by Nina D'Aleo
“How did you find me?” I whispered.
Dark lifted my arm—the tracer. He’d tracked me the same way I’d been searching for him.
“I thought the app was malfunctioning,” I said.
“It was. Byter called me and gave me a location.” He glanced around us. “I’m out of it for five seconds and the whole world goes to hell.”
“Perfect reason never to leave again,” I told him.
He smiled, but it faded immediately as he saw the blood pooling around us. He grabbed up my shirt. He gritted his teeth. There was a gaping bullet wound in my stomach. Dark ripped off his jacket to stem the blood flow, but before he could press it to the wound, the hole began to shrink, smaller, smaller until the bullet itself popped out and the wound sealed over. Dark’s eyes widened. There was a whoosh of air and I dragged him down beside me as a massive tree trunk flew just over our heads.
“We have to get out of here!” I yelled to my partner.
He didn’t question or argue. He just hauled me to my feet and helped me run to the car. We leaped in and he started it up. Through smears of Pope’s blood on the windscreen, I finally spotted Rocco, Marco and Willow at the end of the cul-de-sac. They were surrounded on all sides by Shaman soldiers, and taking hit after hit. Rocco was trying to shield the other two. He was fighting their every move, but there were too many of them. I saw him stumble and fall. Fear choked me.
“See that guy there? We need to help him!” I said to Dark. “He saved me.”
Dark nodded, grim resolve tightening his face. He grabbed something off the back seat and handed it to me. I held up the machine gun.
“Always come prepared,” I said.
“Always,” Dark said. He revved the engine and threw the car into gear. He skidded the tires across the grass and we flew off the curb toward the embattled group. I leaned out the window and opened fire upward. I didn’t want to shoot Rocco and the others while aiming for the enemy. Taken by surprise, the Horseman’s soldiers scattered and we screeched to a stop beside the trio. Willow and Marco dragged Rocco into the back seat and Dark hit reverse, speeding us backward. The smell of burning rubber thickened the air. I could hear a helicopter flying overhead. I turned to the others.
Marco was hugging onto his brother. Rocco held a hand over his neck, over a wound that was literally spurting blood. His eyes met mine and I understood the look. He was bleeding out. Modern medicine was not going to help. He couldn’t regenerate himself fast enough and neither Willow nor Marco were strong enough healers. I looked around desperately for something to help him and grabbed up an oilcloth from near my feet.
“Bos, get us to a hospital!” I said, lunging back to press the rag against Rocco’s wound.
As my fingers brushed his neck, his whole body convulsed off the seat. I gasped and pulled back, unsure of what I’d done to him, but when Rocco straightened up, not only had his neck healed: but all his minor scratches and all his old scars as well; even the tips of his fingers had grown back. The three Shaman stared at me in shock, and I stared back at them just as surprised. The General had said I was strong, but I hadn’t had the time to really consider what that meant.
Dark looked back and saw Rocco was healed. “Where to now?” he asked, slowing the car.
“Back I think. The Horseman and Omen are fighting behind the house.”
Willow’s eyes welled up with tears.
“He needs us,” Rocco said.
“Back, Bos!” I confirmed to my partner and he slammed the car into reverse and sped us back the way we’d come until I pointed to the rebels’ house, on fire and half collapsed and said to my partner, “Can you ram the fence?”
“Not a problem,” Dark said. He shifted the car out of reverse and into gear and sped toward the house. We crashed over the gutter, and tore through the fence and shrubs. The car stalled and we looked out on what had once been backyard. Now it was just dirt, with no one and nothing left standing except Omen and the General. The Horseman. They were throwing everything they had at each other, their powers so advanced that time itself seemed slowed around them. We witnessed each blow—the projection, the impact, both of them regenerating, transforming themselves so quickly they were just buzzes of light.
“Is that …?” My partner hesitated, pointing to the General.
I just stared, still unable to really believe.
Omen got in a fast blow. He threw the General forward onto his hands and knees. I held my breath. The rebel leader moved in fast to strike again, but the General was faking. He shot up and grabbed Omen by the neck, lifting him into the air.
They were face to face—eye to eye—mind to mind, struggling—equally powerful, equally matched—then the General said something. We saw Omen falter. His control crumbled. He yelled out a word. Then he gave in. He lowered his head. The General squeezed his hand and Omen exploded into a million pieces of dust. And he was gone. Willow screamed. Marco turned away. Rocco watched, expressionless.
I was pretty sure what the General had said to Omen. I saw an image of a girl in red in my mind.
My ex-mentor started to turn toward us.
“Bos—go!” I shouted at my partner.
He snapped the engine on and hit reverse. We scraped back out through the fence and over the gutter to the road. He swung the car in a shrieking circle and took off. I turned to look through the back window. I saw the General stepping out of the yard, a gathering of soldiers around him. He walked with his usual casual gait to the helicopter, which had landed at the end of street. The General—the Blood Horseman—the Shaman—the man and the monster got in and it lifted up. It flew in the opposite direction from the way we were traveling, toward the rising sun. I looked at the others and saw it in their faces. The resistance had failed—the era of the Shaman had begun. I collapsed against the seat and closed my eyes.
*
Anger is a funny sort of thing—not ha-ha funny, as Dark would say—funny as in twisted and paradoxical. It drives us forward and it holds us back. It burns hot and it burns cold. It’s our natural defense against pain, yet it hurts so much it can send us crazy… And I think I reached crazy several times in the first ten minutes of staring anger in the face. Then I felt regret—another awesome feeling that gnaws at the soul, like rats with razor teeth and a bad attitude. And betrayal. Another good one. And I wallowed in it deeply as Dark drove us down the highway with no particular direction, until somehow I drifted to sleep or it drifted over me. Either way I crashed out.
The dreams that came were vivid. Mom, Dad, Gemma and Benicio, their baby. It was a happy mind-film at first—a birthday party for their baby, for Lily Grace—somehow she was already a year old. Dad was bringing the loud and inappropriate jokes, trying to start up a round of “happy birthday to you” before the candles were even lit, and Mom was shooting him looks. Gemma had Lily on her lap, Benny stood behind them with his hand on Gemma’s shoulder. I kept to the back of the gathering, looking through the gaps in the crowd to the end of the table where my family was. I felt a sense of something good as I watched my brother, who’d had times in his life where he’d struggled so badly, when he’d been overtaken by fears and obsessions that had haunted him, hunted him to the edge and back. I felt a sense of pride in him—he’d made it—he’d fought his way back and here he was. He was a good husband and a great father. Lily Grace looked in my direction and as she did, a camera flash lit up her face—and then all the camera lights started blazing at once and I heard Dark talking behind me, saying, “It’s time to go.” And Rocco’s voice as well—“It’s time to go.”
But all the lights were scaring the baby and my brother’s forehead had furrows in it—the crowd was pressing too close. I started fighting my way forward through the people, trying to reach my family, but someone was holding me back. I spun around to face them—then I wasn’t at the party anymore. I was in the warehouse, in the middle of all the trapped Shaman, the imprisoned, the tortured and tormented—and my family was there. All of them. The baby
too. I put my hands to my head and screamed. I woke up screaming with Dark shaking me and shouting, “Open your eyes!”
When I did, I was lying by the side of the road and the car was just ahead of us. It had crashed into a guardrail, and smoke was coming from its smashed up hood. Rocco was right beside me—his eyes like the dead of night, and as I stared into them I thought it was true what Mom had told me once, that silence is the loudest scream of all. Willow and Marco stood further back. Willow was sobbing, Marco had his hands on top of his head and was staring in shock.
“What happened?” I asked, and the words burned my throat.
“You flipped right the fuck out is what happened!” Dark said. Panic stared from behind his dark green eyes.
“I’m okay.” I sat up and winced. My chest hurt, my lungs hurt, my stomach muscles felt knotted.
“You’ve been screaming without taking a breath for an hour,” Dark said. “Literally without taking a breath.” I could see all the little veins in his forehead standing out in a way that was never good, but then I noticed something else, all his injuries had healed. He looked perfect. Sweaty, shaken and pale, but perfect. He saw me staring at him.
“You …” He couldn’t finish the sentence and just stood up, running his hand down his face and holding it over his mouth for a few moments before letting it drop to his side with a thud. When he looked at me again I remembered my dream.
“They’re out there,” I said and Dark knew immediately who I meant. In his heart, they were his family too. “I sent them away and they’re out there alone.” I started to feel myself losing it and tried to stand up, trying to escape breaking down in front of Dark and the others, trying to escape myself, impossible as it was. I slipped on the sidewalk, the rain drizzling from a dark gray sky above. I couldn’t tell what time it was. Rocco grabbed my arm to steady me. Dark saw and took hold of my other side, trying to drag me away from him, but I kept a grip on Rocco. Dark looked from my hand to me and back to Rocco. Dark didn’t let go either, saying, “You did what you had to do. What else could you do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, the words sounding hollow. “I don’t know.”
I looked around us, down the empty highway and up at the distant black shapes of birds flying through the storm far above. A feeling came over me, a feeling like a shout pushing upward through my throat, but I shoved it back down, terrified of what it meant. I needed to call my family. I had to find them. I had to get to them before he did. The General wanted me dead and he’d follow assassin protocol—just like Pope had. I felt over my jacket searching for my phones, but my pockets were empty. I looked to Dark and saw him exchanging a glance with Rocco over the top of my head. It made my heart sink.
He saw I’d caught them and explained, “We’ve already tried to contact them. We couldn’t reach the ship, and Gemma’s mother said they’d gone to the family cabin. It doesn’t have a phone.”
It was typical of my brother and Gemma to be difficult to contact. They were both suspicious of cell phones and social media and hardly ever checked their emails. So short of sending a note via snail mail or carrier pigeon, it was next to impossible to get a message through.
“They had to have taken some form of communication,” I said. “With the pregnancy and everything.”
“The mother told me they had a phone with them, something they brought over there—but she didn’t have the number,” Dark said.
“How could she not have the number?”
He shrugged. “It’s for them to call out not for anyone to call in—you know what they’re like.”
I nodded. I knew. “But why couldn’t you reach the ship?” I asked, feeling sick.
“Maybe they’re going through rough weather,” Rocco spoke up beside me, “and it’s disturbing the satellite signal.”
“Rough weather or something else?”
Rocco didn’t respond, but I caught a flicker of something in his eyes.
“He’ll go after them,” I said. “The General.”
“We don’t know that,” Dark said, then repeated. “We don’t know that.”
“I need to go. I need to get to them.”
Rocco and Dark looked at each other again and I felt a surge of anger. It made me tremble and then the ground started rocking, my vision blurred, and my head felt too heavy to hold up. I crouched down and sensed Dark kneeling beside me.
“Please don’t start screaming again.”
“I will if you don’t tell me what’s happening.”
I raised my eyes to him. He noted my expression, then looked behind him to Marco. The younger brother came forward clutching his laptop. I noticed for the first time that it had stickers on it—the World Wildlife Fund Panda Bear, a rabbit sticker with free beneath it and other animal ones too.
“You okay?” he whispered, sitting down beside me.
I nodded. “You?”
“Still here … If that counts for anything.”
“It does,” I reassured him.
He opened up the computer, moving it toward me. The screen was split into many small boxes and I recognized each one—the criminal hit-list of the city, state, country and world. We were on the most wanted list of every law-enforcement agency in the entire universe. Terrorists. The General’s work, no doubt. Anything we said would now be discredited, and getting out of the country would be next to impossible.
“Bastard,” I murmured, rubbing my eyes. “What are we going to do?”
Rocco crossed his arms. “We don’t have the numbers for anything except retreat.”
“Retreat how?” Dark demanded.
“I have a boat,” he said. “Big enough for us. We can get away—re-group—try to wake some others to join us. That was Omen’s plan.”
Willow sobbed. She went over to the car and leaned against the back of it crying. Then I saw a flash of something beside her—it was Omen standing there. He looked up at me and smiled—that deadly smile—and vanished.
“I’m getting some kind of Star Wars visions happening here,” I said to Rocco.
“What are you seeing?” he asked, concern in his voice.
“Him. Omen,” I said and Willow looked up at me sharply.
“He was here?” she asked, her voice choked.
“Right beside you,” I said. “What does it mean?”
Rocco shook his head, but the heavy grief lines on Willow’s face seemed to ease a little. As I watched her, more of the dream came back to me—the warehouse, the imprisoned Shaman, the children …
“We have to go back for the trapped Shaman,” I said and Marco’s eyes darted to mine.
Rocco shook his head. “We can’t. We don’t have the numbers.”
I’d spent a great deal of my life second guessing myself, down-playing myself, disliking and distrusting the face staring back at me in the mirror, but I felt something now—a certainty. I stood up.
“We are going back for them,” I said to Rocco. “Except you. You’re going to the docks. I have a plan.”
*
I’d tried to prepare my mind before reaching the warehouse. I thought it would be somehow less horrifying the second time around, but it wasn’t. It was even worse because I had more time to look at the General’s victims—his experiments, treated no more than pieces of inanimate flesh and left to rot. I didn’t know where to run first, who to try to help and how. They were all so hurt and weak. From a distance, I heard the thuds of Dark’s boots as he ran and his voice calling my name and when I looked up he was right in front of me.
“They’re here,” he said, breathless, showing me his cell phone, which was streaming CCTV footage from the front of the Dunbar Road facility. I watched the screen as a line of cars and trucks pulled up at the gate of the compound and the General’s soldiers started to pile out. I spotted Feng, but then I saw Jovic as well, and other C11 agents who weren’t Shaman—I could sense it. And then I realized the General had sent in human agents so that we would hesitate to attack, to fight back. He was using the
m like shields for his people. It was his usual cunning.
“He knew we were coming,” Dark said.
I watched the soldiers trying to open the gates but it wasn’t working for them. Marco had hacked the system and locked everything down from the compound’s central control room. Some of the soldiers began climbing over the fence and running toward the front of the facility, but they didn’t get far. Strange figures started appearing from the fog and dark of night—unnatural others, brought into sight by Willow, who was standing hidden in the shadows near the gates. The soldiers baulked, raising their weapons at the apparitions. Fear held them back—but it would only be temporary.
I stared around us, then checked my watch. Six minutes left to get all the prisoners out to the back of the warehouse to wait for Rocco. Impossible. Most of them wouldn’t even be able to walk. My breathing sped up. My chest crushed in, throat tightening. Tremors wracked my body. And that feeling started pushing up again—the shout. Omen had asked what it felt like to be a Shaman, and I hadn’t been able to give an answer at the time. I felt like shit—run over several times or more.
Dark stood watching me and I looked into his eyes, expecting to see suspicion or even dislike. I had become what we had spent years together hunting, after all. But instead he just looked worried.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“Everything’s changing.” I gasped.
He nodded. “Except one thing.” He held his hand out to me. “I told you I wasn’t going anywhere.”
I put my hand in his and felt his strength radiating through me.
“Now do whatever you have to do to get these people moving,” he said. “We can’t leave them here like this.”
I nodded but I didn’t want to use my Shaman skill. The thought of it was terrifying. I checked my watch—four minutes. Marco and Willow would be heading to the meeting point. I looked around. I wouldn’t even be able to run the length of the warehouse in four minutes. Or maybe I could. Was I faster than I used to be? Was that one of my enhanced abilities?