Storykiller (43 page)

“Oh God.” Tessa said, her mouth falling open, her cheeks turning red.

“Oh yeah, I’m surprised there isn’t a chart, maybe some sexy
diagrams,” he said, laughing.

“You guys are the worst.”

“Whatever, I’m pretty sure I’m winning,” he said confidently. Tessa cocked an eyebrow at him.

“What do you have?”

“Actual dating, making out, headed for happily ever after,
” Grey said.

Tessa groaned. “Uggghh. What does everyone else have? Wait. Never mind, I don’t want to know!”

Grey laughed and after another long pause continued, “So is it? Happily ever after?” Tessa didn’t say anything, and after a moment Grey filled in the blank. “Marian,” he said and the word cut through Tessa like
a knife. She and Robin had done a great job of avoiding her name, but she was always there, floating in the background.

“Subtle you are not,” Tessa said.

“Sorry, I just get it,” he said, shrugging.

“Well, can you explain it to me? Because nobody else seems to be able to.”

“He’s got a powerful Fiction driving him, Tessa. It’s not like there are Robin Hood stories with a different love interest. It’s never Robin Hood and Elizabeth or Kate or some other nonsense. It’s Marian. She’s it, y’know? Every. Single. Time. It reinforces that power—the connection they feel, over and over again,” Grey paused before going on, choosing his words carefully. “Imagine never dying and being with the same person forever—and really, you didn’t even pick this person. Someone picked for you. You
feel
like you love them, you know you’re supposed to, and sometimes you even do, because everything you are tells you that that’s how you feel. But sometimes it feels like, well, sometimes it feels like someone laid it all out for you and maybe it’s not actually what you would have chosen. And you can’t deny the truth of that feeling, because once you’re aware of what you really are—a Story—then you know that that’s exactly what actually happened. Someone else chose for you.”

Tessa arched an eyebrow at him, “Are you sure you’re talking about Robin?”

“I’m talking about a lot of us,” he said somberly. “Even you.”

At Tessa and Grey’s second location, a large modern house set on nearly two acres of gated land just off Northside Park, was Circe’s new hideout. Tessa could feel something strange as she and Grey crept up the long winding road toward the stone walls that surrounded the place and, on the heels of that, as they got closer, a smell that could not be ignored.

They found a fallen tree that allowed them to reach the top of the wall. Tessa pushed aside a mass of heavy leaves and branches to reveal the expansive lawn leading up to the gleaming, well-lit house.

The grounds surrounding the house were teaming with Mortal zombies and The Draugr.

There must have been hundreds.

Tessa drew back and looked at Grey.

“Tessa,” he breathed, his eyes fixed and wide.

“Balls,” Tessa said. Her mind racing. “Call everyone.”

“It smells like death,” Fenris said when he and Micah arrived. Tessa nodded. They of course both had super-senses, but she suspected you didn’t need any special senses to smell the death if you were this close. It was thick in the air. Tessa jutted her chin at the partially fallen tree.

“Take a peek,” she said. Micah and Fenris both climbed up and then back down immediately. Micah was pale as moonlight. Fenris seemed unsurprised.

“More than I thought,” Fenris said. Tessa nodded.

Micah shook her head as if trying to shake the image out of her mind. “Are they on their way?”

“Yes,” Tessa said, chewing her lip nervously and checking her watch.

“Then we wait,” Fenris said and stripped off his shirt. “I’ll do a pass around the grounds,
make sure there are no surprises.” Tessa nodded again and looked away as he unceremoniously took off his pants. Grey, caught unaware, did not look away.

“Whoa,” he said, part surprised, part impressed, as he got a peek at naked Fenris before he shifted. Tessa chuckled.

“Yeah, you gotta watch out for that,” she said.

Grey shook h
is head. “Or y’know, have my camera ready.”

Tessa stifled another laugh.

Twenty minutes later, Robin emerged from the trees with Snow and Brand stumbling awkwardly behind him.

“Smells terrible,” Brand said, covering his nose with his shirt-sleeve. “What is that?”

Tessa nodded at the tree and they climbed up, even Snow in her four-inch heeled boots, and then back down. Snow was already as pale as a body could get, but Brand’s face was giving her a run for her money. Even Robin looked wan. Tessa looked at Micah.

“Are you sure you can do this?”

Micah shook her head. “No.” Tessa smiled at her friend’s honesty. “I can’t promise,” she said. “But we’ll do everything we can.” Micah pulled The Shiki as green gecko from her sweatshirt pocket.

Tessa and Micah climbed up the tree together, and Micah set The Shiki on the top of the wall. They seemed to mind meld for a moment before she let him go and he scrambled down the wall. Tessa narrowed her eyes, watching the grounds, and a few moments later she saw a zombie shape materialize out of nothing. It turned and looked back at them for a split second before blending into the teeming mass. Micah shuddered and Tessa put a hand on her back.

“Are you okay?” Tessa asked.

Micah gritted her teeth and squinted. “It’s scary,” she said. “It’s like I’m in there, and he’s afraid,” she said, trailing off. Tessa looked into the horde and couldn’t make The Shiki out from the others. She looked back at her friend.

“Should we stop? If you can’t do it, we’ll find another way.”

Micah shook her head. “No, this is the best way. I—we can do it,” she said. Tessa climbed down and then helped Micah too. Fenris returned,
and everyone looked away as he put his clothes back on.

“It’s done?” Fenris asked.

“Yeah. Phase one, c
omplete,” she said.

Grey dropped Tessa, Micah, and Brand at Brand’s house, since Tessa and Brand had the task of keeping Micah up all night. She would be monitoring the situation at Circe’s via Jeff. Micah also needed to be sure she didn’t lose control of him, which was likely to happen if she lost consciousness.

They ordered pizzas while Brand pored over movies, looking for the perfect comedy to keep things light. Tessa tried to enjoy her first sleepover since she was seven. She wasn’t sure what you were supposed to do at a sleepover (other than the aforementioned pizza) but she was pretty sure that this one had extenuating circumstances, what with keeping one member up at all costs, and the threat of impending doom in under twenty-four hours.

It was fun anyway, which Tessa thought spoke volumes.

Around two a.m. Brand took the first sleeping shift, and Tessa stayed up with Micah, who was already somber and quiet. They’d tried not to talk about it, to distract her from what was really going on, but Tessa wondered if it might help her to talk about it.

“Are you okay?” Tessa asked, tentative.

Micah nodded subtly.

“What’s it like?”

“Usually? Or now?”

“Both,” Tessa said.

“Well, at first it was horrible. It was like trying to hold onto a wriggling snake with my mind, constantly. When he stopped fighting me, it got better. At some point we got in sync, made an agreement of sorts really. Promises about mutual freedom or something like that. And so then it became like being on a team, all the time. Which is not so bad, although a bit crowded. But I…” Micah trailed off.

“But what?”

“But now, with him in there, I’ll be honest Tess, it’s horrifying.”

“I can’t even imagine.”

“No, not just that. I mean, yes, pretending to be the walking dead, brainless amongst enemies, at anytime they could swarm him—us, it’s terrible. But that’s not the scariest thing.”

“What’s scarier than that?”

“I love him, Tessa. Like, we’re bonded on a mental level I can’t even explain to you, it’s like having a beloved pet but times a thousand. I mean, I shouldn’t even refer to him as a pet, that seems insulting, that seems beneath the way we’re connected. He’s like a pet and a best friend, a brother, he’s like everything. It’s, I can’t explain. I love him and I’m terrified I’ll lose him, and I don’t think I really understood how I felt until he went in there.”

“Whoa.” Tessa said, blinking and trying to imagine the breadth of what she was saying. She would have to stop referring to him as ‘The Shiki,’ he was clearly more than just some creature to Micah.

“So while I’m terrified something will happen to him, I’m trying to be calm, the way were connected, if I panic, he will too.”

“So, we shouldn’t watch this raunchy comedy then,” Tessa said, trying to lighten the mood and holding up a brightly-covered DVD case.

“Yeah, probably not,” Micah said, grinning. “Focus, calm, these are good things. Of course, those things also rhyme with boring, though not literally, I guess.”

“So, also no rambling period pieces,” Tessa said, holding up a more subdued movie case.

Micah laughed, “No. Maybe something in-between?”

Tessa nodded and dug into the shelf, looking for something soothing but not boring. It was harder to find than you’d think. Plus, movies weren’t as comforting as they used to be. Not when you knew that everything you watched was out there somewhere.

Real, breathing, and maybe coming to kill you.

Tessa woke up on Brand’s bed with a storm of emotions rushing around inside her. The two that rose to the surface however were intense anxiety and some kind of bottled adrenaline. Swirling around in there somewhere was a little pebble of dread. Some innate knowledge that no matter what happened, no matter how successful they might actually be, that something bad would come, too.

Tessa passed by Brand and Micah, watching their millionth movie and eating cereal and drinking cans of Red Bull in his living room, and just nodded at them before heading out the door. They returned sleepy nods. There wasn’t much to say,
and if they were as churned up inside as she was, it was better to keep quiet. No sense in everyone freaking out at once.

When Tessa showed up back at home, there was another white envelope of money waiting for her. The sight of it depressed her to no end.

What if she died? When would he even find out? Would Detectives Wade and Ripley come to deliver the news? Would he even care? He’d barely acknowledged her presence in his life after all these years.

Her mother wouldn’t even know what had really happened to her.

Nobody would know what really happened.

Tessa went upstairs and brought down a huge box. She put the box on the kitchen counter. She’d ordered a gross of her dad’s favorite stupid dishtowels online. If she never came back to the house, at least he’d have plenty of dishtowels to keep him company.

She had meant it as a nice gesture, but now it just seemed grim, and kinda mean.

A few hours later, Tessa answered the door in her strapless blue punk rock number, 20-eye D
ocs, and leather jacket, the feathery blue mask hanging around her wrist.

“Wow,” Robin said, unable to take his eyes off her. “I never thought I would say this, but formal wear somehow suits you.” He paused before adding, “Of course, the leather helps.”

Tessa smiled and then pulled at the top of the dress. “I should have gotten something with straps,” she complained. “I wasn’t thinking but at least it’s tight,” she continued, looking at her reflection in the window. “I think it’ll stay up.”

“Better if it doesn’t,” Robin said. Tessa laughed and then took in his own costume, looking more like a true Story than ever. He had at least partially embraced the “costume” part of The Mask and was dressed up as a more literal Robin Hood than usual in leather pants and a hooded tunic, as well as a complete weapons package, all highly suitable for the battle to come. She slid into his arms and kissed his neck. He groaned a little and found her mouth. It wasn’t until she pulled back and saw his eyes that she knew something was wrong.