Burn (Pure #3)(34)

The creatures shout back at him in yawps and caws. They keep circling, some on all fours, others upright. The curtain of fog sometimes parts, revealing a thick thigh with stitches across it, a bit of moss on a back, the glisten of eye whites.

El Capitan says, “I want you to know something.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t do what Bradwell’s done. I would have forgiven you right away.”

She looks at him, wide-eyed, trying to make out his expression through the fog.

“If you were the person standing there with me,” he says, “I’d always, always stay.”

This is what Pressia wants to believe in—the kind of love that stays, no matter what. It’s a declaration that’s come out of the wrong mouth. As if El Capitan knows what she’s thinking, he says, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to feel the same way about me. I just needed to say it.”

“I understand, yes,” Pressia says. Yes, yes, yes, she wants to say, because he’s made it better. He’s made her feel a little forgiven.

“I’m glad about the fog,” he says. “This way we don’t have to see each other get killed.”

“Killed?” Helmud whispers.

The creatures start to growl, low and deep. She feels like crying, not because she’s afraid—which she is—but because El Capitan deserves to be loved the way he loves her. It’s wrong to die without that. Unfair. She wants to tell him that she loves him. Why not? They’re going to die, but she can’t say it unless it’s true. Really true.

“You’re good,” she says instead. “You really are full of goodness, Cap. Helmud too.”

“Ah,” he says. “I get it.” His voice cracks. She’s afraid she’s only made it worse.

The creatures dare to move in more closely. They reach out and claw at them. They rip Pressia’s pants, her coat. One cuts Helmud’s cheek. The blood spills down his neck. El Capitan punches one, but the others howl and snap at the air near his face.

When there’s a small break in the fog, Pressia has enough aim to kick one with her boots, but it’s up again quickly, unfazed.

Pressia feels an arm around one leg and then the other, and she falls hard. El Capitan is tackled next. They fight and kick and claw back, but it’s little use. The creatures’ faces cut in and out of the fog—the scars, the teeth, the blind eyes.

“I don’t want to die like this!” Pressia shouts, and then she thinks of Bradwell. She doesn’t want to die unforgiven.

“I don’t want to die!” Helmud cries.

“Pressia!” El Capitan shouts, trying to crawl toward her. “Pressia!”

But it’s no use. The creatures were bred to be strong and heartless. Pressia remembers the mutilated wild dog. That’s how she’ll look—she knows it—in a matter of minutes.

And then she hears Bradwell’s voice. “Back off! Get off them!” He’s fighting one of the creatures, but then the others jerk their heads toward the noise. They start to run toward the agitation of molecules, the fresh heartbeat. She sees Fignan’s row of lights blinking in the fog.

“Run!” Bradwell shouts. “Get to the ship! I’ll be there!”

“You won’t make it!” Pressia says.

El Capitan starts running. “Trust him!” he shouts, taking off toward the ship. “I’m going to cut it loose so we’re ready to take off. Come on!”

“No!” Pressia shouts. Her fear makes some of the creatures turn toward her.

Then she hears Bradwell fighting hard. His wings are wide and beating the air. Fignan lets out a shrill alarm she’s never heard before. “Go!” Bradwell shouts. “Pressia, go!”

“I’m not leaving you!”

His pulsing wings are creating a breeze that cuts the fog, creating more curtains that lift and rise. She can see more of the creatures and kicks the nearest one, on all fours, in the stomach. It lets out a moan but then quickly springs to its feet. Bradwell’s wings keep pushing the fog—rippling, rippling. And suddenly, the creature seems lost and truly blind. Another one holds out its hands and pats the air.

“Keep beating your wings!” Pressia shouts breathlessly. “They need the constant fog to sense where they are and where we are.”

Bradwell beats his wings harder, the fog gusting now all around them. His wings—she’s never seen them fully spread, massive and strong. She wants to tell him that this is how he was meant to be—as wrong as it was for her to do this to him, as wrong as it feels, he is this person in this moment, and there’s nothing more beautiful.

The creatures run off in search of the fog that makes sense of their world, retreating into the trees.

Bradwell stops beating his wings. They fold in tightly on his back. And then it’s just the two of them, staring at each other through the thinning mist.





LYDA





A FAIRY TALE




Lyda and Partridge haven’t eaten or slept well in days—not since the man threw himself in front of the train. The suicide numbers are rising. Partridge pushed for the meeting with Foresteed because he wants clearer data, more statistics, a plan to put an end to what’s now, clearly, an epidemic.