Chapter Seventeen
Hex
Grogg is Grogg again. Hex smells his butt and he scampers away, ducking behind a tree. Hex moves through the tree and pounces on the mud troll, pinning him to the ground. “Why?” Hex barks. “Why’d you do it?”
Grogg tilts his head at an angle. In his creaky voice, he says, “Old Master commands it. We must obey.”
Hex isn’t surprised Grogg can understand him. Grogg is a magical being, after all. “Rhett is my master,” he barks. “But I only obey him if it’s the right thing to do.”
Grogg scrunches up his face and some of the mud sloughs off, revealing yet another layer of mud. He looks at Hex quizzically. “How do you do this thing you speak of?” he asks.
Hex licks Grogg’s face and rolls off, allowing the troll to sit up. “No matter how many masters we have, we still have a choice,” he barks. “We are the only master that truly matters.”
Grogg pinches his muddy cheeks and twists his malformed ears. One of them pops off and Grogg rolls it into a ball. He pops it in his mouth, chewing slowly, as if deep in thought. A moment later, his missing ear pops out from the side of his head. Hex chuffs and chases his tail gleefully. “See,” he barks. “You did that without anyone telling you to. And it was amazing!”
Grogg seems to be inspired by Hex’s encouragement, grabbing his ankles and lifting his brown, clumpy feet over his own head like a contortionist. But he doesn’t stop there. He keeps going, his knees melting into his shoulders, his feet arcing down his back, past his rear, and back into place again, his knees reappearing from somewhere south of his torso. Delighted, Hex leaps into the air, allowing butterfly wings to sprout from his back, fluttering rapidly to propel him into a hover a few feet off the ground.
Letting out a husky chuckle, Grogg springs into the air, wrapping his arms around Hex’s neck and hanging on tightly while Hex flies them over the trees, past buildings, above creeks and fields and mountains and valleys. When Hex twists around to look at his passenger, Grogg’s head is spinning like a top, taking in the scenery with unabashed excitement.
“See!” Hex barks, and he doesn’t mean just the beauty of the landscape. He means the beauty of freedom.
“Yes,” Grogg grunts. “I see.
“Will you help me rescue my friends?” he barks.
“I will try,” Grogg says.
Chapter Eighteen
Laney
I’m not really hungry anymore. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry again. Without even bothering to clean my spew from her dress, Chloe fed the rest of the slugs to Bil, who ate them happily. For someone who said “Hunger is nothing,” he had quite an appetite.
Chloe left us after that, ignoring me when I hissed, “Get us out of here!” as she walked away.
So we’re still screwed. Well, I’m screwed, I don’t think Bil cares either way. He’s been muttering something under his breath for a while now, but I can’t understand him. I gave up asking him to speak up, because he just ignored me anyway.
My arms and legs ache from being held so tightly in one position for so long. I’ve got a headache from the band wrapped around my forehead, and from the knock I took on the noggin last night. And there’s an annoying drip coming from one of the stalactites that’s making me want to rip my hair out one strand at a time—but I can’t even indulge in self-abuse with my arms strapped.
With nothing better to do, I close my eyes and try to sleep, but Bil’s incessant whispering makes it impossible.
“Better…,” he says. There’s more, the word a part of a longer sentence, but I can’t make it out, the hissing echoes bouncing off each other and turning the words into garbled mush.
“What’s better, Bil?” I ask, running out of patience. And I might be slightly curious as to what the inner workings of a madman sound like.
His peripheral vision meets my peripheral vision. “This way,” he says. “Better this way.”
That’s what he’s been muttering for two hours? God, I wish I had my Glock right now. I’d shoot him, and then shoot myself. A stab of laughter chokes me. That wouldn’t work, of course. Bil would just be able to Resist my magic bullets, and I’d end up vaporizing myself.
“There’s nothing about our situation that’s better,” I say. “So please shut the hell up, Bil Nez.”
“No!” he says loudly, and for a second I think he’s responding to me. But then he says it again. “No!” Along with: “Yes.” The internal battle continues on. “No! Yes! No! Yes! Stop it stop it stop it better better better…better…this…way…” The last word trails off in defeat, and he starts sobbing.
“Bil?” I say.
“Who is that?” he asks.
“Take a wild guess.”
“Laney?”
Thank God, I think. The real Bil Nez is back. The one I dislike, but not quite enough to hate. Things are looking up. “The one and only,” I say. “Welcome back to the land of the sane.”
“Where are we? Why can’t I move? What happened?”
“In a cave. Magical straps. Caught by Flora.” I’m tempted to tell him about the bellyful of slugs he’s got, but that would be just plain mean, even for me.
There’s silence as he takes a moment to process my snap answers. “Why aren’t we dead?” he asks next.
“I think Flora is collecting Resistors, so you get a free pass for now. Me, I’m bait for her to complete her Resistor collection.”
“Rhett.”
I say nothing.
“She thinks no one will be able to stop her once she has all the Resistors,” Bil says, getting up to speed in a hurry.
“Pretty much,” I say.
“But she won’t be able to force us to use our Resistance to help her,” Bil says. “I’ll just go to my other place if she tries to torture me. And Rhett would die before he’d let himself be used by Flora again.”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s already got one Resistor who is willing to help her. Keeping you and Rhett squirrelled away is enough for her, then at least no one else can use you against her.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Bil says.
“You think? I’ve got a plan, but it involves breaking most of our bones to escape these straps, so if you’ve got anything better…”
Instead of answering, Bil says, “What did I do while I was…gone?”
“Nothing much,” I say. “Provided dozens of nuggets of wisdom, spoke in tongues, ate slugs, the usual.”
“Very funny,” he says, but on the edge of my vision I can see the corner of his lips quirk up. Sometimes the truth is the hardest to believe.
“Flora seems to like you,” I add. “I think she’ll like the other you better than this you.”
“At least someone does,” he mutters.
“Hey, the other you was kind of growing on me, too,” I say, keeping my voice steady.
“Really?”
“No, not really.”
“Oh.” I can’t miss the misery in his voice.
“Sorry,” I say. “I just—I deal with things by making jokes.”
“At the expense of others,” Bil says.
Uh. Yeah. I guess he’s right. I don’t really mock myself nearly as much as I probably should. I try to think of a good one. “Uh, I’m so fat that I don’t care that the internet is broken because I’m already worldwide.”
Silence. I guess I shouldn’t choose standup comedy as a viable career path.
Bil says, “But you’re not fat.”
“It’s just a joke.”
“But it makes no sense unless you’re fat.”
I sigh. He’s right. I suck at making fun of myself. “I invite you to do better,” I say.
“You’re encouraging me to make fun of you?”
I probably have it coming. “Yeah.”
“Your voice is so husky you could be a coconut,” Bil says.
I laugh because it’s so stupid it’s funny. “Nice.”
“No wait, I got one. Your voice is so h
usky you could be a man pretending to be a girl for Halloween.”
Less funny. “Is my voice really that bad?”
Bil grins. “Nah. I’m just making a point. Not so much fun when you’re on the receiving end, is it?”
“Guess not,” I say. “Sorry. If you can stop doing stupid stuff and saying stupid things, it would really help me to tone down the jokes.”
“You’re hopeless,” Bil says, which makes me realize I’ve insulted him even as I’ve apologized for insulting him. Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought.
Footsteps urge us into silence. They’re louder than Flora’s silky footfalls and more certain and confident than Chloe’s timid ones. Whoever it is stops between us, and I can barely make out an obsidian outline of a person.
I can hear breathing.
“What do you want?” I snap, tired of whatever game is being played.
“You’re the girlfriend of the last Resistor,” a female voice says. “I remember you. You tried to kill me and my Master with your pathetically inadequate toy gun.”
Oh gosh. It’s the other Resistor. No, not just some random Resistor, I remember. The sister Rhett never knew he had. Rain Carter. From the sounds of it, she doesn’t even know Rhett’s her brother. Do I tell her? Will it help or make things worse? “You can’t protect that retractable-clawed witch forever,” I say. “If I don’t kill her, someone else will.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” she says. “But I will go on.” Her voice sounds strange. Almost tinny, like it’s echoing in her mouth even before it echoes in the cave. This girl has some serious issues.
“Why did you come? Has this become some kind of human zoo so you and your Shifter buddies can come by and gawk at us? Want me to grunt like a monkey or something?”
“I came to speak to Bil Nez,” she says.
“Why hello there,” Bil says in his deepest voice. Gag. If we’re pinning our hopes on Bil’s ability to seduce Rhett’s sister, then we might as well season our slugs with cyanide and call it a day.
“We need your help,” Rain says.
“I bet you do,” Bil says. Although I have nothing in my stomach, I almost dry-heave.
“To win this war,” she clarifies.
“Screw you,” Bil says, and I want to cheer. I feel a swell of pride.
“The humans won’t accept you,” Rain says. “You’re not like them. Your parents are magic-born, and although you didn’t get the same gifts as them, you got different gifts. Special gifts.”
“I’m not five years old,” Bil says. “I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny anymore.”
“What about Santa Claus?” I ask, jumping in.
“A fat, jolly man who traverses the whole of the earth in a single night, all the while keeping track of the good versus bad kids? C’mon, try your fairy tale on someone with a little less experience,” Bil says.
I laugh at that. He almost sounds…like me.
“What the hell are you even talking about?” Rain says, stepping forward where I can see her better. Even from the corner of my eye, the resemblance to Rhett is striking. She’s a big girl, not someone you’d want to get into a fight with. She wouldn’t be slapping, she’d be hammering. She’s tall, close to six feet, with broad shoulders and wide hips. Her lips are full, dark around the edges and pink where they meet, pouting out slightly on the bottom. Her eyes are a darker brown than Rhett’s, closer to Martin Carter’s color, almost black, but bigger. If her stare wasn’t so sharp, she could almost be considered doe-eyed. If she didn’t look so angry, she could almost be pretty, in an I-want-to-devour-you-for-breakfast kind of way.
I don’t respond and Bil doesn’t either; apparently he’s taking her in as well. I wonder if her resemblance to Rhett will make him more or less inclined to pursue her affections. I’m really hoping for less.
Standing between us, she seems uncertain, rocking from one foot to the other. As if she’s waiting for something. Finally, she says, “I don’t know—I want to—Fine. You’ve made your choice.”
“Wait,” I say, but she’s already spun around and out of sight, the echoes of her footsteps making her exit sound like a stampede rather than the retreat of a single individual.
“That was odd,” Bil says, and coming from him, that says a whole lot.
~~~
We’ve discussed it to death and agreed on nothing. Bil wants to play along, to pretend to switch sides, and then later try to sabotage the Shifters. I’d rather wait and see how it plays out, at least for now. I don’t say it, but I don’t exactly trust that the real Bil will stick around long enough to carry out his proposed plan. And who knows what the other Bil will do when pressed by Rain again. He might even help them, which could be disastrous on so many levels.
We’re still arguing when Bil suddenly groans. I can barely make out that he’s closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide. As if he’s in pai—
“It hurts!” he howls.
“What?” I say, helplessly watching my fellow schemer’s body strain against his bindings, clearly in serious agony.
“He…wants…to…get…inside…me! Argh!”
I’m more than freaked out, but there’s nothing I can do except to provide verbal encouragement for Bil’s fight against some invisible foe. “Fight back! Keep him out! You can do it!” If I had a boom box I’d press play and the Rocky theme song would erupt from the speakers.
“Can’t! Too strong!”
“You can!” I say. “You are stronger!” A skeptical thought shoots through my mind, but if this is some kind of an elaborate joke, I will get my revenge later. At least, if I’m not eaten by a panther first.
And then, as quickly as whatever force came to assault him, it’s gone, leaving Bil panting and breathless. “Oh gosh”—huff huff huff—“oh man”—more breathing—“it’s over. I think it’s over.”
“What was that?”
“I—I think it was a wizard,” Bil says.
And then he passes out.
Chapter Nineteen
Rhett
Although both Xave and Mr. Jackson counseled that there was nothing we could’ve done differently, that the minds of the humans were already made up, I still feel like a big fat loser. A week ago I’d convinced myself that my purpose was greater than the vengeful path I was on. I thought I could make a difference, that I could help bring about peace in a world that so desperately needs a break from the killing.
But now I feel like a fool for thinking I was more important than anyone else. Because I’m not. I’m just a lost teen with an uncanny ability to Resist magic. All it took was a single silver-tongued, well-dressed dude to pull everyone away from me, like the Pied Piper skipping along playing his damn flute.
“Maybe you should denounce your alliance with the magic-born and kick us out,” Xave says as we walk side by side toward the ruins of the White House.
My head snaps toward him. “Are you serious?” I say. “I could never do that.”
“I mean you could pretend. Gain their trust again. Give us time to prove ourselves to them.”
I shake my head. “That’s not the way it should work. You helped save them the last time. You’ve already proven yourselves.”
“I know,” Xave says. “I just wish there was another way. They won’t last ten minutes out there.”
He’s right, which is what scares me. Not because we’re just guessing, but because I’ve Seen it. It was Trish’s final gift to me before she gave her life to save Laney. A vision of a dark future, in which thousands of humans were destroyed by the magic-born. But before I decide anything, I have to know exactly what the vision means.
Tara rises from where she’s sitting and glides across the lawn to meet us. “Rhett Carter,” she says. “Xavier Jackson. I’ve been expecting you both.”
Of course she is. They don’t call them Clairvoyants for nothing.
“Then you already know why we’re here,” I say.
“The vision Mother gave you,” she says. Consideri
ng I only knew Trish as a nine-year-old girl, it still freaks me out the way the Claires refer to her as their mother. I try not to think about it too much in case my brain explodes.
“Do you know what I saw?” I ask.
“We all saw it,” she says. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. The vision felt so personal, like it was a gift from Trish to me, a secret shared between two confidants. My face must give away my astonishment, or she just read my mind, because she says, “There is nothing personal about our magic. What one of us does, the others feel. Our visions are shared, as is our pain. We saw what she showed you, and we wept. We felt our Mother’s agony as she ripped herself apart to save her sister, and we cried tears of joy and sorrow for her sacrifice and death.”
I’ve always thought of the Claires as being so strong and untouchable. The idea of them mourning for both their mother and humanity with the same tears sends a shiver of emotion through me. “I think I understand,” I say. “But I need to know: Is there more? In the vision I was powerless. The end was coming and people were dying and there was no one to help them. They were lost souls.”
“There is no more,” she says, and my heart sinks into a morass of despair.
“Then there is no hope,” I say.
“I wasn’t finished,” she says, gently chiding my interruption like a patient schoolteacher to an unruly student. “Hope isn’t a single act, or a vision of the future, or even a rope that magically appears so you can grab onto it. No, hope is created from within yourself, by sheer strength of will alone. Hope cannot be given, nor taken away. Hope dies a thousand deaths under the weakness of humans and magic-born alike, and hope lives forever in those who promise to nurture it.” She extends her hand and touches my face, her skin so soft I could close my eyes and imagine rose petals brushing my cheek. “You are hope,” she says. Next she cups Xave’s chin and he can’t hold back his smile. “And you. A human and a magic-born, not mired in fear and hate, but connected by love and friendship and…” Her eyes twinkle like blue diamonds.