Dying Light (28 page)

I finally suck in air. “I don’t want
her to explode.” My voice sounds small, childish.

“
Hel-
lo
,” Rachel says. “Are you listening
to me? We have like a hundred years. Trust me, by the time we’re
that old, we’ll want to die. Who wants to live forever with
cataracts and arthritis and all that crap? Not me.”

“
You don’t age,” I remind
her.

“
Uh, if I keep dying. But
we’ll stop one day, right?”

“
It’s a good plan,” Gloria
says, trying to bring my awareness back to the moment. “A long,
happy life is the best one can hope for.”

“
Yes.” I squeeze the word
out. “Yes, I guess it is our best option.”

“
And if you’re worried I’m
going to go all Dolores Claiborne on her when she’s like ninety and
decrepit, don’t worry. I’ll just, like, put a knife in Jesse’s hand
and fall on it or something. It won’t be dramatic at
all.”

I give her a look. She says she’ll
defer to Jesse, let her be the apex, but I am not sure I believe
her. It is easy to be magnanimous in theory. If Rachel were
actually faced with her death, I wonder if she would change her
mind. Then again, if it comes down to just the two of them, ancient
crones as Rachel puts it, maybe it wouldn’t matter. After all, both
will die. It’s just a matter of who will go first.

Rachel shrugs. “I’m trying to make you
feel better.”

My mind is swimming with this
information. I take a breath and ask the only question I seem to be
able to articulate. “You said something about forces of the
universe?”

Rachel nods as if remembering. “Angel
speak is pretty incoherent, let me tell you. Well, I should say,
when he’s trying to convey all this universal crap, it’s
gibberish.”

“
I have a theory on that,
love,” Gideon chimes in. “I think they’re simply doing their best
to communicate a complex idea to a monkey.”

“
Uh, thanks,” Rachel says.
“I am not an idiot, you know.”

“
Oh, of course not,
darling,” he says with his sweetest smile yet. “Compared to your
fellow monkeys. But if it were in fact a supreme being of some
kind, I imagine it’s much like a master trying to get its dog to do
a very specific trick.”

She smirks. “Like play
dead?”

He gets her pun immediately.
“Exactly.”

“
Anyway.” Rachel turns to
me again. “Yes, there are twelve forces. Jesse has one of the most
volatile.”

“
Lucky her,” Gideon says
with a raised brow.

“
What’s her force?” I pull
my knees into my chest.

“
Fire,” she says with a
shrug. “Though I don’t think that’s a direct
translation.”

My confusion must show on my
face.

“
Humans have given all
these things names: Life. Death. Force. Space. Light. Dark. Flesh.
Mind. Water. Earth. Air. Fire—but I think these are
oversimplifications. Our little monkey brains, as Gideon puts it,
can only accept small concepts. I think on a universal scale, these
forces are more elaborate. Take my power for example. Force. Is it
gravity? Not exactly. Is it kinetic or potential energy? Not
exactly. But all of those things are connected to the same
“source”—the whatever it is that makes one object move to another
place. That’s what I’m channeling—whatever the angel-aliens are
calling it.”

Gideon gives me a patronizing smile.
“She really is convinced the angels are ancient aliens.”

“
You don’t know,” she
wails.

Gloria squeezes my shoulder, before
crossing the room to inspect some of the guns on the
wall.

Rachel keeps talking.
“Jesse is fire. But is it the fire like what we make with a match,
or is it like atomic bomb explosions or gamma ray bursts. Or all of
it?” She shrugs. “Whatever the thing is that makes the
boom
. That’s Jesse’s
thing.”

“
And Caldwell?” Gloria
asks.

“
Space,” she says. “He
steps in and out of dimensions, I think. I also think it’s why he
was one of the first called. He was probably closer to the
angel-aliens.”

Gideon snorts.

“
I don’t see you with an
angel chattering into your ear,” she chides him.

“
Praise be to Allah,” he
says. “A conscience is the last thing I need.”

“
Are you a devout Muslim?”
I ask, curious. I hope I don’t sound judgmental. Both Gideon and
Rachel burst out laughing. Even Gloria cracks a smile.

“
Darling,” Gideon says,
with another upward glance. “The only god I serve is
myself.”

“
He likes to talk about
Allah the way I like to talk about being Mexican.”

I did wonder about her complexion, the
dark eyes and hair, the features of her face.

“
We are a quite removed
from our roots,” Gideon says. “The infidels have ruined
me.”

He’s smiling. Another joke. I try to
relax.

The conversation lulls and after a
stretch of silence, Rachel says, “Well, now that we’re all
acquainted, let’s go get our girl.”

“
Yes,” Gloria says, coming
to life as if this were the cue she was waiting for. “We are going
to have to attack The Needle.”

She comes forward and lays her
sketchbook on the floor in front of me. The three of them crowd
around the drawing.

In the drawing, Rachel, Gloria, and I
are in a boat heading toward The Needle.

Gideon is nowhere to be
seen.

The waters look choppy, and I’m
holding the side of the little boat with white knuckles.

“
Well,” Rachel exhales, a
great harrumph from her chest. “This will be
fun
.”

Jesse

I
’m going to lose my mind. I keep pacing the circular room
looking for the door that doesn’t exist. The crazy bastard really
did build a needle in the middle of the lake with no entrance or
exit.

The city taunts me. Sunlight reflects
in the windows. Cars drive along the beach, a knot of people trying
to get somewhere, completely unaware that Caldwell intends to kill
them all.

I collapse on the sofa and my eyes
take in the ceiling above. At some point, I begin to slip out of
consciousness.

Gabriel appears, standing over
me.

“
Oh here we go,” I say.
“Initiate another lucid dream sequence. Any chance that I’ll get
some real sleep one of these days?”

He makes no reply. Instead, he reaches
down and pulls me into his arms, holding me against his chest. His
wings extend and my stomach jolts at the feeling of being propelled
up into space.

I seriously doubt he is actually
flying or we are actually going anywhere. I get that my body is
still on the sofa, asleep, even while he carries me up and
away.

We land and we are at the beach house
again.

I slip out of his arms and my feet
sink in the sand.

“
So what’s for dinner
tonight?” I ask. “Ally making spaghetti again?”

“
We made progress. Let’s
try again.”

I go into the beach house
with the understanding that something must be different. I push
open the front door, and immediately I know the vision has
really
changed.

A plastic tricycle and a floor full of
colorful toys assaults me. A horrible whistling-whining comes from
the corner, and I realize the racket is from a kid slamming a
plastic, squeaky hammer down over and over onto a set of piano
keys. The piano lights up and plays a tune with every
whack.

“
Uh,
no
,” I say. “I think you’re moving
in the wrong direction.”

When the hell did I give him the
impression that I should have children?

Ally comes out of the room, wearing
the same off the shoulder sweater as before and scoops the kid
up.

“
Are you making music?”
she coos. “Are you my little musician?”

She falls onto the sofa and bounces
the toddler in her lap. It laughs and laughs, and when she turns it
over to blow raspberries on its belly, it squeals more.

“
Jess?” Ally
calls.

“
Right here.” How could
she not see me standing in the middle of the room? It’s true that
I’ve gone stark still. I get that way around kids, sort of viewing
them like dinosaurs. Maybe if I’m still enough, they can’t sense
me.

“
Jess, can you come here a
minute?”

“
She cannot see you,”
Gabriel says.

“
Why?” I ask. “I thought
this was supposed to be my fantasy.”

“
This is one of many
possibilities.”

An older kid, maybe seven or eight,
comes down the stairs two at a time. Jumping off the last step and
landing on her hands and knees on the floor.

“
Careful
,” Ally calls out, annoyed.
“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“
I did three this time.”
She brushes off her knees proudly. “Last time I could only jump off
two.”

“
Did you do your
homework?” Ally asks the girl.

“
Most of it,” she says
looking away.

“
Jess
,” Ally says with a threatening tone. “We talked about
this.”

“
Math is stupid,” she
says.

“
Math
is
stupid,” I grumble. “She’s never
going to use it.”

“
Bring it down here and
I’ll help you,” Ally says.

“
Mom—”

Whatever Jesse was going to say
doesn’t surface. With one look from Ally, the girl harrumphs and
marches back up the stairs.

I shiver as someone walks right
through me.

Nikki.

“
Gee-
zus
,” I say, shaking it off. “Watch
where you’re walking, Sasquatch.”

She bends down and gives Ally a kiss.
Then she takes the toddler and twirls it around. “How’s my
baby?”

“
Your
baby?” I whirl on Gabriel. “Ally had babies with
Sasquatch?”

Ally sighs. “Natalie has been fed and
changed, but Jesse—”

“
Let me guess.
Math?”

Ally gives a sweet smile.

“
I’m on it,” Nikki says,
and after planting another kiss on Ally’s lips, this one a little
longer, Sasquatch starts to march upstairs with the toddler in
tow.

Ally isn’t quick to get up. She lies
on the couch, clearly exhausted. Then she pulls herself up and
starts gathering up the strewn toys and dumping them into the box
in the corner.

She comes upon a collection of action
figures, pirates, clearly too old for the toddler and
smiles.

“
She’s just like you,
Jess,” she says. “What am I going to do with her?”

She looks right at me.

“
I thought you said she
can’t see me?”

“
She can’t,” Gabriel
assures me.

Ally’s gaze goes soft and she returns
to dumping the toys into the box.

The house begins to fade, and I find
myself on the beach with Gabriel. The house behind us in the
distance.

“
What the hell, man?” My
temper flares, crashing against me like the waves. I jab a finger
at the house. “What was that supposed to be?”

“
Your choice,” he says
with all the calmness that I hate about him. “One of your
choices.”

“
Uh, I liked the one with
just us actually,” I say, crossing my arms. “If you’re needing me
to verbally agree to something here.”

“
You desire her happiness.
She desires children and a full life. You can give her that
world.”

“
But that world is a world
without me,” I say. “Can you see me with kids? They’d be scarred
for life.”

“
You can give her the
world she wants. It is in your power.”

“
Are you asking me to
be
selfless
?” I
say, stunned.

“
It is only my duty to
show you all of your worlds. I cannot choose for you. It will be
your choice.”

“
Thanks,
Oprah.”

Something rumbles in the distance. The
sand beneath my feet shifts.

“
What was
that?”

Another rumbling roar and the sand
shifts more. The sky darkens above us like a storm is rolling
in.

Gabriel scoops me up. “I must take you
back.”

I blink my eyes open, the ceiling
above coming into view. The Needle comes into focus around me, the
feel of the couch solidifying beneath me.

“
You’re missing it,”
Maisie says.

I sit up and see Maisie at the big
window—the side of The Needle that faces the city.

Black smoke is billowing into the
sky.