Slate Gray

Chapter 19.1: Ace Slate

"No! What are you doing?!" I howl. "Let me go! Let me go! Dad! Dad! Dad!"

But my abductor has eight inches and at least thirty pounds on me so, despite the epinephrine flooding my veins, resistance is unfairly futile. And bouncing on her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, I'm gifted one last view of Dad, lying on his back, crimson running down his wrists as a demonic roar rattles my brain.

The tableau soon vanishes behind a wall of trees, yellow streetlamps glazing their trunks like a cheap camera filter. And the wind whips through my matted hair as the realization of what Perrin's done detonates in my gut.

She left him. Callously abandoned our father to go mano-a-mano with a High-Level when she could have done something. When I could have done something. How could she be so heartless?

Despair ferments my stomach as the empty road stretches into darkness behind me and the acidic taste of vomit snaps me into Beast Mode.

"Perrin, you dumb bitch!" I wail, tearing at her clothes, her hair, transforming into a trapped animal willing to bite their own leg off to escape. "Stop! Put me down! We can still save him! It's not too late!"

But she simply tightens her boa constrictor grip, the cymbal scrape of ragged pants and percussion of feet her only contribution to my hysterical symphony.

Fine. If she's gonna use her Nat 20 Strength to play dirty, then I can play dirty too.

Confirming the bandana wrapped hand is still tucked between her boobs, I draw my knee back and slam it into her palm as hard as I can. The resulting whimper would normally sting my heart but pain coupled with dogged momentum has the desired outcome and Perrin crashes to her knees with a noisy expulsion of air. Overcorrecting when she starts to teeter, she twists to land on her hip, hold loosening enough for me to roll off her shoulder and onto the road.

Gathering my limbs, I try to crawl away but she's too fast, lunging for the same bruised ankle that Jerome favored to tug me backwards, nails grating over asphalt, a starburst of pain igniting in my tender joint. I flip over to retaliate but she's already pounced, straddling my waist with freshly shredded knees and twining her right hand in one strap of my overalls.

"Quit fighting me, you little shit," she seethes, spittle flying from pinched lips. "We need to get to the RV and—"

"How could you leave him?!" I rail, raining fists down on her shoulders, her chest, any square inch I can find. "How could you just give up?!"

"He ordered me to run!" she yells, cringing beneath my blitzkrieg.

"And you can't think for yourself?!" I accuse with a sticky note of ridicule. "I'll never forgive you for this! You hear me? Never! Never! Never!"

"So what?!" Backlit by the jaundiced streetlamps, she leans over me, crunchy spikes of hair hiding one eye while the other pins me with a manic ferocity. "I don't give a flying fig if you hate my guts. If you never talk to me again. As long as you're breathing, you can do whatever you want."

"What I want, is to go back for Dad! What I want, is to shove you off a cliff!"

"Damn it, Ace! Don't you get it?" And my teeth rattle when she shakes me sternly by my strap. "I had a choice and I chose you. I will always choose you!"

That's when Beast Mode fades enough to clock the trembling chin, dimpling with the effort it takes to contain the gulps expanding and contracting her rib cage. To notice the vocal notes of shame and guilt in every inflection. The bottomless pupils within a ring of smoke, silvery tears spilling over red-rimmed lids.

She's crying? But Perrin never cries.

"I chose you over Michael. Over Terry. Over... over Dad," she sobs, shattering on the word, drowning beneath the weight of it. "And even if it damns me, even if it sets the whole fucking world on fire, my choice will always be you. So please, please... Stop making this hurt worse than it already does."