by A. P. Kensey
Alistair brushed off his hands. “I’m done,” he said. “Need to charge.”
Bernam nodded and Alistair walked away, following after Shelly.
“Colton,” said Bernam. “It’s time.”
Colton stood in the middle of the street. He looked at the girl in the grass, who stared back at him in anger. The old woman lay before Bernam, broken and shaking.
“This doesn’t feel right,” said Colton.
Bernam tilted his head to the side as if to say how dare you?, then his shoulders relaxed with a sigh and he walked over to Colton. He nodded sympathetically and rested a hand on Colton’s shoulder.
“This is what we’ve been talking about ever since we first met,” said Bernam. “This is how you get to help countless others who are just like you. This woman holds the key to the future, Colton, and we need that key!”
His conviction was moving, but as Colton looked at the old woman lying helpless on the ground, he knew he could do nothing to harm her. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself,” he said at last. “I mean, look at her—”
“I’ll do it,” interrupted Reece. He looked at the woman and swallowed hard, as if he was struggling to convince himself. “Yeah, sure. I’ll do it. Just like you said, Bernam. Give me the power.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Colton. “What power?”
Bernam shook his head. “This is Colton’s decision.”
“Why do I have to be the one?”
“Because you are the only one strong enough to contain her energy,” said Bernam. “Even I would only be able to hold it a few minutes, after which it would burn me from the inside-out. It must be you.”
Bernam’s hand slipped off his shoulder as Colton walked over and stood above the old woman. She looked up at him without anger or resentment; it almost seemed as if she was already forgiving Colton for what he was supposed to do.
“I won’t do it,” said Colton, shaking his head.
Bernam sighed. His head dropped and he nodded deeply. “Very well,” he said.
He moved so quickly that Colton was staring at empty space when something hit the middle of his ribcage. He looked down to see Bernam’s right hand on his chest. His fingers disappeared into five black holes in Colton’s ribcage. The edges of the holes flowed around Bernam’s fingers like liquid.
Colton tried to speak but he could not. He tried to breathe but his throat was clenched shut.
“Reece, if you would…” said Bernam calmly. He beckoned him over and Reece obeyed, a look of confused horror on his face.
“Don’t hurt him, man,” said Reece.
“It’s a little late for that.”
Bernam reached out and grabbed Reece’s shirt. He pulled him close and gripped him firmly by the throat. Reece struggled to take a breath but his flailing arms bounced harmlessly off Bernam’s skin. He was lifted into the air, his legs kicking uselessly against Bernam’s shins.
Colton felt warmth drain from his limbs. It gathered in his chest and flowed out through the holes made by Bernam’s fingers. His vision dimmed as if it were light fueled by a dying generator.
Bernam stared at Colton. His eyes were solid black, ringed with sparking black fire.
“Your power is wasted on you,” he said.
Colton grit his teeth, certain that they would shatter long before the pain ended. It felt like a hundred clawed fingers were scraping against the inside of his body, peeling away his insides and pulling them out through his chest.
Bernam looked at him with those black eyes, and Colton was more scared in that moment than he had ever been in his entire life. There was no reasoning with the person who had those eyes. They regarded everything with a cold distance, completely devoid of emotion. No amount of pleading and no logical argument could be made to save a person trapped in the stare of eyes so dead.
The last ounce of warmth left Colton’s body and Bernam threw him aside. He fell to the street and he heard his skull crack loudly against the asphalt, but there was no pain. Colton’s entire body was numb.
Paralyzed, he watched Bernam lower Reece to the ground and release his neck. Reece stood there, mouth slack, staring into the distance.
Bernam slapped his shoulder and Reece blinked.
“How do you feel?”
Reece looked down at his hands. “Weird,” he said.
Bernam guided him over to the old woman, who watched everything with wide eyes. She tried to speak but little more than a soft gurgle escaped her lips.
The young girl lying in the grass coughed. “Stop,” she said weakly. Her eyelids fluttered to stay open as she pulled herself toward the old woman. “Stop.”
Bernam held up his hand and flicked the air. The girl tumbled across the grass and rolled to a stop on her stomach twenty feet away. She remained there, unmoving.
“I will start,” said Bernam. “And you will finish.”
Reece looked at Colton as he lay on the ground. “I thought you said that Colton was the only one who could hold her power.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said Bernam, growling with impatience.
Reece opened his mouth to say something else but Bernam pulled him down to kneel in front of the old woman.
“Put your hand here,” said Bernam. He placed Reece’s open palm at the top of the woman’s ribcage. He rested his own hand on top of Reece’s. “You will feel it moving into your hand and into your body. Don’t fight it. As soon as you sense the movement, you will be able to control the flow.”
Blue light shimmered over the woman’s skin and her back arched up violently.
“Don’t let go,” said Bernam loudly.
The old woman twisted under their combined grip. The blue light pooled on her chest and flowed visibly over Reece’s skin. Bernam pulled his hand away and shook it as if he had just touched a hot stove.
“Good,” he said. The blue light flowed faster up Reece’s arm and sank down into his skin. “Very good.”
The woman screamed loudly and her body went limp. Her head rested back against the grass and she lay still.
Reece pulled his hand away and looked at it, rubbing his fingers together thoughtfully. “Wow,” he said.
Bernam smiled and stood. “Well done, Reece. You have secured your rightful place among us. We need to get you back to the center right away.”
A thin trail of blue light ran up Reece’s body from his feet to the top of his head, then exploded like a small firecracker in the air.
“What was that?!” he said.
Bernam put his hand on Reece’s back and guided him away from the old woman. “We’ll talk about it on the way,” he said.
Colton turned his head as they walked away. At an intersection two streets away, the plane idled to a stop and the door opened downward to become a set of stairs.
Reece turned back to look at Colton as he stepped into the plane, but Bernam firmly turned him around and ushered him inside.
Shelly appeared in the doorway. She hugged herself as she looked at Colton lying in the middle of the street. Even at that distance, Colton thought he saw tears on her cheeks. Alistair reached down and grabbed the railing on the stairs. With a smug grin in Colton’s direction, he pulled the door closed.
The plane rolled down the street and the engines whined loudly until the wheels lifted off the ground. Colton watched, still unable to move, as the plane banked in the air and flew back in the direction of the black building.
The deep emptiness inside of him was a constant pressure; a weight on every one of his bones that pressed down and stopped just short of snapping them in half. He was reminded of the weeks after his mother abandoned him and his father; it was a pain he had hoped to never feel again.
He reached out with his mind for the energy in the world around him. Shelly had taught him how to absorb ambient energy and he had gotten so proficient at it that he did it without thinking. He groped for anything—starlight or even the faint heat in the asphalt on which he lay—but he was powerless.
There was nothing.
Colton rolled onto his side, fighting to keep his eyes open as a wave of darkness covered his vision.
The old woman lay at the edge of the road, eyes closed. Her chest rose ever-so-slightly with the shallow breaths of one who was nearly dead. The young girl in the grass had not moved once since Bernam had pushed her there.
A loud crash came from the house with the hole in its roof. A man yelled from within as something heavy scraped against the floor. Wood creaked slowly just before another loud crash.
The front door exploded outward and chunks of wood peppered the grass in front of the house. The man Alistair had called Marius stood in the doorway supporting the white-haired woman. She was awake, but barely. Blood from a deep cut on her head ran down one side of her face and covered her shirt.
Colton rested his head against the street as his vision dimmed to black and he lost consciousness.
30
The biggest hill in the Grove was on the far side of the grid of trees. Haven hadn’t walked past the last line of trees when she first visited the large, grassy field and so she hadn’t noticed that the other side of the hill sloped down to a small pond.
The pond was shaped like a teardrop, with one end large and bulbous and the other tapering at an angle to a rounded point.
At the bottom of the teardrop, at the edge of the still water, rested a lone willow tree.
Its knurled roots twisted out from the base of its crooked trunk and dipped into the water. Whip-like branches sprouted from the top of the trunk like a sad crown, cascading outward and down to brush the ground like a hundred gentle fingertips. Light green leaves covered the branches and stood in pleasing contrast to the light brown of the bark.
The trunk angled out over the pond so that one-half of the branches lightly brushed the surface of the water. Small blue lights floated over the pond, perfectly reflected in its mirrored surface like brilliant fireflies.
Haven stood atop the hill, looking down at the tree.
Elena rested against its trunk, propped up by Marius after he carried her in from the dome. He sat next to her, head cast down, eyes closed, a heavy frown on his sooty face.
Behind Haven, in the grid of trees, Dormer took his hand from Corva’s shoulder and helped her to sit up. The tree from which he had been drawing energy shed a third of its leaves and a small dark spot spread over its bark.
Part of Corva’s face was still covered in blood. She rotated her arm and pressed down on her shoulder, grimacing as she moved. She nodded at Dormer and he helped her to stand. He looked over at Haven.
Marius had nearly killed Dormer when everyone had returned to The Dome. They had been standing down by the small pond and Dormer had said something—Haven couldn’t hear him because she had just walked to the top of the hill—and Marius had turned on him in a blind rage. Part of Dormer’s shirt was burned away from where Marius had lifted him from the ground and lit him on fire. Dormer had quickly reached his maximum storage limit and his body was shedding heat faster than he could absorb it after only a few seconds of contact.
If Elena’s soft voice had not stopped Marius, there would have been nothing left of Dormer but a smoking pile of ashes.
He dropped his gaze and turned to walk away, pushing through the swinging doors that led back to the dome and disappearing around the corner.
Corva walked slowly to the top of the hill and looked down at the pond.
“Are you okay?” asked Haven.
Corva nodded. “Been better. Been worse. Broke my collarbone and dislocated my shoulder. Dormer patched me up enough to get moving. What about you?”
“I’m alright,” said Haven.
Corva raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Well, I’m a little dizzy and every other minute I feel like I have to puke.”
“How’s your head?”
Haven touched the bump behind her right ear where her head hit the ground. It stung but it would be fine. The biggest problem was the emptiness she felt inside. After the man called Bernam had dug into that one boy’s chest and then cast him aside, Haven felt numb all the way to her core. It was an alien feeling, as if her soul had been pulled out of her body.
She was still herself, but she felt distant—unattached.
“I guess Marius is really mad at Dormer,” said Haven.
“That’s an understatement.”
“Does he think Elena would be okay if Dormer had come with us?”
“Probably—but it wasn’t just any old Con out there, it was Bernam.”
“The Void.”
Corva nodded. “And Alistair is no slouch, either. Add the twins into the mix and I doubt having Dormer with us would have made any difference.”
The doors to the Grove swung open and the young boy, Micah, hurried inside. It was obvious he had been asleep—his short hair was matted on one side and his clothes were wrinkled and twisted. He pulled on a pair of reading glasses as he ran up the hill, passed Haven and Corva, and ran down the other side.
He fell to his knees at Elena’s side. She smiled at him weakly as he picked up one of her hands and held it between both of his.
“They seem very close,” said Haven.
“He’s an orphan. His adoptive parents were…” She paused as she struggled to find the right words. “They were not kind. Shortly after they remanded him back into state custody, another child in his orphanage started a fire and the building burned to the ground. Micah was the only survivor.”
“So he’s not a Source or a Con?”
“Not that we know. Elena was never able to have children of her own, so she took him in.”
“He’s very quiet,” said Haven. She watched as Micah held Elena’s hand to his cheek. He closed his eyes and his tears fell onto her skin.
“He was born mute,” said Corva.
Down by the pond, Micah gently laid Elena’s hand in her lap and walked away. He sat in the grass on the other side of the pond with his back to the tree and his shoulders shuddered as he cried. Elena closed her eyes and rested her head against the trunk of the tree.
“What did Bernam do to her?” asked Haven.
“He took her power,” said Corva.
“You can do that?”
“Voids can. They are strong enough to tap into the deepest recesses of one’s very existence, if they so desire. They can scrape out abilities and give them to others.”
“Why did he take Elena’s?”
Corva shook her head. “I don’t know. You can’t have more than one power inside you for long or else you go crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it drives you insane. Taking in another power does not make you stronger. The abilities are separate from each other—individual entities that cannot mix, like oil and water. You can store another’s essence—their ability—for a very short period of time, but you must quickly release the energy to avoid any lasting damage.”
“So, Bernam can’t become a hybrid just by taking a Source’s ability?”
“Exactly,” said Corva. “Even he must know that, which makes it harder to understand why he would drain her power in the first place.”
“But Elena will get better, right? Dormer can heal her.”
“No. We can’t live without our abilities. They are a part of us, and without them we wither. If you are young and strong, you might be able to last a short while, but if you are sick, or weak, or…”
“Or old,” said Haven.
Corva nodded. “Yes.” She gently squeezed Haven’s shoulder and smiled. “I think she would want to speak with you.”
Haven swallowed nervously and nodded. “Okay,” she whispered.
They walked down the hill to the tree. Haven pushed aside several ropey branches and sat on the grass next to Elena. Corva sat next to Marius and put her arm over his shoulders as he leaned against her and closed his eyes.
Haven looked into the pond. The smooth surface of the water reflected the distant lights o
n the ceiling and would have been as flat as a mirror if not for the protruding ends of several large, algae-covered stones that dotted the length of the pond. The water was uniformly shallow and crystal clear. Small, translucent fish darted between long blades of rooted grass. The green, bladed stalks stood suspended in the water as if they had been drifting back and forth in a strong current and had suddenly been frozen in mid-wave.
One of the small blue lights in the air drifted over to Haven and floated a few inches in front of her face. At first it moved in a slow circle, a thin line of wispy blue light trailing behind. The little light moved faster and faster until the trailing light became a glowing ring floating in the air. Suddenly the light stopped moving and, with a small pop, exploded like a tiny firework that shot little sparks into the middle of the fading ring.
Haven smiled and Elena opened her eyes.
“I thought you might like that,” she said weakly.
“It was beautiful,” said Haven.
“What do you think of our little pond?”
“It’s lovely.”
“This tree is over five hundred years old. It was moved here after the Old Home was destroyed. That’s where our kind lived long ago. That’s what we called it.” She closed her eyes and a faint smile crossed her lips. “Yes, I remember. There were so many of us! Hundreds and hundreds. So many…”
“What happened?”
“Most were killed.”
“Is that why there aren’t more of you—of us—here?”
Elena nodded. “They are afraid. Those we manage to find rarely agree to join. They want to live simple, happy lives, and I don’t blame them. I often wished to live such a life.” She smiled and the wrinkles on her face bunched up in the corners of her eyes. “But that was not my job. My job was to keep the others safe.” She took a quick breath and coughed sharply, her throat thick and raspy. “Haven,” she said quietly. “It’s you. You must do this after I am gone.”