by Jordan Dane
Rayne’s brother, Lucas, had definitely stepped into something nasty. Gabe had held back what he’d seen, for her sake. Lucas had been terrified, not just a little scared. And the guy with a meaty hand at her brother’s throat might’ve taken out his anger on him. Right before Rayne woke him, Gabe felt pain before his connection zapped out.
But something even more disturbing hit him—something he hadn’t told Rayne.
During the dream, some of the faces that he’d already drawn flashed in his mind. He hadn’t remembered that until he flipped through his sketchbook again. Maybe those kids were trying to tell him something. What if Lucas wasn’t the only one in danger? What a screwed-up mess! Given his situation, cops were out. Even if he got involved, without Rayne knowing, he could make things worse.
Time and effort. That was what it had taken for him to find a quiet existence, living off the grid where he wasn’t on the run. What he had wasn’t much, but he lived with his choices because they affected only him. Now that he knew about Lucas and these other kids, sitting on the sidelines felt wrong. But if he got involved, his troubles could bring on a new level of hurt to kids who already had it bad.
Gabe didn’t know what to do. Only one thing seemed clear. He had to let Rayne go, even if he looked like a jerk for not helping her.
“I could use a lift for me and my bike,” she said, low and soft. “Are you still offering?”
Gabe didn’t see her come up behind him. He couldn’t turn around. When he heard her voice, his guilt barometer hit the red zone. Smacking him upside the head with a baseball bat would’ve hurt less.
“Yeah.” He shut the tailgate to his truck. “Look, I know this won’t mean much, but—” he looked over his shoulder “—I’m sorry. I hope you find him.”
Rayne didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Nothing she could’ve said or done would make him feel any worse.
Downtown L.A.
An Hour Later
Cut into the side of a hill covered in vines and weeds and scraggly trees, a shadowy tunnel entrance gaped its dark mouth to swallow an old railroad track that led into it. This section of downtown L.A. had been a busy warehouse district.
Now not much went on. That was why they used it.
“I’ll catch up. You take Benny,” Rafe Santana told Kendra Walker as they unloaded the stolen van. “I gotta ditch the wheels.”
Rafe had more in mind than getting rid of evidence. With the new kid still unconscious, that meant the others had to carry him the rest of the way and they’d be distracted. He wanted to make sure they weren’t followed.
“Be careful,” she said as she touched his chest with her hand.
As she rounded up the others and hauled the hurt kid to where they could take care of him, Rafe looked down to see Benny hadn’t left.
“But I wanna stay with you,” the kid argued, tugging at his shirt with his face scrunched tight.
Rafe knelt in front of Benny.
“I know you do, but I need you to take care of my girl.” He spoke low when Kendra and the others got out of earshot and he brushed off the kid’s T-shirt with his hand, a shirt he’d given him that was too big for the ten-year-old.
“Now, go on. Git,” he told him.
The kid didn’t say another word. He kicked at the dirt and made a big show of hating every step he took, but little man did as he was told. Rafe jumped back into the van and drove it miles away from the tunnel entrance. When the cops found it, the stolen vehicle wouldn’t lead back to them.
Rafe ran to catch up with the others. Alone in the dark, he looked over his shoulder until he felt satisfied no one followed him. Until he met Kendra, he didn’t know that L.A. had miles of abandoned tunnels under its downtown streets. At the turn of the century, she told him, they used them to connect different sections of Los Angeles to downtown, but when superhighways got built, the old railroad and car tunnels were abandoned. They even filmed movies under the streets of downtown. The Matrix. Planet of the Apes. Kendra knew stuff like that. She was real smart.
Once he got deep in the tunnels, Rafe picked up his pace and used a shortcut. He had a small flashlight with him, but he rarely needed it. Using it meant his night vision would be messed up. He followed familiar metal railways and climbed rusted spiral stairs to catch up to Kendra and the others. The musty, dank smell used to stink to him. Now it didn’t.
In the dark, the mysterious painted murals on the chipped brick walls were unmarred by graffiti, reminding him how old the tunnels were. Sometimes he’d sit and look at them alone, like they were his private museum. Rusted old machinery, encrusted in dust and cobwebs, had been abandoned long ago. He liked them, too. They were landmarks for him to know which way to go. Some people would be afraid, but to him the tunnels were home.
As he got closer to Kendra, he sensed something wasn’t right up ahead. Something moved, out of place. A smell he hadn’t counted on. Something. He’d quit second-guessing his nature long ago. He trusted it.
“Argh!” A little voice growled like a tunnel beast, and a small shadow leaped from behind a fallen brick wall. The giggling gave Benny away. Rafe pretended to be scared.
“Oh, man. You really got me, dawg.” He grinned. “You waitin’ for me?”
Benny jammed a tiny shoulder against his leg and gave him a bump. Rafe never had a little brother. He never had a use for one until Benny came along. The kid wouldn’t have lasted on the streets of L.A. alone. The way Rafe saw it, he had no choice but to let the kid hang with him. Taking care of Benny, he didn’t feel like such a loser.
“You should’ve let me come with you.” The kid kicked at the dirt and hung his head. “No one sees me unless I want ’em to. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know, but I needed you to stay with Kendra. You know how it is.” Rafe shrugged. “When I’m not around, all she’s got is you, little man.”
When he first came to live in the tunnels, Benny knew he wasn’t like Rafe and the others. He didn’t have special skills. Rafe felt bad for him until the runt came up with his own gig. Benny turned into a superhero-ninja dude. He didn’t see the harm in letting the kid believe he could disappear whenever. Rafe grabbed Benny and swung him up high, letting him straddle his shoulders. The kid liked that.
Without a word, Rafe let Kendra know where he was when he got close enough for her to read him. I’m on your six. Don’t sic the twins on me. When he caught up to her, he had a smirk on his face as he carried Benny.
“Hey, Benny.” Kendra grinned up at the kid on Rafe’s shoulders before she said, “I see your shadow found you.”
“Yeah, he did. As always.” Rafe lowered Benny and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll catch up with you later, chump. Right now I gotta help my girl, here.”
The kid made a face and gave him a sly smile before he puckered his lips in a fake kiss and left. Rafe narrowed his eyes at the kid without saying anything. When he was alone with Kendra, he couldn’t help but talk about what happened. He felt jacked up by it. They were all getting stronger. Working their skills, instead of always hiding them, felt good—like lifting weights and pumping up.
“Glad the Effin brothers are on our side.” Rafe grinned. “Those guys practically wet themselves runnin’ away from the mutts.”
From the glow off his flashlight, he saw Kendra smile. She got off on scrambling the brains of the Believers’ meat army. The twins had a way of making a lasting impression that would keep those chumps running scared, pounding each other and scarfing food like they were starving. By the time the effects wore off, they’d have to turn in their man cards.
All of that would buy Kendra time—to get the new kid stashed and back on his feet. Even though the new guy couldn’t feel it, Kendra held his hand as the others carried him. She always got real protective of the fresh-picked ones.
“The twins are a wonder. No doubt,” she said.
The twelve-year-old identical twins scared Rafe with their freakish blue eyes and pure blond hair, but he’d never said th
at aloud. The Effin brothers were never apart. They did everything together. Rafe had never heard them say much. Their choice. Except for Kendra, no one really communicated with them—not in any way Rafe understood—but he could tell the boys had other ways to entertain each other.
Kendra had nicknamed them the Effin brothers because of what they could do. Rafe didn’t understand the science of it like Kendra did. She said the twins could tap into a gland in the human brain—something like a hippo-talmus—that controlled the four F’s of human behavior. Feeding, fighting, fleeing and hooking up, something like that. Those twins were short and skinny, but they could seriously mess with anyone’s head and make them do whatever. Like a puppet.
Those men found that out.
Rafe didn’t know if Effin was their real last name. It sounded French the way Kendra pronounced it. She had to spell it for him. Sometimes she laughed when she called them that, but real names didn’t matter much to her, or maybe she liked the idea of starting over fresh.
When they got to the deepest part of the tunnels, Kendra had the new kid put into her room. Rafe had never seen her do that before. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but it was hard to argue with her. He had to work double hard to block his thoughts so she wouldn’t know. Secrets were exhausting.
“Put him on my mattress. And get me rags, a bowl of water and a med kit. He may need stitching.”
While the rest of them scrambled and brought her what she needed, Rafe stayed out of her way and watched Kendra from a distance. She lit candles to see and stripped the kid of his ragged clothes after she searched his pockets.
“No ID,” she said. “I only found a phone number written on scrap paper. No name.”
“I could find out who it belongs to. I gotta hit topside tomorrow. I got something to do. I can call the number. Want me to try it?”
Rafe fought a smile as he thought about what he had planned for tomorrow. A surprise. Kendra looked like she could use something special.
“No, don’t worry about it.” She stuffed the paper into her pocket. “Not yet.”
“I’m goin’ anyway if you change your mind.”
Kendra didn’t seem to hear him. She looked over the kid’s body for bloody holes to plug. He had a mean gash on his back and arm and a knot the size of a baseball on the back of his head, too. She’d gotten good at playing doctor, but something in the way she took special care of this kid made Rafe...worry. He waited for things to settle down and for the others to leave before he had her alone.
“Those men. They saw our faces this time. You even gave them a taste of what you can do. What were you thinking?” he asked.
Rafe asked a question he already knew the answer to. Kendra had gotten more over-the-top on everything she did. It was like she dared anyone to stop her.
“We’ve talked about this, Rafe. I got a plan, remember?”
Rafe knew Kendra had a mission to save kids like them, but in the latest confrontations with the Believers, she got in their face in her quiet and controlled way. He didn’t know what to think.
“It’s like you’re rubbing their noses in it,” he said. “That could put us in their crosshairs on their timetable, not ours. You picked that old garage to meet this kid because there weren’t surveillance cameras, but why show our faces to those assholes?”
“We pulled it off. That’s all that counts.”
“You wanted them to see us...to feel your power.” Rafe narrowed his eyes at Kendra when he realized what she must have done. “Is that why you waited until the kid made it to the rooftop...while there was light enough for those men to see? This kid got hurt because you waited, Kendra.”
“I had no way of knowing that would happen. If I thought he’d get hurt, I never would have done that.” Kendra’s voice cracked. “I’m tired of being a victim when we have every right to exist as they do. In the open. Free.”
She turned back to the new boy and dabbed a bloody, wet towel across his forehead, tending to his wounds. The kid hadn’t opened his eyes yet. She took a deep breath and heaved a ragged sigh.
“We’re human beings, Raphael. We’re just...different. We’re better than they are and that makes them afraid. They hunt us, yet we’re the ones they treat like unworthy animals. It isn’t right.”
“I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. I know what happened to this kid was an accident. I just get...afraid for you sometimes. You take on too much. I wish you would let me help you more.” He knelt by her side and stared into her watery eyes.
Her lips curved into a sad smile and she said, “I couldn’t do any of this without you. You know that, right?”
After Rafe nodded, she handed him a bowl of bloodstained water and he took it.
“I could use fresh water,” she said.
“Is he gonna die?”
“Don’t know.” She brushed back the kid’s hair. “I can’t feel him anymore. Don’t know what that means, but it scares me.”
“You’ll fix him. You’re good at that.”
“I gotta get to the garden. Figure stuff out,” she muttered. “He’s gonna need the best I got.”
Rafe didn’t know how Kendra knew the things she did. She had a thing for plants and healing, but what she did with her mind made her different, even among them.
“The Believers send their hunters, and each one is like a rabid pit bull on two legs,” he said. “This time, we had a gun shoved in our faces. These guys are crazy.”
“I had everything under control. You saw that.”
“Yeah, and I got pumped seeing it. No lie, but maybe next time you won’t be in control, Kendra.”
Rafe hadn’t planned on stirring things up with her again, but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop. Kendra always pushed. It was what she did, but the more chances she took, the more she threatened what they already had. Rafe and Benny had found a home in the tunnels, but he felt a clock ticking down to a detonation he couldn’t stop—not without Kendra, the girl who had lit the fuse in the first place, torched it with a damned flame thrower.
“Every time the Believers take one of us, it should make you angry like it does me,” she argued. “We have a right to be the way we are. We have a right to question their world. All I want to do is put our mark on it. That’s how movements start, Raphael. Don’t you want to be part of something bigger than we are?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess.”
Rafe couldn’t argue with her. If Kendra hadn’t found him and Benny, who knew what would’ve happened. There were worse places than juvie and foster care, thanks to the church freaks. Kendra had been the one with a mission to save the world, a kid at a time. That was how she found him and Benny and the others. She made them feel like somebody, not a piece of throwaway garbage. She gave them a family and treated them like they mattered.
Kendra was only seventeen, a year younger than him. He didn’t know how she got to be brainy and pigheaded at the same time.
“We’ve been lucky, but if you keep snatching these kids out from under their noses, they could focus on us. That’s all I’m saying,” he cautioned. “From what you said, they got money and powerful people in their back pocket. Doesn’t that scare you, even a little?”
When she didn’t answer or look at him, Rafe lowered his voice. He reached out his hand to touch her shoulder, but stopped.
“Because of you, we’re getting stronger,” he said. “But I’m not sure we can handle whatever they throw at us. How long before they target you, Kendra?”
Rafe didn’t tell her how much that would kill him. When she didn’t say anything, he did as she asked.
“I’ll get you fresh water.”
* * *
Rafe brought back a bucket of water and set it down near her makeshift bed, along with fresh rags. He didn’t say anything. For that, Kendra had been grateful. He only shot her a worried glance and left her alone with the new one, the pretty one—the special one.
She drenched a new rag with water and wiped his face and chest. C
ombinations of medicinal herbs raced through her head. She dismissed them as fast as she thought them up. She couldn’t afford to guess. Not with this boy. Every bruise, every gash on his body hurt her, too. Rafe had guessed right. She had stalled getting to the deserted parking garage. This boy got hurt because of her. She’d messed up and he’d paid the price. The crack on his head worried her most.
Everything bad happened because of her.
She touched his cheek and felt his fever. A concussion was serious and a brain swell could kill him. Treating the wounds on his body kept her busy, but patching him up on the outside wouldn’t fix what kept him from opening his eyes.
She didn’t know if she’d done the right thing—for him.
I’m so sorry. This is my fault.
If she’d made the decision to take him to a real doctor, she knew what that would’ve meant. To run the risk of exposing her street family would have compounded their problem, and the Believers could’ve found the boy easily. Without anyone knowing, he’d disappear and never get a second chance at freedom. The Believers had a far reach and she’d learned not to trust anyone, but how she felt about stuff didn’t mean he believed it, too.
Living different and free had become precious to her and not something to take for granted. Her kind had become perfect victims. The very act of speaking out would bring on what they feared most—people knowing what they were becoming. A spotlight would make their struggle worse on a global scale. Kendra knew how she felt about that. She’d rather die than be anyone’s slave or lab rat, but did this boy feel the same? Would he risk death for what he believed?
Without thinking, she’d taken that decision away from him.
There were times—like now—that Kendra didn’t feel strong enough, or smart enough, or old enough to take care of her new family. Some of these kids were children. They looked up to her—and she put on a good show—but sometimes she didn’t feel worthy of their loyalty. With the stakes escalating, so were her doubts. She felt part of something bigger, yet completely unworthy of it.
She woke up scared and heard things in the dark that reminded her she was still only a kid—a kid who had screwed up and gotten someone seriously hurt. She brushed back the boy’s hair and touched a trembling finger to his pale lips, something she never would’ve done if he were awake.