Revelations (16 page)

With the weapon now in my hand, I spun around to see Jonas facing off against the second Man in Black. They were not evenly matched, the two of them. Jonas had a good three inches on the guy and at least a hundred pounds, but Holt’s men are as highly trained as I am. The only reason I won with my guy was because as my knuckles broke upon striking the man’s iron jaw, I was able to heal quickly enough to have complete use of my hands to break the neck. That is exactly how I was taught.

Jonas does not fight like I do. Jonas relies on brute strength. His reach is long. His fist swung around, catching the man on the cheek, breaking a bone in the man’s face. The Man in Black continued to fight through his pain, as we were all taught to do but which is what I do best. He managed to hit Jonas twice before Jonas took him down. He tossed the man aside, and the man fell into the dirt. It was simple after this. I called Jonas’s name, and Jonas paused long enough for me to get off one single shot. The Man in Black lay dead on the desert floor a second later.

Jonas came over to me, grabbed my arm and dragged me back to where the pickup still sat in a ditch. “You drive, I’ll push,” he said, pointing towards the driver’s seat. He tried to leave me at the door, but it was my turn to grab his arm.

I swear I never heard the shot that put the hole in his arm, and I even wonder if he felt it through the anger and grief welling inside of him. “You’re bleeding,” I said, moving to face him.

He looked down at the blood soaking into his shirt and shrugged. Then he tried to get away from me.

I wouldn’t let him go. “Stand still,” I said as he once again tried to pull back. Using the powers in my hand, I sealed the wound right around the bullet. When it was done, he yanked his arm out of my grasp and went around to the front of the truck. Without another word, I got in the truck. I turned the key, and after a few tries, the truck roared to life. With Jonas pushing at the front end and me gunning the engine in reverse, we managed to get the truck back onto the road.

We left two more bodies in the desert, soaking fresh blood into the hard packed desert sand. We left them as they deserved to be; as carrion for the vultures. How we left the others…well….

Chapter Thirty-Two

We drove away in silence. We never spoke of our meeting of the two men in the desert and of the way we dispatched them. I could feel the grief and anger growing in Jonas. I saw it in the tense way he sat behind the wheel. I felt it in the way he maneuvered the truck down the highway, weaving through traffic with no care for our safety or for the safety of others. I did my part and kept the cops from noticing his erratic driving.

We had driven away to save our own lives, our lives that were nearly taken from us. We ran without giving our friends the burial they deserved. They were still lying out there; their poor bodies exposed to the elements and to the desert scavengers. That tore open my chest and exposed my bleeding heart to the world.

Yet I didn’t cry.

No tears were shed as Jonas drove us in the direction of Los Angeles. I knew where he headed, and I refused to question his motives. When we reached the city limits, Jonas kept on driving. He drove to the city of Santa Monica, and it was there he stopped. He only stopped because he could go no farther. Had he been able, he would have driven out into the ocean and sank us beneath the waves in his beloved white truck.

My other self, that amnesiac self who wrote this story years ago in the fictional form, wrote about a guy named Henry who found Jonas and me at the beach. The other Christiana wrote of an incident at Our Lady of the Angels church in Los Angeles, a grave attempt to get the gov to come find me, so I could get my revenge. None of it ever happened. I’ve never been to Our Lady of the Angels, but if I exposed myself and my powers, what better place to do so? What happened in fiction doesn’t really matter, though sometimes I wish I had done just that. What really happened wasn’t so dramatic. What happened instead was this….

Jonas parked the truck, got out and went down a pathway, headed for the setting sun. I followed him after a moment, afraid mostly I would lose him. My biggest fear was he’d walk away, and I’d never see him again.

He was angry, and I knew that. He had every right to be angry. I couldn’t blame him for his emotions. He’d just lost everything he’d ever known. His friends, his family. It was all gone. The only home he’d ever had was lost. All he–and I, for that matter–had left was Philip, who lived on the outskirts L.A. Neither of us were ready to find him, though, especially me. I couldn’t tell Philip what I’d done, tell him what I’d destroyed or of the lives I’d taken.

Jonas was standing before the waves. Orange and yellow hues played off the ocean, deepening to the reds, indicating the end of the day. This particular day felt like one of the longest, as well as the shortest, of my life. I can honestly say I’ve destroyed lives before. I’ve been the cause of other deaths. All of them were painful in their own ways. I regret beyond regret what happened out there. The Commune was a weight, a powerful weight on my small shoulders. I did not know if I could carry this weight. I needed Jonas more than ever but he was having none of me.

I stood and watched him for a long time. He stood with his back to me and his hands shoved deep into his pockets in a very Starch-like stance. What went through his mind was beyond me. I didn’t bother to pry or dare to find out. After a long while, after the sun disappeared into the sea and the lights of the nearby pier began to show brightly, Jonas turned from the ocean and walked up the beach. He went past me and headed back to the truck. I did the only thing I could. I turned and followed him.

* * * *

Back at the truck, there were no words spoken. We simply sat in the truck, in our parking spot until we fell asleep, me curled up on the bench seat, him with his head against the steering wheel. I didn’t sleep well or much. Haunting images kept coming back to me. I saw the faces of all the people I’d killed over the years. Children. Grown men. Women like my mother. There were so many more to count among the dead.

In the morning, just before the dawn, I couldn’t stand the dreams any longer. I decided it was time to get up. I opened my eyes to find I was alone in the truck. How he got out without alerting me, I would never know. Scared, I looked around as best I could through the windows but he was nowhere to be seen. In my panic, I opened my door and jumped out, glancing up and down the residential street where we parked. No Jonas. Then my mind caught up to itself and I reached out to the most familiar brain waves I knew.

Jonas was sitting on the beach. He was barefoot, and the waves lapped at his heels. Had this been any other day, I would have thought he was just sitting there peacefully, watching the waves crash into the sand. Much like any other morning, when we’d watch the desert sun rise over the hills and valleys, creating a painted landscape. Desert sunrises were always so beautiful and silent. I’d probably never see one again.

Jonas was not sitting peacefully.

After removing my own shoes and ditching them near the edge of the sand, I walked out to Jonas. I didn’t care if someone took my old boots. I just wanted to be with him. Almost cautiously, I approached him. He was fighting with his own anger, an anger I’d caused. An anger I didn’t want to witness first hand.

I hated myself. After all the years of my life, I know I never hated myself more than this moment. He was the love of my life whose life I utterly destroyed. Hating myself was not good enough for what I had done. I despised myself. I deserved to be lying dead beside them.

“Jonas,” I said quietly as I reached him.

He sat with his knees drawn up to his chest. His arms wrapped around his legs, and his chin rested on his knees. His amber eyes faced seaward, and he would not look my way.

“Talk to me,” I said, hearing the slightest tremble in my voice.

He didn’t speak, just continued to stare out at the ocean.

I couldn’t stand it so I began to beg, which is something I really hate to do. “Please, Jonas. Please say something. Talk to me. Say something.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked, still not raising his eyes to me.

I shook my head though he couldn’t see. I had no idea what I wanted him to tell me or what words he should say. I felt tears well up in my eyes. Then my voice ran away from me. “I can still see them,” I said, “just lying there. We left them there. I left them. Alone. Like that. I killed them, all of them. And I left them there. Oh gods.” I buried my head in my shaking hands, and I kept going. “I loved them all. How could I do that to them? How could I betray them like that and break their trust? What kind of a monster am I? I might as well have just pulled the trigger on each one of them myself.”

I remained still for a moment longer then my feet got a mind of their own, and I walked out into the waves. Standing knee deep in a sucking ocean, alone in the early light of dawn, with only my grieving love to stand as witness, I began to scream. I fisted my hands into my hair and wailed my loss to the world. I fought to retain my balance as the waves threatened to knock me down. I stood there.

Alone.

Screaming.

Jonas let me.

When my voice failed me and I could scream no more, I released my grip on my own hair and paused to catch my breath. My throat burned as I turned from the horizon to see Jonas still sitting there, watching me. The beach was otherwise empty. My eyes were red, my chest hurt, and my head started its usual pounding as I walked out of the waves. My throat felt like it was bleeding.

Soaking wet from the knees down, I stormed back up the beach. I went right past Jonas, headed for the truck and gods knew what else. Jonas was on his feet in an instant, and he stopped me.

He grabbed my arm and forced me to stop my retreat. Then he pulled me as close as the laws of physics would allow. He held me as I buried my face in his chest. I was unable to stop my tears. I soaked the front of his shirt with the power of my self-induced grief, and he held tight against my sobs. He kept my head against his chest, his cheek lying against my hair. I could feel his hand against my neck, could feel his unwillingness to let go His heart beat just as hard as mine. I felt it.

When I tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let me. He simply held me at arms’ length. My head bowed, and I couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Look at me,” he said.

I kept my eyes downcast.

“Chris, look at me.” He said it with such force I couldn’t disobey. He took my chin in his hand when I looked up so I was unable to move my head. “You didn’t kill anyone.”

“Yes,” I said firmly. “Yes, I did.”

Jonas harbours a lot of anger and aggression. He’s a fierce fighter and has an iron fist that can kill with one strike, but he can be tender when he wants to be. Gently, he said, “You didn’t kill them.”

For a moment, I believed him. It was the way he said it that made me believe. Okay, so I didn’t pull the trigger myself. I hadn’t put the gun to their heads or lit the Commune on fire. The direct cause of their deaths
had
been me. If I hadn’t gone to the hospital and cured a certain little girl then they would all still be alive.

They’d be safe.

Except I’d gone.

I’d cured Sarai.

Now they were gone.

Jonas bent down and kissed my temple. He had nothing more to say except, “Come on. We should get somewhere safe.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

I have never been to Our Lady of the Angels. I keep telling myself to go, just to see what all the fuss is about. In the fictionalized version of my life, I went there to heal, to expose myself once more so the gov would find me and try to take me. Maybe that’s what I should have done, so the gov would find me and the world would be aware of me and my “miraculous” powers. In the real version of my life, Jonas and I went and rented a room in a nearby hotel. I didn’t want to see Philip, didn’t want to tell him what I’d done. In the end, Jonas and I decided going to Philip’s home would expose him to the danger we were in. We wanted Philip safe. So Jonas called him on the phone.

I can’t tell you what Jonas said to Philip or how he explained the destruction I caused –will always claim to have caused no matter who tries to convince me otherwise. Outside the room, standing at the end of a walkway, I watched cars go by. Maybe I waited for the inevitable black sedan that never showed up. I went back inside the room only when Jonas came and got me.

“What did he say?” I asked shyly.

“He wanted to talk to you,” Jonas said. “I told him no, that I didn’t know what we were going to do but he had to be on alert. Philip’s tough. And he has connections. He’ll be okay.”

I sat on the edge of the bed.

“What now?”

I thought for a long moment and said, “I want to find my father.”

“Why?” Jonas asked.

“Because he probably isn’t any safer than we are. I want to warn him.”

Jonas eyed me suspiciously, but agreed.

It was a long night, and whether out of our shared grief or out of something entirely different, Jonas and I made love in that hotel room. As we lay together in the darkness, I knew I would never love another man. I knew he was it for me. I could never give myself to anyone else. If he could love me still after what I’d done…well, that was enough for me.

Chapter Thirty-Four