It screeched an unholy sound and rolled away from me as if I were poison, rubbing at its eyes. As it flailed, I lay still for several seconds--maybe years, maybe an eternity--trying to catch my breath, find energy. My throat hurt. Badly. My skin was like a rubber band, dry, taut, ready to snap.
Come on, come on. No time to rest. I'm making my mother proud, remember?
I lumbered to my feet. The Sybilin continued to writhe. I was afraid to touch it again, afraid it would somehow be able to attach itself to me a second time, but I approached it anyway and crouched above it. I began punching. And punching. And punching. It had tried to kill me, would kill me if I let it.
I didn't stop punching, even when it tried to crawl away from me. Even when it bucked and screeched, I still punched. Punched until the murdering creature ceased all movement. None of the other Sybilins came to its rescue.
Only when I stopped did I realize that my knuckles throbbed in sync with my rage. I hurt everywhere. I couldn't stop panting.
Ryan was suddenly at my side. He grabbed my upper arm and pulled me into the very spot I'd been standing before all of this began. My knees collapsed, my adrenaline rush dissipating. I fell to my butt and leaned my head against one of the trees. In that moment, I wanted to vomit. I had nothing left inside me, however, no energy to move.
"You okay?" he asked, crouching just in front of me.
"I'm...fine..." I said as my eyelids closed of their own accord. My throat was dry, raw, each word ripped from me. I'd never felt so weak in my life.
"I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner." He tilted my chin and used his fingers to raise my eyelids and study my eyes. "I've never seen an untrained human successfully fight off a Sybilin who had already begun to feed." There was disbelief in his tone, as if seeing it still hadn't convinced him. "I don't think you'll have any permanent damage. You just need water. A lot of water."
"What about...the other monsters?" I couldn't suck air in fast enough.
"We've got them contained. Finally." He withdrew a canteen from one of his pant pockets and held it to my lips. "Drink."
I drank greedily, my cottony mouth absorbing every drop of moisture.
"Everything's going to be okay."
"Who...are...you?" I panted when there was nothing left. A normal boy could not have fought like that. A normal boy did not carry an arsenal to a kegger. "Who are...you really?"
"I'm nobody." Expression grim, he twisted and surveyed the glen.
I looked past him to do the same. Kids were strewn about, unconscious. Many of the Sybilins were still frozen in place. I gulped. "Are they dead?"
"Your friends or the Sybilins?"
"Both."
"Some of the humans will need a few days on an IV, but survival rate should be good. The Sybilins, well, some of them are alive now but they won't be for long." He said it with the slightest hint of glee.
"What--"
"No." He shook his head. "No more questions."
His sister was approaching, I noticed. She sheathed her weapons--a gun and a knife, exact replicas of Ryan's--at her waist and glanced at me. She had the same dark hair as Ryan, but her eyes were green whereas his were that freaky blue. He was tall, she was short. Where he was muscled, she looked soft.
Hard to believe the sweet-looking teenager had fought so lethally.
"What are we going to do about her?" she demanded, motioning to me with a tilt of her chin.
She was my age, seventeen, but she was trying to act older. In control. I wish I had the strength to challenge her. For the first time in years, I'd done something good. Something right. I didn't deserve condemnation. I deserved a medal. Maybe flowers. A certificate at the very least.
"Well," Allison demanded.
"Not what you're thinking," Ryan said firmly.
What was she thinking? I felt like I should know the answer, but my mind was foggy and I was suddenly having trouble sifting through the gloomy thickness.
"She's seen too much," Allison said through clenched teeth.
"She also helped us. Now drop it and find out what happened to our backup. They should have been here by now."
Allison opened her mouth to respond, but Ryan cut her off with a look. Just a single, dark look that caused her to press her lips together in a mutinous line. Then, of course, she flashed me a teeth-baring scowl as if everything was my fault and whipped around, flouncing away.
I was once again alone with Ryan--who I wasn't sure I liked. He was too bossy, too arrogant, too everything. But I knew I liked to look at him. He was a (sexy) mystery, a (beautiful) confusing puzzle.
"What's your name?" he asked me. His blue eyes were swirling, churning. Like an ocean tempest.
"Phoenix."
"Cute," he said.
"You wouldn't think so if it was your name," I grumbled.
His lips twitched into a smile. "I was talking about you, not the name. But I like that, too."
He thought I was cute? "It's stupid."
"No way."
"Every day someone compares me to a bird that burns to death."
"That bird also rises from its own ashes, stronger than ever before."
Okay. I now officially liked my name. I'd never thought of it that way, but loved the image. I had risen from my own ashes and was trying to make a better life for myself.
Ryan's expression changed from amused to regretful in the blink of an eye. "I'm very sorry, Phoenix," he said.
I blinked over at him in confusion. "For what?" Despite his earlier rudeness, he really had done nothing but help me.
"For this." His hand whipped out and smashed over my nose. The action was startling, unexpected. And...wet. Droplets trickled onto my lips and chin. A bitter scent wafted to my nose, then down my throat as I breathed, then onto my tongue as I opened my mouth.
I grabbed onto his wrist and tried to shove him away. He held tight. Weak as I was, I couldn't budge him. Strangely, I was only growing weaker. Swiftly so.
"My fingers are doused with a sleep aid," he explained calmly. "Sleep, Phoenix."
Our conversation, his praise of my name--obviously only a means of distracting me, I thought darkly. I tried to scream at him, to curse him, but only managed to suck in more of the bitter fumes. How dare he do this! How dare he...do...this...
Once again, I was faced with a black spiderweb. This one was stronger, more potent than the other. Alluring, beckoning me to peace. Like a drug. Sleep would be unbelievably sweet.
I was going to pass out; I knew I was.
But I fought it, fought the sweetness, just as I had fought the Sybilins. Just as I now fought Ryan. What was he planning to do with me? I wriggled and bucked and landed a blow to his right eye. My fist smacked into bone. Satisfaction flooded me.
"Damn it," he growled, but there was no real heat to the words. He tried to capture my hands with his free one. "That hurt."
Good. I managed to punch him a second time before he pinned both of my wrists.
"I'm not going to harm you," he said. He sounded far away, slurred. "Stop fighting. Please. I'm doing this for your own good."
I didn't want to obey him, but the world around me was crumbling. No, not crumbling. Had crumbled. Completely. I had no solid anchor; I was floating. My head was too heavy, my shoulders weighted with bricks. My eyelids closed, practically glued together. For me, there was only darkness and a never-ending tunnel.
"How is she still fighting?" I heard Allison say. I hadn't heard her return.
"I don't know," Ryan said, and there was awe in his tone. "Sleep, Phoenix. Sleep." Warm breath tickled my ear. "Everything's going to be okay. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of you. Promise."
It was the last thing I heard before finally sinking into oblivion.
3
"Load her up," I heard a man say. He sounded far away yet familiar. Ryan, I realized a moment later. Mmm, Ryan. So cute. No, bastard. "Take her home, and be careful with her."
Suddenly I was floating.
"Kadar,"
Ryan called.
"Yeah?"
"Tell her parents...I don't know." Ryan paused. "I hate to tell them we're cops and we caught her using. I don't want her in trouble after everything she did."
"I won't mention the drugs, all right?" someone--Kadar?--replied. A man; a stranger to me. "I'll just tell them I found her like this and used her ID to track down her address. We'll leave it up to the parentals to decide what she did or didn't do at the party."
I should protest. I tried to open my mouth, but no sound emerged.
"Fine," Ryan said. "That'll be fine."
The fog claimed me again, and I knew only darkness.
"How could you, Nix? How could you?"
My mom's angry voice battered through the black shroud covering my mind. My body pulsed and throbbed with pain, I suddenly realized, as if I'd been in a wreck. A fight. Something.
My mouth was dry, so dry. My skin prickled and itched.
I'll take care of you. Promise.
The raspy male voice drifted into my consciousness. For a moment, I forgot everything but that voice. There was comfort in it. Assurance.
"Nix! Wake up. Right now."
There was my mom again, insistent and furious. What had I done wrong this time? Had I stayed out too late and missed curfew?
Everything's going to be okay.
Again, the male voice filled my head. I wanted to see the speaker. See his face, which somehow shimmered tauntingly in shadows. I moaned, trying to force myself to wake up completely.
As consciousness gradually claimed me, I smacked my dry lips together. God, I was thirsty.
"Finally," my mother grumbled. Her fingers closed around my shoulders, and she shook me. "Come on, Nix. I'm tired of waiting." There was a tension-filled pause. "And I'm not going to do it anymore, not when you're responsible for every bit of my pain."
I cracked open my heavy eyelids. Too-bright sunlight filtered past my white curtains, causing my eyes to tear and burn. I rubbed a shaky hand over my face and scratched at my itchy cheek.
"Water," I rasped past the hard lump in my throat. Past the cotton in my mouth. "Water."
Exasperated, my mom stomped from my room, only to return a few minutes later with a glass. I drained the contents in seconds, sucking it down as if my life depended on it. Hmm, good. So good. Cold and wet and heaven on earth. When I finished, I set the cup on my nightstand.
"You ready to talk now?" she said.
"What's going on?" I asked. I was in my bedroom, lying on my bed, but the last thing I remembered was trees. And dirt. Moonlight. Yes, moonlight. In the next instant, a boy's face flashed into my mind. The boy's face, the one who kept speaking in my mind.
He had dark hair and blue eyes; he was tall. He was--his image disappeared. I fought to get it back, but...nothing. What was wrong with me?
"You got high again," Mom said, her scorn and disappointment clear. "That's what is going on."
"What?" I jolted upright. Dizziness hit me in sickening waves, and several minutes passed before the sensation calmed. "I didn't get high." I knew that much for sure.
I'd gone to the party, I remembered that now. I'd stood on the edge of the glen, watching my friends dance and smoke, but I'd resisted. Yes, I had resisted. And then...what? Ryan Stone had approached me. That's right. Ryan Stone. My eyes widened as the night's events replayed through my mind in vivid color and sound.
Ryan was the one inside my head. His sister, Allison, had been in the forest with us. Outers had arrived and had tried to kill us. A fight had broken out. Guns had flashed and knives had glinted. My friends had almost died.
"I snuck out," I said, focusing on my mom. "I admit that. But that's all I'm guilty of. I swear I didn't use. Aliens attacked us. They tried to suck the water out of our bodies, but we fought them." I didn't mention that I'd almost become a victim myself.
Mom glared down at me, and I fought the urge to look away. We were mirror images of each other, Mom and I. We shared the same pale hair, the same big, brown eyes. The same freckles on our cute, pixie noses. The same thin bodies--why couldn't she have given me boobs? Looking at her was like looking at a delicate flower, easily stomped on. I sincerely hoped that was not the image people got when they looked at me.
"I did good, Mom."
"You get high and apparently think I'm so stupid I won't figure it out. Then you lie to me about it. Fighting aliens? Please. Something like that would be all over the news."
"I'm telling the truth! I could have run, but I stayed and fought. I helped save lives. I...I thought you'd be proud of me."
She rubbed a hand over her face, massaging the lines of tension around her eyes and mouth. "Your skin is dry, Nix, as if you haven't been getting enough oxygen. There are circles under your eyes, and your lips are tinted blue. Classic signs of Onadyn use. I should know. I've seen them a thousand times."
"Mom--"
Tears filled her eyes. "I thought you'd quit. You promised me you would quit this time!"
"But Mom--"
"I'm so disappointed in you, I'm almost at a loss for words," she said, cutting me off again. "Did you learn nothing in rehab? Did you forget that drugs can and will kill you?"
"I learned," I insisted. "I know."
She snorted, wiping at the tears with the back of her hand. "I thought you'd wised up and finally realized you were sinking into a dark spiral of unhappiness and death." As she ranted, she paced the length of my room. She became a blur against the white walls, the metallic vanity, and the holographic photos of my friends. "I mean, God! You once threatened to help a girl kill herself."
My cheeks burned in shame.
"I'd never been so mortified and horrified in my life. And now, to find out you're using the very substance that turned you into that monster yet again..."
"I'm not lying to you. I didn't get high."
"Oh, really? A strange man found you and brought you home last night. You were unconscious and unresponsive. I thought I was going to have to take you to the hospital so they could give you a transfusion of oxygen-rich blood."
"A strange man brought me home?" I shook my head, clearing my thoughts. "What did he look like?" Had Ryan brought me here? He'd knocked me out, so it was entirely possible.
Thinking of the way he'd tricked me, the way he'd unmercifully rendered me unconscious, caused my anger levels to spike. My hands clenched into fists. Why had he done that?
"What did he look like?" I insisted.
"What does the man's appearance matter?" my mom said, suddenly hysterical. "He had dark hair and hazel eyes. Happy? He told me he'd found you passed out in the forest and read your ID to learn your address."
For some reason, that sounded familiar to me. I didn't know why, and my head hurt trying to reason it out. I did know the man who brought me home hadn't been Ryan. His eyes were freaky blue, not hazel.
"The man could have been a murderer, a rapist, or an alien," Mom said. "He could have killed you or worse, hurt you to the point you wished he'd killed you, and no one would have known. I would have spent years crying for you, worried about you, praying. Once again my life would have been thrown into turmoil because of you."
"I swear to God I'm clean!" Maybe I would hunt Ryan down. He'd been there. He knew the truth. My mom refused to believe me, but maybe she'd believe him.
"I'm so frustrated with you, Nix. The drugs are destroying us, and I can't take it anymore."
"Mom, you have to believe me!" My voice broke. I kept my gaze on her, silently begging her to trust me. Just this once. I was a different person now and wanted her to see it, to acknowledge it. "You can test...my oxygen levels," I finished lamely. If my water level was down, would my oxygen levels be down, too? If so, I'd appear guilty. "Mom, please."
"Changed your mind about the test, did you?" Laughing without humor, she tangled her hand in her pale hair; the sound of that humorless laughter echoed off the walls. Her shoulders sagged with dejection. "I'm sorry, Nix, but the evidence speaks for itself. I don't need to
pay for a test."
My stomach knotted painfully. I'd never done anything to earn her trust, I knew that and was ashamed of it. I don't know why I'd expected it now. But for the first time in years, I was telling the truth.
I dropped my chin onto my chest and stared down at my hands, twisting grooves into my comforter. Purple and blue branched from my knuckles to my wrists. They were so swollen, each movement of my fingers caused a sharp lance of pain. My skin was flaky.
Try again. "Mom--"
"Save it. Obviously I can't control you, and like I said I'm tired of trying. I'm worn-out. I'm so stressed I can't sleep anymore. I have headaches all the time now. I have no social life, no friends. I'm too busy chasing after you."
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
"I--I just can't do this anymore."
My head whipped up, and I peered at her with dread. "Don't send me back to rehab. Please. I didn't use. I didn't! All I want to do is make you proud."
"Stop," she bit out harshly, cutting me off again. "Just stop."
Tears filled my eyes, burning hotly. I scratched my arms, staring at her, trying to will her to believe me.
"The guy who brought you home told me he sent his own daughter to a special bootcamp for wayward teenagers." She faced me fully, her expression sad, determined. "He gave me the number. I've already called them. The director wasn't there, but he's going to call me as soon as he's in."
A gasp split my lips. "No. Don't do that. Don't send me away again. I just got back. Give me a chance. I'm trying to put my life together again."
She remained firm and unbending. "If they'll have you, you're going. End of discussion." With that, she left my room, shutting the door with a soft click.
I spent the rest of the weekend in my room. I wanted to call and check on my friends, but I was forbidden from using the phone. No way would I disobey Mom now. I didn't need more trouble. Besides, they had to be okay. One or all of the news stations would have reported if anything had happened to them. Not that anyone had reported on the attack.
Which made me think of Ryan when he'd said, "So the media reports everything now?"
Perhaps they weren't as open and honest as I'd assumed.
What else didn't I know about?
I sighed. Most of my time was spent drinking water. Sucking it down, really, unable to get enough. I stared at the holophotos on my wall, animated pictures of me and Jamie playing in my backyard. We laughed and hugged each other.