Molly

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“What are you doing here?” The piss ant has invaded my private sanctuary. I’ve already staked my claim as queen of this hilltop. I’m not about to hand over the crown to her.

“What are you doing here?” Her tone is equally curt. Well hell, would you look at that? She’s found some backbone. Good on her.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” I chastise her. The dimly lit sky makes her sickly pale skin seem even sicklier. Fuck, the girl’s practically a ghost.

“Probably,” she admits. “Shouldn’t you be too?”

“This is the only time we get to be free of security detail.” I fold my arms across my chest defensively. “You should be asleep.”

“Last time I checked, no one gave me an itinerary,” she snaps.

“Well, they should,” I snap back. Wonder how much bark she’d have if I started taking bites.

She must notice how much her presence is disturbing me because she keeps staring at my arms. Not my fault the damn things are tremoring. It’s her fault for being in proximity. I want to drain her dry, and knowing I can’t makes me want to even more.

What’s worse is no one can commiserate with me. None of these other fuckers are feeling the urge I am. Her emotional blocking bullshit does fuck all to abate my craving. Apparently, I’m marked safe from Sheyla’s shitty emotional manipulation.

“Are you okay?” Her voice is full of concern. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t want and/or need your help,” I retort. “We’re going back soon.”

The look of disappointment on her face makes it almost worth my suffering.

“When are you leaving?”

“Dawn.”

Now she’s worried. Swear to fuck, she wears her emotions on her face as bad as Connor. She’s probably worried about losing her precious Brody. Get in line, Bitch. I’m worried about losing him too. We were never the perfect team, but we were a complete clusterfuck before he joined us. Brody has a way of making everything okay. Whether it’s because we brainwashed him into believing the Sentry was his dream come true, or the fates chose wisely in selecting him, I’m not sure. He just balances things out, like a cooling balm on my fiery insubordination itch. He’s our mediator, capable of using logic to get us to focus on the task at hand, instead of our feelings (or lack thereof in my case). Not a fan of being forced to give him up, even though it’s entirely his choice.

“He’s not coming back with us, so if you’re serious about your enabling offer, his would be the throat to shove it down.”

“Molly, can I ask you something?”

“No.” Fucker’s asking anyway. She’s absolutely incapable of not asking.

“You mentioned something once about Connor being your big, little brother. What did you mean by that?”

The question is comical. I laugh, which unnerves her. I file that fact. I’ll be laughing around her more from now on.

“He’s technically older than me by ten years,” I answer. “What difference does it make?” I uncross my arms and shove my hands in my jacket pockets. “I’m older now.”

“They converted him, but they had to do it early, right?”

“The Writers wrote the accident that ended him, and the Readers caught it in time,” I confirm. “It would’ve been nice if they’d gone ahead and saved my parents too.”

Saying it out loud hurts more than I imagined. I’ve thought a lot about what happened. When Phelan broke my memory stone, it didn’t impact me the way it should have. Yeah, it hurt…sort of. It just didn’t hit home. Why? Tyler was to thank for that, but being so far away from Tyler, and talking about it, brings up memories I prefer to dutifully ignore. There’s sweet fuck all room for longing in my heart. It’s full to the brim with bitterness and loathing already.

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“My parents died, yet we lived,” I continue. “They took him, leaving me to whatever fate that would have me. Connor was inconsolable. He fought them at every turn.”

I refuse to let one teardrop fall. She will not be the receptacle for my salty eye piss. She doesn’t deserve to be.

“It took them fifteen years to accept he’d never yield. As long as I was alive, they couldn’t control him—typical unruly teenager. He got free. No idea how, but he came back. Kept sniffing around until they put a stop to it by hauling me in. It was like looking a ghost in the face. He was living and breathing in front of me, except he hadn’t aged a single day. He was exactly as I remembered him. Me, on the other hand, I was all grown up.

“They wanted someone to take care of him…babysit him, if you will. They’d never converted someone so young before.” I shake my head. “He didn’t need a babysitter. He just needed me. I was his only connection to this earth. He’s spent about fifty years trying to fix the age discrepancy.”

“Is it working?”

“A bit at a time, I reckon, but seeing him like that makes me angry all over again for what they did to him.”

“They couldn’t be all bad,” she reasons. “They let him have you.”

“Aren’t I just super lucky?!” I exclaim with mock enthusiasm. “I get the pleasure of being the only girl in an all-boys club, my life—which wasn’t even bad, I should add—was taken from me so I could appease one person’s desire to maintain a familial connection.”

“You’re angry with him?”

“No.” I let out a frustrated groan. Fuck, that was a good one. Sounded almost feral. Good job, me. “Annoyed. Rueful. Sorry for myself. I’m not angry with him, but I’m stuck with this...whatever this is. Indefinitely. I had a life, Sheyla. A real future lined up. I had a boyfriend, a potential lifetime with him, and I loved him. Everything I’d worked the last fifteen years to get back was swept right out from under me, without anyone ever bothering to ask me if that’s what I wanted.”

“See, I have to be bitter, Sheyla.” I refuse to allow my tears to fall. “I have to be hateful, and callous, and downright putrid. If I let myself be free to express what I really feel, they’ll see it. We have no secrets. Phelan has the noose tied so tightly around my neck I’m hopelessly being strangled, but I can’t afford to cut it. I can’t do that to Connor. If he’s forced to see that...his guilt would destroy him.”

“Can’t you just leave?” she whispers.

“Where would that leave Connor? My teammates?” I kick at the earth with my combat boots. “I’m an insignificant piece to this grandiose puzzle. I don’t matter.”

“You do matter,” she argues. “We all matter.”

“Some of us matter more than others,” I snipe. “You’ll see when you transition.”

She groans. Not an impressive groan, for the record. She needs to work on that, along with everything else she sucks at. “Everyone keeps talking about the crap I’ll see when I transition. Well, it’s all for nothing. I’m not transitioning.”

“Yep,” I agree, popping the p. “Yours is going to be an all-out explosion.”

“Why is it so necessary? I don’t understand the difference. I have powers now. Can’t they use those if that’s what they want, without me transitioning?”

“A human life is a temporary one, and your role needs to extend beyond that,” I counter. “You’re too important.”

“Why?”

“They won’t accept a half-hearted effort from you,” I warn her. “It won’t be enough. They’ll want the whole sha-BANG, fireworks and all.”

“What do they want from me?” She’s exasperated.

“Everything you can give them.” My voice is eerily low. “And, what you won’t give them, they’ll take.”

She shudders, and for a brief moment, I actually feel sorry for her. They want her fire power as their greatest weapon. Idiots. All of them are idiots. If she sets her fire free, she’ll scorch the world. Burn it all right the fuck down. I give zero fucks about the world, generally. I do, however, give selective fucks. My brother and my teammates, I have to protect them. Also, let’s not forget my food stock. Super important, that.

“You should go find Brody tomorrow morning,” I suggest. “He won’t tell you he needs you, and I don’t feel comfortable leaving him as he is.”

“Maybe you should take him with you,” she offers.

“He can’t come. Phelan ordered him to stay,” I inform her. “He wouldn’t have left you anyway.”

“Phelan ordered him?”

“When he commands us, we have no choice but to obey. It’s part of our conversion makeup. There’s a rank order,” I explain. If the tethers don’t work, they pound fuck the shit out of you until you submit. Wonder what knowing that’d do to her delicate sensibilities. Hmm. Maybe she’d cry out all her fire. The idea has potential.

“Sounds to me like there’s some dissension in the troops,” she reasons. “Time for some reorganization.”

I smirk. “If they’d let a lady lead, I’d run things in a totally different way. Of course, you’d be dead right now, but that’s a moot point.” If she doesn’t leave soon, she might be dead anyway.

“You make it hard not to tell you things,” I complain. “You’re a vacuum for emotional diarrhea of the mouth.”

“Well, that’s a pleasant analogy.”

“Not pleasant at all.” I grunt before turning abruptly. “I won’t tell him you’re coming. That way, he won’t have time to prepare.”

“Thanks,” she mutters.

I take off toward the trees fast as I can. Her free-range energy is too tempting. The alternative means mistakes I can’t afford to make. She can be the hilltop queen. Jill of the Hill. Brody can play the part of Jack. How long will it take Jack to fall down and break his crown? Not long with Jill pushing him.