Through Glass(76)

I looked toward the gun slowly, the cold piece of painted metal suddenly felt like lead in my hands. It was more than that, though. It wasn’t that the gun had malfunctioned…

“He was a Tar…” I said, my voice a whisper.

“Somehow, yes, and I suspect Abran made him that way.”

“But why? Why would anybody do that?” I asked, my chest seizing at the very thought. My eyes flickered away from Travis to the darkness that surrounded our orb of light. Fear clenched through me at the thought that someone might be standing just outside of it.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, his voice distant. “Attack them, defeat them and become greater than them. I have some ideas, but this is so much deeper than what I had originally thought. There is something more to it, something I am missing. I know Abran, he hates the Tar more than anyone. But to become them? I didn’t think anyone would see that as progress.”

He ran his hand through his hair and looked around him, stress leaching off him as all his ideas swirled around only to increase his stress. “I need to find out what Abran has planned,” he said into the darkness, his voice getting swallowed up by the black that surrounded us before he turned back to me.

“Any thoughts on how to start doing that?” I asked, the sarcasm in my voice mixing awkwardly with my fear.

“I need to find out what these things are, Lex.” Travis rushed toward me, his hands wrapping around mine as he lowered to my eye level, his brown eyes digging into me. “More than what I have seen, more than what the others have said. I need to find the answers before you turn; before it’s too late for you and for everyone. Before Abran leads his army against them.”

“His army? What are you talking about?” I shrieked, everything in my body tensed. Travis’s grip on my hands increased, something I was sure was supposed to be comforting, but it only put me more on edge.

He looked at me for one more moment before he dropped my hands, his shoulders stiffening as he straightened himself. A jitter of fear trailed up my spine. I watched him, waiting for the worst to come. “In one month, we were supposed to empty out their main compound. What we believe is the Tars storage facility, where they turn the humans they have captured. I don’t think Abran wanted to just clear it out any more. If I had to place my best guess, right now, he is looking for supplies.” Travis spoke very slowly, his eyes unfocused on something behind me.

I listened to his words and tried to make sense of them. I had heard of this attack on the very first day when I’d sat with Bridget around the fire. She had spoken of it like a war, as if it was the ending to everything. The way Travis spoke, it was more like it was the beginning.

“That man, he stood in the light. He turned to ash. What’s to say he couldn’t change into one of them? Abran gets rid of one enemy, only to reveal another.” Travis’s voice was hard as he began to pace within the small circle of light we stood in. I watched him as he moved, his hands clenching and unclenching, the movement only adding to my own stress.

“He wants to rule where the Tar does now? Take over the world?” I whispered, my voice awed as everything began to make sense.

“Well, not that simplistic, but yes, that is the general idea.” Travis didn’t even look at me, he simply continued pacing with his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke.

“He can’t do that!” I practically yelled, the fear that had only been increasing inside of me supercharging my emotions.

“He will. In one month.”

Travis stopped pacing to face me, his eyes boring into mine as he watched me. I stood as still as I could and tried to regulate my breathing as everything pumped through me. I met Travis’s eyes, the hard lines of my face increasing at the determination I saw mirrored back to me. We needed to stop this.

“We need to get to Blood Rose. Abran won’t be able to contact them and tell them about us, about you,” he said simply. “They will have enough people to fight and stop this. We need to get there and stop this before it is too late. It may be foolish, but we need to do something to stop him.”

Travis turned from me, the light still held in his hand as he moved to walk out of the alley and toward what I did not know.

“Travis?” I asked, needing more clarification.

He turned toward me slowly, the light in his hand casting odd shadows on his face. His face was haunted as he smiled, the light making him look more wicked than I knew he was.

“Let’s start by getting Cohen back.”





I had been listening to the rumbles for hours, the shake of the building I had been restrained in was loud and menacing. I didn’t care, though. I had no reason to. I stayed still on the same bed they had strapped me to more than a month ago, the same white light shining in my eyes.

The light was supposed to take away my thought, take away my reason to care. I had heard them say it when they came in, heard them tell me how I wouldn’t feel anything after a while. In a lot of ways, they were right. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t care.

Except I did.

I cared about her. She was all I could think about. So much had been taken away from me, however as the light burned into me, the brightness scarring my brain, she was still there.

Her smile, the fiery red color of her hair, the way she tasted when I kissed her. The way my fingers moved when I painted her.