The Dark One

SEVEN

"I'm not saying it again. It was Stacey's fault. She was wobbly, so I was wobbly, and that's why I fell," Isabel repeated. She picked a tiny piece of dead skin off her lower lip, and a droplet of blood appeared.

Max glanced around Michael and Adam's living room. Michael, Adam, Liz, and Maria were all looking at Isabel with varying degrees of disbelief. Clearly no one was buying her story completely. Max sure as hell wasn't.

"I wasn't even hurt. Just let it go already," Isabel added. She licked the droplet of blood away.

A cluster of beings in the consciousness shot Max a question about a cartoon on the muted TV. Max ignored it, forcing his connection to the consciousness as low as it would go. He needed to concentrate on his sister.

"Okay, so you fell, and you weren't hurt. Fine," Max said. "But what about the rest of it-the cracked lips, the way your face is all pale?"

"Oh, God. You sound exactly like Michael," Isabel exclaimed, burying her face in her hands.

Max glared over at Michael. "You know something you aren't saying?" he demanded. But he didn't even need Michael to answer. His aura said it all. There were sickly yellow snakes of fear all through it.

I should have seen it before, Max thought. No, forget that. He shouldn't have needed to see anything in Michael's aura. One good look at Isabel should have told him everything he needed to know.

"It's the akino," he said flatly.

"Whether it is or it isn't is my business," Isabel shot back, her voice suddenly stronger. "It isn't open for group discussion."

Maybe he should have caught it earlier, but there was still time to do what needed to be done. Max pushed himself up from the floor. He strode over to Isabel and pulled her to her feet. "We're going home," he said firmly. "I'm getting the communication crystals, and you're making the connection to the consciousness."

Isabel jerked away her arm, blue eyes burning feverishly. "No."

That's all she said. Just "no." But the threads of gunmetal gray crisscrossing her aura told him that she had no intention of backing down.

Max's gaze flicked briefly to the TV screen. The beings were more insistent now, pushing him to give the cartoon his whole attention so they could experience it.

Not now! Max thought. He ordered his eyes back to Isabel. "Izzy, if you don't-" His eyes sought out the TV again. He gave up, allowing the beings to watch the cartoon while he continued to talk to his sister. "If you don't connect, you'll die. I know. It almost happened to me. I was in the tunnel of light. Another few seconds and I'd have been gone."

Liz leaned over and snapped off the TV "Thanks," Max told her. She didn't respond. She didn't even look at him.

"Maybe Max is right," Michael said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

"Maybe? Maybe!" Max exploded. "There's no maybe about it."

"Hey, Trevor said-" Michael began.

"Trevor? As in the guy who tried to kill me?" Max snapped, his ire raising at an alarming rate. "That's who you're-" Another cluster of beings in the consciousness prodded Max, wanting to know what the smell coming from Adam was. Max ignored the question. "That's who you're going to listen to?"

"And who are we listening to right now, Max?" Isabel demanded, narrowing her eyes. "Is that you talking or a million little voices in your head?"

"Not that bull again," Max burst out, his hands clenching into fists. "All of you have this idea that I'm not myself anymore just because I'm connected to the consciousness."

"You're not you," Isabel told him, tears welling up in her eyes. "My brother Max would never have been watching cartoons while he was talking to me about the possibility that I might die." Her last words came out as a shriek.

"She's right," Liz said from her spot on the floor. She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees, as if preparing to ward off a blow. "You are-were-the most caring, considerate person I'd ever met. You couldn't even walk past a mouse in the bio lab if you knew it was in pain. Remember that day you healed that mouse, Fred?" This time Liz met his gaze steadily. "I think that was the day I fell in love with you."

The beings blasted another question about the Adam smell. Max scrubbed his face with his fingers. "Adam, what kind of gum are you chewing?"

"One piece banana. One piece cinnamon," Adam answered, without blinking an eye.

"Do you even listen to yourself, Max?" Michael burst out. "We're talking about Isabel's life, and you're babbling about bubble gum."

Max sat down on the floor again and closed his eyes, trying to block out as much sensation as possible so the consciousness would have less to respond to.

"I don't know what Trevor's deal is," Max said through gritted teeth. "I don't know why he'd say it's possible to survive the akino without making the connection. But I experienced it. I'm the only one of us who has." He took a deep breath and emphasized every word, hoping they would take him seriously. "It. Can. Not. Be. Survived."

"I remember standing by your bed near… near what we thought was the end," Maria jumped in. "Remember? We didn't just think Max was going to die-we thought he had died. He actually stopped breathing."

Max opened his eyes just a touch and peered up at Isabel. "Are you listening?" he asked, then he closed his eyes again, resisting the urge to run his fingers across the plastic of the closest beanbag chair to allow the beings of the consciousness to feel it.

"If I have to choose between dying or being like Max is now, I'd rather die," Isabel spat out.

"Don't say that," Maria exclaimed.

"I don't think it sounds too bad to be part of the consciousness," Adam said matter-of-factly. "You'd never be alone."

"You'd be a puppet," Isabel cried. "And you know what that feels like, right, Adam? You killed Valenti while you were-"

"It's not the same," Max protested, keeping his eyes closed. "The consciousness doesn't make me kill. It doesn't-"

"It tried to make you kill DuPris," Liz reminded him, voice harsh. "You might not always be a puppet. But the consciousness can pull your strings whenever."

Max heard footsteps pass in front of him. "Isabel, you have to do it," he heard Maria say. He risked a brief squint and saw that Maria had wrapped Isabel in her arms. "I can't lose my frister," she added.

"What's a frister?" Adam asked.

"It's more than a friend, almost a sister," Liz answered. She sprang to her feet and joined the Isabel-Maria knot.

"Listen to them," Max begged. "If you can't listen to me, listen to them." He felt like he'd swallowed something alive, something with claws. It tore at his guts as he waited to hear Isabel's response.

"If I join the consciousness, you will lose me," Isabel explained. "If I take the risk, if I go through the akino without making the connection, you might lose me. But I might survive. At least I'll have the chance of surviving."

"I'm not dead!" Max yelled. He couldn't sit there another second, doing nothing while his sister talked about him this way-as if he'd killed himself. He jumped up, pushed his way between Liz and Maria, and grabbed both of Isabel's hands in his.

"What are you doing?" Isabel cried.

"I'm going to show you the consciousness. I'm going to prove that it's nothing to be afraid of," Max answered.

Isabel tried to jerk away when she realized he had begun making the connection with her. Max tightened his grip. He wasn't going to let her go. He was never going to let her go.

Images from Isabel began to flash through Max's mind. A silvery incubation pod, broken open. A dark-haired guy on a motorcycle. A creature that was half Sheriff Valenti and half wolf. Max's face, eyes vacant, mouth slack.

And he was in. He could feel Isabel's heart beating in his body now. Their body. He could feel her breath in his lungs.

As slowly as he could, he allowed the volume of his connection to the consciousness to come back up and slid into the ocean of auras.

He felt a flicker of panic from Isabel as they were surrounded by the billions of beings, as they became part of the one, the whole, the single living entity-made up of many-that was the consciousness.

The panic in Isabel swelled. Her-their-heartbeat began to flutter. Faster. Faster.

Abruptly his connection with Isabel broke. Max's heart caught with fear. He reached for her, but all he felt was blackness.

"I can't even describe how it felt," Isabel said. She pulled her comforter tighter around her shoulders, even though Michael felt it was a little too warm in her bedroom already.

"It's like I was… dissolving," she continued, her eyes wide. "Or like I was being swallowed up. Then I guess I fainted. I've never fainted in my life."

Lightning bolts of yellow fear zigzagged across her aura as she spoke. And when she glanced over at the communication crystals on her bedside table, her entire aura became the color of fear. The yellow light surrounding her gave her face a corpselike appearance.

"I probably would have fainted, too," Michael told her. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to force all the little hairs back down. What she'd described sounded a lot like death to him. Wasn't that what death was-complete loss of self?

A loud knock sounded at the door, and before he or Isabel could answer, Max came in and stood awkwardly at the foot of Isabel's bed.

"I just wanted to see if you were okay," he said.

"You should have thought about that before you forced me into the connection," Isabel told him, her voice cold enough to turn lava to ice.

"I didn't know it would make you feel so-" Max told her.

"So much like I was dying?" Isabel interrupted.

Max picked a little glass kitten off her dresser and turned it over in his hands.

"Most of the time for me, it's like a tropical ocean, with lots of salt in the water, so that you're really buoyant," Max explained. "Sometimes you hit a bad stretch-like a riptide, I guess. But most of the time…" He raised the kitten to his lips and licked one of its glass ears. Michael's stomach turned just watching him. "I really thought you'd see that it was nothing to be so afraid of."

"What are you doing to that thing?" Michael burst out.

Max's eyebrows drew together. "I was just looking at it. So?"

"You were licking it," Michael informed him, his face a mask of disgust. His best friend was getting freakier by the second.

Max put the kitten down fast but didn't offer any explanation.

"Let me guess. Some of the beings wondered how it tasted?" Isabel asked.

"I just wanted to be sure you were okay," Max said. He gave the communication crystals a pointed look. "You should use those before the pain gets too bad." He glanced from Isabel to Michael and seemed to tense up. Then he hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Probably afraid he'd start licking something else and totally push Isabel off the sanity cliff, Michael thought.

"I feel like I don't even have a brother anymore," Isabel whispered, staring at the closed door.

Don't go there, Michael ordered himself. If he started thinking about what Max had become, Michael would go flying off the sanity cliff himself. He had to concentrate on Isabel.

"You know if I-when I-get too weak to stop him, he's going to force those crystals into my hand," Isabel said, sounding like a small child. "He'll make me connect whether I want to or not. Maria and Liz would probably even help him. Maybe even Alex, too, if he was through sampling every girl in the state," Isabel added, still staring at the door.

Michael reached out and took her chin between his fingers. He forced her to look at him. "I'm not letting anybody do anything to you that you don't want done."

Was it right to promise her that? Was it right to agree to help her do something that could possibly kill her? Michael didn't know for sure, but it was necessary. Isabel needed someone on her side, someone who'd go with her through hell and back if that's what she wanted.

Michael had to be that guy. Right or wrong, he was seeing this thing through with her.

"I don't know if you'll be able to stop him," Isabel said. "Not if he gets everyone else on his side. Unless-"

Suddenly her expression became determined, and she looked more like the Isabel he knew and loved than she had in the last few days. She threw off the comforter and swung her legs around so they were hanging off the bed.

"Unless we leave," she said. "Now."

Michael froze. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Isabel said. "If Max can't find me, I'm safe."