World After

She slams her hand against the mesh repeatedly until I think it might bleed.

I try to block it out.

But no matter how many times I hear her raging at me, her words still pierce through.

I curl into my corner, trying to get as far from her as I can. She’ll twist anything I say to fit her crazy logic and then throw it back at me.

I brace myself for one of her fury storms. Not something I want to experience in a jail so small that we can’t lie down. Not something I want to experience any time, any place.

If it comes down to it, I’m big enough now to beat her in a fight, but she wouldn’t stop until I had to hurt her. Best if I can just soothe her.

But I can’t think of anything to say to calm her. Paige was always the one who did that. So I do the only thing that comes to mind.

I hum.

It’s the song that she hums to us when she’s coming out of a particularly bad spell. It’s what I think of as her apology song. Sunsets, castles, surf, bruises.

She might ignore me or she might go berserk. It could soothe her or make her angrier than ever to hear me humming her song. If there’s one thing you can count on with my mother, it’s that she’s unpredictable.

Her hand whips up and slaps my face.

She hits so hard I think I’ll always carry a palm print on my cheek.

She slaps me again.

The third time, I grab her wrist before she makes contact.

In my training, I’ve been hit, punched, kicked, shoved, slammed, and choked by all kinds of opponents. But nothing hurts as much as a slap from your mom.

I remind myself that it’s been several weeks since she’s been off her medication, but that does nothing to ease the sting.

I brace myself to subdue her somehow without hurting her, hoping it doesn’t escalate too far out of control. But it turns out I don’t have to.

Her expression shifts from fury to anguish. Her fingers loosen against the metal mesh. Her shoulders stoop, and she curls into a fetal ball against the door.

She shakes as the tears take over. She cries in big, baby-girl sobs.

Like her husband has abandoned her to the monsters.

Like her daughters have been torn from her by demons.

Like the world has come to an end.

And nobody understands.

If Paige were here, she’d hold Mom and stroke her hair. Paige would comfort her until she fell asleep. She’s done that countless times, even after our mother hurt her.

But I am not Paige.

I curl into my own corner, gripping the soft fur of my teddy bear.

Chpater 23

I DREAM I’m with Raffe again.

The surroundings look familiar. We’re in the guest cottage that Raffe and I slept in the night we left the office. It’s the night I learned his name, the night he went from prisoner to partner, and the night he held me in his arms as I shivered in a nightmare.

The tat-tat of the rain against the windows fills the cabin.

I look down at my then-self who is asleep on the couch under a thin blanket.

Raffe lies on the other sofa, watching me. His muscular body stretches languidly across the cushions. His dark blue eyes swirl with thoughts I can’t hear. It’s as if the sword became self-conscious after telling me so much about Raffe, and now it’s keeping his thoughts hidden. Maybe I pushed too hard when I asked about that kiss.

There’s a softness to Raffe’s look that I’ve never seen before. It’s not that I see naked longing or tender love or anything like that. And if I did, it would just be in my messed-up fantasies.

Not that I fantasize about him.

It’s more the way a tough guy who doesn’t like cats might look at a kitten and notice for the first time that it can be kind of cute. Sort of a reluctant, private acknowledgment that maybe cats aren’t all bad.

The unguarded moment is gone in a heartbeat. Raffe’s eyes shift to look toward the hallway. He hears something.

He tenses.

I wait, straining to see.

Two sets of red eyes get larger as they creep closer, silent as death. They peer into the living room from the darkness of the hallway, watching me.

Whoa. Why didn’t I know about this?

In a flash, Raffe is up and running, grabbing his sword on his way to the hall.

The hellion shadows leap and bound back toward the bedroom, absolute black against dark gray. They dive through the open door where cold air flows out like a river.

Raffe and the creatures drop into slow-mo as they race for the broken window beside the bed. The rain sheets in through the gaping shards as the curtains dance in the wind in slow motion.

I know I’m supposed to copy Raffe’s movements as he attacks but I’m too busy watching what’s happening. The creatures are running, not attacking.

Were they spying on him? Are they going back for reinforcements?

The hellions would have made it out the window if the first hadn’t shoved the second out of the way into the curtains, causing the second to grab the first in its panic.

As they jockey for position, Raffe slices through the one jumping out the window, cutting it almost in half. Then he cuts the second one, slicing its throat.

Raffe looks out the window, making sure these two are the only hellions.

He staggers onto the bed and winces in pain, bending over to catch his breath. The bandages on his back bloom with dark blood stains where his wings used to be.

He had only just awakened from his healing sleep a few hours before and this has been his third fight since then. Once with me, once with the street gang that broke into our office building, and now with these creepy things. I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for him. It’s one thing to be cut off from your pack and surrounded by enemies, but to be gravely injured on top of that must be the loneliest feeling in the world.

He wipes his blade on the bedding, lovingly polishing it with the sheet. The creatures finally end their death throes as he leaves.

Amazingly, I’m still asleep back in the living room. Of course, I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in days and I was practically unconscious from exhaustion. My body is shivering on the couch. The cold seeped in while the bedroom door was open.

Raffe pauses and leans against the sofa, catching his breath.

I whimper in my sleep, trembling below him.

What’s he thinking?

That if any of the hellions are watching, it won’t make a difference whether we lie on different couches or the same one? Or that I’m already doomed because I’ve been in his company for too long?

I whimper again, pulling my knees to my chest under the thin blanket.

He leans over and whispers, “Hush. Shhh.”

Maybe he just needs to feel the warmth of another living being after going through such a traumatic amputation. Maybe he’s too exhausted to care if I’m a Daughter of Man, as weird and barbaric as the Watchers’ wives.

Whatever the reason, he reluctantly pulls the cushions from the back of my couch. He pauses, looking like he’s about to change his mind.

Then he slides in behind me.

At first, his hold is stiff and uncomfortable. But as he begins to relax, the tension in his face eases.

He strokes my hair and whispers, “Shhh.”

Whatever comfort he’s giving me, I’m giving at least that much back just by being a warm body for him to hold at a time when he needs it most.

I snuggle closer to him in my sleep and my whimpering subsides to a contented sigh. It almost hurts to see Raffe closing his eyes and holding me the way a kid might hold a stuffed animal for comfort.

I reach out my phantom hand to stroke his face. But of course, I can’t feel him. I can only feel what the sword remembers.

I run my hand along the lines of his neck and the muscles of his shoulder, anyway.

Imagining the smooth warmth of him.

Remembering the feeling of being held in his arms.

Chpater 24

IT’S DARK when I wake. I float back into reality, still mired in my dream.

I stroke the soft fur of the teddy bear. My dream had more comfort in it than a fighting lesson has any right to have. It’s as if the sword picked a soothing memory on purpose and I’m grateful.

It takes a minute before I remember why I’m sleeping in the backseat of a car.

Right. We’re prisoners in a police cruiser.

Then the rest of it floods back and I’m wishing I could return to my dream.

Outside, hulks of cars dot the roadway and moon shadows of branches shift back and forth in the wind. Like many places, the streets turn surreal and creepy at night.

Something moves outside the window.

Before I can identify the shadow, it taps on the window.

I yelp.

Silently, my mother clutches my arm, urgently dragging me down into the footwell with her.

“It’s me, Clara,” whispers the shadow.

A key turns and the driver’s door opens. Luckily, someone has turned the car’s overhead light off so we’re not a beacon.

Her too-thin form slips into the driver’s seat.

“You’re the dead woman,” says my mother. “All shriveled up and looking like you crawled out of the grave.”

“She’s not dead, Mom.” I climb up from the footwell and sit on the seat.

“I sometimes wish I were,” says Clara. She turns on the engine, which sounds startlingly loud.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Getting you out of here. Away from these horrible people.” The car moves into a wide S-curve to avoid other cars.

“Turn off the headlights,” I say. “They’ll attract too much attention.”

“It’s the daytime lights. They can’t be turned off.”

As she swerves around the obstacles, our lights hit Mom’s stack of bodies. Apparently, no one wanted to touch them despite Obi’s orders.

The gruesome-looking body sitting on top of the stack sluggishly tries to raise his hand to shield against the light.

“The dead are being resurrected,” says my mother. She sounds excited, like she always knew this would happen.

“He wasn’t dead, Mom.”

“You were the first to be resurrected,” says Mom. “The first of the dead.”

“I wasn’t dead either,” I say.

“I hope he finds his family and they accept him back,” says Clara. Her tone makes it clear she doubts it.

I try not to think about the rest of the victims.

Ironically, my mother may have saved the only scorpion victims who will survive this night.

ONCE WE put some distance between ourselves and the Resistance headquarters, Clara stops the car so I can sit shotgun. Since my mother doesn’t want to be in the backseat jail any more either, we all cram into the front seat with me in the middle.