The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (7 page)

             
“I don't know.”

             
How anticlimactic. How insulting, too, that he had no idea why he had persuaded the others to save me. I would answer for him, just so the question would be closed for good and just be
cause I was urged to say something to fill the space of silence. Words were brimming at my lips, urging me to say them before it was too late to regret. If I didn't speak, I would surely meet my end much earlier than expectation dictated...

             
“I guess you'r
e a good enough person that you didn't like the idea of me being eaten by those things that are just outside the door.”

             
The words fell from my mouth before I could fully appreciate the magnitude of what I had said or the fact that I had known those creatu
res had arrived at all. James looked away from me and then looked back, his own shock evident on his face.

             
“Alright. We have to go.” He picked up my bag and grasped my hand. “I'm going to get us out of this.”

             
“One more thing...” I told him before
creeping out into the living room. I grabbed one of the two picture frames I had placed on the mantle over my fireplace; it was of me, my sisters and my brother from the Christmas before, standing on either side of Maura, my “nanny.” Anyone who didn't know
us or our family tree would think that she was just a proud mother surrounded by her loving children. But as it turns out, that just was not the case.

             
The other picture was from a campaign event of my mother's. Someone with no knowledge of my shaky relat
ionship with her had given the photo to me as a gift. I had kept it simply because I liked the frame and nothing else. In the photo, my mother had her arm around my back and was smiling as she waved to the crowd around her. I was still young enough not to
question the perpetual charade we were forced to live under. In the photo, I was smiling, too, and looking up at her.

             
That photo made me sick. As I shoved it into my other bag, I felt a wave of nausea that was so forceful, I had to reach out and grasp the
mantle for a moment and focus on my breathing. It was the only way to avoid the disgusting, inevitable consequence of the tumultuous, acidic feeling in my stomach.

             
“What is it?” I heard him whispering to me from some far off place. I shook my head slight
ly, unable to explain my strange behavior away. I was unable, for the first time in a long time, to pretend
that I was fine. He slung my bag onto his back and put his arm around my shoulder. As he steered me towards the open window, the feeling began to di
ssipate.

             
“The fire escape doesn't work.” I murmured to him once my stomach stopped bubbling comletely.

             
He looked at me, instantly trying to work out a solution to our conundrum. My two ideas were useless, at least if we wished to live another day: We cou
ld jump to our deaths or get eaten by Reapers. I was well aware that they were the only two options and for me, there was no contest between the two. James interrupted me as I silently prepared to take that first step onto the window ledge.

             
“I know this i
s going to sound insane but I need you to just go with it.”

             
“After everything that has happened today, do you really think I’m
not
going to go with it?”

             
“Do you have something sarcastic to say every time someone speaks?” He asked me, clearly amused and b
ewildered by the tendency. Most people just found it annoying.

             
“Indeed, I do.” I replied and before I could add, “Thank you so much,” I heard my name being hissed on the other side of the door. My eyes must have widened and betrayed the revulsion I felt.
I had never heard such a sound and to hear it saying my name provoked a fear that froze my ability to comprehend firmly in its place. Chills ran laps up and down my spine and the hair on my arms stood up straight. One of the creatures outside made a sound
almost like a guttural bark followed by what sounded like my name garbled out through spit and clenched teeth.

             
“James…” I whispered, not realizing how tight my grip on his arm was once again, “What are we going to do?”

             
“Get behind the couch and close you
r eyes.”

             
“What? No, don’t open the door!” I ordered in a furious whisper. “James, please don’t. Please don’t let them in!”

             
To call that “begging” would be inaccurate. To call that pleading with him as though he possessed and could allot the rest of the d
ays of my life would be closer to the truth. But instead of hearing my desperate plea and jumping with me out of my fourth story window, he spun me around and sat me down behind the couch.

             
“I won’t think less of you if you cover your eyes,” He told me hur
riedly, “But whatever you hear, do not come after me. Understand?”

             
I nodded vigorously, suddenly cognizant of the fact that I might very well witness the end of him. Given all the other complex emotions of the moment, I didn’t quite know how to process th
e idea of not having him by my side from then until the end. I would only understand how the thought paralyzed me much later.

             
My entire body jolted upwards as the door he had just thrown open banged against the stopper in the wall. I stared straight ahead
, my eyes wide, my breathing shallow, but my body motionless. The first sound I heard was that short, raspy breathing of the two creatures. Next, I heard their pounding, labored footsteps.

             
“Come on.” James was saying, urging them to get past him, to try t
o come at me. “
Come on!
”

             
One long, deep, ragged inhalation followed by a shrill shriek of animal fury startled me; my hands flew to cover my ears and my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Several hard, evenly spaced thuds vibrated the floor beneath me. I heard t
he bark that could have been produced by the voice of any particularly large breed of dog. After two more barks, the monsters drew in two long breaths before those blood-freezing screeches blasted from their fanged mouths again.

             
Several minutes had passed
since the creatures had entered my apartment and still, James did not attack them nor did they charge him. They truly were searching for only me. I sensed that their stomps and roars were displays of power meant to frighten James away. I did not know why
they would want to spare his life. Perhaps the Reapers only had one kill in them. Perhaps after they murdered me, they would die as well, like two bees whose prized stingers had been sacrificed in a final attack.

             
It didn't matter. The paths out of the tra
p we found ourselves in were closing, slowly becoming
just thin lines that no man or woman could pass over. I couldn’t sit there with my eyes and ears covered like a skittish child awaiting whatever foul beast lurked in the darkness of their closet. James
had gone out of his way already to save my life and his chance against those things was almost nonexistent. I wasn’t going to allow him to face that ominous darkness alone just because I was afraid. Not a chance.

             
I jumped up and saw that James had grabbed
a knife from the kitchen. Given the size difference, the sight of James staring down those two hulking masses made me think of a rabbit charging headfirst into a battle with a hungry, stomping bull, armed only with its thin, almost transparent claws. It w
ould have been comical if we weren't charging headfirst into a fight for our lives.

             
“Brynna, get back down.”

             
The only reason James knew that I was standing in view was because the two creatures stopped stomping and hissing and jerked their heads sideways
at an unnatural angle to look at me.  As I stared into their bottomless black eyes, I could feel the wrath, terror, sorrow and loathing of every lost soul in the history of our race. The feeling enveloped me in blackness, swallowing me whole and sending m
e hurtling through time and space to the place where all evil must go.

             
“Snap out of it! Snap out of it, Brynna!” James screamed at me and it was hearing his voice that sent me flying back to earth and landing with a gratified thud. It was upon landing
that something took over me; it was some inner beast I never knew existed to rival the real monsters in the room.

             
First, I hurtled over the couch. I lunged for the first beast’s throat, wrapped my arms around its meaty neck and forcefully spun so that I w
as behind him, tightly latched onto his back. My body was working completely at its own will and my mind was just along for the ride. When my ears heard another deathly scream behind me, my foot swung backwards to nail the second monster quite perfectly in
the center of its hideous face. It flew back, gasping in an almost absurd display of surprise before putting an elephant-sized dent in my newly painted wall. Beastly bastard…

             
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched James rush forward in a blur, raise the
knife over his head, and bring it forcefully down into the gasping beast’s right eye. Another prolonged gasp and then another scream  filled my ears.

             
My monstrous opponent sunk its several rows of razor teeth into my forearm and instead of crying out in p
ain as I wanted to, I ripped my arm from its slobbering mouth. I was aware of a spray of my blood but was too focused on what I was going to do next to faint at the sight or from the pain that was beginning to burn through my body as though the blood in my
veins had suddenly morphed into gasoline lit aflame.

             
I wrapped both of my arms around its massive head and drew in a deep breath of my own. During the seconds it took to gather such a massive inhalation, I unconsciously focused every remaining iota of st
rength into my locked arms. As soon as I felt the muscles swelling with fullness, I twisted, hoping to snap its neck but getting a result so much more satisfying. The beast's head spun around twice, bobbling like a top ready to topple off of its neck bone.
It collapsed to the ground, face forward and I looked up while still perched on its back. James's arm that held the knife was plunged up to his elbow in the monster's chest. My head jerked downwards and from the way it was angled now, I could see that the
knife had burgeoned out of the beast’s back. My head jerked up again as I took in the deep, wonderful, inexplicable smell of a nonexistent rain. Images of playing with my siblings in the dew-soaked grass at our family’s country estate danced in front of m
y mind’s eye, flooding my body with the strongest sense of euphoria that calmed my rapidly beating heart.

             
James ripped the knife out of the creature’s chest, sending a spray of black liquid in his direction that he smoothly walked sideways to avoid. The
monster gave one feeble moan and fell forward to lie motionless once it had hit my living room floor with a ground-shaking thud.

             
I was aware that I was very slowly and slightly moving downwards. When I looked down at the beast under me, I found that it wa
s no longer a beast, at all. Though its head was severed from its body, its face had transformed into one that was boyishly handsome once again. Its body was sculpted into the physique of a post-adolescent who spent far too much time at the gym. The monste
r was gone and
all that remained was the unfortunate boy from the bar.
             

             
James was obviously experiencing a moment of joyous recollection similar to the one I had been intoxicated by earlier. He was facing the window, standing perfectly still, smelling th
e air deeply. After the moment had passed, he turned to see that his own adversary had transformed back into what I assumed was its true self. A sadness flashed across his eyes that I’m sure he would have seen reflected in my own. I had never killed a huma
n being and I still hadn’t. What I had killed was a hulking, beastly creature hellbent on ripping me apart and devouring the pieces. I hoped that was the case, at least. I could not bear to wonder if the boy was actually human though I certainly did know f
or sure that he was. He had been, anyway, at one time.

             
When James's eyes finally met mine, I was stunned to find that they had turned over to a milky blueish-white, giving him the appearance of being blind.

             
“James…” I whispered in a trembling voice.