Avalon high, p.19
Avalon High, page 19
And then I saw him. Will.
But he wasn’t sitting on his favorite boulder. He wasn’t standing on it, either. Instead, he was stretched out across it, on his back, like…
Well, like a dead man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
I didn’t scream.
I don’t think I could have uttered a sound if I’d tried. For one thing, I was breathing too hard from my run.
And for another, the cold hard fear that had been gripping my heart since I’d heard Cavalier barking—but which I had refused to let myself acknowledge—seemed suddenly to convulse, cutting off all the blood supply to the rest of my body.
I don’t even know how I got to the bottom of the ravine. I suppose I stumbled there somehow. I do know that by the time I reached Will’s boulder, my legs were covered in oozing scratches from all the brambles I’d apparently encountered, but hadn’t felt.
Lifting my gaze to where he lay, his eyes closed, I could detect no sign that Will was breathing. But neither could I see any obvious bloodstains. Still, he had to have heard me coming. And yet he hadn’t moved….
My legs trembling uncontrollably—both from emotion and the endurance test I’d just put them through—I walked around the boulder and set down the sword, still safely wrapped in my dad’s jacket. Then I placed the toe of my shoe into one of the footholds I’d used to climb Will’s boulder the last time….
And his face suddenly popped up above mine.
“Elle,” he said. He reached up to pull off a set of headphones he’d been wearing. “You came. I knew you would.”
And then he grabbed my hand and pulled me up onto the top of the boulder….
…where I completely lost it. My limbs turned to jelly. All the blood in my body, which seconds before had been frozen, seemed to thaw at his touch and left me feeling as if I hadn’t the strength to so much as stand.
Will must have recognized this, for just as I felt my knees begin to give, he said, “Hey—” and let go of my hand, throwing an arm instead around my waist. When my still-liquid limbs continued to sway, he caught me up against him with a laugh that ended abruptly as our bodies met, and my hands flattened out against his chest.
Then he said, “Hey,” again—but in a different, much softer voice.
Staring into his swimming-pool blue eyes, just inches from my own much plainer brown ones, I finally found my voice.
“I thought you were dead,” I whispered raggedly.
“Far from it,” he whispered back.
And then he was kissing me.
And suddenly, my arms and legs didn’t feel like jelly anymore. Instead, I felt as electrified—as if I really had been struck by lightning…only better. Much, much better. Because you can’t wrap your arms around lightning. Or feel lightning’s heart skip a beat beneath yours. Or taste the coffee he’d had to drink earlier, or smell the nice clean scent of his shirt. I could do all these things with Will, and did….
…including press myself as close to him as I possibly could, and not just because I was so cold, after all that rain. Also to prove to myself that he was alive. Alive.
And he was kissing me.
And seemed to like kissing me. Very, very much.
“Now why haven’t we done that before?” Will wanted to know, when we’d finally stopped kissing and his forehead was resting against mine.
“Because you already had a girlfriend,” I reminded him. I was amazed that I still possessed the ability to speak. I would have thought, after a kiss like that, I’d have been rendered speechless. My lips were still tingling from it.
“Oh yeah,” he said, still holding on to me. Then he lifted his head. “Hey. You’re shivering.” He rubbed my arms with his hands—his big, warm hands. “No wonder. You’re all wet. How’d you get so wet?”
“Because it was raining,” I said. And as if to confirm this, thunder rumbled ominously overhead.
“Not here,” Will said.
“Obviously,” I said.
“How can that be?” He let go of me, but only for a second, while he leaned down to lift up a jean jacket he’d left lying beside his iPod. He threw the jacket over my shoulders, then pulled me to him again. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened back there. At the school. With Marco. That was bad.”
“Yeah,” I said, loving the way his arms felt around me. “It was. I…I’m sorry, too.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry for,” he said. “You didn’t do anything. I could have killed him when he pushed you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “About Marco, Will.” I swallowed and then, placing both hands on his shoulders, I pushed him away a little, so that I could look up into his face. It was as darkly handsome as ever, his brilliant blue eyes ringed by thick black lashes.
“What?” he asked, gazing down at me. “He didn’t—you haven’t heard from him, have you? I lost him outside school—I drove around, looking for him, but I couldn’t find him. I…I didn’t want to go home.” He glanced away from me then. “I tried calling your house a few times, but the operator kept saying all circuits were busy. I thought about coming by, but after what happened, I wasn’t sure—”
I grabbed his face between both my palms and turned it so he had to look me in the eye.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “You think I wouldn’t want to see you? Just because of what happened at school?”
That shadow I knew all too well flitted across his face, darkening his features, although his grip on me didn’t loosen.
“It must be all over town by now,” was all he said.
“Will, your mom called me. She’s really worried….”
He did let go of me then. He let go of me and turned his back, running a hand through his dark hair.
“Look,” he said to the trees. “I just need a little time away from her. And my dad. To think things over.” He looked back at me, his expression wry. “It’s not every day a guy finds out his mom’s not really dead, you know.”
“I know,” I said, again. “That’s not why she called, though.”
He grimaced. “I know why she called. It’s Marco, isn’t it?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice to speak. Overhead, thunder rumbled again.
Will sighed. “What’d Marco do now?” He was grinning, but not as if he found the subject a particularly amusing one. “Trash the Land Cruiser? Empty Dad’s liquor cabinet? No, he’s already done all that. Besides, none of that would hurt me, and I’m the one he blames for all this. Oh, wait, I know. He took the Pride Winn out and ran her aground.”
“No,” I said, and swallowed. “He’s stolen one of your dad’s guns. And I think he’s going to try to kill you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
“That’s impossible,” Will said flatly.
“Will.”
I felt miserable. I’d come crashing down from the high his kisses had sent me to. It was almost as if they’d never happened. Had I dreamed them? Everything that had gone on in the past hour seemed like a dream, from the storm to…well, this.
“It’s not impossible,” I said. “Your father’s gun case was broken into, and Marco is still missing. I know you didn’t take it. Who else could have?”
“Oh, I believe Marco took the gun,” Will said. “But kill me? Jean—I mean, Mom—is overreacting a little. Marco’s not a killer.”
This was exactly what I had said to Mr. Morton. Before I’d found out the rest.
“Um,” I said. “Will. This may be a little more complicated than you think.”
“More complicated than my real mother giving birth to me while her husband was overseas, and giving me to the man who’d actually fathered me to raise, so her husband wouldn’t find out she’d been unfaithful? More complicated than having been told my whole life that my mother was dead, until today, when I was told she’s actually the woman my father married after rising high enough through the ranks to be able to send his best friend—her husband—to his death?” Will’s laugh was without mirth. “Believe me, Elle. I get the gist.”
“Yeah,” I said. “About that. I have something to tell you, and it might sound a little strange, but you know before, when you were telling me about how you sometimes get this feeling that you’ve been here before? Well, there’s this group of people who believe you actually—”
“What’s he want to kill me for?” Will interrupted, as he paced up and down the length of the boulder. Above our heads, his question was answered with another loud rumble of thunder. “My dad’s the one who did it. Not me. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, see, remember when Marco attacked Mr. Morton last year? It turns out—”
“And it’s not like my dad did it on purpose,” Will went on. “I mean, yeah, he sent the guy into a hot spot. But it wasn’t like he shot that helicopter down himself. They were under enemy fire. It could have happened to anyone.”
“Will,” I said, reaching out to grab him by the shoulders so he’d quit pacing a minute. “It doesn’t matter why. The fact is, Marco wants to kill you. Now, don’t you think you and I should get out of here, in case he shows up?”
“Here?” Will’s dark eyebrows slanted downward. “But he doesn’t even know about this place. I’ve never brought him here, much less told him about it.”
“And the meeting today with Mr. Morton and your mom,” I said. “Did anybody tell Marco about that? Or did he just show up?”
“No, nobody told him. He…” Will’s expression changed from fury to confusion as he looked down at me. “How could he have known about that meeting? Unless…He must have been listening in on the other extension when Mr. Morton called.”
“Right,” I said. “Or…Well, there’s one other explanation.”
One side of Will’s mouth quirked up. “What? That he’s got ESP?”
“That, or he’s an agent for the powers of darkness.”
I said it fast, to get it out before I thought better of it. I still didn’t believe it. At least, not completely. But I thought I had to give him fair warning, since Mr. Morton obviously hadn’t.
“The powers of…” Will’s voice trailed off as he stared down at me.
But instead of laughing it off or otherwise dismissing it the way I’d half-expected him to, Will’s gaze grew even more intense.
“What did you mean before, when you said that about my thinking I’ve been here before?” he asked. “And what was that about a group of people who believe…something?”
“You know what?” I gripped his shoulders more tightly than ever. “It’s kind of a long story, and there’s a good chance it may not even be true. But true or not, I still think we’d better go—at the very least to get out of the rain, if not away from Marco.”
Will looked up at the ever-darkening mass of clouds overhead—what we could see of them, through the treetops. Funny how it had rained everywhere else but here.
But not ha-ha funny.
“Okay,” he said, and started to follow me as I climbed down from his boulder. “But where do you want to go?”
The deep voice seemed to come out of nowhere.
“May I recommend Tahiti?”
I froze. The blood that Will had thawed with his kiss iced up again.
Because I recognized that voice. I knew who it was even before I turned around and saw him standing in the creek bed, the mouth of an ugly black gun trained on the center of Will’s chest.
“I hear the Polynesian Islands are lovely this time of year,” Marco said casually.
The two brothers stared at each other, Marco, down in the creek bed, and Will on the top of his boulder. It was so still, I could hear both of them breathing. At least until lightning coursed across the sky overhead, making me jump—even before it turned everything along the horizon a bright, cardinal red.
Then thunder crashed, and the red disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
“Elle,” Will said, in the sudden silence that followed these celestial pyrotechnics. He never took his gaze off Marco. “Go home.”
“Yes, Elaine,” Marco said, in a voice dripping with malice. “Run home to float some more. There’s nothing you can do here.”
I bristled. I knew what Marco meant. That there was nothing Elaine of Astolat could do here.
But that was fine, because I wasn’t Elaine of Astolat, no matter what he might think. And there was plenty Elaine Harrison could do.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
Marco feigned that he was touched.
“Aw, how sweet,” he said. “She’s going to stay to defend her man.”
Will didn’t seem to think it was very sweet, though.
“Elle,” he said, in the same voice he’d used that day with Rick, outside Mr. Morton’s classroom—a voice that really did sound as if it might belong to a king, it was so filled with outrage over his wishes being disobeyed. “Go home. I’ll meet you there later.”
“Uh, no, you won’t, Will,” Marco said. “That’s why she’s not budging. She knows as well as I do that you won’t be meeting anyone later.”
Another jolt of lightning. Again the sky turned red. Then just as suddenly, thunder turned it gray again.
“Marco,” Will said. “This is stupid. You don’t want to do this.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Marco said. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long, long time. You think I didn’t get sick of it, back home? Why can’t you be more like Will? Look at Will, he didn’t flunk shop. Look at Will, he didn’t wreck the car. Look at Will, he’s not skipping class to get high behind the Dairy Queen. Look at Will, the Golden Boy. The QB. Mr. Four-Point-Oh, Prom King. I never got it, you know. I never understood why my mom was always harping at me about you. Until now.” He switched off the safety on the gun.
“And then,” he went on casually, as if we’d all bumped into one another down at Storm Brothers, or something, “she up and marries your dad. Lucky me! Now I get to live with you! Yeah, I get to see up close and personal what I could have been, if I’d applied myself. And as if that’s not enough, guess what? Turns out we’re brothers! Yeah, brothers! Like I didn’t feel completely inadequate before. Now I have to deal with the fact that you and I share a significant amount of DNA. Oh, and that your dad was boffing my mom behind my dad’s back? Yeah, nice one.”
“Marco,” Will said, in a low, even voice. “Our parents are screwed up, okay? But we don’t have to take that out on each other.”
“Don’t we?” Marco laughed without humor. “Gee, that’s big of you, Will. Considering my dad didn’t kill your dad, the way yours did mine. The way I see it, there’s only one way to even up the odds. An eye for an eye.”
“If it’s an eye for an eye you want, Marco,” I said, my voice shaking, “kill Will’s dad, not Will.”
Will threw me a Stay out of this look. But I didn’t care.
“I thought about that,” Marco said. “But the thing is, I want the old guy to suffer. And what could hurt more than knowing that his precious golden boy died because of something he did? He’ll have to live with that for the rest of his life, just like I’ll have to live without my dad. That’s what I call an eye for an eye.”
“But what’s the point, Marco?” Will wanted to know. “It’s not going to bring your father back.”
“No,” Marco said, in a voice that sounded entirely reasonable. “It won’t. But it will make me feel a hell of a lot better.”
“And when you’re in jail?” Will asked evenly. If he was afraid, you couldn’t tell by looking at him. He was standing straight and tall, and his voice didn’t shake a bit. He looked almost…well, kinglike.
And apparently I wasn’t the only person who thought so. Marco couldn’t seem to take his gaze off him.
Which was a good thing. Because it gave me the opportunity to slide down the back of the boulder and reach for the sword I’d left at its base.
“I’ll only go to jail if I get caught,” Marco was saying. “And I don’t plan on that happening.”
“Oh, right,” Will said, with a laugh. “What are you going to do, go on the lam? You don’t even have any money. You blew it all on that stupid Corvette of yours. Which I hope you’re not planning on using as a getaway car, by the way. You won’t get any farther than the Bay Bridge before the cops pull you over. They’re already looking for you, after that stunt you pulled back at the school.”
I couldn’t see Marco’s expression, since I was busy unwrapping my dad’s sword from the windbreaker. But he sounded as coolly disinterested as ever.
“I’ll just use your car, then,” he said. “And whatever cash I dig out of your wallet after you’re dead. Now come on down from there. You’re giving me a crick in the neck.”
“You’ve got problems, Marco,” Will said, in a preternaturally calm voice. “You need help. Put down the gun and let’s talk about this.”
“It’s too late for talking.” Marco was starting to lose his cool. His voice had risen, and not just because the thunder overhead was growing even louder and more menacing. “Get down off that rock, Will, or I’ll shoot your girlfriend in the head. What is she doing back there, anyway? Yo! Lily Maid! Get out from behind there. I’m not kidding. I’ll blow a hole through him, I swear.”
I scrambled back up to the top of the boulder, dragging my dad’s sword behind me. No one seemed to notice.
