’Til the World Ends

by Julie Kagawa, Ann Aguirre, Karen Duvall

  I slowed the Trooper and pulled to the curb.

  “Why are we stopping?” Ian asked.

  “Those tents over there.” I pointed at the park. “There could be people inside.”

  “If they’re inside, they’re protected from the sun.”

  “But if they were infected, they’ll need medical attention. There’s an infirmary inside the Capitol Building.”

  Ian looked agitated, but he apparently wanted to help. “What would you like me to do?”

  Rather than tell him, I got out of the SUV and led the way to the cluster of tents. All but one was vacant. I peered inside and found a young couple that looked to be in their early twenties. The woman cradled the man’s head in her lap, her eyes round as she stared up at me while gently combing her fingers through her companion’s hair.

  My heart dipped when I saw the purple rash that covered the man’s face. The sparks had infected him.

  “Please,” the woman said, her voice shaking. “Tell me there’s a cure now. You can make him better, right?”

  I held my composure as I knelt on the floor of the tent. My fault, my fault. “No, hon, I’m afraid not.”

  Ian hadn’t come inside but stood looking through the open tent flap. “I’ll go back to the SUV and get them some water. I’ll need the key to get inside.” I tossed it to him, and he vanished from sight, his fading footsteps crunching over dry brittle grass.

  Tears welled in the woman’s eyes, and her lower lip trembled. “It happened so fast. We’d been at home in bed, in a basement apartment two blocks from here, but I woke up and couldn’t get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. I thought a short walk might help.” Her hands absently rubbed her bulging belly, her unborn child a pillow for her husband’s head. “We’d just rounded the corner when my husband spotted the sparks. He got us to this tent before they fell. He pushed me in ahead of him, but he didn’t make it—” She choked out a sob. “The sparks touched him.”

  I held my breath to keep from screaming. I had to help this woman and her husband. They were my responsibility now. “My friend is getting you water, and then we’ll help you both to the infirmary across the street. I hear there are good people there.”

  She nodded. “I heard that, too. Maybe my husband will get better on his own. It can’t be that bad, can it? Only a couple of sparks touched him.”

  I smiled. “Maybe.” Though I knew the number of sparks didn’t matter when it came to exposure, but I couldn’t tell her that. Not now when her grief was still so fresh. It could be a blessing that the fewer the sparks, the less aggressive the fever. He could last as long as a month and might even see the birth of his child. “We can hope, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, her smile shaky as she wiped a tear from her cheek and kissed the top of her husband’s head. “And believe in a better future. For my baby.”

  Believe. The word echoed between my ears, and the voice saying it sounded like my mother’s.

  Ian should have been back by now. “I’ll just go outside to check on my friend,” I told the woman, and left the tent. I glanced at the street where I’d parked the Trooper. Both Ian and the SUV were gone.

  Chapter Four

  “Ian?” I called as I trotted to the curb where I’d parked the SUV. But it wasn’t there, and neither was Ian. Had he really stolen my car? I glanced up and down the deserted street, then ran to the next block and checked there, too. Not a trace.

  “That son of a bitch,” I muttered between gritted teeth. I knew he was hiding something, but I never would have taken him for a thief. He’d seemed genuine, sincere. When would I learn to stop being so trusting of others and simply trust my own instincts? Opportunists were everywhere.

  I paced the sidewalk in front of the park. How would I get home? And how the hell would I chase storms now? My heart pounded with panic. As my mind raced with strategies to get me on the road, I started back toward the tent with the storm victim inside. The least I could do was help that couple get to the infirmary. I’d work out my own issues later.

  Halfway across the park, I heard someone yell, “Interloper!”

  I turned around, looking left to right, and saw no one. Then I glanced up into a charred cottonwood tree. I spotted a man wearing a black mask and black cape. His flabby bare chest was hairless and sunburned. Wearing faded swim trunks and a pair of trashy work boots two sizes too big, he looked like the ghetto version of a superhero. Since he was obviously a nut job, I ignored him. I wasn’t in the mood to be messed with.

  I kept on walking, and again he shouted at me, “Interloper! Trespasser! You don’t belong here.”

  I stopped and narrowed my eyes at him. “Who put you in charge?”

  “I did.”

  “Yeah?” I shook my head and tossed another hopeful glance at the street. Still no Trooper and no Ian. “Have fun with that.”

  “Get out.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, get out of my city!” He flung his arm toward me, and it felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach. My body flew up and backward, landing just short of a very nasty metal couch frame. He was a Kinetic. Crap.

  “I’m The Law and you’re a puny human.” He spit on the ground. “Get out of my city.”

  This could be a problem. Not only did I have no means of leaving, I took issue with getting pushed around by some deluded freak with a God complex. If this were to be a battle of kinetic powers, I’d lose before putting on the gloves. I had nothing to fight with.

  “Okay,” I said, hoping to placate him. “I’m leaving.” I waved him off and resumed walking toward the tent.

  Suddenly unable to breath, I gasped for air as invisible fingers crushed my windpipe. Standing on the branch of his mighty cottonwood, the man glared down at me while leaning against the trunk and holding out both hands clenched into fists. He was going to kill me for trespassing. Instead of hitting me, he choked me, hands-free.

  Panic overcame me as I dropped to my knees, my eyes swelling in their sockets and my hands desperately grappling at what wasn’t there. My fingernails dug into my neck in a desperate attempt to free myself from the stranglehold. Skin slick with my own blood, my hands slid over my throat as they searched for the tightening band that cut off my air. The light around me dimmed. I was about to pass out.

  The squeal of braking tires sounded in the distance and was followed by the patter of running feet. Strong arms grabbed me around the waist and lowered me gently to the ground. Whoever it was yelled something I couldn’t make out, but I managed to catch a few words: die, kill, crazy bastard. A sudden wind whistled in my ears and tousled my short hair. I blinked, my vision clearing as the choking sensation faded, and I could finally breathe again.

  I gulped in air and saw Ian standing over me, his hands whipping in circles above his head. He’d created a cyclone, and it had lifted my assailant from his tree branch, holding him about twenty feet aloft. His superhero mask had slipped off, and his huge, frightened eyes begged for freedom, but Ian wouldn’t give it to him. I could tell by the expression on Ian’s face that he was dangerously pissed off.

  “Ian,” I rasped, though I wasn’t sure he heard me. “The guy is sick in the head. He can’t help himself. Don’t kill him.”

  Ian’s gaze swiveled to mine, and I saw his fury and his pain. I wondered if his anger was meant for someone else. I added that question to my “Ask Ian” list, if I ever talked to him again.

  The cyclone spun the unmasked fraud toward the Platte River. I had a feeling it might be a while before he came back.

  Ian dropped to the ground beside me, his face pale and sweating. The power he had used to create the twister had apparently sucked a good amount of energy from him. He lay back on the hard ground and closed his eyes.

  I should have left him right where he was. But at the moment, I was as exhausted as he was. My throat felt bruised, and I touched my neck, my fingers coming away bloody. I’d clawed myself good.

  “You’re bleeding,” Ian said, still
catching his breath.

  I glared at him. “You noticed, huh? Did you also notice that I’d have no way to get back home without the SUV you stole from me?”

  He looked away to stare at a heap of trash behind the tents. “I didn’t steal your car.” His tone wasn’t convincing.

  Though I’d stood at death’s door only minutes ago, I forced myself to my feet. “Enjoy what’s left of your life, Ian.”

  “I came back,” he yelled at my retreating back. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  I stopped and turned to face him. “Why come back? And why run off in the first place?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. There was no excuse for what he’d done. Or almost done. I waited for an explanation.

  “To be honest—”

  “Oh, let’s, shall we?” I glowered at him.

  He stood and brushed pieces of dead grass from his pants. “I spotted an auto parts store down the street and thought I’d make a quick run to get a can of coolant for your air conditioner. As I was driving back, I had an overwhelming urge to get away.”

  “Get away?” That was crazy. He wasn’t anyone’s prisoner, least of all mine. “Ian, you’re a free man. You can go anywhere you want.”

  His dark eyes were full of misery. “I’m free now, but I haven’t always been. Someone’s after me, Sarah. He wants to use me and any other Kinetic he can get his hands on. If you’re not careful, he’ll take you, too.”

  Ian helped me get the couple out of the tent and into a building a block away that had an infirmary. I treated the scratches on my neck while we were there. Ian remained silent the entire time, and I was bursting with questions that I couldn’t ask until we were alone. I probably shouldn’t have agreed to take him back with me, but I wasn’t cruel enough to leave him stranded. Now that I knew what he was capable of, I’d be watching him carefully. Duplicity aside, his ability could help people.

  “How could you not tell me any of this?” I asked Ian on our drive back to Lodgepole. “Being stalked by a kidnapper is not a healthy secret to keep, not for you and definitely not for me.”

  He sat slouched in the passenger seat, eyes averted from mine.

  “I want answers, Ian. Right. Now.”

  He rubbed his forehead as if it hurt. “I know how it looks, but it’s not what you think. I’m not a criminal.”

  “Convince me.”

  “I will,” he said, sliding his gaze to give me a hopeful look, then glancing away again. He licked his lips and swallowed. “First, I need to make a confession.”

  I swung my head around to look at him, nearly giving myself whiplash. “What?”

  “I knew about your SUV before I knew about you.”

  A liar and a thief. I really knew how to pick ’em. “So you’d planned to steal my car all along.”

  He sighed. “Before I met you, I saw it in the ambulance bay and tried breaking in to steal it. I was desperate for a way to put distance between me and the guy who’s after me.”

  Desperate. I really hated that word. “Yet when you got the chance to steal my car, you didn’t. Why not?”

  He swiveled in the seat with his back to the window, his attention only on me. “Several reasons. One, I’m not a thief. Two, I couldn’t leave you stranded. Three, we’re both Kinetics, which means the guy after me will come after you, too, and I don’t want you getting hurt. And four...”

  I waited. “What’s the fourth reason?”

  “I like you too much to leave you.”

  Chapter Five

  The blush sizzled up my neck to my cheeks. My spine tingled at knowing how Ian felt because the feeling was mutual. I think I liked him more than was good for me. I wanted to trust him, I really did, but reasons not to were stacking up. Rather than respond to his admission of affection, I redirected back to why he felt the need to steal my SUV in the first place. “Who is this mysterious Kinetic kidnapper anyway?”

  Ian faced forward again and tilted his head back, eyes closed. After a short pause, he said, “After my...” He waved his hands up and down the front of his body. “I discovered I could do things with the weather. So I started to experiment. I made the mistake of making it rain on an old woman’s backyard garden. That action attracted the attention of a Secret Service agent who was rounding up Kinetics for the government.”

  The existence of Kinetics was no secret, though it stirred up hard feelings for anyone who’d lost a loved one to Sun Fever. Many Kinetics kept their abilities private to deter resentment. If the government sought us out, they’d have to do some digging to uncover all the ones staying under the radar. “Why would the U.S. government have any interest in us?”

  “According to Agent Sam Nichol,” he said, putting emphasis on the man’s name as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, “there’s a plan to use us to heal the planet.”

  This news was encouraging, but Ian’s grimace expressed the opposite.

  “How is that a bad thing?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure that it is, but I’m positive Nichol is. Bad, I mean.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He started out okay,” Ian said. “A genuinely nice guy doing his duty for his country. When he first told me about the plan to collect all the Kinetics and house them at the military base inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, I was on board. I believed him. Then he lost his wife and kids to the fever. He was grief-stricken at first, then bitter, then crazy, and then he got mean.”

  I could see how that would happen, especially to someone whose job must have been stressful. The electromagnetic interference from the solar storms affected everyone in some way. Personality and mood changes were only the half of it. Add to that the vitamin and mineral deficiencies in a poor diet of rations and you got a stew of dysfunctional people.

  “Had you and Nichol become friends?” I asked.

  “No.” He pressed his lips together before grinding out, “Enemies.”

  “What did he do to make you hate him so much?”

  “He drugged me, beat me and kept me chained up in a trailer while he went from town to town, selling my services to the highest bidder.” Ian flipped up the hank of hair that usually covered the scar on his right eyebrow. “He gave me this. Threw a whisky bottle at me when I couldn’t make enough rain. I’d drained the reservoir, but it wasn’t enough, so he busted my head open.” He dropped the hair and hunched forward, his body stiff with rage.

  My chest tightened as I considered what it must have been like for him: treated as a slave and forced to perform weather tricks like a trained monkey. Ian had amazing control over his ability, and those who used him had probably made it a habit of demanding the impossible. For Ian to be so traumatized by his experience, I had to wonder what else he’d had to endure when he failed to deliver to Nichol’s satisfaction.

  “How did you get away?” I asked.

  “The same way I got caught. I used weather.” He lifted one hand and waved it in a small circle.

  “Ah. You made a cyclone.”

  He nodded and dropped his hand. “It wasn’t a big one, but strong enough to create the distraction I needed. I’ve been running ever since.”

  That’s why he was always looking over his shoulder. “You haven’t seen this Nichol guy since?”

  Ian shook his head. “I doubt he’s far away. He won’t stop looking for me because I made good money for him. He has a pimped-out SUV like yours, only faster and with more modifications. I figured I’d have a better chance eluding him if I had one, too.” He dipped his chin and stared down at his lap.

  My mind kept scrolling back to what he’d said about the government. “What do you know about this plan to heal the planet?”

  “Not much. Only that Nichol said that the conjoined powers of Kinetics would be strong enough to stop the storms. He also said he didn’t believe it.”

  The theory made sense. Ian and I had felt the surge of power between us when he’d held me. He’d passed
some of his kinetic energy to me, which is why I hadn’t gone through withdrawals right after I’d failed to chase the sun storm in Denver. Or at least I hadn’t suffered them yet. A faint pounding in my ears and a twitching sensation in my legs told me I wasn’t off the hook. The withdrawals were just delayed, and I hoped they wouldn’t be severe.

  Ian shot me a concerned look. “Your hands are shaking.”

  I glanced at my fingers gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white as bone. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t hide their trembling. “So they are.”

  “You okay?”

  “I will be as soon as I can chase another storm.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my T-shirt.

  “I understand.”

  I doubted he really did. He didn’t know what it was like to be a monster that fed off the source of other people’s suffering. The pain of withdrawal was my just desert, and I was okay with that.

  My vision blurred and I almost ran off the road.

  “You better let me drive,” Ian said.

  “Not a chance,” I told him, blinking hard to stay focused. We had only a few blocks left before reaching the hospital. I barely managed to get us there without wrecking the Trooper.

  I parked the car inside the ambulance bay, and we sat in silence for a minute while I gathered enough wits to open the door and climb out. Ian did, as well. His slouched posture revealed his guilt for what he’d done, but at least now I understood why. He wasn’t a malevolent man, just a reckless one.

  “Want to get that drink?” he asked me, a hopeful glint in his eyes.