The Liberator

29 Outside

I spin around and face Kraven. “How fast can you teach me?”

He turns his hands palm up. “That’s the beauty of it, Dante. That all depends on you.”

The way his voice rises, I can tell he likes this. That the ball’s in my court. I roll my head from side to side like Evander Holyfield, like I’m to go twelve rounds. “Bring it, Cyborg.”

Kraven eyes me. “Think you’re a big man? Think you got what it takes?”

“Damn straight.”

He steps toward me. “Let me tell you something. There are eight liberators, all who have trained to summon their wings. What’s more, those cuffs have seen a lot of ankles. Yesterday’s liberators aren’t always today’s. You know how many of them have learned what I have?”

I curl my hand into a zero and hold it up, because I know where this speech is headed.

He surprises me and holds up a single finger. “One other liberator besides me.”

Laughter bursts from my throat. “Oh, ho! Someone else is as awesome as you? Bet that twisted your panties right up.”

Kraven’s lips form a tight line. “You’re not ready to learn.”

“I am,” I say, swallowing my laughter. “I’m totally ready to wing out.”

He circles around me like a wolf, analyzing my build. “You could be strong enough.”

“I am strong enough.” My voice drops an octave. “I’ve already almost done it a couple of times.”

Kraven stops in front of me. “Let’s avoid fictitious tales while we’re training, yes?”

“You don’t believe me?”

He sighs so long I wonder if he’s got three lungs instead of two.

“I’m not lying, Cyborg,” I tell him. “It hurt like hell. Felt like something was trying to tear its way out of me. And it burned.”

Kraven cocks his head to the side. “I don’t believe you, Mr. Walker. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is you try to summon them now.”

I close my eyes and try to focus on growing Hercules wings. I’m doing a pretty good job imagining how wicked cool they’ll look when Kraven interrupts my thoughts.

“I didn’t mean right this second,” he says. “First you have to clear your head.”

I keep my eyes closed. “Head clear. Check. What’s next, sensei?”

Kraven’s bare feet shuffle against the training mats. “Clearing your head doesn’t happen that quickly. You need to be sure you know who you are.”

“Name’s D-Dub. Pleasure.”

“You need to be sure you know, without a doubt, that you are a liberator. That you are ready to leave behind your old lifestyle. Are you harboring any old demons, demon?”

My eyes open. His face softens, and the lines around his mouth relax. He grips the back of my neck. “Everyone has a past, Dante. Have you let yours go? Are you changed?”

Heat creeps across my skin. He asked me a question, so why can’t I answer it?

Because I know what lies in my heart. And I’m not ready to let it go.

Kraven walks to the glass wall. His back is to me. “Do you call yourself a liberator?”

My muscles relax. This is an easier question, one I can answer. “That’s what I am.”

“Is it?”

“What are you, my therapist?” I roll my shoulders to try and loosen up. This sudden change in topic is messing with my head. It’s like he’s already gotten in there, like he can read my mind or some crap.

“I wasn’t always a good man,” Kraven says.

“Are you now?”

Kraven turns around. His dark eyes look past me. “I did terrible things, unimaginable to me now. But I repented. I embraced a new life. And because God is merciful, I was forgiven.” Kraven touches a hand to his chest. “Look at me now, a liberator.”

I don’t believe Kraven ever did terrible things. He’s so Rule Book. But maybe that’s what made him do those things. Maybe he didn’t like it when others wouldn’t abide by his rules. Could that be why he rarely shouts, rarely even raises his voice? Perhaps his demon was his temper.

“I never did terrible things.” My stomach rolls saying this aloud. I’m not lying exactly, but the words are heavy leaving my mouth, like I don’t believe them myself.

“So you were a saint?” Kraven asks, his lips quirking upward. “That’s how you came to be a collector?”

My hands tighten into fists. “It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past.”

“Wrong. In order to summon your wings, you have to dig deep inside of yourself. And if there’s something there that isn’t resolved, it’ll never work.”

I bite the inside of my lip. “Then how did Rector use his wings?”

Kraven averts his eyes. “His wings are not the same as ours. He uses all that darkness in him—all that blackness—in order to call them. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to awaken that side of yourself.”

Don’t I?

“I don’t have anything to let go of,” I snarl. “So what’s next?”

“Again, if you don’t follow the steps, this will never work.”

I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. “Listen to me, Kraven. I’m tired of your sectors, and of your steps. Show me how to summon my wings or I’m out of here.” My heartbeat throbs in my ears. “No. You know what? I don’t need this. What I really need is time. And every second I’m here, I’m risking the sirens breaking in.”

“Do you know why you were chosen to be a collector?” he asks suddenly.

My heart leaps, because it’s a question I’ve never truly known the answer to.

“Lucifer believed you were strong, intelligent, manipulative. He believed you’d faithfully follow orders that satiated your own selfish desires. And more importantly, Lucifer knew that out of all the fallen souls in hell, that you in particular would never consider yourself redeemable. Six cuffs built for six people who fit that exact description. You were one of those six, Dante.”

“How do you know this?” I say in a near whisper.

Kraven turns on his heel and moves away from me.

“And where exactly are you going?” I ask.

“Follow me.”

The SOB must be confident I’ll do as he asks, because he gets farther and farther away without checking to see if I’m behind him. I drop my head back and stare up at the ceiling. Then I groan and jog to catch up, thinking about what he said, wondering if it’s true.

It’s true.

We trek through the house without a word. When he reaches an orange door, he unlocks it and spins around.

“Ready?” His grin sweeps from ear to ear.

“For what?”

“To play.”

Kraven shoulders the door open, and sunlight slams into us. I shield my eyes from the sudden brightness. When my vision adjusts, I gaze across the horizon. We’re in the back of the mansion, patches of snow dotting the ground. A chill creeps in beneath my long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and the smell of salt fills my nose. There’s an empty expanse of dead grass and beyond it nothing except the ocean. But how far down is the water? Twenty feet? Thirty?

A hundred?

Kraven glides toward the cliff without hesitation. He doesn’t even have shoes on, the freak. I follow after him not because I think it’s the best idea, but because my racing pulse demands it. I want to be here. I want to find the sirens.

I want to pick a fight today.

I’ve been cooped up in that house for four days. Today is day five. The sun feels good on my neck, even if the cold bites at my nose and ears. I fill my lungs. Once. Twice.

Walking after Kraven, my blood surges. Yes, I want this. This is what I was reborn to do. Screw strategy, screw process. Just show me the fiend that wants to hurt Charlie and I’ll tear out his beating heart. Then I’ll eat it.

Kraven gets right up to the edge of the cliff, so close I think he might leap off. I’m so hopped up on adrenaline that part of me wants him to. Would I jump after him? See if I can fly without wings?

He spreads his arms out wide, and the wind rolling off the ocean tangles in his blond hair.

“Come and get us!” he thunders into the open air.

And I think, “Yeah. Hell, yeah.”

After Kraven’s words are eaten by the tide, he waits. He waits so long I start to imagine there are bugs beneath my skin. That if I don’t move—if I don’t do something—they’ll devour me alive from the inside out.

A small sound rings through the morning, the noise a stone makes when falling from a ledge to the jutting rocks below.

It sounds again. And again.

Something is coming.

Kraven shuffles back, and I match his steps. We breathe hard, waiting for them to show themselves.

A hand whips over the side of the ledge.

And a man, tall with lanky arms and legs, pulls himself up. He’s wearing a steel-gray shirt, gray pants. If it wasn’t for his dark skin, it’d be hard to tell him apart from the stone cliff he crawled up from. One of his pinkies is missing. I wonder how he lost it. Maybe it was from antagonizing a German shepherd as a kid, or from an Indian cooking class.

I lick my lips, nearly tasting the tension.

My legs move toward him before I even think about what I’m doing. I don’t want to think. I just want to feel the crack of my knuckles against this guy’s face. But something behind him stops me.

It’s another arm, pulling another body over the edge. A woman. She stands upright, cracks her neck.

And then another arm. And another. And another and another and another.

Sirens appear, slithering onto their bellies and then rising up like cobras. They’re mere humans who agreed to work for collectors. They don’t have special powers or the ability to survive where we don’t. I should take comfort in this. But there are too many of them. More than I want to count. I lean my head toward Kraven. “What are we going to do?”

“We?” he says, eyeing the sirens. “This is your fight.” Before I can think, Kraven grabs the back of my shirt and hurls me toward them.

I land hard against the cold ground, frozen solid from winter’s fury. I’m out here alone. They’re surrounding me. I should be afraid. I should run back to Kraven and demand he fight alongside me. But this is what I want.

Release.

I jump to my feet and roar like the beasts they work for. “You want her? You’ve got to get through me first!”

They lunge at me.