Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for teens .txt) 📗

Kill me to stop me.

I grinned at him. “You gonna hit me again and take off?” I backed off and raised my fists. “Better come at me good ’cause you only get to sucker punch a Weller once.”

He shook his head. “No, but maybe I love you more than you love me.”

That made me laugh, else I would’ve started bawling right there. “How do you figure? You can’t feel anything at all. I would imagine love is pretty far outside of your normal parameters about right now.”

“Maybe. But this war is unnecessary if we give the chalkdrive back to my father. You and your family can go on living. I can get my medication and be Micaiah again. And maybe that is the most logical course of action.”

Wind came and blasted us, cold and dry. I took a deep breath and let it out. “This is our Gethsemane. You are asking God to take away this cup of poison we’re to drink from. Only thing we’re missing are tears of blood.”

“You are making Christian references from the gospels.”

“You’re a jackerin’ genius.” Sure, I cussed, but he was making me so tired, his emotionless slow despair ... only it wasn’t despair, it was his logical mind weighing our odds of success versus the price we’d have to pay to succeed. Even after we had pulled a miracle out of our butts to get away at the salvage yards. Even after three armies appeared out of thin air to help us fight our way through the Regios.

Micaiah then quoted from the Mass, from hearing Pilate saying it over and over, “He took the cup, gave it to his disciples and said, ‘Take this, all of you, and drink it.’”

I finished it: “‘For this is my blood, which will be poured out for you and for many.’” I nodded. “Jesus could’ve run, but he didn’t. He saw it through to the cross, all the way to the end.”

“Are we to be crucified?” Micaiah asked.

I stepped forward and rested my head on the thing’s chest. It wasn’t a boy anymore; it was a thing. And I missed Micaiah. I missed his laugh, his tears, his hope. My boy. My sweet, sweet boy.

“Rachel didn’t understand the Gospel,” I whispered into his chest. “It’s about sacrifice. It’s about faith, hope, and love. And though Pilate might think his Lord of the Rings fairytale is the best story ever told, it’s not. The Bible has always been a bestseller, and it still is.” I leaned back to gaze into his face. “If we are crucified? If we die? We will rise again in fulfillment of the scriptures. That’s the promise. We can’t be stopped. And your father knows it.”

Micaiah didn’t respond. He seemed to have made up his mind about something.

“Let’s just walk,” I finally said. “Let’s just walk to Plainville and let it all be what it will be.”

And we did. We walked toward the town of Plainville, on the edge of the Juniper.

I’d crossed her again, the whole way. Not many people did that even once, and I’d done it twice.

I felt it in my feet, felt it more deeply in my heart, all those kilometers.

Sunset. Twilight. We hit the outskirts of the deserted town, whispering with wind and ghosts. The houses were cairns, piles of cement rubble and old drywall and moldering siding. The buildings on the main street were gravestones, concrete foundations and nothing else. Being so close to the World, the salvage monkeys had taken everything of any value out. What was left had been carted down to the airport to join the other piles of scrap and crap there.

A tall shape loomed over the weedy dirt road between the dinosaur-like cement skeletons of storefronts on either side. At first, I thought it was Alice, but no, it was even bigger and squatter. It was a Stanley, and by the looks of her, the Marilyn Monroe.

Standing under her were Wren and Sharlotte. I recognized the arrogant stance of Wren’s body, and Sharlotte—my Sharlotte—her one leg, her New Morality dress from Eryn Lopez, her everything.

And Rachel was there, that soulless Vixx who we gave a soul, and even Pilate, in his duster and hat, sipping from a coffee cup and his cigar stinking up the town; the smoke suddenly hitting me as the wind shifted.

And the wind will shift, always. A good wind will turn bad, and an evil wind will turn blessed. Always.

I left Micaiah behind and ran to them.

My family. Alive. We’d come back together one last time. My people, my family, my friends, my blood.

I melted into their arms and saw that Dutch was there as well. Didn’t know where Alice or June Mai were, but I hoped they’d lived to see the night come.

Sharlotte held me the longest, and I held her, and I’d never felt closer to her.

Pilate had his arm around Rachel. The two of them together ... well, it looked right.

“Hi, Cavvy,” Rachel said in a soft voice. “It’s so good to see you. I hoped we would. I really did.”

She still had her emotions and tears glimmered in her eyes.

“She dug us out,” Sharlotte said. “Rachel saved us all. Marisol fled, but Rachel dug us out, and we got Marilyn working, and here we are.”

“I used hope as a weapon,” Rachel said shyly.

Sharlotte continued. “We got down out of the Rockies, though, and met Nikola Nichols in her Stanleys walking toward Denver. You made quite an impression on her, and she wanted to make sure the cure got out into the world. As did Alice. Her and her rogue Gammas found us in Limon.” Sharlotte laughed suddenly, and it sounded like a song. “When Alice heard we were Wellers, she said she was a Weller, too, and we were sisters.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

No one knew. And no one knew what happened to June Mai or Nikola, either.

I said a prayer for Alice, and it felt like such a natural thing to do, to pray