Destined (Desolation #3) (11 page)

“Come on,” she says, giving up trying to stand and lying back on her pillows. “Join me.”

And all I can think is,
Hell, yes.

If only that damn dog will shut up.

I make to haul myself into the boat, but the girl says, “Wait.”

I freeze.

“I really want you to join me. Do you want to? I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”

And oh man. I want to join her. It’s the only thing in the world I want.

“Except, there’s something I really need. Will you do it for me?”

I swing my leg back out of the boat, standing in the freezing water that isn’t water at all. 

“Anything,” I think I say. I say it in my head, anyway. I can’t hear myself but she seems to.

“Excellent.” I hear her perfectly. Like her voice is inside my head. And maybe it is. She sounds like all my favorite sounds. Miri sighing, whispering my name. The way Miri laughs when we lie in bed together late at night. The sound of a really great live band. The sound of talking and laughing with Desi and Miri. 

Not the sound of Horonius’ barking.

Not the rush of warning that swooshes through my mind.

I focus on the girl. On her voice. Her lips. 

“Where do you need to go?” she asks.

Where do I need to go? I try to think, try to brush away the cobwebs that seem to be everywhere in my mind.

“I . . . I think I just need to get across.” That sounds right. “Me and my . . .” I look to the shore and see the dog. My dog, I think. “Yeah. My dog.”

The girl smiles and reaches for me again. “Come on. I’ll take you. Are you sure that’s all you need?”

Horonius leaps from the shore into the boat, while I pull myself in. I fall forward, face-planting onto the girl’s chest.

“Oh my,” she says, laughing. But she doesn’t push me away. She holds my head to her. Strokes my hair. I think I hear the dog growling.

“Well, we’re across.” The boat bumps against the shore. I look up to discover she’s right. We’re on the other side of the river. Horonius glares at me, his teeth bared.

“Uh, I . . . we . . . might need a ride back. Can you, um, do that?”
Stellar, James. Totally cool.
I hate myself for being anything less than perfect because
perfect
is exactly what this girl deserves. Perfect is what I want to give her.

She bats at my chest playfully, a deliciously sly smile on her lips. I feel myself leaning forward, my whole being intent on kissing her. I feel like I’ll die if I don’t kiss her.

“I know, baby. I want to kiss you, too. But you promised to do something for me, remember?”

I nod my head so hard I think it might fly right off. 

“When you get back. After I return you to the other shore. You’ll help me then. Right?”

I nod again. Try to answer but find all I can do is lick my lips. I lean forward. “Please,” I whisper.

This time she shoves me kind of hard. Hard enough I fall against the side of the boat, the glass edge cutting into my arm. I hiss as I pull it back. My leather jacket’s sliced clear through above the back of my elbow. I wipe my finger across the spot. It comes away slick and red with blood. My blood.

Things start to come into focus. At least enough that when Horonius jumps past me and barks from the shore, I know to follow. I have to go. He’s going to lead me to . . . 

I look at the girl who raises one eyebrow.

. . . something. Some
one
.

Right.

“Okay, I’ve um, gotta go. But I’ll, um . . ., see you later?” I haul myself awkwardly out of the boat, careful of the razor-sharp edges. 

“Sure, loverboy. I’ll see you later.” She raises her glass to her lips and drains the liquid. Her boat moves away from the shore but I don’t take my eyes off of her until she disappears into the dark cave. And even then I don’t move. 

A sharp pain stings me in the fleshy part of my left hand, between the thumb and fingers. I snatch it up to look at it and, for the second time in less than a couple minutes, I see blood on my fingers. The damn dog bit me. “Son of a bitch, Horonius. What’d you do that for?”

He barks at me and moves away, looking for all the world like he’s royally pissed. I stare back at the river, the red lava-blood river with the big boulders and no Ferryman in sight. Yet somehow we are across.

 “Hey, at least I got us across!” I call after the dog as I break into a run to follow him.

So far, this is a piece of cake.

I hear a sound—like stone against stone. Like nails on a chalkboard. At first I ignore it and concentrate on keeping Horonius in sight. The sound scrapes against my nerves again.

The darkness is so complete that even though I know my eyes are open as wide as they can possibly go, even though I can make out the walls from the floor, the barest outline of my hand before my face, I can’t see anything else. 

I hurry after Horonius, fear that I’ll get forever lost in this place suddenly infusing me with an anxious need to find the dog-dude, rescue Desi and get the hell out of here. A soft, hushing sound from behind has me turning before I give the command to my body, and I find myself face-to-face with a creature I’ve had nightmares about almost every night for a year. Except, it’s not Akaros—he was a lot bigger and a helluva lot scarier than this . . . thing . . . in front of me. 

It’s a paler shade than the shadows around me, a pallid gray that makes it look sickly. Still, it moves and breathes and looks plenty deadly to me. Anything that reminds me of Akaros cannot be a good thing. It’s missing most of its teeth when it opens wide to breathe out air that smells like the city dump, but the claws on the end of its wings are polished knives that could kill. 

The bat-dragon-whatever lunges, aiming for my neck, and I get a sudden image of being vampire-ized by the original Count Dracula, who isn’t nearly as sexy and interesting as all the movies make out. 

I scream, stumbling backward and falling on my butt because I trip over myself. Nice. At least I don’t piss my pants—a distinct possibility given how scared I am.

The creature hiss-screams, though it sounds as if it’s screaming through a paper towel roll, which makes it somehow less terrifying. It lunges again, its claws grazing my shoulders as it pins my shirt to the stone on either side of me.

My mind goes blank.

I’m partially aware of my rational brain telling me to kick it, scream, raise a royal ruckus. But the bigger part of my brain has slowed down, taking a leisurely walk through the moment, through my life.

I see the creature’s wide black eyes and I see myself reflected in their depths. I see the gray, wrinkly skin that looks like it’s wearing a flesh-suit ten times too big, drooping all around its eyes and cheeks. I see its elf-like ears, the tendons in its neck as it screams and hisses at me. I see the black, rotted mess of its gums and teeth and think how funny/horrible it will be to be killed by a vampire with only one tooth. 

Thinking that makes me laugh out loud. To laugh and laugh. I think of Miri and how funny she’d find this. Think of the things she’d say, the jokes we’d tell each other. 

The creature freezes.

It stares at me, tilting its head to the side. Which only makes me laugh louder and harder.

And then something lands on the creature and it’s screaming and something else is growling and they’re rolling off of me and down the hall. I inch away, pressing myself against a pile of rocks out of the way of the fight going on a few feet in front of me.

In seconds flat, Horonius has his jaw wrapped around the bat-dragon’s throat. They stay like that for what seems like minutes, but is probably only seconds, until the creature stops struggling. Horonius gives one last shake of his head before dropping the creature to the floor. He looks at me and a cold shiver wraps itself around my spine. Horonius looks far more deadly and terrifying than the creature ever had.

But when he takes off down the corridor, I don’t hesitate even a second before hurrying to follow. 

Lucy moves closer and reaches out, but stops short of touching me.
We love you. You know that, right?

I nod because I know that’s what she expects of me. But do they really? Can anyone? Love me? 

I roll the question around in my mind. Taste it.

And I realize.

They do love me.

And I know it.

I know it.

And so I say, “I love you, too.”

And then,

“Thank you.”

My whole being flares with warmth. I feel it slip through me like liquid honey until every part of me feels impossibly warm in this wasteland of cold nothingness.

Keep shining, baby,
Lucy says, drifting away from me.
I’ll send Michael. He’ll come for you. But you have to keep shining, okay? Let your Halo become a part of you—of every part of you. Can you do that, baby?

I look at Aaron.
Can I do that?

But his eyes are closed again. The light Lucy shared with him is already gone—already found its way into me. Panic rises inside me. Aaron’s going to die. He’s going to burn himself out for me.

Aaron opens his eyes.
It’s my right, D. My gift to give.

I hear his unspoken question between the words he says.

Will you take it?

I watch Lucy fade to a tiny prick of light.

“Yes,” I say to Aaron.

And Lucy’s light blinks out.

While I let Aaron’s light fill me, fill me, fill me, I watch his own light fade.

I don’t know how long we stay there, his hand on my forehead, his light everywhere.

But I am changing. 

I try to ignore how he is changing, too.

We talk some. Laugh over the little guilts and sorrows I’ve kept hidden in my soul. Because he sees all of me now. There are no secrets from him.

Really? You remember that?
Even his voice in my mind sounds like it wheezes. He’s found regret number three million and thirty two. 

I’m sitting in a stall in the girls’ bathroom between classes one day. Jasmine Michaels—I know because she always wears this hideous perfume—comes into the bathroom. 

“Did you see Freakazoid this morning? He got his lip pierced. What an a-hole. What a freak! I mean, piercings are one thing, but a big ol’ pipe or something like that in your lip? I could hear him flicking it against his teeth all during math and it made me sick. I actually had to tell Mr. Johnson I was having female troubles so I could get out of class.” She made a puking sound and the girls she was with laughed as they left.

You didn’t do anything wrong,
Aaron says.

I feel his light—my light with the help of his—slip over that memory and smooth it out, buffing out all the sharp parts until I can look at it for what it is: the mistake of a child, nothing more. Now I know I can say,

 “I wish I’d said something to them. Wish I’d told them to be kinder to you.”

I feel Aaron’s love caress me, feel his warmth flare where it feeds into my mind.
Thank you, D
. And then he closes his eyes as his light fades a little more.

I am awake more often than he is, now. I shine so bright I can see all around me and far out into space. I see the empty places in the rock walls, the hollowed-out places. Places where the genii once lived but live no more. They’ve all followed Ophelia and I wonder what she’s going to do with them. I wonder if I can stop whatever it is, and save more of them from dying at her thoughtless hands. My light grows brighter.