Authors: Lynnie Purcell
He eyed the guitar I had left on the bed. He picked it up, sat on the bed, and started playing. His fingers were a lot more certain over the strings than mine had been, as he played a classical piece beyond my ability. I sat opposite from him in comfortable silence and listened to his playing in wonder. It was the first time he had ever played for me.
“They’re going to have the girl’s funeral in ten minutes,” Daniel finally said.
“That’s quick,” I said.
“The possibility she might come back sort of necessitates a fast send off,” he replied.
“Oh, right,” I said, having forgot about our propensity to ‘go zombie,’ if our bodies weren’t taken care of properly.
His fingers hesitated on the strings. “Reaper asked me to go out with him tonight.”
“Did you tell him you were already dating someone?” I asked.
“On a mission,” he clarified starting to play the guitar again. “He asked me while you were sleeping.”
“What are you going to be doing?” I asked.
He stopped playing again and touched my hand.
Reaper got some intelligence of a…shipment of Watchers headed for Darian’s. We’re going to look into it.
Define ‘look into.’
See what we see,
he said vaguely.
And if you see what you think you’re going to see?
He removed his hand from mine with a meaningful look. I didn’t need the words to know there would be a fight.
“Jackson’s coming with me,” he promised. “But I won’t go if you don’t want me to.”
I sighed, and stopped him from playing with a hand on the strings.
“We’re here for a reason. I know that we’re both…wary,” It was a better word than ‘terrified,’ “of losing each other again, but we also can’t bury our heads in the sand hoping the tide won’t come in. If you feel it’s important to go…you should go. That’s all there is to it.”
“If you say so,” Daniel said with small smile.
“Have you and Jackson patched things up?” I asked after a minute.
“Patched things up?” he asked, thoughtfully tapping on the guitar with his finger.
“I saw that you two had a fight,” I said.
“It’s not the first time we’ve fought,” Daniel said. “He knows I didn’t mean it.”
“Does he?” I asked.
Daniel set the guitar down and stood, pulling me up after him. “Fair enough. I’ll talk to him, if you talk to Alex.”
“What about?” I asked, wondering if I had somehow made her mad.
“Eli,” he said. “The funeral is about to start.”
I sighed and walked out of the room with him at my side.
Everyone was already there when we arrived at the room. The halls were filled with more people than I had seen inside at one time. It was another clue to the extraordinary number of people Reaper had under his command. As we joined the group, which was quiet in their mourning, a low voice started to sing. The crowd shifted and parted as the body of the girl, now wrapped in a white sheet, was brought out of the room on the arms of Ghost, King, Grace and Elizabeth. Preacher walked behind them, his voice lifted in song.
“…Swing low sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home…”
They walked down the hall and out of the back doors of the school. The crowd followed. I watched as the girl’s body was carried to the back of the building, where a large stack of wood had been formed into a pyre. They carefully lowered the body to the wood, as Preacher continued his song. Others started singing, joining Preacher’s dirge, the sound rich and melodic. The night air was a chorus of sorrow.
Elizabeth stepped forward as the song drew to a close and took out a silver lighter from her pocket. She touched the lighter to the wood. A flame crawled up the wood, slowly engulfing the girl’s body. The group watched in silence as the body was consumed by the fire. Then, in pairs and in groups, people left.
Elizabeth stayed to watch the girl burn, her face angry and sad. It was obvious she wasn’t going to let go of her guilt anytime soon; not until she found the person responsible. From the expression on her face, I pitied the person who had pulled the trigger. There would be no mercy when she found them.
As I turned away from the burning body, to follow the others inside, I noticed a movement from a room on the second floor. It caught my eye, and I looked up. A woman with blazing red hair stared down at the fire. Her vivid, red hair was nothing compared to the red of her eyes. They were the color of a Nightstalker’s only more intense, more crimson. Her eyes were the eyes of a killer consumed by purpose…yet her face was soft and full of mourning as she looked down. She turned away when she noticed me looking and disappeared from sight.
Daniel had noticed the woman as well. He shrugged at me when our eyes met, not understanding either why the woman would mourn a member of the group from such a distance, and held his hand out for me to take. I took it, feeling comforted by the feel of his skin on mine.
Behind me, the body burned. A sad trail of smoke reached up to touch the heavens for a girl I had never known, but one I would always remember. She would become a symbol of the day that I realized no haven, even those that were heavily fortified, was truly safe from the storm.
The war, and its consequences, was everywhere. There was no escape – only a growing purpose to end the suffering.
Chapter 12
The common area was full of people when Daniel and I got there. People had bottles in their hands and were going around the room making toasts before they drank. Reaper was making one as we entered.
“K.J’s sacrifice and bravery will be remembered. Her name will be traced into our memories forever, for the hero she was. For K.J!”
It was simple, but poignant, the mark of a good speech.
“K.J.!” the others intoned sadly, raising their drinks in a salute. As one, they drank from their cups.
The memorial lasted an hour, and included lots of drinking, loud music and sad conversations remembering the one they called ‘K.J.’
After the memorial, people left again, necessity forcing them back to the jobs they had to do in the name of the Saints. When the room had half cleared, and only those without serious jobs were left, Reaper came over to where Daniel, Alex and I had claimed a couch. I saw Spider in the corner talking with some shady-looking characters and the kids hanging out at a table close by. Margaret had left on a mystery mission I wasn’t curious enough to ask about, around my sadness.
“Are you ready?” Reaper asked Daniel.
“Yeah. I’ll be back soon,” Daniel promised me.
“Don’t say that,” I said with a pained expression. “It’s bad luck.”
“What should I say?” he asked.
“Something else that couldn’t potentially be ironic,” I said.
“You make life complicated,” Daniel told me.
“Yep,” I agreed.
He kissed me on my neck and whispered in my ear, “Be safe,” before he stood and walked off with Reaper.
Jackson materialized from the crowd and joined them silently, his bulk moving people out of his way. I watched Daniel walk out of the room with a scowl I couldn’t resist. Though what he was doing was important, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to tolerate watching him leave again. It felt like a knife to the chest. It made me feel as helpless as when I was holding K.J.’s chest together, without the knowledge of how to put her back together again.
I made a decision as I watched him walk away. Despite my injury, I would go with Daniel on his next mission. Watching him walk into danger was too difficult…especially now that I was fully aware of results should something go wrong. There was no reason the both of us couldn’t contribute.
“This group is an interesting little study in psychology,” Alex said lightly from the other end of the sofa. I could tell she sensed my agitation and was only talking to stop me from following Daniel.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“They’re used to violence, they’ve been raised in it, and yet they can’t seem to come to accept the fact that their group isn’t always successful. They think of themselves as indestructible, but they know they aren’t. It’s a curious lie.”
“Perhaps, it’s a lie they tell themselves, so they can keep on doing what they need to do,” I suggested.
“That’s one reason,” she agreed.
My eyes strayed back to the kids. They were the brightest lights in the room and helped me maintain my seat. Twitch, Cora and Ethan were laughing at Sprint, who was showing off for the group by telling jokes and stories. Cora and Ethan kept blushing when they caught each other’s eyes, the mutual crush they shared only having grown during the months I had been away; they only lacked the words to express the feelings they shared. I knew they would get around to it eventually. Then, my attention moved to Spider, who was still chatting with the shady-looking Watchers in the corner. They were talking about moving some stolen merchandise and the kinds of fees Spider expected for his help. Watching him was like watching a tiger shark move among baby sharks searching for a meal. Though Spider’s friends were Watchers, they didn’t have his keen intelligence and sharp intuitive sense.
As I sat watching them, trying to sort out right and wrong, one of the men I had been introduced to by Reaper, one of his ‘generals’ approached the table and bent down between Twitch and Cora. I searched for his name in my memory bank, instantly tense. He was a stranger and the expression on his face was far from kind. The name came to me: he was the one Reaper had called Quinn. He was the one who had abandoned the poker game, after Spider had joined it. Behind him were two very large men, who carried themselves like bodyguards. Quinn started talking in a low, angry hiss. Over the chattering voices and music playing, I heard his words.
“This common area is for Watchers only,” he said.
The laughter died from the kids’ faces in an instant. I heard their thoughts switch from comfortable to defensive. They had faced many bullies during their time on the streets, and all of the kids were thinking about likely outcomes of the confrontation in front of them. Cora and Twitch were visibly frightened; their proximity to Quinn didn’t help their fear. Quinn’s smug expression at seeing their reactions, and the laughs from his flunkies, had anger burning through my body.
“Where’s it say that?” Sprint asked, indignant at his words.
“We’ll go,” Ethan said, aware that this breed of bully was a lot more dangerous than the kind they were used to.
I was already out of my seat. I moved through the tables and couches as quickly as I could. Alex followed on my heels, not hearing what I had heard but aware of the tension in the air. I reached the table just as Ethan was standing. I put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, to make him keep his seat. There was no way I was going to let Quinn bully them into leaving. We had been invited. We had as much right to be in the common area as Quinn did. Ethan’s eyes widened when he saw my expression.
“There a problem here?” I asked Quinn, staring into his dark, brown eyes with unflinching resolve.
Quinn refocused on me. “I don’t like insects crawling around my home,” he said. “My experience is that bugs in the house make for messy living.”
“And what school of stupid did you graduate from exactly?” I asked.
“Clare…” Alex warned glancing around the suddenly quiet room.
The other Watchers had broken off from their conversations to listen in. I sensed them hoping for a fight. They assumed Quinn would win.
“They haven’t earned the right to be here,” Quinn said. “They’re weak. Useless.”
“You haven’t given them time to earn the right,” I pointed out.
“Humans have no rights, by default,” he said.
“Your bigotry has been noted,” I said. “Though, I doubt half the people here are as capable as they are...and you, well, barely half.”
“Capable!” he scoffed. “At what? Wasting oxygen?”
He hadn’t noticed what I had noticed. Ethan, Sprint and Spider, who had abandoned the shady characters in the corner to join us, all held up things from Quinn’s pockets: a watch with an orange face, a wallet, a black lighter with a snake eating its own tail. Things that looked important to him. The other Watchers in the room laughed, none of them having noticed the kids’ quick hands in the midst of the drama. The laughter embarrassed Quinn. He grabbed his belongings back, his eyes switching into a more scary darkness; it was the darkness of anger.
“Humans don’t belong here. They endanger us all,” he said in a cold voice.
“Reaper doesn’t seem to think so,” I said.
“Reaper doesn’t know everything,” Quinn replied.
“He knows enough,” Alex said.
Quinn’s eyes turned sly. “His word won’t always be the strongest word here,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
Quinn shrugged and didn’t answer my question. “When certain other voices are stronger, these flies…these humans, will no longer have a place in the Saints. You would do well to remember that.”
“You realize one of your parents had to have been a human, right?” I asked.
“More like a donkey,” Spider muttered.