chapter III
Arlington, Oregon, present day
“AND THE LORD PUT a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him…”
I pored over this verse in Genesis 4, just one page before the one to which Kreios had guided me what seemed like an eternity ago. I was stunned at how much the Bible said, and with so little. The trouble was…what did it all mean? I was reading by the light of my Tracphone in the darkness of my hotel room, having grabbed the Gideons copy of the Bible out of the nightstand.
I had no idea why I had turned absentmindedly to this page. I was just sitting there reading it when it jumped off the page and grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go.
Oh, Kreios…I really, really miss you. I wished more than anything then for my grandfather to come home to me. And home—at least as I had always thought of it up to that moment of my life— was now simply wherever he was. It’s not that I didn’t care about or miss my parents. I didn’t have the luxury of time enough to reflect on them or what they might be thinking, how they might be worried about me. Truth be told, I was trying to avoid that subject; it was too painful, too far out of my control.
I was a prisoner again. A prisoner to circumstance. It sucked. Is life really like this? Just all kinds of crap that happens to you? Or does a girl get to make a choice every now and then?
She crowded into my mind. “But you’ve already made all kinds of choices…”
True enough. The realization made me hurt unbearably.
I was completely frazzled and confused and lonely and in need of somebody stronger than me. Though the tears threatened the edges of my eyelids again, I was sick of crying, sick of being carried along, sick of abdicating, sick of this slimy acquiescence that marked me somehow. And I supposed all of us, really, bore some kind of mark.
But I hated labels. I hated that my favorite books, for instance, had to be categorized as this or that or the other thing. Why couldn’t they just stand alone on their own merit? Why did life lump everything together? “Grrr,” I said to the lame hotel room painting hanging above the mirror.
Kim, snoring next to me on the bed, stirred a little but didn’t wake. Across the room on the other bed, came a voice: “Date went that well, eh?”
“How ‘bout you shut your face, Ellie,” I muttered, with more than a little menace.
No reply.
I continued: “Or I’ll come over there and finish the job I started when we first met.” I was so peeved. How was anything about Michael and me any of her business? I just wanted her to go away. As I brought my knees to my chest and dropped my head into my folded arms, I willed for her to go away.
But then the bed moved and I looked up reflexively. I jumped a little. She was sitting there right in front of me, on my side of the bed. How did she get over here so quick, so quietly? “Whaddayou want,” I spat.
“Girlie, I was going to ask you the very same thing.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Calling you what?” she asked in her insufferably cool accent.
“What gives you the right to poke your nose into everybody’s business? And then act like nothing’s happening, calling me by pet names. You’re not my mom. Lay off.”
“Sorry, girlie, it’s just who I am.”
I could tell she wasn’t going to stop irritating me. It was too much fun for her. “Look, I’m not enjoying the game, okay? So bug off.”
“You’re perilously close to profanity where I come from.”
I just rolled my eyes at her. You’re about to hear much worse.
“Airel, what’s bothering you? Do you want to talk?”
I just looked at her. I wanted to shout, “HA!” at her, but I didn’t want to wake Kim. I looked at the clock: near midnight. “The only thing I want to do is sleep,” I said lamely, hoping she would go away. “But I can’t seem to.”
Ellie placed a sympathetic hand on my knee, saying, “Shh. It’s all right, now.” And then that old weird feeling came back for me, the ripping apart of my heart and soul, and all I could think was oh my gosh, she’s crazy evil. I brushed her hand aside, and as I did, something stabbed at my heart. It went deep; I didn’t know what it was. It was just awful, that’s all. “Just stay away from me, Ellie. I don’t want to talk to you or see you or anything. Just leave me alone!”
I couldn’t describe how she looked right then if I wanted to. But there was deep meaning and pain in her eyes. The source of it—I couldn’t begin to know. “It’s all right,” she said again, standing.
She looked down on me with eyes that pierced right through me, flesh, half-angel blood, bone, and marrow. “I’m gonna step out for a bit.” She stood there for a split second, looking at me. It creeped me out, because for all I could make out of it her expression was one of love and acceptance.
Then she turned and slipped out the door.
I was so angry at her. How could she think I wanted to be her friend after she so shamelessly flirted with Michael, like, every five seconds. I saw through her. I could see that she was working some angle, was playing some game. I wouldn’t play along, even if she pretended to play nice.
It all made me very tired. I fell back on my pillow and dreamed instantly.
It was the kind of dream that was difficult to judge; I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Dreaming or waking, this is what happened: I got up from the bed, peeked around the curtains through the window, and saw her. She was walking away with someone…it was Michael. After that everything was totally blank.
It could have been hours, days before I woke. And when I did, I was so disoriented that I thought I was back home in my room before all my synapses were firing properly. It was jarring; that where the heck am I feeling.
And I woke with a start, like I had just hit the ground from some precipitous fall from dizzying height. I was pretty sure my spasm, which rocked the whole bed, was what woke Kim from the sleep of the dead as well. We both popped up from the pillows and stared at each other wide-eyed, wild-haired. She looked horrible.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Ew, Kim,” I said. “Dragon breath. What did you eat?”
She opened her mouth wide and hissed, “Piiiiiiiiizza, with loooooooooooots of gaaaaaaaarlic.”
I gagged and turned away. I really did want to barf. She smelled like a freaking demon.
And that’s when it all came thundering back at me. I heard Michael’s voice in my head, urging me to talk to Kim about the Bloodstone.
It all made Hellish sense. Her motives, her behavior, her…smell…could all be explained by the one simple question that I didn’t dare ask my best friend.
I hesitated. I didn’t know where it would leave us once I opened this can of worms. A question like that couldn’t be un-asked. Certain things couldn’t be unsaid, just like certain things couldn’t be undone. I thought about how my mom always used to tell me, “Adult decisions have adult consequences,” urging me to be very careful as I tested the world with my newfound teenage powers of Choice. I thought I knew everything. Now it was starting to become clear just how little I knew and how much my parents—painful subject that that was to me—had known all along.
“Kim,” I ventured, fearing the end of everything good and right in the world, “I…I need to talk to you.”
She sat up and looked at me, pulling the covers up to her neck. Her face was serious. “Yeah, I guess we’re overdue,” she yawned.
You don’t know how right you are. I decided to just go for it. “Um, did you happen to find a little red stone anytime recently?” I couldn’t bear to look her in the eye, afraid of what I might find there. But I finally looked up at her.
A cornered cat. That’s what she was. “Airel,” she finally said, “I don’t have it.”
I had never seen her this way. This was not my happy-go-lucky Kim, my chatty Kim, my spacecase buddy from way back. She looked scared. I didn’t know what to say.
“I swear, Airel. I don’t have it.”
“It was down in the park,” I said, the light coming on, “wasn’t it?” I felt so stupid. It was all coming together.
She nodded and then looked away in shame.
“So…” I was in disbelief. “So you carried it this whole time? All the way from…from…”
“I found it on the ground after Michael…um…after Michael—”
“Killed his dad?”
She was crying. “Pretty much.” But these were not tears of relief, of confession.
“Kim, why are you so scared?”
She wouldn’t answer.
I reached out and touched her arm. She gave a little start but then burst into tears.
“Oh, Airel! I’m so scared!” she sobbed. “I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my whole life!” Her body was racked with tears, but then she recovered. “I’ve never messed around with drugs or anything. But I can’t tell you how bad this feels! I mean…it’s like I don’t even know my own thoughts; they just keep pounding away at me, I don’t even know where they’re coming from or why—I mean, I guess I know why, I just don’t recognize the things that pop into my head, and now it’s gone and I don’t know where it is…” As she said this last part, she looked right into my eyes and I could tell it was a lie.
“Kim. Yes, you do. Fess up.”
She growled at me. Showing her teeth. Her eyes were crazed.
“Kim. Don’t. Mess. With. Me. You know I can handle you, no matter what.” Not that I want to fight my BFF, but dang.
“I’m scared…”
“We’ve established that. Where is it?”
Nothing.
“Kim, I can’t tell you how dangerous this is. Do you know what you’ve—” Check that. I didn’t want to make her feel worse by implicating her as being responsible for all our miseries so far on this trip. “Listen. The Brotherhood wants that thing more than…more than a fat kid wants his next snack, okay? Can I let you in on a little secret?” I gauged her for a second. How much do you want to bet she already knows this?
She looked up at me. “What.”
I plunged ahead, hoping my transparency would pay dividends between us in the long run. I missed my normal Kimmie. “You wanna know why they’re chasing us down? It’s not just ‘cause Michael killed Mr. Alexander. Stanley, I mean.” I looked at her more closely. “It’s because… whoever picks up that stone…the Bloodstone…becomes the next Seer.”
She seemed unfazed; I couldn’t make it out. Maybe she had already figured that out, or heard whisperings about it, much like She would wind her way into my thoughts.
“Kim, that means power. Plain and simple.” She popped into my head with this epithet: “Deception equals control equals power.” It felt true enough. Especially just looking at Kim. I reached out to touch her once more.
This time she didn’t jump. “He has it,” she said simply.
“Who,” I said, though the stab in my heart told me the truth.
“Michael,” she said matter-of-factly, and I could tell it was partway intended as a jab. That wasn’t Kim; it was the Bloodstone. My anger kindled. I was speechless. “What will he do with it, I wonder?” she went on.
“Kim…”
“No, hear me out,” she said. “What possible reason could he have for wanting to keep it? And keep it secret? From, of all people, you? His so-called love?”
“Kim, you’re starting to weird me out.” I didn’t add that I wanted more than anything to slap the smugness right off her face. What is happening to us? But I knew: it was the stupid stone. I growled and stood, pacing.
“What’s the matter, Airel?” her tone was sickeningly sweet.
I bolted to her and got in her face, snarling. “Just you shut up, Kim. Seer. Whoever I’m talking to. You’re not yourself, and you’re out of your depth. No matter who you are.”
She feigned mock surprise and awe.
I released her throat, which I didn’t realize I had grasped in my anger, and stood away. “And for crying out loud, girl, would you brush your teeth before we have our next conversation?”
Thank God that broke the spell, or whatever.
Kim laughed out loud. She then walked in her underwear to the bathroom, her body covered with scratches, sores, bruises, and red marks. She looked awful. My heart sank for her. More than ever, I felt overwhelmed.
Worst of all…Michael. My Michael. Now what?