Shadows of Ourselves (2016 Original Edition)

TWENTY-FOUR: Cathedral

While Jackson called his father, I slipped out of his office and went down the hall to the bathroom. I closed myself in, feeling the chill of the ugly beige tiles and the electric drone of the flickering overheads seep into me like permafrost. In a few minutes we would go upstairs, I would make sure Riley was okay, and we would set off to do something there was no coming back from. I'd have to put on a brave face and act like I believed we had a chance, like we could do this.

Truth is, I was terrified. No part of me wanted to get myself killed, or go hunting after ways to kill a deranged magik-user.

If we didn't kill Crayton, he would slaughter us. Jackson would be first. Then me. Or Hunter. Or anyone who got in his way. He'd drained Althea, now he was after his own son...Crayton was insane. We were doing this.

I was doing this. It would be my hands that ended his life, imbued with Hunter's unnatural strength.

And all I wanted to do was puke.

I felt like I was made up of pictures, snapshots of the people around me—Riley's laugh, Hunter's stubble brushing my skin, my mother humming as she stood over the kitchen sink—but they were constantly changing, flickering like candlelight before dissipating in the cold air, gone forever. They died like the seasons, blowing to the ground and rotting, buried beneath a layer of cold distance. We waste life when we think it will stretch on forever—we throw away the minutes like nothing, like dust and spare change. We're fucking idiots.

Thinking of what we were about to do, what the risks was, sent me reeling back through memories of so many moments I'd wasted, poured down the drain. I wanted to have them back, but they were too much to carry.

An entire life of wasted time. If I lived through this, I was going to do more than survive.

This is where I had to start. If I was powerful enough to kill Crayton, powerful enough to stop him from gaining Hunter's powers and tearing this city apart with them, then I had to do it. No one else was going to.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My likelihood was flat, pressed down. A boy in one dimension. More dark circles under my eyes, blooming against my pale skin like black and purple flowers.

I wanted to recreate them, smear the paint onto the canvas with my fingertips so it was stark and sharp, the colours clashing instead of blurring.

I'm about to kill somebody and I'm thinking of painting a representation of my sleep deprivation. Why the fuck am I like this?

Trash, okay? I looked like fucking trash.

Fine, I told myself. You wanna do more than survive? Time to start saving some lives.

By taking one.

~

The first thing I set my mind to when I headed upstairs (aside from escaping Riley's smothering embraces) was head to the bar to grab a coffee. I'd seen the fancy espresso machine back there, all shiny black plastic and gleaming silver—I had no idea if it was for alcoholic coffee drinks or just for the tired employees, but my brain needed to be drowned in java, asap.

The white girl with dreads was sitting behind the bar, chin resting in the palm of her hand. She stared down at a glossy magazine with a bored expression, lips pursed.

Did she always look like it was somebody's funeral?

"Hey," I said.

Dreadlocks looked up at me with disdain. "What is this? Are you albino?"