I couldn’t see her face, but her dark hair swayed as she pulled me down the steps. I tried to resist, and halfway down I caught the railing. She pulled me so hard my sweaty fingers slipped off of it and my knee hit the floorboard. I felt the skin tear and cried out, but she never stopped. I was forced back to my feet as she half-walked, half-carried me down the stairs. When we reached the landing I tried to pull away again. I could feel the tears coursing down my cheeks, partly from rage, partly from the humiliation of having my whole person violated by being treated so roughly. I could feel the trickle of blood running down my shin under my pants.
“Someday you’ll realize,” she said, dragging me around in front of her as she stopped at the foot of the wooden stairs, “all this is for you.”
“I don’t care about someday! I hate you!”
“So be it,” she said, unflinching, unreacting, emotionless. “But you will still respect me – and the rules. And you will obey.”
She twisted my arm again and I cried out as she pulled me the last few steps toward the box. It stood a hair over six feet in height, metal, a couple feet deep and a few feet wide – big enough to imprison me easily enough – and with enough space that I could slide to my haunches and sit with my knees folded in front of me, so I could rest my head on them and fall asleep. “I’ll never respect you,” I said. “I hate you and I always will.”
“Fine,” she said, her voice iron. She pushed me into the box, and I hit the back and felt it wobble, as though it would tilt and fall over, leaving me on my back. My eyes widened but she stepped in and stabilized it with one foot, returning it to equilibrium. I had tipped it before, in the past, and it was horrible, being stuck laying flat. I preferred it the way it was, end up, and she knew it. “Don’t push me, Sienna,” she said, holding me inside. I saw her eyes, and there was something else in there, something deep, behind the irises, something beyond fire or anger. She shut the door and I heard the pin secure it – there was no escape, not now. “And I won’t push you,” she said through the small, mailslot-like hole that hovered in front of my face.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not really sorry but realizing at last, as my fury abated, that this was not where I wanted to be. “I’m sorry! Please, let me out!”
“You should spend your time in there thinking about how you’ll do things differently when you get out,” she said, her inflection dull, dead, as bored as if she were doing something menial that required no thought. Cleaning the bathroom, perhaps. “We won’t have this happen again.”
“I hate you,” I said, and I sobbed, and realized I hated myself for doing it, for showing this measure of weakness. “I wish my father were here. He would have loved me. He wouldn’t have ever done any of this to me. Not like you, you f—”
“Your father would understand,” she said, acknowledging the man even existed for only the second time since I’d known her. “This – all of this – it’s for your own—”
“You don’t care anything about my good,” I said sullenly, and stared back at her eyes. “You don’t care about me at all.”
She stared at me again, a long, uninterrupted silence between us, and I thought I caught just a waver, that certain something in her eyes, as it threatened to break loose. But after a moment it was gone, replaced by the implacable look of Mother, just as she was every time I went in – undeterred. “It’d be easier to think that’s true,” she said, voice husky. “But if it was, I’d let you out. You need to learn. Following the rules will save your life. Discipline will save your life.”
Her fingers came up and I saw them move through the slot, and it started to slide closed as I held myself together for only the seconds before it was shut, leaving the darkness to surround me. I began to sob, slowly at first, as one made its way out, then another, and another as I started to break down, great heaving emotions causing me to lay my back against the wall of the box and slide down, my arms wrapped around my knees as I sat in the darkness, alone – just like always.
Chapter 2
Now
The rocket-propelled grenade hit our car with the force of a sledgehammer against an egg, waking me out of a sound sleep. We had been on our way back from Eagle River, Wisconsin, and I had fallen asleep. It had been a long day – and night, and several more of those before this one. I don’t know when I had passed out, but I knew that most of the sleep I’d had over the last few days had taken place in hotel rooms and cars, and I was lucky that I had abilities to heal that were above normal humans, because otherwise I would have had a permanent crick in my neck.
I felt the shock of the explosion reverberate through my head as the car, already swerving, was lifted from the ground and went into a sideways roll. I felt my body jerk to the side, my head hitting the window it had been resting against, breaking it as the roof crumpled above me as it hit the road.
Everything seemed to be at half speed, as though I could see the fragments of glass rush in front of my eyes in slow motion, pelting Andromeda, who sat next to me, and Scott Byerly, who was in the seat beside her at the other window. I saw Zack and Kurt in front of us, their heads jerked to the right by the motion of the car flipping, Zack’s hands still anchored on the steering wheel.
The car came upright again, all four tires exploding from the force of our landing. My seatbelt held me tight, snug against the soft leather interior, and my head smacked the headrest. When I blinked away the feeling of disorientation, I realized that the front of the car was smoking at the hood, and the windshield was broken, only shards left, like little pebbles all stacked together around the edges of the window.
It was Scott who spoke first, bleariness heavy in his voice. “What. The. Hell. Did we just set a record by hitting the world’s largest roadkill?”
I felt a stinging pain on my forehead, and when my hand reached up, I felt sticky blood, and my fingers came away with crimson adhering to the whorls of my fingerprints. “Roadkill doesn’t explode when you hit it,” I said. “That was an RPG.”
“Again?” Scott asked. “How many is that today?”
“Don’t stop to count now,” I said, fumbling for my seatbelt. “I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself when you should be fleeing for your life.”
“Do you…ever…” Kurt was talking from in front of me, but his voice was a rasp. “Just…get serious…for a minute?” I released my seatbelt and leaned forward, looking over the seat, which was tilted at a funny angle. Kurt was arched forward, pinned against the dash, and blood was running out of his mouth. His airbag had deployed but had already deflated, looking like a used white t-shirt that hung from above the glove box, and he was mashed against it.
“Never,” I said, and clicked the release for his seatbelt. There was smoke in the air, a chemical aroma that made me want to gag. And something else, too, as I turned my head to look at Zack. “Are you okay?”
“Who, me?” He shook his head, and slapped at his airbag, which was still inflated. “My car just got hit by rocket fire on a rural Wisconsin highway. I’m pretty damned far from okay.” His hands ran along the length of his body, as though he were checking for injuries. “But I think I’m uninjured, for the most part.” He kicked his door open and started to get out.
“I am also fine,” I heard Andromeda say behind me. “But the one behind me did not fare quite so well.” I looked back at Andromeda, wondering what she meant by that. Her sandy hair looked different than when I had met her, now that it was dry. She wore a tourist T-shirt that we had bought in Eagle River that had the name of the town etched on it along with a picturesque landscape reflective of that area of the northwoods, along with sweat pants.