Текст книги "The Retribution of Mara Dyer"

Автор книги: Michelle Hodkin

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

48

HI, FOLKS,” A TINNY VOICE announced from the speaker. “There seems to be some sort of service interruption.” He began to say something else, but the words dissolved into static before we heard, “We’ll get you folks moving as soon as we can.”

New Yorkers are pretty unflappable as a group, and the motley crew in our car was no exception. An elderly Asian woman held the hand of an adorable little boy in a blue peacoat, who spoke to her calmly in English, though she spoke to him in something else, maybe Chinese? Next to her a frazzled-looking mother was trying to keep her two children from breaking off in opposite directions after her bag of groceries had fallen to the floor. Her apples scattered across the car like billiard balls. But no one cried. No one panicked. Not until the lights went out.

There was silence at first, then noise. People talking, a child crying. The car wasn’t completely dark—the emergency lights were on in the adjacent cars, just not in ours.

“This stuff happens all the time,” Jamie said. His face was painted in a faint, eerie glow. “They’ll figure it out.”

A burst of static startled Daniel—I felt him jump against my shoulder. Someone’s cell phone buzzed with a text. And then a stranger said my name.

“Mara Dyer?”

The owner of the voice was a twentysomething girl with gauges in her ears, a hoop in her nose, and a bushel of wild, curly hair. She held a book with a leafy green tree on the cover, title obscured, and a cell phone in the other. “Who is Mara Dyer?”

I felt Daniel’s and Jamie’s eyes boring into each side of my face. The stale air seemed to press in on me, slowing my thoughts. “Uh, me?” I said, before Jamie shushed me.

Everyone in the car stared as Curly Girl walked over to me and handed me her phone. “Someone’s texting you.”

“I don’t know you,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

“And I don’t know you. But the person texting me doesn’t seem to care.” She gestured with the phone. “See for yourself.”

I tried to, but realized that my arms were in the iron grips of my brother and Jamie.

“This is bad news,” Daniel said. “Bad news.”

I shook them off and took the phone from the girl.

I HAVE WHAT YOU WANT.

Below that was a picture of Noah. I couldn’t see where he was and didn’t know what he was doing; it was just a close-up of his face. But it was Noah to the life. And there was a newspaper next to him with today’s date.

“Can I have my phone back now?” Curly Girl asked. I ignored her.

“Ask who it is,” Jamie said.

“Like he’s going to answer?” Daniel replied.

“How do you know it’s a he?” Jamie asked.

Daniel rolled his eyes. “It’s a he.”

Who is this, I texted back. A few seconds later, the girl’s phone pinged again.

DOES IT MATTER? OPEN THE DOOR BETWEEN CARS AND GET OUT. LEAVE YOUR BROTHER AND FRIEND BEHIND SO THEY DON’T GET HURT.

“Trap,” Daniel and Jamie said simultaneously.

“Hey,” Curly Girl said, clearly annoyed now. “My phone?”

Jamie looked at her and said, “This isn’t your phone.” Her forehead creased and her eyes glazed over. “You dropped your phone on the tracks.”

“I dropped it?” Her voice wavered as she looked back and forth between Jamie and the phone in my hands.

“Yes. Run along now.” Jamie gestured at her. “Shoo.”

When she walked away, I stood up.

“Oh, come on, Mara,” Jamie said.

Daniel was shaking his head as he spoke. “You’re not going out there.”

“Of course I’m going out there.” More static from the speaker, but no lights and no movement still. Daniel and Jamie were right. Obviously right. And I was in no frame of mind to process the picture other than to seize it as proof that Noah was, in fact, alive. I had to make sure he stayed that way. I had to make sure Daniel and Jamie stayed that way too.

“Sister, I love you, and I would do anything for you, but I really do not want to creep around in the bowels of the New York City transit system for you. Please do not make me.”

“Not only am I not making you,” I said as I reached for the handle of the door between the cars. “I’m not going to let you.”

“You’re not going to stop me,” Daniel said.

Jamie bent over. If he’d had hair, he’d have been pulling it. “Damn it, Mara. We’ve been here before.”

I opened the door and stepped out into the darkness. “True,” I said. “And I was fine before.”

“I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘fine.’ ”

“Look,” I said to Daniel and Jamie, “what’s the most terrifying thing you can think of in these tunnels? Rats? Mole people?”

“Evil mastermind hell bent on killing you?” Jamie suggested.

“Wrong. The most terrifying thing in these tunnels is me.” I shut the door on both of them and jumped onto the tracks.

The girl’s cell phone buzzed in my hand.

WALK TOWARD THE END OF THE TRAIN UNTIL YOU PASS IT. GO TO THE THIRD NICHE WITH A DOOR.

The curved walls seemed to stretch into infinity, but I started walking, following a miniature creek between the tracks that was choked with garbage. Air ruffled papers taped to the graffitied, wet-looking walls. My pulse began to race as I neared the end of the train, but not from fear. I believed what I’d told my brother and Jamie. I believed in myself. I would find Noah, and I would punish whoever had taken him from me.

I passed the first niche, and then the second. But before I came to the third, I heard my name shouted behind me.

“Mara?” Daniel’s voice echoed in the tunnel. Panic seized me.

“Wherefore art thou, Mara Dyer?” Jamie’s voice this time.

“That means ‘why’, not ‘where,’ ” I heard my brother say. “Just saying.”

“Go back!” I yelled automatically, then cursed myself. Not for giving away my position to my mystery texter but for giving it away to my brother. Marco Polo used to be his favorite game.

Daniel yelled, “No chance! I’m your big brother. It’s my job to protect you.”

And then a shadow peeled itself from the wall, forming the outline of someone I knew, of the person I’d expected ever since I’d seen that first text. Ever since I’d heard the girl on the subway say my name, really.

“Don’t hurt them,” I said to Jude, and I meant it. “Please.”

“I didn’t want to,” he replied, and punched me in the face.

49

BEFORE

Cambridge, England

THERE WAS NO KNOCK ON the professor’s door before it opened, throwing a shaft of dim, gray light into the room.

A girl stood in the doorway, but did not enter. She was half in shadow, but I did not need to see her to know who she was.

The professor lifted a glass of amber liquid to his lips and sipped as he wrote in his notebook. “Come in, Naomi.”

Naomi Tate hurried in, bringing the scents of rain and nervousness with her. She shut the door forcefully, rattling the shutters, and a few leaves that had clung to her coat scattered to the scratched wooden floor.

“Bit early to be drinking, Professor?” she said casually, as she shrugged off her coat.

“Perhaps it’s a bit late.” He continued to write without looking up.

Naomi’s hair was damp and wild, and she tied what she could into a messy knot at the nape of her neck as she moved in front of the professor’s desk. Fine blond wisps curled around her forehead and temples, framing her face.

That face. With high cheekbones and a long, elegant nose, Naomi was beautiful in a rare, peculiar way, in a way that demands attention. I’d known her for a year and still, I could never quite get used to looking at her.

But there was something different about her today. I shifted in the tufted, battered leather armchair I always sat in, my island amid the chaos that was the professor’s Cambridge office, and sniffed the air. The scents in the room were all familiar: old paper mingling with leather and mold; the coriander and musk that was the professor; the paperwhites and cedar that was Naomi. And something else, something—

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Shaw?” he asked. He took another slow sip of whiskey.

Mrs. Shaw. She was Mrs. Shaw, now. I kept forgetting. She’d married the grandson of Elliot, whom I last saw at eight years old, throwing books and toys about his room, because he couldn’t find the one he wanted. I did not know her husband well, but my impression was that David Shaw was not terribly different.

Naomi refused to answer the professor; she would not fight for his attention. She would make him fight for hers. I loved that about her.

After several seconds, he finally abandoned his notebook and looked up at her. His lips pulled back into a smile. “You’re pregnant,” he finally said.

A sharp intake of breath. Mine. “How far along?”

I hadn’t heard the professor rise from his desk, but he was standing when he spoke. “Early,” he said, approaching Naomi with slow, graceful steps. “About two weeks?”

Naomi didn’t speak, but she nodded. She rubbed at a knot in the ancient desk with her finger—she was nervous, but grinning madly anyway.

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “It’s too early,” I said to the professor. “She might not be—”

“I am,” she said, in a tone that left no room for argument. “I am.”

The professor ran a hand over his chin and mouth. Then said, “May I?” He indicated her flat stomach. Naomi nodded.

The professor drew nearer, until he was close enough to touch her. I noticed the way her muscles tightened in apprehension, the way her aqua eyes dropped to the floor as he reached out to her. When he placed his hand low on her belly, Naomi flinched. A tiny movement, one she tried to disguise. If it bothered him, he didn’t show it.

“Three fifteen,” he said, and withdrew his hand. Naomi relaxed. “What does it mean to you?”

Her cheeks flushed, and she began rubbing at the pockmarked desk again. “The day I conceived, I think. March fifteenth.”

“Does David know?” I asked quickly.

Naomi shook her head. “Not yet,” she said, and swallowed. She glanced up at the professor. “I wanted to tell you first.”

“Thank you.” The professor inclined his head. He leaned over his desk and began to write. “For now, I’d prefer you didn’t mention it to him. Can you do that, Naomi?”

“Of course,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“You’ll be having a boy, you know.”

All traces of her earlier irritation vanished. A smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “A boy,” she repeated, as if saying the word for the first time. “You’ve seen him?”

The professor hesitated for a moment, then said, “Yes.”

“Tell me everything,” she said, her face lit with excitement.

“I don’t know everything,” the professor said, “but I do know he has your smile.”

Her hands drifted down to her lower belly. “I can’t believe this is really happening.”

“It is happening.” The professor had counted on this, on her, and I had too. “The boy is destined for greatness. Because of you, he will change the world.”

And because of him, Naomi would die. It was a sacrifice she was willing to make. It cost the professor nothing; but I was the one who had convinced her to make it. I needed her child too, and her death was easy to accept when Naomi was just an abstraction, a stranger. But now I knew her, and I was haunted by guilt. I had befriended her, persuaded her, knowing that there was no time line in which she would have this child and live, and over the months, the specter of her someday-death haunted me. I dreamed of her hanging by a rope from the rafters in a stable, her feet bare, her body swinging after the tension in the rope snapped her spine. I dreamed that a shard of glass pierced her chest after in a car accident, and she died choking on her own blood. I dreamed of her murder, her drowning, her being buried alive beneath a collapsing building. I didn’t know when it would happen, but I knew that it would.

Before her wedding, I couldn’t help but warn her again. She would be a martyr for this child, I told her.

Every gift has its cost, she had said back.

I could see the beginnings of that cost today. There was none of a new mother’s emotion in her expression, no awe or wonder, or even love. Instead she looked like a child who’d been told she’d be setting off on a great adventure soon, and she couldn’t wait to begin.

She nearly bounced on her heels. “I wish I didn’t have to wait nine months to meet him,” she said.

“He will be born in a good hour. Be patient.”

“When should I tell David?”

“I’ll let you know the next time we meet.”

“And when will that be?”

“Next Thursday. You, Mara and I shall meet at the lab, and we’ll see how everything is progressing. All right, then?”

“If you say so.”

“Very good. Then I shall see you then. Good day, Mrs. Shaw,” he said, as Naomi turned to leave. “And congratulations.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Don’t call me Mrs. Shaw,” she added petulantly. “Makes me feel ancient.”

A hint of a smile touched the professor’s mouth, and then the door closed behind her.

“This pregnancy will be difficult for her,” the professor said, staring after her.

“The child will live, yes?”

“Yes. Of course.”

I paused for a moment. Then asked, “And Naomi?”

“She will not die in childbirth.”

But that wasn’t what I asked, and we both knew it.

50

I OPENED MY EYES TO darkness. I saw nothing but felt like a small thing alone in a wide, cavernous space. And high—I felt high up, which made me want to tuck my limbs in, tight and close to my body. I tried to but couldn’t. My arms and legs were bound. But I wasn’t afraid; I felt removed, distant. Where I should have felt frightened and terrified, I just felt clinical and calculating.

Until I remembered my brother, calling for me in the dark.

I could see only what was above me and on either side of my head, and not well at that. I was in some kind of warehouse; there was a source of light somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. I blinked and blinked again. A crumbling, pockmarked concrete ceiling materialized above me, framed by casement windows fogged with grime. And to my left and right were the shadows of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people.

No. Not people. Mannequins. Or parts of them, anyway. An army of headless torsos standing at attention, extending farther back than I could see. Dingy resin hands and arms, cloth torsos and plastic eyes, were heaped and scattered on the ground.

But Daniel wasn’t there, not that I could see. I knew I wasn’t alone, but maybe I was the only one Jude had taken. I prayed to a God I did not believe in that I was right.

“You’re wondering where we are,” a voice said. A strangely familiar voice, resonant and compelling, even though I’d never heard it before. My ears were ringing and my head was cloudy, and everything, including my thoughts, seemed distorted.

“You’re wondering why we’re here.” I heard the sound of slow, purposeful footsteps but didn’t see anyone at first. Then, slowly, my eyes detected movement. A figure moved between the bodies, as tall and narrow as they were. I discerned the outline of a black suit among them, and as the footsteps grew nearer, the outline became a person.

He had Noah’s blue-gray eyes, but he wasn’t Noah. And behind him stood Jude.

“I’m afraid we’ve never been formally introduced,” the man said to me. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, the slight curve of his mouth emphasizing the hollows beneath his sculpted cheekbones. “My name is David Shaw.”

My tongue was thick in my mouth, and my thoughts dissolved before they could reach it. I had heard about Noah’s father but had never met him, and now, now he was here. He was here, and I had been brought here by him.

By him.

He stood there looking at me kindly, sympathetically, as if Jude, my tormenter, were not standing beside him. As if he hadn’t been the orchestrator of my torment, using Horizons and Wayne and Kells as tools.

Struck dumb by shock or drugs, all I could do was stare at him and Jude, who scarcely resembled the creature I remembered. Gone was the smooth conviction he’d displayed at the dock when he’d forced me to cut my own wrists. I saw none of the anger he’d shown in the garden at Horizons, when he’d tortured my friends and Noah and me. He was whispering to himself. Mumbling. I couldn’t make out the words.

“You’re afraid,” David Shaw said to me.

I wasn’t. Not anymore.

“I am truly sorry for this. I wish things could be different.”

They would be. I wasn’t going to kill him like I’d killed everyone else. I would torture him, the way he had tortured me.

I didn’t need him to tell me why he had done it. I didn’t care. I only cared about only one thing, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words until David Shaw gave it permission to. I recognized the sensation. I was on Anemosyne, Kells’s drug of choice.

“Did Noah know?” My voice was scratchy and hoarse, and I wasn’t sure he heard me, until his eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“You’re wondering if he betrayed you?” David’s eyes narrowed a bit. “How little you trust him.” His sentence was punctuated by the ringing metallic clang of metal on metal and the sound of approaching footsteps. “Speak of the devil,” David said, and then Noah appeared behind him.

51

NOAH

I DULLY STALK BEHIND MY father, briefly noting the fiberglass army of armless, headless mannequins that surround us. They seem to stiffen at my arrival, to cringe at my too loud steps. So sinister. Lovely touch.

Walking feels like an effort, as does thinking, unfortunately. My vision is oddly tunneled; we appear to be in a large, probably condemned warehouse of standard decrepitude; the plaster is peeling off of the dingy once-white walls, the casement windows are thick with grime, et cetera. I notice a sign just outside one of the windows with the words STORAGE WAREHOUSE: FIREPROOF painted on it, except someone had blackened out the letters so that it read, RAGE WAREHOUSE: IREPROOF. Mara would love that so much.

Thinking her name cuts through something in my brain, steals the laughter from my throat. And then I see her.

But it isn’t Mara—or at least it isn’t the Mara I remember. The one with quick, smudged fingers, lips that couldn’t decide whether to swear or smile, with eyes that told me nothing about her and everything about me.

The last time I saw that Mara, she stood held against Jude’s body, his blade at her naked throat. Or no, no, that wasn’t the last time. A split-second frame flickers in my mind, a quick and blurred picture of her pressing Jude against a wall, almost into it, with her hands at his throat, digging into his bare skin. And I remembered what preceded it. Mara began as his victim, and then she made him hers.

But it wasn’t just us fucked up teens that last night in Horizons. A scentless something invaded the air, made it shimmer and wave. I remembered my voice as I called out to her, the way it competed with the sound of blood rushing beneath my skin, with the sound of my ragged breath roaring in my ears, before my world went black.

God knew how many minutes, hours, days I’d spent in darkness after that, waking up to be forced to eat by a person, or people, with blurred, blank faces and gloved hands, only to be swallowed back into unconsciousness as a dark, wet tongue pushed me to the back of its throat. I remembered practically nothing until today, when my father’s face appeared at the door.

“You’re safe now,” he said, and miracle of miracles, led me out into the world. I felt bliss for a moment when I saw the sky, until I realized it was the color of spoiled milk. My father seemed to be talking to me, reassuring me or something, but I had trouble translating the words. I did try to find some sliver of gratitude for him, some rejoicing at my freedom, but I felt absolutely nothing at all.

Until he mentioned her name.

My father had found her the way he’d found me, he said. She needed help that only I could give her, and would I go with him?

I would go anywhere, with anyone, to see the girl I loved again. Obviously.

The girl before me now doesn’t quite look like her. She is different in a way I can’t name, in a way that goes beyond her thinness, her new shape. If she were naked beneath the faded black T-shirt she wears (one of mine—the hem is half-torn), her ribs would show, her spine would protrude, her collarbones would cut glass. But she doesn’t look ill, not the way she had begun to before Horizons. Color blooms in her cheeks, and her eyes are lit with an emotion I can’t name. And there’s something more, more than the change in her features and in her body. Looking at her is like walking into a home you once lived in to find it changed by new, alien owners. She is bound, prone, and Jude, that absolute horror of a human being, looms over her, but she looks nothing like a damsel in distress. She looks like a dragon instead. I am struck dumb and thoughtless with the sense that I don’t know a thing about this person until she speaks my name.

The sound of her voice thaws my mind and my blood; it pulses hotly through my veins. I ignore Jude’s presence—she and I can butcher him together later. My feet carry me to my girl and I kneel and reach for her. Something stops me—not Jude. Not my father. My hand curls into a fist and falls by my side, and a strange, unfamiliar voice inside me whispers, Don’t.

I look to Mara for an answer to the question I haven’t asked. She says instead, “You’re here.” But what I hear in her tone is, Where were you?

My heart would break if it weren’t filled with happiness. Her voice is the same. It’s home.

My father pollutes the air with his, however. “Mara was told that Horizons collapsed.”

I look up in confusion. “Why?”

“To keep you safe,” he says to me.

“From what exactly?”

“From her.”

Mara is silent for a moment, and blinks her dark lashes that frame her too-wide eyes. They would look innocent on anyone else. “I would never hurt him.”

My father looks at her with no expression. “You already have.”