Estranged (34 page)

Her anger toward Marley
turned into a hatred of herself. She shouldn’t have attacked him
like that. She shouldn’t have threatened his kid and called him a
moron...
Dammit, Kalei. He’s your friend.
He’s just trying to keep his family safe, which is more than you’ve
ever managed. Can’t you understand where he’s coming
from?

She had to admit, she could
understand. But that understanding turned sour in her gut and
sharpened the pain of her loss. Whether Marley wanted to admit it
or not, she was forever alone now. She would never have a family
again. The people of Celan could never fill that void.

Her grief and guilt nested in her
heart and dug deeper and deeper until the hole in her chest became
a festering sore. All she wanted was to take a knife and carve out
that pain at its source. Or blow it out with a gun, or blow her
brains out, or throw herself off the roof—anything to just put an
end to it all. But even as she thought these things, Kalei’s limbs
turned to lead and all motivation fled her. So she just sat there
with her back against the cold, brick wall.

She sat like that for a while, tilting
her head to stare at her hands, to stare at the ladder, to stare at
the city. As she sat there on that familiar roof, she could almost
hear Fenn’s voice trying to cut through her sorrow and loneliness.
But thinking of him only added to the already unbearable
pain.

The clouds disappeared behind the
Alundai Mountains, the stars came out and spelled their sparse
constellations in the sky, but still she sat there. There was
nowhere for her to go. What else could she do? So she swam through
her world of memories and tried to pretend the present didn’t
exist.

The sun had made its trip
across the sky several times before the ladder rattled and gave a
soft
klang.
Someone was climbing up to the roof.

Kalei’s heart leapt in erratic joy,
but she stuffed the emotion away. Her heart might have given in to
hope, but her head knew better. Fenn wasn’t coming this
time.

So she waited.

A woman’s face soon cleared the roof,
and Kalei recognized it as Samantha, the guard from Landen’s party.
Kalei would have thought seeing Fenn was more likely.

Kalei gruffly demanded, “What do you
want?” Her voice cracked from so many hours of disuse.

The blonde stepped onto the roof,
brushed herself off, and said with a smile, “Found you!”

Kalei narrowed her eyes. “How and
why?”

Samantha laughed. “You forget who I
work for.”

“
Fine. So you’re here to
take me back to Landen. What the fuck could he want with me
anymore?”

Samantha laughed again, a light,
hearty laugh this time. “I’m not here to take you back, sweetie.
Don’t worry about it. This will be over quick, I promise.” Samantha
pulled out a gun and shot Kalei twice in the chest.

The force of the bullets at
point-blank range felt like two semi-trucks hitting Kalei in quick
succession, slamming her into the wall she sat against. Then the
weight abruptly disappeared and Kalei pitched forward onto her
hands and knees. She could feel her left lung filling with blood
while pain and adrenaline blossomed through her chest.

This was exactly what she had wanted
just a minute ago, and Samantha had kindly delivered it. But the
sharp succession of sensations had woken up every cell in her body,
and suddenly, her world came through crystal clear. She could hear
the blood rattling in her throat with dizzying clarity, she could
feel every sharp angle of every pebble beneath her outstretched
hands, she could smell every note of car exhaust and sea salt as it
was carried by the softest gust of wind. And with that lucidity,
she faced the reality of leaving this world, and she knew, with
resolute certainty, she wasn’t ready yet. She couldn’t leave Fenn
alone. She couldn’t see him, true, but she couldn’t leave him
either.

She heard the pebbles crunch beneath
Samantha’s feet as the woman approached.

Kalei wheezed, “You know that won’t
kill me.”

The woman cheerfully responded, “I
know.” Then she took the last few steps between them, holstering
her gun as she took off a glove. “But it makes you far more
manageable.” Samantha grabbed Kalei by the hair and pulled her head
back. Samantha’s cheeks were all smiles, but her eyes were cold and
dead.

Kalei saw Samantha’s other hand moving
toward her out of the corner of her eye, but before the blonde
could do anything, Kalei slammed an uppercut to into the woman’s
gut. Samantha took a step back and doubled over, loosening her grip
on Kalei’s hair. Kalei ripped her head free and followed up with a
swift left hook to the cheek, sending Samantha to the
ground.

Now that she was free, Kalei started
to climb to her feet. But before she could get so much as a foot
under herself, she was brought back down by a fierce coughing fit.
She hacked and wheezed and spit out small puddles of blood as she
clutched at the throbbing, bleeding holes in her chest.

Samantha managed to get up during
Kalei’s spasm, and came in for a second try.

Kalei spit out a final globule of
blood and recovered in time to swiftly kick the blonde’s feet out
from under her. As the woman hit the ground a second time, Kalei
climbed on top, her knees pinning the Samantha’s arms to the roof,
Kalei’s hands around the woman’s neck.

Samantha brought her own knee up and
slammed it into the exit wounds on Kalei’s back. The bullet holes
released fresh pain and blood as Kalei cried out and Samantha used
the distraction to roll her off. The woman tried to use the
momentum to assert a position on top of Kalei, but Kalei caught her
leg before it could crush down on her, and rolled her off again.
Kalei tried to climb back on top, but Samantha was ready for her
this time, and they rolled one more time before Samantha grabbed
Kalei’s shirt and the two women rolled off the roof.

As they fell, Kalei wrenched
Samantha’s hands free and gave her a hard shove. The action was
instinctual; Samantha was clawing at Kalei and stabbing at her with
her darkness and Kalei knew that whatever Samantha was trying to do
wasn’t good, but the shove ended up working in Samantha’s favor.
Samantha landed in a dumpster, while Kalei fell feet first into the
concrete. Her legs and hips took most of the impact before the rest
of her body followed, crashing flat onto her back and slamming her
head into a pile of discarded newspaper. She heard snapping and
cracking and crunching, but by the time the world stopped moving,
she couldn’t feel a thing. Kalei looked up at the blue sky,
stunned.

Slowly, she became aware of someone
approaching. She tried to get up; she told her legs to move, but
they didn’t. She looked down at her body, screaming at it to run,
and discovered that everything from her stomach down no longer
responded to her commands. She lay back again as Samantha
approached from behind. She blinked a few times, watching Samantha
pull off a glove and reach a hand down to Kalei’s exposed neck.
Kalei grabbed her wrist, trying to push it back, but she was unable
to stop her. Samantha’s hand closed around her windpipe.

Samantha’s hand didn’t squeeze.
Instead, Kalei felt Samantha’s darkness plunge into her, sharp and
pointed as a blade. Kalei instinctively brought up her own darkness
in defense, repelling the attack with a solid wall, but when the
darkness collided with her own, Kalei heard herself cry out in
pain.

Samantha pulled her darkness back,
prepping for a second blow, but Kalei regained her bearings. She
slammed her wall of darkness into Samantha’s blade, pushing the
foreign darkness out of her body. Then Kalei took a page out of
Samantha’s book, forming her darkness into a dagger of her own.
Behind it, she put all the weight of every piece of darkness she
had, every bit of anger and remorse and pain and determination –
and she let loose. The dagger shot up Samantha’s arm, blasted
through Samantha’s defenses, and pierced straight through her
heart.

Something within Samantha
snapped.

Then everything reversed. Samantha’s
body went slack and all of her darkness rushed into Kalei’s as
though it was a raging river flowing downstream. Kalei tried to let
go of Samantha’s hand, but the muscles in her arm had seized and
didn’t obey her orders to let go. Kalei switched to internal
tactics instead, trying to fend off the oncoming torrent, but there
was no stopping it. It was like she stood in front of a broken dam,
trying to stop the oncoming flood with her two small
hands.

The darkness swept over her, bringing
with it a mixture of ecstasy and agony that was just...
overwhelming would be an understatement. Kalei couldn’t take it.
She screamed. Visions flashed into her mind. Snippets. A gun
shooting Kalei– a phone ringing– Landen’s mansion exploding–
someone’s mother cooking breakfast in the kitchen– Flash after
flash kept coming, never ceasing. The pain, the ecstasy, the
images, the emotions, all of it kept coming...

And Kalei kept screaming.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lost

It felt like an eternity.
Her mind and body torn between two extremes of sensation, pain, and
ecstasy waging war for her soul. The darkness churned like a storm
around her, beating her down with its devastating force. She
reached out to it, she tried to regain control, but it was...
different. It slipped through her fingers; it moved through her in
odd, undulating waves. And in those waves it brought visions
–
no, memories
–
memories that were not her own. Falling off a bike and scraping her
knee, arguing with a woman who wasn’t her mother – but she
remembered her as “Mother.” It was her mother. But it wasn’t
Kalei’s mother – graduating school, going into the military...
tactical training... discharge...funerals... fighting – a
black-nailed hand reaching for her arm...

“
Kalei. Listen to me.”
Kalei felt the voice before she heard it. Another darkness entered
the storm, steering through her own like a boat through fog.
Somehow, the new darkness maintained its shape. Her own darkness
pulled and tore at it, but the foreign visitor repelled the attacks
and continued its journey unscathed. Then the new entity turned the
tide, reaching out into the storm like a gentle hand, corralling
her unruly darkness and pulling it back to her core.

As it worked, it spoke to Kalei in a
male voice, soft and weary with age. The notes of it were deep,
soothing, and familiar as it said, “You need to control the
darkness. Kalei.”

She yelled back, “I can’t!”

“
Yes, you can.”

“
No, I can’t!” She wasn’t
sure if she was shouting out loud, or if all sounds were captured
within that dark space. “There is no way for me to grab it. There
is no way for me to push it or pull it or—”

“
Your darkness has
changed. Samantha’s darkness has diluted it and turned it into
something new. It behaves differently now, that is all. You have to
learn—”

“
I can’t!” Kalei felt
herself bawling at the futility of it all.

“
Stop trying to grab
it.”

This voice was being ridiculous. First
it told her to pull it back, then it told her not to. Her emotions
spun through confusion, futility, fear, and finally settled on
fury. “How the hell can I pull it back without grabbing
it?”

“
Scoop it.”

“
What?”

The voice remained calm and even. “If
grabbing it isn’t working, then try something else.”

“
I can’t—”

“
Scoop it.”

By now, this other darkness had
corralled most of her own into a pool. Kalei could breathe again.
Not easily, but she could breathe. Her mind slowly began to clear
as well. She thought about what he said, and she decided the voice
wasn’t going to relent until she tried. So, instead of reaching
down to the darkness with an open hand, she closed her fingers and
scooped. The darkness quivered oddly at her touch. For a second,
she thought it was going to slip away from her again, but it
didn’t. As she pulled it closer within herself, it
obeyed.

“
Now, take control of your
darkness.”

Kalei reached out to do as he said,
but when her fingers brushed against the heavy mass of her
darkness, she stopped. “There’s too much. I can’t handle all of
this.”

“
Yes, you can.”

Her rage returned. “And who are you to
tell me what I can and can’t handle!”

The voice calmly responded, “I’m your
grandfather. I know you can handle it.”

“
What?”

“
I know you, Kalei, and I
know the darkness. Now stop whining and take control.”

Her thoughts crashed and jumbled in
confusion. She tried to put together what he was saying.

“
Take your darkness,
Kalei!” The voice wasn’t angry, but it was stern and
uncompromising.

The other entity started to withdraw.
Her own darkness began falling loose of its hold; it started to
spill out everywhere. “No! Don’t!”

“
Take it.”

She scrambled to catch it all, to
scoop it all in, to put it back under her control. There was so
much, too much. She continued to scoop, she continued to pull it
in. Any minute now, she was going to exceed her capacity and
explode. She could feel her heart straining with too much darkness.
Every new addition felt like it would be her last, and still she
scooped and scooped, a perpetual repetition she thought would never
end.