“No.” The single word cut me off and echoed with power and finality.
As soon as his attention was off of me and on the bloody bodies, I searched his features for some sign of regret. I should’ve let it go but I couldn’t, and when I couldn’t find any, I tried to pull it out of him.
“I know this wasn’t the outcome you were hoping for.” I thanked my years in front of hostile juries for my ability to hide stress under duress and my continued blasé attitude when I felt nothing of the sort.
“It wasn’t planned but I’m not unhappy with the results.” His voice was stiff and I felt like I barely knew this man. Or maybe I did. I just hadn’t seen him in a long while.
He walked closer to where I was and looked over his results.
“We should get out of here.” I looked over my shoulder, toward the glass door. All I could think of was escape. They were dead and I still wanted to run. I felt like a coward of the worst kind, worse than the names I’d called the tattooed employee who had taken off. I turned to Fate again, my back to the doors, refusing to show any more weakness.
Fate looked at his watch. “Why? The police response time right now is a joke.” He knelt down next to one of them, looking the bodies over.
He was right. The cops who were still showing up for work were so overtaxed it was almost as if there weren’t any at all. I’d heard reports of up to a twelve-hour response time in certain areas.
“I knew that one.” I rattled off the bare details as he concentrated on the other two. I knew what he wanted. He was looking for ID. If there was some way to link the bodies to their former past, we could determine if the truce had been broken before this incident. I didn’t see a reason to care. The truce was broken either way. “What’s the point?”
“All knowledge is good.”
My arms were wet. I needed to get the blood off. I walked down an aisle and found some baby wipes and made my way back to where he was still inspecting the dead, only one question on my mind. “What about that thing you said to me the other night?” I asked as I scrubbed my forearms to baby softness, trying to concentrate on the clean smell and not the wet feeling on my leggings.
He looked up at me from where he was and cocked an eyebrow as if he had no idea what thing I was speaking of.
“You know, the thing?” I’d just escaped rape. Did he have to play games right now?
“What thing?” He shook his head, still proclaiming ignorance.
Was he trying to be obtuse? “Sacrificing one for the greater good thing.”
“This was different.” He went back to his inspection, dismissing the question.
I took a second, wondering if I was the one missing something. “How is this different?”
“It is. That’s all.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Did you want to get gang raped?” His voice was off, the tiniest little bit. It was so slight, I wasn’t sure my human ears would’ve picked up on the difference of a 16th of an octave at most.
“That was uncalled for.” Anger that was boiling inside of me, choking me with its fight for prominence in a myriad of unhealthy emotions, was starting to gnaw its way out, beating past the humiliation, ineptitude and self-pity.
“Then stop questioning it and be grateful.”
This tone I knew well. Irritated.
“I just don’t understand why you did it.” I went to grab another wipe to realize the packet was empty, all the used ones in a pile by my feet. I ducked down the aisle to grab another container.
“What don’t you understand? Didn’t you want me to stop it?” he asked, his voice carrying over the aisle as I debated between baby wipes or going for some disinfectants. I opted for Lysol wipes and walked back.
When I returned, he looked at me as if I were the stupidest being walking the planet. He was the one contradicting himself.
“I want to know why you did that. Why you broke the truce when it’s the exact opposite of what you said you’d do? And I want to know why, whenever I need you most, you act like the biggest asshole I’ve ever met?” I looked at the spot where the incident had almost happened as I vigorously scrubbed my skin. No. I wouldn’t let that rile me. They hadn’t done it, and if I acknowledged how close they’d come I might start losing it a little, and I was fairly proud of myself with how I was holding it together thus far.
His eyes narrowed on the Lysol wipes I was scrubbing my cheeks with and then rubbed against my lips. “Can you just say thank you and—for once in the last twenty lives you’ve lived—act like a normal girl?”
“You’re a complete ass. Can’t you ever have an ounce of compassion?” Wait…twenty lives? I had him! He slipped. Didn’t really watch me my ass. “Twenty lives?”
He let out a loud sigh and ran his hands through his hair, still clean and pristine in comparison to myself.
“I might have seen you around.”
“When?”
“Can’t say. Against the rules.” He shrugged as he stood there.
“Well that’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard from you. Yes, you can. And even if some stupid rule existed, you don’t listen to rules.” He walked out of the store but stopped just outside of the threshold holding the door open for me.
“You’re right. I can. I just won’t.”
“You’re really not going to tell me anything?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Don’t feel like it.”
“What do you mean, you don’t feel like it? I was just attacked in there! You can’t cut me a little slack?” I was screaming at him like a banshee in the middle of the parking lot and he seemed completely unperturbed.
Then it clicked into place. He’d wanted me to scream at him. I stopped, now feeling like an even bigger ass than I had a moment ago. My shoulders sagged and I let out a long sigh.
“Better?” he asked.
“Actually, yeah, a little,” I admitted, embarrassed at how easily he’d manipulated me but grateful for the release. “Was that a lie? The twenty lives?”
There was a flicker of indecision before he answered, “No.”
“And?”
“What?”
“You’re really not going to tell me about them?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“That wouldn’t be any fun.” He walked toward the car, opening the trunk and grabbing a T-shirt out and throwing it on.
“But…"
“I know, you were almost raped.”
“I can’t figure out if you’re really a bastard or sometimes you just play one for kicks.”
He smirked but the light in his eyes wasn’t there this time and I had a feeling he was faking it.
“Just so you know, I won’t ask any more questions for now, since you are obviously flustered by this situation, but this is not the end of it.” I tilted my head toward the store we’d left. I didn’t even want to look in that direction. “What about them? We can’t just leave them there in the middle of the store.”
“They won’t be there long. If they do manage to get the police here, the bodies will be gone before they show, energy reabsorbed into the system. Nothing will be left but some dusty residue.”
I nodded, feeling an overwhelming need to go home and scrub my skin in the shower for hours. “I need to get my car at the office. It’s been a long night.”
“I’ll drive you. You’re in shock.”
I shook my head. “No. I’m not. I’ve been in shock enough times in the last several months to know what it feels like. I’m a little off balance but I’ll be fine.” The scariest part was I would be. Close call, but I’d made it out relatively unharmed, physically anyway.
His silence made me look at him and the stern set of his mouth as he stared off into the distance, surveying for anymore threats.
“I would’ve thought that would make you happy. I’m getting tougher, jaded if you will.” I let out a long sigh before I continued. “Less human.”
He shook his head, a profoundly sad look on his face. It wasn’t an emotion I was used to seeing him wear. He leaned his forearms on the car hood in between us. “No. Not even a little.”
“Why? It’s for the best.” How many times had I heard the word transfer like it was a disease of the worst kind since I’d come here?