“I know, Pux. There are perks to being human.”
Pux smiled and glanced at the kitchen and all the things he couldn’t eat anymore. “Aye, the food was fantastic.” His thoughts circled around Kaliel. She was so unpredictable and he didn’t want to risk exposing her. She caused an apocalypse, and blew up a volcano. The only thing solid about her was her love for the boy that used to be a Ferryman. Elwen opened the fridge and Pux looked over at him, not wanting him to touch anything.
Atara sighed. “How did this happen?”
Pux felt small and childish. He twisted his hands in his lap. “Shimma …”
Atara seemed disappointed. “She made you human?” Pux nodded. “And her spell broke?” Pux nodded. “And she left you here?”
“Klavotesi ran me off the road and Shimma’s Camaro crashed into the lake and I transported and … and then I was …”
“Where do you put the peanut butter?” Elwen asked from the kitchen.
Pux couldn’t answer; he was too busy hyperventilating while Atara processed all the things he blurted out. He choked, glad he didn’t mention Kaliel. Nothing about Kaliel, nothing about Kaliel. He clamped his mouth shut, willing himself not to talk about her. He bolted, moving to the kitchen and taking the peanut butter out of Elwen’s hands. “I’ll put everything away; you can leave it … anywhere.” Elwen stopped, putting the jar of peanut butter on the counter and backing away.
“How much did you tell her?” Pux whispered.
“Nothing.”
Pux went back into living room, trying to smooth out his expression. He glanced at the flat screen which was off and at the video games, which no longer worked very well for him, a combination of claws and the screen freezing. He sat on the couch and tried to look natural. “Do I have to leave right now?”
“This is a onetime offer.” She reached around her neck and unclasped the pendant, pooling it in her palm. She held it out to him. It was the Great Oak, etched into a small stone slab. “You can use this to call the boat.”
She disdainfully set it on the coffee table between them. Pux blinked, unsure what to think. She was the Sovereign of Avristar; this was something the land gave to her to signify her marriage to the land. He trembled. “You’re not going home?”
Atara stood and brushed off her white jeans. “I have zero desire to be around Istar.”
“But.…”
She held a hand up. “He is my soul mate I know, and we will be together in the end.”
Pux looked at the pendant as she moved into the kitchen. “Where are you going?”
Atara stopped by the door, her eyes hard on the filth. “India. I need to speak with Gaia.”
“Oh.”
Elwen moved to the door. “Do you need anything else?”
“He needs someone to remove the trash,” Atara retorted, eyeing him like he was a human and that was his job.
Elwen flushed. “Right, do you have any bags?”
Pux pointed to under the sink and leaned forward, taking the pendant in his hands. It sent a jolt through him when he touched it, filled with ancient, mystical power. Atara crossed the threshold as Elwen gathered the garbage in silence. Pux didn’t understand why Atara didn’t want to go home, and why she acted so cavalier about giving up her pendant. It went against everything she was taught. He rubbed the edge of the stone with his thumb, a deep foreboding in the pit of his belly. He sighed, having nothing left to do but wait for Krishani to call, or for Kaliel to show up on his doorstep.
***
Chapter 32
Fake Friendships
They wouldn’t let her see him. She sat in the hallway in sticky blue chairs for hours, staring at the fluorescent lights, tiled floors, vending machines, people in scrubs and street clothes. People gave her funny stares when her strength faltered and she broke down again and again. Her tears were like tidal waves, destroying all the walls she built and dragging her under the current. She pressed her heels into the edge of the chair and hugged her knees, burying her head in the circle of her arms.
Nobody would tell her anything.
Nurses avoided her when they walked by and Dr. Grant wasn’t available. She heard something about a resident doctor—Hakim, taking the case.
She gave in to aimlessly wandering hallways, five and a half hours later. She hit the button for the elevator and hugged her arms to her chest. She hadn’t worn anything special to school that day. Her usual ratty sweater for canoeing, flare jeans, a purple tank top with a blue monster on it, the words “Monsters Live Under My Bed” across it. She zipped the sweater to her chin and pulled sleeves over her hands as the elevator dinged and she entered behind a man in his late twenties, sandy blonde hair and dark denim. She glanced at his wrist, a digital watch around it.
Maeva hit the button for the third floor while the guy hit the fifth, maternity ward. She looked at the slate gray floor as the elevator pitched, moving up. The doors slid open and she shuffled across the floor, her flats scraping linoleum. She left her backpack in the Sundance, but her phone was heavy in her pocket, still on, despite the signs. She kept checking the time. At present it was nearly six o’clock. She was supposed to work a shift at Red Boot but since she hadn’t faced Rachel about the whole walking out situation she wasn’t about to call and tell her she wasn’t coming in. She was going to get fired anyway.
She turned the corridor, a wide empty hall ahead, bright lights casting an eerie white filmy glow across the floor. She checked open doors, hoping to find Michael, awake, recovering, the nightmare over.
A door near the middle of the hall was only open a crack and she pushed the heavy oak, a nurse’s station and bathroom the first things in the small room. It wasn’t like the rest of the rooms, lamp light pitching the room in soft warm tones.
She saw him.
The bed had rails on both sides, but one side was lowered. He was hooked up to everything that made her hospital phobia swell. An IV stuck out of his arm, morphine drip and saline hanging from a metal pole. She recognized the tiny blue box monitoring doses. A heart rate monitor blipped on the side closest to her, slow green lines racing across the screen, a rounded box in the corner flashing seventy-six, seventy-eight, seventy-three. She glanced at his face, buds in his nose to control his labored slow breaths, hair slicked against his clammy forehead, hands hung limp at his sides. He had a colorless blanket over his legs, reaching his waist. They put him in those sickening grayish white hospital gowns, thin fabric loose around his chest.
She stared at him for a long time, tracing the contours of his sharp cheekbones, defined jawline, and dry cracked lips. Shadows conglomerated under his closed eyes, faint purplish bruises. She glanced at the corner, both a stool and a low-rise sofa chair available. She rolled the stool over and perched on it, moving so close to the edge of the bed she heard his slow pulse.
Her heart constricted and she pressed her forehead to the back of his hand, feeling the little IV tube poking her. She ran her hand under his and clasped it hard, running her lips over his knuckles, unable to stop the river of tears convulsing from her.
O O O
Krishani felt her soft hands and heard her hiccupping cries as he opened his eyes, the room a blur around him. Being awake was like a dream, a girl slumped over him. All he made out was her mass of black curls. He moved his fingers, trying to feel something other than painful numbness and the restless Vulture wanting to rip itself out of the body and insatiable hunger. He gulped, tasting phlegm in his throat. He coughed and flattened his other hand against his chest, the one she wasn’t holding. Weakness forced him to lie back, pushing his head into scratchy pillows.
“Kaliel,” he whispered; his voice hoarse.
She moved, her hand locked in his, her amethyst-tinged eyes full of devastation. “Michael?” Her voice was scarce.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, the most his muscles could handle. “That’s not my name.…”
“Mekelle,” she breathed, her Canadian accent making it sound all wrong.
She inched closer, her hand unshackling his as she tried to sit on the edge of the bed. He piled his hands on his lap to give her more room but he was too weak to move. He wanted to kiss her but all he managed to do was flick his fingers in her direction. She slid her warm hand back into his cold one and stared at him for a long time, their eyes locking.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” he said. He vaguely remembered collapsing, skidding down a flight of stairs and bashing his head on a hard concrete floor. The tiles were warm, a bad sign, considering his current frosty temperature. He couldn’t recall anything after Kaliel’s terrified scream, darkness enveloping him in thick icy arms. Waking up was a miracle. He didn’t expect to last on the stairs, constantly begging the body to hold on while he forced one more heartbeat, one more breath.
It felt like someone was methodically carving out his heart while he watched. She leaned forward and buried her face in his shoulder, her arm curling around his waist. She smelled like violet flowers, the heady scent making him drift off to faraway places and happy memories he couldn’t regain.
“I thought you weren’t going to wake up.”
He cringed, wanting to put his hands on her back and trace little patterns with the edges of his fingers but he couldn’t. “I promised …”
She pulled away abruptly and looked at him, her mouth open in a small
O
. “Grad—”
He put his fingers over her mouth before she could say anything and she stared at him helplessly. She stroked his forearm absentmindedly. “I completely forgot.”
He wanted to reach for her, cup her face in his hands and kiss her, but his mouth felt like sandpaper and his insides felt like mush, organs liquefying under the pressure of the Vulture. He didn’t want to admit it, but his very essence was poison. He was a monster, everything about him injecting the body with pain. If it didn’t hurt so much he would have been doing something very different with Kaliel. He wouldn’t be sitting there completely incapacitated.
“Kaliel.…” He wasn’t going to last the night let alone another day. Everything tensed, muscles contracting, torso bending as a convulsion ripped through him and his heart galloped. Kaliel’s eyes widened as the monitor spiked, the little box turning red as numbers climbed past one hundred twenty eight, one hundred thirty four, one hundred fifty six. His head burned; the sound of the Vulture screeching inside him.
“What’s happening?” she shrieked, sweat glistening on her forehead, her hand gripping his, fingers digging into flesh. She slid off the bed, looking at the door for the typical parade of nurses, her hand slipping out of his. He snapped to attention, summoning the last of his strength. His hand flashed out, seizing her wrist, squeezing as hard as he could. She let out a whimper, her eyes full of something he’d recognize anywhere. It was the same look she gave him when they were standing in the field of boulders and he told her she couldn’t stop it.
“I’m dying.” He said it because it was true, not so he could watch her heart crack and her eyes water and her mouth drop open.
“Now?”
He nodded and she tried to wrench herself out of his grip but he held on, unable to let her leave the room. If she left he wasn’t going to be there when she got back. She lowered herself onto the stool.
“I have to get someone,” she said, monotone.
“There’s nothing they can do.”
Dr. Grant had been saying it for months. They could try another procedure, kill a few more cancerous cells, and with it destroy a lot more healthy cells. She said the malignant cells were strong, and the procession was quick. He went from stage one to stage four in a matter of weeks. It was like trying to fight a hydra, cut off one head and two more grew in its place. He knew he was wasting away but he couldn’t let Kaliel leave. She looked so unprepared, so shell-shocked.
He tilted his head back trying to withstand all the screaming pain in his brain. He didn’t want it to happen this way. He wanted her to know all the good things she used to be, and see him for the boy he used to be. “I wish you remembered … before …”
Spasms took hold of his body and everything turned rock tight, rattling him to the core. She gripped his hand tighter, pushing her forehead to his thigh, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. He felt the way he did when Istar stopped him from going to the mountain, when he was thrown from Umber as a deafening explosion rose into the air, fire, rock, and ash splattering the sky. Only instead of her it was him—a river of fire in his veins and a mushy acidic soup in his stomach and vomit in the back of his throat.
“I can’t watch you die again … Krishani …”
His eyes widened and she turned her head a fraction of an inch her eyes full of the Flame’s fire, bright thick rings of amethyst circling her irises. She looked confused by the name, her lips moving, forming the syllables. “Krishani?”
He nodded, not needing words to explain it. He tasted salt on his tongue and realized the body was crying. “I thought I’d be here long enough …”
Terror registered in her eyes. “Who are they?”
He swallowed; his throat constricted and heavy. There wasn’t any time for her to figure it out on her own. She’d have to accept his answers, her memory locked in a vice. “The Powers That Be.”
The Vulture screeched, icy tendrils covering her in a flurry of cold. He couldn’t stop it, the body completely uninhabitable. “Go to Thunder Bay. Find Pux. Don’t freak out when you see him.”
The words rushed past his mouth, unable to stop them. She wiped her tears with the sleeve of her sweater, stunned. He didn’t have to ask why. The Powers That Be knew everything, saw everything, and were everything. In his old life he called them the Valtanyana but language evolved and names changed and history was rewritten. There was no fighting against them. If they wanted someone dead, they died. Nobody ever won against them, not in thousands of years.
The monitor flat lined as he tore to the ceiling, hunger pouring through him, aching pain lancing into him, the need for souls so thick he couldn’t think. He glanced at the girl, just a girl, crunched over a shell that used to be his, looking like a broken doll. He felt them in the hall, saccharine tasting souls ready to be devoured. He needed the sustenance, the thick wispy white smoke to drown out all the cold, all the pain. He slithered across the ceiling and retreated through the corridors, leaving everything of his previous existence behind, shattered memories fading into nothingness.
O O O
She felt it when he died.
The inhuman burst of cold made goose bumps skitter along her arms. She gripped his hand so hard she thought she’d break it, but she couldn’t let go. Her insides shook as another inconsolable sob shuddered through her, crumpled over his body, unwilling to leave, unable to move. Time seemed suspended. In the moments between monitors freaking out and being shoved out of the way by nurses, she thought about Charlotte.
Charlotte Rountree, her duet partner. In Maeva’s mind she sat in Charlotte’s kitchen, her grandmother at the sink, drying a load of dishes. She and Charlotte were eating freezer pops, turning their tongues blue. Charlotte finished hers first and went over to the freezer, ready to pull out another one when Grandma Rountree’s eyes went sharp.
“Don’t you ruin your dinner, Lottie. You’ll piss off the Powers That Be.” Grandma Rountree was always talking like that, mentioning the Powers That Be whenever it damned well suited her.
What Krishani said rocketed through her. She may as well have pissed off Zeus himself. Cold poured into her, and moved through her like a plague. Nurses appeared in the doorway, one of them saying she wasn’t supposed to be in there, but it was all a dull hum in the back of her mind. She stared at Krishani’s lifeless body, eyes pinned open, the extraordinary blue replaced with this dull emptiness she couldn’t fathom. She stumbled and someone caught her, hands on her shoulders, pushing her upright, a dark skinned man with corn-rowed hair staring at her as she moved into the hall. The fluorescent lighting hit her hard, making everything seem brighter than it was. She shielded herself from the light and wandered in the direction of the exit.
Her mind was a jumbled mess. She blinked, bringing dreams to the surface, nothing but forests and snow and explosions behind her eyes. Krishani couldn’t be dead; it was May, only May. Her chest constricted as she reached the elevator, pain threatening to throw her into a coma. She took short breaths, the dizziness in her head increasing. She couldn’t remember everything. The past was a mass of confusing bits and pieces, emotions and images cramming together in smushed abstract murals, dots between them impossible to connect.
It felt like cannons had gone off in her head. The last thing he told her to do throbbed at the forefront of her mind. Who was Pux? The only person she knew in Thunder Bay was Rob. She fell against the railing in the elevator bracing her hand on the stainless steel. She needed Rob. He said he’d be there when Krishani … but he was leaving too. The elevators opened and she ambled to the emergency doors, her car parked in the lot at the bottom. She turned a fraction of an inch, realizing she had to pay for parking if she was going to leave. All her money was in her backpack.
The sky was black when she got outside and hit her car, pulling coins out of her wallet and stalking back to the sliding double doors. She punched the machine, jamming her ticket in and feeding the coins into the slot. She felt numb from the neck down, completely shell-shocked. Retrieving the ticket she went back to her car and pulled out her phone, texting Rob.