“How’d you do that?” Butch asked, head tilted into the middle of the room.
“Do what?”
“Kill me. You’re supposed to be immobile during metamorphosis. How’d you move?”
Like I knew? Instead of answering, I advanced.
“One more step and you’ll watch your sister die.” He’d stilled and was focused on me despite his blindness. For emphasis, he tightened his grip. Olivia’s eyes bulged. “Now step back.”
Death rode his brow. I stepped back. Think, Joanna. Think!
Okay, so Butch’s sight was gone, but his other senses were flawlessly acute. It made me wonder at this transformation he’d talked about. It obviously meant something to him. He’d waited until then to try and kill me, and in that time all my senses had been shut down. But now that they were back, what about that “sixth sense” he’d spoken of? Was that what he was using to track me now?
As much as I hated to take my eyes from Butch and Olivia, I had to close them in order to transfer focus to my other senses. I did, and the difference was immediately discernable. Colors flashed behind my eyelids, accompanying scent and sound. By simply casting my mind in the direction of the objects I last remembered seeing, I could smell them.
On myself I smelled blood, Ben, and the faint scent of the soap I showered with. I turned to the dresser beside me where a bevy of beauty products rested—mint, eucalyptus, wax, powder, and a perfume that reminded me unerringly of Olivia. Turning my attention to her, I inhaled deeply, and caught lingering tendrils of that scent, as well as something sharp, which I instinctively identified as fear.
As for Butch, I didn’t dare cast my mind in his direction. His scent was already overwhelming me, like being locked in a room with a pustulant corpse. I was already more sensitized to him than anything else in the room.
Except the blade on the floor between us.
My eyes flew open in time to see Butch’s head jerk, then jerk again when I inhaled sharply. We scented it at the same time, or scented each other scenting it. He was closer than I. I lunged, he snarled, and we reached it at the same time.
I came up with the tip burrowed beneath my chin, Butch’s laughter hot in my face. Olivia’s squeal was choked off in a warning tug. “Don’t fucking move. You don’t think I know what you’re doing? What you’re thinking?” He flicked the blade, a swift motion that made me wince in anticipation, but no pain came. Yet. My necklace, however, dropped soundlessly to the carpet. My jaw clenched reflexively, but otherwise I didn’t move. Butch laughed humorlessly. “I can detect your thoughts before you even form them. Remember, I’ve been at it longer, Archer, and I’ve never been an innocent.”
That I could believe.
“Just tell me what you want,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “Anything you want. Me for her? Give the word and I’ll do it.”
“Oh, now you’re making deals, are you? Isn’t that noble, sacrificing everything for your sister. But you’ve done that before, haven’t you, Jo?” He grinned that corrosive smile. “Time to do it again.”
“No!” Olivia struggled against his iron grip. He just held on until she’d worn herself out. If it had been me, I could have bent forward until his weight was on my back, flipping him, or swept a leg, or scraped his shin on the way to breaking bones in his foot. But it wasn’t me. It was my sweet, harmless, innocent sister, and she could only stand there and weep. And choke.
“Take out the weapon in your left pocket, and throw it out the door.”
I didn’t wonder how he knew about the hidden kubotan. Even I could smell the cold, pressed aluminum. I did, tossing it through the doorway leading to the living room.
“Now step back…Step back,” he repeated, when I didn’t move. “I can smell the defiance on you, Joanna, don’t you know that? Do you really think you can do something to change what’s happening here? You think you can save Olivia now like you saved her before?”
I stepped back, but instead of relaxing Butch, this seemed to provoke him. Olivia struggled, her face going red, but his grip was a crowbar wrapped around a feather. If he’d shoved that knife through my jaw, I’d have felt less horror.
“No!” My fists balled impotently at my side and fear slicked my insides and rose like a tide of tar, oiling the air around me. I knew he could smell it on me. Desperation made my words earnest. “You said you’d trade me for her! Me for her!”
“Now why would I want to trade you for her?” he asked, loosening his grip. Olivia stilled. Butch raised the blade. “When I can have you both?”
With that he began to cut.
“Joanna?” Olivia’s voice was childlike, small. She looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, wide eyes filled with childlike confusion. I knew, though, that she was really viewing me through a veil of white-hot pain. I remembered how the world looked when buried beneath your own blood. Tears burned in my eyes for Olivia’s sake and a strangled cry escaped my throat.
Butch began to laugh. Laughing and cutting, precise despite his blindness. Beyond the brutality, there was just something horrifying about seeing that pure beauty marked. I’d never seen Olivia injured before and it was like seeing wings torn from a butterfly, like watching a temple being defiled. It broke something reverent in my heart, and her anguished cries filled my own mouth.
“Stop! Stop!”
Butch held out the dripping blade. “Stop? Yes, well…why not? She’s nothing to me, after all. Just a pawn, really. Just a way to get to you. Thank you, Olivia. For a job well done.”
The tips of his filed teeth sparked in a telling grin. I saw it, and still there was nothing I could do. Butch opened his stance, turned his shoulders, and propelled Olivia into the arching wall of glass. I heard the sick thud of her body hitting, the hollow crack of the pane, and in what seemed like slow motion, the glass splintered, then shattered. It collapsed, and Olivia fell with it.
Her scream razored through the night, lingering after her body had fallen. An answering cry burst from my throat as I rushed the window, clambering gracelessly over the wide bed and bounding across the other side. I clawed at the jagged glass, bloodying my hands and forearms, feeling nothing.
I couldn’t see her. She was already lost in the void of night; dropping like the rain, falling like a star, setting like a crimson sun.
Staring out into that cold black void, I had a momentary urge to follow. One step, a mere five inches, and it would all be over. I’d never have to move or fight or weep again. I wouldn’t have the unending chore of breathing anymore, and the screams pinballing in my skull would be silenced once and for all.
I heard my name; a taunting, singsong repetition, languorously drawing out the syllables. All I could think, all I could feel, was that I’d been wrong. Wrong to believe I’d taken every precaution to protect myself. Wrong in believing nothing else could be taken from me, that I had nothing to lose. There was one last thing that I had cared about in this world. My sister.
And now she too was gone.
“Jo-ahn-naa…”
Sucking in a deep, steadying breath, I lowered my head like a bull readying for the charge, and I did take that first, that final, step forward.
But not before I had turned around.
I sprang forward, body low, and used my weight to take his legs from under him. There were no thoughts of weapons as I wrapped my arms around his knees. No care of injury as his bulk collapsed and toppled forward. I swiveled, fighting for his back, but he was quicker than he looked, even blind. Before he could use his fists or weight against me, I was out of reach, regrouping, and readying for a second assault.