“Feisty,” Grace said to Evan with a smile. “Like her namesake.”
“They have nothing to do with this,” Evan said. “Let them go, Grace.”
“Evan, I’m not even sure I understand what this is.” She left her post and floated—there’s no other word for it—to his bedside. “And nobody is going anywhere until I do.” She leaned over and took his face in her hands and kissed him long and lingering on the lips. He fought her—I could see that—but she immobilized him with her otherworldly überwiles, which she carried in spades in her wheelhouse. “Did you tell her, Evan?” she murmured against his cheek, though she made sure I could hear. “Does she know how all of this ends?”
“Like this,” I said, and launched myself at her, leading, as I usually did, with my head, aiming the hard crown part of it at the soft temple part of hers. The impact knocked her sideways into the closet doors. I ended up sprawled across Evan’s lap. Perfectly perfect, I thought, a little incoherently.
I pushed myself up and Evan wrapped his arms around my waist and yanked me back down. “No, Cassie.”
But he was weak and I was strong and I ripped free easily and jumped from the bed onto her back. That was a big mistake: She grabbed my arm and hurled me across the room. I smashed against the wall beside the window and plopped straight down on my ass, sending a hot jolt of pain up my back. From the hallway, I heard a door fly open, and I shouted, “Get out, Sam! Get Zombie! Get—”
She was gone before I got the second get out. The last time I saw someone move that fast was at Camp Ashpit, when the phony soldiers from Wright-Patterson spotted me hiding in the woods. Like, cartoon fast, which might be humorous if not for the reason she bolted.
Oh no you don’t, bitch. Not my little brother.
I raced past Dumbo, past Evan, who had thrown off the covers and was struggling to swing his badly wounded self out of bed, into the hall, which was empty, not a good thing, not good at all, then two steps to Sam’s room, and when my fingers touched the handle, a wrecking ball smashed into the back of my head and my nose smacked into the wood. Something went crunch, and it wasn’t the wood. I stepped backward, blood pouring down my face. I could taste my blood and somehow it was the taste that kept me upright—I didn’t know till then that rage had a taste and it tasted like your own blood.
Cold fingers locked around my neck and I watched my feet leave the ground through a shower of red rain. Then I was soaring down the length of the hallway, coming down hard on my shoulder, and rolling to a stop a foot from the window at the far end.
Grace: “Stay there.”
She was standing by Sammy’s door, a lithe shadow down a dimly lit tunnel, shimmering on the other side of the tears that welled uncontrollably and spilled down my cheeks to mix with blood.
“Leave. My. Brother. Alone.”
“That adorable little boy? He’s your brother? I’m sorry, Cassiopeia, I didn’t know.” Shaking her head in mock sadness. Like they mocked every decent human thing.
“He’s already dead.”
46
THREE THINGS HAPPENED then, all at the same time. Four, if you counted my heart blowing apart.
I ran—not away but toward. I was going to rip her cover-model face off. I was going to tear her pseudo-human heart from between her perfectly shaped human boobs. I was going to open her up with my fingernails.
That was the first thing.
The second was the stairway door flying open and Poundcake entering the hall in anything but Eeyore fashion, shoving me back with one arm as the other brought his rifle to bear on Grace. Not an easy shot by any means, but Poundcake was the squad’s best marksman after Ringer, according to Ben.
The third thing was a shirtless, boxer-shorts-wearing Evan Walker, crawling out of the room behind Grace. Expert marksman or not, if Poundcake missed . . . or if Grace dived out of the way at the last second . . .
So I did the diving, wrapping my arms around the kid’s ankles. He toppled forward, his rifle discharged, and then I heard the stairway door again and Ben shouting, “Freeze!” just like they used to in the movies, but nobody froze, not me, not Poundcake, and not Evan—and certainly not Grace, who was gone. She was there and then she wasn’t. Ben hopped over me and Poundcake and limped down the hall to the room opposite Sam’s.
Sam.
I jumped up and raced down the hall. Ben was motioning to Poundcake, saying, “She’s in there.”
I yanked on the handle. Locked. Thank you, God! I pounded on the door. “Sam! Sam, open up! It’s me!”
And from the other side, a voice no louder than a mouse’s squeak: “It’s a trick! You’re tricking me!”
I lost it. Pressed my bloody cheek against the door and had a good, solid, and very satisfying mini-breakdown. I’d let my guard down. I’d forgotten how cruel the Others could be. Not enough to punch a hole through my heart with a bullet. No, first you have to pummel it and stomp on it and crush it in your hands until the tissue oozes from between your fingers like Play-Doh.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I whimpered. “Stay in there, okay? No matter what, Sam. Don’t come out till I come back.”
Poundcake was standing to one side of the door across the hall. Ben was helping Evan to his feet—or trying to. Every time he loosened his grip, Evan’s knees buckled. Ben finally decided to lean him against the wall, where Evan rocked, gasping for air, his skin the color of the ashes at the camp where my father died.
Evan looked over at me and he hardly had the breath for the words: “Get out of this hallway. Now.”
The drywall in front of Poundcake blew apart in a rain of fine white dust and chunks of moldy wallpaper. He staggered backward. His rifle fell from his limp fingers. He knocked into Ben, who grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him into the room with Dumbo. Ben reached for me next, but I slapped his hand away and told him to grab Evan before picking up Poundcake’s rifle and opening up on Grace’s door. The sound was deafening in the narrow hall. I emptied the magazine before Ben got hold of me and pulled me back.
“Don’t be an idiot!” he shouted. He slapped a full magazine into my hand and told me to watch the door but stay down.
The scene played out like a TV show going on in another room: just voices. I was flat on my stomach, resting my upper body on my elbows, the rifle trained on the door directly across from me. Come on, ice maiden. I have a little something for you. Running my tongue over my bloody lips, hating the taste, loving the taste. Come on, you creepy Swede.