Natural Selection (22 page)

“
I love you too, Amelia. So
much.” There were tears glistening on her face, and I felt hot
trails on my own cheeks. She removed the crystal pendant that had
always hung around her neck and pressed it in my hand.

Nate’s arms wrapped around my waist,
lifting me off the ground. He carried me effortlessly, putting me
into the van despite my struggles. I screamed and tried to stop
him—to get back to my mother. The world was strangely silent as he
closed the door. I climbed to the back of the van, staring out the
window as we pulled away. I saw a shadowy presence at the edge of
the parking lot stalk towards her, but we turned a corner and she
was lost to my sight.

“
No!” I screamed, beating
on Nate’s chest. “We have to go back!” I reached for the van’s
door, but Nate grabbed my wrist to stop me. Yanking my hand away
like his touch burnt me, there was no mistaking the hurt on his
face. But I was beyond caring. I climbed to the front of the car
and shook Xander, but he ignored me as he drove into the night.
Sariah stood and climbed over the center console into the back with
me. She gave me a sad smile and placed her hand on my shoulder.
Guiding me into one of the captain’s chairs as the world began to
grow fuzzy around the edges then went completely out.

My world was darkness, sadness, and
pain. I floated in overwhelming grief and self-pity, with no words,
no thoughts just misery. Occasionally, I felt hands on me and heard
distant voices, but I ignored them. Something severed as the van
plunged into the night, and I knew it was my mother dying. I tried
to cry out but there was no sound, only silent body wracking sobs.
Retreating into the darkness, I wallowed in my own
misery.

I WAS LOST in a dark, quiet place with
my sorrows. Time passed, though I wasn’t aware. Someone picked me
up, tossed me over their shoulder, and carried me somewhere. What
did it matter? I felt myself roughly tossed onto a floor, and cold
water rained down over me. A hand slapped against my cheek, and the
world lurched back into crystal clear focus.

Placing a hand to my stinging cheek, I
looked around. Lying beneath the showerhead in a less than
immaculate hotel bathroom, I stared up at my sister’s furious face.
I tried to scramble back from her realizing just how scary Sariah
could be. My back hit the wall behind me, and I swallowed harshly
as she knelt beside me. As she moved closer the anger was
evaporated leaving only the same sadness that I felt on her
face.

“
I know this is hard,
Amelia. But I also know you’re stronger than this. I can’t begin to
imagine what you’re going through—having all this thrust on you at
once—but I need you to pull it together.”

I stared up at her, her face blurring
as tears flooded my eyes. The shower floor was cold and hard
against me as I wept. I would take this one last moment to grieve
and then I would put it behind me until this was over. Everything I
had lost in the last twenty-four hours ran through my mind and sobs
tore from a place deep inside me. I couldn’t imagine how to go on
without my parents. Despite the fact I looked like a grown woman, I
was still only fifteen—I needed them. I’d lost my home, my friends,
and the life I thought I’d had. All the pent up frustrations of the
last several months were washed away with the tears. I hated how
miserable I made my parents’ life at the end. My entire life I had
been lost in my own troubles, but now it was time to pull it
together. Their death would not be the end, and I couldn’t let my
parents down. I had to keep living because that’s what they would
want. We were their legacy, and I wouldn’t leave it lacking in any
way.

By the time I pulled myself off the
floor, my teeth were chattering from the cold water. Stripping out
of my wet clothes, I wrapped in Sariah's fancy silk bathrobe I
found lying against the sink. I saw my face in the mirror. It
seemed like everything that happened over the last couple of days
should be visible. But all I could see were dark circles from lack
of sleep and red puffy eyes from crying. The exhaustion was
overwhelming, but I knew I couldn’t sleep. There was too much to
do: plans to make, and problems to solve.

I self-consciously opened the door,
holding the robe around me with my hands, but no one was in the
room. Dashing to my bag, I grabbed some clothes and scurried back
into the bathroom. Once I was changed into a blue tank top, a grey
cashmere cardigan and black cotton pants, I towel dried my hair and
styled it with my fingers. I hung the crystal my mother had given
me around my neck, then shrugged.

I found Sariah sitting on the bed. She
studied me for a moment then went to the door. When she opened it,
I realized we were in one of the no-tell motels that are common
along the highways. It was the kind where the rooms are stretched
out, lining the parking lot in two stories. This one looked very
generic with tan walls and a green door.

Nate came in carrying a laptop case
with Xander behind him carrying a brown paper bag with grease
stains. He proceeded to pull out four greasy burgers and four boxes
of fries. Sariah grabbed two cans of Coke and two bottles of apple
juice out of the ice bucket. We ate in silence. Nate sat in the
desk chair fiddling with the laptop as he ate. Xander, Sariah and I
sat on the bed.

I did my best not to make faces, but
the days when I could graze by the side of the road at fast food
joints were definitely behind me. It struck me as odd they thought
to get us apple juice but didn’t think about the preservatives and
grease in the burger. It wasn’t even a good quality burger. It was
made with things I really didn’t want to think about, let alone
eat. I tried to choke it down, but all I could manage to do was
nibble on small bites of the bun. Even the fries were
disgusting—genetically altered before they were processed, breaded
and dumped in a vat of dirty grease. Sneaking a glance at Nate, I
noticed him poking his food with a disgusted look on his
face.

Was this going to be our lives? Seedy
motels and greasy foods I couldn’t choke down? What were we going
to do for money? None of us had any marketable skills. Hell, I
couldn’t even legally work! Xander was eighteen and Nate and Sariah
were seventeen. We weren’t old enough to be on our own—and yet here
we were. I wished I could take it all back. I would wake up in my
own bed, and this would all be a horrible nightmare. Mom and Dad
would be sitting in the kitchen reading the paper, and we would
talk as I ate my cereal.

Sariah cocked her head, and nudged
Xander sending a significant look in my direction. I don’t know
what it was about, but I found at that moment I didn’t care.
Suddenly, I hated their damn demonic blankness. I hated that they
could turn it off, and I couldn’t. I hated that they had known the
truth all this time while I was kept in the dark. And I hated that
they got to share this strange new world I was just discovering in
a way that I couldn’t. But more than anything I hated that they
watched me as I struggled not to fall apart.

My vision went red with anger. I threw
the disgusting burger. It splattered against the wall and slowly
ran down leaving a trail of grease and cheese. Needing to move
before I did something stupid, I stood up. I wanted to break
something or hit someone, and I didn’t want to start a fight with
the only family I had left. My fists clenched so hard they hurt and
my nails cut into my palms. Ready to run out into the night, I
headed for the door. But Xander stepped in front of me.

I tried to go around him,
but he sidestepped in front of me again. One look at his face, his
disgustingly blank face, and my palm itched to slap him. Before I
even realized what I was doing, my hand met his face with a
resounding
smack
.

“
You can do better than
that,” he said with a sneer.

My jaw tightened. I balled my fist,
ramming it into his stomach as hard as I could. A dam inside me
burst, and I began to pummel him. I released all the anger and
frustration on him, even though he wasn’t who I was angry with. I
was angry at my parents. They hadn’t prepared me. They hadn’t felt
the need to tell me what I needed to know, claiming they were
protecting me. But were they really protecting me, or were they
trying to keep me their little girl forever? All their secrets had
wound up costing them their lives. Would things have turned out
differently if they’d been up front with me?

I punched, hit, and kicked my brother
until I fell on the floor at his feet, utterly exhausted. Through
it all Xander just stood and let me beat on him, never flinching.
When I fell to the floor he knelt in front of me taking my chin in
his hand and raising it until I met his blue eyes. I wasn’t
prepared for the pain and hurt in them.

“
We can turn it off, but it
doesn’t go away. It waits for us to focus on it. We can only get
rid of it the same way you are—by falling apart. And we
will
go through it
because like this—we can’t feel
anything,
Lia. No pain and sadness,
but no love either. That’s what makes us different than other
demons. We’re willing to go through the pain for the love. It’s
what Mom taught us, and I won’t soil her memory by turning my back
on it. When this is all done we can fall apart together. But right
now, we
have
to
hold it together. We have to come up with a plan to stop that
psycho bitch.”

With a nod, tried to pull myself
together. I could do this for my mom and dad. I was strong enough
to keep moving forward as long as I needed to. In that moment,
sitting on the crappy carpet of a cheap roadside motel in the
middle of nowhere, I decided I would not let my grief get in my
way. I would make Monica pay. Eventually, I would figure out how to
put myself back together again.

Through it all Nate sat staring at the
computer, pointedly ignoring us. Sariah sat on the edge of the bed
studying me like a bug. I wiped my hands on my pants, certain they
would be bruised tomorrow—my brother wasn’t exactly soft. There was
a good chance my toe was broken from his hard shin. If it was I
would just wrap it in tape and ignore it, because there simply
wasn’t time for anything else. I refused to let this little temper
tantrum set us back even a moment.

I stood with a calm resolve, once more
putting lead in my spine. My stomach settled in place and my chin
rose of its own accord, pride filling me. Sariah smiled and Xander
clapped me on the back. “She’s back!” he said with a
smile.

WE ENTERED PEORIA via an orange
bridge, exiting the interstate as soon as we were across the river.
I had been there a few times over the years, but never without my
parents. For a moment I felt their loss keenly, but I had no time
to linger on it. Sensing my pain, Sariah reached out and took my
hand showing the matching grief in her dark eyes. I looked out the
window as we exited into downtown telling myself I would not cry
again. We had to concentrate on surviving.

According to Xander we spent the night
of mom’s death driving aimlessly. It had been nearly dawn when we
stopped at that nameless motel in a rural town in southern
Illinois. After my melt down, we decided to head to Peoria because
it seemed like the least obvious choice and gave us time to plan.
Xander pointed out that no one would expect us to stay this close
to Lincoln—less than an hour away. Besides, Peoria had a secret
weapon we all knew about. It was a perfect place to set the stage
to end this once and for all.