Chapter 15 Whitney #2
“You were using the bond to mask your needs, but I’m using it now to bring them to the fore. I can’t have you weak when we meet the government in a few hours.”
The last thing I see before I fall asleep is his watching face. My gorgeous, powerful, and somehow still gentle death lord. A small twinge of guilt strikes just as I fall asleep, knowing that my family will be waiting, ready to use me to incapacitate him very soon.
When I wake, I yawn and stretch. As soon as my eyes focus, it’s clear that he’s gone out.
Xolotl’s squatting across from the bed, holding a drink carrier.
“The woman at the coffee shop said these were their four most popular drinks.” He crosses the room and thrusts a bag toward me.
“And these are their most popular breakfast foods.”
Starbucks.
He went out to get me Starbucks.
I manage to destroy two of the coffees—the real coffee; I hate the fluffy crap—and then I eat a muffin and a danish. That’s when I realize something. The sticker on the cup holder’s in Spanish. “Wait, where did you say you went to get this?”
Xolotl stands. “I think we should go.”
Only then do I realize the sun’s definitely already up. “We’re late.”
“I’m never late.” Xolotl smiles. “I don’t allow humans to dictate times to me. You reminded me of that.”
“What if they’ve left by now?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I can always draw them back to me now that I know the location of their military base, but it’s best to set our positions up properly from the start. I dictate the terms. Not them.”
Drawing them back will involve killing another massive group of people, I’m sure.
But taking over the military will also involve killing a lot of people, only, he’ll be using other people to do it.
I just can’t really embrace his premise that things like war and plagues help humanity stay healthy.
It’s like he’s saying that humans can’t thrive without suffering.
“Are you ready?” He’s waiting for me, having cleared the pile of rubble out of the doorway.
“I still want to know which Starbucks you went to.” I look at the pastry bag, and I realize the sticker that held it closed is in Spanish, too. In fact, it looks exactly like the stickers they had at Starbucks when I was in Columbia on that study abroad. “Xolotl.”
He sighs. “While you’re awake, you shield your thoughts. When you sleep, I see things sometimes, and if I see something more than once, I know it matters. I find myself becoming vested in the memory. I can’t have my general distracted by past wrongs. It would be unsafe.”
“What things are you talking about?” My cheeks heat a little, because I had a pretty strange dream about me and Cobalt Blue last night.
He kissed me, and I know it’s because Xolotl got all close to me before, but it was unsettling.
I didn’t like it at all. Or maybe I liked it so much when I wasn’t in control of my feelings that I’m now desperate to hate it enough to offset my involuntary response.
“I decline to answer.”
“No, I overrule that. You have to tell me. What past wrong?”
He frowns. “We need to leave. As mentioned, we’re late.”
I lean back in bed. “I won’t be leaving until you tell me what you did.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. You had a nightmare again—a dream of the night the man attacked you. He shredded your purse, but in the second dream you had, he also did other things.” His nostrils flare. “Distasteful things.”
“And?” I stand now, worried. “Listen, those were just dreams.”
“I think not,” he says. “They felt like repressed memories, and the more you remembered, the less I liked the perpetrator.”
My detached, impartial killer seems to have developed more emotions about things. I did want to change him, but now that I have, I find it concerning. Sometimes we really don’t know what we’re trying to do until we do it. “Where did you go, Xolotl, and what exactly did you do?”
“You know what I do, Whitney. I went to Columbia, and I did it there.”
“You killed him?” I can barely breathe.
“It was the first time I’ve killed for personal reasons.” He looks a little bothered by it. “I thought it might be harder, but it wasn’t. It was easy. It might have been the easiest I have ever taken a soul.”
“You—you traveled to Columbia while I was sleeping and you murdered the man who assaulted me?”
“The man who threatened to kill you, who ripped your shirt open?” His fists are balled at his side.
“Yes, I ended his life, and I did it painfully. I don’t regret it.
If you had seen his soul, you wouldn’t have regretted my actions either.
Energy may be light or dark, depending on whether it’s tied to the creation of or the termination of life, but the soul, that’s different.
As humans make evil decisions, their soul darkens.
It becomes darker and darker, and his was quite dark.
” He tosses his head at the doorway. “It’s time for us to go. ”
I should argue with him or chastise him, like usual, but I can’t find the will to do it. He’s finally done something I’d have done myself if I had the skill. “What is it exactly that I’m getting ready for? Are you about to shove me into a big, dirty hole?”
He clears the doorway and gestures for me to walk through.
“That’s how my brothers teleport, because they’re strongest in earth powers.
I’m stronger in wind and lightning, so I usually.
. .” He waves his hand around, and I fly upward, along with him, shooting through the doorway and into the air outside, and slamming pretty solidly against his chest.
My hands press against his powerful pec muscles, and I can’t help shifting my fingers just a little, because he may be a terrible person, but his chest didn’t do anything horrible, and frankly, it’s a thing of beauty.
“What are you doing?” He clears his throat. “Why are your fingers moving like that?”
“Me?” My head snaps up. “They’re bracing me against the currents. I’m flying through the air like Lois Lane, here.”
His brow furrows. “Lois who?”
“It’s from a movie.”
We dip a bit in the air.
I squawk.
He’s smiling now. “Relax, little one. This will be fast.” We hurtle forward for another hundred feet, and then there’s a strong sound like a popping accompanied by a strange sort of a vacuum feeling, as though we’ve just hurtled through very compressed time and space, and then we explode into the sky above Travis Air Force Base.
Or at least, I assume it’s Travis Air Force Base. There are buildings, tents, and several towers. All of it’s rather boring in color, and there are loudspeakers blaring in the distance.
“How’d you get us here?”
“All I need are good images to orient on, and I recalled after you went to sleep that I had seen this place in the minds of many of the soldiers who died yesterday.”
Of course he did. Gross. Mass murderer and mind rapist. Ugh. Every time I think maybe he’s not so bad, he says something like that. I swear, I might be getting Stockholm Syndrome.
But if these are going to be some of my last moments on this earth, at least I’m doing cool stuff and seeing once-in-a-lifetime things. We drop toward the earth, and by golly, Xolotl was right. There are loads of people still gathered below us, even though we’re clearly very late.
Tanks, jeeps, and rows of armed troops are directly below. And above us jets dart and weave.
Xolotl’s smiling as we light on the ground a hundred yards from the gathered troops. “Who’s the leader here?” His voice booms, so he must be augmenting it somehow.
The tinny, grainy sound of a loudspeaker explodes out toward us. “I’m General Phillips, and you’re quite late.”
Xolotl waves his left hand and two tanks roll end over end, away from us. He tightens his hand into a fist, and the rolling tanks crumple into balls. I close my eyes, unwilling to think about what happened to the humans inside them. “You were saying?”
“The entire force of the West Coast United States military’s arrayed against you, Xolotl,” General Phillips says. “I’m not sure watching you destroy two tanks convinces me of much.”
“The entire military force, yet you hide like a coward,” Xolotl says, “I thought perhaps you would be the man I was looking for, but that’s clearly not the case.”
“I’m not hiding.” A small figure walks toward us from the line of infantry in the front.
He’s holding a loudspeaker in his left hand.
Smart. He continues walking forward until he’s only fifty feet away.
“I’m here, before you, but I should warn you that what we deployed yesterday was just a little test. It’s nothing to the heat we can bring to bear on you right now. ”
Xolotl sighs like he’s terribly annoyed. “Great, then do it.”
The general’s jaw drops. Then he shakes his head. “Excuse me?”
“I said go ahead and do it. I’m ready and waiting.”
“You can’t possibly want us to attack you.” The general frowns, walking a few steps closer. “I’m sure you’re putting on a good face, but after being hit with so many missiles yesterday—”
Xolotl whips his hand outward, and a missile flies away from him and hits the middle of the gathered troops.
There’s a massive explosion and bodies fly in every direction.
“I wasn’t hit with anything.” He smiles.
“Your attacks restock my toy chest, so go ahead. Once you’re done handing me gifts, I’ll talk with whoever’s still alive.
I’m sure the next general in the line of command will be happy to take orders from me. ”
The general’s trembling.
“Maybe cut him a little slack,” I say. “You’re a lot to take in. You can’t really blame him for being incredulous.”
“You don’t know military men like I do,” he says. “They only speak one language, and it hasn’t changed in thousands of years. Control or defeat. He must understand that I have all the power, or he’ll never submit. He wouldn’t be much of a leader if that wasn’t the case.”
“So it’s a pissing match then.” I fold my arms.