Runaways

by Christopher Golden

  Chase nodded. “You don’t like surprises, but—”

  “I like this one,” Gert said.

  A low snarl made them all pause and turn toward the noise. For half a second Karolina feared they had celebrated too soon, that there were some kind of guard dogs or—knowing the Pride—guard monsters down here, but it was just Old Lace prancing out of one of the side corridors, snout in the air as she investigated all the hoopla they were making.

  Gert called the dinosaur’s name and ran to her, threw her arms around her, apparently happier to see her pet than she was to have a new home.

  Karolina, Nico, Molly, and Chase stood and watched the girl-and-dinosaur reunion. Ever since she’d been bonded to Old Lace, Gert—or Arsenic—never seemed completely at ease when they were apart. And if she’d been a bit standoffish before, Gert seemed to like people less and less the more time she spent with her dinosaur. She liked Chase, obviously, and most days she seemed to like the other Runaways, but Karolina got the impression her brilliant purple-haired friend would have preferred her world to be Arsenic and Old Lace 90 percent of the time, with Chase in the mix the other 10 percent, and no room at all for anyone else.

  Karolina envied her a little. She wished she had someone—even a genetically engineered dinosaur—that she could feel that comfortable with.

  “Umm, I don’t want to interrupt…whatever this is,” Allis said, standing beside the open Leapfrog hatch. She pushed her hair behind her ears, then crooked a thumb toward the vehicle’s interior. “But the dead kid?”

  Karolina felt a pang of guilt. Here was this poor girl who’d been knocked out, terrified out of her wits, nearly murdered, cuffed to a post, had her wrists chafed till they bled, and been rescued by a bunch of people with super powers, and they were ignoring her.

  “Yeah?” Nico said. “What about him?”

  Allis shrugged.

  “Pretty sure he’s waking up.”

  Turned out his name was Zeke. Chase didn’t like him from the second he stepped out of the Leapfrog, but the same couldn’t be said for the girls. Not that they were all mooning over the guy or anything, but he was pitiful and injured and good-looking. Chase had seen pretty much every movie Hong Kong action star Chow Yun-Fat had ever made and in every one of them Chow ended up beaten and bloody, clutching his cracked ribs, staggering into or out of some violent altercation. Usually with a gun in each hand, but of course this Zeke guy didn’t have even one gun. That was who Zeke reminded him of, standing there all dignified and broken—Chow Yun-Fat, who was not an especially handsome guy when the movies began, but was inevitably made more attractive with each new injury. It shouldn’t have worked like that. He got his ass kicked, got dirty and sweaty, could barely stay on his feet, and yet somehow that made him sexy.

  His first word was “Wow.” Just that. He glanced around the hideout, looking massively impressed, as if they’d not only passed inspection but exceeded expectations, and said “Wow.”

  Chase felt the hairs bristle on the back of his neck as he went into defensive mode. He moved in front of Gert—and she shoved him aside, frowning at him like he’d just ripped a huge burp in a public place. He felt stupid after that, because of course her scowl had been well-earned. She didn’t need macho jealous boyfriend bullshit in her life. Chase took another look at the bruised-up kid.

  “So, you guys are staring,” the new arrival said, leaning tiredly against the Frog. “My name is Zeke.” He pointed at Chase. “I’m gonna guess blue eyes here is Chase Stein, since he’s the only dude.”

  Chase blinked. “How did you know—?”

  “I’m Zeke Zheng,” the guy said, and then he pointed at each of them in turn. “Molly. Nico. Karolina. Which means the cute chick with the purple hair is Gert.”

  Cute chick? Chase thought, narrowing his eyes.

  “Cute chick?” Gert said, narrowing her eyes.

  Nico moved toward him, hands curled into fists.

  Zeke pointed at Allis. “You, I don’t know. But if you’re with these kids—”

  “We just met her,” Nico said. “And we just met you. So how the hell do you know our names?”

  Stupid, Chase thought. We were stupid to bring this guy back with us.

  Zeke grunted as he forced himself to stand without the support of the Leapfrog. “You’re the Pride’s kids. I wanted to find you…tried to sneak away from my mother and her friends, but they caught me. Abernathy—he’s the telekinetic in the group, but he’s got some light telepathy he’s been hiding—anyway, he picked up my thoughts and they tried to stop me. Tried to basically imprison me while my mom tried to convince me this was all normal, that I should just go along and be the next generation of the Nightwatch, take over for them up in San Francisco while they made their play in L.A. Then they found out about the Pride’s minions abducting street kids and sacrificing them and they tracked the minions down and went after them. I had a fight with Abernathy. He smashed me around a lot, but I’m tougher than I look and I knocked the bastard out and took off.”

  He grinned then, and the smile lit his face up like he was born for Hollywood.

  “I couldn’t believe my luck when I got out onto the street and saw the Leapfrog just, like, hovering there. Chase landed…I ran for it…saw you, Karolina…” Zeke shrugged. “I don’t remember much after that. Or anything, really.”

  Chase stared at him. They were all staring, even the almost-a-human-sacrifice girl.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Zeke asked, looking nervous.

  “How about all of it?” Nico said.

  Gert crossed her arms, glaring at him. “We have no idea what any of that means.”

  “Except the part where your mother’s evil and wanted to brainwash you,” Molly said. “We got that part.”

  “And we’ll help,” Karolina said quickly, as if trying to reassure him. She glanced around at the rest of them. “We will help. It’s sort of our thing, taking kids with horrible parents and getting them out of trouble.”

  “But there’s obviously a lot more going on here than we understand,” Chase went on. “A lot that you seem to think we already know, or ought to know. So maybe you better back up and start with, again, who you are.”

  “And what the hell is a Nightwatch?” Nico asked.

  Zeke nodded slowly. “Okay. Wow.”

  “You say ‘wow’ a lot,” Chase noted.

  “It’s a ‘wow’ kind of day,” Zeke told him.

  Chase had to smile. The guy had charm, as much as he hated to admit it. “Okay, so, the Nightwatch.”

  Zeke glanced around. “I’m about to fall down. What are the chances of me finding a chair and something caffeinated in this place?”

  They all turned to look at Chase. Of course they did. He was the only one of them who had already seen more of their new home than this one room.

  He pointed toward a far door. “This way. Chairs and caffeine. And information about the Nightwatch.”

  “Absolutely,” Zeke said. “You have to know everything. Otherwise they’re definitely going to kill us all.”

  Nico sighed. “Of course they are.”

  Nico had a hundred questions for Chase, but she knew they were going to have to wait. Part of her wished they’d never rescued Allis or been approached by Zeke—that they could erase the whole night—but then they wouldn’t be here in this absurdly weird headquarters under the La Brea Tar Pits. Just thinking about it made her head hurt. The La Brea Tar Pits. One thing was for certain: nobody searching for them would ever think to look here, which was obviously why their parents had chosen this as a location for one of their bases.

  “Okay,” she said, settling into a leather chair at a round, gleaming cherrywood table in what could only have been the Pride’s conference room. “I’m going to keep this simple, Zeke, because we don’t want your life story.”

  “You don’t have to be rude,” Molly said.

  Nico shot her a look. In a rudeness contest, Nico wasn’t sure if she or Gert would win—sh
e figured it depended on the day—but Molly wasn’t usually one to call them out on it. Of course, Zeke did have that dude-in-distress thing going for him. Gert and Molly seemed to be sympathetic toward him, though Karolina seemed unimpressed. Nico felt it, but she had more practical concerns than patching up pretty boys who’d thrown themselves on the mercy of the Runaways.

  “You’re right,” Nico told Molly, just to move things along. Eleven-year-old girls could be stubborn. “But there’s a lot happening right now, so I want to focus on facts.”

  Zeke nodded. “Fair enough.”

  Dim lights cast a yellow glow on the table. Bottles of flavored water had been hastily arranged in the center after Chase and Gert had found them in a small galley kitchen beside the conference room, where they’d also made Zeke a cup of coffee. Nico assumed there must be a real kitchen somewhere, but now wasn’t the time for the full tour.

  “Start with the Nightwatch and your mother,” Nico said. “Short version.”

  Zeke shook his head. His swollen and bruised face needed medical attention. For now, he’d just washed the blood off, but at the very least he needed an ice pack. That would also have to wait.

  “I can’t believe you guys don’t know this stuff,” he said. “I know the Pride kept you in the dark about a lot of things—”

  “About everything,” Gert said.

  “Seems that way,” Zeke admitted. “The easiest way to say this is that the Nightwatch is to San Francisco what the Pride was to L.A.”

  “So they also cut a deal with the Gibborim,” Nico said.

  Zeke frowned. “No. It’s not…Okay, I guess I’m backing up further. You guys know what the Gibborim are?”

  “They’re the Elder Gods of the Earth,” Chase said, glancing awkwardly at Allis. “Should she be in here for all of this?”

  Allis rolled her eyes. “Who am I going to tell? I don’t even have anywhere to go, never mind anyone to go to.”

  Nico saw how unsteady Allis seemed, and wondered if the whack the girl had taken on the head had done more damage than to just knock her unconscious. Her eyes were glazed and she seemed pale, though that might have been her normal skin tone.

  “Why don’t you have some water, Allis? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  Allis sighed. “If you want me to leave—”

  “No, I mean it,” Nico said. “You don’t look good. Drink some water. And if you need to lie down, just go. Chase will help you get settled somewhere.”

  Karolina took two bottles of flavored water, gave one to Allis, and opened one for herself. Nico looked back at Zeke, but now that she’d noticed how pale the girl looked she had started to worry. They probably should have brought her to a hospital—her and Zeke both. She wondered just how badly she was messing up this whole leader thing. Most of her life she’d been on the outskirts of other people’s friend groups. Maybe she’d always liked it that way or maybe she’d just grown to like it, but either way, Nico usually preferred to be alone. Sometimes she desperately needed it. Yet somehow here she was with these friends she would die for, and the loner girl, the girl on the outskirts, was in charge.

  “Anyway,” Nico said, “the Gibborim. Elder Gods of the Earth. Hundred-foot, six-fingered, really frickin’ weird-looking giants. Existed before humanity, currently banished or at least retreated to some kind of limbo dimension. Definitely waiting for another crack at destroying humanity so they can return the world to the same people-free paradise it was in their freakish glory days. That about sums it up.”

  Zeke smiled, and winced as it caused him pain. “How many Gibborim are there?”

  “Three that we know of,” Gert replied.

  “That makes sense,” Zeke said thoughtfully. He glanced disappointedly into his empty coffee mug, then grabbed a bottle of water. “Now let me ask you another question. Did it never seem remotely bizarre to any of you that the Gibborim, these Elder Gods of the Earth, wanted to kill all of humanity, made a deal with your parents for immortality, blah blah blah, but somehow their power never extended beyond Greater Los Angeles, and your parents confined their criminal empire to the same area? I mean, these aren’t the Elder Gods of L.A., right?”

  “Right,” Molly agreed.

  Zeke sipped his water. “Yeah. Except they are.”

  Karolina shifted in her chair. “Want to explain that?”

  “The Gibborim aren’t the only Elder Gods left. Just the only ones left out of that tribe. There are major chunks of the planet that don’t have any, but there are other tribes left. The tribe that once ruled northern California and most of Oregon are called the Kurdogrim. Think of them as cousins to the Gibborim. There are at least four Kurdogrim left.”

  Nico sat back, chair creaking beneath her. “So when you say the Nightwatch are the Pride of San Francisco, you’re being literal. Your mother and the rest of them—were they recruited the same way our parents were?”

  Zeke shrugged. “Honestly, I like to appear cool and all-knowing but I don’t actually know all of the details on that. I know your parents made a deal. I know my mom and the other three members of the Nightwatch made a deal. There are a bunch of factions of Elder Gods battling for dominance, sort of behind the curtains of the world, but they’re fighting over scraps of power. None of them really have the ability to do much beyond their territory without help. Your parents were making annual sacrifices to give the Gibborim a massive power-up so they could make their move, not just revert the Earth to proto-Eden or whatever, but to wipe out any of the other Elder Gods who tried to fight them.”

  Molly put her feet up on the table. “Yeah, well we messed that plan up for them.”

  “You did,” Zeke said. “They’re licking their wounds now. According to my mom, it cost them a lot of power when the Pride died. So much that the Gibborim can’t exert any control over L.A. at all right now. Which is why the Nightwatch is here.”

  Nico drummed her fingers on the table. “They’re making a play for L.A., aren’t they? Your mom and the Nightwatch? They’re trying to claim the Gibborim’s territory and give it over to the Kurdogrim.”

  “Exactly. They dragged us down here with them to help, and to see them in action. My mom told me that eventually they planned to split up, with half of the Nightwatch staying up north and the rest of us in L.A. The first thing on their to-do list was tracking down the Pride’s minions and taking them out.”

  “We didn’t even know our parents had minions,” Chase said.

  “They’re like this cult,” Gert explained to him, as Chase hadn’t seen them. “They’re the ones who took Allis. My guess is they’d already sacrificed at least a couple of street kids, using the same rituals our parents did. Allis would’ve been next—”

  “But you guys got there in time!” Molly said with satisfaction.

  “I’m not sure we did,” Karolina replied. “We’ll never know. That’s when the Nightwatch showed up and started killing the minions. It’s weird to say ‘minions.’ I keep thinking of little yellow guys. Can we call them something else?”

  Gert shifted awkwardly in her seat. “I don’t know that we need to call them anything anymore. I think they’re probably all dead or hospitalized.”

  “Or running scared and not likely to ever come back to L.A.,” Nico added.

  “But if they were followers of the Pride, I definitely feel like we need to find out, and take them down if they’re still up to evil shenanigans,” Gert finished.

  Nico nodded. “No question. We’re not, like, patrolling for Super Villains or something, but I know we’re all on board with the idea of cleaning up whatever trouble the Pride left behind. We inherited their trouble. That said, one crisis at a time.”

  She turned to stare at Zeke. “Which brings me back to you.” Something he’d said had stuck in her mind, and now she realized what it was. “You said ‘us.’”

  “What?”

  “‘They dragged us down to L.A.,’ you said. There are four members of the Nightwatch, right? But you said
‘us,’ so who else is part of ‘us’?”

  All of Zeke’s swagger faded. Suddenly he looked much younger, his forehead creased with wonder and his eyes damp with unshed tears. “Yeah. Four members of the Nightwatch. My mom, Kathryn, has elemental powers. Wind, earth, that kind of thing. Abernathy—”

  “The telekinetic,” Gert said.

  “—then there’s the Ochoas. They’re married. She’s a shape-shifter and he’s—”

  “Let me guess,” Nico said. “Teleporter with a sword fetish?”

  “That’s Emilio Ochoa, yeah. Abernathy doesn’t have kids, but the Ochoas have two, Carlos and Tess. Our parents—the Nightwatch—they told us this was supposed to be our coming-of-age moment. The next generation. Yeah, we knew about their powers, and we knew they’d done bad things before, but we never knew how bad. We trusted them—they’re our parents—but now we know better. They were all recruited young by the Kurdogrim and they’ve been working in secret all along, so you’ve never seen them in, like, a Super Hero battle or something. Never seen them in the papers. They’re too smart for that.”

  “Just like our parents were,” Karolina said.

  “Smart or evil,” Chase muttered.

  “Both,” Zeke said, wiping at his eyes, clearly embarrassed by his show of emotion. “They brought us down here and they didn’t try to soften what they were planning anymore, didn’t try to hide what they were. When they told us they were going to kill the Pride’s minions…”

  He glanced around the table.

  “…when they told us they were going to kill the five of you…”

  Nico shivered.

  “…we just couldn’t go along with it,” Zeke said. “I mean, rich and immortal sounds great, but murder? Maybe mass murder? Yeah, we were definitely not on board. They tried to force us, and we stood up to them. Fought them.”

  “You lost,” Chase said.

  Zeke shot him a withering look. “Yeah, thanks for rubbing that in, bro. I guess not everyone finds it as easy to murder their parents as you guys.”

  “Hey!” Molly barked. “That’s really mean.”