Page 39 of The Godhead Complex
“Probably, with my luck.” She spit again then took a sip of water.
Frypan stole away their attention. “Hey, look. I remember that up ahead, that building.” He pointed, and it only took a second for Isaac to recognize it, too. It was the first building they’d seen upon arriving from the island. A true skyscraper, surrounded by many others. Only a short journey now to the house where Letti and Timon had slit Kletter’s throat.
Thinking about that put Isaac on edge. He couldn’t let his guard down, and as they walked on, toward the same place where everything had gone wrong before, he reached for the knife Minho had given him.
This time around, if someone taunted them from a creepy house, Isaac would be ready.
Gastar saliva.
A waste of saliva and a waste of breath, as her Abuela would say. There was no use in telling Carlos what she felt to be true about her mom and his wife. Dead. His poor, young, beautiful wife who he’d hoped to have children with someday. Carlos’ measure of hope would always outweigh anything else in his mind, and their trip was already depressing enough. Eating snakes, sleeping in the desert, moving camp every morning. The heat. The unbearable heat.
“Do you want the snakeskin to make something?” Carlos asked as he packed up their cooking tools. Ximena declined with a quick shake of her head. There would be plenty more snakes on their path if she wanted to fashion something. “What’s the matter? You’ve been quiet.”
“Nada. Nothing’s wrong.”
Up until the clear feeling she’d had about her mom being dead, Ximena had spent every single day in the desert looking at the horizon, hoping she’d see her mom and Mariana walking toward them. Then they’d walk faster, then maybe they’d run. But she should have known that it wasn’t hope which brought them out here. It was her intuition that something was wrong.Manera de ver,as her Abuela would say. Her way of seeing.
“You having a vision and not telling me?” Carlos asked as he flicked the snakeskin aside.
She shook her head and kicked a rock, then started walking north again on the worn path. “No.” It wasn’t a lie. She had afeeling, not a vision. They were two very different things.
Carlos nodded as he joined her. They had a map to the Villa if needed, but so far, the path was clear enough.
Many people back home in the village had intuition in various forms. Carlos might, too, if he wasn’t so clouded by hope.
Hope. It had a way of blanketing all things as some big, glorious lie until they morphed into what a person wanted them to be. Seers, on the other hand, embraced the pain of truth, and saw things how theyweren’t.
Ximena looked over at Carlos as they walked. He was a strong enough man to protect her from almost anything that came along—anything but the truth.
“There’s something bothering you,” he said when he noticed her gaze. “You’re never this quiet in the morning.” He was right; typically, she thought out loud.
Ximena softened. “Just thinking about what will happen when we get there, is all.”
Carlos stopped. “Don’t be all mad at Annie when we see her. She can’t help it that these missions go on longer than expected.”
“Shecanhelp it. She’s the lead on the team. She’s literally the only one who can help it.” Carlos picked up his feet again, but she wasn’t letting him leave this behind. Her mom and Mariana were two months past the latest point in time when the group had assured they’d be back. But Absent-Minded-Annie always conveniently forgot the promises she made to those back home, like when their mothers, daughters, and wives would return. Ever since Ximena was little, her Abuela had taught her how to trust herself and why sheshouldn’ttrust ‘Annie from the Villa.’
Despite this, Ximena never actually thought Annie would get her mom or Mariana killed. So why was she feeling that way now?Ellas estan muertas,her gut whispered, as her mind searched for any feelings that came with names from home who’d left at the same time as her mom.Fransico, Manual, Ana. . . she concentrated on each name as she and Carlos walked but no imprint came to her.Dónde estás?But she got nothing. Not even colors of their auras came through.
There had never been a time in Ximena’s childhood when she’d been separated from her mom where she couldn’t at leastfeelher, out there, wherever she was. Ximena didn’t know how to explain it to anyone else, but she couldn’t feel her mother anymore.
If something was killing the rabbits, something could be killing people. Half-Cranks. Or healthy humans who weren’t Cranks but might as well be. Humans evil enough to annihilate her whole village.
Or, there could be another virus.
One that her homeland couldn’t withstand.
A virus that started with dead black jackrabbits in the desert.
“Annie isn’t—” Carlos gave a big sigh. “She’s not to blame for everything.” He looked back at Ximena to make sure’d she heard the last part.
She had, but she didn’t believe it. It was painfully obvious that Annie had been responsible for every last thing that went wrong in their village in the last twenty-five years, and Ximena had only been alive for sixteen of those. If Carlos wanted to ignore it, she would let him continue to ignore it.
“You’re so much like your mom right now.”
“What? Why?” Ximena hated that it had been so long since her mom agreed to work off-site for the Villa that she was already starting to forget things about her.
“She always thought she was smarter than everybody else.” Carlos shook his head as if being intelligent in a world full of half-Cranks was a bad thing. So what if her brain was more . . .humanthan most humans. Better that than the brain of an animal. A monster. Or a liar like Annie.
