Something clicked behind her—a switch being flipped.
The lights went out.
Before she could scream, arms seized her from behind. A hand clamped roughly over her mouth. In the darkness, she sensed the other stranger moving toward her.
Michael!
A sharp pain in her neck took Arielle by surprise, the drug cold as it seeped into her veins.
A needle…
The man behind her tightened his grip on her body.
“Sweet dreams,” he crooned into her ear.
Warren.
“Thattagirl,” he soothed as Arielle’s body went limp in his arms.
23
The first thing Michael noticed when he reached the front door of the Cold War Café, followed by Peter, Eli, Ian, and a dozen soldiers, was that the lights had been turned off.
Checking to make sure it wasn’t one of the town’s frequent power outages, he saw electric lights visible in other houses along the street.
Arielle had been expecting them, so why did the place appear as if it had been shut down for the night?
Finding the door unlocked, Michael walked in and flipped the switch. He noticed the smell before he saw the bread rolls laid haphazardly on a tray, which had been placed oddly diagonal to the table’s edge. As if Arielle had been in a hurry while setting it there.
But why would that be?
They were even ten minutes late, and Michael knew she’d been preparing for the celebration for hours. By now, everything should have been out ready for them.
“Who’s hungry?” Eli said, pushing past him toward the tray.
Laughing, a few soldiers raised their hands. One went to the jukebox to start up a tune.
“We’re thirsty,” one shouted, which caused the others to break into cheers. “Who said we couldn’t bring moonshine?”
“Everyone,” Michael said. “Quiet. Something’s up.”
The men fell silent. The one at the jukebox froze.
“What is it, Mike?” Peter asked.
Ian inspected the bread rolls, which had practically been piled on top of each other, despite all the room on the tray.
“Weird,” he said, picking one up and turning it in his fingers. “Wait. Look.”
Fear gripped Michael as Ian raised the roll for a closer examination.
“Lint,” Michael said.
Frantically, he grabbed other bread rolls and studied them. They were all dirty in some way, covered in tiny clumps of dust and streaks of dirt. One even had a long strand of hair curled against its surface.
Michael tossed them to the floor, already running breathlessly toward the kitchen.
“Arielle!”
The lights had been left on, but the room was empty. He rushed back into the dining area, shouting at the others.
“Get Dominic. I think Arielle’s missing. Search the town. I’ll join you in a bit.”
“Got it,” Ian said. Without hesitation, he waved for the men to follow him.
Michael scanned the kitchen one last time—visually but also telepathically—before heading toward the back door. On the way, he noticed slices of carrots and tomatoes resting on a cutting board, next to a knife and other vegetables that had yet to be chopped. Nearby was a bowl of jerky and a pitcher of fresh apple juice.
His hand brushed the oven. Still warm, but no longer hot.
Someone took her. They might still be in town.
Kicking the back door open, Michael rushed into the darkened street. Closing his eyes, he extended his telepathic reach as far as it would go. Minds came alight like fireflies blinking—yet, he failed to maintain the connection, each light instantly going dark.
Someone was interfering.
It was as if the entire town were on that drug, Selarix.
Footsteps rose in a light, rhythmic pattering—one footfall resounding with more of a clomping sound than the other.
Michael searched the empty street for the boy.
“William?”
His presence would explain the interference. William was a blocker, which made him the last person on earth Michael wanted to be around right now.
“Michael,” William said, limping around the corner of a nearby building. He was barely visible in the moon’s light. The boy panted. “It’s Aunt Arielle.”
“Where?”
He ran up to William, took the boy’s arms in a powerful grip.
“Ow. You’re hurting me.”
“Where is she, William? Where’s Arielle?”
“She fell. I think she’s hurt.”
“Show me,” Michael said, scooping the boy into his arms. He was heavy, but running would be faster than limping. “Point in the direction you last saw her, okay?”
“I will.” He pointed along the street’s length. “It’s that way.”
The gathering took place in the public park outside the town hall.
A crowd surged, more joining every minute, their faces scowling and furious in the orange glow of torches set up around them and held by many.
Archibald Frugin stood at one end of the park, his back to the town hall’s front entrance. Midas Ford and Louis Blake had already left the building—a good idea.
Cowards.
“The time has come to choose,” Frugin announced. “We can leave our homes and our farms to go with them…” He pointed at NDR soldiers who had gathered along the streets to watch. “Or we can arm ourselves and fight for what’s ours!”
Cheers erupted from the crowd. Frugin raised his hands to silence them.
“You heard what they have planned. How they expect us to just walk on out of here—like cattle rounded up by a bunch of gun-slingin’ cowboys—to be shipped to our slaughter!”
A chorus of boos filled the park. Frugin was nothing if not good with words. When the invaders were gone, he’d be the leader of this town. A new mayor who’d respect people’s right to live as they saw fit, in the homes they had restored with their bare hands.
He stirred the flames even more. “The invaders, led by Michael Cairne, aren’t just threatening us with guns. Less than an hour ago, Louis Blake used telepathy against us. He broke a sacred law, and he must not go unpunished!”
He screamed his next words over the shouts and cheers. “The intruders and their ment overlords must leave tonight! Go, gather any weapons you can find. Be prepared to defend yourselves!”
Within seconds, the crowd dispersed. Farmers ran for the trucks that would take them outside the town to the guns hidden in their homes. Once used to defend against raiders, these guns would now be used—tonight, they could only hope—against the enemy they had always known would turn on them.
Michael Cairne.
24
Peter and Ian were breathless by the time they reached Dominic.
Eli took longer to catch up. At first, Dominic assumed the boys were jogging up the dark street to join him and the other soldiers who had stopped to watch Frugin’s rally in the park.
The soldiers had begun to disperse, but Dominic had lingered, watching a few of Frugin’s men gather the torches as if to use them for an upcoming witch hunt. Murderous thoughts flashed through his mind. Killing Frugin and any of his armed men would feel pretty good right now. But he had to restrain himself—slaughtering the people of Gulch wasn’t an option, which meant their trip to New Dallas would have to happen much sooner than they had expected.
“Pete, Ian,” Dominic said. “You should be packing your things. Might get bloody around here real soon.”
“Forget that,” Peter said. “It’s Mike.”
“What about him? What happened?”
The boys explained, interrupting each other. Something about dirty bread rolls and Arielle being missing.
“Stop,” Dominic said. “I’ll do a scan.”
“That’s the thing,” Peter said. “We can’t sense Michael or Arielle. It’s like they disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Dominic closed his eyes, extending his telepathic reach. Peter was
right. Either Michael and Arielle had left Gulch, or something else was up.
“They’re being blocked,” Dominic said, opening his eyes. “We need Louis.”
He sent a message across town.
Louis…
Blake’s response was immediate.
I know. I can’t locate him either.
“She’s in there,” William said, thrusting his pointed finger at a convenience store shut down for the night.
Michael had been inside many times, to shop for vegetables and the occasional jar of homemade toothpaste sold by the farmer who owned the tiny shop. The windows were dark.
Why the hell would Arielle be in there?
“You can’t lie to me, William,” Michael said. “This isn’t a funny prank.”
“I’m not lying! She said she had to get more stuff for dinner.”
Setting William down on the empty street, Michael considered this for a moment. It felt like a trap, and the fact his telepathy was completely blocked by the boy’s strange ability unnerved him.
But it was possible. Arielle had a key to the store. She and the owner had worked out an agreement; Arielle was free to go into the storage room to take whatever ingredients she needed when he wasn’t around. In exchange, he received compensation in the form of free meals and coffee at the café. Gulch thrived on crude bartering systems like this.
If Arielle was in the storage room, it made sense the light hadn’t been turned on in the main shop. Her key only opened the back door.
“I need you to run away,” Michael told William. “As fast as you can.”
“Why?” William said, frowning.
Because you’re getting in my way, you weird little blocker, Michael wanted to say.
“Go find your mom. Tell her Aunt Arielle needs help. Go now.”
William nodded. “Okay.”
As the boy limped around the corner and disappeared, Michael paced back and forth, waiting for his telepathy to return. How far did the boy’s reach extend?
When it didn’t come back, he thought to double-check and make sure William had actually gone up the street instead of lingering close by. But the tightness in his muscles was too much to bear. He sprang toward the shop’s back door and found it unlocked, hopefully a sign Arielle was inside.
A quick telepathic scan was no use. William’s reach extended farther than Michael had assumed. The boy was getting stronger by the day.
It didn’t matter. Michael could glance inside quickly and assess the situation, then decide what to do from there.
He threw the door open. The storage room was pitch black.
“Arielle?”
He reached into the darkness to feel for the light switch. His hand scrambled over the wall. Maybe the owner used lamps to light the room, in which case Michael would have to feel his way through the darkness to locate them.
“Arielle, if you’re in here, make a sound. Any sound.”
A dreadful moment of silence was followed by the rustling of a box or a crate being shifted. Someone was definitely inside. Maybe they had tied her up.
The air in front of him shifted. Michael was about to step away from the door when a body lunged out of the darkness and tackled him.
“Got ya,” his attacker said.
Warren.
Pinned beneath the man’s weight, Michael’s lungs emptied. He struggled to breathe as Warren’s hands tightened around his throat. The man’s weathered, bearded face hung above his own. Warren was grinning, teeth bared as they struggled.
Physically, Michael was no match for Warren. He never had been. Trying to force the man off was no use—not when he could use telepathy to cripple him.
But that wasn’t an option, either.
How could the boy still be blocking him?
“Don’t hurt him,” a meek voice said from across the street.
William was back. He’d never left. The boy had been part of the trap, after all.
Michael tried to shout in the hope someone would hear him, but it was impossible with Warren choking him.
How could he have been so stupid? Warren probably knew about Arielle’s key to the store. Had probably seen her going in and out.
Another voice spoke from across the street, behind Michael, where he couldn’t get a good look.
“You’re a brave boy, William,” the man said, his accent refined, his tone smooth and confident. “A very good boy. Your mother will be so proud.”
Michael was beginning to lose consciousness. The voice sounded familiar.
Could it be?
You’re an ascendant, the man had gasped at Michael back in Praetoria, only moments before Ian managed to shoot him in the chest three times. You’re Michael Cairne.
How was he still alive? What had he done with Arielle?
A familiar heat washed over Michael’s body, rage filling him, pushing aside his fear.
Yes. He had to give in to it. The cost no longer mattered. It was time to unleash his power, to let the blood run from his eyes, to use the death whisper…
“Oh no, you don’t,” the Type II telepath said.
Footsteps thumped against the pavement, the telepath running toward him and Warren. Seconds later, Michael felt the sting of a needle being thrust into his neck. His mind immediately began to cloud.
Warren released him, his grin widening. Then he stood and spit in Michael’s face.
In the moment before the world went dark, he felt the warm trickle of the man’s saliva run down the side of his cheek, like tears falling.
25
Blake got out of his pickup truck, then joined Dominic and the boys.
A dozen of Michael’s soldiers had formed a perimeter around the park, facing outward at the streets with semi-automatics ready to fend off anyone who might attempt an assassination, just as Blake had instructed.
He gathered Dominic and the others into a tight circle.
“Together, now,” Blake said. “We can get past the block.”
They all closed their eyes. Within seconds, a link was established. Blake guided them along the process of converting their telepathic reach from something resembling a pair of X-ray binoculars to a force more like a battering ram.
If William—or someone else—were blocking Michael and Arielle’s telepathy, this technique would crash right through that barrier.
He hoped.
“Oh, my God,” Ian said.
Blake’s entire body went rigid, as if that same deafening alarm from his previous night’s dream had just gone off over Gulch.
The town’s population had changed dramatically. Minds came alight in the mouth of the canyon—an entire swarm that hadn’t been there minutes earlier when Blake had performed his initial scan of Gulch. Now, with his ability reinforced, it was as if clouds had vanished to expose a night sky riddled with stars. It could only mean one thing.
“Those farmers from earlier?” Eli said. “Coming back to town?”
“No way,” Peter responded. “There are too many of them. At least thirty, maybe forty.”
“It’s closer to sixty,” Dominic said. “Not farmers. We would have sensed their approach sooner.”
Blake opened his eyes, cutting the connection.
“An army. We couldn’t sense them before,” he said, “and we won’t be able to going forward. They’re on Selarix.”
Dominic and the boys traded fearful glances.
“Oh, shit,” Eli said.
Already headed toward his truck—which Blake had prepared for this kind of emergency—he shouted over his shoulder.
“We need every gun we can get our hands on. Start with these.”
Grabbing the edge of the tarp covering the truck’s cargo bed, he flung aside one half. The boys’ eyes went wide as they took stock of what was inside.
Dominic wasted no time in grabbing an AR-15 off the pile. There were over a dozen, with enough thirty-round magazines to outfit a small army.
The NDR soldiers had begun to take notice.
&nb
sp; “Everyone, listen to me,” Blake yelled, waving them over. “The town is being attacked. At least sixty Republic soldiers are entering through the mouth of the canyon. Michael has gone missing. Head to the guard towers immediately, then shoot them while they’re funneling through. Go now!”
There was no reply. Every soldier immediately sprinted toward the western edge of town. They were well-trained, and Blake silently thanked Michael for bringing them here.
He repeated the command—telepathically, this time—across Gulch. He addressed every living soul he could reach. There was only one response he hoped for, but Michael was silent, maybe dead. A chilling thought.
Shots rang out in the distance.
“Reggie,” Dominic said.
He climbed into the driver’s seat, Blake running around the truck to the passenger side. Peter, Eli, and Ian jumped into the cargo bed.
Flooring the gas pedal, Dominic took them straight across town to face an army.
The fires had already been lit.
Ian could smell them. He tried to remain still, his body jostled by the truck’s rapid turns and swings. Gripping his AR-15 in sweaty palms, he said a silent prayer.
Please, God, don’t let this be the end.
Shots rang out in the distance, getting louder as they approached. Smoke billowed toward the sky. Soon, he could see the orange glow of flames consuming one of the guard towers. Amid the commotion, he heard a gushing noise, like pressurized air—or gas—being expelled through a narrow opening.
“A flamethrower,” Ian said. “They brought spiteful flamethrowers.”
“Let’s take them down,” Eli said.
He sat against the corner of the truck’s cargo bed, hugging a rifle to his chest, eyes wide with fear. Ian gave him a reassuring nod.
“You and me. We’ll take care of them.”
Peter gripped Ian’s shoulder. “I’ll look after Louis. Whatever happens, let’s stay connected and update each other.”
The trucks came to a sliding halt at the edge of town, where they were surrounded by hills that became canyon walls farther out. The boys jumped out of the cargo bed, Peter following Blake as the old man rushed toward the fray. Dominic headed toward the burning guard tower, already firing at soldiers in the distance.
Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series Page 62