Two Truths and a Liar

XXVIII • The Chase

Leon

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By now, I was used to running, but I wasn't used to being the one in pursuit.

Jenna took the lead as we ran through the parking lot and down uniform suburban sidewalks, each time hitting the ground but barely making an indent in the pale snowy surface under our feet, each breath controlled and even. She flew across the parking lot easily, target locked in her sight. Fixed and coming closer by the second.

I had run in football, and I was well known for my speed. But turning aside your well fed, easy lifestyle for scrounging on the street, losing your mind trying to run from yourself has a way of shaving off your abilities. Running was one of them.

My whole body burned, and Jenna was gaining on the figure by the second. Numbness in the wake of needles and pins crawling up from the soles of my feet, the cold rawness of the wind scouring my skin. I squinted against it, hot breath pouring from my lungs.

Harley wasn't doing much better, a few feet behind me gasping for breath, face aflame and dripping in sweat. He held on. Ran with a kind of desperation I couldn't help but admire, despite the fact he was burning calories that didn't exist. Fighting with nothing to keep him going but skin and bones and spite.

And as far as I'd seen, he had a lot of that.

I wished I had something to run on that wasn't fear. Something to push me forward, that didn't crush my guilty conscience with that constant reminder of what I'd done. What I'd do. What I couldn't stop. Because no matter how much I cried, how much I felt my stomach twist and clutched at my ribs reading news stories and watching police cars fly by on squealing tires and red and blue lights blazing into the snow, I couldn't take back the casualties I'd caused. And yet I still found myself looking in the mirror at night whispering again and again:

"But it wasn't my fault, I didn't do it." I didn't do it. I would never. I could never.

Leon Lucas Halloway was not a killer.

Was he a killer? The sweater clad stranger who couldn't have been more than 13 and streaked out of sight faster than it seemed possible for a person of his size. The red eyes marked him, the Skeplar cried his curse. In Jenna's eyes he was nothing. But was he in control?

Why was my curse more easily forgivable than his?

I got so lost in my head, I almost forgot I was running. Forgot about Jenna, whose dark ponytail before had been almost close enough to whip me in the face, but was now completely gone.  I stopped, and Harley clashed into me cursing, huffing, and stumbling away with a glare.

The sidewalk ahead was vacant and untouched, the path behind carrying scores of markings as if a whole parade had trampled it. Now that the world wasn't such a blur, I could make out an unclear path of footprints offshooting the path, and fading into an alley in between houses. We backtracked. Peered past the fence, and saw.

    Bare branches cast feeble shade over the alley, but just enough for the bed of snow under our feet to be lighter than the packed sleet built up over the neighborhood sidewalks. Harsh tones carried from the end of the path, where Jenna, in one hand a stake held at the Lamia’s chest, the other a fist full of his sweatshirt dangling him inches off the ground. Her voice quiet, yet harsh. I could hear every word growing louder as we neared. 

    “When?”

    “You stupid Anthropos,” the creature’s voice was as immature as his size, the high pitched whine of a child. “The Queen has it all planned. You know you won’t be able to stop us,”