Anathema (16 page)

“Benjamin Franklins.”

“That’s the bloke.” He grins at me savagely. “Look how in sync we are. We could have a bright future together, darling.”

“Maybe one day.” Never. Never ever.

On edge, uneasy, I back away from him. My legs are shaking as I walk away. My heart pounds as I travel through curious anathemas, as I leave their lair. I stumble through the darkness and move numbly across the windy beach, around trash. I nearly trip over a familiar redhead. Bile rises in my throat the sight of Ezra, the host. The redheaded woman lies sprawled on her back, eyes wide open, her throat blown wide open. Nearby is Ezekiel’s crumpled body. His body, not his head. Even though they were closely protected at the rear of the vanguard, the hosts of
Showdown
still didn’t escape the carnage.

Suddenly I’m running, sprinting for the second time tonight, terror ripping through my veins. Cars fly past, anathemas pulling bodies out of them. Blades flash as they hack at them. Chainsaws roar. I cover my ears and keep running. I wish I could burn out my retinas rather than see another dead body. Another sign of what I did. This horrible thing I did.

Alexander’s words float back to me.
“I never sleep through the night.”

I will never do it again, either.

I stay home sick from school for three days. My parents let me do it, even though several times my mother appears in my room. Her voice rings in my ear about the importance of an Asylum Scholarship. I don’t listen. I must look as awful as I feel, because she lets me off the hook.

During the day after my parents go to work, I grab the comforter off my bed and hole up in the panic room. I don’t care if there’s no threat anymore. Every sound outside – car doors closing, engines roaring – makes me cringe.

Dead bodies and Russell’s sneering face dance behind my closed eyelids.

Even semi-catatonic as I am, I can’t miss the news. My parents talk about it in the hallway outside my room. My father’s radio blares it from his study. There’s a breaking story all over the internet about the disappearance of the
Showdown
crew. Their cars were found trashed at the bottom of a cliff off Highway One. Their footage is missing.

It’s being called ‘The Shelter Valley Massacre’. The slaughter took place in Cordoba Bay but apparently the anathemas stashed the abandoned cars and wrecked equipment of the
Showdown
people in Shelter Valley. The public thinks they were all killed there, which probably makes it easier to hide evidence guns were involved. It’s sensational and exciting, a massive event in the professional hunting world. The internet is apparently abuzz with new developments and speculations.

I wander from my room to use the bathroom when Mom’s voice drifts up the staircase. “Shelter Valley is right next door. This is going to drive down our property value, Frank. How are we going to sell the house now?”

I halt. What do they mean, ‘sell the house’?

“The value will bounce back,” Dad says.

“In a year? Two? That’s too late.”

“We’ll find another way to buy an exit visa.”

“How? We’re already mortgaged to the hilt to pay Kathryn’s legal fees. We’ve gone to all the relatives. The bank won’t lend us another dime. I can’t quit my job to home school if we can’t sell the house. And the asylum scholarship…”

My breath goes very still in my chest. I listen so intently, I can hear my own heartbeat.

“She’s already falling apart and it’s only October. She’s not going to hold it together the whole school year. She needs to be home schooled. I don’t think she can take this.”

It was true. It was all true.

I hear my dad kiss her. He murmurs meaningless reassurances that we’d work this all out somehow. All I can think of is the desperation driving my mom. She’s willing to quit the job that she loves, sell the house that she loves, just to keep me alive.

Tears sting my eyes. I’m their only child. It’s going to hurt them when I get killed. But I’m hurting them anyway. I don’t know how to fix any of this. Mom’s right. I am falling apart.

All I can do is go back to my panic room with my comforter.

I just want to forget what I’ve done.

It’s the middle of the school day on Friday when our doorbell begins to ring. Over and over again, followed by a fist pounding.

I huddle down in the corner of my panic room. Please let whoever it is go away. Please let them leave.

“Kat! I know you’re in there. Kat!”

Amanda. Her voice registers dully in my mind. That’s Amanda.

I groan. Amanda is nothing if not persistent. She won’t leave. She’ll keep it up.

Soon, her car horn begins to honk. Over and over. One of my neighbors yells at her, she yells back. The honking continues. My phone begins ringing over and over again.

Finally, irritation does what nothing else can.

I throw off my blankets, charge out of my panic room and down the stairs. I shove the front door open and glare at her through the bright sunlit day. She’s parked in the driveway, a hand dangling carelessly out the open window.

Amanda leans out, raising a cool eyebrow. Her chestnut hair slips down over the spaghetti strap of her tank top. “Letting me in yet?”

I sigh. Then I turn away and leave the door open.

I don’t look at her as her heels click their way into my living room. My hair is flat and greasy. It’s beginning to look awful with so many of my dark roots showing. I’m still in the same pajamas I’ve worn since
that
night. The worst night of my life. The night where I became a murderer.

“Wow, you’re a mess,” she remarks, walking behind me.

“I’m okay.”

“No, you’re obviously not. You are in dire need of a shower. Why haven’t you been answering my texts, you lazy sow?”

I ignore her question. “You skipped school just to come criticize me?”

“You’re one to talk about skipping school.” She strolls after me into the sunlit kitchen. “Besides, I can miss a day when my best friend obviously needs me. What’s wrong with you, Miss Asylum Scholarship-Hopeful? I hate to break it to you, but bailing on all your classes is not the way to get good grades.”

I set about making coffee just for something to do. “Not like I’ll live long enough to go to Europe anyway.”

“Oh my God, you cannot seriously be suicidal over Conrad. You’ve never broken up with anyone before, but believe me, I have. It’s really not the end of the world. You guys were the high school version of old married couple. It wasn’t healthy. You’ll forget Conrad. Russ is right. You need a rebound.”

I flinch at his name. I really don’t want to talk. The day feels oppressive. All I want is to return to my panic room. Then I don’t need to think about Russell or the massacre or Conrad dumping me for Siobhan or anything that’s happened.

“Oh by the way, did you hear that Russell’s off the team?”

I freeze up.

“No, you wouldn’t have heard since you’ve been hiding out in your house.” Amanda sighs and sinks into a chair at our kitchen table. She lounges back, kicking up her heels, heedless of her short skirt riding up her thighs. “Yeah, he fell off a ladder or something and broke his fingers. It’s crazy. It’s awful timing, too. He’s going to miss all the scouts.”

“Oh.” It’s all I can manage. My voice sounds dull, hollow.

“He won’t talk about it. I know he has to be crushed, but he just tells me to mind my own business when I ask him if he’s okay. You know how some guys are. They can’t master the fine art of airing their problems using words like normal, emotionally healthy people.”

My hands shake as I pour water in the coffeemaker. So Russell didn’t tell her about my role in breaking his fingers. Is he afraid of Alexander, or is he worried I’ll tell Amanda what he did?

It should reassure me that he wants to keep it quiet. I’ve been dreading this talk with Amanda. It’s one of many reasons I can’t stand to go to school. Yet even with the ready excuse to avoid it, I’m not relaxing. We’ve just delayed some terrible, inevitable reckoning.

Amanda twirls her hair around a finger. “Oh, and all those
Showdown
people are gone, too.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t. Six scoops of coffee. That’s what I need to dump in the carafe.

“They just left. Some people are saying they were killed by rogue anathemas. Like, all of them. Personally I think it’s a publicity stunt and they’re trying to save face since they gave up on Metz. Alexander is walking around school like nothing happened.”

The coffee scoop slips out of my hand and clatters to the floor, spilling coffee across the floor. “Oh no,” I moan, so frustrated I could scream and scream. I swoop down to grab the coffee scooper, but suddenly I’m shaking with tears. I can’t stop them.

And then Amanda pulls me up, and bats down my feeble gesture towards the coffee maker. “Forget that for a minute. I’ll clean up. What’s wrong? Tell me the truth.”

Her arms wrap around me, hugging me to her. The unexpectedly tender gesture makes me feel like I’m splitting apart. I can’t take this lying and hiding anymore.

She sucks in a breath between her teeth. “Your face!”

My hair has shifted aside to expose the bruising. I try to pull away from her, but she thrusts my hair aside and studies my bruised skin.

“Who did this?” Her fingers pinch into my shoulder. “Kathryn, who did this to you? I am going to murder them.”

“Amanda…”

“Just tell me!”

Tears well in my eyes, blurring her face. Amanda. My best friend in this entire world. My heart is twisting, squeezing. I might lose her. I can’t bear to lose her. But if I don’t give voice to this secret, it will kill me.

So I speak.

“It was Russell.”

Amanda goes very still. Then she recovers, a smile flashing across her lips, filled with indulgent disbelief. “Russell? Why would Russ hit you?”

“He did more than hit me. He attacked me. He tried to rape me.”

Amanda’s grip goes slack, falls from my shoulders. She’s just staring at me.

“I’m so sorry,” I go on. “I didn’t know how to tell you. But he’s been acting differently ever since I lost citizenship. He’s been cornering me and saying stuff and touching me… And oh God, I didn’t encourage him if that’s what you think. That’s what he’ll say, but it’s not true. I didn’t. I swear.”

Amanda takes a jagged step back, still staring at me. She turns around, surveying the kitchen. Her hands reach up, groom her hair, brush it back from her face, tuck it behind her ears. Then she shakes her head. “Wait. What? Wait. No. This can’t be right.” She turns on me. “It can’t be, Kat. Something got confused here.”

I sit down. “No, it didn’t.”

“Yes, it did. There was some sort of misunderstanding.”

“There wasn’t.”

“Russell wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”

“He did. You left us when we were all drinking, then he followed me to the bathroom. He said all this stuff. He cornered me. He chased me and grabbed me.” I can’t bear to see her, so I press my palms over my eyes. “He was going to do it. He was really going to do it. He had me pinned down. If Alexander Metz hadn’t come, he would have raped me.”

“Alexander Metz?” she says faintly.

“He was there. He saved me. He’s the one who broke Russell’s fingers. To punish him.”

“But—”

I lower my hands so I can see her in the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen windows. “His right hand. How do I know that if I wasn’t there? I haven’t been at school. He says he broke his right hand when he ‘fell off the ladder’, right? If that was true, I couldn’t know what hand it was because I haven’t been in school, but I do. I saw it happen. To his right hand.”

She breaks off eye contact this time, hugging her arms over her chest. “No. This isn’t possible.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I hate that I have to tell you about this but I do. I wish it hadn’t happened but it did. He did it, and… And I told Alexander to break his thumb. It was my decision. I had to. Russell bragged about killing another anathema, a father of three kids. He actually bragged about it like it was a great thing.”

“Russell wouldn’t kill someone. He’s in the community hunting guild, but he’s never killed anyone.”

“He has. He says he did it. Why would he lie?”

Amanda shakes her head, horrified. “This is a trick of some kind.”

“A trick?”

“Yes, a trick! Alexander must’ve tricked you somehow. He’s an
anathema,
remember?”

I don’t point out that I’m an anathema, too. Amanda is feverish with denial.

“An anathema, Kat. Alexander is not a good person. He must’ve engineered this somehow. I don’t know why, but he must’ve set it up so it seemed like Russell was attacking you or something.”

“How could he possibly do that, through
mind control?
” I shout, rising to my feet. “Amanda, face it! Alexander didn’t do this.
Russell
did. Alexander saved me.”

Amanda just gapes at me, still shaking her head lightly.

“It’s not true,” she insists. “None of this is true.”

“It’s true.”

“I can’t. Kat, I can’t.” Her voice breaks, her eyes glassy. She whips around and heads out of the kitchen.

“Amanda,” I whisper, suddenly terrified, regretting this. “Amanda!” I jolt to my feet and run after her. She throws open the front door, and I follow her out in the driveway. I make it outside just as she pulls open the door to her car.

She turns to me, holding up her splayed palm. I freeze in place, recognizing a stay back gesture when I see it.

“I am going to talk to Russell. I am going to figure this out. There’s some mistake. This can’t be right. He can explain it to me.”

“He’ll lie to you! He’ll just lie about it. Are you going to believe Russell over me?”

“Kat, I can’t deal with this right now. I just can’t.”

I stop moving towards her, devastation rocking me. Amanda throws herself into her car and cranks the engine. Her tires squeal as she pulls out of my driveway, fishtails off down the street.

My legs sink under me. I sit numbly on the front lawn. I am in danger sitting out here but I don’t care. The damp grass prickles the soles of my bare feet, but I don’t even move.

I will stay right here. I don’t care anymore what happens. Let whatever comes – hunters, psychopaths, bounty hunters – just come and kill me if they want. I don’t ever want to move again.

*
       
*
         
*

Time passes by as I lounge on the front lawn.

It’s been so long since I’ve just spent time outside. My natural tan is gone and sometime in the last two weeks I gave up on wearing self-tanner. The sunlight feels so good. I fold my knees to my chest and lean my chin on them, just letting the breeze and the warmth kiss my skin. The blue sky is endless and bright overhead. Just sitting out here exposed to it is an act of danger and I’m glad for it.

A hunting guild could descend on me right now and I wouldn’t stir from this spot. I am so tired of living in this world as an anathema. I can’t sleep with the images from the massacre playing behind my eyelids, haunting my memories. I’m done. It’s over. I will sit out here in front of my house every day until some hunter sees me and kills me.

Anger and despair fill me, saturate me. I pay no attention to the world.

Until I can’t help it.

Until I feel a strange certainty I’m being watched.

Every molecule in my body freezes, locks up. My ears listen intently. Some primitive, animal instinct deep inside me alerts me to danger. I am not alone on this street. Someone is near. Someone is watching me.

The weight of the person’s eyes feels physical. Their gaze is a drill boring into me.

My breath halts in my throat. My grip tightens around my bent knees.

Grass rustles.

It rustles again. Slow, steady footsteps. Heavy ones. They draw towards me. They’re as
 
careful as a panther’s. Like a hunter in sight of prey, not wanting to startle it into fleeing.

The hairs rise on the back of my neck. Even the sunlight seems to grow chill on my skin. All my resignation and fatalism vanishes beneath a tide of cold, white terror. I am alone and exposed and too far from the door.

I sat out here thinking I could just end my troubles and let someone kill me.

And now someone has come to do it.

So quickly. So soon. I didn’t expect this so soon.

Fate is calling my bluff.

Holding my breath, I rise to my feet and turn to face them head on.