by Alexa Dare
“Because of me.”
“No, because the general allowed others to leave and spread the disease.” To ease the weight in her chest, she breathed in stagnant, earthy inhales. In a hot rush, her throat clogged. Not one for sentiment, she blinked against tears that failed to form.
Vincent, his pale face drawn, sat native style and rocked in place. The sight of him in too-tight light green medical scrubs pressed tears into the inner corners of her eyes.
She blinked and forced a wide smile.
Lack of motion and meds added a few pounds. Even though a tad heavy, her son was a striking young man. His blond hair brought out the light blue of his gaze. As he glanced at her with his face totally void of emotion, the eerie pale light of his irises nearly faded into the whites of his eyes. “We have been monsters together.”
“Always you and me.” She nodded. “The two of us.”
“Men such as the general are the true beasts.”
“Mark that one slain.” Nora fisted her gloved hands. Oh, the joy of seeing the tyrant General Gardner ripped apart by the tornado the little girl created.
“More of them will come.” His icy blues stared back at her.
“No doubt.”
“What if there was a special plague?” Vincent rocked in quick fits and starts. “Every disease selects its hosts. In one manner or other.”
Tension knots drilled her mouth edges. “About the pox…”
“I have never tried to undo what has been done. Perhaps after breakfast. I prefer grape jelly.” He stood. The movement stirred the air from his room.
The scent of old blood floated into her nose. Her quick, thick swallow poked the hollow of her throat. “So, you will try to reverse the pox?”
“Perhaps, but first, I want to meet others like me.” Vincent’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“The other Children of the Elements are younger.” Her breath caught. Dare she bring them to—the monster—her son? “More fragile.”
Darcy Lynn, so little and ill, getting worse by the minute.
“I shall not cause them harm.” Her son’s gaze held neither caring nor threat. He tilted his head to one side as if eyeing her, his own mother, as he would a slimy slug before pouring salt.
Nora’s chest chilled. An unreal shift swirled in her temples. Did she gaze into the shrewd eyes of death? “I’m not here to bargain, Vincent. I came to you for help.”
Beneath her, the tunnel floor shifted as if alive.
Alarms blared in shrill pulses. Blue and white lights flashed along the sides of the hall.
“My soon-to-be new friend is none too happy.” Vincent smirked.
Nora leapt to her feet. “I have to stop Junior from bringing the entire mountain peak down on top of us.” She grasped the silver of her choker. “The new collars are altering our powers. His ability might be out of control.”
“Shall we chat another time?” asked Vincent.
The ground quaked again.
From the ceiling, dirt sifted like fine rain.
“You’re truly the son the project shaped you to be.” The harsh truth of Nora’s words choked her.
“A monster through and through.” Her son’s laugh echoed harsh behind her.
She about faced and turned her back to the child she brought into a world of experiments and genetic mutations. As his laughter echoed through the passage, she dared not look back. “Stay in your metal room where you’ll be safe.”
He cackled. “You are not a fool, Nora. There is no safety when one is about to be buried alive.”
The hallway bucked beneath her feet. Exhaling musty dust from her nose, Nora ducked her head. The floor jerked in swaying inches. She stumbled but caught her balance. Full out, she dashed through the tunnels to deal with a boy able to direct the earth’s energy.
If only she thought she had not just left a worse threat behind.
Chapter 4
Just when Brody thought his situation couldn’t stink any worse, the two men holding him captive built a campfire inside the Devil’s Ridge cave. As orange and yellow firelight tongues lapped at the gloom, rank body odor, in ninety-plus degrees heat, musked strong.
“Hard to fathom.” Helmsey shook his head as he sat on the ground on one side of the fire to Brody’s left. His captor, dressed in filthy leafy camo, stared in awe.
“You’re telling us things are even worse than what we were told.” About a yard out on the far edge of the burning woodpile, Tuck waved his arms wide.
Oh, man.
As Brody held his breath, the roaring fire crackled, and thick low-hanging smoke stung his eyes. Burnt inhales poked at his throat. Sweat dripped from his temples.
As shadow and light danced on the walls, he propped his elbows on his knees and slumped his head between his legs. If he heaved, at least his face hovered close to the ground. Besides, the lower air stunk a little less there.
After a moment, he inhaled a lungful.
Did he catch the tart whiff of dirty feet?
Before the fire, Tuck held a pair of grayish white socks, one with a hole at the big toe.
The back of Brody’s throat gaped apple-wide. He gulped, and his tonsils clicked. He mouth breathed. An unclean, half-rotten aftertaste coated his tongue. Like Tuck’d brewed tea with his filthy socks and forced him to drink a swig.
Delete, delete, delete. Erase.
There was no taking back the image or the thought.
Were they trying to smother him on purpose? Unable to clear his mind, Brody cupped his hand over his non-shave-worthy lower face and sipped a shallow, sluggish inhale.
By the second, the warmth in the cave spiked.
His casual military drabs, as if over-starched, scuffed his skin in the rising heat.
Helmsey shrugged out of his camo jacket. Sweat stains browned the leaf patterns around and under his armpits into fall foliage. “You’re trying to tell us their powers are stronger than we thought.”
“I’m just telling you the straight of the project.” With any luck Brody would scare them spitless in the process. “Like I said, they’re all under the age of sixteen. The youngest is only seven. You heard about the tornado that hit the next town over, right?”
Helmsey grunted and pawed his chin. “Even bigger one down in Oak Ridge. Razed one of them big sites flat.”
Relief and sadness squirmed in Brody’s gut. “She did that. Darcy Lynn controls the wind.”
Tuck fanned a sock at the flames.
The stink would fry Brody’s nose hair sooner or later. “The next oldest is ten. Junior directs the earth and makes stuff grow—”
“That ain’t no big deal.” Tuck snorted.
“Anywhere, anytime, and he causes earthquakes.”
“You don’t say.” Helmsey chuckled.
“The twins are thirteen. Hannah directs water and Abe fire.” Brody took in a breath to ramp his campfire tale, but a cough erupted into a wet belch.
“Let me get this here straight. There’s not just wind, earth, fire, and water, but one nobody knows about, right?” Tuck fanned both socks to dry curdled sweat into the once white cotton fibers. “And this last guy is a real bad fella.”
“Not exactly.” Brody squeaked out words in long breaths to keep from inhaling too often. “Vincent’s a sixteen-year-old and not bad for a teenager.” As if telling a fireside ghost story, he leaned in. “Though his powers are majorly deadly.”
“So, this here fifth one is called the void.” Helmsey rolled up his sleeves to reveal hairy, beefy lower arms. “But this teenager that controls it draws pictures?”
“It means—” Nah, telling them the ability came from the ether or psyche won’t cut it. “From what I understand, the void is the vast power of the mind.”
Tuck put down the socks, sighed, and stared lazily into the flames.
Helmsey eyed the yard-high flickers of orange. “The void’s the big picture. Except this kid draws little pictures.”
“That makes bugs and germs and such.” Tuck ran h
is dirty sock-tainted hands over a thin crop of hair, yawned, and wagged his head.
“Is that right, Brody?” Helmsey crossed his legs at the ankle and bent to untie his hiking boots.
“Insects, viruses, plagues.” Tears slid from the outer corners of Brody’s eyes from the acrid smoke sting. Brody croaked out, “There’s another one too. The Master of the Void’s mother. She doesn’t control one of the elements, but she holds the power of life and death. One touch from her, and she can stop your heart. Or make it pop like a zit.”
“They got them a whopper of a freak show going on inside that mountain.” Tuck lost himself again in an open stare at the orange yellow glow.
From all sides, shadows swayed along the granite. Like bony fingers reaching from the grave.
Brody’s neck hairs prickled.
“Not as bad as the fools in here.” Barking coughs erupted from the cave entrance. The third stranger stood just outside the cave and called out, “What the heck are you doing in there? Cooking yourselves alive?”
“Crap.” Tuck tossed his socks in the fire and shoved his coffee brown-stained bare feet into his boots.
“Sir, we uh...” Helmsey fought to tie his shoestrings.
The flames engulfed the socks in a bright flare. Brody covered his face with his forearms. Even as the heat scorched the underside of his arms. The smell of burnt hair choked him.
A man squealed, more pig-like than manly, then there were smacking and slapping noises.
A gunshot boomed.
Too late, Brody hunkered down and covered his head with his arms.
“Another half hour and I would have found the three of you dead.” The backlit stranger spoke in a low rumbling drawl. “No smoke vents. You would have slowly smothered yourselves to death. Put the fire out and get out. Now.”
A red-faced Helmsey scooped cave-floor grime onto the campfire with a short-handled shovel. His bulging eyes, below a bright pink, browless forehead, angled back and forth to and from the opening.
With his mouth filled with tart saliva, Brody sat up.
The fire had seared off Helmsey’s brows, but where the heck had Tuck gone?
Brody squinted through the flames and found a lump on the cave floor and caught sight of camo patterns in the flame shifting like moving grass.
Brody half-stood.
Smoke rose from the end of the mass. Was the man’s hair burning? Half on fire, Tuck lay prone and didn’t move.
“That idiot’ll not be a bother to you again,” said the stranger.
“You. You.” Brody ducked his head and dry heaved. “Shot. Tuck.”
“There’s work-with stupid and then there’s don’t-get-it stupid. Tuck’s not getting it got him killed. My bullet just happened to get the honor of doing so.” The man gripped Brody’s elbow and hauled him to his feet.
With an uplift to his hurt shoulder—ow, ow, ow—the stranger guided out of the cave. Outside, late morning light blinded him. Gobbling mouthfuls of fresh air, he slammed his eyes shut. The coolness, after the overheated inside, slapped him hard.
The dude that shot Tuck pulled Brody out onto a ledge with trees rooted in the rock cracks.
Brody stumbled.
The guy steadied him and jerked him to a halt.
“Folks call me Yates.” Ex-military, bald and broad chested, the man stood at attention. Laugh lines bordered blue eyes devoid of humor and caring. “The pox shut down the entire county. The fittest will survive, so if you help us out, I’ve got use for you. If not…” He shrugged a broad shoulder. “You get me?”
An area on the nape of Brody’s sweaty neck burned and itched. He pressed his nails into his palms to keep from scratching. “Look, man, if you had any idea what I’ve been through the last few days. Those two goons—”
“The dregs of the militia. With so many ill, I should have come myself.”
“You’re one of them.” Brody’s knees gave way.
Yates’s pinching grip saved him from hitting the ground. “I’m head of the militia. Our current mission is simple. We take control of the gifted children, then overthrow the feds.”
“A government takeover?” Brody’s voice broke as if he were thirteen again. “Sure, right. As head guy, you know about Cantrell. Where and how he is. and you’ve got a say as to what happens to us.”
“We need your talents, but know that once in the cause, you remain in the cause.”
“Boss, once the corpse stops smoking,” Helmsey stumbled out of the cave entrance, “I’ll bury it. I’m awfully sorry—”
I’m in a hurry and running low on patience.” Yates lifted his gun and fired again.
As Brody staggered back until his shoulder blades grated stone, a ringing shrilled amidst his dulled hearing.
A nickel-sized black hole punched into the middle of Helmsey’s forehead. A boyish smile played over his mouth, then the corners of his lips drooped, his face went slack, and his body pitched face first toward the ground. Crimson flowed from the hole as if poured from an iced tea pitcher spout.
“I’ll send others to clean up the mess.” Yates grinned a wide all’s-good smile and headed down the slope. “Glad to have you and your brother as part of our group.”
Unable to protest through a throat pinched closed by fear, Brody stumbled along as they left the cave behind, he was caught in a snare of real-life schemes and plots with no way out.
Chapter 5
No way was Junior giving up the stuffed tan dog with the pink ribbon collar around its neck. He stood, water dripping off him onto a floor with a drain in the middle. A sink and cabinet covered the wall to one side and a shower stall the other. Across from the door, a lidded toilet blended in with the white of the rest of the bathroom.
Carved rock capped the ceiling. In the his too-clean condition, cold shivers joined the anger shaking his arms and legs.
So that he could stay with Darcy Lynn, the nurse made him wash up—nothing wrong with a little dirt—but while he showered, she took his jeans, t-shirt, and skivvies. With his stomach growling, he longed for bacon and biscuits and gravy. The little bit of a throb through his head didn’t affect his hunger at all.
Nurse Weems left him a thin rough white bath towel.
No clothes. No plant and marble bag. No nothing.
The old biddy would have stolen the toy too if Junior hadn’t hung it, by its ribbon, over the shower nozzle pipe.
Once he got the stuffed toy out of the stall, he wiped the dampness from its fur, then set it on top of the commode tank.
Black coat button eyes watched.
Quick like, Junior dabbed at his chill bumps and, careful of his hurt forehead, dried his buzzed hair. He wrapped the damp towel around his middle and sat on the closed toilet basin lid. Jittering from the cold, he put the toy dog on his lap.
The dog’s ears wiggled and flopped.
Even chilled to the bone, he’d sit right there until they let him go to his friend.
“At times, it just be’s that way.” Leastwise, that’s what now-dead Aunt Pearl used to tell him.
While he waited, the walls closed in, as if the room shrank, little by little, then even more. He breathed in short bumpy pants. Beneath his feet’s soles, the ground shook, like when he found out his clothes were gone.
Knocks pounded the door.
“What’s going on, Junior?” asked the Nora lady.
“I want to see Darcy Lynn. Now.” Good thing he didn’t have power in his eyes like Abe to make fire or else Nora would be in big trouble. “The nurse took my clothes.”
The knob turned. With a low screech, the white-painted door inched open.
“Nurse Weems thought you might want to wear clean clothing when you visit your friend.” In the door opening, Nora’s hazel eyes appeared.
“I have to see her.” Junior blinked away the memory of Darcy Lynn lying so still.
“We’re inside a mountain, Junior. You can’t cause quakes and expect the caves to remain stable.”
Junior lifted h
is dirt-stained feet bottoms off the floor. No amount of scrubbing—
“Your clothes will be washed and given back to you.” Nora pushed the door open a few more inches and offered a stack of clothes. “Here are others you can wear until then.”
“If I do what you want me to do, you’ll let me stay with her?” He hunched and gripped his elbows to steady the rapid jerks of his arms.
The clothes would be warm…
“As long as you don’t get in Nurse Weems’ way or bring down the place on our heads.” Nora held out a stack of clothing.
“No suit to keep me from touching the ground?” Junior dug the tips of his fingers into the dog’s floppy neck.
“Not if you behave.” Either Nora told the truth, or she’d learned to hide the telltale rise of her voice.
But she was right.
He couldn’t protect his friend if he caused the mountain above them to crumble and collapse down on them all. Warmth shifted in his chest. “I get to meet your son like you said?”
“You will.” Nope, she hadn’t learned to lie without telling on herself with her high-pitched voice, at least, not always. Nora placed folded clothes on the floor just inside the doorway.
A folded olive-green t-shirt topped a pair of tan pants. White underwear, then socks, rested on the shirt.
“I reckon I’ll do as you say.” He patted the dog’s head and wagged its neck. The long, flat ears flopped, fanning a faint berry scent that was a girl smell. So what if he didn’t meet her son, taking care of Darcy Lynn mattered most. He avoided looking at Nora and only skimmed his gaze over the toy.
“For your friend?” she asked.
“Just bringing back her kid’s toy.” He brought the fuzzy dog to his nose. The soft, fur tickled. Cheeks flushed warm, he shoved the stuffed animal back into his lap. “Brody’s brother brought it from the house before the tornado took the place.”
“I’m glad Brody found his brother.” Nora pulled the door a little farther closed, but not shut.
“He didn’t. The brother came to us.”
“I assume Brody was happy.”
“No. He seemed really mad that Cantrell wasn’t going to help us. Guess he couldn’t though, because he was sick.”