In White Robes

Chapter 12 - Want and Need

"Where's Avery?" Now there was panic in my voice. The thought of Avery being in danger struck me spiritually. I just couldn't handle it. He was too innocent, too pure. And I admitted I loved him with every ounce of my being.

"A few of the masked guys took him," Tabby answered with the truth. When I looked harder past the barrier into Avery's side of the room, I saw that the door was not completely shut. It was cracked, not bolted or locked anymore. We could go out that way.

"We need to find him."

Tabby looked at me like I was crazy. His eyes had gone wide, his face completely frozen. Doubt was written all over him. I thought for a moment that maybe he didn't understand the value of love. Has he ever felt love? I knew nothing about him, he knew nothing about me, but this conversation proved to me that he did not know what love and connection was about.

"Are you insane?" he said in an accusing tone. "I'm sure he's just getting the same treatment. The injection or whatever. Why would you chase after him when he's with the Concealed?" The Concealed. I hadn't heard their name in a few days, and now it kind of shocked me to remember who was serving the headmaster.

"I don't want him to go through what we did, Tabby," I barked, "he doesn't deserve what he's about to get."

"And neither did we," he added in a low, almost sad voice, "but here we are. Forever tainted. With these ugly eyes and these sore muscles. We have to suck it up, don't you get it? We were all meant to be changed." Still, up to that point, I didn't know what changed really meant. How exactly were we changed? The only difference I saw in myself was my eye color, now a fiery yellow, and the shape of my body which had been altered very slightly.

My waist was curvier, a little more feminine. The slimness of my body was gone, replaced by a change that clearly happened over night. Or less than that. Hours. Lord, I didn't even know. Koko had knocked me into unconsciousness and I just woke back up on the floor, impossibly unable to remember the time or the day.

"I'm going to find him," I said firmly and got up, my body still aching but I pushed through the splitting pain. The barrier felt cold as I pressed against it, feeling for Avery's presence but there was nothing there. Only an empty half of the room we once shared.

"Please don't go." Tabby started grabbing at my shoulder and huddling against me like a lost child would to their oblivious parents. "If you get killed, I'll have nothing left." He was desperately clinging to me, holding me away from the glass. Holding me away from Avery. "Please, Kay."

"Give me your knife," I said.

Tabby hesitated. "But--"

"Give it to me!" He instantly reacted, pulling the sharp knife from beneath his robes. There was a piece of duct tape stuck to the steel. I now knew how he hid it from the Concealed.

I held it carefully, looking now at the barrier instead of Tabby.

The glass felt so brittle beneath my fingers.

I could shatter it.

"I can't lose you now," Tabby whined. "I was just starting to like you. If you got killed, I would end up killing . . ."

My head snapped toward him. "Don't even think about it." My voice was so quick, he edged backward a little bit, his grip on my arm loosening. That childishness in his face had come back, and for some reason I felt ushered to look away.

Back at the glass.

The weak glass.

It had to fear me at this point.

I pulled a fist back, standing a little bit away from the barrier. Tabby had let go of me now, waiting patiently as my fist yearned to collapse the barrier at last. Because I knew I could break it now. With whatever new strength I had been given through the injection, I could do anything.

I could finally feel Avery.

Thinking of the deer, of my love, of my angel, I sent my fist flying through the glass. The shattering noise resounded in our little room, a quick pinch of sound, and then it was over. Glass painted the tiles. My hand briefly thumped with pain. The barrier was finally gone. And so was Avery.

I stepped through the hole in the glass, finding myself in Avery's territory. It smelled so strongly of him here: lavender and honey. Sweetness. My Avery. I glanced at the door, walking toward it slowly as if entering some new dimension, some new dangerous world that I was almost afraid to enter, before Tabby grabbed my arm again. I faced him.

"Just kidding," he said and now he had a massive grin on his face. "I'm coming with you. I've been itching to scratch up one of those masked guys. Let's scratch 'em up together."

The knife in my hand shimmered and I nodded.