Burn (Pure #3)(104)

He once imagined what it would be like to tell Pressia that Bradwell was dead. Will Bradwell be the one to tell her that he and Helmud are dead? He hopes that in that moment she realizes that she loves him. That’s all he’s wanted. He imagines that she’ll cry and that Bradwell will be the one to comfort her.

In this scenario, they might be sitting inside of a cracked Dome.

They might have made it all the way to that reality—without him.

He got close.

Someone hits him so hard that his body arches and then sways. The crowd—now hundreds of them—cheers. But El Capitan remembers being weightless—up in the sky on that airship. If he has a soul, and if the soul leaves the body once someone dies, he’d like it to take off like that airship.

I’d like to fly. It’s a new prayer. I’d like to fly just once more.

He’s fighting to stay awake. He feels a dull shade being drawn over his eyes. Darkness. He fights it. His body bucks. His hands are blue claws strung over his head. He tries to wet his lips and tastes blood. He hears his brother’s voice humming in his ear—a dim song, one El Capitan can’t place.

The beatings have stopped. There’s a rush of wind in El Capitan’s ears. Things have gone quiet and still.

Except there’s a voice.

El Capitan forces open one eye.

He sees Bradwell’s wings arching over his shoulders. The wind buffets the feathers. The survivors are still holding on to their sticks and clubs, but they’ve gone quiet.

Bradwell has a way of talking that makes people listen. He always has. Shadow History. The underground. He had a following. He led a movement.

Has Bradwell convinced Gorse to let him talk to the people? Is he making a case on behalf of El Capitan and Helmud? Is Bradwell trying to save them?

He hears the word evil. Maybe Bradwell isn’t trying to save them at all. El Capitan knows what evil feels like—on your skin it feels like hatred, but when you find it riding low in your gut, it’s really fear. Fear is where evil comes from. And hatred always came so easily to El Capitan because he hated himself—so deeply, so thoroughly, like he’d been shot through with self-hatred, a spray of buckshot.

For a vengeful second, he thinks, Let them beat me to death. Let them beat their hate into me. He knows that beating him to death will be their punishment. Killing someone—that can’t be washed away. They’ll have to carry it around—easier in a group, easier to shift the sin from one person to the other, but never painless. They’ll have his death forever.

Helmud’s too.

Equality—that’s what Bradwell is talking about now. In this world?

But whatever he says, it works. Someone has climbed the top of the old swing set and is sawing at the ropes with a knife. Other survivors have wrapped their arms around El Capitan’s legs so he and Helmud are caught once the ropes snap.

Their lives have been spared. By God? By Saint Wi? By Bradwell?

And then Bradwell is there. He hugs El Capitan and Helmud.

“What happened?” El Capitan whispers through his swollen, split lip.

“I struck a deal with Gorse. I promised to take him to his sister if he’d give me a couple of minutes to address the crowd. And then I told the people I was sent from God. An angel.”

El Capitan smiles even though it hurts. “The wings helped.”

“Finally they’re good for something,” Bradwell says.

“Good,” Helmud says.

Bradwell calls some survivors over. “Get them cleaned up. El Capitan was lost, but now he’s found.”

The survivors start giving each other orders. They gaze at El Capitan and Helmud, perplexed but a little awestruck too. The look makes El Capitan nervous. He always preferred fear to admiration, but maybe it’s the same thing. Power. For a second, he wonders if Bradwell really saved him and Helmud because he loves them like brothers or because of some other more complex reason. Maybe he knows Bradwell needs El Capitan to get what he wants. And what does Bradwell really want? To take the Dome down or to get Pressia back before she decides to stay there?

“What’s next?” El Capitan asks Bradwell, but Bradwell can’t understand him. El Capitan’s voice is so raw he can only whisper, and his lips are so puffed his words come out garbled.

Bradwell kneels down and lays a hand on his chest. “What did you say?”

“What’s next?” Helmud says, speaking for his brother.

Bradwell says, “We await word.”

“From Pressia?” El Capitan asks.

“We await word from on high,” Bradwell says loudly so everyone can hear. “Who else? Where else?”

The brightness zeroes in on Bradwell’s face. Blackness swallows the edges of El Capitan’s vision. He blinks and blinks and tries to say something. But then the world is dark.





PARTRIDGE





DREAM




Partridge wakes up; a figure’s looming over him. He jerks, sits up. “What the hell?”

He’s on the couch in his honeymoon suite. The curtains are drawn except for one small inch of light…and there’s Foresteed, staring down at him. He’s wearing his military uniform—an old one from the days of the Righteous Red Wave. A red armband is cinched around his bicep, medals glint on his chest, and a cap sits slightly cockeyed on his head.