chapter XI
THE MORNING SUN AND fresh after-rain smell of the woods turned to heavy sticky humidity as we walked back to the house. We had to get going, we had agreed. I looked up through the trees and saw dark clouds moving in quickly as they do at high elevations. It could be sunny one moment and snowing the next.
I was still shaking a little from the moment before, but the rain starting and just shutting off like that, like a faucet, pulled us into awkwardness. He had pulled away then. I wondered what it was that held him back from me. Was he scared that I would judge him; that he was not good enough or something?
“I think we need to cut each other some serious slack,” I said. Michael stepped over a fallen log and I followed.
“Word up, homie.”
I laughed. “Who are you?”
“Gangsta, girl.”
“That’s actually kind of true…” I thought of his late antisocial associations.
“Take it easy,” he said. “Remember: slaaaaack.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, giving him a little shove in the back.
He laughed.
How could we go from rain-soaked dream moment to adorkable in two seconds? I shook my head but realized that I liked his dorky side.
We walked on for a bit and I came alongside him as the trail widened.
“So, do you really think we can find Kreios?”
“Sure. Besides, that’s what I’m good at. I’ve tracked guys like him my whole life. Kind of what I do.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“Google,” he said. “Get me a network connection and I can find just about anybody pretty quick.” He pulled a smartphone from his pocket.
“That thing survived the rain?”
“Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? I don’t mess around with my tools. You could drop this into a bucket of water and it would be fine. I have people.”
“Yeah, I don’t wanna hear about your people.”
“But seriously. This is a mil-spec case around it.” He pointed to his phone.
“So you have a 4G pocket protector. You’re a nerd.”
He just looked at me. “This is serious stuff.”
“I can tell, mister. But what are you gonna search for?” I wondered if he knew something that he was not telling me about where Kreios went.
“Murder. Crime. And in big numbers.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Kreios was beyond angry when he left. There was something uncontrolled about him. He wouldn’t even look at me.” He looked down as he walked. “Personally, I think he’s going after the Brotherhood clans, maybe one by one. He’ll go down the rank and file until he gets what he wants.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“Revenge. I’m betting he’ll leave a wake of bodies. We find the bodies, we find him.”
“Or at least a trail that might lead to him,” I added.
“Yep. I just need to get somewhere that has more bars than…” he checked his phone display, “than zero.”
We laughed.
“The Brotherhood has been waiting on word from Stanley, but they won’t wait for long. When they don’t get it they’ll know something’s up, maybe even by now, and start moving.”
“Hey, I agree. You made your point, okay?” I looked around as we walked, up through the trees and into the troubled sky. It looked like it had a stomachache; it was all churny. “Well…we should get going…I’m a little weirded out by this place anyway. With Kreios not here it seems kind of out of sync and wild…or is that just me?”
Michael looked at me. “I know what you mean. It does seem off somehow, as if time is different here.”
“Yeah, and have you even once seen a plane fly overhead?”
“Those are called contrails. Those little white trails they leave.”
“Nerd alert,” I said, pointing to his pocket where he stashed the phone.
He sighed at me. “Are you done?”
“Why? Want me to be?”
“Desperately.”
“Then no,” I said playfully.
“Okay. If I’m a nerd, then you’re a dork.” He nudged me with his arm.
It sent tingles through me. Just like always. I felt relieved by that, but all my words were stolen as a result.
He went on. “The seasons change by the hour…the weather has moods.”
Thank God he’s kept things going. “I feel like it’s based on my mood. When I get emotional it gets stormy. If I’m, like, normal, it’s all sunny. I don’t mean to sound self-important, but I’ve been watching it for a while now.”
Michael looked at me. “You need to cheer up. Dork.” He smiled at me, just a little too broadly, and I laughed at him and shook my head.
We finally arrived at the house, panting and grinning, still soaked to the bone but at least not dripping wet.
“Kim!” I called out as we walked in.
“She’s probably upstairs,” Michael said.
“Or in the kitchen,” I said.
“Try the kitchen!” Came a voice. It was Kim. We walked toward it and her. We turned the corner to find her standing at the counter by a plate of sandwiches. A duffel bag was at her feet. She turned to us. “’Bout time you two lovebirds showed up,” she said. “Kiss yet?”
I blushed.
“Ooooo,” she cooed, coming closer to me, “do tell!”
“Stuff it,” I said.
“How ‘bout you stuff it,” she said, motioning to the sandwiches. “I made us some lunch. And I’m packed. I’ve just gotta go powder my nose. You guys try to keep up, okay?” She scampered out, headed upstairs.
Michael watched Kim as she hurried off. “She’s an odd duck,” he said. The scar under his shirt burned, and he felt something call to him, back in a hidden place in his mind. It sat there, waiting: “Come to me—find me and be whole.”
He blinked and looked at Airel, his mind flitting over her Book, over the other books on that shelf. Anxiety filled him.
The Bloodstone.
He wanted Stanley’s stone. But, no, he didn’t. Why should he? He didn’t know what he would do with it. But he had to have it back. No, he didn’t. Where is it? Does Kreios have it? He might have kept it as a sort of talisman.
The Bloodstone that had owned Stanley Alexander was more powerful than anything Michael had ever known, and it was calling to him. He clenched his jaw. He picked up a sandwich.
“She is an odd duck,” I said, “But I love her.” I had to confess though, Kim wasn’t who was on my mind. It was She, and She was not helping—it was hard enough without her input, especially when it was so negative. “He almost died, sure…almost killed you too. Did you ever think he might have planned it all? Made sure he didn’t die, made it look like he was saving you, that he cared?”
I blinked. Why? Just so he can kill me again?
“Believe what you want, Airel. Maybe he wants you alive…”
We grabbed a quick bite and then packed up to leave…perhaps forever? I wasn’t sure.
Michael left Airel after lunch so she could go pack.
He ducked into the library, resolved to check on her Book. He told himself that it was out of a desire to protect her, that he wanted to be sure he did all within his power to keep her safe, do whatever it took. But her Book was gone. All that was left was the old quill pen, the inkwell, a few old trinkets standing there on the mantelpiece.
Oh. She already grabbed it. “Impressive,” he said to himself, and turned to pack up what little he anticipated he would need for their trip.
I watched Michael twirl a set of keys on his finger. He had found them in the kitchen. I thought that was just far too normal to be possible, but I guessed they were for Kale’s—Kreios’s—black SUV. The kidnapmobile.
We found Kim, and then all three of us walked the massive spaces of the house one last time. The enormous ballroom with the waterfall windows, the midday sun glittering through into the space like God’s own disco ball, the impossible kitchen, down the long and dark hallway that Michael and I had been carried, one at a time, when we were first-date-first-time prisoners—only this time back out.
Michael went first, climbing the stairs to the weird door that lay on the forest floor, opening it upward. He let it down slowly, wide open on the pine needle floor of the clearing. Above us yawned a dark portal to the Milky Way, door-shaped, massive ponderosa pines leaning in and up, and stairs leading right up to the edge of it.
It was otherworldly.
“How can it be nighttime?” Kim asked what we were all thinking.
“No clue,” I said.
“Let’s go,” Michael said, gesturing us up the stairs. For a while, we just stood at the threshold of the door in amazement at the night sky turning above us, millions of stars placed precisely in the indigo tapestry.
For me, it was all too familiar. It felt like the very night I had first been taken. I almost wondered aloud if it was. But that would have been too crazy, even for me, after all I had been through. “Let’s get going,” I said.
“Couldn’t have said it better,” Michael replied, shutting the door back on itself. It looked like a discarded random wooden door in the dirt, left by some random prospector, utterly forgotten.
The black SUV sat right where it should have been.
Had it ever moved? “That’s just weird,” I said.
Michael hit the unlock button and began loading our bags in the back.
“What’s that one?” I asked, pointing to a long hard case. It looked professional, like it was designed to hold guns or sound equipment.
He looked over at me and his eyes sparkled. “Oh, just some protection. I figured we might need them.”
“Them?”
He turned the complicated latches and opened the case. The gleaming blades of three different swords winked at the three of us.
“Holy crap!” Kim said.
The warrior in me smiled at the killer in him as he closed it again, shoving the case farther inside and packing my bag on top.
“Good call, mister.” Things felt a little dangerous, a little grown up, and I liked that.
“I guess we’ll find out,” he said. He loaded Kim’s bags and closed the doors.
“Does anybody else just feel weird?” she asked. “I mean, here we are basically stealing this dude’s stuff—even his car—I guess because we need it…I just don’t know.”
“Kim,” Michael said, “I guess this is as good a time as any to break it to you.”
“Break what?” she and I said in unison.
“That Airel and I are taking you straight home,” he said matter-of-factly.
Kim came out of her skin. “What?!”
“I just think it’s best—”
“I don’t give two eyelashes what you say,” she said. “Who do you think you are?”
“Really, Michael,” I tried to be the voice of reason.
“No, stop, Airel,” Kim said. “This is between me and him. Listen up, Mr. Dad, you’ve got a lot of nerve talking to me like that. How dare you! You’re gonna try to tell me how it’s gonna be all of a sudden?”
“Kim, it’s just not safe—”
“How ‘bout shut up, Michael!” Her red hair swirled in a frenzy around her animated face. “If you think for one second that you have the right to tell me what to do, you’re freakin’ crazy!”
“Kim,” I tried interjecting, “he kinda has a point here…”
“What?!” she was furious. “Airel, how could you? Don’t you see what’s going on here? He’s trying to separate us. I’m trying to guard your back.”
“What?” I was shocked. “What for?”
“Seriously? You’re joking, right?”
“Aw, Kim! I thought we’d been through this already…”
“Ladies, please…”
“Shut up, Michael!” Kim said. “After all you’ve done!”
“Enough!” I said. “Kim, you’re crossing the line.” I glared at her.
She glared back. “Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be.” She turned to get into the kidnapmobile. Over her shoulder she said, “But guess what, lovebirds! You’re stuck with little miss third wheel! Kimmy ain’t goin’ nowhere but wherever you two are. End of story.” She climbed in and slammed the door.
“Michael…” I began.
“I just think she’s really scared,” he said.
“Uhm,” was all I could manage.
“No big,” he said, grabbing my hands. “I should know better than to try to control Kim, but it was worth a shot.” He opened the passenger side door and he helped me up and in. “I’ve got you now.”
Massive waves of déjà vu swept over me, and I couldn’t help but be transported back to our first date, that night, how he looked at me, how we had made such innocent plans, and how they had been so cleanly blasted away. Perhaps this was the perfect opportunity to start over, forget the past, move forward? He had compared me to Audrey Hepburn…! A smile crept into my heart and spread across my face as I came back from that moment. “Well, mister…are we going or not?”
He smiled and nodded. Mr. Smooth was here. As he closed my door and walked around to the driver’s seat, I couldn’t help but imagine all kinds of delicious and fantastic things were destined to happen between us. But maybe that was just the irrational little girl speaking.