Revenant (8 page)

I look over at her, lying motionless in the snow. Unable to shield herself against the elements. Tears start to well in my eyes. I run over to her as fast as I can, taking the suitcase full of arrows with me, and kneel down beside her. Her face is already covered in burns. The wind picks up and blows angry frost particles over my face. It freezes me, yet singes her. I unzip my sweater and drape it over her like a blanket. I fold her arms across her chest and try my best to cover her legs as well. There’s a nasty gash running across her forehead. My fingers ever so lightly trace the wound for a moment.

Meg’s impatient shrill rings out behind me. “You done, yet?”

I just hiss “shut up” right back at her. My eyes fixate on the gash on Dodger’s forehead, and something compels me to kiss it. It’s not like the reassuring gesture will register. It’s more to reassure myself than her, I think. The kiss leaves the faint hint of dirt in my mouth.

A few moments of silence pass. In time, the woman with the wavy hair runs out to me. By now, the pink band over the horizon has grown to a brilliant palette of orange and red. Snowflakes evaporate on her skin as she runs over to me.

“Meg wants you. Now,” she says.

“Tell her... tell her I’ve changed my mind.”

“What?”

Be it anger, bravado, or stupidity, I don’t know. For whatever reason, I grip my bow and thrust one end straight through her heart. She collapses, her body smoldering amongst the snow. I can hear the others shouting. My fingers fumble only for a moment before opening suitcase. Arrow, match, fire. I restring, light, and fire at Meg, but it’s rushed. The arrow lands in the trees, burning the dead branches. Fire and ice.

Meg and Hank come at me now. Little Tyler is hesitant, staying behind his “mother.”. I fire at Meg, trying to catch her off guard. She drops underneath my shot however, and the arrow flies right through Tyler’s skull. He collapses. Two to go. Meg’s fuming. Her one eye glows red.

“You horrible, horrible girl! You will never be a part of my family! Not anymore, princess!”

She and Hank run at me, but dawn’s on my side. They’re slower and less agile. My first arrow hits Hank just to the left of his heart. He stumbles and falls to his knees. The fire reaches his clothes and skin. He erupts in a burst of flames for a moment. The snow snuffs it out when he falls, but the damage is already done.

His death completely breaks the hold on Dodger. She snaps back to consciousness, screaming from the burns. I call over to her, and it’s in that moment, where my concentration was taken off Meg and put onto my friend, that Meg takes advantage of. I don’t see it, but I guess she ran up behind me while my head was turned and snapped my neck.

I fall to the ground. My second death feels much like the first. I see Dodger and Meg grapple in the snow. They’re both covered in burns which melt the snow and ice when they roll around. Dodger’s trying to get to me, to revive me like she did before, but Meg’s not allowing it. I hear Meg scream something like “we’re both going down tonight!” and throw Dodger into a tree. The impact shakes off snow from the branches and she receives a small hot shower. She’s struggling to stand. She holds herself up by the branch of a tree.

It’s now when I realize my vision is changing. Last time, my vision remained normal. Now, it’s growing sharper. Not fading, getting
sharper
. I hear every snowflake hit the ground and the sound of drums- Meg and Dodger’s hearts- starts rattling in my ears. That slight taste on my lips when I kissed Dodger wasn’t dirt.

It was blood.

Meg and Dodger collide one final time and fall into the snow, puffs of steam leap from the earth beneath them and take to the sky. They stumble again to their feet, Dodger using the branch once more for support.

Or maybe not.

It happens faster than I can see. I hear Dodger groan and the sound of wood snapping, followed by a muffled cry. Both of them collapse at once and neither of them moves. But I can see that branch has now been lodged in Meg’s heart. Her body is starting to erode into tendrils of black dust. Three more plumes of dust burn nearby.

Dodger’s burns begin to fade away. She brings her hand up to her mouth and when she opens her palm, I see her holding two bloody fangs. Two human incisors have replaced them. She’s visibly weaker, but she’s no longer in any danger from the sun. She stumbles over to me, sobbing. She puts her mouth to her forearm and tries to bite, but can’t bring herself to draw blood. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Human blood doesn’t revive humans. Well, not in the same way as vampire blood at least.

Dodger throws her arms around me and bawls like a child. Little does she know that I’m not gone. Give me three days, I think. Three days, and I guess some human blood, hopefully from a criminal or someone the earth would be better off without, and I’ll be fine. Scout the slayer now Scout the creature of the night. Dodger the tortured soul, now a human girl.

All at once, Dodger stops sobbing. Her eyes find something on my back. I don’t know what, but my guess is it was a burn or something because her face lights up. She picks me up, using all her human strength to carry me into the woods.

She lays me down beneath an evergreen tree, leaves for a moment, and returns with my sweater that I had just laid over her. She looks straight into my eyes and whispers “I’ll be here when you wake up. Don’t worry, I’ve been here before. You’re going to be okay, Scout. You’re going to be okay.”

If by “okay” you mean “vampire,” then yes. I’ll be okay for decades. I’ll be trapped in this body until god knows when, but for now at least, I’m not going to worry about my future. The roles have reversed, it would seem. And I know that in the years to come, there will be reasons to worry. Like Dodger growing older and taller while I remain mentally and physically seventeen. Or me being the exact creature my Uncle Hunter makes a living killing. Or how Dodger and I are going to deal with the dawn and where we are going to go. But for now, I can smile. If only in my thoughts.

I’ve seen this happen in other people’s lives, and now it’s happening in mine.