Anathema (28 page)

“So what if he is?” I look towards Liam, then Alexander. Then I point my knife blade at the camera the nearby anathema has trained on us… The camera that has captured every moment of Wolfman Savage’s breakdown, his groveling. “It doesn’t matter if he’s putting on an act. We have it all on film. He’s finished.”

The fearsome leader of Death’s Disciples. The most notorious hunter in America. An icon of fear and terror. And we have him pleading, begging, and utterly debasing himself on camera, pleading for mercy at the feet of a teenaged girl. We’ve seen it and soon the whole world will, too.

We’ve already destroyed him in the way that matters the most.

We upload it Friday night. By Saturday morning, the video has had two hundred million hits, far exceeding the number of subscribers for the Death’s Disciples YouTube channel. The story of Wolfman Savage’s destruction in Cordoba Bay is the hottest news in the hunting world. He didn’t die gloriously in battle against lawbreakers. He succumbed to one young girl. That’s what people see in the video: Wolfman Savage begging and pleading for his life from the same anathema he came to hunt.

A martyred hunter has power. But an icon of fear reduced to a coward? That’s something else entirely. It seems to frighten hunters more than death or destruction could have.

I am the anathema in the video with him. Now I am truly frightening.

Instead of seeing glory in seeking me out in Cordoba Bay, hunters on message boards see a much more humiliating prospect than death. My hazard index shoots up to a ten.
History of violence. High likelihood of death when hunting this anathema.

That’s the only aspect of this whole mess that seems to reassure my parents.

Mom and Dad rushed to the door when I knocked after that long Friday night. By the time I eased away from their frantic hugs and looked behind me, Alexander had already retreated back to the waiting car. Liam drove them off down the street.

My parents let me sleep.

Saturday, they wake me up early. They fuss over my injuries. They demand an explanation for everything that’s occurred. The Wasters had patched me up a bit, but Mom insists on applying new bandages. I explain everything.

“You should have told us about all of this sooner,” Dad says when I’ve finished.

“What could you have done?” I reply calmly, and that silences both of them.

There was once a time when my parents could have fixed anything for me. Anything. My problems have grown too large for that now. My dangers are too acute. They can’t reach in and fix my world.

I’m the only one who can do that now.

On Monday, Mom takes off work and brings me to the doctor to check the gashes on my back, to set the bones in my hand. It costs far too much now that I don’t have insurance, but she doesn’t say a word about that. The rest of the day passes in a sleepy silence. I wander into her room late in the afternoon to find her sitting on her bed, watching old videos of me dancing. There are tears on her face.

“You used to be so happy,” Mom says.

I settle on the bed next to her, gazing at ninth-grade me decked up for one of my weekend competitions. I’m a pretty blonde girl on the screen, twirling across the stage. I’m covered in makeup, a smile plastered on my face. My face used to hurt after a day of dancing just from forcing myself to smile so much but judges ate it up. I still remember the stress that made my head feel like it would burst, rushing between competitions with the Cordoba Bay Dance Studio, and the games I spent cheering with the dance squad.

“I wish you’d never stepped between that girl and that hunter,” Mom says suddenly. “I wish you’d left it alone.”

I shake my head. “I don’t.”

If I wish anything, it’s that I’d seen the problem facing people like Noelle and Alexander
before
their problem became my own. That was my hypocrisy. But maybe that was just my humanity.
 
The world contains so much suffering and grief. Maybe most of us only see through the narrow window directly in front of us because that’s the only way to bear it. If we experience it all, the ugliness of this world can drown us.

I don’t regret what I did. I’m glad I acted. I can live with myself because I stepped between Noelle and that hunter.

Mom and I watch that ninth grader, the girl who was totally oblivious to the problems I face every day now. She may have been happier for it, but she wasn’t changing anything. Her life was small and meaningless. She wasn’t having any impact.

I’m not like her anymore.

I can make amends for her obliviousness now. Each wrong, each injustice, every cause of grief begins to change with a single person stepping forward to fix it. The day with Noelle, it was me. I stepped forward. I can keep stepping forward. Even as an anathema. Even as an HI-10. There is an entire world ahead of me.

“I’d do it again,” I tell Mom. “Even if I’d known, Mom, I would’ve done it all over again.”

Tears continue to stream down her face. “I can’t save you from yourself.”

I kiss her wet cheek. “You don’t have to anymore. I’m almost eighteen now. It’s my job to do that from now on.”

That night, I find my car keys and drive down to the beach. I return to that place where the first terrible massacre took place

The Waste.

I venture out among the jagged rocks, lighter in hand, and scan for any moving shapes. I wave my feeble flame in an ‘S’, waiting for a response. When no one comes out to greet me,
 
I venture onward, the stench of rotting seaweed mounting in my nose.

But nobody is here.

I find the darkened cave where Liam and the Wasters used to live. It’s abandoned.

Amanda texted me that Alexander wasn’t in school Monday. She hadn’t seen Noelle, either. My gut curls in apprehension as I gaze around the empty caves. I came here hoping to find out what happened to them. I wanted to make sure they were still alive after surrendering that information so vital to preserving their lives. Has
 
Alexander rejoined them? Have they all moved to another city? I owe the Wasters my life twice over, but they’re also the greatest menace to me in this city.

I walk slowly out, the wind and the water spattering my face. The night is thick and dark around me, but it holds no terror now. Maybe I’ve finally burned out on it. Or maybe something so simple as seeing my worst nightmare reduced to a groveling mess has made every other fear pale in comparison.

Distant lights are scattered over the hillside above me. For a moment I stand there at the edge of the water staring up at them, thinking how strange it was that Liam was so close to the heart of our city yet remained hidden for so long. They’d gone in and out and wreaked havoc yet attracted no notice. Not from anyone in town. Not from the city government or even…

Then it hits me.

The answer flies into place. I look around and almost laugh at the simplicity of it. I’ve missed it this whole time.

I know where to go from here.

Conrad’s face fills with surprise when I ring the doorbell to his house. He draws me into an eager embrace. Too eager.

“Conrad…”

“I know.” He steps back. “You’re still hurt.”

I shake my head. “We need to talk.”

I break it to him. The truth. The truth that we’d been together far longer than we should have been. The truth that I don’t feel the same way I used to. The truth that he should go back to Siobhan.

“It’s that anathema, isn’t it?” he mutters.

My cheeks heat. “Part of the reason.” I sigh. “Conrad, you were kissing Siobhan in the cafeteria in front of everyone. You can’t tell me that meant nothing.”

“She won’t take me back. I left you for her, then I left her for you.”

“Trust me, she’ll take you back.”

His eyes flicker up to me. “You can’t possibly know that.”

I arch my eyebrows. I feel strangely indulgent towards him like he’s an old friend and not the boy I dated for so many years. “I can get her back for you. I promise.”

He frowns at me like he’s not sure how to feel about me himself. “Sometimes I feel like you’ve become this whole other person and I barely understand you anymore.”

I laugh. “Sometimes, I feel like that, too.” My eyes stray beyond him, to the hallway leading to the real reason for my visit. “I’ll be right back.”

He stays there on the couch as I walk farther into his house, but I’m not heading to the bathroom or doing anything else. Instead I venture right down the darkened hallway and knock on the door of the familiar study. Light spills out from under the door. She’s home.

“Come in.”

I shove the door open. Shock transforms Mayor Alton’s face before the familiar blistering ice takes its place. “What are you doing here, Kathryn?”

I smile thinly. “Must be a nasty shock to see I’m still alive. Or is it?”

“Excuse me?”

I nudge the door shut with my heel. “I want to know what the anathemas at the Waste have done to Alexander.”

She blinks several times. “I don’t know what—”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Standing there on the beach, looking at those distant lights, I realized it was no accident the Wasters were here in Cordoba Bay. They had someone high up in city government covering for them, working to conceal the power they were using from the energy grid. Someone with a vested interest in making sure the destruction of the Showdown crew was known as the
Shelter Valley
Massacre, not the
Cordoba Bay
Massacre.

Someone who could readily deploy her self-funded gang of anathemas against her rivals for California governor. There was a reason for the anathema-related crime wave in Los Angeles, home of Mayor Alton’s foremost political rival. And how convenient for her, controlling all the criminals in Cordoba Bay. She ensured they committed no crime here so she could claim credit for cleaning up our streets.

Most damning of all, she had access to all the footage from the massacre. Liam said he handed it over to their boss. She leaked the footage of me intentionally to ensure my death right after I kissed her son in front of her house. Right after I challenged her like that. And since she knew from the Wasters that I was staying at the school with Alexander, she also knew to tell the Principal about us, to drive me out of the single refuge saving my life. She wanted someone to kill me, anathemas, hunters, whoever.

It made sense. After all, Mayor Alton must have been horrified when her son’s girlfriend lost citizenship.

I was so close to her family for years and now I was an anathema. Mayor Alton’s two worlds were colliding. I knew her as Jolene Alton, pillar of the community and now I’d just joined the criminal underworld she secretly controlled.

I became a threat to her. A threat she needed to eliminate.

“I know it’s you,” I say. “It’s been you all along. You’re the boss of those anathemas. You give them orders. You fund them.”

Her mouth bobs open in shock.

“Oh, and I don’t know because of Alexander,” I add. “He was telling the truth. He never hacked your encrypted computer chip. I figured it out for myself, and that expression on your face? Pretty much confirms all my suspicions.” I plant my hands on her desk and lean forward. “But that doesn’t mean my suspicions stay with me. I can keep quiet, or I can be very loud. I don’t know what you have planned for Alexander and Noelle, but I want them safe.”

Her face has become smooth, hard granite. “If you expect me to say something incriminating so you can record me, you’re deluding yourself.”

“I don’t need proof. If I don’t see Alexander and Noelle again very soon, alive and healthy, a video of me goes up on YouTube accusing you of leading a huge group of anathemas.” I smile slowly. “Funny thing about my new found fame: anything I post right now will get a
lot
of attention. If I put my conspiracy theory out there, all those political rivals of yours with their mysterious, anathema-related crime waves will suddenly start investigating you. I bet they’ll be able to prove what I can’t.”