Estranged (20 page)

“
What!” Kalei dropped the
kit and ran toward the back of the van just as a scream pierced the
air. She reached Shenaia and saw the boy slumped over in her arms.
Kalei was furious. “What the hell did you do!”

Shenaia was rocking back and forth,
stroking the boy’s hair, muttering, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The
young woman’s eyes were stretched wide open and her pupils were
fully dilated.

Kalei opened her mouth,
but she heard a shout behind her. “Kalei!” She looked back to see
Dwaro running towards her.
Shit!
Her helmet was still in the front of the van.
“Kalei, what happened?”

The yard fell silent as everyone
looked at the van. Time seemed to slow down. Kalei saw Dwaro
closing the distance between him and Kalei, one long stride after
the next, she felt her heart pounding against the inside of her
chest, and for two more heartbeats, she did nothing as Shenaia
continued to mutter behind her.

Then the silence was broken by a deep,
throaty laugh that carried across the yard and echoed off the cold
brick walls of the complex.

Time kicked back into motion. Kalei
turned away from Dwaro and looked past the open door of the van. In
the heart of the crowd of onlookers stood the hooded man she had
spotted before, now shoulder to shoulder with a half dozen new
spectators. His hood was pushed back, and he held his stomach as
the laughter sailed out of his grinning mouth. His bleach-blond
hair caught the light and stood out bright against the gloomy scene
around him.

“
Get away from him! NOW!”
Recognizing Xamic and the danger he posed, Kalei sprinted toward
the crowd. The people around him were confused, bumping into each
other and pushing away from Kalei, clearly unsure which “him” she
was referring to. Then they started to run in terror when Xamic
reached up and stroked a hand across the cheeks of a middle-aged
woman and a young man. The pair fell like rocks.

Then Xamic bolted, the laughter
shifting into a higher pitch.

Kalei didn’t slow her stride, pushing
through the crowd and charging after Xamic. He ducked down a narrow
alley between the apartment buildings, and disappeared for a moment
in the shadows. Kalei followed, catching sight of him exiting the
other end. She covered the twenty-foot stretch and followed him
into the open.

About thirty feet of flattened dirt
stretched out before her and ended at an aged chain-link fence that
leaned away from its posts, sporting several holes where it had
been cut or pulled up for someone to crawl through. Xamic slipped
through one of those holes and ran toward a toppled boxcar. Track
after rusted railway track covered the ground for as far as Kalei
could see. The track nearest to her bore a mile-long cargo train,
the majority of the cars still standing despite the proliferation
of rust covering nearly every inch of the yard. But the section of
five cars directly in front of her, the section Xamic was running
toward, was toppled as though some giant had taken his massive hand
and pushed them over. Beyond that, Kalei could see the remnants of
a train wreck, with boxcars crushed and twisted, and piled at odd
angles from a high-speed collision. Kalei couldn’t decide if it
looked more like a pile of discarded toys, or a misguided piece of
modern art.

This had once been the busiest railway
juncture in Celan. E-day had put an end to that. A hijacked train
crashed into the yard, traffic to West Lake came to a complete
stop, and later, when Franklin built a new train yard on the East
Side, the West Side railway became obsolete. Home only to runaways
and rogue Estranged. A place for society to bury its
dead.

Xamic reached the toppled
boxcar, ten feet tall even on its side, and vaulted it easily, as
though it were a small turnstile in a subway. Kalei’s pace slowed
momentarily, then picked back up as she spotted a gap between the
cars on her right. She lost sight of Xamic, but he was still easy
to follow. He kept
Whoop!-
ing like a frat boy on his
way to a tailgate party. The sound carried easily across the
abandoned yard.

Kalei skirted the massive pile of
train cars, and on the other side lay several more tracks with
trains still standing. Kalei slipped between the cars, and as she
ran, she occasionally saw Xamic jump up onto the trains, shouting
and skipping from boxcar to boxcar. Even with his antics, he was
still faster than her, and the gap between them grew wider. Kalei
ducked her head and pushed her legs to run faster. Her breath was
labored, her legs were beginning to ache, but despite all that, she
didn’t feel tired. If anything, she felt determined.

The rail yard was coming to an end.
Xamic and Kalei had cleared the trains and were now sprinting
across the open ground toward a twenty-foot cement wall marking the
border to the freeway.

Xamic didn’t slow. Kalei didn’t
either.

When Xamic arrived, he used his
momentum to sprint up the side and easily launch over the barrier.
Kalei tried to follow, but made it only halfway up the wall before
she fell away. She looked around, spotting a maple tree growing
beside the barrier about ten feet to her right. Its leafy green
canopy reached about forty feet into the air, and its middle
branches reached over the fence to watch the traffic on the other
side. Kalei ran over and began climbing.

She was about halfway up when she
heard glass shattering, tires screaming, and horns blaring as metal
slammed into metal. Kalei scrambled to climb the last few branches,
then shimmied over to the top of the wall.

Looking down, she saw about twenty
cars – ten on each side of the freeway – slammed together in two
mangled piles. At the heart of the collisions, the metal was so
twisted and mangled, it was hard to tell where one car ended and
the next car began.

Xamic stood on the cement median,
watching her. He held out his hands and smiled, as if to show off
his masterpiece. Then he hopped off the median and ran into the
mess.

Kalei swung off the branch and dropped
into a ten-foot pile of freshly dug dirt that sat to one side of a
construction site. Her feet sank straight into the pile like it
wasn’t there, and the dirt came almost to her neck before she
stopped, pinning her arms to her body. Cursing, Kalei fought and
kicked her way out until she broke free and ran out onto the
freeway after Xamic.

Kalei jumped, dodged, and climbed over
the wreckage as she ran. An SUV lay on its side, windshield
shattered, the driver hanging limp, suspended by the seatbelt.
Whether the woman was alive or dead, Kalei couldn’t
tell.

She kept running, trying not to look
too closely at the carnage she climbed over. She sidestepped the
remains of a hot rod, catching a glimpse of white-walled tires
before looking away, and as she passed, she felt a sharp bite as
something caught on her arm, sinking into her flesh. Without
looking or slowing, she ripped her arm free and charged
forward.

Once she was clear of the first crash
site, she spotted Xamic on the other side of the highway, leaning
against the hood of a yet-untouched Smart car. The owner stared at
the pile-up before him with wide eyes, seemingly unaware of Xamic’s
presence. Xamic waited for Kalei to hurdle the median, then
galloped off into the traffic jam he had created.

As he went, Xamic shattered windows
and windshields left and right using a metal tire iron he had
picked up. Screams rang out in time with every crash of shattered
glass; some people climbed out of their cars and ran in the
opposite direction.

Xamic continued to shout and carry on,
occasionally stopping to take out a tail light or bash in a hood.
The activity slowed him down, allowing Kalei to catch
up.

As the distance between them closed,
Kalei put on more speed. The sound of his destruction became
louder, and she could see the families and commuters cowering in
their cars as she ran past. Kalei clenched her jaw and closed the
last few feet between her and Xamic.

Xamic spun around and took a deadly
swing at her skull, but he missed her head as she dropped her torso
and tackled him low in the abdomen. They both went crashing to the
ground.

Xamic didn’t struggle as Kalei climbed
on top of him, pinning his arms to the cement with her knees. Nor
did he protest when she grabbed him by the throat. He didn’t seem
to mind when the blood seeped out of her flayed right bicep, down
her arm, and colored his neck red. Instead, he smiled.

“
Y’know, the black in your
hair really brings out your eyes. You have your grandfather’s
eyes.”

She punched him in the
face.

“
You want to get physical,
huh?” The ease and strength with which he moved made Kalei feel
like a child as he tossed her off and reversed positions. Now he
sat on top of her stomach with his hand on her neck.

Kalei snarled “You
fucking—!”

“
Shhh.” Kalei’s jaw
locked. She could feel his darkness inside her, slowly creeping
through her body and taking control. Her own darkness tried to bite
and attack the invading mass, but his simply brushed the pestering
blows aside as it continued to pour into her. He laughed. “The
darkness is mine, sweetheart. You can’t use it against
me.”

The sheer amount he sent into her was
overwhelming. Yet even as the flow of darkness stilled, Kalei could
feel that the opaque well within him was still full.

He smiled again. Kalei glared at him,
then tensed as she felt his darkness tear a piece from hers. He
leaned his head back and sighed deeply, as though enjoying a deeply
refreshing beverage.

A brief moment later, he rocked his
head forward and said, “You can tell Terin that I will be taking
the dessert for myself. Once it has finished baking, of course.”
Xamic grinned at her again.

Kalei tried to move her arms, she
tried to use her darkness to push him back, but she couldn’t. She
was trapped within her own body. It was a similar experience to the
day Terin first found her downtown, when Terin had immobilized her
by freezing something – presumably the darkness – within
her.

But Xamic was different. Xamic was
invading her. Kalei could feel his darkness within every inch of
her body, holding her tightly beneath his control.

He leaned his head in close to hers.
She couldn’t even wrinkle her nose against the smell of stale earth
and fresh death. “You know, Fenn is a nice guy. He won’t stop
talking about you, even after I told him what you are.” Xamic slid
his left hand up to her chin as he slipped his right hand behind
her skull. Then he snapped her neck.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Trapped

Kalei woke up screaming. She kicked
off a blanket and sat up. The room was entirely bare, aside from
the cracks in the walls and the light streaming in through the
window. Kalei found herself in the middle of the carpeted floor, a
red comforter askew beside her. She recognized the Recovery Room;
she had been here several times, dropping off out-of-control
visitors. It was weird to realize she was one of them.
Again.

She held up her hand and flexed her
fingers as she watched the black swirls assume their places on her
nails. She felt as though Xamic was still inside her. She felt
tainted.

At the thought of Xamic, her stomach
seized, and she rolled over to dry-heave as her gut tried to expel
its nonexistent contents.

When she was done, she sat back down
beside the blanket and wiped off a glob of spit from her lips.
Still a bit dazed, she tried putting the pieces together
...

Fenn is a good guy... even
after I told him what you are.

The memory hit Kalei like a fist to
the stomach. She doubled over for a second time, only this time,
she kept her jaw clenched shut. When she recovered, she headed
straight for the door.

Kalei tore through the halls, yelling
for Terin all the way. He didn’t respond, but that didn’t matter;
she knew where his office was.

When she reached his office, she had
enough presence of mind to use the door handle, but the door still
slammed into the wall with enough violence that the doorknob left a
hole.

Somewhere along the way, Kalei had
picked up a vase. She couldn’t remember grabbing it, the trip down
the hall was one angry blur, but the vase was there in her hands.
So when she saw Terin lounging behind his desk, playing with a
fountain pen, she didn’t hesitate to chuck the piece of pottery at
him. He easily dodged it, which infuriated Kalei further, but she
remained rooted in her place by the door as she demanded, “Where is
my family!”

Terin leaned forward and set the pen
delicately upon his worn, wooden desk. His face darkened as he
propped his elbows on the table and interlocked his hands in front
of his face, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at
her.

Kalei took another step into the
office and continued, “Xamic knows where Fenn is. If he hasn’t
already, he’s going to—”

“
Xamic does not know where
Fenn is.” Terin’s tone was flat. “I reviewed the recording from
your ear cam. I can tell you for a fact that he is not going to
kill your family. Xamic is messing with your emotions. You should
forget about what he said.”