Crossed (4 page)

“It’s not that simple,” someone says. I can’t tell who but I decide to answer them anyway.

“It
is
that simple. Whatever happened to ‘we don’t negotiate with the devil—if we do, we always lose’?”

The argumentative babble gets louder, defensive.

The Sarge’s voice cuts out over all of them. Not because it’s loud, but because it’s cold in a room filled with heat, slow in a room where everyone is talking fast. If it was anyone else, I would suspect melodrama.

“Because we’ve already lost.”

The room gets suddenly quiet. I turn slowly to face her, and a path is cleared between the two of us. “What do you mean?” My question is as slow as her statement.

Her tone is her classic brand of painfully blunt, her face devoid of emotion. No, that's wrong, not devoid, just contained. She has the blank look of a soldier reporting on a mission gone FUBAR. “The demons have cut our active numbers by two-thirds in the last two months.” I feel Jo start next to me. We knew it was bad, obviously, but two-thirds in two months? The Sarge doesn’t give us any time to process, doing her best to hammer through my reserves with brutal truths. “The last Crusader community fell when Shady Glen did.” Boom. “We, the three dozen Crusaders here, are the largest fighting force left.” Boom.

“
What do you mean?
” It’s a stupid question. I know what she means. Still I can’t help it. “The Corps—” I look at the bitter wreck of Sergeant Graff and don’t finish the sentence. I don't ask about Wisconsin, where the Sarge’s son and his family are—were—stationed. “
All of them?
”

Jo’s grip on my arm becomes punishing.

“The number of Beacons has dropped with us. Even if we turned this thing around now, we’re going to be facing the darkest period in our history since the Hemoclysm.” The Hemoclysm, or “blood flood,” was a time when the demons were able to eliminate a large number of Beacons, people destined to do good for mankind, by stealing the Beacon Map.

The Sarge continues, still not raising her voice, though the emotion in it is unmistakable. “Our children are scattered, hidden for their own protection. We don’t have enough Crusaders to protect them. We don’t even have enough to take care of them. The youngest ones, who can’t accidentally blow our cover, have been placed with normal families. If we don’t come back from this, they’ll never even know they’re Crusaders, that they are meant for better things.”

Given everything else she just said,
better
seems debatable.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” the Sarge asks, and there’s a crack in her armor. Desperation seeps out. “We’re dying out.” She takes a moment to collect herself. “The time for desperate measures is upon us.”

She stops talking and the silence in the room is profound. Everyone else already knew everything she just said, but the Sarge has a way of putting things that doesn’t allow you to hide behind the bullshit blanket your mind uses to pad hard truths.

“I understand. But you need to understand this.” I point at Armand. “Whatever he’s planning—it helps no one but himself.” I let my arm fall. “Trust me. I’m doing you a favor.”

For the second time, I turn and walk out. The room erupts in chaotic argument behind me, most of it shouted in my direction. I was failing the Crusaders, I was abandoning the world. I was dooming them all to death.

I don’t care what any of them say except for the one person who says nothing. Jo. I know she’s furious, but I don’t hear a word from her and she doesn’t follow me. I’m not sure if it’s because she senses my need to blow off steam, because she wants to get more information from the Crusaders, or because she needs time to formulate a plot to change my mind.

Knowing Jo, probably all three.

But that’s a problem for later. For now I head down to the stable and make two monsters very, very sorry they were ever born.

Jo doesn’t return for hours, not until I’m stepping out of the bath. I pull the stopper, setting the bloody, pink-tinged water spiraling down the drain, then towel off and toss on some sweats. The TV is on in the common area and I find Chi there, sprawled on the couch playing a video game. It’s almost morning.

“Too jazzed to sleep?” I ask.

“What?” He spares me the briefest glance before returning to the screen where he appears to be blowing up aliens with a bazooka. “No. I’ve just wanted to play one of these for, you know, my whole life . . . Whoop!” He jumps to his feet and launches another rocket at his enemies. Like an Amish kid with a Nintendo. I take it as a good sign. Surely he wouldn’t be playing video games if Jo was plotting my murder.

“She in her room?”

He grunts distractedly.

I push into Jo’s room without knocking, preferring to be on the offensive. She’s sitting on the bed, leaning against the headboard. Her pant leg is hauled up to her thigh and she’s working the strap of her leg brace. I don’t often see her leg—she tries to keep it covered, as if she thinks if no one sees it, they’ll forget it’s there. She jerks at my sudden appearance, habit sending her hands skittering to pull her pant leg back down. But she stops when she realizes it’s me, and just sends me a peeved look before going back to working the strap. She doesn’t seem mad or, at least,
especially
mad, so I move deeper into the room.

She gets the first, then the second strap undone and makes a groan that’s both pain and relief as she pulls the brace off. There’s a faint noise, a soft
pop
of release, and I smell blood. She tosses the brace aside and shoves a pillow under her tattered leg, elevating it. Even from across the room I can see how swollen it is, the bands of scar tissue standing out, creases where the skin can’t expand with fluid. She once told me that the non-swollen parts feel worse than the swollen ones—like thumbs pressing a bruise. That, when she gets a chance to elevate it, she feels the fluid
glug
out of her leg. Like an IV bag turned upside down.

Where the brace attaches, the skin is a raw, bloody red, flecked with thin white flaps of ruptured blisters.

“I think you need a new brace.”

“You think?” She’s too tired to bother putting much sarcasm into it. Then she sighs. “The guy who made this one is dead. Apparently the whole advanced medical team is dead.”

“There are normal doctors, you know.”

“Yes, but I’m not a normal girl, am I? The doctor might notice the way it starts to instantly heal.” She waves at her leg. It’s true, already the shiny-smooth edges of the wound have started to spread, knitting over the raw place. It will take several hours, maybe all night, but the progress is fast enough to see. “Or should I show him when it’s already healed and try to explain why there’s a problem?”

“I could steal you one.”

“How would you get one that fits?”

“I could steal you a hundred.”

She smiles, and her eyes linger on my face. “Thanks, Meda, but I think this sort of thing is a custom job.” She blows air out through her lips. “Besides, who’s got time? You heard the Sarge, we have a world to save.”

And there it is.

“What are you thinking?” I perch on the edge of her bed.

She doesn’t answer, but her forehead folds up into wrinkles. It’s obvious what she’s thinking. Information is like catnip to her.

“Jo, you know what he is.”

“
I’ve
always known,” she says pointedly. She opens her mouth to say something else, but closes it instead. Then, “How was it? Seeing him?”

I shrug. “It’d be easier if he was dead.”

She smiles faintly. “You think that about everyone.”

I bat my eyes. “Oh, how you get me.” Instead of a laugh, her eyes skitter away from mine.

“But with this particular guy, I have to agree.” She sighs, a sound weighted in dread, and leans back against the headboard. “But not just yet.”

And there it is, the other shoe. “You think I should marry him.”

Her lips tighten, and she looks at me intently. “Would it matter if I did?”

“No.”

She continues her careful study of my face, searching for cracks in my resolve. She must realize the futility of her hunt because she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she has her I’m-trying-to-be-reasonable-but-I’m-ready-to-fight-should-you-lose-your-shit face. It’s kind of a braced calm.

“I guess it’s just as well, then,” she says. “Armand’s relented. He’s agreed to marry someone else.”

There’s a queer little note to the way she says it. If she’s worried I’d be jealous, she’s barking up the wrong tree.

“Someone who said yes. You’re off the hook.” She doesn’t look at me.

“Idiots.” I shake my head. “Can’t say I didn’t warn them. So who is the poor bastard?”

Now she does turn. “Me.”

FOUR

“What?” The transition from talking to screaming is a quick one. “Jo, no.” I jump to my feet.

She spins to face me. The suddenness of her movement sends the pillow she was using as a leg-rest flying. She holds out her hands as if trying to calm a wild animal. “Meda, you heard the Sarge. We need the information. Someone has to do it.”

“So let someone else.”

Her jaw is set, but then, she knew this confrontation was coming. She had time to prepare. “He’s only willing to agree to you—or me.”

“He’s playing you, Jo. He’s only doing this to manipulate me. Dammit Jo, you
know
that.”

“Yes, Meda, I do.” Her calm façade starts to crumble, but she manages to grab on to it. “I do know it,” she repeats. “But it doesn’t matter, Meda. The result is the same. As long as he willingly agrees—’

“
It doesn’t matter?
” I jab a finger toward the dean’s suite. “You’re letting him win.”

Jo’s cheeks flush, but she keeps her voice calm. “No, Meda, I’m helping
us
win.” She swallows, like it’s an effort to keep herself in check. “That takes some . . . sacrifice.”

“Dammit Jo, not this much! And what about Chi?”

Her eyes skitter away. “Chi understands.”

“How the
hell
?” I think of him, playing video games in the other room. “
He knows?
”

“Of course he knows,” she says firmly.

“I shake my head and force a calming breath. It doesn’t help. “Dammit Jo, just stop it. Can’t you just let any damn thing go? Meet a sacrifice you don’t have to make? You really think throwing your life away is going to make a damn bit of difference? We’re losing and this isn’t going to fix that.”

“No, Meda, you’re right.” The façade comes tumbling down, and she’s now shouting back. “We should just wait until the demons hunt us down and kill us all. That’s so much better!”

“Can you see the future? Because I sure as shit know the Crusaders can’t. Sure, we’re losing, but this can’t be our only hope. Or, hell, maybe it is. Maybe the Crusaders will die out, but not
us
—we can disappear, destroy the beacon map—’

Jo looks horrified. While my plan was so obvious to me I didn’t even have to consider it, to her it’s an anathema to everything she believes in.

She takes deep breaths grabs on to the vestiges of her control. “Look, I know you don’t understand, but I don’t work that way. I don’t work in half-measures. It has to be all or nothing. I can’t start questioning, can’t start picking and choosing what’s enough, what’s too much. There’s no sliding scale, there’s no room to question. If I start down that path I’ll go crazy. Is what we’re doing right? Is there too much sacrifice? Is it fair that I had to sacrifice my entire damn family? That the demons get to be reborn while my parents rot in a grave? I can’t, Meda, because I can’t understand it all. I have one rule—one rule I can understand: one.’ She raises a trembling finger. ‘That defeating the demons it worth everything.” A plaintive note enters her voice. “Can’t you understand?”

She sees the answer in my expression, saving me the trouble of a long, curse-filled tirade.

She pulls back. Her eyes flick away, then come back to me. “Did I ever tell you where our motto came from?”

The switch in topics catches me off guard. I shake my head numbly, still in shock at this unexpected turn.

“Hundreds of years ago we had a monastery, a haven for beacons. We were protecting them, letting them work. They were gifted—geniuses, artists. The very best of their time.

“The demons attacked—and took it. We fought back, even though we were outnumbered. Even though we sustained incredible losses. Even though, by the time we made it back in, only three of the original twenty-seven beacons were still alive. That’s why we don’t try to pen them up to protect them anymore. We were almost wiped out. We lost over half our force, and for what? Three beacons? It was hard to believe it was worth it, seeing what we’d won versus what we lost.”

Her expression takes on that of a true devotee, a child telling the triumphant climax of a fairy tale she’d heard a thousand times. “But there, carved on the wall of the temple, each letter a foot high, carved inches deep in perfect calligraphy:
dum spiro spero
.” She looks at me, a painful plea on her face. “
In life, hope
. It was a sign. A message from God directly to us in our darkest hour. When we thought we had lost—all those Beacons, all those Crusaders—we got this message. As long as there is life, there is hope. It’s not over, it’s not ever over.” Her expression is ferocious. “As long as we are still alive, as long as we still believe, as long as we are willing to do whatever it takes, there is always hope.”

She’s insane. I’ve always known it, and I can’t defeat it. My argument fits strict parameters; it’s constrained by logic and reason. Her insanity is boundless.

I can’t agree with her; there is not a part of me that can understand her willingness to sacrifice herself, to sacrifice everything. But it doesn’t matter that I can’t understand. My relationship with Jo has always been built upon a foundation of discord. We have never agreed on anything, but it has never mattered. I can wish away her righteous nature all day, but I can’t argue it out of existence. And I do wish it away. I wish it away wildly. In the darkest hours of the night, I think what it would be like if honor didn’t tie her to the Crusaders. We could leave the Templars, leave this war. Start a new life, a normal life. Trade ratty motel rooms for an apartment; go to college; join a band; run for president; rule the world. Be safe.

But she’d never go for that, nor Chi. Her boneheaded dedication to her faith is an integral part of who she is. And painful as caring for someone with such self-sacrificing tendencies is, it doesn’t change anything.

She’s my best friend.

We’ve been to the gates of hell—twice—and saved each other a dozen different times, in a dozen different ways. We are bound too tightly by ties I can’t escape, even if I wanted to.

And I don’t want to. Ever.

I end on a quiet plea. “Jo, please, don’t
do
this.”

She jerks her head towards the dark window, and I feel in her the same exhausted hopelessness I feel. With a frustrated growl I turn and storm from the room, slamming the door behind me. The noise startles Chi, who turns.

“And
you
,” I snarl at him.

“Hi, Meda,” he says placidly.

“You’re
okay
with all this?” I stir the air with my hand, but it’s clenched into a rigid claw.

“This what?”

“You’re kidding.”

He just blinks at me.

“Your girlfriend agreeing to, oh, you know,
marry someone not you
.”

“Oh, that.” He shrugs and turns back to his game.

“Oh,
that
.”

“Yeah, I’m not worried.” He jerks the controller, blasting a bug-eyed alien to cyber hell.

“Why the hell not?”

He pauses the game so he can turn and smile beatifically. “Because there’s not a chance you’ll let her do it.”

I want to scream and stomp and rip his stupid smile from his face, but I can’t argue. Besides, I have better things to do. “Where is he?” My baleful tone leaves no question as to whom I’m asking about.

Undaunted, Chi turns back to his game. “Storage room.” He sticks out his tongue and jerks the controller to the right. The screen explodes with green alien visceral fluid. “In the basement.”

The guard positioned at the door tells me I’ve found Armand. He reads the thundercloud on my face, but merely says “Just don’t kill him” before stepping aside.

I make no promises.

This deep within the bowels of the building, crumbling plaster over pitted brick betrays its true age. The walls and floor are streaked with water stains from some historical flood; the outlines of recently-moved boxes block the room into segments. A lone bulb dangles from the ceiling, swaying slightly from the force with which I slam open the door.

Armand sits in the corner, leaning against the wall, his legs stretched out parallel to the back wall, crossed at the ankle. Almost the exact position he was in the first time we met, except now the hands on his lap are wrapped in chains reinforced with demon-controlling magic.

He opens his eyes at my entrance, the whites bright in the dim room. He doesn’t look surprised to see me, nor concerned at my radiating fury.

The silence stretches long and tense, until his eyes finally drop to run over me, then back to my face. He smiles faintly. “Alone at last.”

“That’s not something you should smile about.”

“Why not? It’s what I wanted.” The words are soft, almost gentle, the smugness of his words entirely belied by his open expression and tone. “I knew you’d come.”

“Did you?” The words slip out sharp and smooth, ice-cold and slithery. Stomping and storming are human emotions, meant for human friends. Armand is neither.

“Yes.”

I bend down until I’m on his level. I cock my head. “Just as you knew I wouldn’t let you marry Jo.”

“Yes.”

We’re kissing distance close. His eyes fall to my lips as they form my next words. “Just as you know how very sorry I am going to make you.”

His gaze drifts back up to mine. “I have nothing left to lose.”

I lean in, closer, closer, until my mouth hovers next to his ear. Until the length of my neck stretches in front of his mouth, so close he can see my pulse throbbing, until he is surrounded by my scent. A scent that carries memories of dancing, of play, of lying tangled on a couch. A scent that whispers of “almost” and “not quite.”

Just as his scent surrounds me.

He inhales, slowly, quietly, deeply. I can’t see his eyes, but I know they’re closed. I can't see his hands but I know they’re clenched, just like the muscle bunching at the corner of his jaw.

“Armand,” I whisper so softly, it’s more breath than word. I let it linger there, on my tongue, on the sensitive skin of his ear. “Armand. I know you’re not naive enough to believe that.” He stiffens but doesn’t pull away. “You, who know me so well.” I slide a finger up his muscled chest, my nail catching lightly in his shirt, until it traces up his neck to rest at the spot where it joins his jaw. Then I press. Then press harder. Then harder and harder until the skin pops, until he jerks, until a trickle of blood seeps from around the white tip of my nail and runs down his neck. “I won’t tell you what I will do.” I pull my nail from his skin and drag it thought his blood slowly, casually, smearing it across his neck, a red slash across his jugular. “I won’t tell you what I’m capable of.” I pull back just far enough so he can see my eyes, but staying close, so close, invading his space, merging good memory with bad. And he can’t help it; he leans in even as his head tells him to lean back. But he can’t. The danger and the lust and the longing are merged together in the dim room filled with swaying shadows and all the heat of what could have been. “I don’t need to. We both know there are a thousand ways I can have my vengeance. A thousand ways I can make you hurt.” I put my bloodied finger in my mouth and slowly suck it clean, then lean in just slightly. “I own you now.”

“Meda,” he whispers just as softly, dragging his eyes from my mouth. “You’ve owned me for quite some time.”

I pull back so quickly that he hunches forward, as if my absence created a vacuum. The spell shatters.

“Good.” I smile in satisfaction because that's what I want him to see. “Now that that's settled, we can discuss what I really came for. What game are you playing? What’s in this marriage for you?”

“Besides your charming self?” he asks dryly, but I hear the quaver in his voice.

“I want the truth.”

“The truth?” He watches me. “There’s no fun in the truth.”

I wait.

“The truth,” he repeats, slowly as if the word is a foreign food he’s tasting for the first time. “The
truth
,” he repeats, then barks a laugh as if he finds the very concept funny. “The
truth
is that I don’t understand the hold they have over you.” The words flow smoothly, quickly, water rushing over rounded stones. “The
truth
is, I find Jo annoying and Chi to be lacking in depth.” His smile disappears and his voice takes on a harshness. He leans forward, his chains rattling, his words coming quicker still.

“The
truth
is, I hate the way you defend them; I’m enraged by the way they steal your attention. The
truth
is, I would rip them from your mind if I could, cut them from your tiny heart. I would slit their throats and use their bodies as stepping stones to get to you.” He makes the violent motions then lets his hands fall. He leans back, as if his outburst took the last bit of energy he had.

“But yes.” That laugh again. “I would also marry them. I would protect them. I would let them have a priceless artifact so they aren’t strung up as traitors.” Sardonic now. “Because they don’t really matter. Nothing matters but getting what I want.” He raises his shoulders in a slight shrug, the chains around his wrists clanking. “That’s all that’s left to me now. Grab as much as I can get before it all goes away.” His bitter slash of a smile is back. “What game am I playing, you asked? All of them. Every last one.” His eyes cut me. “But I suspect you already knew that.”