Watercolour Smile

  That was why I was standing in front of a beaten-down boathouse, my hand hovering over the handle of the unlocked door. It was tiny, sagging slightly at the back-end, and ripped almost completely open at the front-end. Truly, if one had wanted to get inside, they might have simply pulled up a few of the loose boards from the outside and walked right in—but Weston assured me that the magic wouldn’t allow them.

  “I want to be here,” I said out loud, just as Weston had instructed me to. “I accept your invitation.”

  At my words, the door fell away from my reaching fingertips, creaking open to reveal the dusty, abandoned interior. We were somewhere between Seattle and Maple Falls, judging by how long it had taken to drive there—though I supposed we could have been travelling in another direction altogether. The swamp was eerily quiet, untouched by the sounds of civilisation. There were no other structures in sight, no boats passing by on the river that bordered the area. It was utterly unidentifiable.

  I had barely taken a step inside before something sounded behind me, forcing me to spin around. They were all still there: Gerald, Weston, Kingsling and Jayden… only, there was an extra person standing behind Kingsling.

  There was also a rather large, red stain soaking into the front of Kingsling’s shirt. His mouth went slack, his eyes blinking in horror. He gurgled, clutching at his chest, and everyone turned to watch as he fell to his knees, hovering there for a moment before his face smacked into the dirt.

  Silas stood behind him. There was a gun in his hand with a silver barrel-shaped extension attached to the end of it, almost the same size as the gun’s original barrel. He dismantled the extra barrel and tucked it into his back pocket, as calm as I had ever seen him.

  I stumbled into the doorway, grasping blindly for something to hold on to. Gerald looked appropriately surprised, but Weston barely flickered an eyelid. He cocked his head at Kingsling for a few moments, witnessing the last few spasms that raced through the dying man, and I thought he might have let out a small sigh, before he dismissed the body and turned back to me.

  “Go on ahead,” he said, checking his watch. “Seems Dominic won’t be accompanying you after all.”

  “W-what did you do?” I stuttered, a hand covering my mouth.

  “Are you talking to the man with the gun?” Weston asked me. “I wouldn’t bother. He’s not very vocal when he’s on a rampage.”

  Silas raised the gun again, this time aiming it at Weston.

  “You can’t shoot me.” Weston sounded exasperated, leading me to believe that he had said this on more than one occasion.

  Silas’s expression didn’t change, but his arm started to turn and rise, until it was notched against his own temple.

  “And you can’t shoot me.” Silas’s tone carried a dangerous edge. “If you do, your precious Voda heir will die right alongside me. It seems we’re at an impasse. Again.”

  Weston smiled, and it was the same smile that I had seen in the graveyard: a baring of teeth that made you wish to shield your throat, on the off-chance that he decided to lunge for it.

  “Not quite,” Weston said.

  Silas’s gun began to move again, but this time the barrel pointed at me. His finger tightened on the trigger. I tensed, my fingers digging into the rotted wood of the doorframe.

  “I’m sorry,” Weston said, walking toward me and leaning against the boat shed beside my doorway. He folded his arms, turning sideways to watch me. “But you make such pretty collateral, Miss Black.” He tilted his face away from me, focussing on Silas. “Tell me why you killed my Director—not that I’m complaining, by the way—but I am ever so curious. I think you understand how ultimatums work. Speak, or you’ll be the cause of the bullet in her heart.”

  I doubted that Weston would actually make Silas shoot me, but it was difficult to hold onto that notion with a gun pointed at my chest. There was also the fact that Weston was armed with the knowledge of me having brought myself back from the brink of death once before. Perhaps he was willing to risk it, just to punish Silas.

  “He tried to kill her,” Silas growled. “Is that how the Klovoda works now?”

  “You always were one for overreaction,” Weston said with a sigh. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to hunt down the fourth subject and gain her trust. I don’t know how you managed it, but befriending her to keep her away from me…” He chuckled, casting his eyes back to me. “It was the perfect revenge. Until now.”

  “You can’t hurt her.” Silas said.

  “Yes I can,” Weston replied, a second before the sound of a gunshot rang out.

  Pain tore through my shoulder, and I screamed, the whiplash forcing me into a rotted wooden skeleton of something—possibly a bench, or a boat trolley. It caved underneath me, and I pushed away from the mess of wood before I hit the floor, trying to avoid getting impaled by anything. Unfortunately, I landed on my bad arm, and my next scream was dashed against the musty ground.

  I heard a thud as Weston’s body hit the outside of the boathouse.

  “Where’d that come from?” Gerald shouted, sounding afraid.

  “Don’t… move…” Weston sounded strained, his voice laced with pain.

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” Silas grated out. “Now tell your hypnotist that he needs to go inside and get Seraph. Tell him to take her back to the road and leave her there. If you or Dipshit over there try to stop him, my snipers will take you all out. If he tries to hurt her, you will all die. Understand?”

  “I might not be able to kill you, boy, but I’ll take you to the brink every single fucking day until you’re begging for me to dash your head against the wall until it cracks, do you understand? I won’t let you go now, not even for my sons. Not even for your mother. You’ve overstepped. I’ll make you pay for this.”

  “I’m aware,” Silas replied simply. “Now do as I said.”

  I released the breath that I had been holding, and it came out as an agonised groan. Time seemed to suspend as blood mixed with moss and rot, wetting the boards beneath me. Weston apparently didn’t know that I had been having trouble with my valcrick ever since the accident. I tried to draw on it as I lay there, but it didn’t so much as flutter in greeting.

  Weston’s breaths rattled out, as painful as mine, and I managed to turn my head enough to glimpse out of the doorway. He was slumped on the ground where he had previously been standing. He was clutching his stomach, somehow bleeding less than I was, though it was obvious he had been shot as well.

  “Go,” he finally growled.

  Jayden strode into the boathouse and his eyes passed over the mess of broken wood behind me, before finding me on the ground. He knelt down beside me, his eyes narrowing on the spreading puddle of blood beneath me.

  He lifted me to his chest and the movement had me crying out again as pain rocked through my shoulder, tingling numbness down to my fingertips and aching all the way into my chest. I was beginning to feel faint, and my head rolled backwards as Jayden strode out of the boathouse.

  He made to move past Silas, who was standing with his arms hanging by his sides, his fists clenched into white-knuckled tension. His whole body seemed to be vibrating, and I knew that Weston was still controlling him.

  “Wait,” he said, causing Jayden’s step to falter. “I’m sorry.” He croaked the words and finally turned his eyes to mine. He wasn’t in the midst of an episode, as I thought he would be. Instead, his eyes were full of agony. “I’m really sorry, angel.” He turned away, his head hanging.

  “No…” I whispered, realising what was happening. “No!” I tried to fight against Jayden, causing a near-overwhelming roil of nausea to rise up and choke me. Dark spots flashed across my vision, and I struggled to cling to consciousness. “Silas, you can’t do it! Don’t do it, please don’t!”

  He avoided looking at me, and Jayden started moving again.

  “Silas you can’t do this!” I screamed, fighting with every vestige of strength.

  “Stop moving,” Jayden sai
d calmly. My body immediately stilled. “Stop screaming.”

  “He can’t,” I sobbed quietly. “I won’t let him.”

  “That’s the funny thing about this situation, Seraph. You don’t have a choice.”

  He carried me back to the roadside where Quillan was waiting: a large, fancy-looking rifle slung over his shoulder. It had something resembling a telescope attached to the top of it. He was standing beside a black Range Rover that I had never seen before; Noah and Cabe jumped out, alighting on the ground beside him. They all watched as Jayden approached.

  “Why isn’t she healing herself?” Cabe asked, apparently confused.

  Jayden didn’t answer. He passed me to Quillan, whose jaw was clenched, taut with a reaching tension that had driven demons straight into his black eyes.

  “You let him,” I realised out loud. “How could you let him do that? We need to go back. We need to save him. You can’t leave him there, Quillan, you can’t let him do this! Weston will ruin him! I didn’t need saving, his life is over now… Weston will never let him go…”

  Quillan didn’t reply and eventually my desperate attempts to be heard died out. He grimaced at Jayden and jerked his head at Noah and Cabe, who got back into the Range Rover. He buckled me into the front passenger seat, and I cursed him the whole time. Eventually, I got frustrated at Jayden controlling my body, so I turned my curses his way. Jayden closed the door, cutting off the litany of words that Poison would have been proud of. He got into the driver’s side and pressed a button to roll my window down.

  “Thank you,” he said to Jayden.

  Jayden nodded, his mismatched blue and green eyes were burning with an emotion that I didn’t recognise. For just a moment, he became human. He stepped up to my window and reached out a hand, catching my cheek.

  “He’d kill me for this,” he said, “but you should remember. You should know.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and then everything rushed back. The memories flowed into my mind with an ease that betrayed the crease of frustration marring Jayden’s forehead. They swam into the cracks that I hadn’t even realised were empty, completing something in my mind that I hadn’t even realised was broken.

  I remembered.

  The boy was older than me—he seemed taller than the boys at the high school that I had just been enrolled in. It wasn’t the first time that I had dreamed of him, but it was the first dream in which he had seemed so real. His hair was as dark as mine, cut short at the sides in a practical sort of way, and flopping forward in disarray to obscure his eyes. He flicked it back and wiped a hand over the back of his mouth, leaving a smear of red on his skin. This movement revealed his eyes to me, and I felt a lurch in my chest at the sight of them. They were the kind of dark that didn’t stem from colour, but from experience. They burned hotly, and the fire seemed to scream from within. I imagined people becoming victim to that fire, tripping and falling into it. Their screams would mix with his. He seemed to have that power; the particularly violent capacity to collect pain. He licked at the blood seeping out of the side of his mouth and laughed.

  “Fuck you, Weston.”

  A hand whipped out, catching the boy across the face. Judging by the swelling in the right side of his face, it wasn’t the first blow that he had suffered. I felt sorry for him, but I also wished that he would stop laughing, and start fighting back. He looked strong. I wished I was that strong.

  I wished I could fight. Why wasn’t he?

  “Either you start cooperating, you little parasite, or I’ll have you stab yourself with a needle over and over again until your every pore has been filled with metal,” the man called Weston said. He delivered the threat so convincingly, so chillingly, that I found myself frozen in fear, even though I wasn’t physically there.

  I immediately changed my mind. Don’t fight, I urged the boy. Run. Run away, as fast as you can.

  The boy didn’t run. He fell back against the topside of a table, pushing a hand through his mussed hair to draw it back from his forehead again. “Get out of my head,” he said. “You won’t find anything new. I told you already, I didn’t feel anything. She’s not my Atmá. Not her, and not any of the others.”

  “I’m not in your head.” This time Weston laughed. It wasn’t an evil laugh; it held no mocking. He seemed almost delighted. “Twenty years old, and you’re already unhinged. Really… I’m disappointed. Your mother has lasted much longer, and her mind shows no signs of breaking down.”

  “I can feel the presence,” the boy continued, sounding confused. He didn’t seem to have heard what Weston had said. His brow creased, drawing two darkly arched brows together in concentration. “I can feel it there, in my mind…”

  Weston stopped laughing. He peered at the boy, and then whipped a hand out. I cringed, expecting the blow to land across the boy’s face again, but Weston clapped his hand over the boy’s shoulder instead. The boy tried to pull away, but Weston’s fingers curled inwards. It was almost as if he had grown claws—the boy became rooted to the spot, as though the fingers had pierced his skin and dug into his bones, holding him hostage.

  “That’s not me…” Weston sounded astonished, and something tickled against my mind. I pushed at it, rejecting the alien feeling, and Weston jerked back from the boy. “It’s her,” he sounded breathless, “finally! She’s trying to connect to you. She must have some kind of mind ability.” He reached for the boy again—but the boy jumped off the table.

  “No.” He shook his head rapidly, spraying hair over his forehead again. “No. You’re wrong.”

  “What other person in the world would be trying to attach themselves to your mind?” Weston was laughing again.

  This time, the boy fought. He punched at Weston, but the bigger man clamped a hand down on the boy’s shoulder again, and all of the movement drained out of the boy’s body. He slackened, his form dangling, inert, from Weston’s fingers. The presence brushed against my mind again, once, twice, and then it latched onto me.

  In that moment, I was jolted from my sleep as the door to my bedroom swung open. Gerald materialised in the doorway and I snapped upright, clutching my head. It felt as though someone was trying to hammer into my skull, but there was a barrier in the way. I knew, instinctively, that the barrier was the boy. His mind was fighting alongside mine, even if his body had been incapacitated. I had the strangest feeling that he wasn’t there willingly. I felt that I had dragged him between myself and Weston, and now he couldn’t leave.

  “Wake up,” Gerald slurred at me, even though I was now sitting up in bed.

  He teetered on his feet, swaying in my doorway for a moment, and then he fell forwards, landing beside me.

  I couldn’t speak, because the pain in my head had intensified. The boy was still fighting, but Weston was stronger. I gritted my teeth as my vision swam, blurring Gerald’s face into a featureless blob that stunk of spirits and grinned too widely to be human. I counted too many teeth, before the grin melted away and Gerald’s sloppy mouth was on mine. I fought the vomit that rose, because the last time I had vomited on him, he had punished me severely.

  I fought the sickness, but I didn’t fight him.

  I couldn’t. It was our deal. As long as I kept quiet and allowed him to do as he wished, he would leave Tariq alone. My mother was already dead, but Tariq was still very much alive, and if Gerald turned to him for entertainment, I was almost certain that it would kill me.

  Weston was gaining in his fight with the boy, and I was sure that he was seconds away from piercing my mind. I wasn’t sure what would happen if he succeeded, but there was something otherworldly dangerous about the man. I gagged, both from the pressure on my mind, and the sour taste in my mouth, and Gerald’s hand wound around my neck. He didn’t like it when I made that sound. He slapped my cheek, but the shock of sudden pain cleared my mind. I propelled the force of Weston away, clinging to the remnants of the boy. Gerald slapped my other cheek, slurring something as his face dropped sloppily against my collarbone
.

  “Where do you keep going?” he groused, slapping the opposite side of my face again. “Stop that. Pay attention to me.”

  I tried.

  I tried to pull myself back into the real world. Gerald only needed compliance. He would bully me and touch me and spend himself in my hands, and then he would leave, satisfied that he had taught me another lesson. The most important lesson of all: he was better than me, and I was nothing; he had control, and I had nothing; he was the abuser, and I was only the victim.

  I tried… but I wanted so badly to float away with the boy. I didn’t want to release his presence in my head. His pain had called to my pain, he had collected my screams the way he collected his own, and now I didn’t want to leave him. Selfishly, I wanted to leave my house, leave Gerald, and forget that I had a baby brother to look after. I wanted to forget the reason that I sat here, night after night, forcing compliance. I wanted to disappear into the world of screams and fire, where I could force the boy to fight against the monsters that battered at my mind.

  I wanted to embrace the looming insanity.

  “Stop. Leaving. Me.” Gerald’s grip on my neck turned punishing, cutting off the circulation to my lungs and forcing me backwards, until my head smacked into the wall.

  Not good. Tariq would hear that. I couldn’t risk him coming to investigate.

  Gerald heaved himself on top of me, trying to adjust himself for some new kind of punishment. I didn’t truly think that he would do it, until he was tugging down my pyjama pants.

  “Get off!” the boy screamed, fighting against Weston again. He managed to break Weston’s hold, and the older man seemed surprised.

  Unfortunately, the surprise didn’t last for long, and it was soon melting away into a cold, detached sort of fury. He walked to the other side of the room and retrieved a knife from the table. I balked, because there was already blood on the knife. It had dried to an ugly brown colour, caking along the shiny steel.

  Gerald’s teeth sank into my neck, his foul breath wafting up to my face, and his fingers fumbled between my legs. I began to grow dizzy, indecision tearing me in half. Gerald had never gone this far before, and I wasn’t convinced that I could allow him. Not even for Tariq.