war.

“It’s not her,” I say. He doesn’t respond or look at me. “She’s not in there.” I nod at the body. “I saw her go.” Still he doesn’t respond. “Chi, this was her plan. She’s not dead. Read the letter.”

Chi takes the offered letter as if his hand weighs a thousand pounds, as if he hasn’t the energy to lift it. He stares at it as if it is some offensive thing.

“Chi, look at me.”

He does. He looks up from the letter and there is such a look of hopelessness in his eyes that I have to clench my jaw to keep from gasping. When my words come out, they sound intense, even to my own ears. “We
will
save her. We
will
free her soul. We
will
defeat the demon army, and in the process save the whole damn world.”

He blinks and the hopelessness disappears. “You’re damn right we will.”

“Good,” I say, but he’s not listening. He’s reading the letter.

As Chi reads, his grip on the paper gets tighter and tighter until he's crushing it. He suddenly releases it, then presses it to the floor and smooths it carefully. His movements are slow and deliberate. Finally he looks at me. “Did you know she was going to do this?”

My expression says
are you kidding me?

He smooths the paper again, then runs his finger along one side.

“Me, neither,” he finally says.

“No shit.”

He looks sharply away, out the window. Towards the sea, though I don’t think he sees it.

“If we can’t release the souls, she’ll be damned to hell.”

“I know, Chi.”

“She’ll burn for all eternity. They'll torture her—’

“I know.”

“—over and over and over again. There is no second death, there’s no escape. She’ll never be free—’

“Chi, I
know
.” He opens his mouth to say something else but I hold up a hand to stop him, “Chi, I swear to God if you say one more word, I’m going to rip out your voice box and feed it to Bubba.” Chi isn’t the only one who lost Jo today.

He closes his mouth and looks back out the window. He wears a peculiar expression, one I've never seen on him before. Then I understand. Chi is afraid. I'm struck with the urge to reassure him, but comforting lies are the only kind I never learned how to tell.

The school becomes a bunker, and I, in particular am kept on a tight leash. Even Chi, beloved by all, is not allowed to leave campus. The higher-ups argue endlessly: what to do if she doesn’t come back, what to do if she does. They seem torn in two: a demon is not to be trusted; a Crusader who made such an enormous sacrifice must be. But there is no way to know what is going to happen, what new Jo is going to be like. In the end there’s nothing to do but wait. Wait for Jo to come back. Again.

If she does come back.

Again.

The atmosphere of the compound takes on the oppressive stillness of a beach community waiting for a hurricane to make landfall. According to Armand, the actual creation of a demon doesn’t take long. It’s what comes after.

I ask. I screw up my courage and ask.

“She belongs to them now,” is his only response. I appreciate his cop-out.

The sounding of the bell jolts me from the not-sleep that dominates my nights. I fly from Armand’s room, running, literally, into Chi as we fight our way through the doorway and into the hall. I leap down the stairs, dozens at a time, then spring over the railing. I’m one of the first to join the sentries at the gate, though Chi, and everyone else, is not far behind.

The morning Jo returns is the opening scene of a zombie movie: the eerie grey fog filling the dips and shadows of the early morning countryside, keeping secrets, dampening noise; the vivid pink sky, the exact color of blood-tinged spit. Even, or maybe, especially, the lurching gait of the lone figure approaching the waiting army.

It’s not an inappropriate comparison. Jo is, after all, back from the dead. And the world could very well be on the verge of the Apocalypse.

The morning has the still, tense quiet of a held breath. In the silence, I can feel the fear-filled hope of those around me. She could be the end, or she could be the beginning. This figure who looks like a friend but who could be something else entirely.

She limps right up to the main gate, a teenaged girl with a twisted leg facing down an assemblage of Crusaders, bristling with holy blades. It hits me that I’d find the image funny any other time, and make a note to laugh about it later. Assuming I’m in a position to do so. Finally Jo stops about ten feet away and there’s a long pause as we wait to see who speaks first.

She does. “Seriously, guys?” She waves at all the weapons. “I just sold my damn soul for you.”

Her tone is so sourly
Jo
, a startled laugh escapes me. She looks at me.

“
Sold
your
damn
soul?” I say. “Get it?
Get it?
” Relief, apparently, makes me lame. I must not be the only one because around me grins split faces at my poor not-joke and there’s a downright gust of relieved exhalations. Chi pushes through the crowd and throws his arms around her in a fierce hug and she hugs him right back.

“Well?” she asks when she pulls free. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

We’re whisked into the dean’s suite, though everyone has started calling it the war room. Jo sits in a chair at the center and the rest of the Crusaders pack in around her. It takes a few sharp elbows, but I secure a spot at her side.

Graff, as expected, begins the inquisition. And it
is
an inquisition. He asks every question several ways, trying to catch her in a lie. He probes her oaths, searching for loopholes. Jo ticks off her litany of promises, pointing to each red slice across the otherwise smooth skin of her forearm, raw despite the intervening days since she made them. “I swore not to harm anyone helping on my mission. I swore not to let anyone get in the way of my mission. I swore not to hurt my friends. I swore not to lie to any Crusaders. I swore not to betray the location or plans of any Crusaders to the demons.” And the list goes on.

“And you saw the devil.”

“Yes.” Her tone is curiously flat.

“And how were you able to protect your mind from him?”

“I didn’t,” she says simply, her eyes unnaturally large. “He knows everything.” There’s twitching around the room, uneasy shifting, glances exchanged, hands moving to weapons. The distant look leaves her eyes. “But he’s rather like the captain of our team. He doesn’t get directly involved.”

“How can you be sure?”

“He . . . let me know.”

“He said?” Graff pushed. It’s obvious where Graff stands on the do-we-trust-her, do-we-trust-her-not question. Not that I expected differently. The rest of the room seems to feel the opposite. The more Jo talks, the more they believe in her. She’s one of their own. Many of them knew her parents, watched her grow up. She could be any of their children, nieces or cousins. She sacrificed everything for the cause. They won’t turn on her. Not unless they have to.

It doesn’t hurt that, if her plan works, it could save the world.

“Not in words, it was . . . he . . .” She finally gives up on finding words to describe it. “He let me know,” she finishes lamely.

“And you didn’t tell the rest of the demons, then?”

“No.”

“How can we be sure?”

“I can’t lie to a Crusader,” she says, waving her red-marked arms. “Plus, you’re not all dead.” Her eyes flick to Graff’s. “They’re not afraid of us. When they know where we are, they’ll come for us.”

Graff then moves on to the specifics of Jo’s plan to take a contingent of Crusaders and infiltrate hell. Armand knows where the souls are kept, so it’s just a matter of getting in undetected and breaking the spell. ‘“There are no secrets in hell,’” Graff quotes. “Truths can be pulled from a demon,” he looks at me, “or a Halfling, in hell. What if you’re caught?”

“We’ll just have to be careful, then, won’t we?” she asks. “
I
can be disguised,” she looks to me. “As can Meda, being a Halfling, and Armand. Once below, I’ll have the ability to change our appearances. It’s you Crusaders who’ll be likely to get caught.”

“And the mechanism for containing the spells—we still don’t understand. We’re going in blind.”

“It’s magical,” she states, then waves at me. “Meda’s the most magically powerful creature there is. There’s not a spell she can’t break, given enough time.” She looks around the room, appealing to everyone, not just Graff. “And she is a Beacon. A
Beacon
. This,
this
, is her destiny. Releasing the souls could save all of humanity—all we need is someone with unsurpassed magical abilities. And we have one. A Beacon.” She points at me. “Don’t you see how perfect it is?”

Graff deflates Jo’s talk of destiny with more down-to-earth problems. “We don’t know that she’ll have enough time, and if you get caught, if
she
gets caught, then
they’ll
have the most magically powerful creature there is. The last thing we need is to give them another weapon.”

“Hey,” I butt in, “
she’s
right here. And I haven’t teamed up with them before.”

The interrogation continues as if I hadn’t spoken, and I start to get the feeling there’s something off. I can’t put my finger on it. Chi’s grinning like an idiot, the other Crusaders—with the exception of Graff and some of his cronies—are cautiously optimistic. Jo’s answers are all rational, cohesive, logical, even with Graff doing his best to poke holes.

Then it dawns on me. Jo is too calm, too collected. I remember the wreck she was the night she told me what she’d done; I remember the look on Armand’s face when he refused to tell me what selling your soul is like. If nothing else, Jo despises Graff, but she tolerates his accusatory questions as if she didn’t just damn herself to hell for his benefit. There are hints and flashes of irritation, but Jo is not a girl of hints and flashes. She has all the subtlety of a hurricane.