Echo Soul Seekers

Teasing. Taunting. As I gape at the canopy of blooms I once viewed as vibrant, budding with life—now turned to a snarl of blackened dead vines infested with rats, left to droop over a horrible, putrid, rotting cesspool of a spring that smells just like death.
    Even the lawn of green velvet where Dace and I shared our love is nothing more than a burned-out rug swarming with insects.
    And the wounds I thought healed are now back—my finger once again throbbing, swollen, and red—my feet covered in seeping blisters that stick to my shoes.
    Dace lets loose a long stream of curses and yanks hard on my hand. Urging me to leave, to run, to get out while we can. But I can’t go just yet. There’s something still left to see.
    I whirl around, horrified by the monstrous sight that confronts me.
    My stifled cry of anguish cause Dace to turn. His eyes widen in disbelief when he sees the Cade from my nightmares. The one with gleaming red eyes, an open gash of a mouth, and the swarm of two-headed, soul-stealing snakes shooting out from the place where his tongue ought to be.
    But unlike the Cade from my dreams, this one swiftly expands as though molded and stretched by unseen hands. His flesh adopting a strange scaly texture, emitting an odd reddish glow—as his torso lengthens, his limbs bulk up and widen with thick corded muscles—while his clothes, no longer able to contain him, shred and disintegrate, falling like feathers to his enormous clawed feet. Leaving him massive and naked and looming before us, with his faithful coyote inflating right along with him—two sets of eyes glowering an identical red.
    Without a word, Dace drags me toward Horse. His good arm circling my waist, about to heave me onto his back when Horse gallops away and Raven soars with him. Leaving us with no choice but to race through a dying land that grows bleaker with each passing step.
    Our exodus mocked by Cade’s taunting voice, calling, “Run, brother! Run all you want. But you’ll never escape me. I’m your Echo—always with you—always watching.”

 
    eight
    “How long have you known?” Dace paces his small functional kitchen. Taking two steps to the old stove, one from there to the ancient white fridge, three more to the stained porcelain sink, and then one and a half to the stove again, where he pauses, rubs a weary hand over his eyes, and shoots me a look so conflicted, I hesitate to meet it.
    I drop onto a chair next to the carved wooden table that’s nearly identical to the one in Leftfoot’s adobe, wishing Dace would come join me. But realizing he won’t even consider it until I provide some of the answers he seeks, I take a fortifying breath and say, “Paloma told me about the circumstance of your birth—about Leandro altering Chepi’s perception long enough to seduce her.”
    “ Seduce her?” Dace whirls on me, his face a mask of outrage. “He raped her. Chepi was a sixteen-year-old virgin that day. She wasn’t looking for trouble.”
    I shrink under his gaze, then force myself to straighten again, determined to explain. “I didn’t mean it like that—like it was some romantic tryst. What I meant to say is that he lured her. He lured her with witchcraft and black magick. The Richters know how to change people’s perception—they’ve been doing it for centuries. It’s how they rule this town and nearly everyone in it. It’s how Cade made us think the spring was still enchanted when it had already been corrupted. Leandro fed into her dreams, allowed her to see what she most wanted to see, and then, once she was completely enthralled…” I leave the sentence unfinished, seeing no reason to illustrate.
    Dace waves it away, batting the empty space before him, his eyes fatigued and red-rimmed in a way I’ve never seen them. “I’m the product of violence.” He shakes his head, his gaze cold and empty. “There’s no getting around it. I never should’ve been born.”
    “Don’t say that!” I grip the table hard, fighting the urge to leap over the counter that separates us and hug him tightly to me. Right now he’s an island—a population of one. He wouldn’t welcome the intrusion.
    “Do you know how much easier her life would’ve been without me?” His voice is flat and dull. “Every time she looks at me she’s reminded of the worst day of her life.”
    “I don’t believe that,” I say. “And you shouldn’t either.”
    He dismisses my meaningful look, saying, “Really, Daire? Just how