Matt Archer: Redemption (35 page)

“Tink, you better keep your promise to me.” She cast me a bleak look, her eyes full of a fathomless weariness. “He’s the only brother I have left.”

She raised her arms to the crumbling ceiling and shouted, “What was bound has been set free! Now light must rise to reclaim the heavens, so the rift mends forever. And so it shall be.”

A flash of light burst from my sister’s hands. The ceiling fell away, giving us a view of the sky. The black hole had swallowed up almost everything above us. Only the faintest hints of faded gray sky rimmed the edges of the broken rock and the writhing darkness was eating away at the little bit that remained.

Mamie’s light reached up, higher and higher, until it collided with the black hole. A sunburst exploded into shooting stars that broke the darkness. The sky started creeping back into the existence. The darkness pushed against it, growing a little, and my sister’s forehead wrinkled as she strained to contain it.

The howling, the shouts, the cries—everything fell silent. Mamie stood completely still, face turned up to the war in the sky as light poured from her very skin. As I watched, struggling for breath, my sister began to fade. The more the sky ate into the black hole, reducing its size, the dimmer she became. Finally, when the darkness went from a pinpoint to nothing, the sky regained its color and a shower of sparks fell to earth in trails of silver. The sunset glowed orange over the dune once more, and Mamie’s light winked out.

“You did it,” I rasped. “You closed the rift. You saved us.”

A single tear ran down her cheek, then my sister collapsed. A whisper, much like Tink’s voice, echoed in my head. This time, though, it wasn’t Tink calling to me from the cosmic plane. It was Mamie.

Goodbye, Matt.

The sound lingered for a moment, then passed with a sigh.

Light was no longer earthbound.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The barrier holding my team back fell away, no longer needed in a world safe from the dark. Because an angel gave her life in redemption of ours.

A sacrifice that shattered what little was left of my heart.

Footsteps, many of them, pounded the hard stone. “Daisy! Daisy May!” Mike’s cries echoed against the rocks as he flung himself down next to her. “Oh, God, Daisy. Open your eyes, baby. Help! Medic!”

Aunt Julie dropped down next to him, barking orders, but Johnson knelt by Mamie’s other side and touched his large fingers to her throat. With a shuddering breath, he shook his head and buried his face in his hands. He knew there was no going back, that the world had forever changed.

In the confusion, no one noticed me lying in a pool of my own blood on the stone floor, except for one person. The one person I could always count on.

The only brother I had left.

Will leaned over me to press his jacket against the wound in my chest. “You don’t get to die today, understand?” His voice was barely a rasp, angry and hurt. “You will live through this. I swear to God you will. Hear me? You stay with us.”

A tear splashed onto my face.

Then it all went dark.

Chapter Forty

The incessant beeping crept into my consciousness before anything else did. Voices sped up, slowed to a crawl. I knew I should wake up, that I’d been lost for a long time. But something pressed me to stay in oblivion, and I drifted.

Until a single shard of light flickered in my brain.

Mamie.

My eyes flew open and I let out a shout, fighting get up. The room had nice furniture and heavy curtains on the windows, but I was in a hospital bed and my whole body ached. I had a cast on my leg, taped ribs, stitches and bandages everywhere. All of those impediments, along with my IV and blood pressure cuff, trapped me to the mattress.

“Mamie!” I shouted. If I called loud enough for her …

People rushed to my hospital bed. Mom and Dad, pale and worried. Two nurses in lavender scrubs. Uncle Mike, unshaven with bloodshot eyes. A doctor with glasses and a long white coat.

“Lucy, get me some valium.” The doctor said to a nurse over his shoulder as he held my leg still. “Matt, you can’t move so much. You’ll reinjure yourself.”

The door banged open. Aunt Julie and Will ran into the room, both bruised and panicked. Will’s right hand was wrapped past his wrist in gauze.

It was a nightmare, it had to be. None of this was real. I was hopped up on pain pills and I’d dreamed the whole thing. I was
still
dreaming.

“Where is she?” I looked wildly at Mom. She was choking back a sob. No. No, this wasn’t right. “Where are Brent and Mamie? Why aren’t they here?”

Please don’t say it, please don’t say it, please don’t say it, please don’t say—

“They’re dead, sweetheart.”

* * *

“He hasn’t spoken a word for two days,” Mom said outside my hospital room, her voice cracking. “Erik, I can’t lose them all.”

“He’ll find his way back,” Dad said. “It’s a dark place, where he’s gone. But he’s my son. I found my way back. So will he.”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to come back.

* * *

Someone knocked and I turned away from the door. Soon it’d be the doctor telling me it was time to leave Fort Carson. General Richardson had commandeered the senior officers’ private hospital room for me, but I couldn’t stay here forever. My leg, encased in a brace now, could bear some weight if I used a crutch to help, and my stitches would come out day after tomorrow. I’d have to head home then, even if I didn’t want to go. Day four since I regained consciousness, and I still couldn’t speak. Every time I tried, I wanted to scream, so I stayed mute. Didn’t talk when Mom cried at my bedside. Didn’t say hello to the nurses when they did their business. Stared into space when the military shrink came to visit. I couldn’t even look at Will or Mike or Johnson. How could I, knowing Mamie’s last wish was to save my life? Why was I still here when my brother and sister weren’t?

The door hissed as it swung open and a person with a heavy tread lumbered into the room. I lay on my side, facing away from him, but I knew who it was by the sound of his walk.

“I brought something for you,” Will said. He sounded hoarse, exhausted to his bones. “Flew a long way to get it.”

I kept my back to him and didn’t answer.

He waited, but finally said, “Okay, I’ll just leave it here for you.”

His footsteps receded, then the door clicked shut. He’d gone home for a day or two to see Penn and his family for Thanksgiving, and part of me wished he’d stayed there, away from all this. I wondered what he brought me, but was too tired to look. Probably double-chocolate brownies from Millicent. Nice try, but I wouldn’t eat. If I didn’t eat and didn’t talk, then I’d disappear. And that’s what I wanted—to be a shade in the world of the living. I had no home here. Everything I’d been before was gone, burned away in that fortress.

Interest lost, I closed my eyes and sank toward sleep.

Someone sat down on the side of the bed, startling me out of a doze. A soft hand brushed my cheek and a scent I knew better than anything enveloped me.

Vanilla shampoo.

Ella bent to kiss my temple, even as I burrowed deeper into my pillow, thinking to escape. An intervention. Why didn’t I see that coming? Will had gone home to stage an intervention, bringing in the one person he thought could break me down.

I hated him for it.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Ella said. “My family wanted to fly home as soon as we saw what was going on in Colorado, but air traffic was halted all over the country. By the time I got to Billings, Will asked me to wait and come back with him. He said things were bad here.”

I held completely still. Maybe she’d think I was asleep and leave.

She leaned in close, her breath warm on my neck, and whispered, “Talk to me, Matt. Please? Don’t shut me out.”

I started to shake and snapped my jaw shut tight, holding back everything I wanted to say. If I kept my mouth closed, the pain wouldn’t come pouring out. Swallow it. Swallow it until I choke.

“We miss her, too. And we miss you.” Her voice was thick with tears. “Because we love you.
I
love you. More than life itself. I can’t lose you now. Please talk to me.”

I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve any of them. I never did. Tink took away everything I loved and left a shell where my life used to be.

“She wanted you to live, not die along with her.” Ella twisted on the bed to lie down next to me and wrapped an arm around my waist. “Mamie saved you for better than this.”

And I’m broken.

The howl of rage I’d held in for days burst free. I couldn’t keep it contained any longer, there was just too much. Ella rocked me back and forth as I cried, down to the last drop of pain. If I had been able to trash my room, there wouldn’t have been anything left whole. But I was too weak, so I sobbed, and it was ugly. I knocked my water jug off the side table and pulled my own hair. That wasn’t enough physical pain to kill what was ripping me apart inside, and Ella held me tight to keep me from hurting myself.

Footsteps and angry words filled the hallway outside my room. Over it all, Will shouted, “No one goes in. No one! I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England. Get away from this door!”

Still had my back, even today.

I couldn’t say how long I went to pieces, but it was a while. Pouring out three years’ worth of pain took time, and I had to purge what I could. The anger at knowing my family had to pay the price so everyone else could live. The resentment for being chosen. The agony of knowing I couldn’t bring Brent or Mamie back and a metric ton of guilt for being the one to survive while they died.

Ella never let go.

Eventually I calmed down, feeling two things: relieved to my core, and embarrassed as hell. But I also found my voice.

“I love you, too,” I said in a ragged whisper. The words burned my throat, but I was ready to talk, even if it hurt. “I’m glad you came.”

She kissed the back of my neck. “Will knew you needed me here.”

I leaned against her, fitting into the curve of her body and laughed a little, sounding snotty from my crying jag. “Do my parents know I have a girl in my bed?”

“Not sure if you heard the scuffle, but Will’s standing right outside the door. He’s been playing bouncer to make sure we’re alone. A few nurses may be ready to kill him, but honestly, I don’t think anyone else minds what happens in here, as long as you start talking and eating again.”

I rolled onto my back, looking at her for the first time. Her green eyes were red-rimmed, and tear stains of her own covered her cheeks but she smiled and a familiar rush of electricity tingled in my limbs. “I wonder if he’s thinking he’ll get to hear us making out through the door, despite the hospital bed and the broken leg. High expectations, don’t you think? I’ve been practically catatonic the last few days.”

We burst out laughing. Irreverent? Yeah. But a little humor made my heart feel less like stone.

Ella brushed her lips against mine. “Maybe his expectations were a little high for today. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can’t do better.”

Mamie saved me for this.

* * *

On the last Tuesday in April, five months after the worst days of my life, I sat on the deck behind my house, soaking in the late afternoon sun with my bad leg propped up on a plastic table. It still ached on cold days, but I could walk without a cane now, as long as I moved slowly.

Mom came out once to check on me and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, but otherwise left me alone. The smell of pot roast drifted through the open kitchen window. Dad would be here for dinner soon. He’d left the CIA and had moved to Billings right after we lost Brent and Mamie, saying he’d had enough. That he’d
missed
enough. He ran a private security business now and had more work than he could handle. He seemed happy.

And Mom? It took three months of convincing, but she finally let him move back into our house. Maybe she decided we’d lost too much not to give him a second chance. It was another month before she let him move back into the master bedroom, though. He’d followed her rules with good humor, never complaining, and I think that’s what persuaded her to let him stay. So far, he hadn’t disappointed us.

I shifted in my seat, readjusting my leg. I still had a ton of physical therapy ahead of me, but it would be better in time for school in the fall, despite the high fitness requirements. Even now, my accelerated rate of healing astonished my doctors. West Point’s acceptance letter was on my desk upstairs, and I knew I’d go. Mamie would’ve wanted me to.

Next to the acceptance letter sat my diploma from Greenhill High. Mrs. Stevens had graduated me in her office two weeks ago. I’d earned enough credits through my online coursework, and she said a diploma was better than a GED, so she enrolled me for one day to complete the paperwork. The ceremony had been only her, me, Ella and Mom. Perfect.

A gentle knock sounded on the back door. Funny, someone was knocking to come out, instead of to come in. The door swung open, and a man I wasn’t expecting moved on silent feet to take the chair next to mine. Jorge smiled, his strange eyes alight. In honor of his visit to the States, he’d abandoned his field pants and tunic, wearing chinos and a bright blue polo instead. He looked weird.

“Sorry not to visit sooner,” Jorge said. “I had some issues back home I needed to address.” He looked me over. “You seem to be healing.”

“Some,” I said, staring across the backyard. I hoped he hadn’t flown up from Peru just for a pep talk. “I’m better than I was, anyway.”

“Hmm.”

Always so much loaded into that one syllable with him. “Hmm, what?”

“You still blame yourself, and you shouldn’t. Mamie’s path wasn’t yours. It never was. Marked by blood, Matt. All three of you were. Don’t you see?”

I shrugged, having wrestled with these thoughts for months now. I didn’t think my survivor’s guilt would ever leave me. “It should’ve been me. I don’t understand why it had to be my sister, why it was her sacrifice to make. She could’ve shared her gifts with the world. What am I going to do to compare to that?”