AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Who’s coming?”
“He’s erasing me, Anita.” The fear in his eyes looked real.
“Who?” I asked.
“He calls me Phobos.”
“Phobos.” I repeated the name. “It means panic. Shit, you mean Deimos, terror.”
He looked behind us again, panic rolling off him, but it left me untouched, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. This wasn’t my fear, it was his. “Be War for me, Anita, be Ares, be my god and save me.”
“You killed Domino.” And the minute I said it we were back in the hotel room in Ireland. Domino was bleeding out on the floor. He wasn’t moving at all now. He just lay there on his side, but he’d fallen at an odd angle, unable to cushion or direct it. His neck was hyperextended, which would make breathing even harder, or maybe easier. I didn’t know anymore. But I could see his face, see his eyes too wide as he struggled to breathe, that awful wet sound coming from his chest, or his throat. Blood coated his chin and mouth. I could still taste his kiss on my lips. He shook, shivered; a gout of blood spilled out of his mouth and the horrible wet rattling breathing stopped. I saw his eyes start to go; the most alien of all the were tigers, flame colored orange, yellow, and red, and I had to watch the life fade from them. I watched him dying inches from me.
I screamed. I screamed for help. I screamed because there was nothing else I could do. The man on top of me popped me in the side of the face the way you hit a cat that was chewing something, not to hurt, just to startle. It made me look away from Domino. Itwas Rodrigo sitting across my waist, pinning me to the floor, but that wasn’t right. He’d killed Domino, but he hadn’t been the one that was pinning me down, trying to inject me with something so they could kidnap me.
“He’ll hear you,” Rodrigo said.
“Deimos,” I said.
“I didn’t make you remember your lover’s death just now. You thought of him, not me; I would never have reminded you of why you hate me.”
“You killed…”
“Your thoughts will bring it back, you will make yourself relive his death, your thoughts, not mine, yours.”
“Rodrigo,” I said, “where are we?”
“It is partially your dream, but the rest is…Control your thoughts or you will be trapped in the worst moments of your life. Trust me, you don’t want that.”
I forced my breathing to even out and did my best to empty my mind and just be in the moment, but I didn’t like this moment, so I changed it. We were standing in the small forest of twisted trees again, but the sun was out, and the sea was shining out from the clifftop. I had never been any place that looked remotely like this.
“It’s my memory,” he said, and I turned back to him. His eyes were perfectly black, the iris so close in color to his pupil that it made him look blind with only the white of the eye to ruin the blackness. There was more white today, like a horse with wide, frightened eyes.
“Where are we?”
“In hell,” he said, then grabbed my arm and started running through the trees again. There was enough light now to avoid the dead trees. They looked blackened, like fire had killed them years ago, but the grass was green with wildflowers growing up between the…vines. It was grapevines grown so tall they looked like trees to us. I realized that we were small, like children, but it was still us at the same time.
I used his grip on my arm to turn him around. “Stop running, you’re not a child, this is a memory from when you were a child.”
“I know, but I can’t get out.” He started dragging me toward the edge of the dead vines and the green grass that spilled out toward the edge of the cliff and the sea beyond. We were holding hands and running full out toward the edge of the cliff. I pulled and spun him around before we could get there.
“What’s happening, Rodrigo?” I stared into his eyes and suddenly saw through his eyes. He was holding the hand of a little blond girl; it was Rodina. They were running as fast as they could in the dark toward the sea. He looked back and there was a figure dressed all in black with a white mask where the face should be; even her hands were covered in gloves. She was Harlequin before we’d freed them of the mask and hiding. She was running with a little blond boy in her arms; it was Ru.
There was a second Harlequin only a little taller than their mother running behind. Their father fought other figures dressed just like them. The Harlequin were fighting themselves. They moved in blurs of speed and grace that we couldn’t follow with our eyes. Here were the Harlequin with the magic of the Mother of All Darkness running strong through them. They had to hide away, but they were gods as they moved over the battleground.
We stood at the edge of the cliff. Rodina was crying, her arm was bleeding, my arm was bleeding, our arm was bleeding. Our mother sat Ru down beside me; she took her glove off and touched my face with her bare hand. Rodrigo was startled; she never did that in public, couldn’t show herself, not even a hand. She pressed Ru’s hand into Rodina’s, so that the three of them held hands on the clifftop.
She told them that she loved them, and that she was sorry that she couldn’t save them, and then she turned and went to fight beside their father. They fought well, but there were only two of them against a small army. They died bravely, but they still died.
Rodina had dragged them all to the very edge of the cliff, cryingand screaming for their parents. Ru was silent, face pale, but he didn’t cry. Rodrigo would remember that years later, that the only one of them that didn’t cry was Ru.
The masked and hooded figures cleaned their blades and turned to the three children. One held a gloved hand out to them and spoke in a man’s voice. “Come along, it is over.”
Rodina had looked at him, then at Ru, then back to him. A look came over her face that she still had today: fierce determination and a totally fuck-you attitude. She took a step backward. Rodrigo hesitated, then took it with her; only Ru held back, leaning on their clasped hands.
He said, “No, Dinnie.”
The Harlequin that had spoken said, “Don’t be foolish, we will not hurt you.”
