The Alignment (8 page)

Chapter 10

Trey

I
wake up on
cold wood, a wet nose under my hand. I roll onto my back. The sky is a kaleidoscope, each point of color shrinking down until I see they’re merely stars. I’m not sure how I wound up on the porch. The temperature must be low but I don’t feel it. River claws my arm, a numb limb now alive with four distinct lines of pain. I’d stay out here and die if she wasn’t so insistent.

I feel my way inside and trip over a body in the kitchen. When I see her I’m glad it’s no one I killed, no body I need to drag from the house. Then I remember what we did. I kneel to find her pulse. Hell, she should be dead.

She’s not. I carry her limp body to the bedroom and lay her on the bed. Only I could survive a handful that size but I gave it to her anyway. Maybe this is how it ends, this is my out. If she dies here instead of at their hand, she won’t feel the pain of death.

It will be easy to make it look like an accident. I’ll take her body up to the bluffs. I’ll be sure to be part of the search party. If I’m there when she’s found, I can make sure they won’t question. It’s a simple effect—quick to prepare, effortless to dole out. My power might be rusty but I’ve succeeded at this more times than I can remember.

I pack all her clothes, gather her things from the bathroom and comb the house, removing every trace of her. Once her body is gone, I will wait for the harvest, and I will leave.

I collapse on the couch, too exhausted to remove my shoes.

I awaken to River’s howl in the night. Two more howls, followed by a pause. I wait for it. One more howl. Her warning call. Someone is here. My adrenaline is slow to kick in because the tea’s still in my system. It’s worse than being drunk but I’ll have to shake it off. I roll from the couch to the floor in a squat, listening. I can’t let them get to her. If they find her before I can deal with her, it will be more difficult to cover up. I don’t have a plan prepared for that, and I don’t have the desire or motivation to come up with one.

Using the shadows to conceal my motion, I slip over to the large bureau. Common sense pleads a good case, but I stopped listening to common sense a long time ago. I stand and shove the bureau down the hall and up against the bedroom door with flaccid arms and a swimming head. It makes a lot of noise, but it can’t be helped.

I prefer to face him outside. There’s more room to move around and it’s easier to clean up. My head start was taken by moving the bureau. I open the door and walk outside, offering myself.

A yelp sounds from the woods. River. I jump aside as a knife flies by me, cutting my arm and sticking into the ground nearby. I retrieve it, making sure my movements appear strong to hide my insobriety.

“Thanks,” I say aloud.

Instinct shifts my attention to a black outline crouching in the shadow of the garage. I take off running. Better to get this over with. He moves behind the garage and climbs up the back of it, so I follow him up to the top where he grabs my shoulders, flips me hard onto the roof. I roll and get up, but he’s already around me, grabbing me from behind. A wire cuts into my neck. I flip him over my back, using the split second his body is airborne to aim the knife for his throat as he lands. He dodges. I twist my arm, stabbing downward, and the knife makes contact with his thigh.

The exertion leaves me momentarily blind. He rolls to the edge of the roof and drops to the ground. I take a running start, leap off the roof and flip midair, landing on my feet. He’s already running to the house. Fatigue takes hold, but I push it away.

“Oh no you don’t.” I know what he wants. I’m on his heels. This has become personal. They are so insistent on making my life difficult. I am not cleaning up their mess again. This is
my
mess.

Reaching him at the house, I kick his legs out from under him. When we land, I poise the knife to meet his fall. It plunges deep into his lower back. Hopefully I hit a kidney. He grunts but obviously still has some fight in him. His elbow makes contact with my cheekbone, and I fall back, catching myself with my elbows on the ground. I leap up to see him scaling the side of the house, so I follow him up. When he reaches the peak in the roof, I leap for his waist. We fall together, our bodies crashing against the shingles.

He manages to get the knife to my throat, and I feel my strength waning. The fatigue has grown more difficult to deny. This is just a bad night for this. I press the knife away from my skin, but it isn’t quite enough. The tip of the knife slices my chest from collarbone to hip. I use the momentum of his downward thrust and turn the knife back on him, catching him somewhere in the leg. He rolls off me, and I pounce. His open palm slams into my freshly cut chest, but I manage to get around him and roll him over to the edge of the roof, slicing his throat open from ear to ear. He doesn’t let go of me in time, and we both plummet to the ground. I wait for the impact, but it never comes.

Chapter 11

Liv

M
y eyes open
to darkness. I take a slow breath. Shadows, dim images come into focus, monopolizing my concentration until suddenly my ears adjust. Something’s above me. On the roof. I sit up and look around, straining to make sense of the sounds and my surroundings.

Everything around me shudders under the impact of something crashing hard against the roof, and I jump off the bed and duck next to it. Whatever it was, it can’t be good. Violent commotion continues on the roof while I grope blindly in the dark. My fingers settle on the closet door. Somehow I know there should be a trap door in there where I can hide. My stomach roils, driving all the air from my lungs, and I double over with my hands on my knees.

Something massive scrapes down the length of the roof and slams onto the ground. I freeze, overtaken by a shifting, a twisting, like the core of my body is turning with a force of which I have no control. A prickly heat cups my head. I flatten both palms against my temples yet it won’t ease. I know this feeling, but I can’t place it. Something foreign is in my head and it’s spreading lower, into my chest, down my arms and abdomen, sweeping my stomach clean. Once it reaches my feet it’s gone, my body freed from under a weight I didn’t know was there. With the release of this pressure I’m thrust forward, like a tree branch snapping upward when a clump of melting snow finally falls.

I open the bedroom door and catch myself before walking face-first into a large piece of furniture blocking the doorway. I put my hands against it and push. It has to move out of my way now. Leaning into it, I push as hard as I can but the damn thing won’t budge. I need something for leverage. I drag the bed closer to the door, sit on the floor with my back braced against the bed, and push the object with my feet. It slides an inch. I push again, putting all my weight into it, and gain another six inches.

I stand and try to squeeze between the object and the doorway in the tiny space I created but it’s not enough. With my back against the wall, I keep at it, a painful fraction at a time until I finally flop into the hallway. Gasping, I burst through the front door into the yard. The night sky captures me in a way it never has before, every star shimmering for me alone. Orion, so new to me just a few days ago, shines upon me like I’ve known him my whole life, drawing me into his world as if I’m just as much a part of the celestial realm as he is.

River runs up, weaving anxiously back and forth in front of me. I follow her around the corner of the house and see him. His body stained dark with blood. Filled with a pure, potent sweetness, I rush toward him and land on my knees in the grass next to him.

Flat on his back, he’s so covered in blood I can’t tell where he’s injured. Blood pools around his head, and his shirt hangs off in pieces. I check his airway, his breathing, his pulse. His heart beats faintly. His legs are bent under him at the knees, so I feel for broken bones and finding none, I straighten his legs.

My fingers search his skull but can’t find the source of the blood. It’s impossible to know if he has a neck injury, but looking at how he landed, I’m going to have to take a risk and assume he does not. Fresh blood trickles out of his nose and right ear. Not a good sign. I check his pupils, but it’s too dark to see. A shiny slash glistens across his chest, offering a reason for some of the blood soaking him and the ground around him. I’d rather it be from that than from his head.

I stand to assess the situation, knowing somehow I have to get him into the house. It’s an instinct strong enough to overcome my training that should be telling me not to move him—bleeding from the nose and ear could mean a bad head injury. River is standing over a dark crumpled heap in the grass. My heart pounds in my ears. I rush toward River to find a man, dressed completely in black, lying in a dark puddle of blood so thick it looks more like a mirror of the night sky.

My arm halts on its way to find a pulse when I see his throat has been cut. I check for a pulse in his wrist and find nothing. He has bled out.

There could be more of them out here. Head injury or not, I have to get us both inside.

I run to the garage and yank up the door handle. It roars upward and out of my way. There’s just enough light to spot a big square of folded tarp. Perfect. I tuck it under my arm. I unfold the tarp on the ground next to Trey and roll his body onto it. It’s an easier feat than I would’ve thought. I seem to have a superstrength, yet even though my muscles are working overtime I know it won’t last. I manage to slide him to the edge of the driveway where I lose my footing in the gravel. The tarp budges on my second attempt but I begin to realize the futility of this. After a progress of only a few feet, I collapse on the ground, take a few seconds to catch my breath, and run back to the garage. I find a board with wheels on it, the kind mechanics use to work under cars, and I grab a rope as well.

On my way back to Trey, my run slows to a stop. One familiar dog has been replaced by a pack, all standing next to Trey but staring at me. I try to pick River out but can’t tell which one she is. One of them barks at me, tail wagging. I drop the board and the rope, run back to the garage, grab the broom, and walk straight toward them. They part as I approach.

With the broom raised, I look around at them and recognize they’re not dogs, but coyotes, all calmly watching me as if they are waiting for my orders. He must feed these animals for them to be this tame. I don’t have time for this. I’m going to have to ignore them, and they are just going to have to get out of my way. I toss the broom aside, and one of them runs forward, grabbing the tarp in its mouth like a game of tug of war.

“Shoo!” I shout, frantic. This is no time to play!

All at once, the others grab hold of the tarp and I topple backward, catching myself on the ground with my palms. As a perfect team, they drag the tarp, with Trey aboard, all the way to the door. This must be a very bad dream. I will wake up soon, and I can eat breakfast and go to work and forget about this night.

The coyotes dash away. I run to Trey. I lift his head up onto the step and slide my legs under his armpits. I wiggle myself underneath him, brace my feet on the porch, and heave. Once we’re both inside the door, I kick it closed. I don’t want to think about how many times I’ll have to do this until I get him to the couch.

Halfway there, I slide out from under him and run into the bedroom. I pull a couple blankets out of the closet and pile them in the living room. I return to the bedroom and strip the bed of its sheets and pillows and drop them in the living room on the rest of the pile. In the kitchen, I rummage for a pot in the cabinet and fill it with hot water. I lug the pot, soap, and towels into the living room, flipping on the main light with my elbow on my way.

But the effort is for nothing. The darkness was masking a dead man. Now in the light, he has the look of a trauma patient who didn’t make it—pale skin covered in blood, that limpness to his frame which only means one thing. My eyes fill with tears but my hands are too full to wipe them. I have no reason to cry, except my chest has caved into itself and the world has broken away from me.

In the silence there’s a thin breath, and I know it’s not mine because mine is stuck in my lungs. Another breath. I hurry to find his pulse. It’s so faint it must be my own pulse in my fingertips. But it’s too slow to belong to my pounding heart. I put my ear against his chest and count the beats. He’s not gone yet. And he’s not going to die on my watch. I need to clean him up. I need to locate and treat his worst injuries.

I need to call an ambulance.

The blood in his ear has dried enough to tell me it’s through bleeding. I check behind the ear for a bruise that would indicate a head injury. It appears normal. And so far, no evidence of raccoon eyes. I cut what remains of his shirt off, carefully picking it from the open wound on his chest. I take off his shoes and unbutton and unzip his jeans. With my feet braced against the floor again, I pull the ankles of his jeans until they slip all the way off.

He’s clean from the waist down, so I cover his lower half with a sheet and two heavy blankets. I soak a towel in the hot water and, after testing it on my own skin, I press it to his chest. I wipe, rinse, wring, then wipe, rinse, wring again and the water is already red. I take the pot back in the kitchen and dump it. While it’s refilling, I dash into the bathroom for first aid supplies. Under the sink I find bandages and ointment, toss them on the floor next to him on my way through, and run back into the kitchen to retrieve the water.

I repeat the exercise until I get the rest of the blood cleaned off his chest and arms. Several gruesome cuts and scrapes run along both forearms and a nasty gash divides his bicep. After refreshing the water again, I move on to his face and delicately wipe his forehead. His eyelids. His lips.

His swollen right cheekbone is already developing a large bruise. I clean out his bloody ear and do as much of his back as I can reach. Washing under his chin exposes a shallow cut across his throat, as if a knife skimmed him there. It makes me think of the man outside.

Standing to look at my work reveals I need to wash both his hands and do something about the blood caked in his hair. No fresh blood is running, so I can’t help but be encouraged, but with so little color to his skin I must assume he’s lost several units of blood and may need a transfusion—something I can’t do here. I hurry back into the kitchen for fresh water. While the pot fills, I take a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer and find the shallow tray he used for the herbal bath for my leg. I grab a flashlight from the top of the refrigerator.

I take everything back into the living room. After filling the tray with hot water, I place a pillow under his neck and lower his head into the water. First, I rinse his hair to see if there are any wounds. The water immediately reddens. I take the tray to empty it and start again, doing this several times before the water stays somewhat clean and I know it’s possible to examine his head in the light.

I find a two-inch gash but it’s no longer bleeding. There are several lumps but nothing too concerning. The lumps remind me of the frozen peas, so I balance them on his swollen cheek, trying not to apply too much pressure. His pupils respond normally to the flashlight. His irises glow back at me, purely and perfectly green.

With most of the blood rinsed out of his hair, I lather it up with soap, rinse it again, and pat his hair dry. I check his temperature with the back of my hand. Not good. I quickly wash each of his hands in the tray and dry them. They look like they’ve been through a wood chipper, the knuckles scraped almost to the bone. I pat the rest of his body dry and lower his head back to the floor. My fingers move faster than my mind, applying ointment and bandages to all the wounds I can see. I pull the blankets up to his chin.

Standing up leaves me dizzy and drained, but I drag myself to the laundry room for the laundry basket and return to the living room to place all the dirty towels in it. I wipe as much blood off the floor as I can manage and take the basket into the laundry room, the pot and tray into the kitchen. Back in the living room, I roll him onto his side and unfold one of the heavier comforters on the floor next to him. I roll him to his other side and do the same with another, creating a makeshift bed when he’s settled back in place. I tuck a pillow under his head, curl up next to him under the blankets, and fall fast asleep with no willpower left for a second thought.

*

My face is buried against his arm when I wake up. The scent of his skin is an illegal substance, and I’m a criminal, stealing one last fix before the cops haul me away. It’s wrong, and I know it, but I can’t stop. My sickness has fled with my good sense, but now I’m sick with something new: a need to be curled up next to him for eternity. The world has turned upside down.

I sit up. His face—I know it, but not like this. It was different before. This upside-down world must have different lighting or special effects to give his face a rough charm. Features both foreign and familiar, they give me a warmth I’ve never felt. I’m glad he’s asleep so I can stare. I place my palm on the uninjured side of his chest to feel the rise and fall of his steady breath. His heartbeat is stronger than it was last night. Some life has returned to his skin, and the swelling in his cheek has been replaced by a dark purple bruise.

I slide the blanket to his waist and examine the cut on his chest which seems to be already healing, among older scars I didn’t notice last night. Lacerations long-healed by bad suture jobs and what look like gunshot wounds—too many for one person to have so they must be something else. I take his right hand and admire its mass, its strength, its masculinity in proportion to mine. I lean over him and examine his head for the swollen contusions and find them significantly shrunken, and no open wounds. I gently run my fingers down both sides of his face, admiring the cut of his cheekbones, the curve of his lips, the way his hair falls onto his forehead. I pause to stare at his closed eyelids, his lips inches from mine, and wonder how long I have until he wakes up and I have to pretend I still hate him.