Through Glass: Episode Four (2 page)

It couldn’t take away the heated
explosion that I could feel was coming.

The one I knew I should stop, yet I
couldn’t make myself do it.

“
Oh, wait! I was stoned!” I
growled as Travis glared at me out of the corner of his eyes, but I
only plowed on, the look sending my blood into a steady boil. “I
don’t know how much time has passed, Travis.”

I knew my voice was too loud, but I
didn’t do anything to stop it, either; I just let it grow. I let
the anger, the frustration, the heartbreak—I let it all grow. I let
it seep out of me, hoping it would take away the pain that had
flown through my chest. I hadn’t felt this pain since Cohen had
been taken from me. I didn’t want to feel it again.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice
right then.

“
Calm down, Lex,” Travis
said, his voice deep and rumbling as he looked into me, the dark
light in his eyes glowering.

I knew he was right, but yet, I
couldn’t make the anger that had suddenly incapacitated me leave. I
couldn’t ignore the way my brother wasn’t a child anymore, the way
his face was more of a leader, like our fathers. I couldn’t ignore
the scold in his eyes, the look identical to the one that Mom had
given us every time she was gently trying to help us calm
down.

If for only that alone—for that look
and all the memories that came along with it—I exploded.

“
Travis!” I snapped, my
volatile blood boiling in reaction to his voice, to the way he
spoke to me like Mom had, and all the emotions that came right
along with it. “Don’t you dare!”

I didn’t get out more than those few
words before his hand clamped over my mouth, the smell of dirt and
blood that soaked into his rough skin nauseating me.

“
You are going to attract
someone,” Travis growled in my ear, the grip he had on me
increasing as he tried to restrain his temper.

I wanted to correct him, I
wanted to say
something
, but I couldn’t make the words come. No matter how contrived
and clichéd they sounded they were still true.

And he was right.

I would attract someone.

I should have known better. Hell, I
did know better, but the emotion had come on so strong, the anger
and hatred boiling up in me so quick that I couldn’t control it. I
grit my teeth and leaned back against him, letting the boil under
my skin settle into something I could manage.

Something that I could pretend hadn’t
controlled me.

Just like they had said, like they had
warned.

Just like they warned me
when they told me I was turning into one of the Tar.

I banished the thought from my mind
with a heaving breath and held completely still against him, my
body relaxing as the last of the volatile emotions melted
away.

Travis’s arms fell away from me as he
felt my body relax, the soft click as he released the hammer on his
gun echoing around me with a sharp crack. I didn’t even look at
him; I only stared into the darkness, not wanting to see the look
in his eyes at what had almost happened.

What the click of his gun had meant he
was willing to do.

“
I’m sorry,” I told him,
but I wasn’t sure he heard me, he only stepped away from me as we
walked into the dark, his voice low as he continued the
conversation. As if nothing had happened.

“
You need to control it,
Alexis. Don’t let it rule you.”

I could only nod numbly at his words,
knowing he was right but not wanting to say it out loud. I needed
to fight this. I needed to fight for what I wanted and what I
believed in.

I needed to fight to live.

If I was to let the volatile anger
rule, I was only one step closer to changing. Or so they
said.

“
We need to get to Cohen,
Lex, before he changes.”

You mean before
I
change.

I shook the thought from my head and
looked up to my brother, the hard light in his eyes all but gone
now.

“
Why?” I asked, careful to
keep my voice mellow. “You already told me he was gone, Travis.
He’s not like Abran’s men, he was locked in a house just as I was,
and now he has been taken. Turned into just another Tar, just
another monster. If you shoot him with a gun, he will turn to ash
just like all the others.”

My voice trailed away as I spoke, my
eyes falling to the endless grey ash circles we were surrounded by.
The ash was not undisturbed here as it had been in other places.
Here it was spread over the street as the survivors had fought
through them, fossilized footprints preserved in a windless world,
the last promise that people had lived. They had fought, only to
lose their lives anyway, only to turn into another ring of grey
ash. One ring on top of another as person after person had lost
their life.

“
But can he stand in the
light?” Travis asked, his voice soft as he pulled my focus away
from the open air mausoleum we were surrounded by.

“
I don’t know! You ask me
questions I don’t even understand, Travis. How do Abran’s men stand
in the light? Why was I left to live, alone, for eight years? How
can it have been eight years? Neither Cohen nor I saw light after
the world ended. I didn’t even get the light working before they
took him away! How can I give you answers when I don’t understand
them?”

“
That’s why we need to get
him, Lex, so we can understand the questions.” Travis’s voice was
deep as he pleaded with me, the tone low as he tried to control the
sound running through me until I stood frozen before him. “Abran
has done something to the people in Azul. They turned to ash, but
what if they can also turn into creatures like the Tar.”

“
You mean…” I didn’t dare
say it. I knew what he was alluding to, and I didn’t want to admit
that what I had seen was real, that it could happen.

I swallowed as the words got stuck in
my throat, the dark brown of Travis’s eyes boring into me. I had
almost expected the pity I had seen there before, but instead, I
only saw a hard line and determination that had become so expected
of him.

The look I had never seen in my little
brother.

“
I read your file. You told
me about Sarah; how she changed right before your eyes. We have
only ever seen that once, when someone we rescued changed for the
first time. But what if it wasn’t the first time? What if they can
change back and forth at will?”

I could only gape at him. My spine
tensed as my mind slowly began to process his words, the heavy beat
of my heart moving into a frantic race at the memory of my best
friend changing right before my eyes. I cringed at the memory of
the dark, thick blood seeping over her face as the razor sharp
feathers pushed their way through her skin, as she became a
Tar.

I had seen it happen, yet I still did
not want to accept it. Not for her, not for the seemingly unmarred
people back at the compound. And certainly not for
Cohen.

I swallowed hard, wishing that the
lump that had suddenly grown in my throat would disappear, but it
stayed, thick and heavy.

“
So those men can change?”
I barely got the words out, trying to keep my focus off Cohen but
knowing it wasn’t working.

Travis’s jaw tightened as he fought
the answer that both of us knew, the answer that neither of us
wanted to accept. “Those men that you turned to ash have been there
since the beginning. They were the ones who barricaded the school
and kept us safe. They were the ones who figured out the generators
and the cell towers, and discovered how to keep us safe and a
society running in the dark. They aren’t Tar.”

“
Then what are they?” My
body tightened as I asked the question, my muscles tensing as my
eyes darted out of the bright light we stood in, the bubble of
security that we had clung to.

The shadows seemed to ripple as we
walked, the same as they always had, shadows that lay just out of
the corner of my eyes. This time they almost seemed to taunt me,
screamed at me that they were more than shadows. That they we were
no longer safe, not anymore. Not with men that stood in the light
and monsters that could change back and forth at will.

I swallowed hard and pulled my eyes
from the shadows of the old craft store we walked by, my mind
already putting large, winged creatures where only the dark fingers
of shadows on top of shadows were.

“
They must be something
that Abran has created,” Travis said, the muscles in his neck
pulling in his discomfort. “We just need to find out
what.”

“
By getting Cohen back.” My
voice was little more than a whisper as I pushed it out of
me.

“
The Tar take the humans to
a large warehouse in Arkansas. That’s what Abran is going to
raid.”

“
Arkansas?” I gaped, fully
aware that not only were we in Texas, but with where he had
described our destination to be, we were already headed in the
wrong direction.

“
They take them there and
change them.” The shock I had felt at where we were going vanished
as Travis’s deep voice rumbled around me, my heart seeming to stop
as my limbs became heavy.

Where they change
them.

I wished I could un-hear his words. I
wished I could get the image of Cohen’s limp body as that thing
took him away from me out of my head.

But it was already there.

I had accepted him as dead, turned
into another of the army of black monsters that had taken over the
world. I had vowed to rescue him from that. I had vowed to release
him from that prison whether it was by my gun or someone
else’s.

I knew they would send him to me, just
as they had Sarah.

But Travis wasn’t talking about trying
to find the man that I was still desperately in love with. He
wasn’t talking about releasing him from the tormented hell that I
was sure he was trapped in. He wasn’t talking about killing him,
not like I was.

He was talking about saving him, about
keeping him alive; about finding something that was a little of
both—both man and Tar. Something I didn’t think existed, that I
didn’t want to exist.

Not at all.

And not in Cohen.

“
But if he has been gone
for weeks… he’s gone, Travis. You said so yourself.” My mind
struggled to flow around the words, the images blocking thoughts as
I wrestled the mental picture that was slowly growing inside of me.
The desperation and the panic that was still taking hold and
growing.

“
Yes.”

I had already accepted him as dead. I
had already mourned and cried and held onto him, but for some
reason—thinking of his eyes always full of so much expression,
dimmed into that of a monster… a monster that Travis obviously had
other plans for than what I had originally thought.

Pain seized through my chest as if I
had been shot again. I might have been.

“
But if we find him—”
Travis began, his voice suddenly rising in an excitement that only
cut through me, “if we know which one he is—if we find him, then
maybe we can find out what Abran has done to those people. If they
are monsters—”

“
You mean you want to
experiment on Cohen,” I finally interrupted him, my words clipped
in shock and pain.

“
No.”

“
Just the way they wanted
to experiment on me.” I could feel the panic, the temper coming
back and it scared me.

“
Not the same
way—”

“
Exactly the same way! You
want to open him up and see how he ticks—”

“
No, Alexis!” he
interrupted me with a snap, the anger in his voice jolting through
me. The muscles in his jaw flexed as he looked at me with the same
hard look as before, the childish gleam that I had seen in him all
but gone now, leaving only my older, powerful brother.

I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this
for Cohen, for the image of what he was in my mind, in my heart. I
wanted him, but he wasn’t there anymore.

“
I will not do that to
him,” Travis said, his voice almost a whisper as he tried to calm
the angry panic I was sure he could see move through me.

“
Then what, Travis? You
want to manicure his talons… his…” My breath caught as I said it,
an iron vice closing over my heart as I felt the burn behind my
eyes, the burn I wanted so hard to ignore, the tears that I wanted
to pretend I could no longer shed.

I knew it wasn’t that easy,
though.

It couldn’t be.

Just saying the words had let a tiny
part of me out; the part that still clung to that final image of
Cohen, the part that still remembered his kiss, the warmth of his
hands…

Without thinking about it, I lifted my
arm, the sleeve of the over-large, leather jacket rolling back to
reveal the ink pen drawing I had spent so many years tracing. The
drawing that brought back so many memories of his smile.

I could still see him, but now I saw
something more. I saw golden claws where charcoal-stained fingers
used to be, and slick, black skin covered with razor sharp feathers
instead of the scruff that had so taken my heart.