02 Seekers

by Lynnie Purcell

  “Daniel.”

  “I would have thought he’d be better looking,” Spider said.

  I made a face at him. Alex was staring at the picture. “This feels like a trap,” she said.

  “What feels like a trap?” Eli appeared behind me.

  Spider’s quick voice explained everything, and the picture passed to Eli for examination. “This is your friend?” Eli asked.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Which club?”

  “Maquis,” Spider answered.

  “Oh,” Eli said.

  “Oh? ‘Oh’ as in ‘Oh, that place is totally a nest for Seekers’ or ‘Oh, I have gas’?” I asked.

  “Just…oh,” Eli said. He turned the picture around and pointed at the words. “Spider?”

  “Jackson Park, tomorrow at noon,” Spider said quietly.

  Eli nodded in understanding and handed the picture back to me.

  “I’m going to go,” I said.

  “I figured,” Eli said.

  “You’ll be there?” I asked.

  Despite my uncertainty about him, and the fact that over our week with them I hadn’t gotten in a single conversation with him, I wanted him there. I sensed he would do what needed to be done.

  That part of him was very obvious.

  “I owe you,” Eli said.

  “How did you do it?” I asked before he could walk off. “How did you survive for so long

  without being found?”

  He leaned forward and his impassive face twitched. I wasn’t sure if he was fighting a smile or a frown. “I hid,” he said. He walked into the darkness of the lobby without another word, pulling his hoodie over his greasy hair as he walked.

  “Why do you keep testing him, Clare?” Alex asked.

  “Because he annoys me,” I replied.

  “There’s more there than you think,” she said.

  “How do you mean?”

  She tapped her head. “I can just tell. He isn’t closed off to annoy you. Something happened…

  something profound. He’s trying his hardest to make sense of all this. Just like we are.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Did you see that with your gift? Or do you like him?”

  “Of course not!” she exclaimed.

  Her refusal had been too quick and had been followed by the face she reserved for when she was keeping things from me. I made kissy faces at her, letting her know I wasn’t deceived. She pushed me away, rolling her eyes at my teasing, and went to sit at the front of the theater, her blush lighting up the dark surrounding her. I followed, tucking the picture of Daniel into my pocket for safe keeping.

  Cora and Sprint giggled together in the corner while Ethan – who was joined by Spider as I sat –

  tried to overhear their conversation. Cora and Sprint stopped talking as soon as one of them got close enough. They were making a game of it. I could have told them that Cora and Sprint were discussing Cora’s crush on Ethan, but that would have ruined the fun. Twitch sat close to the light, away from the other’s laughter and talking. His thin hands held a dusty, old book, while his mind devoured the words on the page with an overwhelming hunger. I recognized the book from Ethan’s hideout. He had given Twitch the book of poetry after all.

  “We found a lead,” Alex pointed out as she sat.

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  “You don’t think so?” she asked.

  “I’ll let you know,” I replied.

  She sighed. “I am dying for a shower. And a toothbrush. I would literally do anything for a toothbrush,” Alex said.

  “How many times are you going to complain about that?” I asked.

  “If I don’t vocalize my desire to bathe I might just up and leave. Which would you prefer?” she asked. She raised a hand to cut my reply short. “Don’t answer that.”

  “I’ll go buy you a toothbrush,” I told her.

  “How will I brush them? There’s no water.”

  “How do we use the bathroom?” I asked, thinking of the convenience stores we had grown way too familiar with. I had never thought I would be so glad to see the nasty bathroom of most of those places as I was every morning when I had to pee. Spider had shown us which stores were friendly and which ones to avoid…it was the best thing he’d done for us so far.

  “Oh, right,” Alex replied.

  I stood up and she made to follow, but I put a hand on her shoulder. “You should rest. You haven’t slept all week,” I said.

  “You just want to go all ‘Dark Knight’ and brood about life and our situation while you’re gone,” she teased.

  I shrugged and tucked my hands in my pockets.

  “Alright...don’t take too long…” she said, settling back into her chair.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  Alex was right. Sitting in the cramped, humid theater was driving me insane. And, while the narrow streets of New Orleans were usually full of some kind of danger, at least it was private.

  There was privacy in a crowd of people who didn’t know you; privacy in not having to explain why you were scowling or looked so sad. Plus, there was the added benefit of the thoughts

  driving out my own to the point where, for a time, my own reality didn’t feel as closed up in my head.

  I jumped down the last two stairs and breathed in the heavy air of the city. The thick balconies and beautiful, if not mismatched, architecture closed me in on thin streets that screamed out with a dark history. My pace was slow, my head bowed against the thoughts as I walked.

  What was the chance I would actually find something in a club? I knew we had focused on the clubs on a whim, to have a focus for our desire to find information, but to have one of the clubs actually contain a real clue? And to have my name on that clue? I wasn’t stupid enough to accept chance as a reason. Chance was sloppy. It was easy. Nothing about my life was easy.

  I stopped at the corner before the convenience store and pulled the picture from my pocket to look at Daniel’s transformed face. There was another question. There was so much tension in his body, so much darkness in his eyes. He wasn’t the Daniel I knew. How much could a person

  change in three weeks? Had I changed?

  I looked down at my clothes, which had picked up quite a few holes and dirt since I had started breaking into buildings and decided maybe I had. While I had spent my formative years running, afraid I would be discovered by people like the Seekers, I had never been forced on the streets.

  Ellen had made sure I always had a home, had love, and enough to eat. Things had been tough, but I’d always had her. Part of me felt as if I were becoming closer to Daniel and what he had experienced when he was young, and another part of me felt light-years away from him.

  Distracted by the overwhelming sounds around me and my own thoughts, I didn’t notice the

  danger until it was too late. The click of the hammer being pulled back on the gun was

  alarmingly loud to my alert ears. I put my hands up in front of me in reflex as a large, silver plated gun forced its way into my field of vision.

  “You don’t look so tough now. Where’s all your karate skills at, huh?”

  Behind the gun was one of my friends from the alley – the one who had run away from my

  attack. His thoughts were loud and intrusive; they worked themselves to a fever pitch of sound. I flinched from the assault. I knew enough of Spanish to translate: This little bitch thinks she can mess with my friends! No one messes with us and lives…if I kill her in front of witnesses the others won’t blame me for running away. Then, I’ll go find that rat-kid friend of hers and make sure he ends up nose first in the gutter he came from.

  “Why don’t you put the gun down so we can find out?” I said his thoughts letting me know he had no intention of letting me go.

  “You’re a real comedian. If you didn’t notice, I have a gun in your face,” he said, pushing the silver gun closer to my face.

  I leaned away from the gun, my back pressing harder
into the thick wall. “I noticed. What

  happened to your friends? I thought you lot worked in groups.” I asked in a distraction as I furiously worked through options. There weren’t many options that didn’t end with me being dead.

  “They’re in the hospital!” he shouted. “The next place you’ll be…in their morgue, I mean.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve already been dead once this month,” I muttered.

  His thoughts held no compassion for me; his dark eyes reflected that fact. All I could think looking into those eyes was that he would have been perfect for the life of a Seeker, and that of all the ways I could have gone out it had to be in New Orleans on a dark corner by a gang

  member holding a ridiculous silver plated gun. The man smiled and his finger moved toward the trigger in preparation for my murder. I held my breath, unable to move in that moment.

  Chapter 13

  Frozen from fear, I didn’t move when he pulled the trigger. Even though I could hear his

  thoughts, I was surprised. He had actually shot me.

  The bullet ripped into my chest, shoving me against the hard wall. I gasped at the overwhelming pain. I slid down the wall, clutching at my chest, as the warm blood spurted over my pale fingers.

  As my legs lost their ability to stand, I didn’t have any great all-seeing moments where my life flashed in front of my eyes, or come to any grand revelations. Everything turned blurry then started to turn black. The dark pulled me under. Whispers floated out of the darkness,

  surrounding me entirely. The whispers urged me to stay, welcoming me with a dark acceptance as I joined the whispering ranks.

  From somewhere – it felt like it was very far away – I heard a scream and the sounds of sirens rise up out of the night. The scream might have been me: it vocalized my pain perfectly. My attacker ran off, and I was left to die alone. I sunk into an encompassing darkness, the whispering increasing, as the lights disappeared into a grey fog.

  When I felt the electric hand on my chest I was too weak to pull away. The touch was different, unique. Through my pain and weakness, I marveled at it. It was alternately warm, cold, and electric and reminded me of Ellen and Daniel. The pain in my chest lessened and the burning, searing heat of the bullet cooled and died. I gasped and coughed back to the land of the living.

  Those hands moved from my chest and helped me off the wall. I walked without thought. The

  lights slowly stopped swirling as I walked and color came back to the world. I finally recognized Eli at my side. He pulled me along the city streets, urging me to go faster. Behind us, I heard sirens and screams of panic.

  “Am I dying?” I asked him.

  “No,” Eli replied. “Walk.”

  “Isn’t that what I’m doing?” I asked.

  I looked down and saw dark crimson blood had stained my black shirt. A hole where the bullet had passed was the only sign of what had just happened. Not only was that injury healed, but my neck and arm injuries had been replaced by unblemished skin.

  “How am I…did you heal me?”

  He grunted in what I took to be a ‘yes’. “Up here,” he said.

  We were back at his safe house; back to the sword. I crawled up the ladder and collapsed on the roof, exhausted, despite feeling better than I had in my entire life. I didn’t bother going inside the small room. Instead, I watched the stars, hating they were so far away because of the smog and lights of the city. Eli sat down next to me, far enough away so that we couldn’t touch had we tried.

  “Holy crap,” I said to the night, figuring Eli didn’t care.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “He was just kind of…there,” I said. “It happened so fast.”

  “With as many people looking for you as you say, wandering around is stupid,” Eli said.

  “I wanted to get Alex a toothbrush. And think. I wanted to think. What happened to the guy who shot me?”

  “He fell down and broke his neck. It was tragic,” Eli said calmly.

  “Oh. You killed him.”

  “Don’t waste your time feeling sorry,” Eli said in response to the tone in my voice. “People like that choose their fate.”

  “Like you chose yours?” I asked.

  I wasn’t as upset about the man being dead as most would have been, but I thought Daniel would have at least regretted killing him more. I would have regretted killing him more. But now wasn’t the time to think about that. I placed a hand over my heart and felt the blood. Eli had saved my life. He stopped me from becoming another statistic in the city of blues.

  “Thank you for saving me,” I said.

  He shrugged, and his strange eyes moved to stare out over the city.

  We listened to the sirens die and the regular sounds of the city crept over the sounds of drama.

  The city moved on, irrepressible despite what had just happened to me. For all the city knew, I had died tonight and, yet, it moved on. Slowly, my concept of death shifted. There had been no fanfare or crying multitudes as I passed from the world. There had only been pain and a darkness

  – deep and terrifying – to call me under. That I had no choice but to succumb to that call was extremely humbling…and more than a little irritating.

  “Why are you and Alex so loyal to each other?” Eli asked eventually over the sounds of my

  world shifting and changing.

  “I’m sorry, was that an actual question from our inglorious leader?” I asked.

  “It won’t happen again,” he replied quickly.

  “I’m just kidding. Lighten up.” I hesitated and kept my eyes heavenwards. “Alex and I are sisters in a sense,” I said. “Family. It’s the same thing as you being so loyal to the kids.”

  “Sisters…” Eli said slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she like you?” He meant my status as a would-be Watcher.

  “No, not like me.” I wasn’t prepared to tell him about Alex’s strange ability to shift into a Nightstalker. He was still too much of a stranger, and it was definitely not my secret to tell. If Alex did find Eli attractive, or whatever it was she was keeping from me, it was her right to tell him the truth.

  “I think you should stay here for the night. Let the action die down some. I’ll let Alex know where you are,” Eli said abruptly.

  “Oh…kay”

  Apparently, our conversation had ended. He was already down the stairs without a goodbye. I put my hand to my chest where I had been shot and breathed deeply. What a night… I pulled the picture of Daniel out of my pocket and stared at his worried face. Enveloped in his features, overwhelmed by what had just happened, I stared at his face until I was too tired to stay awake any longer. That night I dreamed for the first time in weeks.

  The first dream brought me back into the world of desert landscapes and cold, yellow eyes. The white-haired man I’d seen on the night of the attack in King’s Cross appeared in front of me again. He was tense, a prowling cat. He paused on every return pace and checked his phone.

  Finally it rang.

  He answered it swiftly. “You have them?” he asked. “Good…make sure they cooperate…I don’t

  care how…Don’t fail me, Nguyen…” He hung up and smiled a slow, cruel smile.

  The next nightmare was familiar. Daniel stood before a howling hoard of Nightstalkers. They swarmed around him in organized chaos; a chaos bred of violent natures and deadly intentions.

  As I watched, Daniel changed into a one of the beasts he stood against, his red eyes soulless and malevolent. He roared to the sky and charged at the hoard.

  The vision of him against the others on the battlefield shifted. Suddenly, he was standing against me instead of the Nightstalkers. We were in a large room with a white altar in the center. His eyes locked on mine and his body slowly shifted into a Nightstalker. I glanced down and saw my hands were covered in silver blood. He lunged at me with snarling, ripping, teeth.

  I sat up from the hard roof, awake as suddenly as if I hadn’t
slept at all. Light had crept back into the world. Its shade spread out across the roof, reaching the small room Eli had hid my sword in.

  Daniel’s picture had fallen from my chest with my sudden jump awake. His curiously worried eyes in the picture mirrored my dream. I picked the picture up, staring at those eyes, which were thankfully green, then carefully folded the picture and put it my pocket.

  The nightmare fresh in my mind – not wanting to seek out Alex until it had faded – I went to Eli’s room. Dust swirled lazily in the early morning haze as I pushed the glass door back. The books were faded from the constant deluge of light during the day, but they were beautiful, containing a history and a story that went beyond their pages.

  A small desk I hadn’t noticed on my first visit was crammed between the shelves. I saw another book on top. This one was covered with dust also, but it intrigued me. I picked it up carefully, wondering why it was on the desk and not on the shelves. Was it the last thing Eli’s father had looked at before leaving this solitude of books? Had Eli placed it here?

  The binding protested as the heavy book opened in my hands. I flipped through the pages. The words were in another language, the writing quietly elegant. My eyes scanning the pages

  curiously, I stopped when a crinkled picture slid out from the pages. I set the book back on the table and stared at the picture.

  Eli – who was actually smiling – had a small girl in his arms. Her hair was a dull blonde and her eyes – brown and blue – matched his. Eli’s clothes looked cared after and loved; his blond hair short and washed. The pair looked so happy, so carefree.

  “What are you doing?” Eli asked from the door. I jumped, and he took several steps toward me and the picture I was holding.

  “I wasn’t prying,” I said swiftly. “I swear. It was just sitting here.”

  He held his hand out for the picture. I handed it to him quickly. His impassive face went through a gauntlet of emotions: sadness, regret, guilt, and pain – it finally settled on anger.

  “Out,” he commanded.

  His strange eyes melted to blackness in an instant. I didn’t need the familiar sign to know I had crossed some unspoken line; his voice said it all. I left quietly, curious about the girl, curious about his reaction.