Page 25 of Phantom
“Yep.” Bullet shoved by Bucky and Bullseye until he was face to face with me. He looked me up and down before spitting at my feet. “Useless,” he said and continued past me and out the door.
Bucky didn’t say anything, just glared at me and walked by as well.
Bullseye shook his head. “If you were waiting for a window to earn some trust around here, Val, that was it.” With that, he walked around me and left.
I stood motionless for a few seconds. It was hard to hear but even harder to believe. The second I started doing what they wanted under the false guise that I was earning their respect was the second I’d start losing myself. I wasn’t gonna be anyone’s puppet.
I stormed out of the bar and mounted my bike. Bucky, Bullseye, and Bullet were discussing something in the middle of the parking lot, so I made sure to rev up a lot and kick up dust to let them know what I thought of their little suggestion, then I blazed out of the parking lot and rode onto the highway, choosing to take the quick way home. I wanted to see Colin. He was the one person who saw me for who I was, and whether it was as friends or something more, I wanted to soak up as much of that feeling as possible.
I pulled into the driveway and saw that Colin was still lying on his side, working on his bike. Lockjaw was standing over him, grunting and licking his face in a continuous pattern.
I turned off my bike and got off, then walked into the garage. “You know, you can put him inside if he’s being irritating.” There was no response. “Colin?”
Lockjaw turned and barked at me, and I could see the urgency.
“Colin.” I walked over, leaned down, and pulled on Colin’s shoulder. He slumped over to his back without resistance. He wasn’t moving, and he was burning up. “Fuck. Colin!”
Chapter Nine
Phantom
Thick, swamp-green shrubbery grew around me on all sides. It stretched up much further than my vision could carry and into a darkened void the likes of which I’d never seen before. Looking forward, I saw there were a dozen different paths I could take. I searched my brain for any sense of direction, but none came. Backward, forward—nothing was familiar, so I settled for just moving and hoping that it eventually came to me.
My pace was slow as I gathered my bearings, but the more I moved, the more I realized that I didn’t know where I was or how to get to a place I knew. Though I preferred to keep a level head in any situation—panicking gets you killed—each corner I turned led me down a row with its own flurry of new roads to travel. Always turning right didn’t seem to get me anywhere specific, nor did consecutively turning left. If I kept heading straight, I’d meet dead ends and be forced to turn around. Nothing made sense, and my heart rate quickened, my breath starting to run short.
“Where the hell am I?”
In no time at all, I was running. I didn’t quite know how to explain it, but I couldn’t shake the fear that my time was running short. What my goal was, I didn’t know, but I had to get there quickly. I bolted in every direction I could find, quickly losing track of where I was going and where I had been, simply trying my hardest to move forward. It took active effort to bring myself to breathe, and my head started to fog.
Reaching a T-shaped intersection in the path, I looked to the left and to the right, but both were dead ends. The shrubbery rustled, and Tess stepped out from between the tall hedge wall. She turned and smiled at me, and it put me at ease. Something about her spirit started to slowly pull my heart rate down and make me feel more in control of myself and my situation.
“Well?” She held out a hand toward me. “Are you coming?”
I took a step forward, wanting to follow her anywhere she would take me.
“Colin.”
A voice I knew all too well called out to me from the other direction. I looked back over my shoulder and saw a reflection of myself. My skin prickled, but the longer I stared at the image of me, free of tattoos, less muscular, slightly longer hair—it was Caid.
He held his arms out on either side of himself. “I look better, don’t I?”
Twins though we were, he’d always looked more feeble than I had due to his illness, but though the man before me didn’t have my full arms and thick calves, he looked leagues healthier than the frail man I’d put on a plane to Germany.
My brain created a response, but nothing came out of my mouth. Instead, I just watched as Caid held out a hand to me and grinned. “Come on. You’re gonna love Germany.”
I moved in his direction on impulse. Caid had always been my goal. His health and happiness had been the only things that I’d truly wanted to accomplish in my life ever since we were kids.
“Where are you going?” Tess’ voice pulled me to a halt. I turned to look back at her, and her arm was still extended. “Let’s go.”
Caid and Tess both stood looking at me with their hands outstretched. If I were to go with Tess, I could find a life of my own. I could be with someone who truly made me happy and find a way to deal with my problems instead of running from them. If I went with Caid, I could see the culmination of years of hard work and finally enjoy life with my brother the way I’d always wanted. Both seemed too good to be true, and for as much as I wanted to take a step in one of the directions, I couldn’t do it.
“Colin,” Tess said.
“Colin,” Caid said.
“Colin.” The third voice sent a chill down my spine. It hissed from directly behind me and made my heart crawl to nearly a stop. Slowly, I turned around and looked right into Luther’s cold, unrelenting eyes. “Hey, Phantom.”
My gut told me to scream to Tess and Caid to run, but no words would come out. They stood in their respective directions, still just looking at me, waiting patiently with their open hands. My throat tightened while Luther stared me down, and when he lifted his left arm, it brought with it a black pistol with a silencer at the end.
