Page 53 of Remnants
I shrug. He’s dead already, so what happens to him doesn’t matter now. Whether he’s cut to pieces or peed on, he doesn’t feel any of it. But I can agree with that level of contempt for him. I’d probably join him if I could aim as well as they can.
More liquid pours down the hole, and I turn to Jackson. He squeezes a bottle of lighter fluid over it. The bottle squirts empty, and he drops it in the hole, too. Jack pulls a box of matches from his pocket, makes eye contact with me, then tosses it.
I catch it on reflex.
“Light him up, little one.”
Right.
Thumbing the box, I pick a match from the pile and strike it along the edge. The spark instantly catches, changing to a bright and then steady flame. Its heat warms my fingertips as the tiny blaze flickers and dances in the mild nighttime air. I take a deep breath, and the smell of sulfur fills my nose.
I drop the match over the hole.
The tiny light falls down the dark pit, then bursts into a full flame the second it meets the lighter fluid. It gobbles Gordon up, hungrily spreading over his remains and flaring brighter, higher, until I can see nothing but the fire.
I stare at it, mesmerized. Hoping it will melt and seal the cracks inmy soul if I stand close enough.
“We’re going to defeat Gifted Enterprise.” Aiden’s voice draws my gaze to him. His eyes are locked on mine, his expression serious. Dirt powders his white dress shirt, streaks smeared across his face and exposed forearms from sweat. “No matter what happens, the five of us will prevail. I swear this to you, Raegan, on Gordon’s corpse. He’s the first of many. We’ll do the same with Thorne. Royce. Holt. Charles. And anyone else from GE who tries to stop us.”
His words hang in the night with so much power that I can almost feel it resonate in my chest. Maybe it’s these woods, or the time of night, or the ritualistic burning of our enemy at our feet. But it feels like his words hold weight that fills the air around us, suspended in time like the air in my lungs.
The others are watching me with a similar intensity, and I wonder if there was something to the calls for witchcraft hundreds of years ago. If there isn’t some truth to what was said about what happened, if magical oaths like this are possible, or if it had been a single gifted user with that ability, and people assumed all others withmagiccould do the same.
My body heats beneath their stares, and I’m suddenly filled with the urge to touch each of them. To feel their skin on mine. My clothing feels tight and restrictive, and I want to rip it off. I want to stand at their center and offer myself to them, give in to them while they equally give in to me. My heart hammers in my chest, and electricity buzzes under my skin as I’m consumed by those thoughts. By the nagging need to press myself against each and every one of them. I crave their hands on me more than oxygen, my bodypulsating with that insatiable ache.
I lick my parted lips, staring at each of them and all of them at once, ready to make that demand, when a loudPOPfrom the fire behind us makes my heart stutter out of rhythm and my breath expels in a rush.
Fuck. What was I about to do?
I take another draw of air, realizing then that they’re all waiting for me to say something. Focusing back on the fiery pit, I steel myself to speak to Gordon one last time.
“You are nothing to me. When the last flame leaves you with nothing but bones, I’m going to destroy those, too. There will be no remnants left of you in this world or the next. Because one day, I’m going to forget you completely. It may not be today or tomorrow, but I promise that day will come when I’ll be free of you.”
Kellan tosses another log on the fire—the one without the body in it—and the fire crackles and spurts a slew of sparks into the air.
I’m cuddled against Dane, his arm around my back as we lean against the boulder Jackson dropped by the fire for us.
“We need more wood,” Kellan murmurs to Aiden, who stands from one of the logs he’d cut to make bench seats around the fire. He draws out an axe made completely of metal and follows Kellan out of the small clearing into the denser woods to pick out another small tree to fell for firewood.
I didn’t expect burning a body to its bones to take so long.
Then again, I don’t think I did a whole lot of thinking about what would come after seeing his body. That pretty much occupied all my thoughts.
Jackson has been keeping the fire in the hole well-oxygenated and burning, but it’s been hours since it began.
I close my eyes, trying to let the quiet sounds of nature lull me to sleep, but it never comes. I can’t sleep here, knowing what’s happening a few yards behind me.
“How are you feeling?” Dane asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I feel…nothing…right now. Just…blank. No anger, no sadness, no relief. No sense of closure like I’d hoped.”
He hums softly. “I’m probably the last person to give advice on closure,” he teases gently. “When you told me Vera was dead…I don’t think I ever accepted it. I neversawher after that, so it didn’t feel real. I tried writing to her in my notebook to see if that would help, but I think it just made my denial worse.”
My chest squeezes tightly at the memory of when I’d told him she was dead. That I had done it. And how he must have felt, day after day, as he wrangled with whether or not to believe me. And then what it was like when each day passed, and he never saw her. Years later, when I saw him for the first time in that auto repair shop, he was still drowning in the pain of her loss, as fresh as if it had just happened.
“What I’m trying to say is…I don’t think there’s some perfect moment that gives us closure. I think it’s something we have to work on, on our own terms, about what that means to us. Whether that’s accepting it’s over, deep in our hearts, letting time create the distance we need to be able to leave it behind—and actually choosing to do it—or some other way.”
He pauses. Swallows. “It’s you who helped me move forward, Rae. As long as I’m with you, I’ve been able to live again. I can breathe again. Enjoy the little moments and have hope for the future. You mean everything to me.”
