Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

What? Tom felt his stomach lurch into his throat. What?

“What do you want, Finn?” she asked.

“You’re able to block me,” Finn said. “How? What is it about you that’s so different?”

She looked at Finn for a long moment. “I have cancer.”

The words hit Tom so hard he almost lost it. Probably would’ve— collapsed, screamed, grabbed her, wrapped her up, because no one was touching her, no one would hurt her ever again, and he would fight for her, he would fight—if she hadn’t warned him to keep his mouth shut. No, Jesus, please. His right leg was already shuddering, and now he thought he might actually fall. A red mist crept over his vision. Really, this couldn’t get any worse. There was no hell in the hereafter to worry about. They were living it.

“A brain tumor.” Her voice trembled, just a little. A scarlet flush stained her cheeks.

“Really?” Finn only looked intrigued. “Terminal?”

“That’s what they said.” She moved a shoulder in a shrug. “I’m still here.”

“Fascinating. Are you epileptic? From the tumor?”

“No, are you?”

“No.” The corner of Finn’s mouth twitched. “So you felt it. How are you controlling it? Or are you? You look tense. Barely holding on, is that it? I’ll bet it’s worse when I drive them, isn’t it?” When she didn’t reply, Finn said, “What’s your name?”

“Don’t!” Peter strained against the three guards wrestling him back. “Don’t do it, don’t tell him! It’s how he gets access!”

Access? Tom stared at Peter. To what?

“Peter, it’s all right,” she said.

“But then he’ll control—”

“Quiet, boy-o.” Finn’s revolver was in his hand in the same flash of speed with which he’d wielded that parang. “Don’t push it—”

“Stop, Finn. Don’t hurt him,” she said—and looked at Davey. “Alex. My name is Alex.”

Alex. Tom saw Davey’s eyelids flutter, and his nostrils flare. What are you doing?

“Noooo,” Peter moaned. “Alex, no, you don’t understand—”

“No, Peter,” Alex said. “I think I do.”

“Do you, Alex?” Finn said, in the gentle, almost wheedling tone of a kindly grandfather. “I doubt that. So let me . . . show you.”

Flinching, Alex sucked in a quick, pained breath, her head suddenly snapping the way Peter’s had when Finn hurt him—and Tom couldn’t take it anymore.

“Stop, Finn. Please,” he said, hoarsely. Peter was grimacing, his head moving in a spastic jerk as his fists clenched. All around, the air seemed to hum as the Changed, including Davey, shifted, the way runners take their marks. He felt the guards grab his arms as he tried to get between Finn and Alex. “Stop what you’re doing, don’t hurt her, don’t—”

“N-no, Finn,” Alex stammered. Her eyes rolled to the whites. A thin trickle of blood oozed from a nostril. “L-let me—”

In the tower: Tom. She had to save him. She had to let the monster out and do something, and she had to do it now, right now, before it was too late. And if she couldn’t get back to herself ?

It won’t matter. Can’t let Tom die. Stop being such a scared bunny and do this; this is for Tom, for Chris, for Wolf and Peter, for everybody. No one she cared about would be safe if she didn’t try. She had to trust herself, stop fighting who she was, let the monster go, let it touch Wolf. It wanted to anyway, and Wolf would be easiest to reach, because the monster’s interest was selective.

Steeling herself, she gave the monster substance: built it a gargoyle of a body; went the whole hog, the way the doctors always wanted. Sketch that boogeyman some slit eyes, needle-teeth, scales and wings, claws long as scimitars, a forked tail. Then she imagined the monster reaching out with one scaly arm; felt it unspool from her mind to tap-tap with a single talon. Wolf reacted and turned a look, actually knew she was there—and for a second, she saw Tom with much more clarity through eyes that were not hers. No exchange of thoughts, no insights, but she was in Wolf ’s head for a split second.

She kept the message very simple, stupid: Look. And Wolf did. Davey was harder, different, worse—like jumping from Blackrocks, only at night into black goo. His was a dark language that she only caught when it was very strong in the sweep of the gogo pushpush. She went fast, too. A quick dart, in and out, no message. Finn would be there, holding the boy back; otherwise, Davey and all the Changed would have been tearing these people apart. She didn’t want Finn to feel her, not yet.

Again, that dizzying sidestep, doubling, dropping behind the windows of Davey’s eyes—

And there was Tom, again, but through Davey this time. Davey’s focus, though—so taut and mica-bright it was like riding a laser—was Finn: Finn’s smell, his eyes, even the voice.

The old man—his signal?—was there, too, in the background: a thin red river coursing through an intricate landscape. Not the roaring fury of the push-push go-go, though, because there was no killing to be done at the moment.

She let the monster drift on the current, very briefly; flow from Davey’s perspective to the others, all the altered Changed: Tom and Finn and the square seen from different perspectives and varying points on the same river, like a glimpse of the world through the myriad facets of the eye of a giant fly.

Because Davey and the altered Changed were Finn’s network, his cell towers, and the unaltered Changed were networked to one another. She knew that because none of the Changed, not even Davey, reacted when Finn hurt Peter. Finn didn’t need to use Davey or the altered Changed to get to Peter in that way. But when Finn wanted to reach those Changed he hadn’t altered, he had to go through Davey. Finn was limited the same way she was: the Changed were all on a different circuit, speaking to one another on a frequency that neither Finn nor she could directly access without a kind of gateway.

Simple commands piggybacking on a more generalized signal. That had to be how Finn was doing it. For Finn, Davey was the way into the conversation. When Finn urged on the Changed, all Peter got was the bleed, the leakage, same as she. The further away Finn was, the less she and Peter were affected by the push-push go-go.

One signal, repeated and boosted through one conduit and then into many, just as Jasper said.

Now, as Finn amped it up; as he showed himself in a surge of the red storm; as she felt the hammer and the thrum and the sweeping power of the push-push go-go, Alex let herself go. Let everything fall, all those barriers and walls, no holding back, because this was the leap her father tried to prepare her for all those years ago at Blackrocks, whether he had known it or not: Jump to me, sweetheart. Take a chance and jump. This was the end and it was for keeps, it was forever, and do it, Alex, do it, do it for love, do it for Tom, save him, because it was the very last and only play left.