Dreadknot, p.7
Dreadknot, page 7
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It was near midnight when we went to bed, and not too long after that I got back up, covered in sweat. All my dreams were twisted and sour. When I saw my parents on the Alliance ship dressing the riveting tortoise in my old baby clothes, I finally gave up on the concept of sleep.
I needed space to think, to clear my head. I slipped out of my room, closed the door silently behind me, and tiptoed away from the main compound, shoes in my hand, until I reached the end of the boardwalk where I put them on. Then I made my way through the garden.
Meedian had an incredible green thumb. That, or he hired people with green thumbs. This garden was magnificent; large, old willows led me down to a stream where bright blue flowers glowed in the moonlight.
And there, up the stream, was a waterfall. It wasn’t particularly large or impressive, but under the full moon, the water sparkled like sapphires. I dipped a bare toe, relishing in the cool water of the plunge pool, my passing making ripples in the smooth surface. Yes. This was perfect.
I eased out of my pajamas and slipped into the stream. The water was cool on my skin, reminding me that I was alive, alive, alive. The rocks sliced deep shadows in the flow, leading me up to the curtain of water, my muscles awakening as I fought my way through the current.
Blink, and I was on top of the waterfall, balanced on the rocks right before the sheer drop. I stared down ten, twenty meters of rock and water. Still, I wasn’t scared. Tonight, all vertigo had gone. I was as calm as any one person could be, my breathing deep and even, just like my therapist had taught me. There—clear mind.
In that moment, I could hear it: an anxiety that wasn’t mine.
A dread that ran deeper than thought.
Do it. End it. Make it easier on everyone else.
A faint, persistent murmur, a ceaseless string of fears. A voice I knew so well but no longer sounded like me. Where was it coming from? Was it my voice, or something... else?
Shut up, I replied. You’re not welcome here.
I dove off the cliff, breaking the surface of the water without so much as a splash. Cool, perfect water surrounded me, washing through my hair. For seconds, I lay under the smooth surface, in the peace, in the silence. My lungs didn’t burn as the oxygen depleted, but my mind got murkier, slowly and surely murkier.
What if you come up and everyone else is gone? What if they left you, like Zander left you?
What if the sun is imploding this very minute, and you won’t know until it’s too late?
Too soon I broke out of the silent realm, reflex taking over as I gulped a huge lungful of air, rolling on my back and letting the water carry me downstream. I focused on the ripple of the water against the rocks, drowning out the voice.
I thought I was free of these thoughts, but they were back to living rent-free in my head. Were they even inside or just on the outside, slithering in? Was this the Dread? A voice that sounded like your own, telling you what you most feared? My stomach boiled. If this was the Dread, how could we defeat it? How could we go up against intangible thoughts?
“Couldn’t sleep either, could you?”
I gasped and spat water. The voice came out of nowhere, and it was real, so much louder than my internal monologue. I ran a finger through my ears to dislodge the water there. I scrambled to find the source, but I couldn’t see anyone on the banks. The moonlight only did so much to help.
Who on earth would be up at this hour?
Well, then again, I was up at this hour too.
“Up here,” said the voice. Zander. Calm and eager at the same time, as if as relieved to see me as I was to hear him.
I pushed my wet hair back over my head as I scanned the tree limbs, and there he was, leaning back against the trunk of a massive tree, balanced precariously on one of the branches, completely at ease.
“What are you doing up?” I asked. “Up as in awake. Not up as in...in the tree.”
He shrugged, though his perfect balance was undisturbed. “Both are because it is impossible to sleep here. And by here, I mean at Meedian’s in general, not the tree.”
“Do you mind if I join you?” I asked. He nodded. I slipped my PJs back on, soaking them through, and I focused my jump, landing on the branch above him, and climbed down. He wrapped his arms around my waist so we could both look down at the pool, the surface having returned to its mirror-like state. He rubbed his hands down my arm, trying to warm me, though I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t going to tell him to stop, though.
We hadn’t had a minute to ourselves since... No, not since being back on Earth. Not since the ball. Had it really been since our stolen kisses in the Pyrinian apartment? Every waking moment since then had been either public or a terrible crisis. A few awkward moments in my parents’ house, the Dread seriously killing the mood, though we hadn’t had a word to call it yet.
“And you? How come you can’t sleep?” he whispered. I leaned back into him.
“Just too much going on.” I sighed. “The Dread, I suppose. You?”
He didn’t answer right away, as if trying to figure out how best to say an uncomfortable truth. Eventually, he simply spat it out, as casually as he could. “There’s something. In my gut,” he said quietly. “I can feel it. A little hard ball of... I don’t know.”
“Anxiety? Is it the Dread?”
“It feels more than that. It’s like”—he paused—“I have this feeling that things are about to change. Dramatically. That there’s going to be change and no way to turn back.”
“That sounds like the Dread talking.”
We stared into the pool, my head on his shoulder, his cheek pressed against my soaking scalp. He couldn’t have been comfortable, but he pulled me closer anyway. I snuggled deeper into him, welcoming the warmth of his arms.
“You’d think I’d be used to change by now,” he said, his voice oh-so quiet. “That being the only true constant in the universe.”
“I don’t think anyone can. Get used to it, that is. Dealing with it is always pain, and how you do defines you. It makes you who you are. If there was no change, there’d be no growth. Right?”
“Then why am I afraid of it?” He shivered, sending ripples through my body. “I don’t know what thoughts are mine or this Dread’s right now. And I don’t like not knowing. I’m just...out of sync.”
“What?”
“You know, like...waves.” He pointed at the pond, making a dolphin movement with his hand. “So much of how we experience the universe is in waves. The light we see. The sound we hear. We catch a wave and translate it into our reality.”
I leaned my head against him. There was something soothing in the way he spoke. Grounding. The only man I knew whose hand I could grip like a vice and who could squeeze mine back with the same force, reminding me I was here, now.
“When waves are in phase, they build each other up,” he continued, “making each other bigger, stronger.”
“Like us?” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah, like us. But right now, I feel...out of phase from the rest of the universe. The waves are cancelling each other out.”
I shivered. The thought chilled me to the core, but he was right. No wonder I felt so on edge. We were going up against an enemy that was about as vague as gossip and just as deadly. Evident only on the macro scale, but to the self, an intangible feeling. Everything was out of sync, and so was I.
I needed to remember who I was.
I turned my head upward, kissing his chin, searching for his lips with mine. He found me instead, one hand rising to cup my cheek, the other holding back my hair. We were twisted like a pretzel, but the touch was real, louder than anything else. My head spun with delirious, deafening love, too dizzy to think, to let the bad stuff in.
“Now, what are you thinking?” I pulled back only far enough to breathe.
“That my thoughts are entirely my own,” he whispered against my lips. “But somehow, you still know them.”
I twisted myself around in the tree so that I could hold him, my hands pulling his face to mine. His arms looped back around my torso, but they were burning hot now, pulling me closer and closer until I didn’t know where I stopped and he began. Kissing him was like kissing the sun, hot and explosive and all-consuming. I didn’t want it to end.
And as an added bonus, kissing Zander eclipsed all other thoughts—mine and others.
I gently slipped my hand under his shirt, feeling the wonder of his skin and hard muscles waiting there for me. His odd-numbered abs, the out of place number nine. He shivered as I traced a finger up his back, exhaling sharply.
“You don’t know what you’re doing to me,” he breathed.
“Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing.”
I closed my eyes and leaned deeper, soaking up his presence, filling myself up. My nostrils flared. It had been too long since we’d had any time to ourselves. The night was ours. My skin was already slick with sweat.
“It’s hot,” he said.
“I’m not—”
“No, don’t you feel that?”
We pulled apart, and I caught my breath, one full of flame and heat. Smoke in the air. In the few minutes I’d been in Zander’s halo, I hadn’t seen the garden go from blue to orange. And it was far too early for sunrise.
We dropped out of the tree and raced back toward the rooms. But it was too late; they were already aflame.
Ten cats in a flamethrower suit would do that.
Chapter Six
Fifteen Reasons Cats and Flamethrowers Shouldn’t Mix
I’d never seen cats cooperate before, let alone operate a flame-throwing exoskeleton. Three for each leg, two for the torso, and one for each arm, holding their shape by tooth and claw. From a distance, it was a walking headless armor. Just ten meters away, a furry horror show. The arm operators screamed and yowled with glee as they unleashed their terrible fire, burning the bench bordering the garden. The flames devoured it in seconds before catching the tree behind it.
The compound was on fire.
Zander didn’t hesitate. He flung himself at the cat monstrosity, knocking the exoskeleton to the ground. But the cats didn’t scatter; they climbed on top of him, scratching and biting and howling bloody murder.
My breath hitched in my throat. They had Zander. Oh shit, they had Zander. The sight of him struggling beneath so many cats—shit, more were still flocking to him—sent my gut twisting.
This is your fault, you useless waste of space. You should have stayed under water until you drowned.
“Run, Sally, run!” Zander screamed.
I wasn’t going to let them eat my man or whatever mad cats do. Without thinking, I ran right at them, waving my arms wide and screaming like a deranged hen. They didn’t scatter. They were eating him alive.
So, I kicked a cat. It went flying like a football.
But there were more cats now, over a dozen and maybe more. I didn’t have enough legs.
A brown tabby at the right arm yowled as it slammed a red button. A flame burned off my arm in a single burst.
I screamed in shock at seeing my arm reduced to ash. I’d died before, but never lost a limb. The lack of it sent my mind screaming. I didn’t know how to deal with the loss or the lack of pain that should have come with it, and my mind decided to interpret the sudden lack of nerves as a craving for chalupas.
I kicked the cat, sending it flying. Just trying to swing my leg was hard; my balance was so off. The cat crash-landed a few meters away, rolled back to its feet, and rushed us again.
“What is happening?” I shouted. My arm was growing back, but too slowly. Right now, it was the size of a newborn’s. “What is this?”
“Cats—mff—Dread!”
“What?” The Dread? How? I thought it was just the voice.
Except...if the cats were connected to people light-years away, maybe it was stronger there?
Zander could barely speak; the cats kept going for his eyes and mouth. I had to get him out of there. My baby arm was about the size of a toddler’s now, but the other was enough to grab the scruff of his shirt and pull him away from the cats. With Zander freed, they flocked toward the exoskeleton again, and seconds later they were walking, horrofic flames wielded by tiny devils.
“It’s too late,” Zander panted, covered in small, rapidly closing red bite marks. “The whole compound is on fire.”
It wasn’t just our rooms. The flames were all around. Smoke wrapped its tendrils around us, turning the cat monstrosity into a beast of mythical proportions.
“The library,” said Zander. “Oh stars, the library.”
“Where’s Meedian? Where’s James?” I wanted to scream, but my only hand was busy covering my mouth. The other was too busy going through puberty.
The cats marched in unison, following their exoskeleton overlord down the fiery path. In the distance, a second exoskeleton loomed, piloted by other crazed felines.
“Wh-why would... they d-do this?” I sputtered through rasping breaths. “I-I thought they were... investors!”
“I don’t think they’re in control,” said Zander. “With the Dread, the psychic link between investor and cat must be decaying!”
We didn’t have any time. If the Dread was this strong this soon on Earth, then it was escalating much quicker than anyone could anticipate. We had days at the most, if we were lucky.
“We have to go,” I said, coughing up the smoke. “We have to find Blayde and James and Meedian and... We can’t save this place, but we can save them.”
We raced into the burning rooms. The furniture was pure fire, the kind of cozy living room you’d be lucky to find in hell. The only thing that made it bearable was the absence of victims.
And the heat—the heat. I had never thought I would know the smell of my own skin sizzling off me. I was quite literally frying alive. I squeezed my eyes shut and ran.
“Where are they?” I shouted through trembling lips as I crashed back into Zander in the upper courtyard. Here at least there were no flames. The only cats that ran by were ones stealing equipment, grabbing whatever they could. One had a Wii remote in its mouth, though I failed to see the value.
“Library?” he suggested.
We ran to the library, but it was already a smoking heap. There were no flames here, as it had already entirely burned. Nothing was left but a pile of ashes and twisted metal.
“No. No!” Zander screamed a primal scream and fell to his knees. “We were so close. We were...”
He had a complicated relationship with libraries and fire. I put a hand on his back. There was nothing I could say to make this better.
It’s all your fault. You should have been here, should have protected this place—
Shut up!
“We have to go,” I said. If we didn’t leave now, my weak knees were going to cave in. “We have to find the others.”
We ran back to the apothecary, clutching hands. The cats were congregating at the exit door, both flame-throwing exoskeletons and all hundred little kitty-bodies flocking and yowling around the simple metal. Incredibly—impossibly—the structure hadn’t caught fire yet, but the cats were desperate to get it to ignite. They piled their treasures at the door. Kindling?
“Frash,” said Zander, shaking his head. “Why are they waiting?”
A few flung themselves at the metal, even managing to catch the knob, but slid right off.
“They can’t open the door,” I said. “They can operate flamethrowers, but they can’t get the doorknob?”
“We need to get past them. I can’t see my way through. Can’t jump.”
The cats were so focused on the door they didn’t seem to notice us at all. Maybe we could use that to our advantage. I wrapped my arms around myself, taking a deep breath, trying to calm my tremors.
“I have an idea. It’s terrible, but it might just work.”
I dropped to my knees, indicating for him to do the same. My freshly minted nerve endings in my hand had never felt gravel before, so every rock felt as sharp as a knife. I kept my chin high, despite the small tremble.
“Meow,” I warbled. “Meow!”
Zander followed suit, his cat imitation miles ahead of mine, to the point where he might have been fluent. They ignored us as we made our way through their midst, blending in about as well as aliens at Comicon.
The second we reached it, the door flew open on its own, and two women in spandex bodysuits sprayed the entire cat army with glitter cannons.
Zander grabbed my wrist and tugged me through the door before it slammed shut.
“Thank God you’re okay,” James said as she lifted me to my feet. The shimmery spandex clung to her skin, making her look like she was dipped in molten gold. “Saved by a romantic escapade. Looks like you got lucky in more than one way tonight.”
“What did we miss?” asked Zander, helping Blayde barricade the door, as I was too busy blushing. “What’s with the spandex?”
“Lost my clothes,” she replied. “We found these in the museum. Not sure which was mine or yours.”
Other than James’s hair singed at the tips, there was almost nothing to show she’d been in a fire at all. The outfits made her and Blayde look like the next big pop sensations. Blayde’s red leather coat was remarkably unscathed and looked killer with the gold.
We were in the small atrium behind Meedian’s shop, between the sibling museum and storage. It was tight, dark, and smelled of cabbage. A relief after the smell of roasted Sally.
Meedian burst through the storage room door, having ditched his human suit who knows where, and was now whizzing by, his baby lizard body stuffed in a hovering ring that barely kept his oversized head afloat. His tiny hands were clenched into adorable chubby, pink fists. I threw a hand up to hide my gasp. The once vibrant color was now dull, a light peach rather than neon pink.
“Well thank the flying spittoon you all made it.” His voice boomed through the cramped atrium. James’s jaw hit the floor—must have been the first time she’d seen Meedian’s true body. No scream. Impressive that she was keeping her own after only day one.
“You knew this would happen,” he spat. “And you never told me? No warning, nothing?”
