The Girl Who Would Be King(152)

There has to be a way to get us out of the city, away from people, so she can’t keep using them against me.

And floating there with her, I finally have a good idea.



•

Bonnie looks down at the ocean below us and then toward the beach and the city. She looks sad, but I don’t want her looking sad; I want her looking angry. “I won’t stop until I’ve killed you, Bonnie,” I say. She looks back at me with something soft in her eyes. I think it might be pity. And if there was anything to piss me off more than I already am, it’s a look of pity.

“I know,” she says. While still hovering hundreds of feet above the ocean she reaches out to take my hand. I slap it away and in the process she manages to get her arms around me. She wraps her arms around me tightly and launches us both up into the atmosphere with such speed that I’m stunned. I struggle but her positioning is good and I can’t get the leverage to wrench free.

While we fly she’s whispering in my ear. I don’t know what she’s saying but I know that I’m going to rip out her vocal chords the first chance I get. I think she’s singing a song into my ear, but I don’t know the words.

We go so fast that everything around us is just a bright blur that I can’t focus on. Maybe she’s taking us up into space – will our bodies explode in the vacuum or will we dance on the moon? Maybe her plan is to kill the whole line, to kill us both. All the Bravermans. All the LeFevers.

And actually, on some level, I can totally get behind that. It would be a relief almost.

I close my eyes, waiting for them to pop out of their sockets with the pressure.

But the pop never comes, and when I open them everything is a bright golden-brownish blur. I have no freaking clue where we are. But she suddenly starts driving us back down towards the ground, hard and fast. I can’t get any leverage to stop us and at the last second she leaps away from me, simultaneously propelling me even faster towards the ground and managing to change her own direction. Oh she’s gotten gooood, is all I have time to think before I hit the ground like a small meteor. The impact is like an explosion and I lie at the center of the hole I’ve made in the Earth, healing my parts before even attempting to even crawl out. Above me, sheets of lightning flash in the sky. Faint drops of rain hit me. When I finally slither out of the hole, she’s standing on the edge of my crater, hands on her hips as if waiting patiently for me.

“You bitch,” I spit.

“Yeah, well, at least I didn’t drown you six times and leave you for dead,” she says.

“Four,” I say, under my breath as I crawl out of the pit, the dirt already becoming muddy in the increasing rain.

“Huh?”

“I only drowned you four times.”

“I’m pretty sure it was six.”

“Well, you were pretty incapacitated, I really think I was paying more attention.”

“Really? Really? You think I wasn’t paying attention while I was being repeatedly drowned?”

“How about we split the difference and call it five.”

“Fine. Five it is.”

“Fine.” I cross my arms and look at her wondering what the grand plan is, if it wasn’t to kill us both in outer space. And then I see where we are.

The Nevada desert.

About a mile from my goddamn trailer. I can see it in the distance, the aluminum roof glinting like a slab of glass in the sun. I look back at her,

“You bitch.”

“Sorry Lola. But I had to get us away from people.”

“You could have dropped us anywhere in the desert, you had to bring us here specifically? You’re a fucking bitch.”



°

“I’m pretty sure I’m the less bitchy of the two of us, Lola.” I say, an edge to my voice I wasn’t expecting.

“Don’t count on it,” she snarls back at me.

I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know what you expected; every time I run into you you’re throwing innocent civilians into our battles.”

“Innocent? Those people are not innocent. Nobody’s innocent these days.”

“All right, but you’re not trying to punish them for their crimes, you’re just using them to keep an advantage over me.” I pause for effect. “You’re a coward.” The word seems to sting her a little bit, maybe because she knows it’s true, or maybe because she doesn’t believe it yet and I’m shattering some protective shell she’s built around herself. I expect another witty barb to come flying my way, but instead she comes at me physically.

The force of her shoulder in my chest cracks at least two ribs, and we go flying a few dozen feet before we hit the dirt in a thud. I sense a different kind of fight than the last one we had and am proved right when Lola pulls my hair. I screech and kick her off of me. She goes soaring backwards and lands on her ass a few feet away. I’ve healed my ribs before she picks herself up and hovers over the ground. She takes off into the air and I call after her. “I’m not coming after you, Lola!”