“Ah, mother,” Wyck said, breathing out quickly, looking excited that she was watching. “I’ve—”
“That’s him?” the younger boy broke in, with a hint of an English accent that his brother lacked. Wyck spluttered to a stop, blinking at the interruption.
“Yes,” Morgan replied. “That’s Daniel Rothfeld.”
“Why is he in bed?” he asked. “Make him stand up for me.”
“We can’t, Teddy,” she replied gently. “He’ll run away.”
“Can you still hear me?” Wyck said, unable to disguise his irritation at being interrupted. The eyes of the other two moved away from me and to his screen in their room. Wyck hesitated under his mother’s gaze, still panting for air through his mouth.
“We can hear you,” she said with coldness. “Go on, Wyck.”
“Yes, yes,” he stammered, trying to bring himself back on track but put off by their disruption. He turned again, looking around for something that he’d left leaning against the corner of the counter: a broomstick. He seized its handle.
“Well, we’ve been through this so many times, I figured a repeated episode would get mighty boring,” he said, swallowing. “You see, we keep chasing you, Michael. We keep running. I don’t like to run! I’m tired of it. I’m ready to end this whole thing.”
He furrowed his brow. He gestured to me.
“It’s like…you’re a disease,” he said, coughs punctuating his words. “We’ve just been treating the symptoms of you for decades. But now it’s time to vaccinate the source.”
My brain had started to clear itself again. I knew that Wyck was talking about the Blade—he probably already knew that I’d gone after it as soon as I had escaped them.
“I don’t have…the Blade,” I told him. I didn’t feel the denial was giving him too much.
“No no no no no,” he broke in, waving his hand furiously. “You don’t have to lie yet. I’m not even asking you yet. We’ll get to that.”
He turned the broom over, exposing its bristles on the other end. Then, with a wild swing, he slammed the end of it down onto the counter. I heard the crack echo in my old kitchen, the long pole breaking off with a jagged, spiked edge on its end now.
“Just while you’re watching,” Wyck said, spinning the broken handle back over, “be sure to come up with a good lie. And hold onto it. I’m gonna want to hear it after class.”
“My family doesn’t have anything to do with this!” I burst. Even when he sniffed at my objection there was a lack of care…an inkling of entertainment lapping up my pain like it was nourishment to him. But he paused nonetheless.
“Well,” Wyck said after thinking a moment, “I guess they’re about to have something to do with it.”
He shrugged. “And besides: the color red looks good on a human.”
He looked to the floor.
The camera jerked, a whoosh as the broom handle swung down in Wyck’s fist. I heard the painful scream of my mother amidst the crack of something striking her. It was almost like one of my own bones had broken, so harshly that I couldn’t make a sound.
She yelled for him to stop and he did, turning to look up at the end of the stick. He studied its jagged edge as I watched in wide-eyed, wordless horror.
“Nope, still no blood,” he said with dissatisfaction. So he struck again and I screamed so loud that I couldn’t hear the sound my mother made, struggling to pull myself from the bed even if it meant tearing my own arms out in the process. But my claws refused to emerge.
“Stop! Stop!” I shouted, but Wyck refused to. I shook, feeling my ankles hitting against the straps, like I’d vomit if I had enough strength inside. I heard the whistle of the stick again, the sickening snap, the weak sob.
Morgan sat back comfortably into her chair. How could she simply ignore the sounds, to let it go on? Wasn’t she even going to ask for something, to at least attempt to get the location of the Blade from me? She just watched my reaction. And Teddy slid to sit on one of her legs as she wrapped her arms to hold him up.
“I’ll tell you!” I yelled. “I know where the Blade is!”
My mom’s screams had left all of my defenses broken, so that absolutely nothing else mattered to me at that moment. I heard another shout, and another…
Don’t tell them, Michael!
You can’t tell them!
You can’t ruin everything now, not when you’re so close!
“See, right now,” Wyck said, pausing to catch his breath and wipe his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand, “my goal isn’t to kill you.”
He took a deep breath, readying the broomstick again, lifting it back behind him, gritting his teeth together.
“It’s just to—” He swung the staff forward. “—make… you… feel… dead.”
Every word: another strike, another scream, another crack that drove itself through me. I cried horribly, unable to see, unable to shut out the sounds.
“It’s in Saint Helen’s Cathedral!” I broke out in a moan, unable to fight any longer. The words spilled from my lips, eyes sagging, and arms weak now in the bonds that held me down. Wyck, hearing me, looked up at the camera. He seemed surprised that I’d broken, as if all along he’d been expecting me to resist to the end.
“What city?” he asked. He didn’t even give me a second to get enough breath to reply before he’d kicked my mother on the floor, a crash as she hit the bottom of the dining room table. I jumped in fright.
“In Lodi!” I shouted. Wyck’s eyes shifted to look beyond me.
“Is he telling the truth, mother?” he asked. I realized that Morgan had been staring at me intently, and when Wyck had startled me, she’d been reading a Glimpse in my eyes.
It was too late for me to look away. So my power was Guardian after all.
“He is,” she confirmed.
Teddy clapped with glee, his eyes jumping from one side to the other as he watched Wyck and I with rapture. Seeming satisfied, Wyck finally stopped his beating, sweat now rolling down the sides of his pale face. I couldn’t even hear my mother’s weeping anymore.
“That was…tiring,” he said, unaffected. He lifted the end of the broom handle, and smiled when he saw that it was stained with a splattering of red.
He tossed the broom across the floor and I heard it clattering away. I felt limp, worthless, discarded. I wished I could have passed out anything to block the echoes of my mom’s screams.
Wyck, though, started to pull something off our counter, mixing jars of liquid together while the camera swayed in his uneven grip. He grabbed something out of his pocket: a cigarette lighter. He flicked it and suddenly a tendril of flame flared up from the side of the camera.
“Wait…” I said, lips barely able to move. Wyck didn’t listen.
“I…told you the truth…” I said, blood pounding through my neck. No, Wyck. What are you doing? Don’t… I stared at the screen with tear-filled eyes. He shrugged again.
“This place could use a little brightening up,” he said, and then turning from the camera, he threw the lighter and the jar. The contents sprayed across my kitchen, immediately feeding the tiny flame and flaring up into a burning trail. When the rest of the can hit the ground, there was a massive explosion like a bomb going off, and the lights burst into Wyck’s face.