Feeling like they were waiting for me to say something motivational, I muttered, “Let’s make sure he didn’t die for nothing.”
Mike and John nodded quickly, and then we started laying out a new plan.
“We'll ride separately to the camp.” I didn’t bother to make another sketch in the dirt. We’d all seen the last one in the woods. And with just the three of us, getting to the camp’s perimeter was going to be a lot simpler now. “We'll need the vehicles to transport prisoners out of there. There’s a dirt road with deep ditches on either side of it to the camp’s south where we can park out of sight. Then we'll circle around on foot and enter the compound together on the east side near the prisoners’ building. Mike, you’re going to have to make sure we’re completely invisible as soon as we start approaching the camp on foot. Think you can keep it up for about an hour or so?”
“No problem. But we’re going to have to be real quiet. I can only hide our appearances, not sounds.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Once we get through the gate with bolt cutters, we’ll have to find a way to get past the guards at the prisoner building’s door.”
“I could throw a rock or something to distract them,” John offered.
I nodded. “Yeah, that could work. Nothing too major, just enough to get them both to move a few steps away while we duck inside. Once we’re in, we’ll have to start detoxing people. I’ve never tried to heal anyone, though. Have you?” I looked at them.
They both nodded.
“My mom was a healer,” Mike said. “I picked up a few things from her that we’ve been practicing with. But we should probably detox the known healers first so we’ll have some help. I don’t know how much energy we’ll have to work with. Healing saps it out of you quick.”
“Okay.” I paused, debated, then made the decision to go ahead and say it. “I guess Gary’s proof that I wasn't exaggerating earlier about the live ammo. Tonight, what we're planning here, is going to be as dangerous as it gets. But if you can use non-lethal stuff on the guards, do it.”
“Gary—” Mike began.
“I know what he said,” I replied. “But you saw what happened to him. He used lethal force, and all it did was make them determined to kill us.”
“Okay,” Mike said after a few seconds. “We’ll try not to kill anyone. Or get anyone killed. If we can.”
John nodded as well.
“Right,” I said. “Then let's get out of here.”
I led the way to the internment camp in my truck, with Mike and John riding together in Mike’s little black Saturn. As I drove, I tried not to think about the “leading” part of what I was doing. Every time I did, my hands started shaking on the steering wheel.
What was I doing?
I wasn’t Damon. Just because I was a Shepherd didn’t mean I was born knowing the first thing about leading others, no matter what my parents claimed. And Damon had never just led. He’d inspired. He’d made people want to do amazing things and believe that they could.
And now here I was trying to follow in his footsteps. But I had no clue how a prison break should be done. We probably had way too few people to even consider trying this. We were going up against anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five armed guards, with flashlights and bold cutters as our only physical tools and zero protective armor.
This was crazy.
Tarah would be proud. Maybe Damon would be too.
I just hoped I didn't wind up getting anyone else killed tonight until the more experienced Clann people at the camp could take over.
We cut our headlights as we turned off the main road onto the same side road Tarah and I had used only hours earlier. Mike parked behind me while I shucked off my bulky coat so I would be able to move around easier. My hoodie would have to be enough to keep me warm for awhile.
Then we gathered in the ditch.
“Everyone ready?” I whispered.
They nodded.
We crossed the field that separated our road from the side of the camp, circling wide along the way then cutting back to the east side. We had to move slowly, using the moonlight to help us avoid cactus, rocks and prickly mesquite trees until we reached the east fence between two guards.
The night was too still, amplifying every little crunch of rock and dirt our footsteps made. I was worried Mike’s visual cloaking spell might not be as good as he’d claimed back in the relative safety of the park. Especially when we were so close to the guards that I could make out their eye color beneath the stadium lights flooding the entire camp. With all the prisoners apparently locked up for the night, there was nothing to distract the soldiers from any noise or movement they might pick up. But Gary was as good as promised. The guards never even looked our way.
It took about ten minutes for me to carefully, slowly cut the chain link with the bolt cutters so they wouldn’t make noise. We probably could have used a spell for this too, if any of us had known how to use magic to cut through metal. Which we didn’t.
Finally, the opening in the fence was big enough for us to slip through. Before we did, John chucked a small rock past the guard on the left, which made both guards look in opposite directions away from us. We used that fifteen second distraction to slip through the fence then creep across the twenty open yards to the nearest building where we hoped the prisoners were being kept.
John tossed a second rock he’d stowed in his pocket.
“What was that?” one of the door guards muttered.
“Dunno, but I heard it too,” the other guard said, looking around. They took a couple of steps away from the door, splitting up to look around the sides of the building.
I ran across the rocky, hard packed dirt to the door, grateful my shoes had quiet, flexible soles. As I reached for the doorknob, I held my breath. I had no clue how to pick a lock. Thankfully the guards seemed to have put all their faith in the drugs and their guns to keep the prisoners contained inside, because the door was unlocked. We slipped inside then spread out.
The long metal building’s curved roof and walls had no windows and only the one door we’d entered through, so we could safely turn on the flashlights for the first time. The small beams cut through the pitch black to reveal how the building was filled with row after row of cots, each one holding a comatose patient covered in a single thin blanket. We shone the lights on the prisoners’ faces in order to find some of the healers who had volunteered their skills in the woods tonight before being caught by the soldiers.
While Mike and John started detoxing a few of those healers, I searched cot after cot. But so far Tarah was nowhere in sight.
Was I wrong about the soldiers assuming she was a witch? Had they taken her somewhere else instead?
Muttering a curse, I found Mike and John as they worked separately on detoxing adult healers.
“Is it working?” I whispered to Mike.
“Yeah, but it takes awhile,” Mike said, even as the man whose wrist he held started to wake up.
“Have you seen Tarah anywhere?”
Mike shook his head.
When I asked John, he gave the same answer.
While Mike moved on to detox another healer to add to our ranks, I filled in the still drowsy man on what was going on. The longer I talked, the more alert the man became. After a minute or two, he scrubbed his hands over his face, dragged himself to his feet, then lumbered over to join the detoxing efforts.
I told everyone not to detox the younger kids. The drugs would keep them in their beds, quiet and safely out of the way, while we took care of the rest of the grownup prisoners and eventually the guards. Some of the parents didn't like it, but at least they seemed to understand.
As we neared the farthest end of the building, I spotted the mother, still holding her dead baby even in her sleep, a crowd of healers forming around her cot. One of them reached down for her wrist.
“No, don't. She shouldn't have to see…” I couldn't say the rest.
Thankfully they understood. A woman
who looked like she could be the mother's sister reached out, tears on her cheeks winking from the indirect flashlight beams, and gently eased the baby from the mother's arms. She wrapped the body in a sheet stolen from an empty bed, then tucked the bundle back into the mother's arms.
I could hear faint crying in the crowd, someone sniffling, men clearing their throats. But I couldn't look away from that tiny bundle.
“Hayden,” Mike whispered at my shoulder. “We found Tarah.”
The only words that could move me at that moment.
“Is she okay?” My gaze snapped to his face. I was half afraid of what expression I might find there.
He nodded, a tired half smile twisting his face.
I followed him to the back of the building.
She looked like an angel in her sleep, her ponytail loose so her thick dark hair made a tangled cloud against her cheeks. Mike picked up her limp wrist, and my gut knotted. I'd never wished for a special ability more than I did in that moment as I had to wait for someone else to fix her. I should be the one who was healing her. I’d promised to protect her and failed.
Her eyelids fluttered open. Mike was closer to her head, but somehow she looked right at me instead.
My breath caught in my lungs. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.
Mike moved on to the next prisoner.
Tarah struggled to sit up. I slid an arm around her shoulders and helped her, then ended up hugging her in relief, burying my face and a shaking hand in her hair. “Told you I’d come back for you.”
“What took you so long?” she whispered in my ear.
“Oh, you know how bad traffic on the interstate gets,” I joked. “That and facing down my father about being an outcast.”
She leaned back to search my face with wide eyes. “You, or him?”
“Both, actually.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “And how’d it go?”
I scowled. “Not great. Turns out he’s a total hypocrite. The jackass actually thinks he’s helping everyone by trying to find a way to permanently suppress our magic and make us ‘normal’ again. And remind me to tell you about the Clann sometime later.”
“Okay.” She shook her head. “That sucks about his lying to you all this time.” She sighed. “Well, at least I’m not the only one around here with delusional parents. Speaking of…did you find my dad yet?”
“Not yet, but we’re not done either.”
“Hayden!” John hissed from three cots over. “This guy’s not drugged, but he’s not waking up. What do we do?”
“Is it my dad?” Tarah asked me, her eyes wide with a combination of hope and fear.
Tarah
I tried to stand up too fast and nearly fell back on the cot again as the blood rushed from my head. The drugs they dished out around here were some seriously potent stuff. Hayden helped steady me, then tucked one of my hands through the bend of his elbow so I could hold onto him for balance.
A thin blonde woman overheard us and stumbled over, wobbly from either just waking up or maybe too much healing tonight. “I’m a healer. Let me check him.” I didn’t recognize her. She must not have been part of the Tyler outcasts’ community.
I tried to move faster, but the numbness in my feet had turned into a pins and needles sensation, making every step excruciating as the blood flow returned to my lower limbs. By the time Hayden and I got to the man’s cot and could tell that it was definitely my dad, the woman had already knelt on the floor beside him and pressed both her hands on his temples.
After a minute of frowning with her eyes closed, she said, “He’s got a bad concussion.”
The breath caught in my lungs. Someone had hit him?
I sank down onto an empty cot beside Dad. Would he be okay? Would he suffer any long term damage? Dad had always been the smartest person I’d ever known. The thought of him losing any of that brilliant intelligence made my eyes sting.
“Can you help him?” I asked.
“Give me a minute. Maybe I can reduce the swelling,” the woman muttered, her eyes still closed.
I felt every second tick by, could hear my every breath along with Hayden’s and the woman’s and my dad’s.
Finally, after what felt like an hour, the healer opened her eyes and smiled. “There. All patched up. He should come around in a few seconds.”
We waited, watching Dad’s face in the beam of Hayden’s flashlight. When Dad’s eyelids began to flutter, I reached across the aisle and grabbed his suddenly too frail hand to let him know I was here.
Jumping at my gentle squeeze of his hand, Dad opened his eyes and looked around. “Where—”
“Shh, Dad,” I whispered. “We have to stay quiet. We’re in the prisoners’ building at the internment camp. Hayden’s breaking us out of here.”
Dad grimaced and rolled up onto an elbow, using his free hand to check the back of his head. “Oh boy, that hurts. That’s what I get for refusing to join the mad doctor here. Feels like I cracked my brain pan.”
“You did,” the healer murmured with a small smile. “You might have headaches for awhile as your skull finishes healing. Take it easy moving around, okay?” She slowly stood up. “I’d better go help the others.”
“Thank you...”
“Pamela,” she said, holding out a hand for me to shake.
“Thank you, Pamela.”
Dad smiled his thanks at her as she got up to go help someone else. Then he looked at me, blinked fast a couple of times and frowned. “Tarah, what are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you, of course.” Well, minus the small hiccup of getting myself arrested and rescued first.
Dad sighed. “Your mother’s going to kill me.”
I winced, realizing I’d forgotten to call her earlier and let her know where I was and that I was okay. “Not if she kills me first.”
“You feel up to getting out of here, Dr. Williams?” Hayden asked, offering my dad a strong hand.
“I was ready to blow this joint the second I arrived,” Dad muttered. He let Hayden pull him upright.
The three of us were pretty slow in joining the group of detoxed adults at the dark end of the building farthest from the door. Dad’s knees kept popping so loudly I worried the guards outside would hear them.
“You’ve got a plan for how to get everyone out of here, right?” Mike whispered to me once we’d joined the others. “This whole prison break was your idea, after all.”
I winced. “Yeah, well, I was kind of hoping you guys would fill in the details.”
Hayden crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at Mike. “Can’t we just use your cloaking spell again to get them out a handful at a time the same way we came in?”
Mike cringed. “Sorry, but no. We’re going to need a plan B. All this detoxing’s tapped me out. I’ve got five, maybe ten minutes of cloaking left in me tops.”
That wouldn’t be nearly enough time to get all these people out.
“Can anyone else do a cloaking spell to get us out of here?” Hayden asked the group.
The answer was a whole lot of head shaking.
Oh crap. I shared a worried look with Hayden.
Trying not to panic, I said, “Come on, everyone. We need ideas here.”
Silence as everyone looked to everybody else in the dimly lit circle.
Finally a short guy at the back stepped forward. “Uh, what about a freezing spell on the guards?”
“You can freeze someone?” I hadn’t even known that kind of spell existed in real life.
The man nodded. “The body’s ninety percent water. I just concentrate on that while using a basic freezing effect, and it locks them right up like a cryofreeze. Used to do it on my kid brother all the time when he was acting like a punk.”
A few men chuckled quietly and were quickly hushed by the rest of the group.
“Is your brother still alive?” Hayden asked, eyebrows raised. “We’re aiming for nonlethal stuff here.”
The man grinned. “Yeah, he lived through it. Can’t promise he didn’t lose a few brain cells, though. I ‘might’ have forgotten to unfreeze him for a half hour or so once or twice.”
One corner of Hayden’s mouth twitched. “Good enough...uh, what’s your name?”
“Harvey. Harvey Lansing.”
“Good to meet you, Harvey. Mike, can you cover him while he freezes all the guards?”
Mike nodded and walked with Harvey towards the building’s door at the other end. When they were about ten feet away from us, they simply faded out of sight. A few minutes later, the building’s door eased open several inches, paused, then closed shut again without a sound.
“Stay quiet and wait for the signal,” Hayden told the rest of the prisoners. Then he and I carefully picked our way through the rows of cots to the door, pressed close to the cold metal and listened.
We couldn’t hear a thing out there.
After a couple of minutes of waiting in dead silence, Hayden turned off his flashlight and risked cracking the door open a centimeter. After several long seconds, he pointed to the left then the right and gave me a thumbs up, which I took to mean the guards at the door were frozen now.
Curious to know just what a frozen person looked like, I slipped in between him and the door and peeked out through the tiny sliver of an opening. The guards at either side of the doorway weren’t moving. They weren’t breathing either, but were still standing at attention, which seemed a good sign. From what I could see of the nearest perimeter guards, nobody else had noticed yet.
I couldn’t see the freeze team. They must have moved away so we weren’t included in Mike’s cloaking sphere. At first, I couldn’t even tell which perimeter guards they’d frozen so far. The guards didn’t move that much anyways. But after a few minutes, I could detect one difference. Unfrozen guards turned their heads an inch or two from side to side as they scanned the perimeter beyond the fence.
Three minutes passed. Then five. Then seven. How much longer could Mike keep up the cloaking spell?
The flap on the tent building rustled. The wind, or an outcast?
The crowd at the far end of the building began to get antsy. Someone whispered “did it work?” too loudly and was hushed by several others.
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