The Breaker's Resolution: (YA Paranormal Romance) (Fixed Points Book 4) (10 page)

“I don’t want to hear about my father!” I yelled, for the first time acknowledging his connection to me out loud.

“And I don’t particularly want to talk about him. At least, not at the moment. You have to let me out of here. We have to run. The Constants are-”

“You know something? I don’t give a damn about the Constants. I also don’t give a damn about you or whatever nonsense you’re hell bent on feeding me right now. I breathed in that crap because you told me to, and nothing happened. I don’t remember anything.”

“That’s how it happens, Cresta,” he said, pulling at his restraints. “It comes back in pieces.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient for you,” I narrowed my eyes. “Or-and this might be a stretch, so I’m going to need you to bear with me- maybe you’re lying to me again.”

“We can’t stay here!” He yelled. “The Constants will send signs that even you can’t hide. We’re walking signal flares now.” He leaned forward, no longer trying to free himself. Instead, he looked deep into my eyes.  “I know you want to help your friend. Your mother was just like that, loyal to a fault. And it cost her everything. It cost her you.”

“And you don’t want me to make the same mistake, to lose everything?” I asked, my nose scrunching disgustedly. “I’ve heard it before. It’s not going to change my mind.”

“No,” he shook his head. “I
don’t
want you to make the same mistake. But not because of you. You’re not your mother Cresta, and you have way more at stake. Your mother messed up, and she lost everything. If you mess up, the entire world does.”

“You know,” I answered, shaking my head. “If that was coming from somebody else; say Echo or Dahlia, I might actually take a second to consider it. But you- you don’t get a second. And you certainly don’t get any more of my time.”

Jiqui started pulling at his restraints again. His eyes were wild and his teeth were clenched. But I didn’t care. What was I supposed to do, run away from everything based on the word of somebody I couldn’t even trust? And what if he was telling the truth? It didn’t change anything. Casper’s kid was at stake. I had already let him down once. It was the reason he was in this situation. I wasn’t about to do it to him again. The world be damned.

I turned, scoffing at my would be uncle.

“Listen to me, dammit!” He screamed, but I didn’t break stride. “Cresta, listen! You’re going to kill us all!”

“That’s what they tell me,” I muttered, and pulled open the door.

Royce was standing at the doorway, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “Did I hear mango?” He asked, his eyes narrowing.

“You did not,” I answered, sliding past him. “I can handle myself, you know.”

“Oh, I know that Sweetheart,” he answered, closing the door on Jiqui. “But that’s only half of what I’m worried about.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, spinning toward him.

“Nothing,” he answered. “It’s just, the idiot gets under your skin. I don’t want you getting mad and doing anything stupid.”

I stared at Royce for a long moment. He seemed on the edge of something, like he was holding back.

“What is it that you think I’m going to do?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“Nothing,” he answered, tensing up. “I just-”

“Wait, is that why you were standing outside the door? Did you think I was going to hurt him?”

Now Royce looked like he had just stepped onto a mine field.

“Sweetheart, you-”

“You did, didn’t you?” I started.  Anger welled up in me. The idea that Jiqui might need protection from me was as infuriating a prospect as I could imagine. “You had to. I mean, you certainly didn’t he was any danger to me. He had enough duct tape on him to pin down an elephant.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” Royce said, suddenly defensive.

“That’s because you’re doing such a piss poor job of putting them there yourself. Now just admit it! You thought I was going to hurt him!”

“You’re damn right I did!” Royce answered, walking toward me. He shook his head, his shielded eyes drilling into me. “You know I don’t sugarcoat things for you, Sweetheart. It’s one of the reasons you love me.”

“I don’t love you,” I said.

“Yeah ya do. But that aint the point right now. The point is, I’m about to tell it to ya like it is.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That sonofabitch makes you nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I don’t know if it’s because he’s your uncle, or because he was part of that poser Allister Leeman’s crew. Or maybe it’s because he looks like you a little bit. But the truth is, he messes with your head.”

“That’s not true,” I answered, my lips pursed.

“The hell it’s not,” Royce scoffed. “You’d have never agreed to something as dangerous and foolhardy as taking a whiff from his crazy ass peace pipe if your head was screwed on straight. You lost days, Sweetheart. We thought you were dead, that this entire thing was over and had been for nothing.”

“Is that what this is about?” I asked, my mouth twisting downward. “The mission being over? You were pissed because you thought your chess piece was off the board?”

Royce glared at me for a long moment. “Even you ain’t stubborn enough to think that’s the truth. You know how I feel about you. How we all do.”

“Cress,” Casper stepped forward. “It’s just that-”

“It’s just what?!” I shouted. This was all too much. I had been through too much garbage, lost too many pieces of myself to put up with this too. “You thought it too?! What did you think, Casper? Did you think I was gonna go all Bloodmoon on him and rip him in half or something?” I shook my head disgustedly. “Maybe I’d pop his head off like a champagne cork and drink his blood. That’s what monsters do, right?”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Royce said, talking as loudly as me.

“Don’t you dare say that to me!” I pointed at the twanged twit. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. You think you can just strut in here, late to the game, and pretend that you understand me.”

“I do understand you!” He answered. “I’m the only damn person in the whole world who understands what it’s like to be you.” He swallowed hard. “Cause that’s what it’s like to be me too.”

“The hell it is! I lost everything to this!” Tears welled up behind my eyes. “I lost my dad. I lost my mom. Did you?” I answered before he had a chance to. “No you didn’t. I heard you back in the Hourglass. I heard you on the phone with your mother. So don’t tell me you know what this feels like.”

“That’s not fair,” Dahlia finally chimed in. “You don’t know what Royce’s life has looked like.” The tone of her voice left me wanting, like she knew something about Royce that I didn’t. “We’ve all lost things to this cause. You’re not the only one who’s suffered.”

“But I’m the only one who gets treated like a liability,” I answered in a small voice.

“We trust you, Cress,” Casper said. “I trust you more than anybody in the whole world. If someone told me that I would have to bet between whether the sun would come up tomorrow or if you’d come through for me, I’d tell them to throw their shades away.” He moved toward me. “But he makes you crazy. And, though I really, very seriously don’t want to be the one to tell you this, he’s started to make you harder. And I know that he doesn’t deserve a second chance, and I wouldn’t care if you tossed him into an incinerator. It’s no more than he deserves. But I don’t want you to lose the person you are because of someone like him, Cress. I don’t want me to lose you either.”

“Why would you think you would lose me?” I asked, genuinely astonished at the idea.

“You know what happened to your dad, Cress,” Casper answered mournfully. “And now that you’re getting into the same stuff-”

“Are you serious?” I asked, shaking my head. “You’re going to play the whole ‘it runs in the family’ thing? With me?!”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just-the essence-”

“Right, and there’s no way I could handle the essence. Cause my father couldn’t. Have you thought about who your father is, Cass? He’s a jackass who knocked your mom up way too young and never listened to anybody who cared about him. And I gotta tell you, you’re starting to sound a lot like him.”

Casper blinked hard. “That’s below the belt, Cress.”

I put my head in my hands. Did I really just say that to him? Was Casper right? Had I gotten hard? Had I lost myself in all of this? I
had
been tossing Jiqui around with reckless abandon lately. But he deserved it. It wasn’t like I’d do that to just anybody.

But was that just an excuse? Was this the first step down a slippery slope that led me to the Bloodmoon?

“I need to go,” I said through my fingers. “I need to-I just need a minute.”

“Fine. Let me get my coat,” Royce answered.

“No!” I said, throwing my hand up. “I need to be alone. I can’t- I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Cress, I get that it’s a lot. And I know that this probably isn’t fair, but it’s not safe,” Casper answered. “None of us can be alone right now.”

“But I’m not just any of you,” I said, my mouth twisting bitterly. “I’m super powerful, remember? I’m too powerful to be trusted, so I’m sure that I’m too powerful to be threatened, right?”

“Cresta, just listen,” Casper sighed.

“Nope,” I answered. “Not tonight. I’m done listening.” I moved toward the door, opening it. “And I’m done playing nice.”

“I’m not letting you leave, Sweetheart,” Royce said.

“And I’m not giving you a choice,” I said. I focused my energy, pulling at the shade in the room and creating a barrier. It ran the length of the room, boxing them inside.

“Cresta!” Royce screamed, for once using my name. “Cresta, you could get killed!”

“Please,” I answered. “I could always get killed. It’s what makes me who I am.” I shook my head. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Cresta, please don’t do this!” He screamed, punching futilely against the barrier.

I didn’t answer. I just closed the door.

It felt weird walking down the side of the road. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been along. Sure, I had been by myself in the dreamscape before Sevie and Wendy found me. But that wasn’t real. It wasn’t my real body. My body-this old thing- had someone around it at all times.

And it made sense. I was important in some weird tripped out way. I was the opposite of a savior, and maybe that had a certain cache about it.

My mind spun as I shivered. It was so cold outside, but I was red hot. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I couldn’t believe where I was. How did it come to this; plopping down the side of a dark Maryland highway all by myself?  And in my pajamas no less.

Maybe I should have thought this through a little better.

No! I was right. They had acted insanely. Surely they didn’t think I was capable of actually hurting Jiqui. And what if I did? Didn’t he deserve it? Who was the villain here anyway?

And that’s when it hit me, the reason I was so upset. It was right there in their eyes, simmering right under the surface of their words.  They thought I was turning into the Bloodmoon, or at the very least, someone who could one day become the Bloodmoon.

The realization was like a dagger through my heart. All we had been through, all the wars we had waged for each other, and this is what it had come to. I found myself wincing in the presence of a glowing red light.

It was a diner; Mel’s to be exact.  And, though I wasn’t particularly hungry, I started toward it.

Pushing the door open, I found exactly what you’d expect to find from a seedy roadside diner. Country music blared through the air. Fluorescent lights put harsh illumination to everything. And coffee seemed to flow like water from a broken hydrant.

But the best part, the thing that made it all worth it, was that no one looked at me as I walked through the door.

Not one damn person. 

I slid into the diner, moving passed people who were so absorbed with either their coffee and pie or the conversations of the people sitting across from them to realize that the person who might very well bring about the end of their world just came through the door wearing a pair of sweatpants and an exhausted look.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do as I sat down at one of the very few empty booths. What tome was it? And why was this dive diner so crowded? It didn’t matter. All I wanted-maybe for the rest of my life- was a little bit of quiet and to be left alone.

I folded my arms onto the table and lay my head in them, trying not to think about all the things I knew I would always think about.  Somehow the end of the world didn’t even matter anymore. It seemed so far away, so ridiculous. To think that anyone, let alone a group of people who claimed to be the most evolved species on the planet, would think I was capable of bringing all of civilization to its knees seemed more than a little preposterous. I couldn’t even set the brightness level on my IPhone without Casper’s help.

But I didn’t want to think about that now. I was tired of that old song, tired of examining myself for seeds of something that might grow into the Bloodmoon. And the idea that the people around me were starting to see those seeds made it even worse.

“Hey there,” a female voice pulled me from my doldrums. “What can I get you?”

Looking up, I saw a girl, really close to my age. She wore glasses and a Baltimore Orioles baseball cap. She was chomping on gum and staring at me expectantly with her pad and pen in hand.

“A brand new start?” I sighed, blinking at her.

She chuckled. “You and me both. How’s about I give you a minute to temper your expectations?” She smiled at me and then went to the next table over.

I lay my head back down, no longer able to stop the flooding of emotions. Closing my eyes, I let it wash over me and did my best to push it away. I just-I wished my mom was here. She’d be able to make sense of this. She’d know me well enough to know that-no matter what- nothing in this world would be able to turn me into the thing they were afraid I’d become.

And no matter what happened to the Damnatus, there’d be no way I could ever hurt a child-let alone be responsible for the deaths of every child on the planet.

But Mom wasn’t the only person who knew me that way. My dad did too. But he was dead. They were both dead, and I was left with a world full of people -Casper included, heartbreakingly enough-that didn’t believe in me the way I needed them to.

That assessment, of course, had one very glaring exception.

“Owen,” I murmured. Just saying his name made me feel better. There had never been one time, not through any of this, when he ever made me feel the way I felt now. If only he was here, if only I could be with him again, we’d find a way out of this. I knew it. As sure as I was sitting here, he’d find a way to make this right.

But fate had taken him away from me, that vindictive bitch. And I was left like this, alone and lost.

“Here you go,” the waitress returned. She had a slice of cherry pie in her hand and a glass of iced tea, both of which she sat in front of me.

“Oh, I didn’t order this,” I answered, looking up at her.

“I know,” she nodded. “But you looked like you might need it.”

“I don’t have any money,” I admitted, pushing the plate away from me.

“Not a problem,” she answered. She looked out the window beside me, her face hardening just a fraction. “You eat up. Don’t worry about the bill. I need to take care of something.”

The pie flaked as I dug the fork into it. I hadn’t eaten in days apparently, and my stomach roared as I shoveled a chunk of red gooey goodness into my mouth. It was warm and sweet, just like it had been at Freeman’s Pastries back in Chicago. Hungrily, I scooped up another chunk. Wow. This was seriously just like Freeman’s. It was uncanny.

The jukebox blared to life, cutting through the sounds of chatter and forks clanging against dishes. I was halfway through another mouthful when I realized what song was playing.

“Don’t worry babyyyyy,” I found myself singing through a mountain of the most delicious pie I had eaten in years.

This was dad’s song, his absolute favorite. It was also the song that was playing the night he died, when I accidentally drove our car off that bridge.

For all intents and purposes, it should have made me feel bad. I didn’t like going back to that moment, and usually steered clear of anything that made me think of it. But there was something about hearing this song tonight, all alone and surrounded by strangers, that made me smile. It was like he was trying to tell me he was watching over me, that he’d do whatever he could to make sure I was safe.

“Cresta.” The waitress was above me now.

Finishing up the pie, my heart skipped.

“How do you know my name?” I asked. I looked up to find that things had changed a bit.

I had gone completely unnoticed before, a sloppy looking girl in a corner booth. But now, every single person in this diner was staring me down. And it became very clear to me that I was going to need whatever sort of otherworldly protection my father could give me.

I stood quickly, wiping crumbs off my face and throwing my hands in front of me.

“Cresta you need to listen to me.”

“How do you know my name?!” I asked, throwing my hands just enough to let her know I meant business. If she knew enough about me to know my name, then it was likely that she also knew what I was capable of.

“You know how,” she answered. “Because I know you. And you know me.” She took her baseball cap and glasses off. Thick curls spilled down to her shoulders and her eyes changed not only color but also shape. “And least you know of me.”

My eyes narrowed at her. She
did
look familiar. But why?

“Who are you? How do you know me?” I backed toward the window.

“You don’t want to do that,” the waitress said, looking passed me. “The fields at the windows only affect visual stimulation, and if you interrupt them, they won’t be good for anything.” She sighed, reading my confusion. “If you screw with the camouflage at the windows then those bastards will be able to see that you’re in here.” She blinked at me. “Which would be bad.” She added. “You know, because they’d kill you.”

“How do you know me?” I repeated through clenched teeth.

“Look at me,” she answered. “Don’t you recognize me? You watched him for months. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh my God,” I muttered as it came to me. That curly hair, those eyes. “You’re Olivia Rivers, the girl Casper fell in love with.”

“Well, he was Toby to me, but it’s all very flattering nonetheless.” She looked behind me again. “Now if you’ll come with me, we really don’t have a lot of time, and we need to get you to a safe place.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” I answered. Ridiculously, I grabbed my pie covered fork. You know, because someone with more power than any breaker in the last hundred years needed to defend herself with cutlery. “Who are you?” I asked, backing up even further.

“You know who I am. I’m Olivia Rivers,” she answered, moving closer to me slowly. “Now please get away from the window.”

“What does that mean?! Who the hell is Olivia Rivers and what do you want with me?”

“We’re the Taggers, Cresta. We want to save you.” She smiled. “And you can call me Liv.”

I kept backing up. Suddenly, I felt the window at my back. But it wasn’t just the window. A weird electronic current tickled at my back. I jerked forward, but it was too late. Sparks flew from the window and a sheen of light flickered across it before it died out.

“Damnit!” Liv yelled. “The veil’s been breached.” She spun on her heels.  “Barricade the east and back entrances. One way in means one way out. We need to be able to see them coming.” She turned back to me. “And you, the thing you just destroyed was an eighty thousand dollar sensory disruptor. Which not only means that we’re gonna have to hold a bake sale when we get back to town, but also that the Breakers who just pulled up outside will have no problem sensing you. Now, you might be the most important person in the world and all that crap, but you’re really starting to piss me off. So, if you don’t mind-and I really hope you don’t- I’m going to need you to move you’re perky little ass.”

“I don’t know what Taggers are,” I answered, trying to soak in all the information I had just been force fed.

“Listen, if you would just- Really?” She asked, cocking her head and furrowing her brow. “Not even a little? I mean, I didn’t expect there to be a wing dedicated to us in the Hourglass or anything. But a mention wouldn’t be out of the question.”

The truth was I had heard of the Taggers. Owen had said something about them way on back in the beginning. The day my house in Crestview blew up, he told Ezra-that damn floating amputee- that he was going to “finish what the Taggers started when they took your legs”. I hadn’t really thought about that much since that day. I had a lot going on, I guess. But the idea of being surrounded by a group of people who had, at one point or another, actually cut someone’s legs off didn’t fill me with ease.

“Cardinal Rivers!” An older man shouted from behind Liv. “The tunnel is prepared.”

“Cresta,” Liv turned to me. “We need to get the hell out. At our last count, there were five Breakers here. They’re looking for you and, without the tech to shield your aura, they’ll be able to sense you. They’re going to come for you Cresta. We can’t be here when they find you.”

She pointed out the window. It was true. Several people dressed in black were dispersing. Some were headed passed the diner. Some were headed right for us. And some were headed the other way, back toward the…

“The hotel,” I muttered, panic rising in my throat. “They’ll go to the hotel! They’ll find the others!”

“The others can protect themselves, Cresta,” Liv said. “You’re our priority.”

“They can’t!” I yelled. “I trapped them. Damn it, I trapped them inside!”

I ran toward the door.

“Stop her!” Liv yelled. Taggers poured toward me, but I wasn’t having any of it. Throwing my hand, I used shade to knock them out of my way, like bowling pins being manhandled by a rolling ball.

I pushed through the doors. Cold air hit me and no sooner was I outside that the Breakers heading toward me caught site.

They darted toward me, but they didn’t fare much better than the Taggers. I picked them up with the shade and slammed them together, knocking them both out cold.

“Cresta!” I heard Liv’s voice boom behind me as I huffed toward the hotel, “Cresta, stop!”

But I wasn’t going to stop. The hotel was just in view. All I had to do was get there. Once I was a little closer, I’d be able to take hold of the barrier I created and knock it down. Then we could get the hell out of here. Then we could-

A bright orange light lit up the sky. I stopped dead in my tracks. The sound was deafening. A whistling that got louder and louder. I watched as the orange light took shape. A thing line that ran toward the hotel.

“No!” I screamed. “Please God, no!” But no one listen to me. The instants the words left my mouth, I watched in horror as the hotel- the very hotel Casper, Royce, and Dahlia sat in, helpless because of the barrier
I
put in place- blew up in a horrific sea of fire and rubble.