Fear My Mortality (13 page)

In the meantime, I had to make the house as safe as I could, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to protect myself when it was empty. It wasn’t as if there were any heavy cupboards to board up windows. Then I remembered Dad’s outdoor shed. It might have some tools I could use.

I detoured to my bedroom, pulled open my dance bag, and filled it with anything I thought would be useful: jeans and t-shirts, nail scissors, tweezers, pens and pencils, sturdy shoes, a pair of costume glasses—which led me to my costume bag where I found two wigs and performance make-up I’d used in dance performances. If I had to disguise myself, at least I had somewhere to start.

Then I raced downstairs where the gloom hit me. I remembered it all over again, the door rattling behind me, the glassy rain on my head. My back still ached, the cut stung, and so did my feet. I shoved on the laundry door, working it open just enough to slide through.

Satisfied that I was alone in the yard, I jogged over to the shed to find the latch ajar. Which probably meant Dad had taken his things with him, after all. I levered the door open, wincing when it creaked, finding it hard to see anything more than vague shapes. I knew I’d regret it if I turned on the fluorescent light, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. There could be any number of life-saving items in there—or none at all.

I stumbled inside, shuffling my feet so I didn’t trip on anything. A few steps inside, it was pitch black, and I prepared to shut myself in the dark and flick on the light.

There was a flash of light moments after the crunch of soft footfalls. I froze in my tracks. Torchlight pooled at the door to the shed, a circular glow like an artificial moon on the grass. “Ava?”

I grabbed the nearest object—a coiled up hose—and stepped out into the light, surprised when the torch clicked off, leaving us in darkness.

“Stay back,” I warned, thinking that a hose wouldn’t do much, but it was heavy and I could throw it, and at least it was
something
.

“Ava? It’s me. Michael.”

Oh no. Not him.
He was the last person I expected. “Stay away from me.”

“I’m not a wicked witch.” The smile in his voice made my face burn as my eyes adjusted to the dark. A stupid hose wasn’t going to protect me from Michael Bradley, the guy who took a knife and cut my life into pieces.

“I don’t melt,” he continued. The corners of his mouth tugged up, his shoulders relaxed, and I saw a glimmer of the guy he was at school. “Even around you.”

My hand went slack around the garden hose. It thudded against the side of the shed when I threw it away.

Michael’s grin was short-lived, replaced by a narrowing of his eyes. “There’s glass all over the back porch. Was it Bashers or Hazards?”

When I didn’t answer, he stuffed the torch behind his back. “I’m amazed you escaped them.” He held up his hands as though it would make me feel better. “I’m not here to hurt you. Seriously, Ava. I’m not.”

“Right.” He was the one who stabbed Josh to death. The one who drove me to the recovery center where Reid tortured me. His godfather was some kind of high-ranking officer. Of course he was there to hurt me. It was probably his job to lure me somewhere so they could capture me.

“Look. Can we go inside? It’s not safe out here.”

“Like I’m letting you in the house with me.”

I stepped toward him, and he took a step back, still with his hands placating in the air. “I’m not one of them. I’m really not.”

“There’s no way you can convince me of that. Your godfather—Cheyne—the one who was supposed to be on my side. He’s part of this.” I gestured at the shattered glass adorning the back porch. “So are you.”

“Really? Maybe we have more in common than you think.”

“You can’t die. I can.” I spat out the words and advanced on him with my fists clenched. “We are so far apart from each other it’s not funny.”

Again, he took a step back, and I wondered if he was as afraid of me as Ms. White had been. No matter what they said on the news, I knew I couldn’t hurt him—even though I wanted to, so badly. I wanted to take away from him what he’d taken away from me. My brother. My parents. My safety. My whole world.

I sought the coiled shadow of the hose again and realized that I could use it, that it could buy me time. I lunged for it, and he must not have anticipated me at all because he just stood there, preparing to speak, as if anything he could say would convince me to listen.

The hose gripped in one hand, I landed a punch on his startled face with my other. It was a wimpy hit, but he stumbled backward, surprise etched on his features. As soon as he was on the back foot, I shoved him, as hard as I could, so he lost his balance.

Before he recovered, I snapped the hose around his neck, jerked on it to force his head down, and catapulted onto his back. I yanked the ends in opposite directions, crushing the resistance of his neck, straining my forearms. He fought me, leveraging his elbow to jab me lightly in the chin, so lightly I wondered why he didn’t clobber me like I knew he could.

It wouldn’t kill him. But if I could get the hose tight enough to crush his neck, render him unconscious, he’d take a few minutes to recover: a few minutes for me to get back to the house and escape.

My chest heaved. Sobs wracked through me. My arms burned and my heart choked.

I gripped harder, arm muscles boiling, kneeing him in the back to keep him down, trying not to think about what I was doing. Especially when my own timid voice in the back of my mind told me:
this is wrong
.

He wasn’t struggling that hard. I was sure he had more strength than this. He could have turned the tables on me, wrenched himself out of my grip, thrown me off him, and then charged at me.

All he did was try to speak. One word, over and over. His voice gasped for air, trying to be heard and it finally edged into my consciousness.

“Out … cast.”

He strained to say it again, and again. My eyes widened. That’s what I was—an outcast. But why would he say that to me—insult me—unless he meant …
just like him
.

A cry tore out of me and my hands shook, the hose slippery with my sweat and tears. I stumbled away from him, catching myself before I tripped and fell, hovering off to the side as if I was the wounded one, staring back at him with my heart in tatters.

He hunched on the ground, a crumpled mound, one arm hidden under him, the other trying to hold himself up. His torso shook so hard his arm gave out and he dropped his forehead to the ground, coughing into the dirt and grass.

“Outcast.” He heaved out the word and then there was silence, broken only by his rasping breath in the frozen air.

For the longest time, he huddled on the ground, and for an eternity I stared at him, hearing that word inside my head and thinking about how it applied to me so completely. I wasn’t part of the world anymore. I was outside it all. I tilted my head back and even the stars seemed that much further away, as though they couldn’t stand to be near me.

That’s when it hit me how quiet it was, how dark. None of the neighboring houses had lights on. There hadn’t been any headlights all evening, cars shining their way down the street into garages. No people walking dogs. No familiar clatter as neighbors took out the trash. No doors opening and closing or kids playing in backyards.

If I walked down the street right then and peered inside the houses, I knew they would be empty. Relocated.
Evacuated
. Away from the worst threat of all: me.

I could only imagine what they’d been told. Biological hazard. Contagion. Risk of final death. For your safety …

I wondered if Michael was the last person I would ever look at.

It took an age for him to shuffle up to his knees, his face down, his hands planted on the tops of his thighs as leverage. I dreaded what I would see in his face when he looked up.

He finally raised his eyes to mine. “We’re outcasts now. You and me. Nobody will ever look at us the same way, treat us the same way. We’re
different
.”

I didn’t shake my head this time, didn’t try to deny it.

“You’re the first mortal, Ava.” His expression was dark. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything so raw as the look on his face. “But I’m the first murderer.”

Michael said, “I can’t go home.”

I couldn’t hide from the look in his eyes, the look that said he had nowhere else to go and he couldn’t leave, even though I’d just tried to strangle him.

Worse was the realization that he wanted me to. He wanted to die, but he couldn’t.

“The way everyone looks at me.” His head dropped, mercifully, and I didn’t have to face the ripped look in his eyes anymore. “I’m the one who tore the world apart.”

I remembered the drive to the recovery center. He’d sat there, staring at the tunnel lights as though he didn’t care whether we crashed or not.

He looked up again, pinning me. “Do you know I can regenerate faster than anyone else? It takes me three seconds to restart my heart when the average is thirty. The other guys are always coming at me because if they can beat me, then that means something. That night at the Terminal, some idiot chopped off my arm and it didn’t even hit the floor. Dad says I’m one of the … ”

He must have seen how pale I’d become because he stopped. “They should be charging me, but they aren’t going to. The Attorney-General said there was no intent to kill. And then he told Dad we should change our name and move to another city—maybe one of the country towns in the western region where they don’t get the news so much. Yesterday when I went to buy milk, a little girl started screaming when she saw me. She thought I was going to kill her dead. People won’t come near me because if I killed someone, then I can kill them too. They’re saying the same thing about you on the news already. That it could be catching. That people should stay away.” He chomped his lip, sucking in a breath. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

The stars were so bright above us that his words didn’t seem to matter anymore. The night sky sparkled without the usual house lights obscuring it. I focused on the constellation of the Milky Way, thinking about how soft it looked, how radiant. I wondered how amazing it would look from the top of a Starsgardian tower. All those stars swimming through the darkness, shedding their light like shedding skin.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me too?” I asked him, the words slipping from my mouth in a dizzy haze. “Don’t you know I could kill you just by looking at you?”

He choked. “Don’t
you
know I could kill you just by touching you?” He swallowed, his eyes suddenly glassy, his voice hoarse. “You’re no more deadly than moonlight, Ava Holland. I’m sorry I’m the only one who believes that.”

As he spoke, the curtain of night tilted. The ground suddenly tipped, and I was cushioned in something as nice as cotton candy.

“Ava!” Michael’s face was close to mine, hovering above me, his chest next to my cheek, one arm cradling my head.

I tried to speak, but my mouth was hollow. At least my head had stopped spinning and I felt safe for the first time all day.

He broke eye contact, looking past me to his other hand, the one that had caught me, turning it back and forth. “Your back’s bleeding. I’m taking you inside.”

I was propelled along in the air before I knew it, and it was at that point that I understood how much he’d allowed me to hurt him before, how much he hadn’t fought back.

I felt it, in every part of my body that touched his.

“Energy,” I said, and he gave me a curious look.

He shoved the laundry door open with his back, and I found the will to grab his arm. My entire hand tingled. I wondered if Sarah Watson had felt like this when she hung off Michael’s side that day at school. I considered whether normal girls could feel the energy zipping through him. I’d danced with boys in dance class and none of them had ever felt like this.

It was like touching a live wire. I wondered briefly whether it would kill me. There was a part of me that didn’t care.

Then I remembered about the floor. “Watch out for the glass!”

“I saw it. Don’t worry. I’ve got boots on.”

I bit my lip. “I’m getting my voice back. That’s a good sign, right?”

“Yeah, you had me worried for a minute there. Looks like you’ve lost enough blood to make standing a bad idea right now.” He gave me a perplexed look, and I realized that he’d stopped moving. “So they’re really gone.”

“My parents? You say that like you knew they were leaving.”

“I heard Cheyne talking. It’s why I came here. He told Dad you’d disappeared and they were looking for you everywhere. I wanted to find you, make sure you were okay.” His arms tensed, one shoulder lifting as if he’d shrug if he could. “Look, that doesn’t matter right now.”

I followed his gaze around the empty living room. “Just put me on the floor. Mom’s not here to stress out about getting blood on the carpet.”

He was about to rest me down in the middle of the living room—the back of my calves prickled on the woolen fibers—when he yanked me back up again.

“It’s covered in glass. Those idiots must have tracked it all through the house. You got anywhere better? It’s not like I can clean up and carry you at the same time.”