“Yes, what?” Tad asks, stymied by my spontaneous affirmation.
“Um, I have to go visit Michelle. Ms. Richards wants the squad to show our solidarity.” Or was it unity?
“I heard all about that.” My mother takes in a deep worried breath.
At least something shot her down from her cloud.
“I’m headed there, too. I’ll give you a lift,” Marshall says.
“I’m going with Brielle.”
“I’ll extend the offer to her as well. We’ll be green.” He nods towards my mother. “It’s been lovely. I’ll return the favor at the ranch. I’m planning on having a community gathering to celebrate the opening. Of course, I can’t do it without my model in her wings.” He glides into a smile that reeks of sexual gratification.
“I think it’ll be a little chilly running around the ranch without any clothes on.” Tad huffs.
Thank you.
“She can wear a body suit.” My mom’s quick to save the moment, anything to please Mr. Studley.
“A body suit sounds disgusting,” I say getting up, and by the look on Marshall’s face, he agrees. “I gotta get my uniform on.”
“That’s perfect. Who wouldn’t like angel wings on an all American cheerleader?” He asks, pleased with the epiphany.
I can hear my mother agreeing with him, offering to make up posters just for the event.
It’s obvious Tad wanted to badly disfigure Marshall all night—stab him through the eye with a fork or something. Maybe my mother will end up having an affair with Marshall and that will end the monkey rein that’s taken over our lives?
That would be totally freaky.
Who knows, maybe some good will come from Marshall after all.
49
Stay
Michelle glows under the white-hot spotlight of faux somber attention. She’s magnetized to Marshall in an almost stalkerish way. Her parents and little sister head downstairs for dinner as soon as we arrive, so she could spend a little time with her friends, which is ironic since she only has the two, and the rest of us are glorified room décor.
Ms. Richards makes small talk before announcing it’s her bedtime. She winks over at Marshall before making a beeline for the door. Michelle catches on and grows uneasy. Her dark wavy hair rises high above her head in a bountiful birds nest, and her face is sallow as though she’s been dead a year herself.
“All I’ll need is a walking cast.” She espouses as though it were no big deal.
“Why’d you do it?” Nat doesn’t seem to have her mouth filter on.
I, for one, am glad she had the balls to ask because I’m dying to know.
“It’s called nocturnal something,” she says it dead serious as though it were an official medical term. “I was sleepwalking, and I got in the car and drove to the cliffs. I must have fallen off.” She fingers the rose around her neck in an effort to stabilize her shaking fingers. “I had a terrible nightmare.” Her lips turn a purplish-blue. She shakes her head. “I miss your class. Am I far behind?” She directs it at Marshall.
I can’t tell whether or not this is something sexual, or if she’s dead serious. Either way, she looks as if she were dropped off at the morgue, and death forgot to claim her.
“I’ll excuse you,” he says before nodding in my direction. “In fact, I was going to bring your assignments, but I was having dinner at the Messenger’s home.”
“Your house?” She pins me with her instant anger.
I’m not sure what Marshall’s motives are, but clearly pissing off Michelle for his sheer enjoyment is one of them.
“My mom…” I glance over at him. “My mom’s doing some work for him. He invited himself.”
“I would never do that.” He straightens.
“Michelle, you’ll get so much more rest with your jewelry off. Want me to help you with the necklace?” I offer. Despite the fact she’s a major bitch, I don’t really want her swan diving, or driving for that matter, in her sleep. Nor do I want to be forced to visit her in the hospital as an integral part of my grade.
“You guys mind leaving me and Messenger alone for a minute?” She doesn’t waver her immovable stare.
The room clears as quick as a blink.
“Dinner?” Her eyes flare up. Her olive skin brightens just beneath the surface of her wrath. “And now you want to steal my necklace?”
“I don’t want your boy-toy, and for sure I don’t want your necklace. But I promise you’ll feel better if you take it off.”
She slides the dirty rose along the chain, creating a sizzle of audible tension.
“No. I won’t take this off until the day I die.”
Might be quicker than she thinks. I purse my lips as I remember something.
“Hey,” I open my mouth in a fit of trepidation. “Ellis was telling me…” My stomach drops when I say his name. I keep forgetting he’s gone. “Um, that night at his party—homecoming last year…he says he saw you walking out of the forest, alone. He thought maybe you might have been the last one to see Chloe Bishop alive.”
“So now you’re accusing me of killing Chloe?” She asks as though it were ludicrous.
“No—not at all. It’s just that…I don’t know if you know, but Ellis is missing. They think it might be the same people that took her. You know, they might be responsible.”
Her face bleeds out all color. Her chest ceases to rise and fall. She’s completely stopped breathing.
“Michelle?”
She looks wearily towards the door and pulls the sheets up to her chin.
“I can’t sleep alone. Promise me you’ll stay with me.”
“What? What about Emily or Lexy? Or your mom?” All far more logical choices.
“Em and Lex can’t know I’m afraid.” She shakes her head in a panic. “They’ll never let me live it down, and my mom and dad won’t stay. They said I was a big girl and laughed at me for asking.”
“I have school tomorrow.” Plus, I need to be in L.A. and back before first period.
“You’ll stay, or I’ll tell everyone you’re sleeping with Mr. Dudley.”
“Everyone is sleeping with Mr. Dudley.” Except me, but I choose to excise the truth because apparently that’s how I roll these days.
“I’ll tell them you’re pregnant. I’ll tell them you had an abortion—ate your baby. Doesn’t matter, they’ll believe anything I want. Understand?”
“I’ll stay under one condition.”
“What?” Her teeth chatter, her voice is marked with a clear tremor.
“Tell me what you saw that night.”
“I saw…” Her eyes widen as she loses focus, just before she turns a hideous shade of grey and passes out.
50
L.A. Lady
The nurses decided Michelle is better off in ICU for the night where they can monitor her breathing, and not so unfortunately for me, that meant no overnight visitors.
I get straight to bed and feel myself sailing off into the past. I’ve become a master of heading off into whatever timeframe I want—master of disaster is a bit more accurate.
I give a hard blink and check out my surroundings. I’m in my cluttered up room back in L.A. Everything’s disheveled like before and the window’s shattered.
I bolt up and check down on the grass for signs of Ellis.
He’s there! He’s lying in a pool of silver glass with his hand up over his head like he’s trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
A chipped lattice trellis adheres to the wall outside my window. I climb out and try crawling down. It splinters under my weight and I dive two stories straight down, landing with my left leg below the knee splayed out unnaturally to the side.
A series of low gurgling moans escapes my throat as I try not to pass out from the sheer freaking horror of it all. Just the sight of my severely disjointed leg weakens me to the point of wanting to zoom back to Paragon.
“Is that painful?” Ellis says from over my shoulder.
T
his can go two ways as far as I see it. I panic and scream or man up and pop it back into joint—so I do both. I scream so loud it hardly sounds human. The tendons behind my knee feel severed, and the area swells instantly like a balloon. I pull back my jeans just enough.
This can be healed, I tell myself placing my hands over my knee with the utmost care. Maybe all I have to do is believe this is going to be OK?
I wait, but the swelling only seems to increase, and the adrenaline effect is wearing off, sending hot searing pain straight into my chest.
“Spit on it.” He commands.
“What?”
“See if that works. Spit on it.”
I spit in my hands and rub them over the hot spot on my leg. The swelling decreases a bit. My leg softens, and I can extend it again.
“It sort of worked. How’d you know that?”
“I didn’t. I just wanted to see if you’d spit on yourself.” He gives a tiny smirk of satisfaction. “Let’s get Gage and get the hell out of here. It feels like I’ve been down here for days.”
“More like years,” I say, attempting to get up on my feet and letting out a yelp. Still injured.
A loud thump emerges from inside the house, and my dad calls out my name.
“Come on.” Ellis takes me by the elbow, and we round out to the back of the house with me hobbling severely.
The side gate is wedged in dirt. We never used this gate, so it doesn’t surprise me. Ellis kicks it down, and helps me climb over the wreckage. The whole house has been destroyed—decimated. Just as my thoughts turn to what my neighbors might be thinking, a siren pierces through the thick humid air.
“Shit!” I mutter. “Gage!” I scream so loud it’s barely distinguishable. “Gage?”
The landscape darkens. Three moaning bodies with obvious knife wounds lie in the yard—all three of them male with long unkempt hair sporting dreadlocked beards of varying lengths. Pools of crimson spread beneath them. It’s so gruesome I can’t bear to look anymore.
A choir of hissing erupts.
“Time to go.” Ellis clasps onto my hand.
“Not without Gage.”
“Yes, without Gage.” Ellis scoops me up in his arms and traverses the series of bodies, running straight through the house and towards the front door.
“Skyla?” My dad calls chasing after us.
“He’s going to kill you.” I squirm out of Ellis’ arms. He snatches my hand, and we race to the end of the front lawn.
A brigade of police cars and fire trucks fill the streets.
“They’re going to think we slaughtered those Fems!” I panic.
Ellis shakes his head and points over towards the front door.
A police officer is talking to my father. Dad places a long bloodied kitchen knife down and places his hands up against the wall.
“They’re arresting my dad.” An air of disbelief cripples me.
A thick fog falls around us. It glows a subtle shade of blue.
“What’s happening?”
“We’re changing…”
“Changing what?”
“Dimensional planes.”
“What does that mean?” I’m not sure I want to know.
“It means, it’s on, and we need to get out of Dodge right the hell now.”
“What’s on?”
The ground trembles. A shadow falls over us thick as night. A bear-like Fem, tall as the house stomps in our direction.
Everything in me pulsates. I breathe in the congealed vapors that glaze my lungs like paste.
Its black eyes glisten. The red hole of its mouth yawns out a howl and his claw swipes down and cuts through Ellis’ midsection in one easy swipe.
“You’re bleeding,” I say stupidly.
I know that I should take Ellis and leave—never come back—beg the Oliver family to forgive me for losing Gage, but don’t. Instead I gather my strength and scream out the one name I never wanted to use.
“Marshall!”
With spirited precision he appears, clean, resplendent, radiating a light all his own. He reaches down into the fog and plucks one of the corpses from the yard.
“This is the best you can do?” He yells at it as though it could hear him. He pushes violently into the bear-like Fem, “Skyla, are you afraid of dead bodies? Over sized bears?”
“No.” Actually that’s not true, but a stubborn part of me refuses to say otherwise. I feel blindly for Ellis and grab onto his fingers.
“Useless.” He slams the body back to the ground. “You play on fears. She’s looking into resurrections, and you think she’ll cower from a little rotting flesh?”
It takes a moment for me to figure out he’s schooling the Fems on how best to frighten me.
“Where are your take downs? Body counts? Have you forgotten you have the authority to damage human flesh?” He swipes his hand through the air, and the giant bear-like Fem disappears.
“I thought you were on my side,” I yell.
“Until you choose me, I’m neither for you or against you.”
“I won’t make a good wife if I’m dead.” I pan the area. “Where’s Gage?”
He points just beyond the house. Right there in the ethereal plane, a meadow of fog and shadows, Gage is wrestling with a muscular lion-looking creature—he’s stretching its face with his hand, clasping at his throat.
“It’s a battle to the death. Entertaining as hell. We’re taking wagers. You want to guess who’ll win?” Marshall asks.
I walk over stunned. My footsteps move through the fog creating a series of hollow clicks.
“We shouldn’t really be messing with all this crap,” Ellis groans.
“Get in there and help him,” I say.
“I don’t think I…I don’t feel like…”
I don’t wait for Ellis to stammer through his laundry list of excuses. I move forward until the ground quakes beneath my feet from their tumbling. The air becomes alive with their fearful grunting.
It’s not a lion at all. It’s a half beast, just like the panthers from the backyard—something strangely human about it.
“Back up,” Gage growls.
I don’t see his mouth move when he says it. I hadn’t realized he knew I was watching.
Claws as long as butcher knives slice through his chest. Four glossy red ribbons bloom across his crisp white t-shirt. Gage cries out and releases his grasp on the beast’s throat. Another gash appears on his thigh, slices through his jeans easy as butter.
“I’ll do it.” It comes out feeble. “Marshall…” I can’t stand here and watch as Gage gets dissected.
I turn to see my father driving off in the back of a police car, just beyond the fog. I know they’ll never make it to the station, or if they do, he’ll burn later, somehow. “I choose you.” I look up, but it’s not Marshall standing there behind me, or Ellis.
“Logan!” I wrap my arms around his waist at Mach five.
“Stay back.” He drops a kiss on the top of my head and gently pulls away.
Logan looks different, noble—older.
He strides over to the lion and whips it off Gage by the tail. He helps a bloodied and bruised Gage back up onto his feet.
The lion creature surges. It pounces on Logan’s back and lands him flat on the ground. In a fit of wrestling and snarling, and with Gage trying to pluck the beast off of him, Logan manages to get a firm grip on its mane and gives a series of violent yanks until the neck of the lion snaps and its mouth is fully facing the wrong side of its body.
Gage gives Logan a hand upright.
It’s lifeless. The once ferocious creature, the size of a car, lays motionless with its broken body expelling a steady trickle of blood.
Logan walks over to it. I’m afraid the beast will animate and clamp its razor-like teeth into his leg, so I clutch onto Ellis as though that has the power to stop anything.
Almost as an afterthought Logan reaches down and claws a line down the center of the lion’s chest. The skin parts in two
, creating a bright red seam down its chest. He stretches back the flesh and turns the beast over, shaking out its insides until they slosh out onto the velum-like floor. Intestines—long, coiled grey tubing, an enlarged liver, a bloated pink bag, gallons of blood, and yellow glimmering fat all slink out with a lazy swoosh.
Logan and Gage walk over to us, shoulders back, their gaze straight on. Logan clasps my left hand and Gage my right. Logan walks right through Ellis, and I feel myself falling.
51
Sublime
I’m not on my bed, but the sweet scent of cedars assures me I’m somewhere safely on Paragon. It’s cold and dark and the fog gently lifts revealing Gage bent over nursing his wounds.
“You’re hurt.” I place my hand over his stomach. The moonlight reveals a thick coat of dark liquid, warm and sticky. I think I’m going to be sick.
“I better get you home.” A voice booms over my shoulder. Logan steps in and places Gage’s arm around his shoulder. “You want to come?” He looks at me with those perfect amber eyes. They glimmer in this light and give him an otherworldly glow. It’s hard to tell under the cover of night, but he looks like his younger self again.
“I’ll get a ride with Ellis. Just get him help,” I say rubbing the back of my hand soft against Gage’s cheek.
Gage gives the impression of a smile, and they disappear.
“Let’s get out of here.” Ellis hops into his truck. It takes a minute to register we’re standing in the student parking lot of West—strange, but not half as strange as the last twenty-four hours, or two years combined have been.
I get in, still nursing my badly wounded knee. We drive for a good long while without saying a word.
“So, what’s up with that treble thing?” I’m too tired to piece that mystery together myself.
“It’s a loop that repeats until I dismiss it.”
“It’s not your typical treble, is it?” I keep thinking of that treble with Ezrina. I was back in her underground mausoleum within the hour. Something’s not right.