Some Quiet Place (23 page)

He doesn’t answer.

Her soul shatters, and her heart stops beating. She clutches his face until her knuckles turn white. “Wake up, Landon. Wake up now!” She starts to pound his chest furiously. It’s the first time she’s ever struck him. Realizing this, Rebecca stops. She holds his cold body close again, shaking her head.

Her power leaks out, affecting the land, and the skies open up and start to sob with her. Her hair plasters to her head and her clothes grow heavy with water. They sit there together in the mud, the girl and her brother. Trembling, she starts to tell him a story. She bends over him to shield him from the wetness, and her hair trails through the mud.

“They all lived happily ever after … ” Rebecca says in his ear, kissing his cheek. His eyes are closed now—she must have shut them at some point. Rain falls harder now, soaking her to the skin, washing all the blood away.

Thunder shakes the ground, but she hardly notices.

“We need to go.”

The voice makes her jump, and Rebecca looks up dully. “Oh. It’s you,” she mumbles incoherently, then puts all her attention back into rocking Landon.

The woman kneels beside Rebecca, tugs at her arm. Her gray eyes are sharp and wary. “It’s not safe here,” she adds in a low voice. “We need to—”

“Leave me alone!” The scream echoes, becoming lyrics to the song of the storm. Rebecca shakes. A moment later, however, she’s returned to the mindless grief. “You can’t leave me all alone. Please, please, please, come back … ”

The woman apparently decides to forgo asking and seizes Rebecca’s arm. The girl hisses, swiping at her as if she’s a wild animal. Jerking back, the woman lashes out. The blow hits Rebecca in the head, and she slumps. Swearing under her breath, the woman gathers Rebecca up in her arms. She’s not much bigger than the girl; she stumbles back a step. The rain continues to come down in torrents. The woman sloshes through the mud toward the cover of the trees. She leaves Landon there, bleeding, rotting, dead. It’s too late for him. Her eyes prickle but she doesn’t look back.

Rebecca stirs. “W-where’s Mom?” she asks bleakly, head lolling in the crook of her rescuer’s elbow.

“She’s gone. I think … I think your father took her. I could feel his essence in the air. You were probably too distracted to tell the difference between yours and his. By the time I realized what was happening and went to warn you all, the house was empty. I heard you screaming in the woods.”

The words don’t seem to register with Rebecca. “Where’s Mom?” she asks again. Her companion lets it go unanswered this time, breathing hard. When she trips over a root she curses, setting Rebecca down.

“You’re going to run,” she orders her. “If you don’t, I’ll hit you again. Harder.”

“Oh, Rebecca! Rebecca James!” The playful, unfamiliar voice comes from behind.

The woman’s eyes widen in panic and she yanks at Rebecca’s arm so hard that it might pop out of the socket. Rebecca just stares ahead, empty.

“Where’s Mom?” she murmurs yet again.

“Rebecca! I have some questions for you, if you’ll spare a second!” that male voice calls.

The woman shudders in terror. She glances down at Rebecca with a manic light in her eyes, as if she’s thinking about slapping her. Reason isn’t working, so she stoops again, slips the girl’s arm around her neck, and straightens, trying to drag her soundlessly through the trees. Nightmare is close by; the power rolls off of his skin.

The woman’s fear is so strong that Fear actually comes, app-earing right in her path. Drawing up short at the sight of him, the woman smothers her gasp just in time, chest heaving. Fear assesses the situation in an instant. “Take her somewhere safe. I’ll distract him,” he says quietly, touching the woman’s back. His gaze is focused on the way she came. She doesn’t protest. She nods sharply and continues to pull Rebecca along. She knows the girl’s car is parked back at the house, a mile away, so she heads in that direction. Sweat makes her shirt stick to her torso.

They reach the tree line twenty minutes later. Without going out of the way to get clothes or food from the house, the woman bundles Rebecca into the ancient Cadillac and goes. She doesn’t look back, but when she senses Nightmare near, her pulse picks up speed again. He doesn’t appear. The only destination she has in mind is far, far away. They bump onto the highway and climb up to seventy miles an hour.

They spend hours on the road. Five. Eleven. Nineteen. Twenty-
six. They stop only for gas and bathroom breaks. Blearily the woman finds a half-full bottle of Gatorade and a bag of Doritos in the glove compartment. The car becomes hot and cramped, but neither really notices. Rebecca might as well be a corpse. She doesn’t move, speak, eat, or drink. She stares out the window at the passing scenery, not really seeing any of it. Rather than letting her worry consume her, the woman concentrates on the run. Getting as far away from the Element as fast as possible, so that he can no longer sense them.

It’s somewhere in Wisconsin, at twilight, that she finally steps on the brake, frowning. “What’s going on?” she mutters.

There’s a red pickup truck in the middle of the road, one door wide open, the headlights still illuminating the night. The driver isn’t behind the wheel; he’s kneeling next to something on the blacktop, his movements jerky and frantic. CPR. Rebecca and the woman watch, both realizing at some point that the figure lying there prone is a person. A little girl. Her yellow hair splays around her head, a bittersweet halo.

After a few seconds the woman tears her gaze away from the tragedy, shifting gears to pull around them. “We need to keep moving,” she mutters. “He’s still—”

“No, don’t.” It’s the first time Rebecca has spoken since they fled from her home. The woman pauses with her hand poised over the gearshift. The look in Rebecca’s eyes halts the question in her throat. Rebecca slowly turns from the chaos of the accident, staring at her companion with an expression of desperation. “I have an idea,” she whispers, so quietly that the woman has to strain to hear.

The woman frowns. The truck driver is sobbing into his cell phone, hysteria thick in the air. “What do you—” She starts, then breaks off with an impatient hiss. “Rebecca, we don’t have time for this! If he gets too close, he’ll be able to sense you. Please, can’t you just—”

“I have an idea,” Rebecca repeats, like some broken toy.

The woman grits her teeth. “Fine. What’s your idea, Rebecca?”

An odd smile curves the girl’s lips and she continues to stare at the crying driver, the too-silent child. Both of them can feel Death coming. Closer, closer. Nervous, the woman turns away. Rebecca watches. She doesn’t say a word as Death takes the little girl’s soul, but part of her wants to call the Element back, beg for his touch. Something keeps her silent. And then all that’s left is a shell, a half-delirious driver, and the endless possibilities.

Wordlessly, Rebecca reaches out and touches the woman’s wrist.

The woman looks at the body on the road and back at Rebecca. Understanding dawns; she realizes what her charge is suggesting. Her expression twists into a combination of instant revulsion and reluctant speculation. Rebecca just looks at her with a sort of flat pleading. Even with the unique blood running through her veins, she has smudges under her eyes that have never been there before. She looks white and too thin. The woman is tired, too. Tired from the running, tired of holding her form in one place for so long when it’s in her nature to go from place to place, summons to summons. If something doesn’t change, there won’t be an end to any of it.

Three minutes tick by. Rebecca counts the seconds. In the distance, they can hear the wail of a siren. No more time to decide.

The woman heaves a sigh, her shoulders slumping. She faces Rebecca. “Okay,” she says softly.

Rebecca’s relief is so palpable it’s almost overwhelming. “Okay?” she echoes.

“Okay.” The woman looks at the driver, steeling herself. He’s the first loose end to tie up. Then there’s the body to hide. She rolls up her sleeves and gets out of the car. She approaches the man, kneels in front of him, and says something softly. She rests her hands on his shoulders. His eyes glaze over and he nods. He stands. As he lumbers back to his vehicle, the woman turns her attention to the little body still lying in the middle of the road.

Rebecca waits where she is, holding her knees in an effort to make herself small. It’s the only way to keep calm when there’s a moment to think. She watches the clock on the dashboard to distract herself. Six minutes … seven … ten …

“Rebecca.” The woman returns. She stands by the passenger window, gripping the car door with white knuckles. The power has already taken a toll on her; her countenance is gray and lined. Rebecca nods, unbuckling the seat belt, and follows the woman off the road, into the ditch.

Rebecca waits until they’re facing each other to say, “I want you to make a block so none of the Emotions can touch me.”

The woman hesitates. A crow swoops overhead. “First, I’m not sure I’m capable of doing that, and second, won’t it make the humans suspicious? It’ll complicate—”

“Just try it, okay?”

Pursing her lips, her companion nods. “You will forget everything,” she agrees. She holds out her hand, preparing for the biggest illusion of all. “Too bad you won’t be there on the other side to restore me,” she adds. There’s a note of uncertainty in her voice. Not the case with Rebecca. She stands there, waiting, thrumming for the moment when she’ll open her eyes and not remember a thing, not feel a thing. This constant shooting pain in her chest will be gone, the memory of blood on her hands, gone. Landon … Landon … No. Rebecca won’t think about it. Her insides twist and her fists clench at her sides. “Do it,” she breathes, eyes burning with a manic need.

But the woman can’t leave it at that. “I’ll give you ten years. The Element will be off your trail by then.”

“Fifteen,” Rebecca counters, need coiling like a snake within her.

The ambulance is almost there. Time for arguing is over. “Fine,” the woman replies shortly. Then, “I’m not going to say goodbye.” She closes her eyes. The man is sitting in his truck now, still blinking in dazed confusion, and the body is gone, hidden forever. Too late to go back now, and Nightmare will still be looking. This really is the best solution, the woman tells herself. She takes a breath, then twitches as her power flows toward Rebecca James.

The girl screams as it latches onto her. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! She drops to her knees. It’s like a fire licking over every inch of her skin. She tries to dig her fingers into the tar and her nails tear away, bleed. A vein bulges from the woman’s forehead as she concentrates, and there’s pity in her eyes. But the woman keeps her hand over the writhing girl. Feature by feature, piece by piece, the things that make Rebecca are wiped away. Brown curls turn to straight blond tresses. Long slender fingers shorten to a chubby child’s. Elegant legs become knobby knees. The woman focuses on the block, now that the illusion is complete. Nothingness. She says it over and over again in her head. Nothing. Rebecca feels nothing.

And then it’s done.

Spent, the woman sags against a tree. She struggles for breath. The ambulance is coming over the hill now, lights flashing. Before they can spot her and her car, she leaves the girl in the ditch, hating herself, hating Rebecca for asking her to do it. But she comforts herself by saying that it was the smartest thing to do. A necessity.

She’s driving away when it happens. When it begins. She doesn’t see it. But she feels it, feels the knowledge sealing itself inside her, not to be spoken of for fifteen years.

Elizabeth Caldwell opens her eyes.

“Elizabeth,” peeps in my ear. “Wake up, wake up! Please, please!”

My eyes flutter open. The illusion trembles, so close to being broken.

Moss has given me strength again. I can feel it whizzing through my muscles, brightness illuminating me from the inside. I see movement out of the corner of my eye, remember the Element, where I am. Nightmare dives at me, the knife I’d dropped catching the light in his hand. Reacting swiftly, I roll off the table, and the blade clatters behind me.

I scramble toward the door on all fours, panting, scraping my knees and the palms of my hands. Nightmare shoves the table out of his path—it lands against another wall and shatters a hole through it—and dives for me again. I don’t move fast enough, and his hand encircles my ankle. I scream and he laughs, yanking me back toward him. I jerk my leg, startling him, but the knife buries itself deep in my calf. I scream again, and the sound pierces the air so sharply that Moss covers her ears. Nightmare groans at the sound, wincing as he leans away. That’s when I see it. The smaller knife from earlier, the one he’d used to stab my hand, abandoned in the corner. Just inches away from my fingers.

It’s quick. It’s so quick that it seems surreal. I grab and raise the small knife, then shove it into the Element’s left eye without thinking.

I’ll never forget his cry. Half-man, half-beast, so frightening that my heart twists inside of me. He recoils, his back slamming into the wall closest to us. Dirt showers down on our heads. The blow doesn’t kill him instantly, as I’d hoped it would, so while he’s weakened and distracted, I yank the other knife out of my leg. Ignoring the shooting pain, I reach forward again, my hands slick with blood, and slit Nightmare’s throat.

He stares at me for an eternity. He touches the cut, and when he pulls his hand away he looks at the vibrant, scarlet blood on his fingers as if he can’t believe it. Then he falls. Doesn’t get back up again.