Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (65 page)

David coiled his hands into fists and sneered. “Let her go,” he said, the fiery yellow fluorescence growing brighter. “Let her go, Taylor.”

“I don’t think so,” Taylor hissed. Then he stretched out his hands and a flash of purple burst from them, hitting David in the chest and sending him staggering back.

He’d caught him off guard.

David shot a confused glance at me and I shook my head.

“Be careful,” I mouthed through the bars of arcing fluorescence.

“Being one of us is one thing,” David said, “but using your powers against us, makes you one of them. Leave her alone. Let her go and we’ll forget any of this ever happened. We can just go our own separate ways.”

Taylor
laughed callously. “Is he for real?”
he asked, glancing at me. “What do you think you are? A hero? You’re
just like the rest of them. You’re weak. They made
me
powerful
for a reason.”

“I knew there was something wrong with you when I met you at the hotel,” David continued. “Your fluorescent aura is corrupted. It’s purple and then it’s black and grey and purple again. It’s out of control. I could hardly track you at all even when you were right there in front of me. Now I know it’s clearly done something to your head. The Saviors screwed all of our lives up. You don’t have to do this. You can just stop following them. It’s what I did.”

“This doesn’t have shit to do with the Saviors anymore!” Taylor yelled. “Not a single damn thing. This is about
me
now.”

David tipped his face down, narrowing his eyes. He pushed a hand out and yellow color skittered down toward his wrists. Taylor doubled over as David’s invisible pulse of energy choked the breath out of him.

“They sent me to control the others, you know,” David
added, forcing more color through his body, which sent Taylor
crumbling to his knees in pain. “They made me powerful, too.”

Taylor groaned and gasped for breath, pawing at the dirt and gravel beneath him and then cupping his head in his hands.

The cage holding me split open and disintegrated. I shot up and ran to David’s side.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking me over swiftly.

“Yes.” I swallowed hard. “Be careful, please. Taylor’s really—”

“Resilient?” Taylor said beneath his breath, panting. His face came back up and a streak of crimson shimmered on his lips. He swiped it from his face with the back of his hand and came to his knees.

“David? What’s going on?” I asked, panicking. David’s fluorescence was still aglow in his chest, but Taylor was able to stand.

“I don’t know!” He held out both hands and amber fire lit up his veins again.

Taylor straightened up and brushed the dirt from his pants. “You can’t stop me,” he slurred, taking a wobbly step closer toward us. “You can’t. I’ll take out every one of you if I have to. Starting with you.” He gave me a nasty stare. “And then I’ll drain you, too.” He looked at David. “And when I’m done…” He lumbered closer, spat blood on the ground, and wiped his mouth again. “I’ll come for Brian and his little girlfriend.”

David reached an arm out and gestured for me to get behind him.

“David, do something, please!” I said as I moved back. He flexed his hands and tried again. Bolts of yellow crackled beneath his skin toward his fingertips.

Taylor didn’t flinch.

A wave of searing violet lighting burst up from the ground
and latched on to David’s body, tangling around his arms and legs and bringing him down to the ground. He grunted and squirmed as purple sparks nipped at his face and hands, leaving charred black dashes on his flesh.

“David!” I moved closer. A fleck of color ricocheted off him and hit my arm. I snapped back as it burned me like hot oil.

Taylor held out his hands and the cage started shrinking around David, burning him more and more until he finally cried out from the pain.

“Stop it!” I sucked up my courage and took a step closer. “Leave him alone, Taylor!”

“What are you going to do?” Taylor smirked and then closed a glowing fist, causing David to let out another stifled
moan. The burning fluorescent cage had gaps in it in various
places around David’s body. I hunched down behind him, held my breath, and reached through one, biting down to resist the urge to cry out as flickering sparks sizzled a band around the circumference of my wrist.

I jerked my hand back from his belt and out of the cage.
Then I straightened my arm out toward Taylor, braced myself
, and squeezed the trigger as hard as I could.

A piercing bang rang out and a loud buzzing sound made
my head twinge.

The electric cage holding David collapsed and… so did its maker.

Chapter
24

I
dropped the gun.

David coughed violently and struggled to sit up, slipping once until I reached over to help him up to his knees. His clothes were shredded and burned—his jeans covered in holes with singed edges still smoldering. He brought his face up. A dark brown line of burnt skin marred his left cheek.

I looked across from us at the body lying stretched out on the ground in a puddle of blood and my stomach turned. The fluorescent light inside him had gone completely dark and I knew in my gut what that meant.

“Holy shit!” I slipped down to my knees and covered my face with both hands. The adrenaline screeching through my body wasn’t enough to stop my eyes from welling with tears. I gasped for breath as my heart pounded against my ribcage.
“Oh my God.” I wheezed, tears rolling down my
face. “Oh my God. I fucking killed someone!” I pulled my arms in close to my chest and took short, whooping breaths through my mouth while rocking back and forth. My wrist ached from the fresh burn.

“Kareena?” David shuffled closer, cupped my face, and forced me to face him. I halfheartedly tried to push him away. “Kareena! Look at me.”

I did, and my heart skipped a beat.

His endless brown eyes begged me to listen.

“Do you want to live!?” he asked, his breaths still labored.

“Yes! Yes, I do!” Salty tears kept drizzling onto my lips. I coughed again.

His fingers spread out and he caressed them toward my hairline. “Then you did the right thing, Kareena,” he said softly.

“But…” I wheezed again, fighting weakly to get out of his grasp. “I-I killed him!”

“You’re not a killer” He slid his hands down to my shoulders
and grasped me tighter. “I am.”

“What?” I stopped squirming. “What do you mean, David?”

He looked down and closed his eyes. “I’ve had blood on my hands since I was seventeen.” He opened them and continued, speaking slowly. “It was
my
gun you used. Those were
my
bullets and that makes it
my
responsibility. You’re not a killer, Kareena. You were fighting for your life and it was going to be either you or him. You did the right thing.”

“Then why do I feel like shit?” I whimpered, my chin
dripping with tears. “Why do I feel like I’m the most horrible, disgusting thing alive?”

“Because you’re human. Because you
are
alive. You care about things.
You value life.” He glanced quickly back at Taylor’s body and then at me.
“Him. That
thing
he became… it wasn’t human. All he lived for was himself and that’s not living. I know this, Kareena, because I used to be like that, too. I
never gave a shit about anyone or anything. Then things changed and I started to realize the world didn’t revolve around me.”

He was probably talking about his sister, but his words still made me feel better.

“What do I have to live for?” I replied. “I have nothing. Brian has Alice and you… you don’t seem to need or want anyone. What am I supposed to do if I can’t find purpose? I can’t go back to school. I can’t have a real job or even a damn boyfriend. I’m just trapped in this hell with this stuff inside my body that makes me see terrible things inside others. Disease. Death.”

He reached down, picked up his gun, and tucked it into the back of his belt. “Come on. Stand up.” He grunted and tried to hide his pain as he stood and helped me to my feet. “This isn’t what you want to hear right now, but the others care about you,” he said, wiping a stream of tears from my cheek with his thumb. “Brian. Alice. Even if they don’t seem like it, they
do
care. They probably missed you when you left them.” He looked off to the side and swallowed hard. “Like I did.”

I think it hurt him to tell me that. I could see the discomfort twisting his face. The way his eyebrows wrinkled and his frowning lips fought back a quiver. I didn’t think he liked me all that much. I thought we were only using each other, but maybe there was more to it than that. More than he wanted to admit.

“We’re better off without Taylor,” David added. “He wasn’t one of us. Brian was actually right about that.”

Brian…

“He’s not right about everything, you know.” I tried to cross my arms, but I scuffed my burnt wrist against my shirt and grimaced.

David brought his arms up around me and coaxed me into a careful embrace. I closed my eyes and rested my face
against his chest, noticing the rapid pitter-patter of my heart
finally softening.

For a sliver of time I felt… safe again. His warmth pressed
against me—his arms holding me earnestly. Then he shifted slightly and I heard a quick gasp from his mouth.

“Kareena!?” He pulled back, his hand came up toward
my neck and he delicately inspected my throat. “What happened
to you?” His fingertips barely touched my skin. “What did he do to you?”

I moved away and covered my neck with both hands. “It’s nothing. It’s over with.”

“Your neck, it’s… Oh, shit, did he try to… choke you?”

I broke eye contact with him and didn’t reply.

“Jesus, Kareena, I’m sorry.” He carefully pried my fingers
away from my throat and then cupped my face in his hands so I would look up at him. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Taylor was… evil. A misogynistic jackass. He preyed on you because he thought it would be easy, but you were stronger than he thought you’d be. You shouldn’t have had to go through what you did. I wish I could have helped you before any of this. Before—”

“You did,” I looked into his eyes and smiled. “You did help me, David. Thank you.”

He stroked his fingers through my hair, took a deep breath, and then backed off, dropping his hands down to his sides.

“So how did you find me?” I asked.

“That doorway thing showed up out of nowhere and I heard you calling for me from it—whatever it was.”

The portal.
That wasn’t me he’d heard, but I didn’t have the courage to tell him that. It must have been the Prism impersonating me like it had with the others once before. It worked, though. For once, I was grateful for the deception.

“You could see it, then? The door of light the Prism sent?”

“I saw what looked like smoke. It was a faded halo of smoke. That’s all I could see, but I heard your voice and knew it was coming from within it. You sounded like you were in trouble, so I went through.”

“I can see the entire portal, myself,” I added. “It’s a swirl of white light just spinning and sparkling like—”

“Like a Stargate?” He cocked his head.

“A-a what?”

“A wormhole that kind of looks like glowing water swirling around a
drain. It was alien technology from a book and a movie and—”

“I don’t get nerd references.”

“So now I’m a nerd?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Geek. Nerd. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “And, well, no. I didn’t
mean that. I just… never mind.” I would have chuckled, but the
fleeting opportunity passed quickly and reality sunk back in.

We both sighed and looked back at the swirling portal and then briefly at Taylor’s body.

“What are we going to do about him?” The sickness was waning, but I still felt like I might throw up if I dwelled on the sight of the blood for too long.

“There’s nothing we can do,” David replied.

“You’re right. Do we just… leave him?”

“It’s probably our only option. I know it’s bad, but—”

“He would have left us,” I said flatly.

David nodded. “Alright then. You’d better get back to the others,” he said, pressing his hand against the small of my back to nudge me gently ahead of him.

“Me? What about you? You’re not coming?”

“
There’s no place for me.” He shrugged. “Brian and Alice have each other and you—”

“I’m just here,” I interrupted, frowning. “Seriously, David, I
don’t really belong, either, but we each have a purpose. We’re all here for a reason—whatever the hell that may be.
And as much as I hate to admit it, we’re stronger when we’re
t
ogether. All of us. And… I’d…” My throat tightened and I strained to clear my throat. “I’d kind of like you to come back
with me. Please?”

He looked into my eyes and studied me for a moment. It made me uncomfortable, waiting for him to decide what to do and how to respond, but I meant what I said. I
wanted
him to come back with me.

“Okay,” he finally answered.

“Thank you,” I replied, relieved. “Thank you, David.”

We approached the glowing white light and he glanced
at me just before passing through. I stepped in after him
and a cool rush of air filled my nostrils.

Chapter
25

W
ithin seconds, we were back in the parking garage. The portal that had brought David to where I was had taken us both back to the others.

“Are they here?” David asked, looking around. “Oh, wait.”
He
squinted. “I see traces of their fluorescence. There.” He pointed.

“
Yes. They’re in that maintenance room on the other side,” I confirmed. “I was with them before Taylor grabbed me.”
We started walking toward the room when David slowed down and stopped.