Head Rush (12 page)

Just a little longer.

Darkness. Wind in my fingers. Falling, holding. Knuckles burning. The term
death grip
floats through my mind. The sense of release.

Chapter Seven

I wake up to something rough on my cheek.

Icy pavement.

It’s night. My toes are so numb they burn. Something hard under my ribs. I lift myself off it and find that it’s an axe. My fingers are burning with cold, too. My head throbs.

And it’s all perfectly fine. Wonderful even. Because I’m free of fear.

I grab the axe and sit up, smiling, surprised to see the Butcher on the other side of the sidewalk, back flattened against a brick wall, eyes wide. Does he think I’m going to try to chop him up? Why didn’t he take the axe while I was out?

Was
I out?

“Did I pass out?” I ask him.

He just gapes at me, like I might go crazy on him at any second.

“Come on. Was I out? It seems like I was…”

“I know you were pretending,” he says.

“Mmm.” Irrational. But I just zinged him with all the fear I’d built up over the past sixty-four days. Most people can’t handle what I accumulate from one day.

I put my hand to the place where my cheek burns. Maybe I scraped it, but I can move my jaw just fine. My knee is killing me, but I decide it’s just bruised. I wiggle my toes to get the blood back in them. This could be the beginnings of frostbite. “Skyrockets in Flight” is still running through my mind, because that’s the kind of song it is. Sharp pain in my head. I recall falling and bumping my head. It seems ridiculous to me now, how worked up I got over a bump on the head.

I am a ridiculous person.

The Butcher copycat watches me mutely. Was he sitting there the whole time, thinking I was toying with him? Fear makes people stupid; I know that better than anyone. I look around for Shelby. I have to keep going. I have to stop her.

“Okay, how long was I pretending?”

No answer.

“So you’re supposed to be the Belmont Butcher? Is that your thing?”

He nods.

“Where’s your black apron?”

“Underneath my coat,” he whispers. His eyes go wide as I stand unsteadily with the help of a sign pole and the axe, which I use as a kind of crutch. I narrow my eyes, breathing in the cool, fresh air.

“Why were you following her? Were you specifically following her, or was it random?”

He draws back, panicked.

“Come on,” I say. “I want an answer.” I shift a bit, and my knee buckles under me; I hold the pole, unsteady on my skates, and that’s when the Butcher explodes up from the sidewalk, tearing away from me in the direction of the river. He trips and falls at one point, then scrambles up and continues, like I might be chasing him. He runs willy-nilly, away from Shelby. Away from the Tangle.

Works for me.

I turn and squint into the distance, toward Shelby’s place. No sign of her, though I can make out what I think is her bike. And I’m betting there are tracks leading from the bike into her building, if the snow hasn’t covered them. Luckily, it’s tapered off into small, icy flakes. Cold-weather snow.

I start off. Every stride hurts, not that I care. Pain is just pain, cold is just cold, and it’s idiotic to think I have a vein-star blowout. People hit their heads every day!

I clear one block, skating carefully. Two to go. Shelby’s faint tire tracks look like soft snakes twining in the snow.

Another block. The Tangle looms large and loud.

Maybe I should feel bad for giving in and zinging, but I’m far too exhilarated. When you dump out the heavy, dark emotions that weigh you down, your mind gets strong, and your senses heighten—taste, smell, touch—you get more information from the world around you. And you feel so so wonderful! Because you’re free.

The extreme version of this freedom lasts for up to an hour.
Glory hour
, we call it. After that, the darkness starts building back up, slowly dulling your senses and your mind.

The Tangle noise grows louder as I reach her bike, which is chained to a sign pole. Her boot prints lead away from it, but not to the door of her apartment building. They lead in the direction of the Tangle.

Why? Is she stashing the guns down in the Tanglelands instead of in her apartment? It makes some sense if she knows her place is being watched, though it doesn’t seem incredibly secure—for her or for the guns. The Tanglelands, the vast wasteland below the Tangle’s coil of highway curlicues, is a wellspring of scary urban legends for a reason.

I follow her boot prints beyond where the street dead-ends, then through the wasteland that encircles the Tanglelands—a realm of garbage, blocky concrete boulders, and junked shopping carts. Not the best place to be on rollerblades. But the pain in my knee and head has become its own thing, not good or bad, just intense.

Shelby’s tracks lead around the perimeter of the Tangle, and I follow them, half skating and half walking, thankful for the long-handled axe, which makes a handy, though heavy, balancing aid. I move past hulking rubble chunks, over the snow-covered section of a broken-down highway, and around a concrete pillar, fat as a silo. Finally the tracks turn in through a slim opening concealed by twisted guardrails. I torque my body to squeeze through, knee protesting, and find myself in a dim cave whose low ceiling is formed by the underbelly of a highway long out of use.

The sound is different inside here—it has more of a vibrational quality, like sound inside a skull. The rubble and garbage on the floor obscure her boot prints, but I pick them up farther in, leading to a tunnel just big enough for a train to go through, if a train could run along a V-shaped gulley.

I follow, moving deeper in, picking around the debris as best as I can. What is she thinking, taking crazy chances, stashing weapons in the Tanglelands? And she probably didn’t even know she was being pursued by a killer. I shudder to recall the horrible things she has in store for Packard.
Killer of Avery
, as she calls him, unable to even say his name. Killing Packard would destroy her. Even Avery would see a quest for vengeance as a form of oppression.

How could Shelby have gone off the edge like this, and I didn’t even know it? I’ve been an oblivious friend, that’s how. No more.

Her tracks fade out in a minichamber that’s composed of concrete and twisted metal. The hum of the vehicles above sounds throatier here.

I pick up her prints on the other side of a slimy puddle and crawl through a small, rocky space that angles upward. Everything I touch is cold, gross, or sharp. I curse myself for not grabbing my mittens off the street where I fought the fake Butcher.

I follow her trail onward, into a smaller underhighway cavern, a space that would be totally dark if it weren’t for a storm lantern, hanging mysteriously and somewhat ominously from a rebar arm poking out of broken concrete. Did I scare somebody off? Is somebody lurking? I grip my axe, straining to hear anything above the thrumming of vehicles. If nothing else, surely rats, bats, and cannibals are roaming around in here.

Okay, glory hour is definitely fading.

In the distance is a steep incline, like a rocky mountainside. I ramble over and climb it, pushing with the edges of my rollerblade wheels and my axe, dislodging rubble. I reach the tip-top, panting. In front of me stretches a stadium-sized space, except in place of a ceiling, there are crisscrosses of highway, soaring above like the heavenly dome of a dystopian world.

You can even see bits of sky between the twisting highways, some of which are dimly strobed with car headlights. I turn my gaze downward; below is a dark expanse of something—liquid? Ambient light from above pulses off it. It has its own kind of beauty, this strange cavernous place.

A dim flash draws my attention to the ledge that encircles the huge space. Another flash—it’s a person carrying a flashlight. I squint, making out the figure’s dark hair, large bag. It’s Shelby, walking around the space, staying close to the edge, trying to avoid the dark lake in the middle

A glint of metal—she has one of the machine guns out. She carries it in front of her chest, like a mercenary. It’s strange, almost comical, like seeing your cat driving a car. I call out, but the hum is too loud, and she’s too far away.

I make my way down, nearly losing my footing. At one point, my axe slips from my grip and tumbles on ahead of me, but I grab onto stuff and manage a controlled slide, albeit with a hard landing. I find my axe again and survey the area. Up close, the slime lake smells, and it’s full of debris that I don’t want to think about. A trail leads off to my right—the one Shelby followed. In the distance across the slime expanse, I spy a kind of platform atop a hill of boulders. There are people up there, huddled by a dim fire. Two figures. Is Shelby going to join them?

The figure whose back is to me pokes at the embers, and flames rise, casting a glow on the face and cinnamon hair of the figure oriented toward me.

Packard.

I know him even from this distance. I’d know him anywhere. I watch him, stunned. Relieved. Then I realize Shelby is approaching them unseen…with a gun.

She’s going to kill him.

“Packard!” I yell. “Packard!” He can’t hear me, of course. Every molecule of my being screams to get to him, save him, a kind of blind primal urge. “Packard!”

Shelby continues stalking around the edge of the space. But I’m closer—if I go through the lake.

I grip my axe and take off, wading right into the slime, or more, through it, through the viscous, oily fluid. It’s deeper than I thought—up to my knees in areas. I try not to splash or get any in my mouth. I hit something big and fall right onto it, or more like through it—my hands plunge into something soft and lumpy. I tell myself it’s a submerged sack of garbage, and I just get back up and keep on, shaking the slime off my hands and arms, rubbing it on my lycra outer layer, moving forward on the rollerblades. There’s no way this fluid isn’t toxic. Virulent. Bacteria-laden. My knee’s screaming again—white hot with pain, but nothing matters except stopping Shelby. She’s distraught. Vengeful.

And she’s found Packard.

A waving light in the distance—it’s Shelby’s flashlight beam—she’s jerking it around. No—she’s running. She’s seen me! She’s trying to beat me to Packard’s perch!

“No!” I scream, trying to wade faster, arms out, legs fighting through the sludge. On the other side I smash into a boulder and start climbing up, axe in hand. I have to beat Shelby. I scramble right to the top.

“Packard!” I call.

He springs up from where he sits. “Justine?”

I practically fall right onto him.

He grabs my arm. “Justine!”

“Shelby’s coming! She has a gun!”

I recognize the other person by the fire now: Jordan the crazy therapist, the second-most dangerous disillusionist. She makes people feel really screwed up. Is Shelby gunning for Jordan, too?

I look around for an exit. “We have to get out—”

Shelby appears on the other side, black, winter face mask pulled up to reveal blazing eyes.

I step in front of Packard, clutching him behind me with one hand, axe in the other. “Drop it, Shelby!”

Shelby points her gun at me. “No.” The traffic hum seems to louden. “Away from him, Justine. Now.”

“Justine—” Packard says, laying his hands on my shoulders, tentatively, like he doesn’t want to startle me. “Shelby—”

“Now!” Shelby yells.

I say, “It won’t solve anything or make you feel better, and it won’t bring Avery back.”

Shelby straightens. “What won’t?”

Packard says my name again in my ear and I feel his hand curving round my waist. I begin to feel really strange. My knee screams in pain.

Shelby laughs.

“What?”

“You are protecting him.” Shelby says.

I straighten. She’s right—I’m protecting him. A killer. The memory of his killing Avery hits me, blindingly, like needles in my head. My legs feel weak.
Not now!

Strong arms fasten around me, keeping me upright, holding me so tightly the breath goes out of me. “Justine. It's okay,” he murmurs. Warm words on my neck.

“Stay behind me! Nobody’s shooting anyone here.” I pull myself together, wriggle to force him back behind me, legs still wobbling. It's pathetic to think I can save him when I can barely stand.

He pulls me right up against him, supporting me, helping me save him. “It’s okay,” he says again. “She’s okay.”

“Justine, you think I will kill him?” Shelby snorts. “I thought
you
were here to kill him.”

I regard her dimly. We thought each other was here to kill Packard?

Shelby grins.

Packard grabs my axe, pulls me around to face him, close enough to kiss him. “Justine.” His face is shadowed, but his gaze is fierce, and I stare into his green eyes with their pale ruffle of lashes, feeling suspended in time, in place. It’s like the feeling you get on a swing set when you’ve swung as far forward as physics will allow, and there’s this one blank moment where the world stops. Yet somehow, everything is in motion.

Packard.

Yes, I was protecting him. And I’d do it again. It doesn’t make sense, because I saw him kill…the pain stabs at my head as I flash on the memory.

And then he kisses me.

And we’re in freefall. The delicious sensation of him takes me by surprise. I grab on, pull him to me. I’m feeling him with my heart, and I know I’ve never felt anything so good—so true—as his lips crushed against mine, the gritty rub of his stubble on my cheek, my fingers in his hair. I forget about Jordan, Shelby; the momentum is too delicious, too smooth. I kiss him, soak in the warmth of him.

And then something strange happens: it’s as though a layer is peeling away, and I’m discovering my heart again. The more I know my heart, the more I know Packard.

And I know that he didn’t kill Avery.

The memory of it strikes me now as strangely two-dimensional, disembodied, like a deeply troubling dream. The stabbing pain in my head fades as the reality drains from the memory.

The memory isn’t real.