The Rephaim: Burn Part 23

I arrive halfway down the mountain, next to a large Moreton Bay fig tree.

It's quiet here too, but without the tension and recrimination of the campsite. I reach out, press my palm against the cool trunk. Run my fingertips across a patch of dried moss.

Thick, twisting branches stretch out overhead. Here, the forest shelters. Embraces. Morning light flickers down through the canopy, dappling the ferns. It seems impossible that a h.e.l.lion could lumber out of these shadows. But it's going to happen-here, or on the beach, or right in the centre of town.

I see the faces of the Rephaim again. Watch them absorb the truth about Jude and me. If Zarael's pending attack really is the start of something much bigger, we need to find a way to fight together, but I have no idea how that's going to happen.

I reach for my phone, text Jason to tell him I'm coming. I wait for his response and then shift to his first-floor suite at the resort. The French doors onto his balcony are open and the room smells of the sea and guava juice.

Dani already knows what I've come to tell her. She was watching.

'I couldn't help it,' she says, sitting cross-legged on Jason's couch. 'I needed to know what was happening.'

She's wearing a sleeveless chambray shirt-dress and white knee-length leggings with tiny blue starfish on them. From the freshly cut labels on the coffee table, it looks like she's been shopping downstairs. From the prices, I'm guessing Jason paid.

'Do you know what's going to happen?' I ask her.

'No, but I remember everything from before, like you do.'

'Did something happen in the shift?'

She shakes her head. 'I don't think so, but I remembered it all when we got here.' She glances at Jason. 'I wasn't going to say anything, but I didn't want to lie to Mom and Jason. They know everything now.'

Jason is in the open doorway, blond curls framed by a cloudless sky. Anger radiates from him. At least Maria's in the bathroom, so I don't have to withstand accusing stares from both of them.

'They're not very happy.'

'I don't blame them. We should never have involved you.'

'I explained that I made you take me-'

'You were eleven, Dani,' Jason snaps. 'And they are Rephaim. How could you make them do anything they didn't want to?'

She twists around on the couch to face him. 'The same way I get you to. I'm a pest.'

He shakes his head and goes out on the balcony.

'Are you still taking me to see a koala later?' she calls out.

'Yes,' he says, not turning our way. Even mad at her, he can't say no.

I sit on the arm of the couch, nudge an oversized cushion out of the way with my runner. Check her eyes. Try to see if the memory of the forest has stolen anything from her. 'What do you remember?' I ask gently.

'I didn't see what happened but...I heard it.' For a second she's back there. I hear it in her voice, see the colour leach from her cheeks. The terror. 'I hid, just like you said. A h.e.l.lion found me'-she swallows, glances at the bathroom door-'but then everything turned bright... I don't remember what happened after that.'

I reach for her and clammy fingers find mine. She still trusts me, even now. What sort of monster am I, putting her in the path of demons again?

'I see the Gatekeepers on the beach every time I close my eyes. It's going to happen soon.' Dani traces a starfish on her leggings. 'Do you think everyone will stop fighting before they come?'

'You don't know?'

She shakes her head. I sigh, sink back into the leather couch.

'Me neither.'

And I can't bring myself to think about what's going to happen to Pan Beach if n.o.body shows up at Rick's this afternoon.

BARE NAKED.

I don't want to get out of the shower.

The water is tepid-too many Rephaim beat me in here this morning-and there's barely enough pressure to rinse my hair, but there's something calming about our cramped bathroom. The powder blue tiles and the shower screen with the hairline crack in the middle panel. The smell of Maggie's cherry blossom shampoo and my pink grapefruit shower gel. The ceramic soap dish shaped like a giant sh.e.l.l.

It's home. It's safe.

If I try hard enough, I can pretend I'm still a backpacker sharing a cheap bungalow with my best friend, working a few shifts at the library to pay my bills. Not have to think about my mistakes. Or how many people I've let down in this long life of mine. Or the fact an army of demons is coming to terrorise my town.

I finally turn off the tap but I don't get out. Water drips from the showerhead and hits the floor in fat splashes. I feel myself start to air dry. Absently, I trace the collections of scars puckering my skin. Wounds on my legs from knives and swords and claws. Old and new. Gouges across my side from my cage match at the Sanctuary last week. Claw marks on my chest from last night. I feel for the h.e.l.lion bite on my collarbone and then my fingers search under my hair to the thick scar on my neck.

Who am I kidding? I wear the body of a one-hundred-and-thirty-nine-year-old warrior, not a teenage library a.s.sistant. The time for that fantasy has pa.s.sed.

I towel-dry my hair and put on undies and a t-shirt-the only clean clothes I brought in with me. I listen at the door. The house is silent, but just in case I'm not alone, I shift into my room-and freeze.

Rafa is sitting on the edge of my desk.

His eyes drop to my bare legs and then lift to meet mine. 'Hey.'

I'm acutely aware that I'm not wearing a bra. So is Rafa, even if he's trying to keep his attention on my face. It wasn't so many hours ago we were naked, entangled, breathing each other's air. But now our history has loomed up between us.

'Where's Jude?' I ask.

'He was still up the mountain talking to the Butlers when I left.' Another quick glance at my legs. I should get dressed. But there's a part of me that likes having Rafa off balance. It reminds me I'm not the only one whose edges are a little softer now. I walk over to the pile of clothes on my desk. 'Let's hear it then.'

'Hear what?'

'What you've got to say about last year. What Jude and I did.'

'That can wait. I want to sort this out first.' He gestures to himself and me. 'I gave you a chance to punish me-'

'Punish you for what?'

'You know what.'

'What's the point? We both know what happened between us at the Sanctuary was a total f.u.c.king disaster.'

His gaze slides away but not before I see the injury there. The capitulation.

'Not last night,' I say, frustrated he could even think that's what I meant. 'The first time. We stuffed that up from start to finish. That fight...You tried to tell me how bad it was, but b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, the things I said-'

'You weren't alone.'

I don't want to pick apart that decade-old slanging match. I find a mark on my t-shirt near the hem, probably chocolate. Spend a few seconds rubbing at it but all it does is smear.

'What about the past week?' Rafa pushes. 'How I've handled things.'

He's talking about stalking me in the rainforest. His impatience. His avoidance of questions about our past. And the lies: that he and I never slept together. That I stayed at the Sanctuary to be with Daniel.

I sigh, give up on the stain. 'I get why you didn't want to tell me the truth. If our situations were reversed-if it was you who didn't remember-I wouldn't have told you either.' I glance at him sideways. 'But I probably would've got more mileage out of it.'

'More mileage than licking your neck in public?'

I feel the slow spread of heat, surprised that after everything that's happened between us, that memory still affects me. I pick up a pair of jeans. 'I can't believe you had the b.a.l.l.s to come to Rick's.'

A guarded smile. 'Now you understand why I was surprised you let me close enough to touch you. Then you kissed me and I kind of forgot myself for a second, especially when you seemed so into it.'

And I was. It was so unlike me-either version. But my body remembered Rafa, just like it remembered how to fight. Muscle memory of a different kind.

'What's it all mean, then? Are you back to being who you were a year ago?'

I drop the jeans back on the washing pile. 'Are you?'

'No.'

'Me neither. I've been someone else for a whole year and I can't undo that-I don't want to. It's who I am now. I just happen to remember another life as well. I'm still figuring out how it all fits.'

Green eyes search mine. 'Gaby, I know I've f.u.c.ked up-'

'We both made this mess and we've both suffered for it.' I glance at his chest. 'Things are different now.'

His mood shifts. 'Don't go easy on me because you feel pity.'

'It's not pity-'

'Then don't tell me this past week undoes the last ten years. I knew what I was doing back then-that you wouldn't have touched me if you'd known about Mya. But I wanted you so badly I didn't care. I'm the reason you and Jude were apart-'

'I made my own choices-'

'I'm the reason you hooked up with Daniel-don't think the irony of that was lost on me all those years-and I lied to my best friend, never told him why you stayed behind.'

Frustration radiates from Rafa. I give him s.p.a.ce. 'Jude knows.'

He falters. 'Since when?'

'Since Patmos, last year. After our little run-in, he pushed me for the truth, so I told him.'

Rafa laces his fingers behind his head. 'Ah, s.h.i.t.'

What I didn't tell Jude was what I couldn't even admit to myself back then: that it took a near-death experience for me to drop my guard with Rafa because I'd always needed to be better than the girls he hooked up with. And then I'd needed to despise him, so I could live with the choices that followed.

'Rafa...' The truth gnaws at me. I have to say it out loud to him before I bury it again. 'You and I f.u.c.ked up monumentally, but I could've left with the rest of you, even after our brawl. I chose my reputation-my fear of humiliation-over my brother. Over the truth.'

He drops his arms but doesn't respond. He's too busy feeding his own guilt.

'Do you want me to hurt you, Rafa? Is that what it's going to take for us to move on-me taking you through another window?'

He meets my eyes. 'What else is there?'

'How about forgiveness?'

His chest rises and falls. 'Too easy.'

'Too easy? More like we haven't had enough practice.' I splay my bare toes against the hardwood floor, try to control my breathing. 'Does that mean you can't forgive me?'

'I didn't say that.'

'Oh, so you're capable of forgiveness, but I'm not?'

'Gaby-'

'I'm not going to hit you or kick you or run your head through a wall, Rafa, so either you can accept I'm dealing with our past or you can't. And believe me, forgiveness isn't the easy option. It takes a h.e.l.l of a lot more effort than breaking bones.'

He's still propped against the desk, arms folded, grinding his jaw. 'How can you forgive what I did?'

'Because I know you. Because I've seen the best and the worst of you. Because of everything we've been through in the last hundred and thirty-nine years and what we've been through since you found me in the bar. G.o.d, because I want to move forward.'

'Yeah, but-'

'Because I love you, you idiot!'

The sentence hangs in the air. It's taken us both by surprise. We blink at each other, take a breath. I feel the flush climb my neck, check that I mean it.

I do.

Not just for who he's been for the past two weeks, but for our friendship before that. Before we screwed everything up.

'No you don't,' Rafa says. But the guilt and frustration are gone, replaced by something more fragile.

'Don't tell me what I do and don't feel, Rafa.'

He watches me, unreadable. The seconds stretch out.

'Then say it again.'

I look him the eye. They're difficult words because they strip me bare. 'I love you. You idiot.'

Rafa doesn't speak and I can't tell what he's thinking. This quiet intensity is something new. I close the distance until I'm standing between his legs. I don't touch him.

'That's not easy for me to say.'