Chapter Thirteen
AN: I can see this scene in my head, and I want you guys to see it too, so I'm writing it a little differently from the other chapters. Hope it works!
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"Are you ready for this?"
"What, are you kidding?"
"I'll take that as a yes," Reid says, his voice a low, whispering torrent that rips through Tyler like an electric shock. They are standing on the roof of one of the first large inns in Ipswich, built in 1878, abandoned for twenty-three years now. It is dark, the moon high in the sky, just a sly shiver away from full. A brisk, secretive breeze whips through their hair, sending their jackets billowing.
"Are you sure you wanna do this, man? Even if you weren't less than two days away from ascending, it's dangerous. Hell, I don't want to-" Reid raises a hand, his fingerless gloves a sharp contrast against the smooth paleness of his skin. His hands, in the dark, in the moonlight, have an unearthly glow to them. It outlines the long, elegant fingers, the short nails, the deadly strength of those youthful tendons. When he looks at Tyler, his eyes are wide and wild and his smile is quick and reckless: a lightningflashrainbow of teeth and promise. Tyler feels the excitement, the rush. It shoots through him, quickening his breath, a burning tingle in his palms and toes.
"Let's do it," Reid murmurs. He is the elder, the rebel, the mentor, the lonely, the angry, the fearless, the friend. In Tyler's eyes, in this moment, he is God. The younger boy straightens, breathes in. He tastes wind and blood in his mouth, and feels his lips curl up in a daredevil grin to rival his blond companion's.
"Fuck safe," he declares, throwing his head back with a laugh. "Let's find your girl!"
Reid's eyes burn fiery moltenhot, a hellish, wickedly beautiful flame that, in an instant, tears through his irises and leaves them, as well as his whites, pure black. Tyler's do the same, and across the town, Caleb and Pogue let out soft, harsh curses… but it's too late.
Moving in unison, breathing in sync, the wilder half of the Sons of Ipswich quartet steps smoothly off the top of a five-story building, supported on nothing as they rise above the town. Reid looks to Tyler.
"Take it away!" The other boy nods, and they reach out. Hands meet in a hard clash, skin-to-skin contact exploding with power as they combine strength and will. Twin pairs of jet-black eyes close, squeezing shut. Together, they See.
woman man together naked bed sheets sweat
FLASH
girls laughing arms looped walking smell of popcorn and perfume blond hair and brown hair short skirts and jeans
FLASH
child bedroom gray walls all gray tears oh no daddy don't hit me don't hit me don'tdon'tdon't
FLASH
Tyler's breathing hard, gasping, almost.
"Oh God," he grits. "It's too much. There's too much!" Reid's grip tightens to the point of sharp, fresh pain.
"Hold on," he forces out, body tensed with effort. "Hold on."
boy sleeping blood on the sheets nosebleed sleep sleep wake up see oh god my nose shit its on the pillow shit shit gotta clean it up and
FLASH
asking so many people all these people nobody's seen her no one knows she's gone gone little lost kat gotta keep looking keep asking pogue baby come on we gotta ask over there they might know someth
FLASH
"How many people are in this fucking place?!" Tyler's bitten his lip. It's bleeding. Reid smells the coppery metallic scent and laughs.
"Don't know, man, but- ah!" He breaks off and convulses in the air, bombarded by someone else's thoughts. "We'll find her! We'll- find- stay focused! Hold the hell on!"
cold its cold and im all alone here all alone hungry so hungry stay strong oh god please please help me help me reid reid no no one can help me no one please help me reid please caleb tyler help me come find me come on damn you fucking damn you to hell you fucking bitch you'll pay you'll pay pogue caleb come on come back here you lunatic i got to you before and i can get to you again you
"That's her! That-"
And that's when the fast, angry, desperate voice that's tearing through both Reid and Tyler, a voice they both recognize, gives way to a wordless scream as she hits something; they don't know what, they only feel the shock of the blow and the harsh, mindless fury that's so strong they both flinch back. Their hands fly apart; the connection is severed; the voice is cut off. Cold shock floods each power-filled system, and two teenage boys plummet from several hundred feet in the air.
"Shit!" Reid's heart is a stone, falling as fast as he is. Tyler is shouting, arms windmilling, eyes brown and human and filled with terror. Wind whips by them, fast and cruel and cold as it bites their cheeks in passing. Reid can feel, in this moment that is so quick and yet so very infinitive, each of his molecules separating and drifting to mingle with the oxygen around him as he falls, becoming one with the air but not fast enough because his body, his flesh that has housed his spirit for so many years, is too solid and too dense and too heavy to be suspended no matter how terrified the pieces of his being are.
They're both shouting now. Screaming, mindless, thoughtless, helpless. The ground is coming, gaining on them, a hard and merciless abandon and falling, falling, closer, faster, faster, cold air and brisk wind and oh fucking god oh god oh no can't stop it can't stop it oh god gonna diegonnadiegonnadiegonna
and
freeze frame.
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Eyes open.
Breathing.
Silence.
In his mind, stillness. A poetry of living, of existing.
Pounding of the heart, sharp and loud and insistent.
Flat. On the ground.
Buzzzzzzzzz… adrenaline, coursing through him.
Blackeyes to blueeyes, all in a second.
That's all it takes, he thinks. A second. A push, a pull, just a little pressure.
Alive.
Dead.
A great and terrible knowledge takes hold of his mind, creating within him a void of recognition: he is alive. It is so strange that he is lying here, alive.
And then…
"Jesus fucking Christ." They sit up, slowly, gingerly. Half expecting the solid earth beneath them to fade, become transparent, translucent, not real. Half expecting the welcome ground to say, 'just kidding!' and disappear into a horrible dance of almost-thereness, of the ever-increasing closeness that is falling. Tyler looks at Reid, face drawn with a kind of wary relief.
"Whoa," is all Reid can say. He touches his forehead, his nose, his eyelids. Those eyes. Those magical, dangerous eyes that both condemned them… and saved them. And then they are smiling, grinning, laughing like madmen as they flop back on the earth and feel it hard and safe beneath them. "That was close," Reid wheezes, his body still trembling.
And they're alive.
And when they sit up again, Reid looks at Tyler and he's smiling, but it's a different smile now, because they both know something new. Something other than the glorious feeling of living.
They know where Kat Teague is.
That's when the rest of the adrenaline runs out, leaving them with nothing but the drain of using way too much in way too short a time, plus the utter shock to the system that comes with almost dying, and both boys collapse back to the ground, unconscious.
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I don't sleep. I can't. It's like, whenever I close my eyes, I see my own face in some nonexistent mirror, and I'm dead. A nightmare that plays on my own closed eyelids. So instead, I pace. I snarl. I drink water from this stupid water bottle. I imagine, quite vividly, ripping out Mary Harcortte's throat.
The strangest thing happened earlier. It was as if there was someone else inside my head, listening in on my thoughts. Like the slightest nudge against my mind, a nudge that seemed vaguely familiar, but it was gone almost as soon as I realized it was there.
Whatever.
If I get out of here alive, I swear that the first thing I'm going to do is tell my father I love him. Tell him the truth about what I am? I think not. But that I love him?
Definitely.
She cut me.
A little while ago. Just reached in before I could react and sliced my arm with a knife, wiping the blood off the blade with a little medical swab.
"Just for some tests," she said. What are you, I wanted to ask. A priestess or a scientist?
I said nothing.
I take stock of my surroundings, for the millionth time. I am in a cage. It is roughly six feet by ten feet, and the ceiling is solid steel. The cage is in a room, but the room is plain white. No other furniture save for the video camera in the corner. No way out save for the single door in the wall I'm currently facing.
No way out at all.
I shake my head, deliberately pressing down on my cut and hissing with pain. I'm being stupid and fatalistic. I've only been in this prison for what, almost a day? I cannot give up hope so soon. My timeline may be running out, but I am not a coward and I will not give into fear after a mere twenty-four hours of captivity.
I will not let her beat me.