Rivals (24 page)

“Where is
she?” Brent demanded. “Where’s Lucy?”

“Don’t have an
aneurysm, baby bro,” Maggie said. She looked bored.

Bored. She
had the gall to be nonchalant at a time like this. He would pound that blasé
look right off her face, he would—

“She’s just
over here,” Maggie said, and walked around the side of the trailer. “I stashed
her in the shade so she wouldn’t even get sunburned. I’ve got no reason
to—”

Brent stomped
around to the back of the trailer and saw a coil of wire on the ground. It
looked like someone had been tied up with it, but there was no one inside the
coil. Lucy’s leg braces lay on the dirt next to the coil. They were twisted
out of shape and one of them was broken in half.

“Oh,” Maggie
said. “That’s strange, she was here a minute ago—”

Brent hit her
with everything he had.

Maggie reeled
backwards, her jaw erupting in violent agony. She staggered and nearly fell,
one hand grabbing at the ground behind her. She hadn’t expected him to come at
her so fast.

She cleared
her head and started to get up, but he was already on her again, smashing at
her face with a vicious left hook. She spun around, just trying to get her
balance, and tripped over her own feet. She landed face down in the dirt,
coughing and gasping for breath.

He kicked her
in the back of the head, hard enough to force her face into the soil until she
couldn’t see or breathe. She tried to control herself, tried to hold back the
pain, but her body rebelled and tried to breathe in. Her mouth filled with
loose wet dirt and her brain started to scream in panic.

That wouldn’t
do.

She had left a
ten pound sledge hammer propped up against the glaring white side of the
trailer. Her left hand flailed out and felt the rough wood handle. As he
stomped on her head, pushing her down deeper into the dry earth, she got a grip
on the hammer and swung it around blindly behind her, just hoping it would
connect enough to startle him.

Instead it
caught him in the side hard enough to knock him five yards through the air.
She twisted around on the ground and spat up dirt as he bounced off a patch of
hard-packed dirt corrugated with tire tracks. In a split second she was up,
standing with her feet well apart in a solid stance, grasping her sledge hammer
with both hands.

If she could
catch him before he had time to get back up, before he—

—but he
was fast, so fast. He came at her out of her blind spot, holding a length of
iron rebar like a samurai sword. He swung wide and low, his blow intended to
catch her in the stomach. She just had time to bring the sledge hammer around
to parry his strike. Metal hit wood with enough force to send painful
vibrations all the way up Maggie’s arms.

“You’re quick,”
she said, as she stepped backwards, breaking contact.

“Faster than
you,” he said, bringing his bar up for another attack, this time aiming at her
head.

She caught the
attack just in time, catching the iron bar in the angle between the handle and
the metal head of her sledge hammer. The rebar dug a nasty gouge in the wooden
handle, but in return it bent in his hands, forming an obtuse angle. He pulled
back to try another swing. She was ready for it this time, and rather than
parrying his blow she ducked under it and swept his legs with her hammer,
spilling him onto the ground.

“I’m still
smarter, apparently,” she said, dancing backwards and bringing up her hammer.
She swung it back behind her head and started to bring it down—except the
damage to the handle must have been worse than she thought. The heavy head
went flying to ricochet off the side of the trailer with an ear-shattering
clang.

He laughed
bitterly as she stared at the length of wood in her hands. She noticed,
however, that what she was left with was a two foot long club with a sharp and
jagged end. She switched up her grip and stabbed downward with what had become
a pointed stake, intending to drive it right through his heart. It worked on
vampires.

The jagged
wood splintered and shattered against his tough skin. The handle split right
up the middle, driving inch-long splinters into both her palms.

He groaned in
pain—the impact would still have hurt him, she thought—and raised
his iron bar as if to ward her off. She kicked it out of his hands and then
jumped up on top of the trailer.

He roared and
slammed into the side of the trailer like a bull.

It was
working.

He was made
enough now. He was pissed off enough to not be able to stop himself, when the
time came. When he had her down and defenseless, he would not just tie her up
an wait for the police to arrive. Oh, no. He wouldn’t be able to help
himself—he would take this to its logical conclusion, and kill her.

Which was
exactly what she wanted.

She needed an
end to this. She needed to stop running. She couldn’t make excuses for her
behavior any more, couldn’t forgive herself for the things she’d done,
and—

“Come down,”
he shouted, and hit the trailer again.

“Why don’t you
come up here and make me?” she told him.

As she’d
expected he grabbed two handfuls of the metal side of the trailer and hauled
himself upward, threw his body into the air to come crashing down right next to
her. The impact caved in the metal roof of the trailer. She stepped backwards
and leaned to the side to avoid his flying fists.

She couldn’t
let on that he was being set up. He had to believe he had no choice. He had
to think she was fighting back as hard as she could. So she stuck out her leg
and let him trip over it, let him fall face forward onto the trailer’s roof,
denting it further.

He pushed
himself upward on his arms. She aimed a kick at his face but made it just slow
enough that he would see it coming. He grabbed her foot with both hands and
twisted, and she went flying. She hit the roof of the trailer with her back
and it hurt. It hurt a lot. She cried out. He loomed over her, his hands
balled into fists so tightly his knuckles were white.

She reached
down, grabbed the metal roof with both hands, and tore.

The roof had
been damaged when they started fighting. It had come close to caving in every
time one of them hit the other. It couldn’t take any more abuse. As she’d
thought it might, the roof collapsed as she pulled and twisted at it, spilling
them both into the trailer’s interior.

She saw him
slam against a side wall, his head flopping against his shoulder. She hit a
desk that caught her right in the small of her back, folding her in half the
wrong way. The incredibly painful way. She felt her vertebrae pulling apart,
felt every muscle in her back screaming as it was stretched beyond its limit.

She shrieked
in agony and flailed around her with her arms and legs. Leaning over to one
side she struck out with both fists and one of them went right through the
trailer wall. She could have freed it easily, of course, but she saw him
standing up. Saw Brent watching her.

She made a
show of pulling at her arm, trying to get her fist out of the hole she’d made
in the wall. As he came closer, his shoulders tight, his head slightly bowed,
she rolled her eyes in simulated panic.

This is it
, she thought.
This is my last chance.

Stop me,
Brent. If you don’t, the darkness will win. It will take over completely and
there will be nothing left of Maggie Gill. There will just be the villain.

Finish me off.

Brent watched
Maggie struggle with a sense of profound detachment. That wasn’t his sister
with her hand stuck in the wall. It was some evil creature that didn’t deserve
to live. Who knew what she had done to Lucy? He wouldn’t put anything past
her anymore. She’d had a chance to redeem herself. She’d had plenty of
chances, and she had refused every time to do the right thing.

He felt like
something enormous and powerful and
right
was growing inside of him. A creature of pure light, of
justice
. Whatever he might do to Maggie was less than she
deserved. He looked down at his feet and found a broken computer monitor lying
there, its cord twisted around it like a broken tail. Its screen had cracked
in a million pieces, each of them triangular and sharp like a tooth. He
plucked one out of the broken machine and held it in both of his hands.

“Come on,
then,” Maggie said. “What are you waiting for?”

Brent wondered
as much, himself. He took a step toward her and he felt like he was getting
stronger with every moment that passed. When he brought the shard of glass
down his arm would be strengthened by the sheer correctness of the act.

He lifted the
glass knife over his head. She had stopped struggling and seemed to be just
waiting for him to strike. Perhaps she had come to accept that this was
necessary. The fitting end to their rivalry. Their sibling rivalry.

How could
we turn out so different? I can’t believe you are my father’s daughter
, he thought, and started to bring the weapon down on
her head—

—and
caught himself in mid-swing.

But you are
.

“Dad,” he said
out loud. “Dad wouldn’t—”

“I killed Dad!
You should avenge him,” Maggie said. Her eyes were filling with tears, he
saw, and that made him feel very strange. “You should do it for him.”

“Did
you—did you find him in there? In the cylinder?” Brent asked. His own
voice sounded like it was coming from someone else’s body.

“Yes! He was
still there. So I took him out and buried him. Out in the desert where the
FBI can’t dig him up to study his corpse.”

Brent felt as
if he were watching her from above, as if he were floating up near the ceiling
looking down at her—and at himself. His body was down there, frozen in
place, as if time had stopped for it. “Was it… bad?” he asked. “I mean, was
he all messed up?”

Maggie turned
her face away from him. “You don’t want to know.” She sighed. “You can’t do
this, can you? You’re not strong enough.”

“He asked me
not to fight so much with you. Right before he died. And here we are, doing
exactly what we always did.” Brent shook his head, and below him he saw his
body shake its head, too. He could feel the piece of glass cutting his fingers
and he let it go. It crashed on the floor and the noise was loud enough to jar
him, to make him blink. Suddenly he was back in his own body. It hadn’t been
real, he knew. He hadn’t ever left it. He’d just gotten so worked up, so
angry it had felt that way. He wondered if that was how Maggie felt all the
time. Now he was back in his body the thought made him shiver. “Just tell me
where Lucy is. Tell me what you did to her.”

“And then
what? You’ll let me go?” It didn’t sound like she even wanted that. But
then, what did she want?

“No,” he said.
“It’s gone too far for that. I’ll turn you over to Weathers. He promised me
he would get you the help you need.”

“How
absolutely gracious of him,” Maggie said. And then she pulled her hand out of
the wall. She hadn’t really been trapped—it had been an act. But why?
Brent was still trying to figure that out when her foot came up and smashed him
across the face.

“I’m sorry,
bro, but only one of us can leave here today,” she said. He was still spinning
around, trying to figure out where she was. Then she just appeared out of his
blind spot and grabbed him, picked him up and threw him through the wall of the
trailer. “If it has to be me, then so be it!” she called as he sailed through
the brilliant desert sunlight. He hit the side of a boulder with his face and
dropped in a heap.

A moment later
her hands grabbed him under the armpits and she hauled him upright—just
to throw him again. He hit the side of a bulldozer hard enough that it rang
like a bell. His vision blurred and his brain felt like it was spinning inside
his skull. He needed to get his bearings, he knew, he needed to get up on his
feet and be ready for her before she—

With no
warning at all she hit him in the chest with a rock as big as his head. The
breath exploded out of him and he saw little lights go shooting through his
vision. She hit him again, this time in the stomach, and pain blossomed inside
his abdomen as something vital burst open. Instantly he could feel his body
putting itself back together, felt his guts grow warm and then hot as they
tried to slither back into their appropriate places. But he was sagging to his
knees and he knew if she hit him again he wouldn’t be able to get up.

She hit him
again. And again. His head slumped forward and she smashed the back of his
neck with her rock. This was all it would take, he realized. She could kill
him this easily, by grinding him to a pulp, one blow at a time. He felt as
powerless and insubstantial as the faint warm breeze that played through his
hair.

She’s
stronger than you
, Weathers had told him.
He was faster, but that didn’t matter if he couldn’t get up on his feet, if he
couldn’t dodge her attacks. He saw the rock coming toward his face and he
tried to weave over to one side, but he barely moved enough that the rock
caught his cheek and ear instead of his nose. The pain was just as intense.
The noise of bones breaking was just as loud in his inner ear.

She lifted the
rock again, lifted it high in both hands. She was going to bring it straight
down on the top of his head, he knew. It would be the last thing he ever felt.
Everything would go black, and it would finally be over.

“Wait,” Lucy
said.