Breathless (3 page)

Were they actual y talking about kil ing me? What kind of rescuers were they? I tried to ask them but only managed a low, cracking groan. I sensed movement and knew that one of them had shifted closer.

“Absolutely not.” His voice swirled in my head like satin.

“But she saw me! You know the danger in that!”

“I do. I see you every day and it’s made my life hel .”

She hissed, and it was the same sound I’d heard under the water from the blue-haired demon. “The king is not going to be happy with you.”

“And how would that be different from any other day?”

“Bastin! You curse us al with your short-sightedness! These creatures are weak and stupid. They destroy everything they do not understand, and that makes them more dangerous than any foreign army we’ve ever faced. How can—”

“Luna.” The voice was no longer caramel-coated but now a jagged, tangible force.

Bastin. His name was Bastin.

“That is enough!” he continued. “Do you need to be reminded of your rank?”

“Remind
me
? Evidently, I know my duty better than you.”

I felt the slight breeze of a swift movement and heard the girl gasp.

“Please do not confuse your rank with
my
authority,” Bastin growled.

The one he cal ed Luna made a choking noise.

“Perhaps,” he continued, “you would like to spend some recon time with the humans. A week maybe. You could scout for purifiers and hopeful y would come back with a better respect for your superiors.”

“No!” Luna’s cry came out as a garbled whisper. “You would do that? After al I’ve done for you—al the purifiers I obtained today?”

“From that one there?”

Even teetering on the edge of unconsciousness I felt the weight of their gaze settle upon me.

“Yes,” Luna answered.

“Interesting,” he murmured. A finger slid across my forehead and pushed my wet bangs from my closed eyes. “I wonder . . .” Bastin let his words hang in the air.

“Wel , if you’re not going to let me kil it,
Your Majesty
,” the bitterness in Luna’s voice was unmistakable, “I suggest we get back. Its kind wil soon swarm this area like the parasites they are.”

My lungs burned, the feeling growing until it exploded up my throat and wracked my body with a series of violent coughs. When it subsided, I rubbed the back of my hand into my stinging eyes and wedged my lids open.

Even in the dark, I could see the moon reflecting blue orbs against the two sets of onyx eyes that stared back at me.

Icy fear sank into my bones and froze the marrow within. I thought I was paralyzed in my terror, but a sharp pain below my neck brought my eyes down to the shredded skin around my chest. Among the crumpled crimson, I saw a flash of silver and was certain I was seeing my own col arbone.

The shock was enough to send me spiraling back into the black depths of unconsciousness. But not before I heard the sound of two large splashes.

The low grumble breached through my black haven and pul ed me painful y into consciousness. I had been around Sir long enough to know the difference between a casual clearing of the throat and an unspoken order. I opened my eyes and blinked several times to clear the blurriness from my vision. When the stark white wal s of the room came into focus, I discovered that I wasn’t in my bed, but a hospital room.

“Michael, maybe we should let her get her bearings together?” my mother asked from the foot of my bed.

I flinched at the look Sir shot her from where he stood in the doorway. She seemed to shrink before my eyes. I wasn’t the only one expected to obey orders.

I watched as Sir turned away from her and marched to the side of my bed. I averted my gaze from the muscles that flexed in his jaw. Instead, I studied the reflections the florescent lights made on his bald head.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

I twisted my hands into the stiff sheets to keep from jumping out of the bed and fleeing, my IV in tow. “The hospital?”

“Very good,” he answered, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Now would you care to tel me how you got here?”

That was the last thing I wanted to do. As I thought about the possible answers, I wondered which would get me shipped off to military school faster: the fact that I was riding in a boat with kids who were drinking and smoking weed? Or that while I was in the ocean, a girl with blue hair had clawed at my throat and tried to strangle me?

I bit my lip and looked past him, hoping that a doctor might come to my rescue. But help didn’t come, and I knew my mother, who stood a safe distance away twisting her hands together, would be useless.

“Answer the question, Ed.” His eyes blazed, exposing the tiny red veins that surrounded his crystal-blue irises.

I didn’t know if it was the cold IV fluid leaking into my veins or fear of the man before me, but I began to tremble. I tried not to feel ashamed—those eyes had broken stronger soldiers than me. The only difference was that most of those men had grown to love and respect the sergeant. “I don’t know, sir.”

He arched a thin brown eyebrow. “You don’t know? You have deep lacerations along your neck and col arbone, scratches along your legs, and you have no idea how they got there?”

I shook my head.

Sir narrowed his eyes. “
Excuse
me?”

“No, sir.” It was barely a whisper. “The last thing I remember is riding in the boat with Lieutenant Colonel Sherwood’s son. I don’t know what happened.”

His jaw flexed. “I’l tel you what happened,” he snarled, leaning into me.

I sank as deep into the bed as the rock-hard mattress would al ow.

“Kids died, Ed.”

Bile crept up the back of my throat.

“Lieutenant Colonel Sherwood’s boy has a punctured lung and a skul fracture.”

I looked to my mom for help, but her eyes never left the wedding band that she twisted around and around her finger.

“And, apparently,” Sir continued, “some shark found you too much trouble to eat.”

I looked down at the bloody gauze wrapped around my chest and shoulder and cringed. Funny how things hurt so much worse when you paid attention to them. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered.

Sir leaned down so that only inches separated our noses. “You wil speak up when addressing me.”

The throbbing in my neck and shoulder intensified by the second. The pain made my vision teeter. Sir’s face rippled like a lake disturbed by a thrown pebble. I closed my eyes and swal owed the excess saliva in my mouth. “I said, I think I’m going to be—” but I had run out of time.

Sir barely had a chance to blink, let alone move, before the onslaught of saltwater and my partial y digested lunch spewed from my throat. As I continued to heave, Sir scrambled backwards, his teeth grinding as he used his fingers to clear the vomit from his eyes.

I wanted to apologize, to tel him that I’d tried to warn him, but I couldn’t talk around the choked cries brought on by my stomach’s contractions—even after it was completely purged.

“Oh, honey.” My mother moved toward me but was stopped by Sir’s outstretched arm.

“Carol.”

Mom glanced at me—a bold move on her part—and before she looked away, I watched the sadness in her eyes smooth into the blank mask that she had perfected long ago. “Michael?” she asked.

“I’m going to find a bathroom and clean myself off,” Sir said, seething. “I need you to go find a nurse, doctor, or whoever runs this monkey operation they cal a hospital, and get the rest of Ed’s tests run. Then maybe we can get some goddamn release papers. I don’t want to stay here longer than what is absolutely necessary.”

My mother opened her mouth, but a disapproving look from Sir had her snapping it shut just as quickly. “Yes, Michael,” she said, then turned on her heels and left the room.

“Now,” Sir said as he swiveled his head back in my direction, “this is not over, Ed. Kids are dead. Sherwood’s boy was seriously injured. I wil have answers from you. Do I make myself clear?”

I nodded weakly. Using the bed sheet, I wiped at a line of saliva that dripped off my chin. After Sir left and I pushed my soiled sheets to the foot of the bed, I gave in to the grief pul ing at my heart. I curled into a bal and cried. Kids were dead? I sucked on my lip to keep from releasing the desperate wail lodged in my throat. Why couldn’t I have been so lucky?

Much to the protest of the ER doctor, Sir had me released from the hospital and home shortly thereafter. I breathed a sigh of relief when we pul ed up to our two-story rental in neighboring Valparaiso. This place was only temporary, as Sir was fond of reminding me, until a house—if that’s what you cal ed the tiny duplexes they shoved us in—on the Air Force Base opened up. I prayed every night that nothing would.

I loved living among civilians, away from the Stepford life that was base living. Here there was no prerecorded horn blaring through loudspeakers to wake you up in the morning. In the afternoon, there was no
Star Spangled Banner
forcing you to stop what you were doing, even if it was driving, so you could pledge your al egiance. And, lastly, there was no
Taps
to signal the end of your day. No, in Valparaiso, there was nothing to announce the coming and going of my day other than the songs of the bul frogs in the nearby bayou and the sun and the moon themselves.

I pushed open the door of Sir’s 4x4 and, even after a month of living in Florida, was no less surprised by the forceful impact of the humidity. Right away I could feel my lacerations burn with the sweat that beaded along my skin.

Sir stood at the front of the 4x4, watching me. “Do you need help?”

I shook my head. I knew a test when I saw one. “No, sir.”

He nodded once and strode up the sidewalk and into the house without a backward glance.

Mom was instantly at my side, pul ing me against her as she led me into the house. “You know your father is only acting like this because he’s upset.”

Father.
If I could have chewed up the word and spit it on the sidewalk I would have. My real dad took off when I was an infant. When I was three, Mom met Sir and they were married in a courthouse after only a few months of dating. Sir was rigid from the beginning, but the birth of my brother seemed to soften him a bit. There were fewer orders and I was al owed to cal him “Dad.” When my brother was alive we were a family. Practical y happy.

Now it was al gone and Sir blamed me.

I leaned into my mother’s arms, inhaling the fragrance of English roses, her favorite perfume. Something deep inside of me loosened, like a stray thread on a sweater had been tugged, and I worried that I was on the verge of unraveling.

Mom gave me a hard kiss on the top of my head. “So scary . . .” She shuddered. “I don’t want to think about it.”

That was good because just placing one foot in front of the other took al my concentration. Sir had retreated to his room upstairs, so Mom led me quietly to the back of the house and into my bedroom. The previous tenants painted the master bedroom pink—a color that gave Sir aneurysms —and because Sir was convinced we would be moving any day now and because painting a rental was a waste of time and money, he and Mom occupied one the smal er bedrooms.

Even as tired and miserable as I felt, as soon as I stepped into my flamingo-colored room, I smiled. I didn’t even like pink—though the fact that it worked as Sir repel ant gave it bonus points—it was just the first time in my life that I lived in a room with color of any kind. Base housing was very strict about keeping the wal s eggshel -white.

Mom walked me to my ful -sized bed and gently eased me onto it. “Do you want to sleep in those?” She motioned to the pale green scrubs the hospital gave me.

“Not real y.”

“Didn’t think so.” She shuffled through my drawers until she found an oversized T-shirt. “Would you like some help getting dressed?”

“No,” I said automatical y. I didn’t ask for help. Ever. Years of Sir demanding to know if my arms were broken had cured me of that.

Something clouded Mom’s face—regret? I couldn’t be sure because it was gone as soon as it came. She pushed her shoulders back. “Don’t be sil y, Edith. I’m going to help you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stiffened.

“Mom,” I corrected.

She made a sound like a choking sigh and approached me. Careful y, she pul ed both of my arms out of the scrub top and slid it over my head.

She looked at me and hissed. “You’re bleeding through your bandages. I’m going to have to change those, too.”

I fought the urge to cross my arms over my bare chest, reminding myself that Mom had seen me naked before, and looked at my shoulder. Sure enough, a large patch of crimson had bloomed, like an angry rose, onto the gauze.

Mom left my room and returned moments later with our first aid kit. She worked fast, removing the soiled bandages and exchanging them with fresh gauze and tape. I was careful not to watch. Somehow it hurt less that way. After she packed the supplies away back in their smal plastic container, she stared at me—much to my discomfort—in an almost trance-like way.

I hugged my arms across my body. “Mom?”

She didn’t move, and when she spoke, sounded far away, like she had fal en deep into herself. “I was wondering . . .”

When her voice trailed away I made a nervous grab for my T-shirt. “You were wondering?” I prompted, pul ing the shirt over my head.

She shook her head and appeared to come back to herself. “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged, but the pain that seared across my shoulder made me immediately regret that action. “That’s okay. What was it?”

Mom tucked a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear and bit her lip. “Does it hurt much?”

I could only blink at her. What kind of question was that? I thought of a dozen smartass replies—
I don’t know, how about I jab a fork into your neck and you tell me
—but I wasn’t that kind of girl. In fact, I wondered if I was any kind of girl at al . I went to school, participated in the required after-school activities, did my homework, ate what was placed in front of me, and spoke when spoken to. No, there was no teenage-girl here; I was an empty shel housing only the remains of my spirit, long broken from squeezing inside of molds that didn’t fit.