Chapter 28 Zane
ZANE
It’s too quiet.
I check the thread of my power, and it’s still coursing inside her, but something’s wrong.
There’s nothing. No trace of the minutia of her mind, no more thoughts or memories for me to peruse.
The part of me that is in her mind sees the fragments of them there at my feet, but they’re different.
They’ve lost the luster of life lived and earned.
I pick one up, a memory I held in my grasp only moments before, and it’s blank. Gone.
My stomach sinks as I look at the debris around me, as the truth of the matter settles into my bones. There were plenty of memories with him inside of them, but none as C. None as the monster that ruined my life.
She didn’t know.
I pull the filaments of my influence back into myself, shame burning my soul. At what I had said. What I had done. Who I had been in those terrible, ugly moments.
She opened a gaping wound in her heart to me, and I had done the unthinkable. I became the monster she always feared I was.
Her eyelids are dusky pink, lined with delicate veins. I stroke my fingers across the contours of her cheekbone. So soft.
So pale. She should be awake by now.
Her chest rises and falls. Her pulse thrums slowly, steadily under the pads of my fingers.
“Kaye?” I brush her hair back from her face. “Wake up, Kaye.”
Not a muscle twitches in her face at the sound of her name.
Her breathing neither slows nor quickens.
It’s as though she’s asleep, but even in sleep I would expect to see her eyes dart within their lids as she dreams. While she shows all the vital signs of life, it’s as though there’s nothing within her to wake. Nothing.
“Kaye!” I take her by the shoulders, shaking her gently with sweating palms. A bolt of panic shoots through me, like fire racing scorching my nerves. “Please.”
A grief I haven’t felt in years roars inside my chest, tightening my lungs.
I place my palm over her heart, and pour my power into her chest, until I’m there in her mind again.
Among the tattered remains of empty dreams and memories, there’s a small spark, glowing blue and brilliant, that wasn’t there before.
So gently that she wouldn’t even feel the touch, I pick up the sphere of that spark. So faint. So delicate. I press my face to it, inhale the soft, sweet scent of lilac on a summer day, feel the texture of silky fur brush between my fingers and cat ears poking up against my palm.
Apollo.
No other piece of her remains.
The serum.
Pulling back into myself, I swallow against the pain building up my throat.
Oh God! What have I done?
What have I done?
Tears prick the corners of my eyes, and the pain inside builds up into a visceral thing. Folding Kaye against my chest, I release the first sob against the soft tendrils of her hair.
She didn’t know.
I destroyed her.
I didn’t mean to—I didn’t…
Katerina Grace. Checkmate. My beautiful, fierce, strong, stubborn adversary. Friend, foe, ally, love. After nearly half a decade of fighting on opposite sides of this city, I asked her to believe in me. Put her faith in me. And she did. For four incredible months.
I ruined it. Took her trust, her faith, and used it to tear her to shreds.
I’m the worst kind of monster. No. Monster is too good a word for me.
Predator. I hunted through her mind like a predator.
But maybe—just maybe—it’s not too late.
Kaye still hasn’t woken by the time the GT-R pulls up to Our Lady of Sacred Redemption. I checked her mind at every red light on the way here, and more and more glowing blue orbs have been there each time. The mind is resilient, capable of healing itself of injuries and traumas.
The problem is memories are stored through connections and only the person who lived them knows what they are.
A song or band might remind you of a particular stage of your life.
The smell of apples could make you think of the first time you baked a pie with your grandmother.
That first touch of September air might take you right back to the feeling of the first day of school.
There are no connections to anchor Kaye’s memories. No path to link present and past.
“I should burn you where you stand.”
I stiffen, pulling back from where Kaye rests in the passenger seat of the car. I was about to take her into my arms before Fulton spoke. Now I’m glad I didn’t. I turn to face her, spread my arms wide, palms to the sky at my sides.
“Do it,” I beg. My stomach roils, lining my gut with lead and making my skin feel too tight, too hot. Guilt coils around my neck like a snake ready to strike. Like a weight hanging over my head. “It’s what I deserve.”
Fulton’s face, all graceful angles and smooth beauty, hardens with divine fury. Like the archangel whose power she embodies, her eyes are lit with a fire that blazes from within, waiting on her call. All she’s missing is a sword and the picture would be complete.
She shakes her head. That kind of justice would be too easy a punishment, and we both know it. There’s only one person who can redeem or condemn me, but first we have to get her back. I bend again to take her in my arms only to find myself blocked by Adeon and Jaspar.
Adeon looks me up and down, his chest puffing with crossed arms. I don’t know how to react. It’s so unlike his normally pacifistic nature.
“We’ve got it from here.” Jaspar places an arm on mine, sympathy shining from his expressive eyes.
What can I do? Fulton, Jaspar, Adeon, Milo, Eko, Agus… even Vita. We may have started as weary allies, but somewhere along the way they became my friends. And Kaye’s.
I stand aside and let them take the most important person in my life away.
It’s Adeon who folds Kaye in his arms, cradling her to his chest with care. Jaspar presses a kiss to her forehead, and I don’t care for the troubled look marring his face. I’ve never seen the man so serious.
He looks to Fulton, then me. “Her future is there, but it’s almost like a film wrapped over the image. There are shapes of what could be, but… I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Like a satellite entering a gravitational field, I’m drawn to her, moving instinctively closer.
Fulton steps into my path, blocking the way with a fist of fire ready to snake up her skin.
She’s got me and she knows it. I’ve seen her whole body consumed by flames and she walked it off like it was nothing, because it was to her.
Heavenly fire is her gift and if she wants it, the rest of us will burn.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Zane.” As if the sight of her weren’t enough to put me in my place.
I nod. Back slowly away. “Call me if there’s any change. If you need anything at all.”
The look on Fulton’s face tells me in no uncertain terms “she’ll think about it.” Again, I can’t say that’s not fair. More than I could ask for, even.
Back in the car, speeding down the highway on the outskirts of New Malcolm, my phone rings in my pocket. My heart picks up a beat, hope spearing through me that maybe it’s Fulton. Maybe Kaye woke up.
I wait just a moment, until I’m off the highway, before I pull the device from my pocket. An unknown number lights up the screen.
“Hello?” Only a select few have this number. It’s unregistered, the phone a burner paid for in cash with no connection to anyone or anything.
“Is it strange to say that it’s good to hear your voice again, Zane?”
My stomach plummets, souring as recognition registers in my mind. “Considering you tried to murder me? Yes. What do you want?”
His laughter rings in my ear. I hate that sound. “What if I called to apologize?”
“Bullshit.” I know I sound as bitter as I feel but I don’t care.
My hands shake with the restraint of not punching the window out beside my head.
“You killed Moira. Nothing you could say or do would change that. And when I find you, C—and I will find you—I’ll crush your throat with my bare hands.
And the best part? You’ll let me. You’ll smile at me and mouth gratitude as your brain is deprived of oxygen and life fades from your eyes. ”
The bastard chuckles as if I said an endearment rather than detailed a threat. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
“What do you want?” Exhaustion weighs down my shoulders, and the light has long-since turned green but I can’t bring myself to care.
There’s no one around. Cornfields to the right; forest to my left.
A road that stretches between, and somewhere beyond that a home suddenly empty of the one person who would know exactly what to say to make any of this better.
“You were supposed to keep her safe.” C’s voice has turned thick and ugly. Calm, pure rage, all the more frightening because of its clear control. “You were the one person I trusted with her. And what did you do, Zane?”
“You killed my fiancée!”
“And you turned my sister into a shell! You shattered her mind into fragments so small she may never be the same again. Does that make you proud, Zane? An eye for an eye—Moira and Kaye?”
I have to swallow back the thickness coating my throat, the anguish and guilt and fury at him. And at myself more than anyone.
“How do you know that?” I choke past the blockage.
His haggard breath echoes down the connection.
“I’ve been monitoring you for a while, Zane.
You think I couldn’t find someone to hack a chip in a burner phone?
I know where you are. Who your friends are.
Who hides you. My benevolence has kept you alive, not your stealth.
Hiding in your own house. That might work on those simpletons in City Hall, but you and I know better. ”
“Just tell me what you want and be done with it.”
I can practically hear him smirk down the line.
“My altruism has worn out, but I’m not a complete monster.
Give yourself over to me and I’ll spare your family, those morons in the chapel—and I’ll restore little Kitty to all her formal glory.
Thirteen for the price of one. You won’t get that good of a deal again. ”
I pinch the skin at the bridge of my nose. Thirteen. As I tick off the numbers in my head, I realize he must know about Thierry too. Fuck.
“How do I know you’ll keep up your end?”
“She’s my sister, Zane, and they’ve been kind to her. I never could stand the bullies. I’m afraid that didn’t help her make many friends either. I have no reason to hurt the ones she has now, unless you make me.”
The light is green for a second time, but I have even less desire to obey it now that my choices have become so limited. From the moment I picked up the phone, my fate was set into motion.
“Tell me what to do.”