Sun Kissed

16. The Storm (EDITED)

16. The Storm

Enough clouds collected around the sun to stifle the murderous heat. Sofi made her way through the Amazon, not so concerned by how the air cooled and the sky darkened by degrees.

"Long time, no see."

    The gruff greeting made Sofi actually look where she was going. Everything had been a blur since she left the waterfall.

She had to blink twice. For a split second, she mistook the man before her for Amancio's dark-haired puppet master. But it was only Toni. He had shaved his face and cut his hair since they'd last talked. Toni looked different. He didn't have Julio's Cheshire grin, but there were similarities that Sofi hadn't noticed until now.

Sofi approached him and gestured to his knife. "Please tell me that's not your blood."

Toni cleaned the blade on a frond. Kept his eyes averted. "You're all wet."

    Sofi bit her lip. "We – I mean I –"

    "Went for a swim with the creature that almost drowned you last week. I know."

    Sofi couldn't come up with a polite way to excuse herself fast enough.

    "Did you kiss him?" Toni looked at her now, his knife tucked away. Arms crossed. A look that told of something like a smile and yet not like a smile.

    Sofi faltered. Was he taunting her?

    And then she smelled the answer on him. Mint leaves.

    "You're him," Sofi whispered. "I don't know how, but you are."

    When she started to back away, Toni relaxed his arms and dropped the tease.

    "Sofi, what's wrong?" His gaze softened, subtracting his likeness to the dark-haired Encantado. But it was all a trick.

    "Get away from me."

Toni took a step toward her. "Sofi, what did I do?"

And then an eruption of laughter. Deep and lazy. Sofi and Toni followed it to its source.

"Our Sofia is having a little trouble telling us apart."

A teenage boy crouched in the trees. Sofi shuffled backwards until her spine connected with Toni's chest. She retreated behind his arms, using them as armor.

Toni's voice had lost its mocking edge. "Sofi, who is that?"

Julio's skin glowed like a harvest moon under the darkening sky. His eyes were just as black and cosmic as Sofi remembered them. If only she could reach him and scratch out those black holes. Scratch them out before they swallowed her.

"Make no mistake," Julio said, grinning madly, "only one of us is a man."

Thunder exploded simultaneously with his own laughter.

"The other is a monster."

Sofi threaded her fingers through Toni's.

"Run."

~

Thunder. Torrents of rain. Insane laughter. It all fed into a single storm.

    Toni had tried to ask Sofi where she was taking them. Either she hadn't heard him over the roar of rain or she was too terrified to pause long enough to tell him. Thunder struck violently behind them. The Encantado's laughter chased their heels, but Toni didn't dare look back.

    He understood why Sofi had her suspicions. Though he and the shapeshifter weren't twins, they could pass for brothers. Sofi dragged him before a body of water. A small inlet with, of all things, a house, on its shore.

    "Who lives here?" Toni asked, not so concerned about the loose tree branches that tornadoed past their heads.

    Sofi shoved him up the stairs. "Just get inside!"

    Once they shut the door behind them, it was like waking up from a dream. The familiar objects swaying from the ceiling gave him clarity and purpose. Toni went to work, drawing up a tarp and looping it through one of the hooks suspended from a beam. He found a hammer and nails, with which he used to complete the fort around the solitary couch. It didn't take long for Sofi to get the message and seek refuge there. When the tarp was secured, Toni joined her. He sat on the floor, soaking, praying that they had put enough distance between themselves and the shapeshifter. That the rattling of the tarp was enough to mask their breathing.

    Toni tried to steady his breaths, but it was no use. The storm had robbed the air of warmth. He clenched his teeth against the shivering. Bit his tongue over and over.

"Toni."

He turned around. Sofi was as soaked as he, on the couch hugging her knees to her chin.

"What are you doing?"

Toni looked down at his shirt. It sagged with too much moisture, making the chills worse. "I'm f-fine."

But Sofi was already taking off her shirt. She cast it to the floor. "Just get over here until the storm is over."

He knew her skin was already wet, yet the rivulets racing down to her navel caught him off guard. He followed her tan lines north and then back south again. More marks like the one by her eye winked at him from unexpected places.

Toni tore his eyes away from the simple design of her black bralette. Reluctantly, he peeled the wet fabric over his head and met Sofi on the couch. He stretched out with the cushion at his back and Sofi curled against his middle, his arms crossed over her abdomen. It was a sweet kind of torture.

Neither of them could sleep while the storm raged on. No one wanted to acknowledge the unfair advantage their bodies had over their emotions. So they talked of other things.

Sofi confessed her mission to reunite the red-haired Encantado with his past.

"You don't happen to know where I could find instructions for this kind of thing, would you?"

    She claimed that he, the shifter – Amancio – that wasn't all that bad. Sort of like a child in some ways. But Julio, the one who had conjured the storm, he was the true monster.

    "He's the one who . . . I'm so sorry, Toni."

    So his sister was being guarded by his copycat. Toni didn't know why he cared about Sofi feeling guilty, but he did.

    "Do you think you would have still helped Amancio even if he couldn't bring my sister back?"

    They were so close, he could feel her thinking.

    "There's no way to be sure," she said slowly. "But I think I would have."

    After a while, Toni said, "I admire that."

    Some of the tension in Sofi's body slipped away. The shift gave him permission to relax too, despite his internal protest.

    "I know it hasn't been that long since I got here, but every time I walk into the forest, I come out feeling a little different from the person I was when I walked in."

Toni closed his eyes. "I know what you mean. I've learned that nature takes, but she can give too."

In a very small voice, Sofi said, "What I did to Paola . . . I know I don't deserve your forgiveness –"

"You don't."

She tensed.

"But know," he held her, really held her, and spoke into her hair, "Sofia, I see that you're trying."