River: A Novel (39 page)

 “Asher,” I
said slowly and quietly. Calmly. “
What
did you do?”

 “Hmm?” His
questioning tone was clearly confused, as if he had been far away, thinking of
something else.

 “You blew
off the rebellion to come and rescue me. What the hell was
that
?” The
last part came out a little harshly. I took a deep, painful breath to stop the
rush of anger.

 “No… no, I
had to leave the theater when you did. Gwen—”

 “You left
Gwen alone to come after me? What were you thinking?” I slapped my hands on his
chest and took another scorching breath.

 “Elodie…,” he
began and then stopped. I waited very patiently for thirty seconds to let him
gather his explanation before giving in to my irritation.

 “You should
have stayed. You should have left me here to be a diversion. I mean… there are too
many people counting on you.” Slumping from exhaustion or frustration or both, I
couldn’t go on, thinking of all the people I’d met: Gwen, Colin, Grandma, they
were friends. Petra, Danny, Nanette, they were my family. “What do you think
happened to them?” I finally whispered.

 “Elodie,
don’t worry, please,” he said quietly, trying to convince me. “Gwen was fine
with being in charge of our part. Even if the Speakers knew about the rebellion—she
would’ve gotten people to safety somehow.” I didn’t respond, so he went on
quickly in his defense. “When Mace started toward the stage, she was the one
who made me follow. I was up in the rafters above the stage.”

 “
You
were?”
I breathed.

 “It was the
closest I could get to you.”

 I slumped further
and closed my eyes. Not that it changed the scenery. He’d climbed the rafters
of the theater for me. Defeated, I swirled in a flood of emotions. 

 Asher was
unaware of my swoon, continuing with his version of the night, “When I saw the
look on Mace’s face, when he’d forced you into leaving with him and his… cronies—I
knew what he was up to.” While waiting for his body to relax, I clutched his
jacket, thinking of what it would have been like if he weren’t here, if he
hadn’t had the compulsion to follow. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have tried to
slit my wrists somehow, perhaps using a button off my jacket. Shaking the image
away, I snapped out of it when his hands locked around me. “There was no
possible
way
I was going to leave you to his devices.”

 I held my
breath, and then let it out. “But,
Gwen
… What if…?” Gwen was capable. I
knew this. I just didn’t know what the Speakers were capable of, how far they
would go to stop our cause. They were a dark mystery to me that was already the
stuff of nightmares.

 “I assure
you, Gwen is the perfect candidate to lead a rebellion. The people couldn’t be
in better hands.” He sighed, and I felt his fingers brushing my temple. His
other hand gently trailed toward my neck. “I couldn’t just stand by and
let
him…,” he paused to kiss my lips lightly. “Will you forgive me?” he whispered,
almost silently.

 Completely
disarmed, it took me a moment to answer his preposterous question. “I guess I can
forgive you for coming to rescue me.” Regaining my composure, I couldn’t stop
counting the possible consequences of his rash decision. “But only if you make
it out of here so you can become what you are meant to be,” I countered. My
hands loosened from their fists and found his shirtsleeves, his elbows; finally,
I settled on curling them around his shoulders, drawing even closer to him.

 “And what
is that?”

 “A hero,” I
answered, directly into his ear.

 There was a
hushed chuckle in his throat, as if he were about to disagree, when we both
heard it. The monotonous tone was low. If our senses wouldn’t have been heightened
by blindness, we would have been deaf to it. Laughter that caused my skin crawl
and turned my stomach muscles into icy daggers echoed through the darkness,
bouncing all around us.

Asher was
quick. We had already been sitting loosely against one of the walls, but he had
us huddled in a corner within seconds. An inhuman grunt that could only be
described as the imitation of a muzzled hyena grew in layers, until I thought I
would lose my mind. Asher’s hands held my clammy palms with assuredness—something
I didn’t have. If he hadn’t been with me, I would have been digging that
blessed coat button against my wrists, wishing for a sharper edge.

 “Shhhh,” Asher
breathed, barely audible. Holding in a lungful of air, I squeezed my eyes shut
and tried to control my fear. It was a losing battle until he reached around my
shoulders and pulled me toward him. I let out a half gasp, half sob into his
shirt, and then his voice was in my ear. “Elodie, I know this place well. I
will get you out of here. Believe me?”

 I nodded
against his chest, not trusting my voice to be quiet enough.

 “Good. When
we move, stay as close to me as you can.”

 He didn’t
say anything else. He didn’t have a chance. Asher was ripped from my arms in
the same second I was shoved into the wall, something hard garroting my throat.
Bright sparks crowded my vision as a shuffling sounded, and then was silenced
by a booming growl. 

 “You
defy
me Elodie?” Mace’s screech was a distorted, sharp burst. I tried to push
the cudgel away from my throat; instead I choked and gasped before being thrown
in the center of the Dark Room. Struggling to my feet, I was knocked down again
and held by iron on my shoulders, hot breath in my face. I shrank from it as he
shouted.

 “Do you
think
you
can get away from
me
?” He picked my entire body up roughly,
only to throw me back to the floor. Terrified, all I could do was curl into a
ball, shielding my head from his madness.

 “You think
I couldn’t just take you at any time?” His massive hand batted my arm away from
my ear. He hissed into it, “This has been one of the best shows yet, but all
good things must end.” He then scraped his nail across my cheek as I whimpered.
He laughed again, moving away from me. “You think I didn’t know what was
happening this entire time?” Icy fear slithered in the core of my gut. “It’s
been very entertaining, procuring information on this little rebellion. On this
pathetic
resistance—as if anyone could get away from me.” Mace snorted
after he spoke. 

 A horrible
knowledge was seeping through my terror. Was it really possible that Mace knew
everything? Asher was gone somehow; I could no longer feel him in the room. We
would never escape. Though futile, I covered my head tight as he trailed his razor-sharp
nail from my forehead to my ear. Somehow, he could see me. I coiled into myself,
ignoring the pain. 

 “You don’t
seem to understand. I
am
River. Nothing happens here without my
knowledge.” I sensed him slowly walking around my form in a circle, purely
predatory. “The only thing I don’t know is what happened to you that day—how
you escaped from me.” He chuckled. “Not that it really matters, now.” My body
was agonizingly rigid as he spoke. “I’ve been contemplating what to do with you,
or to you, but I think we have enough guests to have a little party. And this
party just keeps getting better and better.”

 I was in
the middle of blinking when a beam of light shot through the room, bright white
and blinding. Lifting my head, it looked like a spotlight on a stage, a blurry
person illuminated. 

 “Petra?” I
whispered while squinting, the light burning my eyes. She was motionless and
glancing around as if she couldn’t see anyone else. She probably didn’t know I
was here, still in the darkness, but she
did
know where she was—it was
painfully obvious by the fear in her stance. Even without glasses I could see
it, almost feel it.

 A hulking
shadow made her recoil. Mace’s outline was stepping toward her, and I lurched for
the light she was trapped in, only to ram into an invisible wall, ricocheting
back in shock. The rooms were made of thick glass. I frantically searched into
the black space behind me for a way out, but I didn’t know from which direction
Mace had left, and the light didn’t reflect back into the gloom. The beam came
from directly above Petra’s head, holding her in a bright pool, casting shadows
on her features with such harshness that she looked like a two-dimensional
paper doll. Bottomless shade sliced her pale skin into fragments.

 Mace
touched her cheek, seeming to wipe away a tear, as I desperately looked for a
break in the glass; something to get me to the other side. I froze when his
voice wafted through the air from some kind of intercom. Soft and menacing he
said to her, “You were the most entertaining of my participants in this little
play. Who knew you would be so loyal to Elodie?” When he flipped her hair
behind her ear, she crossed her hands in front of her throat, an involuntary
defense. “I had so much fun planning your demise,” he purred, nudging her leg
with his. Petra winced. 

 “You really
thought that you could save her from me? Save
yourself
? I could have  let
you try to convince everyone that I’d had my
fun
with Elodie while she
was pregnant, and then forced her to have an abortion, just to humiliate you
further,” he smiled, softly growling into her ear. “But I couldn’t have you
running around with the truth, now could I? I’m only being pragmatic, unlike my
predecessors.” Mace began to walk behind her, circling her long, blond hair
disdainfully around her throat. He completed the noose and whispered as he
traced a nail down her cheek, drawing blood. Petra and I cringed at the same
time. “Oh, Petra. So beautiful, so naïve. The usher you always thought was your
friend was my friend, too. Or at least he was after I had a little rendezvous
with his mother.”  

 Frustrated,
I placed my hands on the glass, fuming at the vilifying way he spoke to Petra
and of his other victims. Also, I was surprised that I could still hear him. He
must have had some kind of microphone on, for his snarling whispers were loud
and clear, as if he had his face in mine instead of my friend’s. And Petra was
definitely, without a doubt, still my friend. She was going through all this
because she had tried to help me, or River Elodie, as though any of that
mattered… I was here now.

 Without
warning, Mace jerked her into him, close enough for her to really panic, as if
he were going to kiss her, and grinned. “Well, it looks like you’ve learned your
lesson,” he said, and then kicked her legs out from underneath her. She didn’t
see it coming and crumpled to the ground, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
“And this party is just starting.” I clenched my fists as my vision was jerked from
Petra’s huddled form.

 About
twenty feet away, another light glowed to life. Danny’s head sprang up as he
squinted, looking around. His gaze landed on Petra immediately, his mouth gaping
open. A surge of hate coursed through me, and I banged on the glass, but it
made no sound—the vibrations just absorbed into it. “No,” I said to myself,
starting to really panic as I gazed from Dan to Petra and back again. This had
to stop.

 “Daniel!” Mace
bellowed and clapped his hands violently once, forgetting about Petra. She whipped
her head around, placing her fingertips over her mouth in shock, with eyes wide
open and her head slightly shaking side to side. Danny eyed Mace’s movement
from Petra’s light into his own, sliding in and out of the black in between. “You
will be happy to hear the good news,” Mace went on like a sick talk show host. “You
get to stay here with me
indefinitely
.” Dan glowered at him, seeming to
understand what this meant. “Your talents will not be wasted… or else, little
Petra
will
suffer in the most interesting ways.” Mace stepped back into
the negative space and yanked Petra by the hair seconds later, his arm like the
lashing tongue of a snake. Her face contorted in pain.

 I yelled
“No!” at the same time that Danny signed it. My shouts were fruitless, as the
glass wall absorbed them, only reverberating slightly back to me. Dan and Petra
had no idea I was watching, but if it were possible for me to escape—I would
never leave them behind.

 Dan gave a
furious nod. He would not stand by again and let Mace hurt Petra. Even if he’d somehow
been blocked from hearing Mace’s declaration that she had broken no bizarre rules
in the first place, he would protect her. Mace let go of Petra, as though throwing
a fish back to water, a tear glistening on her cheek before she collapsed. My sympathy
for Petra quickly becoming helplessness, I was still staring at the scene in
disbelief when a third spot blazed. Mace had disappeared again to the dark
space between the white lights.

 When I tore
my gaze from Petra to Danny, he looked equally horrified and powerless. Suddenly
weak, I reluctantly turned to the third light, but Mace was standing directly
in front the next prisoner. It dawned on me that he had chosen this pose
deliberately to block my view, as I was the obvious audience. Danny straightened
and then dropped his head. Petra slowly stood, her brow furrowed with confusion.

 “You are
the most surprising of my guests tonight,” said Mace in a calculating tone. “Not
many people fly under the radar in my town, but you seem to attract the least
attention possible.” Clapping slowly in his superior way, he said, “Bravo,
James. Your father would’ve just been swollen with pride.” My heart plummeted
when he moved to the side, and I barely registered that Mace had said the wrong
name. But maybe that was a good thing, strategically. Asher stood, hands fisted
in barely controlled aggression.