Strong Enough(64)

My heart is beating sluggishly, almost like it’s running down, like it’s forgetting how to work. My lungs are pulling in long, steady gulps of air. My eyes are clear and focused. So clear and focused, in fact, that it’s as though they can see below the inky surface. On the water, I don’t see a reflection of the moon above. I don’t see my face or my surroundings. But I see into it, beneath it. And I see my brother there.

He looks just as he did the day he died. His face is a pale oval and his lips are cold blue. His brown hair, just a few shades lighter than mine, floats around his head like an unnatural halo and his eyes . . . God, his eyes! They’re the only other reflection I see. But they don’t reflect me or the moon or the lake. No, they reflect the emptiness, the blackness that resides where my soul should be. They accuse me of living when he didn’t. They blame me for never fighting for him. They hate me escaping our childhood when he couldn’t.

I try to lift one leaden arm, to reach out toward him even though some part of my mind knows he isn’t there, but I can’t. It weighs too much. Just like it did that day long ago when Jeremy drifted away. Away from shore, away from me, away from life. I couldn’t move, couldn’t go back in and drag him out again. I just . . . couldn’t. Just like I can’t now.

My feet are surely cemented to the dock, my legs made of iron. The only things that are working are my vital organs and my thoughts. And damn those thoughts!

I close the eyes that play tricks on me, but what I see is no different. Still, hanging there in the water, is my brother. The vision is seared into my mind. It’s inescapable. My past, my life, who I am is inescapable. And if I can’t overcome it, there will always be more casualties of it. Of me. Of the monster.

Casualties.

Muse.

I open my eyes to the small boat bobbing in the cove. I can barely make out Muse’s face, but I can see enough of it to know something is wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. And not just because her life is in danger. It’s something else.

I see the flash of moonlight on a muzzle as her captor, a guy who looks a lot like the picture I saw of her ex, presses a pistol to her temple. Muse’s eyes widen, but she shows no other reaction. She just looks . . . shocked.

But she’ll soon look dead if I don’t get to her. If I can’t get to her.

My heart rate speeds. My breathing becomes labored. A twitch starts in the fingers of my left hand, the hand that held so tight to my brother’s arm as I dragged him along behind me.

I have a choice to make, a choice with dire consequences one way or the other. I could drown trying to get to Muse. My muscles could seize, fall victim to the power of my mind. Or I could stand here and watch someone take her life. Take the life of the only person who’s been able to penetrate the thick scar tissue that surrounds my cold heart.

Or I could swim out and get her. I could save her. Like she’s been saving me, little by little, day by day.

“You’re a coward, King. I had hoped for better,” the guy calls across the lake to me. Then, before my sleeping limbs can wake, he turns his gun toward me and fires.





TWENTY-NINE


Muse

The gunshot is not what makes me scream. It’s the violent jerk of Jasper’s left shoulder followed by his headfirst tumble into the lake that rips the sound from my throat.

“Noooo!” I cry, standing up so quickly that the boat tips precariously toward the black water. “Jasperrrr!”

“Sit down!” Matt spits, yanking my arm and pulling me backward into the boat. “I’m not fishing your ass out of this lake in the middle of the night. I’d sooner leave you out here to drown, too.”

Matt picks up the oars and starts to row toward shore. I stare at him for a few seconds, my mind spinning and my heart breaking, before a desperate rage overwhelms me.

With a growl that I don’t even recognize as coming from me, I launch myself at him, fingers bent into claws that I plan to use to remove his eyes from their sockets.

“You bastard!”

I feel my nails sink deeply, satisfyingly into flesh when my fingers meet his face. I’m gratified by his yowl of pain, which acts as fuel to the wildfire burning in my gut. I lash and tear, scrape and scratch, kick and punch at every surface I can reach. Skin, clothing, hair. I’m a flurry of uncoordinated arms and legs, but all with the same goal—hurt, maim, cripple. Destroy Matt.

But all my adrenaline and fury is no match for Matt’s superior size and strength. I hear the clatter of the gun on the bottom of the boat just before Matt uses his bulky arms and one leg to subdue me.

“You bitch!” he says, wiping at his left cheek. Streaks of blood mar his pale skin and bring a smile to my face.