02 Seekers

by Lynnie Purcell

  “Are you crazy?! Of course not! If you’re going to do something stupid then I’m coming along to supervise.”

  “Yeah, I got that point when you followed us down here,” I said. “When did you want me to go wandering around?” I asked Jackson.

  “Are you busy now?” he asked.

  I smiled. This moment was the reason I had come down here. It was why I had fought so hard to not be left behind. I would finally get to help, and it was at something I was sure I couldn’t fail at. I had been bait since the moment I had been born. All I had to do was continue being a large human target. Jackson’s return smile was uncertain but determined. He knew the risks, just like he knew he couldn’t back out now. It was important to find this man and make sure the violence didn’t spread to Daniel.

  I gathered my phone and wallet from my room and, with Alex at my side, prepared to go out on the town in search of a deadly Seeker.

  Chapter 7

  We left through the lobby, not having to use the backdoor this time. I managed to keep the thoughts from the tourists and the employees down to a dull roar as we let ourselves out. It was all I could manage after three weeks of practicing. Jackson went a different way down the street the moment we were all outside, disappearing around a corner. I wasn’t worried. He would track us, along with Margaret, and see if we stirred up any interest from the Watcher-kind. Alex had her expensive bag slung over her arm, and her large sunglasses blocked out the sun, looking every inch the tourist. A small smile clung to her face as she looked around the balcony

  entrenched streets of a town we hadn’t seen since we had been sequestered in the hotel.

  “You seem awfully calm,” I said, surveying her serene face.

  “I’m just glad to be out of that hotel room. Three weeks! Three weeks of staring at a computer screen, watching people disappear and not being able to do anything about it…I’m ready to start karate chopping everything in sight.” She made a chop motion with her hand, looking ridiculous.

  “I don’t think there will be much karate chopping…not for us anyways. Margaret and Jackson will get those honors,” I said.

  “I know…but still…” she said.

  “When have I become the voice of reason?” I laughed.

  “It is somewhat startling,” she agreed. “Oh! Look!”

  Our steps had led us the end of the narrow road – in a way we hadn’t explored yet. Beyond the asphalt of the road intersecting our road, and behind a grassy park full of vendors selling trinkets, was a church. White spires touched the sky with majestic purpose as the building stretched behind the park with graceful magnitude. I sensed a historic peace about the large church, which let me know the structure was destined to outlast the generations.

  “It’s huge,” I agreed.

  “I want a picture,” Alex told me.

  “Go right ahead,” I said.

  “With you in it!” she demanded.

  “I don’t…”

  She grabbed my wrist and spun me around. Her fast hands had taken the picture before I had time to catch up. Her wicked smirk was irrepressible. I rolled my eyes at her and poked her in the side to keep her walking. Had I been more aware, I would have noticed the eyes on us from

  across the road assessing Alex’s phone with greedy eyes.

  “You’re evil,” I said.

  “Yep.” She slid the phone into her back pocket and grinned at me. “Which way?”

  I recalled Jackson’s directions, my brain memorizing them without thought. “Left.”

  “It feels weird to be bait,” Alex said after a moment, her eyes roaming around the street with more alertness than before. “I’m not sure I like it.”

  “Don’t you want to catch the bad guys?” I asked.

  “Oh, I am all for catching bad guys. It just feels funny wandering around, hoping to be noticed…

  sort of stupid…”

  “I thought you knew…stupid is my middle name.”

  “Is that before or after annoying and smart assed?” she asked.

  “After annoying. Smart assed is more of a title, less of a name.”

  “This should be interesting…” she said.

  “‘Interesting’ is better than boring, and I’ve had enough of unbearable, disturbing boring.”

  Alex hooked her arm through mine, knowing what I was feeling in a look. “I bet Daniel will send another message any day now. He’s probably just waiting for the right moment,” she said soothingly.

  We hadn’t heard from him over the course of our three weeks on lock down. Nothing to let us know he was still wandering around the world of the living.

  “Or he’s dead.”

  Alex jerked me to a stop, her nails digging into my arm. “Don’t you dare say that. Ever. You would know if he’s dead. I would know if he’s dead. He’s not dead.”

  It was impossible not to think he was gone after three weeks of silence, three weeks of being locked away in a room while he risked everything. But I knew it wasn’t true. I knew she was right – I would feel it if something had happened to him.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I forgive you.” We started walking again. “You’re getting really good at fencing,” she

  complemented me after a moment searching for something beyond the seriousness of our fear.

  “Oh…I’m not sure that’s saying much.”

  “No, really-”

  She was going to say more, perhaps to try and convince me I didn’t suck as bad as I thought I did, but I didn’t give her the chance to finish. It happened so quickly. I glanced back – feeling eyes on me – and saw a boy deftly pull her phone out of her back pocket, without her noticing, and stick it into his ratty clothes in one fluid motion. When our eyes connected, he knew he had been made, and his cocky smirk turned hard. He didn’t wait for an invitation to go to jail.

  Without a second glance, he took off. I chased him out of instinct.

  Alex yelled for me to stop running, finally catching up to the situation. She chased us much slower, the stupid sandals she had bought getting in her way. I ignored her, and focused on the thief, my indignation overriding good common sense. How dare he steal her phone right in front of me? I didn’t waste my breath yelling for him to stop, knowing that would do little beyond take precious air, and concentrated on following him.

  He knew the streets well, his lanky legs taking him fast and far. He led me away from the park, cutting through a back alley, across a street bordered by brick, and into another back alley. As he cut into the second back alley I lost sight of him, his sharp turns, and years of practice at running, working to his advantage. But he had never been chased down by me. As I rounded the corner of the alley, I caught sight of him again. He had stopped running, confident he had lost me,

  confident in his abilities. He jumped in surprise when he saw me running at him and started to run again, but it was too late. Throwing aside all dignity, I tackled him to the ground. He grunted in pain as we hit the hard pavement, his body taking the full force of the fall. The phone he had stolen flew out of his hand and crashed into a million pieces. I noticed several things as I tackled him. He was small, very young, had swimmingly green eyes, and was very, very dirty. He tried to scramble away, his fear of me overriding his pain, but I pinned him again.

  “Get off!” He shoved at my arms, but I was resolute.

  “You dirty rotten thief!” I exclaimed, shaking him hard.

  He kicked at me in response, and I gripped his arms harder. I felt my anger at him rise. All my frustration of the past month was suddenly focused on his dirty, smelly body.

  “Hey, man! You’re hurting me!” he yelled, his eyes widening in pain.

  I released him in reflex, the fear in his voice too sincere for comfort. He rolled away and stood, dusting off his pants, which were so dirty and full of holes, I didn’t get why he bothered.

  “Nothing is worth this,” he muttered starting to run off again.

  A dark tingling started at the b
ase of my spine and traveled all the way up to the top of my head.

  The same tingling erupted along my scalp, and the hairs on my arms rose in preternatural alarm.

  It was close to the feeling I’d had when we had been watched after our shopping trip, but was infinitely more dangerous and tangibly more immediate. In the next instant, the reason for the odd feeling was made terrifyingly apparent. For the second time in a matter of moments, I

  tackled the boy. Not because he had stolen a phone, but because a large industrial trash can had decided to learn to fly, speeding towards the boy’s back with dangerous speed.

  “I’m sorry about your freaking phone!” he yelled as I pinned him again. “It’s just…”

  His words trailed away as he turned over in time to watch the heavy metal arch low and fly upward. Together, in mutual shock, we followed the progress of the dumpster. It continued its steady progress up and flew over the side of a building as if gravity were merely a joke science had conjured out of nothing. The dumpster swirled around the ledge like a dog circling a bone. It was then that I noticed a pair of people – a man and a woman – on the rooftop of the building the dumpster was swirling around; two very graceful, tall people. They were obviously Watchers.

  My first thought was that I had been found, but the pair weren’t paying me any attention, though I could tell they were aware of me. They seemed content enough on trying to kill each other. I stared harder, trying to piece together an explanation around all the movement and swirling debris and noticed the swords in their hands. From the gleam of the hot sun on the cool blade, I saw that the sharp metal had a silver tint.

  As I watched them slash at each other with remarkable grace, more items in the alley suddenly decided they, too, had learned the miracle of flight. Trash, pebbles, the remains of Alex’s phone, dangerously large objects, everything, rose into the air. They swirled around like a miniature tornado in terrible purpose and started launching themselves at the man. But the objects didn’t seem to bother him more than the quick flick of the wrist it took to send them pelting back down to the earth. The woman, her red hair sticking out the back of her baseball cap, increased her delude of items at the mocking smile on his lips.

  I stood up, the tingling in my scalp worse with the added adrenaline, and pulled the boy after me.

  My necklace pulsed into life with a bright light at the urge to protect the wayward thief. Even if he was a thief he didn’t deserve the sort of punishment my kind tended to inflict on humans caught up in the fight. Ignoring the light, I focused on the best plan of escape.

  As soon as the boy gained his feet again he tried to run, but I grabbed him. “Wait,” I warned.

  On cue, the dumpster dropped where he would have been had he moved. He gulped, and his eyes darted around the narrow alley for another way of escape as more items fell around us. I kept my eyes on the Watchers, figuring, despite the chaos around us, they were the most dangerous aspect of this equation, and that they would be my clue for when to run.

  From my many sword fights with Margaret and Jackson, I sensed the tide of the fight subtly shift directions. The man’s swings got increasingly messier and uncertain, the woman’s own

  swordsmanship turning even more impressive and dangerous. The woman started to break

  through his guard, blood running down his arms and legs from her blade. In a desperate last act to save his life, the man tried to trick the woman into falling off their ledge, but it was too late.

  He had already lost. The woman twirled the sword out of his hands in a move Jackson had used on me a million times, disarming him in an instant. It landed right in front of me, wedging into the cracks of the cement and vibrating from the force of the impact. I took a deep breath at the near miss. The boy whimpered slightly, but was maintaining his cool.

  The woman stabbed the now unarmed man straight through the heart with her sword. Silver

  blood bubbled from his lips, and he fell to his knees on the rooftop. All the swirling objects dropped to the ground as she bent down and did something I couldn’t see. When she stood back up she had his silver heart clenched in her limber fingers. A thin trail of smoke circled to the sky from where she had set his body on fire.

  Not knowing if she would attack us next, I took advantage of the sword lodged at my feet. In my adrenaline fueled state it came out of the ground easily, eagerly. I gripped it with both hands feeling unbalanced after using the light fencing foils for so long. It flashed evilly in the thin sunlight of our shadowed alley.

  The heart now safely tucked away, she stared down at us with black and dangerous eyes. The black eyes were uncertain and curious as she took in my shining necklace and the wicked sword I was holding. She leaned forward on the ledge in preparation for a leap down. I felt my breath catch, even as I worked to keep my hands steady. There was no way I could win a sword fight with her. She had just proven her skill...and there would be no ‘again’ like there was with Jackson. This would be a true test of my ability; a test which would have deadly consequences.

  Her weight shifted on the ledge as she bent her knees to jump, but she stopped herself. She cocked her head to one side and listened. I heard the same thing she was hearing. People had heard the fight and were coming to investigate. There were quite a few, their thoughts panicked and worried at the violence. Something in her eyes told me she didn’t want the attention. She cursed, her black eyes returning to mine one last time before she stepped backwards and

  disappeared from sight.

  “Run,” I told the boy.

  He didn’t need to be told twice. He was a passing wind over a distant prairie as his feet flew down the uneven street of the back alley. He was gone in seconds. Figuring attention wouldn’t be good for me either, hearing the thoughts grow in fervor as the people approached the mouth of the alley, I grabbed a smelly piece of cloth off the ground and wrapped the shiny blade of the sword as best I could. Then, I followed the boy out of the alley, trying hard not to look guilty.

  I ran into Alex half a block away. Her round face was flushed with red, and her blonde hair was plastered to her forehead from running. She looked annoyed and relieved at the same time.

  “There you are! I’ve been running around this whole fraking neighborhood trying to find you!”

  She caught sight of the growing crowd and the destruction of the alley. Her eyes grew large.

  “What happened?”

  I took her arm and started searching for a more familiar street, one which was infinitely more crowded. Hopefully the woman, if she was watching us like I suspected she was, would lose us in the crowds. If she wasn’t, then, at least, I was learning caution…Everything felt like a hidden danger, every person we passed, a Watcher, as we circled back to the park we had just run away from.

  Alex’s surprise and fear at the conclusion of my story weren’t enough to keep her from being practical. “Did you call Jackson and tell him? I mean…I think this qualifies as an emergency.”

  “I forgot about him…” I admitted. “Why wasn’t he there? He said he would be watching.”

  “I don’t know, Clare, maybe he lost track of you when you decided to chase after a thief for stealing a phone you didn’t even pay for.”

  “Oh, sarcasm, that’s original,” I retorted, knowing she was right.

  She shook her head in irritation and focused on keeping up with my long strides. I sensed her unspoken worry and her uncertainty, but she was keeping it to herself; she was good at that. We stopped three blocks away and ducked under an out-of-the-way awning. I pushed speed dial on the phone Jackson had given me and waited. Alex was look out, her eyes searching the street and roofs for possible Watchers as I waited with electrical tension for him to pick up. I got the voicemail.

  “Jackson, are you there? It’s important. Something happened.” My stomach was already in

  knots. There was no good reason he wouldn’t pick up. Cars hummed by, people shouted about

  the chaos of the alley, and, somew
here down the road, rap blared out of a stereo. The sounds were louder in my panic. “We’ll meet you back at the hotel,” I added.

  I shut the phone and shared a helpless look with Alex. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said.

  “Me too, Luke,” I joked, loving her unintentional Star Wars reference.

  “Huh?” she asked, not getting it.

  “Never mind…Let’s get back to the hotel,” I said.

  Alex looked around the street again. “You think it’s safe?” she asked.

  “I think it’s the only place we know to meet up with Margaret and Jackson…and they’re the

  safest place to be. If we have to switch hotels, then so be it.”

  Alex frowned and ran her hand through her hair as we started walking again. “What does what you saw mean?”

  “That someone died, I guess.”

  At my words the sword I was carrying grew heavier. A dark power radiated from the blade as if it enjoyed my use of the word ‘death’. I didn’t tell Alex, but I gripped it with increasingly uncertain hands. In that instant, I wanted to throw it away and never look back. What kind of sword was it? How had it killed that man? Nothing beyond another Watcher was supposed to be able to hurt another Watcher. What had I stumbled on?

  “No, I mean…it feels a bit convenient, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. We know they’re all over town, so why not run into one of them?”

  “You go strolling down the street and just happen to witness what you witnessed?” Her

  eyebrows furrowed. “Maybe that kid was a trap. Maybe he was supposed to lead you into that alley.”

  “Nah,” I replied.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  I tapped my head. “He told me so. He was too scared to be in on it. My bet is coincidence. At least, we know one Watcher with some serious fighting skills in town. Margaret and Jackson might be able to track down the redhead and get some answers from her.”

  “Hm,” Alex said noncommittally, her face narrowed in thought.

  We made our way through the park and past the church in silent contemplation, each too