“What if it was a major hint?”
“Not even then.” Luckily for Priyam, Gaia walked passed them. She had the same gorgeous strap sundress with a knitted sweater she had been wearing since the morning. “Exhibit A, I’ll tell her to take off her sweater.” Priyam placed the book on her lap as they both stared in Gaia’s direction. “G!”
Gaia heard her best friend calling. She turned on her heels, finding Priyam and Edan staring at her. “What?”
“It’s getting hot for a sweater don’t you think?” Priyam asked, using her hand to fan some wind to the side of her neck.
“A little,” Gaia agreed, yet did nothing to fix it. The sweater remained on.
“Your dress looks prettier by itself.”
Gaia flicked her hands over the cotton fabric, not really understanding what the big deal with her dress was. “Thanks.”
“It makes me want to see it without the sweater,” Priyam added a bigger hint.
“You already have.” Confused, her hand twirled one of her bright red hair strands. “You bought it for my seventeenth birthday.”
“See? Clueless.” Priyam smiled at her profound knowledge of Gaia’s quirks. “My advice is this… whatever huge hint you gave her, it didn’t work.”
“Bollocks,” he mouthed under his breath.
“Look, if you need to tell her something, you have to do it. Loud and clear.” She pointed at Gaia who was already walking away. “Just rip it like a Band-Aid.”
“I don’t know what a Band-Aid is.”
“You don’t? What do you use when you cut yourself?”
“A bandage?”
“Right…” She tried a better way to explain it. Nothing. “Just go do it!”
“Red!” Edan ran after her.
Gaia waited for him with a big bright smile. “Second time today?”
“You have no idea.” He chuckled at the painful irony. He could still sense Priyam staring at them, waiting for him to reveal the major hint he was talking about. If only he could. He knew he should just say it but he was never known for expressing his feelings openly. Or at all.
That, plus having her staring at him with such intensity, waiting for him to speak, was driving him insane. He wanted to get it over with, he just had no clue how. “How does your dress look without the sweater?” He tested Priyam’s theory once more. Hoping that by some miracle Gaia would prove to him she can take a hint.
“Normal… What is it with me and my dress today?” she asked, inspecting her outfit in case there was something wrong no one was telling her about.
It took Edan all of his willpower not to laugh. “Can we talk?”
“Sure.”
“That time, in the cave. What I tried to tell you was—”
“Edan,” Floyd called him from where Priyam was sitting.
“This isn’t happening.” Edan ruffled his brown hair with his hand. This day was beginning to look like a sicker version of the twins’ April Fool’s Day.
“Edan!” Floyd yelped once more.
“What!?” Edan snapped. “What could you possibly want right this bloody second!?”
“Our weapons’ contact agreed to help. We have the routes,” he said, amused by Edan’s unusual reaction to good news. “You know, the ones you urgently needed after the meeting.”
“Everyone!” Edan screamed. He was getting tired of not having a break. “Get together!”
“Is he angry?” Floyd asked Priyam as they all walked to the gathering point.
“Entertaining, isn’t it?”
“Very,” he cackled.
Once everyone was at their place around the table, Edan took a black marker from one of the equipment bags. He placed his hand on the middle of the map, marked with an X on their location. “We are here in Manning Park. We need to get to Penticton where the twins have a contact who can help us with all the lost equipment. The moment we are ready,” he then drew another X on their destination, “we need to reach the next door.”
Hunter drew a thick line up to the east of Canada and signaled. “We are sending a trace to Toronto while we drive south. With that we can get a few days’ head start.”
“Funny.” Priyam swung her legs. “There’s a Huntsville in Alabama.” She pointed at the map.
Edan nodded, “That’s exactly where we are going.”
“I’m sorry.” Priyam slumped against the desk, almost falling from her chair. “I thought I heard you suggest we would walk three-thousand miles.”
“Four-thousand one-hundred and forty-eight miles to be precise,” he said.
“It’s decided. The entire universe will die.” Priyam laughed with a cynical tone. “I can’t walk to the kitchen, much less four-thousand one-hundred and forty-eight miles.”
“We aren’t walking.” Edan passed the marker to Hunter and grabbed six small red-velvet bags from the same place he took the marker from. He threw them on top of the map. “Hunter, you stay here to take care of the girls. The rest, we are going shopping. Veter, Pink, you go together. Shui, take Donovan. Floyd, come with me. We need something fast. Let those of legal of age talk to the seller. Take a bag each and we’ll meet here in no more than three hours. We are leaving before sundown.”
Everyone took the bags and followed Edan’s orders. As the team took their places, Edan walked next to Gaia. “We’ll talk later.”
* * *
After a much-needed nap, Gaia went to the kitchen to prepare some sandwiches. She kept thinking about where Pratt was and how she really needed him to teach her more about the Nature’s Communion. She was scared of it, but since it helped her save Edan, she understood if it was used for good reasons, then there was no problem. Gaia took Pink’s BBQ sauce and poured some of it into Priyam’s sandwich. She closed the lid and noticed her hand had been smudged with sauce. Yuck… she looked around but there were no napkins or anything else to clean her hand. Double Yuck. Having no option she passed her palm on top of a rock just like she did that time against the Draak’s bone. The mark! She remembered the strange mark she saw carved on the Draak. She closed her eyes and concentrated on what it looked like. It was an N…wasn’t it?
On her way to the bungalows, Gaia did a small recollection of her encounters with Draaks. The Draaks in her nightmare were too far away to tell if they had the mark and she was too stressed to pay attention to the Draak that took Edan. Hunter probably knows.
Gaia left Priyam’s sandwich on top of her desk and walked around the trees until she found Hunter. He was sitting on a thick branch, carving a wolf on a small piece of wood. “Hey there.” Gaia waved her hand for Hunter to see.
“Is something wrong?” Hunter signaled with the knife in his hand.
“No.” Gaia took out a wrapped bacon and chicken sandwich she’d made with the remaining supplies and handed it to Hunter. “I got this for you.”
Happy, Hunter placed the wolf and knife on the branch next to his legs. “Thanks.”
Gaia gave one last glance at her surroundings in case someone was within hearing distance. Once she was sure they were alone, she climbed the tree to sit beside him. “Hunter, do you know a lot about the dark beasts?”
“Every one of them,” he signaled with his mouth full.
“What things do you know about them?”
Hunter passed his hand over his eyes. “Trackers are blind.”
Gaia took a rolled piece of paper from her sweater. “Sorry, Priyam has already learned them, but my memory is super crappy.” She checked her notes on signs to discover if the one Hunter made meant that they couldn’t see. “What?! They’re blind?” Gaia was not expecting that, after all Trackers were the ones who kept finding them. “How can they track?”
“With the coat of needles they have piercing their flesh.” He mimicked the needles with his fingers. “When their prey is near, the needles vibrate guiding the Tracker to whoever or whatever they need to find.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It’s pretty cool actually.”
<
br /> “What about… Draaks?” she said, almost whispering that last word.
“Those can see pretty well.” He grinned at his smart-alec comment before taking another bite of his scrumptious sandwich.
“What does their mark mean?” Gaia asked.
“What mark?”
She checked that last sign… ‘Mark’. “You know,” Gaia slid her finger on the side of her torso. “The one they have on their ribcage.”
“No.” Hunter swallowed a big chunk of bacon. “They don’t have marks on their bones, Gaia.”
“Oh…”
Hunter tilted his head, staring straight at Gaia, “You saw one.” He could see it in her reaction, “You saw one with a mark, right?”
Gaia avoided eye contact with Hunter. “Yes.”
Hunter pulled her up so she could see his hands talking. “Where?”
“When I helped Edan,” she lied, afraid Hunter would discover she was with Pratt the moment she saw that mark or something along those lines. “Back at the mountains.”
“How did it look? The mark.”
Gaia took Priyam’s pen out of her back pocket and drew it on the skin of her knee. “Something like this, I’m terrible at drawing.”
“And it moved?” Hunter asked with a slight panic in his eyes. “The beast that had the mark moved?”
“It did,” said Gaia. “Why wouldn’t it?”
“That’s a Hagalaz rune.” Hunter signaled the drawing on her knee. “It’s the symbol of destruction. Done correctly and with the proper chant, anything with that mark is a corpse. If it moves it means it’s being manipulated. Like a puppet.”
Gaia shivered. Not good! Was the Draak already dead before it attacked us?
“Gaia.” Hunter signaled. “That’s Azazel’s favorite mark.”
“You think Azazel did it?” she asked the teen.
“Probably.”
“But why?” she gasped. “Don’t they obey him already? Why would he need to manipulate them?”
“Who knows.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes, for people like Azazel, loyalty isn’t enough.”
“They’re back!” Priyam’s screams were heard from across the field.
Gaia and Hunter jumped off the tree and walked towards the rest. “Don’t tell anyone,” Gaia begged. She hated lying to Hunter but training with Pratt was the only way she knew she could save everyone she loved, including Hunter. There was no way she would let Azazel put that in jeopardy. “Edan was too hurt to notice, and I don’t want him to get worried over something that has already passed.”
“I won’t,” he promised her.
“Yes!” Priyam dashed to where Veter and the rest parked the cars.
Pink was driving a beautiful black and yellow Lamborghini Aventador, Veter arrived in a black Corvette C7, while Donovan, Shui and Edan arrived on three motorcycles.
“Why did you get bikes?” Pink complained as she got out of her car.
“We need eyes outside,” said Edan.
Priyam ran, unable to hold back her impulse to touch all of the cars. “You are in a Lambo! How could you complain?”
“Just saying, look at that beauty.” Pink pointed at the bike Edan was on.
Edan laughed out loud. “You should see what Floyd got.”
“What?” Pink asked but she was answered a second later when Floyd arrived in a 6X6 army-green Mercedes van.
“No bloody way!” Pink gasped as she took her hands up to her mouth. “I want it! I need it.”
“Not likely.” Floyd stuck his head out the window, his blond Mohawk swishing with glory. “This beast is mine, lil’ sis.”
“We’ll rotate,” said Edan, preventing a massive fight between the teenaged twins.
“What’s up, Robin Hood? Nice horses you just stole,” Priyam teased as she checked out the bike.
“We didn’t steal anything.”
“Right, like you could possibly afford all of this?” Priyam made a hand gesture that covered all the vehicles. “In fact, how have you afforded anything? Your weapons, your supplies, and all this?”
“With this.” Donovan passed an arm across Priyam’s shoulder and emptied one of the small velvet bags. Edan poured them into his hand. Dozens of diamonds shined on top of his palm.
“Diamonds!” Synthia gasped. “Where did you get those?!” She took a bunch and looked at the light through one of them.
“I made them,” said Willow with pride. It was obviously an advanced earth-wielder trait. “If you think about it, they are just metastable allotrope of carbon.”
Edan took the diamonds away from Synthia. “After she makes them I cut them into the shape we need.”
“So…” Synthia mumbled. “What you are saying is that you are like, rich?”
“Precisely.” Edan nodded.
“Then why are we walking everywhere like a bunch of poor people?” Synthia whined with her nasal voice.
“Same reason we aren’t using the condors to get anywhere we want to go,” said Donovan. “For security reasons, why else?”
“I don’t know, lame-o… because I thought you were broke.”
“Stop arguing, get your stuff. We’re leaving.” Edan gave the order as he took out a crystal dagger from his back holster. “Veter take Shui in the Lambo,” he said. “Pink, Hunter and I will take the bikes, the rest go with Floyd in the van.” He scratched a few symbols in the car’s paint and passed the crystal dagger to Willow. “Take care of the rest.”
“What the fuck!?” Priyam gasped. “What are you doing!?”
“We’re camouflaging them. They’re fast but they are also flashy,” Donovan explained. “We need to be fast but we can’t afford to be seen or arrested.”
“I’ll go with you, Edan.” Synthia crossed her arms as if she were throwing a temper tantrum. “He’s seventeen. I’m not going in that tomboy’s car with him.” She proceeded to cling to Edan’s arm. “I would be safer on the bike with you. Holding you from the back.”
Begging for some much-needed patience, Edan moved his arm away from her grip. “We’ll both be better if you go in the van.”
“What if he crashes and I die?”
“You shouldn’t worry about that.” Veter patted Synthia’s back as he returned from opening the door for Shui. “Who do you think taught us to drive?” he chuckled.
“Sorry Synthia, please do as you are told and get in the van,” said Edan. “Let’s go.” He gave the signal but walked away from the motorcycle and towards the van.
“Where’re you going?” asked Donovan amused by Edan’s strange behavior throughout the day.
“To rip it like a Band-Aid,” Edan said running to the van. “Red,” he stopped her by grabbing her arm before she could get into the van. After everything that had happened that day, he wasn’t going to let his worries or anything else get in the way of telling her. He wasn’t used to expressing his feelings but having her still oblivious to their promise was far worse. “You are her,” he said, his gorgeous eyes staring straight into hers. “You are my match.”
“I’m… your match?” Her body visually relaxed, letting Edan know she’d been struggling the same way he had.
“Always have been.” He smiled carefree, able to breathe again. “Always will be.”
“How could I be?” she asked. “I don’t remember you declaring it.”
Declaring it… he thought. Those specific words only meant one thing, she’d been asking around, investigating the meaning of a match. He liked that thought. “That’s because I didn’t.” Edan moved closer to her ear. “You did.” He kissed her cheek, opened the door of the van and closed it once she was inside.
Gaia put on her seatbelt as she watched Edan put on the helmet and start the bike. “Priy…” She turned to the other seat where her best friend was. “Do I talk in my sleep?”
Chapter 12
Red and Blue
THE ADRENALINE OF the 200-miles-an-hour drive, the powerful sound of the engine roaring, and the constant switches bet
ween cars at their maximum speed, were nothing compared to the adrenaline created by Edan’s words.
Gaia stared out of the window, as if the answers to all of her questions lay outside of the van. Like her thoughts, the outside was a mix of blurry images, speed, and unfinished sounds that blended in the darkness of the night. Unable to find the distraction she needed, Gaia switched her attention to the inside of the van.
Floyd was driving, singing, and bouncing to “Carry on My Wayward Son” by Kansas. Gaia was shocked, not just by his peculiarly cool moves, but by the fact that despite moving so much, the van was completely steady.
Synthia, sitting as co-pilot, was scanning through a magazine pretending she was in her own little show of “Who wore it better?” Apparently, no one did. Every one of the models had either a big nose, thick legs, small eyes, was overweight, or something needed to be changed in order to belong to her imaginary group of famous friends.
Edan’s face flashed in Gaia’s mind. The memory of him telling her they were a match made Gaia feel like turning on fire. Not a good idea inside a moving van.
She shifted her weight trying to find a comfortable position, not because she needed to, since the van might as well have been the interior of a first-class jumbo plane, but because her body felt like it was full of energy. Too alive to stay still, too awake to fall asleep.
Gaia felt the exhilarating need to tell Priyam what had happened with Edan. As if telling her best friend would make what happened real. As if in telling her, the feeling of constant electricity circling her body would fade away. The problem was, her best friend was sleeping like a rock. Yes, only Priyam could fall asleep on a high-speed race to their survival. Needless to say, there was nothing Gaia could do but wait until they reached their next safe place at Penticton. This is going to be a long night…
* * *
“You are my match,” Gaia repeated the words out loud. Words that made her stomach flutter each time she thought about them.
“Just like that?” asked Priyam, who was sitting on the other side of their double bed, playing with an arrow.
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