“Did I kill anyone?”
“You injured some but the Book appeared to be having a hard time acclimating to controlling your body. Jada is fine, as are your parents.”
I narrow my eyes. I’d had far too much blood on my hands, hair, face, and clothing to have merely “injured” people. I study his profile. It doesn’t elude me that he answered what should have been a yes or no question with an offer of parallel information that, while pertinent, was deftly evasive. He hadn’t lied. But he hadn’t told the truth either.
He turns his head and looks at me.
I know I killed, I say levelly.
Then don’t waste my time.
Our gazes lock. In his eyes I see a wall I might push through to reveal names, places, and how. But if I get tangled up in who and how I killed, I’ll come undone. I must be a smooth flat stone, skipping lightly on a dark lake that could drown me.
A few moments pass and I realize my heartbeat is returning to normal, my stomach no longer feels queasy, and I’m not nearly as tired and sore as I’d been feeling. In fact, I feel…good. All because this man sat down next to me. Such a simple thing, such a powerful thing. “Did you ever see that movie What Dreams May Come?”
He slices his head to the left.
Barrons always denies watching TV or movies, as if it’s too plebeian a pastime for a man of his ilk. “I loved that film.”
He gives me a cool look. “What the fuck was there to love about it? They all died. First the children. Then the parents.”
I smirk. “I knew you watched it.” The reason I’d loved it was because when the wife killed herself, she was sent to Hell to suffer in madness, alone for all eternity. But her husband refused to let that happen. “You came to my couch and joined me in my hell.”
He smiles faintly. “Maybe you came to mine.”
“Guess it doesn’t matter whose couch it is.” I lift my hand, hesitate, drop it back to my thigh. He’s not a man for physical displays of affection. He’s either having sex or not touching. “So, what am I supposed to do?”
He takes my hand, laces our fingers together. His hand is huge and strong and dwarfs mine. I glimpse the black and red ink of a fresh tattoo above the silver cuff, stretching up his arm. “What do you want to do?”
I lean my head against his shoulder. “Leave this world and find another that won’t matter if I destroy it until I know for sure that I’m in control.”
“Ah. So, you think there are worlds that can be destroyed without mattering,” he mocks lightly.
“I could go to a barren planet with no life.”
“It doesn’t matter what you destroy, but that you destroy. There are two types of people in this world: those who can create and those who can’t. Creators are powerful, shaping the world around them. All beings crave power over their slice of existence. Those who can’t create do one of three things: convince themselves to accept a half-life of mediocrity and seething dissatisfaction, deriving enjoyment from whatever small acts of dominance they manage to achieve over their companions; find a creator to leech onto and exploit to enjoy a parasitic lifestyle; or destroy. One way or another, someone that can’t create will find a way to feel in control. Destruction feels like control.”
I pull back and look at him. “Your point?”
“You’re a creator, not a destroyer. Destruction destroys the destroyer. Always. Eventually. And badly.”
“Your point?”
“The Sinsar Dubh has leeched onto you. There’s no place you can run. The battle goes with you.”
“But I could minimize the fallout.”
“Only to yourself. You might not care as much if it were a stranger on some other world that the Book killed, but I doubt the stranger would care any less, nor would the people who care about that stranger.”
“Okay, not getting this. On the one hand, with the exception of creators, you just told me all people are essentially dickheads. Now you’re arguing for those dickheads.”
“I argue for nothing. I’m merely stating that whether you destroy here or on another world, you’re still destroying. That’s your battle—to destroy or not. Once you start splitting hairs, trying to convince yourself some things are more acceptable to destroy, you’ve already lost the most important war. There’s no advantage in moving your battle to unknown terrain.”
“You think I should stay here and fight, even if it costs the lives of people I love?”
“Your battle is half won. You’re sitting here with me. The Sinsar Dubh isn’t. Make that permanent.”
“But you’re not telling me how.”
“What does the Sinsar Dubh want?”
“I don’t know.” That’s what I’d been wondering before he came in. Trying to figure out its end goal so I could intercept and undermine.
“Yes, you do. It wants to be in the world, living, in control of itself. What do you want?”
“The same thing.”
“Why?”