Nothing I’d seen prepared me for the children. Just beyond the buildings was a playground that had been impacted by the blast. Mesmerized by the gruesome sight before me, I stood in front of a blackened set of swings. The bodies must have fallen where they stood. Children and toddlers had been cut down in the middle of some game that involved running. They were petrified mid-stride.
One of the smallest bodies twitched at the outskirts of the game. The child’s long dress had partially melted into her bubbling, raw skin. Her hair was nearly gone. She spoke in her native language, but I understood her perfectly. She begged me to make the pain go away. I fell to my knees and gathered her in my arms as she gasped her final breaths.
I bowed my head and sobbed for the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people killed by that uncontrolled explosion. Mostly, I cried for the children. How many children had cried for someone to hold them and ease the transition to the beyond? How many had seen their friends and families die?
“Dakarai,” I screamed, “is this the lesson? Is this what you wanted me to see? Do you believe that I am destruction? You’re wrong! I control the flame!”
I laid the girl’s broken body on the ground, closed her eyelids, and offered a prayer for her soul. Viscera and other bloody gunk clung to me, but I didn’t brush it off. It felt like a desecration of the memory of the newly dead.
My entire being flooded with rage until my vision was distorted by red as dark as the blood on my hands. The power inside that little boy had murdered these people. He’d been too young to control it. Worse, he’d been left to live with the consequences.
The voice had prophesized that my fate would be the same. Screw fate. I refused to be controlled. With a roar of defiance, I called the flames to me and stepped out of this nightmare.
✽ ✽ ✽
Someone must have picked me up and carried me to my room because when my eyes opened, and I let out a scream, I was tucked beneath my warm comforter. I yanked it off, expecting to find my ruined and bloodied clothes, but I was in a clean pair of pajamas. The blood covering my arms was gone.
I sprung out of bed and attacked my clothes hamper. The last several hours couldn’t have been a dream. I needed to prove that I wasn’t crazy, and my clothes were likely the only evidence I could put my hands on to prove that I’d experienced something too terrible to put into words. Piles rose around me while I sorted my clothes by item as I searched.
I found nothing. Growling with frustration, I turned to my small closet and ripped pants and dresses from their hangers. I ripped out the drawers in my dresser and crawled under my bed.
My clothes were gone.
The realization that it had been nothing more than a vivid nightmare did nothing to comfort me. My memories of the market were slowly fading, but the boy remained. I saw him bleeding in the alley surrounded by gore. I felt the last shuddering breath of the little girl I’d held in my arms. The faint odor of death still clung to my nostrils.
Nothing made sense. How could have something that had seemed so real turn out to be a nightmare? Why did reality feel so wrong? I didn’t dare check my reflection in the mirror in case the monster inside appeared. Sleep was an impossibility. Conveying my dream to someone was too daunting to consider. Out of ideas, I climbed into bed and pulled the covers to my chin.
Hours later, heavy footsteps crossed the hallway and paused in front of my door. Dakarai knocked softly and let himself in without waiting for an answer.
“Jasper?”
“Hi,” I whispered from beneath the pillows. “Dakarai, I need help. There’s something wrong with me, and I can’t fix it.”
The mattress shifted as he sat on my bed. “The wrongness isn’t in you. The massacre you witnessed was real. It occurred eighteen years ago.”
I popped up so fast that my pillow flew into his face. “What? How do you know? It was real?”
He gave me a slight nod. “It was reported as a terrorist bomb. There were no witnesses to claim otherwise. Only a handful of people knew the truth. Of those, two remain among the living.”
My head hurt too much to interpret his cryptic language. “Explain.”
“You pushed your way into my mind. That was my memory.” He smiled faintly. “All these years, I wondered about the strange looking woman at the end of the alley. If she’d survived. Now I know.”
“Huh?”
“I am that little boy.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Dakarai and I settled into opposite sides of my couch and said nothing for a long time. My tea had long cooled, and Dakarai seemed to be in a light sleep. I took the opportunity to study him and tried to reconcile the man clutching a pillow to his chest with the little boy.
The scar on Dakarai’s neck was identical to the gash created by the man with the whip. I knew that if he removed his shirt, I’d find remnants of the boy’s wounds.
That made sense. I saw a younger version of Dakarai. What didn’t make sense was how it happened. Except the rare dreams I shared with my brother, I’d never connected with anyone. I’d never been inside Jude’s memories.
Dakarai swore that I’d not only seen what happened, but I’d also been present in his reality. Was time travel real? Where was my body during that time? How did I end up in bed?
“You’re thinking too loud,” Dakarai said. “Please relax.”
“How are you relaxed?”
He opened one eye and glanced at me. “Who says I am? On the contrary, I am sifting through everything I’ve learned to find an explanation.”
“More tea?” I walked to my small stove and waited for the kettle to heat. “Are you hungry?”
“Thank you, but no. My stomach has a hard time settling on the rare occasions I revisit those memories. You want an explanation.”
When the kettle whistled, I prepared my tea and returned to the couch. “Yes.”
Dakarai sighed with the weariness of a man who longed for oblivion. “I do not understand how this happened. It must be a side effect of your mixed abilities.”
“Will you tell me?”
He held the pillow tighter. “Yes. As a child, I lived in Ethiopia, in a city called Addis Ababa. My parents and I lived in the business district for most of the year. I spent summers with my grandmother and my mother’s people. They called me a wild child. I refused to wear shoes because I believed them to be an unnecessary inconvenience. From sunrise to sunset, I was allowed to roam free.”
I smiled at the memory of the boy who stuck his tongue out and laughed. “You were happy.”
“I was indeed a happy child, at least until that day. The men had seen me before, seen me glow and steal things without touching anything. Telekinesis wasn’t a word that was known to me, but the action was as natural as breathing. I was young enough that the men thought they could beat it out of me or, if they couldn’t, kill me and dispose of the demon.”
The cruelty was breathtaking. Grown men decided to hunt and kill a child because he was different. I wanted to comfort him, but there were no words to erase that pain. I touched his hand and hoped he understood that I wasn’t afraid.
Dakarai frowned for a moment. He appeared confused about the meaning behind the gesture but squeezed my hand, nonetheless. “Before, I could summon and control small amounts of energy. My cousins urged me to make little fires — children’s games. But the pain unlocked something inside of me that day. I didn’t understand why the men were so angry. I wanted the men to stop hitting me and to go away. A small part of me wanted them to receive a harsh spanking. It was the first time I had exploded with such violence.”
The destruction of that market and the deaths of all those people was the work of a seven-year-old who had barely come into his abilities. He’d only wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to vomit.
“There was a woman in the alley with me. I told her to run because I didn’t want to hurt her. The power was building again, and even then, my concern was for your safety.”
“What happened after?”
&nb
sp; A ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “If this had been a natural phenomenon, scientists would have called it aftershocks. I emitted small bursts, but none were bigger than the circumference of my body. By the time I’d been found, stories of the demon boy had spread. Thankfully, someone within the Order had seen me in their visions, so a small group was already searching for me. They were the ones who took me away from my home.”
My heart broke for the skinny little boy, broken and bleeding, turned out by his family and ripped away from everything he’d ever known. “Did you see your family again?”
“No. One of my uncles had been the one to inform the men about the demon boy and led them to me. He was killed in the explosion. My family did not want me and, as far as I know, no one has ever looked for me. They were glad to hand me over to the Order.”
I had a new plan. I’d find my family’s murderers, kill them, and jump on a plane to Ethiopia. No matter how long it took, I planned to find every one of Dakarai’s family members, torture and kill them. I wanted them to beg for death.
Dakarai’s hand on my arm snapped me from my violent daydream. “Jasper, come back. Breathe with me.”
“Oh,” I said with a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I got carried away in my thoughts.”
“You’re glowing.”
I cursed my glowing skin and focused on my breathing. The rage wanted an outlet, but my willpower was too strong. I imagined shoving the violence and power into a metal lock box. The box was then put into a larger metal box, which fit into a wooden crate. I covered that with a Plexiglas box and wrapped it in Teflon. With effort, I dropped the whole damn thing into an imaginary ocean. When it sank, I dusted my hands with satisfaction and opened my eyes.
“Did it work?”
Dakarai broke out into laughter. He pulled me across the couch and hugged me until I couldn’t breathe.
“Dude,” I choked out. “Dying here.”
“Dude,” he teased. “You did it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MIKAEL HURLED YET ANOTHER dodgeball at my head. “For someone so tough, you run from a rubber ball like a scared little child.”
“Ow! Cut it out!” The next ball struck my thigh. “Jerk! I get the point. See, still not getting angry.”
“We are not even close to done, Milaya.” He laughed and threw another stinking red rubber ball. “Did you not play this game as a child?
I snarled at him. “Yeah, but there was only one ball, and I had a team. Stop it.”
“Maintain that Zen attitude and catch them. Then we will see.”
The ball moved across the room in slow motion. It was headed directly at my face. I thought about moving but time sped up just in time for it to smash into my nose and knock me on my ass. I fell backward and slammed my head against the floor. Clutching my nose, I staggered to my feet.
“Time out! I think you broke my nose!”
Mikael walked over to examine me. He clucked as he pushed and prodded. “I feel nothing. Shake it off and get ready.”
I expected to get angry, to feel the need to hurt Mikael, but the urge never came. Instead, I felt pathetic and wanted to hide somewhere no one would see me blubber. My nose still ached, and my head throbbed. But it was Mikael’s lack of concern that hurt most.
He resumed his position and launched three balls in quick succession. “Stop crying and start catching.”
Only one made contact. It grazed my right shoulder and continued to sail past me. “Stop it. I’m done for the day.”
“No. We will rest after you stop allowing yourself to get injured.” He lowered his voice. “Please start catching. My arms are getting heavy.”
“I don’t want to play anymore.”
Mikael stormed over and shoved me against the wall. “Do you think I enjoy trying to hurt you? Do you think I find pleasure in seeing you bleed? This isn’t a game, Jasper.”
“What the hell are we doing?” I yelled.
“We are in a safe place where the worst that can happen is a bloody nose. What happens when someone wants to hurt you? What if someone is trying to hurt me? Could you save me? Or would you destroy at least one of the five boroughs?”
Mikael was stronger than I imagined. His hands pinned me against the wall, and no amount of kicking or writhing budged him. “How do dodgeballs help?”
“The ball is roughly the size of a man’s head. If you become angry, you need to direct your energy at your target without risking the lives of bystanders. “He regained some of his humor and smiled. “Since I am your favorite person, I am an ideal candidate.”
I stopped struggling. These people were out of their minds. They’d shipped me to an off-site location with Mikael. Someone thought throwing things at me was a great idea. And Mikael came willingly. Idiots, all of them.
“What is wrong with you?”
He let go of my shoulders and stepped back. “Nothing is wrong with me. I trust you and believe that you won’t hurt me. We will stay here until you believe the same.”
“Can we take a break?” Fatigue threatened to take me down. I considered stretching out on the mat and trying to catch a few hours of sleep. It would have been pointless because Mikael would have kept launching my rubber nemeses at my face until I got with the program.
“Sure. I brought you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” Mikael sat down gingerly. “My head has been hurting for days. Do you have any remedies?”
I took the sandwich and a bottle of water from him. “Is it the visions?”
“Yes. The frequency has increased. Something is coming, Jasper. We need you to be ready for it.”
“We? Why can’t I stay here where I’m not a danger to anyone? What danger?”
Mikael grimaced. “I can’t see it. I see friends and colleagues dying. The blood of children is everywhere. The balance will be destroyed if our children die.”
“What children?”
He whimpered and curled into a ball. “It never stops — the children. I cannot see their faces, but their little bodies are mangled and discarded. Whatever forces seek to destroy us are near. We need you, Jasper. I need you.”
I put my arm around his shoulders and stroked his hair until he relaxed, and the tears subsided. “It’s okay, Mikael. Don’t cry anymore. You can throw those stupid things at me until your arms don’t move. I won’t let you down. No one else will die because of me.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“Yeah!” I pumped a fist as the last dodgeball exploded into a mess of rubber and sand. “We did it!”
Mikael dusted his shoulders and grinned. “I shouldn’t have worried. I knew you wouldn’t misjudge and hit my face.”
Once I’d mastered the art of staying cool in the midst of a bombardment, our focus had shifted to letting out small, controlled bursts of energy, similar to what I’d done as a child. Soon enough, I was destroying anything, and anything Mikael threw at me.
“Oh, get over it. I only hit you once, and it was just a tiny bit.” I smothered a grin as he pointed to his left shoulder. “You’re fine.”
He plopped down next to me with a groan. “My arm aches.”
“You should have switched arms occasionally.”
“I can’t throw with my left. Are you ready to go home?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I don’t enjoy sleeping on stinky workout mats, and I’m tired of these four walls. There’s something about the echoes at night that creeps me out.”
Mikael agreed. Nights had found us next to each other in sleeping bags. We’d pretended that the noises hadn’t bothered us, but it was still a lie. Neither of us planned to sleep in cavernous places anytime soon.
He changed the topic to our favorite subject: food. Our shared weakness was spending too much of the Order’s money on deliveries from every restaurant within a five-mile radius. We were both starving, so he waxed poetic about the meals he’d order and the obscene amount of food we’d eat during movie night. This was serious business for Mikael. He was sweet as pie but turned into a surly teddy bea
r when his stomach was empty. He had a craving for Italian, and I wanted Vietnamese. We settled on Mexican.
As we packed up, I voiced a nagging concern. “They’ve been watching us the entire time. Who?”
“Does it bother you?”
I shrugged and began to pack my belongings. “It’s not surprising, but it sucks to be treated like a feral animal. So?”
“Charles and Miriam from the High Council, Danny, and Jordy. There might be others.”
“Fantastic. Hey, Jordy,” I shouted. “Stop being an asshole.”
“Milaya, please don’t do this. I know it has been difficult to lose a friend. He has his reasons.”
“Do you know those reasons?”
He shook his head. “Trust his judgment and try to understand he’s doing what he believes is right.”
“Yeah, I know. It still hurts. Ugh, I wish there was a silver lining. I get how lab rats feel. All this work for no payoff.”
Mikael shouldered his pack and grinned. “You forget that lab rats get a treat once the experiment is complete.”
I clapped my hands together. “Presents? Gimme, gimme, gimme!”
“Nope. You’ll have to wait until we get home. I promise it will be worth the wait.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Freedom.
I asked Mikael to explain it twice. Then I asked him to say it again because I couldn’t believe it was true. The powers that be were easing my restrictions. While I wasn’t granted full access to the compound, the Tower was mine again. My bedroom doors no longer locked from the outside. I had access to all the facilities including the nicer gyms and the Order’s libraries.
My training with Dakarai was scheduled to resume the following Monday. Cecilia and Mikael were charged with educating me on the history of the Order and showing me the lineage of the direct line. Someone from the security team had been assigned to me for weapons training and hand-to-hand combat drills.
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