She Lies Twisted (16 page)

“
When Boyd died, I saw you were in pain. I just wanted to comfort you, to hold you again, and the only way I knew how to do that was to bring you over.
Running scared, alone and tortur'd,/ Twist'd by demons, blood, misfortune..
I had to do it. It was written on the flute, Tate. It was about me, it was made
for
me,” she whispered fervently as my heart broke into pieces and refused to be put back together. “I had to follow my destiny, Tate. I had to kill you.”

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

I swallowed my heart and buried myself in James' sweatshirt. It was intimate, it was comforting, it should've made me happy but her words refused to leave my head.

“
I had to kill you.”

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

The mantra didn't help. The stones had hurt, they had killed me when she'd pushed me from the cliff but the words hurt, too. She didn't love me more than she loved herself. I knew that because I knew I loved her more and I knew I would've never done something like that. I sobbed and soaked James with my tears and my misery and my suffering.

“
I tried to kill a harpy, Tate. I tried for two years. One taste of a harpy's flesh and I could've been whole, I wouldn't have had to kill you. You could've seen me then!” I refused to look at her. She wasn't processing any real emotions and her voice was hollow and imperfect and disgusting to me. I didn't know how I would feel if I looked at her. “But it never happened and then you were so sad,” she took a shaking breath. James squeezed me more tightly and laid his chin on my head.

They say that disasters bring people closer together, that people that go through hurricanes or floods or bombings, that they form bonds that make them seem as if they've known each other for years. That was happening to James and I in that moment. Four days was becoming four years.
I will appreciate this later,
I promised myself as my sister dug herself further and further into the hole of my heart.

“
But I've done it now,” she said, almost jubilantly. She was excited, excited about eating a piece of flesh, of beautiful Nethel's back. She hadn't shown me pain but what I'd seen was horrible, it had to hurt. “Jarrod can see me now and I can have him, too, and I'm sorry, Tate.” I could hear her taking steps towards us. James slid the pocketknife from the back pocket of my pants. I heard him flick it open. When Jessica spoke again, her words were testy and uncomfortable. “I never thought you'd get called by one of those devils. I thought you'd be a spirit and I'd play my flute and you'd come to me and we'd get Jarrod and we'd walk together and...” She paused in her rambling and I spun around to face her.

“
I loved you more than anything and you left me,” I said and I realized I was still crying. “You left me alone and then you took something that wasn't yours, Jessica. You took my life when I never really had one. Now, look at me!” I gestured at the stitches in my wrist. “I'm not me anymore, I'm something else and now I have to say goodbye to Boyd for the second time and I...” I brushed my fingers against the purse. It was time to let her go. I wasn't going to get the talk that I wanted. I wasn't going to be able to hold her and have a memory to light the dark nights and chase away the fog. She had lost it. She had lost it and she had lost me. I would still love her, I always would, but that didn't mean I had to like her.

Movement to my right caught my eye.

Jarrod was sprinting across the field, his shoes kicking up divots as he stumbled and tried desperately to get away from something that never should've been. Jessica frowned and the dragonfly demon reacted. I don't how it knew but somehow, it was responding to her wishes. It dove at Jarrod's head, its spindly legs outstretched, clawed tips coruscating with moonlight.

“
Stop it!” I screamed, unable to stop the demon but throwing myself at Jessica. I didn't know if it would help but it was all I could do. I could hear James moving behind me. I think he was headed towards the demon. I didn't get a chance to look because Jessica turned too quickly and I found myself on the ground. She flipped me over and straddled me while I struggled to get a hold of her hands. She had the knife. My sister, my twin sister, had a knife and I had no idea if she would use it on me.

She was crying again, her eyeliner dripping down her face in wet clumps. Her hair was a mess, like a golden halo, fanning behind her head and blocking my view of the sky.

“
You know,” she said, gulping down more sadness and pain with each breath. “It was hard enough to kill you the first time but think about how I feel. I have to kill my own sister,
twice.
” She sat up, satisfied that with the wet earth that I was sinking into and the force of gravity, that she had the upper hand.

“
Why?” I asked her, finding no comfort in the fact that I couldn't die. The idea that she was even going to try to kill me, that I'd have a permanent reminder etched into my skin in black thread, was enough to smash my soul into bits. I gazed up at her, my arms straining against her shoulders as her eyes lost more and more of her focus and her sanity and wished that I were nothing but atoms. That I was just molecules and elements and space, that I had no soul and no feelings and no heart. It hurt, it all hurt so much.

“
Don't be sad, Neil,” Boyd had said. “Because when you're sad, it feels like there's nothing right in this world.”

I watched her watch me and squeeze the hilt of the knife and I let everything I ever wanted to say drip from my eyes and soak into the neck of my sweater but she wasn't listening. I hiccuped and wished that the knife would kill me and then the harpies could send a summoner and I could go to the Library and stop being a part of this world that had wronged me and beaten me down at every opportunity.

Jessica smiled a horrible smile that mocked my pain and twisted my soul.

“
Did you know,” she began, leaning down and with a start I realized that there was excitement in her voice. She wanted to kill me. She wanted me, not as me, but as something that would validate her own sense of self. “The only way to kill a summoner is with a knife, soaked in the blood of a loved one?” My eyes widened in shock. Summoners could be killed?
But we're immortal,
my brain screamed, suddenly afraid of the one thing it had always wanted most. Death.

My body overrode my soul and fought. It fought like a caged animal that knows that when the gates open, the hunter will be standing there waiting, rifle in hand. I screamed with a fear I hadn't known I had.
I don't think I'm ready to die yet,
I realized as I opened my throat and spilled my terror into the night air.
I haven't even had a chance to live.

Jessica slid the knife across her wrists in a cruel imitation of how she'd ended her own life. Blood boiled from her skin and fell in fat drops, scalding me, burning me. I struggled harder but I couldn't get her to move. She sat atop my ribcage and squeezed her thighs, locking me in my place. I didn't know if it was supernatural strength or just belief in her own, confused conviction.
She's stronger than you. You can't escape this.
I closed my eyes as she lifted the knife. I didn't want to see it.
Just make it quick,
I thought as tears pushed their way past my eyelids.
Just
do it and play your flute and wrap me under your spell so I don't have time to think about how you betrayed me.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and suddenly, there was a lightness on my chest. I could breathe. I opened my eyes and saw Jessica and James struggling in the grass. I sat up quickly and wiped the blood from my face. Jarrod was gone and so was the demon. It took a moment for me to get moving. My emotions were running wild, thoughts I'd never had were fighting for attention, and a sense of relief was washing over me, nearly drowning in its intensity. Finally, I forced my shaking legs to stand and joined in the fight.

James and Jessica were grappling over the knife. His hand was clamped around her wrist while she tried to force her way into his flesh. She was winning.

I put my hand around hers and tried to peel her fingers away from the blade. When she looked up at me, I almost faltered. There was betrayal there, too, and hurt.

“
You're choosing him over me!” She screamed as the knife flew from her fingers and toppled end over end across the damp grass. James released her and stood up, brushing dirt from his pants. In his hand he held her purse, snatched right from her shoulder in the tussle. She'd made the mistake of paying attention only to the knife and had lost her most precious weapon. Without the flute, she wouldn't be able to stop me. I was going to send her on and I was going to do it now.

“
I love you, Jessica,” I said as I reached for my purse. “No matter what you've done to me.” I heard James gasp and turned to find him holding an empty bag. Sweet music poured from Jessica's lips and spread out across the field and into the trees. A crash resounded, scattering birds and shaking pine needles to the earth. Something big was coming. I exchanged a look with James. He didn't know about the harp but if he'd had, I was sure that he'd want me to use it. I flicked open the clasp and reached for it.

No sooner had my hands brushed the silver wood than it was gone. My purse was flying across the field like a football and I was face down, an intense pressure on my back and neck. I could hear James screaming in the background as I was lifted up and slammed against the base of the goal post. Tentacles twisted around my belly and squeezed until I was blue in the face. My brain told me I was dying but I didn't black out. I couldn't. I was
indefinite.

“
Why, Tate?” Jessica asked as she stepped over James body. He was lying unconscious at the fifteen yard line, blood seeping from the back of his neck. A blue demon circled him with hair like glass and the face of a baboon. I wanted to shriek at James to get up but I couldn't find the strength for breath.
He'll be
okay, he can't die. He's indefinite, too.
“Why do you always do this to me?!” She screeched, doubling over and stumbling like it was too much for her to bear, like I had wronged her and the weight of it was driving her to her knees.

I tugged at the black tentacles around my waist but they were solid muscle. I couldn't even get my fingers under them for leverage. The demon behind me shifted and I could hot breath against my neck. I refused to look.

“
Why do you have to go out of your way to make things difficult?” She asked, tapping the flute against the palm of her hand. With my sweatshirt and Boyd's earring and Abe's boots, it was like watching me punish myself. I had always done it, in some form or another. I had punished myself for the deaths of those around me. Now, I was finally starting to get outsider's view on how ridiculous I had been.
I'm going to have a
revelation and then die. How Shakespearean.
“You wanted things to be hard for me. You couldn't just blend in; you had to stand out in the worst way, Tate. What is wrong with you?” I blocked her voice out and went to that place inside my head, the place I'd gone when I'd found Boyd dead.

Just as I found myself in a meadow with gently swaying daisies and a blanket with the world's best picnic, an arrow shattered my concentration and drew me back. It struck the baboon demon in the chest, knocking him away from James just as Nethel landed in the grass, light as the feathers that coated her skin and wings. Ehferea fired a second arrow and I watched in horror as it came straight at my face-- and then past it.

The arrow struck the thing behind me and I found myself falling

I landed on the ground with a grunt and sucked in what was maybe not a needed but certainly much wanted breath.

Jessica was watching the harpies without much interest. She wasn't afraid of them and that was the scariest part. She turned back towards me.

“
I'm not done with you,” she whispered softly. “You're my sister and we're meant to be together, you and me and Jarrod. I won't stop until I get that, Tate. I need this.”

I cringed as a dark shadow passed over, swept down and drew Jessica away in taloned claws. The bird demon flapped mustard yellow wings and rose, its beak-less face snarling in warning as it passed by. I watched them go. I watched my sister fly away in the arms of a monster and I couldn't have been happier. I crawled over to James and helped Nethel turn him onto his back.

“
Please be okay,” I whispered aloud as I checked his neck for injuries. There were none, just stitches in a rough line between his shoulder blades and scalp. His eyes fluttered open and he smiled at me, giving me a thumbs up.