The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (16 page)

Holding the Darkness at Bay

Saturday, November 10th

PATRICK

“W
hat’s wrong?” I asked as
I closed my wooden locker in the guy’s locker room at the Temple of Kalona. At six we had all stopped for the day, and hit the locker rooms for showers. And now the only people still left in the guy’s locker room were me and Shawn, and Shawn had been standing in front of his open locker for a while, just staring into it.

“You’re really fucking scary, you know that?” Shawn said in a quiet voice, not taking his eyes from his locker.

“Come on, Shawn, it’s me—”

He finally looked at me, and there was fear behind his blue eyes. “Patrick, you didn’t just
not
get hit by those rubber bullets. You dodged them
before
they even reached you. Like you knew exactly where Kiskei was going to fire them.”

“It was just luck,” I said trying to shrug it off, but even I didn’t really believe that. And the unbelievably dubious look Shawn gave me said he didn’t either.

“I’m still me,” I said in a small, pleading voice. “No matter what I can do, I’m still me.”

Shawn’s expression turned unreadable, and he closed his locker. “One of these days, you’re going to have to admit that that person you thought you were was a lie.”

He walked past me, but paused when he reached the door. He didn’t turn around, just kept his eyes focused straight ahead. “If you don’t, you’re going to get someone killed.”

I stood there for a long time after he left, unable to make myself move. He was right. I hated it, but he was right. Because no matter how fast or how far I ran, I would never be able to escape my past. To escape Aku. To escape myself.

TRAVIS

I
had spent the last nine
days trying to figure out how to tell Patrick about me and Nualla. About our past. About what I now knew for certain had
actually
happened. I couldn’t pretend anymore that this was something I could just bury under a smile and pretend it never happened. Pretend it wasn’t really destroying me. But as the days ticked by, I realized just how royally screwed I was. Because there was really no good way to say,
Oh hey, I slept with your wife. But it’s okay, because it was four years ago when I thought you were dead.

I stared up at the collection of photos covering the ceiling above my bed, and let my mind wander. Filling my head with good memories before I closed my eyes. And trying, as I had so many times before, to hold the darkness at bay.

I could nearly feel the weightlessness of sleep creeping in when Patrick asked suddenly from the doorway, “Are you awake?”

My eyes shot open, and I jerked my head toward him. Since he had woken up from having the device removed from his back, something had changed in him, and now he moved as silently as a ghost.

“Where have
you
been all day?” I asked a little too harshly because he had startled me.

Patrick paused for a second, but his eyes didn’t leave mine. Finally they darted to the side as he leaned against the door frame. “I was hanging out with Shawn,” he answered, his eyes still avoiding mine.

A lie? Maybe, but not completely. But more importantly, why did he feel he needed to lie to me at all? How many more dark demons did he have that I hadn’t already seen in the past few months?

But you’ve been lying too,
my inner demons whispered, their voices seductive and damning in the same breath.

“What’s wrong?” Patrick asked and I looked up, realizing that I had been lost in my thoughts again.

“What?”

“I’m not blind, Travis, and I’m not a fucking idiot. I can see
something’s
eating you up inside. So whatever it is, just tell me.” His voice was harsh and raw, but his eyes were pleading.

“It’s nothing,” I replied, my eyes darting away. Unable to keep looking into
those
eyes. It had taken me so long to realize it, but they were our mom’s eyes. Dark, with a strange gentle sadness to them.

“Is it Parker?”

“No,” I choked out past the fear in my throat.

“I’m just gonna keep guessing until you tell me,” he said with a mischievous smirk to his voice, obviously trying to lighten the mood, but I didn’t answer.

You don’t want to know this,
trust
me. Please,
please,
don’t make me ruin everything.

Patrick didn’t say anything more for a moment and I thought that maybe he had given up. But as I turned my head to look at him I knew I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The smirk slipped from his face like a passing shadow and he got very still. “Is it Nualla?” he asked in an uncertain voice.

I couldn’t stop myself from flinching.

“It
is,
isn’t it?” he asked, taking a step into my room. “Is she—”

“She’s fine. Just drop it, Patrick,” I said, my heart starting to beat faster.

“Just tell me what it is, Travis,” he said, taking a few more steps into my room.

“You really,
really
don’t want to know,” I forced out through gritted teeth.

Please, I’m begging you, don’t make me tell you.

“Just fucking tell me, Travis!” Patrick shouted, his hands balled into fists at his sides, shaking.

“I slept with her, okay!” I shouted back, unable to keep the words in any longer as I sat up, and slammed my fists into the bed.

Patrick blinked at me for one stunned moment, and I at him. Then finally he swallowed hard, and croaked out the word, “What?”

And I could see it—the moment the betrayal spread across his face—and I realized I had just made everything a million times worse.

“I can explain,” I blurted out in a rush.

“You slept with my
wife
?!” Patrick squawked, his eyes huge with disbelief.

“She wasn’t your wife back then. It was like four years—” I tried to explain.

“And neither of you
said
anything?” Patrick spat in an accusing voice that trembled, and I realized the mistake in not telling him sooner.

“Patrick, I—”

“Well, I’m so
very
sorry I came in here and fucked up everything for you two. Maybe it would have been better if I’d just
stayed
dead!” he snapped venomously before he stormed out of the room.

“Patrick! Patrick,
wait
!”

I got to my feet, and chased after him. But he was too fast, and I could already hear the front door slamming behind him as I reached the hallway.

The Past You Can’t Escape From

Saturday, November 10th

PATRICK

I
didn’t notice where I had
run to until I was standing in front of the door in the pouring rain. The water sliding down the sides of the corrugated cement wall like miniature rivers.

The key was still in my jeans pocket from the morning. Had it only been this morning? So much had happened between then and now, and it didn’t seem fair to still be the same day.

I jammed my key into the door and turned it roughly, my chest heaving from anger and the exertion of running nearly the whole way. I crossed the walkway over the moat without waiting for the outer wall door to close, and stormed past the stone gazelle sentinels until I reached the double doors of the temple.

I pushed the heavy wooden doors open so hard they slammed into the walls. And then I just stood there looking at the mosaic of Kalona as lightning arched across the sky, lighting up the night. And then I finally lost the control over my emotions.

“
Why
?!” I asked Kalona as I slammed my hands onto the edge of the tiered shelves that held the votive candles, rattling them.

“How could you all be so fucking cruel?!” I screamed at the deity as if she, and she alone, was responsible for every horrible thing that happened to me. But Kalona had no apology for me. No words to answer,
why?
Just cold eyes of unfeeling stone.

A savage cry of primal anger ripped my throat raw as I seized one of the lit votive candles, and smashed it on the stone entry floor. It shattered to the ground, but the sound was swallowed up by a clap of thunder that sounded like it was coming from just overhead. Or from me.

I glared at the mosaic, my breaths coming in jagged huffs. The sky overhead rumbled again, and the candles flickered in the breeze coming through the open temple doors.

“You don’t care,
do
you? We’re all just your pawns in this sick game, and you don’t even give a fuck how badly you hurt us, do you?” I asked Kalona, my hands clenched into fists so tightly that my nails bit into my palms.

“You’re worse than the Kakodemoss. Because even
they
aren’t cruel enough to hide behind a mask of kindness,” I spat as I turned to the right, and stormed into the practice room. I was trailing puddles of rainwater across the mats, but I didn’t care. I marched straight up to a practice dummy, and punched it. Seeing their faces on its surface with each punch. The gods, the Kakodemoss, even Travis’. But eventually they all blended together into
his
face. Aku’s face. My face.

I threw my fists into the dummy, punching until my hands felt numb. Until
I
felt numb. And then I just let my body go, and fell onto my back. Slamming my fists into the mat, and squeezing my eyes shut as the tears rolled down my cheeks, mixing with the rainwater and sweat.

I don’t know how long I laid there. A few minutes. A few hours. A few lifetimes. Time becoming more irrelevant with every beat of my frantic heart.

Sometime later there was a sound, and I sprang into a defensive crouch, ready to strike. A raven looked back at me in the darkness of the room.

“Where the fuck did
you
come from?” I blurted out incredulously as fiery hot darts pricked across my skin. My heart beating against my ribcage like a drum as I remembered that Kalona had a big black raven perched on her shoulder on the mosaic in the entry room.

The raven cocked its head to one side, observing me curiously with intelligent black eyes. And then it squawked at me—a sudden jarring sound—and launched itself into the air. The raven flew up into the rafters, drops of rainwater sliding off its sleek feathers to land on the mats.

I looked back to where the raven had just been sitting, and noticed that part of the wall—or what I had
thought
was a wall—was slightly ajar. Pushed in slightly at the right edge so a sliver of black showed on the left side.

I stood up, and walked toward the wall. And as I pushed on the left edge of the wall panel it buckled, and folded in on itself like a French door. And to my surprise, on the other side of the accordion wall was a wide wooden porch like you’d expect to see on any traditional rural Japanese building, and beyond that, a rain-soaked garden.

I stepped onto the porch, and let my eyes travel across the landscape of the garden. The moat that wrapped around from the front met in the center in front of me, and continued on toward a small stone waterfall. A pair of curved Japanese bridges arced over the moat, allowing you passage to the garden beyond. And a path wound through the garden, leading up to an eight-sided, solid-walled, gazebo-like structure that stood off to one side of the garden.

Without a second’s hesitation I started off toward the structure. My heart beating uncomfortably fast in my chest. There was something about the type of structure that I could almost remember.

Icy darts of rain pelted my skin as I nearly ran through the garden, but I didn’t care. There were answers in that place, I just knew it.

When I reached it, I stood in the arched doorway of the structure and let my eyes trace it, searching. Tiered shelves ran the length of the inside of the structure, holding a collection of thin rectangular wooden planks, and lit only by a single Japanese-style lantern. And directly in front of me were two deities carved in stone. One I recognized as Kalona from her armor and the raven perched on her shoulder. And the other… It was male, and the only male deity I knew of in the Daenarian pantheon was…Reshawn, Protector of the Dead.

Protector of the dead.

Realization hit me like a lightning strike, and my eyes darted quickly around the structure. This was a shrine—a shrine for the dead. For those fallen Amurai, recognized in the only place they could be. Recognized in a way that would keep their identities secret, even in death.

My eyes traced over the symbols on the wooden planks that I now realized were names in Daemotic, searching. Searching for two with matching symbols. Searching until one stood out. And then another.

I took a few steps toward them, reaching out a shaking hand. The markings were fresher than some of the others, but still old. I ran my fingers over the letters in the carved wood recognizing their pattern.

Centrina
.

There was a sharp pain in my chest when I realized I didn’t know which one was for which parent. I frantically traced my fingers over the planks, picking out the letters I
did
know until I knew which marker was for my mom and which was for my dad. And then I willed myself to memorize the shape of their names so I could never forget.

When I was sure, I lifted the markers up gently, and turned them over in my hands. There was only one thing carved into the back. A set of numbers. A date.

12-24-1996

The day that they had died. The day that everything had changed. The day I had become Aku. December 24th, 1996.

I had been struggling for months with the
why
. Why the Kakodemoss would take
me
? Why they would murder
my
parents? It had kept me awake at night—the not knowing. Now, I at least had a small glimmer of the truth, because I knew their secret. My parents had been Warriors of Kalo, and they had been killed for it. But what I still didn’t know was why the Kakodemoss had taken me and experimented on me, instead of just killing me.

As I sat there staring at the numbers carved into the wood, I realized they had died because they had been unable to escape their past. That even though they had moved us two states across the region and hidden us away, that their past had still crept up through the night and killed them. And if they had been unable to escape their past, what chance did
I
have of escaping mine?

None. I had absolutely no chance. Because your past was you, and you could never escape yourself. And that realization—that I could never outrun it—was shockingly freeing.

I set the markers back down gently. I had been so afraid of the dark parts of Aku taking me over and snuffing out Patrick, that I had forgotten that he had had good parts. Because a bad person couldn’t have someone love them as fiercely as Kira and Chan-rin had loved Aku. I almost wanted to laugh at myself for being so afraid. For thinking I could be lost in myself.

Stilling to a deadly calm, I closed my eyes.

I am no longer afraid of you,
I told Aku within my own head, and then I waited. But nothing happened. I had expected a tidal wave of emotions and memories as Aku rushed into me, but not
nothing
.

When I realized he wasn’t coming, I couldn’t stop the hysterical laughter that burst past my lips, and the sheer irony of it all. Because maybe this whole time I hadn’t been the only one who had been running.

I strolled down the street, my shirt plastered to my back, and my wet hair making a forest of black strands in front of my eyes. A strange new sense of serenity flowing like gentle water through my body. I was halfway back to Travis’ apartment when a car slid to a halt at the curb next to me.

I looked over at the sleek black Porsche 911 Carrera Targa as the passenger side window rolled down.

Travis leaned across the seat. “Get in.”

Without a word, I opened the door and dropped onto the seat. As the window slid closed, I looked over at Travis.

“I want you to know I’m sorry. I know that there’s nothing—absolutely
nothing
—I can do to change what happened, but keeping the truth from you wasn’t right. And if I could go back and change it all I’d—” he blurted out in an anxious rush.

“I wouldn’t have you change it,” I stated calmly.

“What?” Travis sputtered, clearly caught off guard.

“You thought I was
dead
, Travis. And even if you
had
known I wasn’t, that wouldn’t have changed anything. Because we both know she was yours long before she was ever mine. And getting mad at you for loving her is like the most ridiculous thing in the world.”

Travis just gaped at me as if those were the last words he
ever
expected me to say. Finally he swallowed, and looked at me uneasily. “You’re being very zen about this.”

“Not even the gods can change the past, right? So how could I expect you to?”

“Right…” Travis agreed, his expression still wary of my calmness, like he expected me to punch him at any moment. But as the moments slipped by and I didn’t fly into a rage, he let out a long breath.

We were still sitting at the curb, illegally stopped in a fire hydrant red zone, but it didn’t seem like a good time to mention it to him.

Travis leaned his head back on his headrest and groaned, “Gods, our lives are so unbelievably fucked up.”

“I can’t argue with you there,” I agreed with a snort.

He turned his head toward me with a wry, crooked smile as he turned the key in the ignition.

As we sat at a red light a few blocks down the street I looked over at Travis. “I don’t know if I ever said it but…thanks.”

“For what?” he asked dubiously, like he thought I might have suffered too many blows to the head.

“For letting me stay with you. I…I don’t know where I’d stay if—”

“You’re my little brother, Patrick, you’re always welcome to stay with me,” he said as if the very idea that I would think otherwise was down right crazy.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t get any words out because what he was really saying was,
you’re my little brother, and I’d die for you in a heart beat
.

My eyes started to sting, and I looked away from him.

After a moment or two of silence filled only with the sound of rain hitting the windows of his Porsche, he stretched forward. Rotating his wrists so they made small cracking sounds and stated, “So, I’m starving, you want to get some food?”

“Spaghetti?” I suggested, the lump still in my throat as the light turned green, and he started moving down the street again.

Travis froze, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly before he swallowed hard. “No…uh…let’s get something else. Like Mongolian or something.”

I opened my mouth, and then stopped. Travis’ life seemed to be a whole tangled mess of secrets and I wasn’t sure how many of them I could pull loose before he collapsed in on himself. And I think I had already pulled loose enough for tonight.

“Mongolian sounds great.”