“We have to get home, Daryn.” His voice is in shreds and his eyes begin to shine with tears. Marcus comes out of the cabin carrying someone over his shoulder. Then Jode does.
And I understand.
Not here. Not yet.
Home first.
With half of our team either slumped or strapped to saddles, I open the portal and bring us back through to Nevada, where blood is scarlet red under the bright desert sun.
CHAPTER 16
GIDEON
Jode takes a pull from the whiskey bottle and grimaces. “Acid.” He presses the back of his hand to his mouth, wincing. “Or is this petrol?” He passes it to me. “I can’t tell.”
I reach across and take the bottle. Robohand’s working again, now that we’re back out. I’m not sure the rest of me is, though.
I don’t feel right.
“If it gets the job done, does it matter?” I say, slurring all over the place. I don’t drink. At all, really. I have a hard time with anger when I drink. Harder time. And it’s murder on my stomach. But tonight there was no choice. Right now, life is pain—the kind you do anything to try to stop.
We’re lined up on top of our trailer—the three of us—our legs hanging over the side. Below, the camp’s spotlights illuminate about twenty feet of desert; then it’s nothing but darkness and stars.
“Tell me how close you were to splitting Samrael open again,” I say to Marcus.
Five minutes ago we were all staring at the ground and trying to figure out if we’d break anything if we fell. Marcus got dizzy, which is why he’s lying back. Jode and I are still sitting. Even though I’m dizzy, too. Except the dizziness is somewhere inside me. My soul may have a concussion.
“I’ve told you three times already,” he says.
“I’m trying to focus on happy things.”
“Close. A couple inches.”
“And you threw the scythe how far?”
“Don’t know. Forty feet.”
“That’s really good, Marcus. But maybe get practiced up. So you don’t miss if you get another chance.”
“I’ll do that.”
He’s joking. We’re joking. You don’t throw a scythe. But I bet he actually will practice. He wants to end Samrael. Almost as much as I do.
We’ve hit another conversational dead end, so I drink.
It’s terrible. Like petrol.
Why am I doing this?
Oh, yeah. Because I don’t want to think.
“Suarez is leaving in the morning,” Jode says. “Soraya told me a little while ago. He’s going to Texas to see Low’s family.”
I look at him. “You’re just telling us this?”
“It didn’t seem like a headline item.”
That’s true. The headline items of the day are hard to eclipse.
Things could’ve gone worse earlier. We did make it back out of the Rift. But we paid a steep price. We lost too much today.
Suarez had to have a blood transfusion and twenty-four stitches on his thigh. Maia had five on her forearm, seven on her shoulder. Ben’s status is as yet unclear. He’s had massive internal bleeding. Right now we’re waiting. We just want good news. I was sure Cordero wouldn’t make it. I thought she’d had her jugular or carotid nicked. But it was a wound in her scalp that caused all the bleeding. She got some staples, but she’s fine. Physically she’s going to be okay. But not Low.
Travis Low is dead.
Dead, but constantly appearing in my head. Joking around, and then yelling in fear. Unstoppable, and then in shreds.
I should know how fast it happens, after my dad. How quickly you can lose someone. But I don’t feel any more equipped to handle this.
“I don’t want this. Here, take it.” I hand the bottle to Marcus. My stomach’s churning—it hasn’t stopped churning since the second I caught up to Low and saw that I was too late.
“No,” Marcus says.
“Yes. Take it.”
“Don’t want it.”
“Why so difficult, Marc?”
“Who’s Marc?”
“You are.”
“Yeah? ’Sup, Gid?”
“If you’re gonna shorten it, use Deon.”
Marcus laughs. “Ohhh my God. You are messed up.”
He’s right. At this point Jack Daniel’s has as much to say about what comes out of my mouth as I do. “Why aren’t you messed up?”
He’s quiet for a second. “Not a good idea.”
I understand. On top of everything else, seeing the silver Mustang in the Rift got to him. Some things are better left in the past—and for him that’s one of them.
What I don’t understand is how it got in there. How did Daryn’s Wyoming cabin or her mother, for that matter?
There’s a whole part of this that we’re not even tapping into yet.
I draw the cool night air into my lungs, filling them. All the stars in the universe are out tonight. Stars by the billion. It could’ve been a perfect night under different circumstances.
“Suarez is going to Texas, huh? It’s the right thing,” I say. He knew Travis for fifteen years. Better than anyone. They’ve been on the same track since boot camp. Low’s ex-wife will be hurting. His kid, who’s only three, will feel the loss for the rest of his life. Jared needs to be there for them. I didn’t know Travis as well as Suarez but we went through plenty together these past months.
The stars start to blur and my throat goes raw.
Shit.
Jode sighs. He rubs a hand over his head. “What were we thinking, taking everyone in there?”
“Nuh-uh. I ain’t lookin’ back, Jode,” Marcus says. “Why didn’t we do this and why didn’t we do that?” He shakes his head. “It happened. It’s done.”
I agree. But Jode just wants to understand. Processing information is how he copes. I’ve seen this before.
A phone buzzes. Jode pulls his mobile from his pocket, the screen illuminating the look of relief on his face. Jode’s not close to his family. He has a pretty distant relationship with his parents and his sister. The only person who gets that reaction out of him is my sister.
“We’re not supposed to take personal calls here,” I say, like an asshole. I don’t know why. Yes, I do. Maybe I want what they have.
“Cordero made an exception today.”
“Makes sense. Enjoy talking to the person I share the most DNA with.”
He smiles. “I will.” He hops up and walks away. “Anna? Yes, I called. No, no, no, everything’s fine. Only wanted to talk.” He sells it pretty well until the very end. On the last comment, emotion makes his voice crack. “I do? No, it’s nothing. Just a sore throat coming on. Tell me how you are.”
His voice fades away as he climbs down the ladder and disappears into the RV. It’s weird to hear him lie to my sister but it’s part of the job. Part of what we promised we’d do. Still, I feel bad for him and I feel bad for Anna. My sister’s too smart to be fooled. And today isn’t a day for hiding things from the people you care about.
“You want to know something? This is the only time I’ve ever wanted them to actually be physically together. I mean in the same place. Not physical with each other.”
Marcus smiles. “You want them to get physical, Blake?”
“This isn’t the time, man. Really.”
He laughs.