Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

Chris crossed to stand over the bed. The silence was eerie. Jess lay on her back, hands curled over her stomach because the small muscles had atrophied with disuse. Someone had brushed her hair, which spilled over the pillow and her shoulders. Kincaid, probably. In the moonlight, the whites showed through her lashes in thumbnail slivers. Chris kept expecting her to say something, or those lids to snap open, and to see himself captured in those black-mirror eyes. The prolonged bout of REM sleep that had seized Jess for weeks had ended abruptly only a half hour ago, Kincaid said. Chris had felt only a mild shock when the doctor showed him the book from which he’d gleaned the drug’s formula: Ghost-Walkers: The Ethnobotanical Encyclopedia of Medicinal and Psychoactive Mushrooms. In another half hour—and probably less, because Kincaid hadn’t stinted on the dose this time—Jess would be past dreams.

“Would you like to sit?” Yeager indicated a chair with a bony hand that jutted from an arm as thin as a chopstick. His clothing puddled. “We haven’t talked.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to point out that he’d been in cardiac arrest part of the time and busy the rest, but he let that fizzle. The last time he’d seen this old man, his grandfather had smacked him around. Taking a seat also made him uneasy, as if he’d be conceding something, maybe getting himself under this old man’s thumb. “What for? I don’t have anything to say. I don’t forgive you, if that’s what you want. You and the Council let terrible things happen. I don’t even care about whose idea it was first, because if it was Peter’s, you should’ve said no. If it was yours, then you took advantage of Peter and that’s even worse. You had every chance to stop this, but you didn’t. You didn’t even save Kincaid, a friend. You let Aidan take his eye, for God’s sake. What could you say that will make any of that better, or even justify it?”

“Nothing,” Yeager said, his tone void of emotion but not indifferent or cold. “But I thought you might have questions.”

“Like I said—”

“Then I have one. How is my brother?”

“Last time I saw him, he was pretty sick from smoke inhalation.” Which was totally my fault.

“I’m sorry for that. We haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I admire him for setting up a place for children who wanted a different life from their parents. He always did want to help.”

“He helped me when I was hurt. It’s a long story.” Coming back from the dead wasn’t a subject he wanted to broach with this old man.

“How much did he tell you?”

“Pretty much everything. Some stuff, I figured out on my own.” “Ah. Do you have questions?”

Oh, about a million. Although he’d resolved that it didn’t matter, that it was water under the bridge, he couldn’t help being curious. “Yes. How did you decide? Between me and Simon, I mean.”

“Mmm.” Yeager knit his skeletal hands together. If he’d had a sickle, he could’ve passed as the Grim Reaper. “To be honest, I chose the infant on the right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could only take one. Your mother was holding you both at the time, and she cradled you on the left.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” The mention of his mother stung. He heard the sharpness, his simmering anger, and decided, Screw it. “What difference did the side make?”

“Oh . . .” Yeager drew a slow hand over his bald scalp, the gesture of a man who’d once had hair to smooth. “Because Christ sits on God’s right hand, I suppose. If you want something scriptural. But it’s mystical, really. Goes back to the Jews. For them, the body’s two sides mirror the divided nature of our soul. There is the power to give and hold back. The right hand is stronger; you give with your right, whether it’s justice or kindness. With your left, you hold back. The left hand is discipline and restraint. The left hand keeps its secrets.”

And lives in the shadows. His grandfather had just described him and his life to a T. “So you went for strength.”

“I chose the sword.” Yeager paused. “But in my arrogance I forgot that it takes just as much strength to refrain, be slow to anger and rash action. It’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that in the righteousness of your anger, cruelty is justified. But you are strong, Chris, much stronger than I’ve given you credit for.”

“I’m not strong,” Chris said. Yet of all the things he remembered about Rule, a place where he thought he might finally find a home, the mornings after a fight were the most vivid: kneeling next to Peter in church, as everyone—including Alex, especially Alex—looked on, and feeling his grandfather’s hands on his head in blessing. It was hokey and stupid and incredibly sexist, and yet he had felt pride: This is what it’s like not to be afraid. This is what it feels like to belong. He was like Tom, wasn’t he? Looking for my people . . . Except Alex was gone, and if his dreams held true, Peter was worse than dead. A strange lump forced its way into his throat. He should go. No way he’d break down now. He didn’t forgive Yeager, he couldn’t. Chris could let go of the hammer for Peter but never for this old man. “Sometimes I wait too long and then it’s too late.”

“But you never broke, Chris. You’re following your path and still finding your way. Take it from an old man: sometimes, you get a second chance.”

Not with Alex. What he said next surprised him. “What do I do about Simon? If he’s alive . . . we’re enemies. Did he even know about me?”

Yeager shook his head. “What you do depends on what you find.”

“He eats people.” He’s my brother; we’re identical twins. He’s me and I’m him.

“If that is all he is, then you have your answer, don’t you?”

“How can he be more than that?”

“I love him, Chris.” Too dark to see his grandfather’s expression, Chris heard the catch in his voice. “That makes him more.”

That Yeager could not say the same about him hurt more than Chris would’ve imagined. Well, what did he expect? He’d shown up in town a virtual stranger, only a copy, a faded Xerox.

“Try not to be bitter for too long,” Yeager said. “Life is hard enough.”

“Whose fault is that? I was a kid. I saw you, what, five times before the world blew up? It was Peter who really cared, who went out of his way—” He swallowed back the rest. “How else am I supposed to feel?”