Through the fire, p.11
Through the Fire, page 11
"Did I keep you awake?"
"Nah." Chris pinched the insides of his eyes, then rose and stretched himself like a cat, working out the kinks of having slept fully clothed. "But you always could sleep, no matter what else was going on, unless you had bad dreams." He went and got more water as Nick sat on his own bed, shoulders slumped.
"I kept dreaming about…what happened."
"'k. Tell me 'bout it."
"I dunno. I don't really remember much. Just there was a lot of light, and maybe…maybe Saboac."
"What do you remember about last night?" This time Chris handed him a glass of water. Not the same glass; he still had the one Nick had gotten for him in one hand, and drained it for the third time in as many minutes. Nick drank his, then handed the glass back to his brother with a pathetically hopeful look. Chris refilled it and brought it back before Nick even tried to answer anything about the night before. "I know I asked you already," Chris said, almost gently. "I know you told me a little already. But tell me anyway. Anything you remember, so we can figure out what to do."
"I was counting down two minutes. About ten seconds before the mark, I heard the back door break open and you shouted. And then…" Nick closed his eyes, the light marking the backs of his eyelids again. "I kicked the door open. I must have kicked the door open. It was broken and I was inside and it looked like Emerson was on top of you and I…"
"Exploded," Chris said, helpfully.
Nick lowered his head, frowning uncertainly at the half-empty water glass. "I guess? I wanted to get to you. I wanted to get him off you. And I felt…" He put a closed fist over his sternum, like he could capture the sensation that had been there. "I felt like I couldn't move fast enough, even if I didn't really know how I even got where I was. I felt like I could tear Emerson apart, like I could tear…everything apart. Like if I got hold of him I would. And I didn't want to do that, I just wanted you to be safe, but it was like there was all of this…energy? I guess?"
He looked up at Chris, who leaned against the motel room's desk, just a few feet way, with his eyebrows drawn in concentration. Not judging, just listening. Listening hard, and trying to understand. "It felt like I had to do something," Nick said helplessly. "Like…like a natural disaster or something, right? When something's happened and you can't fix it but you feel like you need to run or hit something or scream so you don't erupt?"
"Like you felt at the funeral." Chris hesitated. "Like we felt."
"Yeah." The small word came out in a desperate rush. "Like that. Like I didn't know what to do with it and if I didn't let it out somehow something…something bad was going to happen. And I knew I could've gotten to Emerson. He was just a couple steps away and he looked so insignificant and weak. He would never have even known I was coming, and then he'd have been…"
"Dead," Chris supplied. "But that's not you."
A bleak knife went through Nick's chest, cutting away at the certainty he might have taken from Chris's confidence. "I wanted to, though. I wanted to and I didn't, and then…I don't know, Chris. It's like I didn't move fast enough for the power to be satisfied but I couldn't hold it in. It just…exploded. Like you said. And then I was so tired. I'm still so tired."
Chris took a deep, careful breath. "Do you still feel it?"
Nick, lips compressed, nodded. "It's not as bad. It doesn't want to get out as much right now. But it's there and I'm afraid if I get scared again…"
"You're going to have to learn to control it." Chris sounded so much older than he was, implacable and almost angry, like their dad, although he walked back what he'd said almost before he'd finished saying it. "You were controlling it, Nicky. You didn't let all that shrapnel hit either me or Emerson. You know that, right?"
"I know that's what you think. I think Emerson got lucky because he was next to you."
"Doesn't matter," Chris said with absolute conviction. "Even if you're right and you were only trying to keep me safe, you did. Which means you controlled it. Which means you'll be able to, Nick. We'll build on that."
"How can you be so calm?" The sensation of something building in his chest woke again, stronger than just the dull, tired presence he'd felt a moment earlier.
It dissipated, though, as Chris let out a quick bark of laughter. "I'm not. I'm pretending so we don't both flip out, Nicky. Last thing you need is me going haywire on you now."
"You're allowed to have feelings too, Chris." It seemed to Nick like he'd said that to him already, recently, but Chris only chuckled quietly.
"Right now you need me to be your cool, calm, collected big brother." He paused, then admitted, "And maybe I need that too. I mean, this is pretty weird, man. You look bad," he said after a minute. "You should try to sleep again. I'll keep watch."
"No." Nick sounded hoarse and wrung out, even to himself. "No, I gotta…I gotta figure this thing out now, Chris. I can't be around Stephanie if I don't know if I'm going to explode."
Chris stared at him a few seconds, then let go a slow exhalation. "Yeah, okay. Look, there's a…there's an old quarry up the road a ways. I'll check us out of the motel and we can drive up there and…I don't know, but there won't be anything to hurt out there, anyway. You can text your girl and tell her to meet us there."
"Arright." Nick closed his eyes. "Chris?"
"Yeah."
"Thanks."
Chris pushed away from the desk and put his hand on Nicky's shoulder briefly, then left the room. Nick packed up what little they'd brought in and met his brother at the truck a couple of minutes later. The drive to the quarry took longer than he expected, or felt like it did, at least, but that happened when you didn't know where you were going. He bet the drive out would seem shorter. He closed his eyes, resting his head against the window, and Chris, in the same voice he’d used when Nick was a kid, said, “Almost there, buddy.”
“We’re in a state park,” Nick said, mostly to the window. “You sure we’re supposed to be driving up here?”
“Pretty sure we’re not.” Chris flashed him one of those damn grins that got him in and out of trouble with equal ease. “On the other hand, it’s winter, the road’s big enough to drive on, nobody’s looking, and some days it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.”
“The Chris Cassidy Life Story,” Nick muttered, and Chris’s smile flashed again. A couple minutes later, the trail they were following stopped in a rough mass of carved-out marble that, despite its soft pale tones, looked dark compared to the snow heaped all over the place. “Tyler’s gonna pitch a fit about driving his Highlander up here.”
“How sad for him.”
A betraying wheeze of laughter escaped Nick’s throat, and Chris grinned. “I won’t tell him you giggled.”
“I didn’t giggle.” Nick paced forward, snow squeaking under his sneakers. They’d crushed cross-country ski tracks coming in, and there were more spreading across the quarry, giving him something more solid than powder to stand on. A wind cut through the pine trees, hissing between needles so dark they were almost black, beneath the cloudy winter sky. It smelled fresh and cold, with a promise of new snow. Nick stopped, and with the cessation of movement, his shoes stopped squeaking, which left him in a space of more complete silence than he’d heard in years. He could hear his own breathing, and Chris coughed once on the bite of cold in the air, but otherwise there was nothing but the wind scraping over the snow, and a sudden caw from an unseen raven.
The pressure, or the presence, of power inside of him seemed to wobble, in all that silence. Like it was equalizing, or something. Like it had room to expand, in the quiet. Or like it was looking for something to affect.
The last thought made Nick shudder, and he spoke too loudly, his voice cracking through the silence. “Great, here we are in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of snow and rock and trees. Now what?”
“You still feeling that energy, or whatever?”
Nick pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum. “Yeah. It’s—” The answer turned to a yowl as a snowball slammed into the back of his head and melted directly into his collar. Scraping snow away, Nick spun on his brother, offended and borderline hurt. “What the hell, man!”
Chris, packing another snowball, actually looked a little guilty. “Sorry. I kinda didn’t think it would hit you. Like you’d have a spider-sense or something.”
“Well I didn’t!”
“I said sorry! Try to stop this one.” He lobbed another snowball, and Nick stopped it all right, but in the traditional way, by crossing his arms and ducking and yelling and generally protesting the entire process. He scraped up a handful of snow himself and flung it at Chris, who ducked behind the Dodge and yelled, “Neener neener!” because apparently they were five.
For a couple of minutes they just threw snowballs, laughing and howling and swearing at each other, until Chris slipped on a slick patch, went down hard, and didn’t get up again. After a couple of seconds Nick heard the rough catch of his breath, and went around the truck to find Chris sitting with his jaw clenched and his hands in fists, glazed gaze locked on the quarry walls a little distance away. Nick slid down to sit beside him, neither of them speaking or—quite, Nick thought—crying. But he would break if either of them spoke, and he thought Chris might, too. So they just sat until it passed, or at least until Nick’s butt was so cold he couldn’t feel it anymore. Just before he had to give up and get to his feet, Chris grunted, “I got an idea,” and stood abruptly.
Nick rose, rubbing his frozen butt, and, baffled, watched as Chris found a semi-scalable chunk of quarry and began to climb. He slipped a couple of times, making Nick hiss with concern, but he caught himself both times, with a casual ease that made it look like he wasn’t worried. But muttered curses bounced around the stone, so at least he had some modicum of sense remaining. Nick’s own hands hurt with the idea of how cold the rock must be. After a few minutes, Chris had climbed maybe ten or fifteen feet, and found a ledge just about wide enough to stand on. He looked around a minute, said, “Nice view,” then, “Ready?”
“Ready? For what?”
Chris jumped off the ledge.
CHAPTER 9
Panic and power exploded from that awful space inside Nick’s chest. He didn’t think there were words around it, or inside it, just a raw need that erupted into action. Into form. Into something that leaped from him, as if the physical action he took—throwing his hands out like could catch his stupid-ass brother—shaped an impossible strength that would do what he otherwise couldn’t.
Snow and air and Nick didn’t know what else swept up together and caught Chris in a cushion just a few feet above the ground. Nick felt the impact, like he’d caught Chris physically, and the air rushed out of him. So did the unnatural power, like it couldn’t withstand the shock. Chris fell the last couple of feet and landed hard in a pile of snow deeper than it had been before.
Landed hard, but not nearly as hard as he would have if his fall hadn’t been broken. Nick’s voice shot up, cracking the air and his throat. “What the fuck, Chris! What the fucking fuck!?”
After a moment’s silence, a cackling groan emerged from the snowdrift, followed by Chris’s raspy voice. “Ow, man, that hurt.”
By that time Nick was there, hauling him out of the snowbank with both fists so he could yell in his brother’s face. “That hurt? What if I hadn’t been able to catch you, Jesus, Chris, you could have been killed, you—”
“Get off.” Chris tried to knock Nick’s hands loose from his coat without much success. “Get off. I knew you’d catch me.”
“How in ever-loving fuck could you know that?” Nick did let go then, explosively. Chris staggered backward a step or two and collided with the rock wall he’d just climbed. Snow from a tree above them collapsed and dumped heavily on him, and he yelled, “Hey!” like that was the unreasonable thing that had just happened. Then he shoved past Nick, knocking snow off as he went. “I knew it because you were trying to keep me safe with Emerson. What’d it feel like?”
“It felt like panic, you fucking idiot, what the fuck were you thinking—”
“Aren’t you the one who was giving me shit about using ‘fuck’ too many times in one sentence like two days ago? Or yesterday? Jesus, when was that?” Chris pulled his jacket off to shake the rest of the snow off.
Nick stared at him blankly a few seconds, the mundanity of the question knocking him out of his anger. "It was…it's Monday morning. That was Saturday. Two days. Chris…" Nick sat down hard in the snow again, shaking all over as he buried his face against his knees. "Don't do that again. Jesus, man, don't do that again."
He heard Chris's boots squeak on the snow, and a moment later the heat of his brother's hand warmed his shoulder. "I gotta admit, there was a split second there where I thought I'd made a terrible mistake. You caught me, though, so I'd do it again."
"Chris."
"Maybe not unless it was an emergency," Chris conceded. He crouched, his hand still on Nick's shoulder. "What'd it feel like?"
Nick snarled, "Terrifying," against his knees, then looked up. His brother's gaze showed a trace of sympathetic apology, but mostly held a familiar sharpness, an intensity that said he was on the hunt, searching for answers, and that he wouldn't let it go until he had them.
Sometimes, Nick thought, Chris reminded him too much of their father. He put his head back down against his knees, but this time he was searching for the right words, not just rattled beyond being able to speak. After a minute he lifted his head again. "Do you remember when we were kids and we spent like half a summer just lying around staring at things, convinced we could move them with our minds if we tried hard enough?"
A brief smile slid across Chris's mouth. "Yeah. You'd read some book where the kid could do that. I told you like half the X-Men could."
Nick, distracted, said, "I think like two of the X-Men could, at least on the main teams. Anyway, yeah. Aside from the panic, dude, it felt like that. Like that's what I was trying, except it worked this time. I…" He stretched out both hands, like he'd done when he'd tried to stop Chris's fall. "I reached, but my…my mind reached farther."
"And stronger," Chris said thoughtfully. "You wouldn't have been able to catch me with your arms. Anything else?"
"I don't know, man, I was really kind of focused on freaking out." Nick bared his teeth. "On panicking. Not, like…freaking."
"Not grendeling," Chris said, and shrugged when Nick gave him a hard look. "Yeah, it doesn't exactly flow, but we'll get used to it. How you feel now?"
"Exhausted."
"Too exhausted to try again?"
Nick's spine stiffened, angry dismay washing through him. "You just said—"
"No, not like that, yeah, no, I'm not jumping off another cliff today. But you have more of an idea of what you did, now. Basically telekinesis, right? So, I dunno…" Chris looked around, then packed a snowball together and stood up. "C'mon, stand up and see if you can stop it from hitting you."
"Why would standing up matter?" Nick rose anyway, and Chris backed off to give him some reaction distance before throwing the snowball.
It hit Nick square in the middle of the chest. They both looked at the blob of white breaking in pieces and sliding down his coat, and then Nick lifted an accusatory stare toward his brother.
Chris offered a wide cheesy smile. "Try again?" After a few more successful hits, Nick muttered, "You're enjoying this, aren't you," and Chris's smile went crooked before he said, "Lemme try something."
"Oh, sure, go ahead, this is obviously great, I'm having lots of fun, you do you, man, whatever."
Chris cackled and made a whole stack of snowballs, then scooped as many as he could hold up into one arm, and began throwing them at Nick with the other. The first couple hit while Nick stood there feeling mildly abused, and then a barrage flew at him. He raised his arms, trying to protect himself, then growled, "Hey…hey!" as they came faster. Then angry pain erupted in him as a snowball caught him in the ear, and his next protest came as an incoherent shout. He threw his arms down, apart, like he might if he was holding swords in both hands and making a last stand, and roared, as if the sound alone could end the bombardment.
An almost-visible wave of power, like frustration embodied, bubbled in front of him. The snowballs smacked against it harmlessly, disintegrating in soft poofs. The bubble didn't quite hit Chris, but it displaced air and snow, spitting a spray of white over him. He stepped, almost staggered, back, as if he'd been pushed, but the surprise that flashed over his face was replaced almost instantly by delight. "Yeah! There you go! Arright, what else? You straight-armed Saboac, go see if you can pick up the truck!"
"The truck weighs a literal ton, Chris, the angel thing didn't weigh that much." Nick tried anyway, with exactly as much success as he expected, but Chris waved it off.
"You can't do it if you don't believe in yourself, man. Try a rock instead. Or me, your buddy Tyler says you can bench press more than I weigh anyway."
"You want me to straight-arm you?" Nick asked incredulously.
"Sure!"
"Dude, you know you aren't meant to be experimented on?"
"Better me than Stephanie," Chris said cheerfully, and it turned out Nick could, in a flash of anger, straight-arm him, although at least he didn't grab him by the throat. Chris, dangling in his grip, said, "What's it feel like?" and Nick put him down to stare at him.
"It feels like straight-arming my brother, and it's not cool." He stepped back, slipping in the snow, and rubbed a cold hand over his face. "I know that's not what you mean. It feels like I'm using my muscles, but not as much as I should have to. It's easy, and I don't…I don't like it."
"And how do you feel? Still tired?"
"Not as tired as before. I don't like that either." Nick folded his arms around himself, staring at the snow, now broken with their footprints and snowball-collecting marks. "I don't want to be a freak, Chris."
"I don't know, man, it's pretty cool to be able to lift somebody like that." Chris's voice softened, though. "I know. But I think freak powers—grendel powers—are better if you know how to use them than not. You gotta be able to control that shit. So now we know you get explosive if you get mad or scared, but you can pick me up like I'm a rag doll without being pissy."
