The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage

by Selznick, Matthew Wayne

  “Holy…”

  I forgot about how gross everything was and snatched the bag out of the trash can with my bare hands. I yanked it open. My father’s scent hit me like heat from an open oven.

  I coughed. My throat clenched up. It wasn’t a terrible smell—it was too familiar, too much like me to be flat-out offensive—but it was so strong! My eyes watered.

  I remembered the one and only time I’d seen my father, a little less than a year ago, not more than a few blocks from where I was standing, at my grandmother’s cabin. He’d had a beard that looked like it had jumped off of Grizzly Adams, rolled around in a pigsty, and then latched onto my dad’s face. His hair had been long and tangled, all, what’s it called, dreadlocks, like a reggae guy.

  All that hair. It was mostly in the bag in my hand now.

  Denver Colorado had given my dad a haircut.

  And bought him clothes.

  That probably didn’t happen too often, based on how the guy had looked when I saw him last year.

  Why had it happened…when? Yesterday?

  The fresh trash bag cinched it. My dad had been here yesterday.

  I put the hair bag back in the trash and put the lid back on the can, thinking.

  Where were they, now? When were they coming back?

  I sighed. I couldn’t wait here forever. It was almost nine o’clock. By now, my mother was up, and pissed. She may have called Denver already. She may be on her way up here—she knew I wanted to find my dad, and where else but here would I go?

  I was lousy at running away. I kept going to the same place. But hell, that was where the action was always going to be, apparently.

  Point was, I couldn’t just stand around outside Denver Colorado’s house. Someone would notice. There was no not noticing me.

  Frowning, I threw my sweatshirt hood over my head and, lacking any other direction, walked back to the front of the house.

  Once again, I noticed the funky new wooden fence between Denver’s place and his neighbor’s. It needed about three winter freezes before it didn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

  I stuck out like a sore thumb, too.

  Nine o’clock. No Denver, no Andrew Charters, and my mother was probably on her way here right now, driving like the devil. Maybe she’d catch the same traffic Jason was worried about, but she’d be here eventually.

  Maybe they were in town? If my dad had fresh clothes, a shave, a haircut, he’d look like anybody. He didn’t share my unusual features. Maybe they were just having breakfast?

  I didn’t really want to be noticed, but with my hood up, maybe I could just skirt through town. It wasn’t far. It was kind of on the way to my grandmother’s empty cabin, too, and I had a key.

  The more I hung around Denver’s place, the more paranoid I got. He and my dad had to be around. Close. It was just a matter of finding them.

  I had a plan. Walk through town. If I didn’t see them, go to the cabin, let myself in, call Denver’s house. If he wasn’t there, leave a message. Wait.

  Either he’d call, or my mother would show up. My mother was going to show up eventually. And it would be warm, or warmer, at the cabin.

  I had a plan. Okay.

  I started up the street, head down, past new-fence neighbor’s house.

  A door opened. A woman’s voice called out.

  “Hey. You waiting for somebody?”

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Sixteen

  I very nearly ignored the woman. My hood was up; I had a good stride going. I could have kept on walking.

  I should have.

  It might sound strange, but when she called to me, I got the exact same feeling in my gut and up my spine that I did when my mother caught me doing something I shouldn’t. A hands-in-the-cookie-jar jolt that stopped me cold.

  I looked to the left, keeping my head down as much as I could. The woman standing in the open door of the house next to Denver’s place didn’t look like anyone’s mother.

  She was older, sure…maybe in her thirties, I guess. She was tall, and slender. She wore those stupid furry suede boots girls like and a black turtleneck tucked into blue jeans. Her hair was dark brown, straight, and just touched her shoulders. Her eyes were very dark, and her face had lots of angles, like the Nagel painting on the cover of Rio, but, I don’t know…harder. Not in a bad way, though.

  She grinned before she said, “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just noticed you hanging around Denver’s place.”

  “Um, yeah.” I kept my head down. “He’s a family friend.”

  She crossed her arms across her chest. “A family friend, huh? You sure you’re not just casing his place? Shouldn’t you be in school, anyway?”

  Despite what she said, she didn’t sound suspicious. I wished I could catch her scent, but the air wasn’t cooperating with me. It sounded like she was having some fun with me.

  “No,” I said.

  “No, what?”

  Huh?

  “No…ma’am?”

  Her laugh was throaty. “Wow. No, I mean…oh, hell, never mind.” She brought one hand up to cradle her jaw and cheek. Her fingers were long and thin, like Lina’s. “I think he took off.”

  “Yeah. His van’s not there. Thanks.”

  “You live around here, ‘family friend’ of Denver’s? I don’t think I’ve seen you at his place before.”

  “Just visiting.” The way she talked, it sounded like she knew Denver. Were they friends? Had he talked about me? Did she recognize me?

  “You’re not from Kirby Lake? Family have a cabin up here, or something?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m just gonna head back there…I’ll call Denver and leave him a message, catch up with him later.”

  She nodded with a thoughtful pout. “Well…he probably won’t be gone long. He hardly ever goes down the hill—I bet he’s just at the Pantry House, getting some breakfast.” She stepped to the side and propped the door open with an outstretched arm. “If you want, you can use my phone and wait here for a while. Beats walking, at least until the day heats up a little. It’s cold.”

  I could have said no, thanks, and walked on. And do you know why I didn’t?

  Because I was not quite seventeen years old and a hot older woman who was home alone asked me to come into her house.

  That’s why.

  I’d read enough Penthouse Forum magazines Mel pilfered from his dad to understand what could happen in a situation like this, even if I wasn’t so naive as to think spontaneous sex with a lonely older woman was what was actually about to happen.

  Still. The whole situation was too damn inviting.

  Besides, it made sense. No point in walking all the way to the cabin if Denver came back (with my dad!) a few minutes after I left.

  As for worrying about being recognized, well, if she knew Denver, I could assume she already knew about me. That guy loved to talk.

  “Well…okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Come on in.”

  She didn’t put a whole lot of effort into getting out of the way when I came through the doorway. We got really close. I smelled her shampoo.

  I hated myself a little.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Seventeen

  For someone like me—which is to say, me, and maybe my father—houses smell like the people who live in them painted the air with layer after layer of day after day of their presence. It’s not a bad thing, usually, but it’s certainly distinctive.

  I remember talking to Lina about it, one time. She said it must be like the way your house smells when you come back after a vacation, only more.

  This house smelled like furniture. Leather and dust and wood. New furniture, at that. Eventually, furniture smells mostly like the people who use it, and this stuff still smelled a little like department store.

  One thing I could tell, though: the woman didn’t live here alone. There was a man.

  The living room had a leather couch, a glass coffee table, and one of those big console tele
visions that weigh about a ton and a half.

  She closed the door. My eyes adjusted instantly to the dim interior. She held out her hand.

  “My name’s Evelyn.”

  I shook her hand. “I’m Nate.”

  I saw the expected hint of recognition in the way she tilted her head. “Nate…?” She glanced at the top of my head. “Take off your hood, Nate.” She grinned. “Show some manners.”

  Here we go. What the hell. I pulled the hood off and watched her expression as she took in my big eyes and the odd bone and muscle structure in my face. She seemed bemused by the leopard spots Crystal Dubois’s mom had dyed into my short, sandy-brown hair.

  “I thought so,” she said. “You’re that Nate. Friend of the family, just like you said.”

  She didn’t sound freaked out. More interested than anything else. It gave me some stupid confidence. “Yep. Boy freak, at your service.”

  As soon as I said it, I could feel a blush threaten my cheeks. At your service? What would she think I meant by that?

  But she was walking through the living room and gesturing toward the kitchen. “Phone’s in there, Nate. Help yourself. I’ll be right back.”

  She went down the hall and through a door. I called “thanks” after her, went into the kitchen, and found the phone.

  I kept a thin, tiny address book in my front pocket. I pulled it out, found Denver’s number, and dialed it.

  His answering machine picked up and played a warbly recording.

  “This is Denver Colorado. If you’re calling about a piece you commissioned, it’s not ready. If you’re calling about commissioning a piece, it’s probably going to take a while because you just heard I have to do that other one, and it’s late. If you still need to leave a message, you know what to do and when to do it.”

  Beep.

  “Hey, um, Denver. It’s Nate Charters. I’m…um, well, I’m actually right here at your next-door neighbor’s house. Surprise. I really need to see you. I think you’re with my dad, and I really, really need to see him, so that’s, um, that’s good. I hope he’s still there. With you. Uh, when you get back.”

  I recognized that I was rambling.

  “Anyway, I don’t know the number here, but I’ll be looking out for your van, and I’ll just come over, I guess. I wanted to leave this message so you wouldn’t be too shocked. Maybe you can give my dad a heads-up, too. Okay. Thanks. Bye.”

  I hung up and wished I could get a do-over on that message. But whatever. Good enough.

  From somewhere in the back of the house, Evelyn hollered, “Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in a sec.”

  “Okay!”

  Other than a roll of paper towels, the kitchen counters were empty. I tried one of the cabinets.

  It was empty.

  Next one over had a stack of paper plates, a box of plastic utensils, and two stacks of Styrofoam cups.

  That was sure weird.

  I opened the refrigerator. Evelyn had said to make myself at home, after all.

  A carton of milk. A loaf of bread, which I didn’t get. Who puts bread in the fridge? Four bottles of some beer I didn’t recognize. An open package of sliced ham. A bottle of ketchup. Two Chinese food takeout containers with those thin metal handles.

  That was it.

  I closed the refrigerator door and glanced around the place. The bare counter tops, the furniture that still smelled new… I stepped back into the living room and noticed that the glass coffee table didn’t have a smudge or fingerprint on it. It didn’t have any cleaning residue on it, either; I would have smelled that shit.

  My mother’s a real-estate agent, so I’ve seen those model homes they set up with the fake books and old magazines in the bathroom and silk flowers and whatever. These people didn’t even bother with that.

  I didn’t like it.

  I thought maybe I should just go.

  I turned toward the hallways and saw Evelyn coming toward me. Her arms were straight out in front of her, and she held a gun with both hands.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Eighteen

  The hole at the end of the barrel of the gun in her hands lined up with a spot just to the left of my breastbone. That hole didn’t waver as she walked down the hall. It was like the rest of her was anchored to the end of the gun.

  I froze.

  She stopped about eight feet away from me. Her eyes were bright. She had the slightest smile on her face.

  “Too good to be true,” she said.

  It was hard to take my eyes off of the hole at the end of the barrel of the handgun. I remember thinking that I hadn’t even made it a whole year without someone pointing a gun at me. The last time it happened had been less than a mile away from where I stood at that moment. Just down the street, more or less.

  I figured that couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “What’s going on?” I was surprised to hear my voice come out of my mouth in a ragged whisper. It was like the rules of being held at gunpoint were the same as being in a library or church. I wanted to clear my throat, but I was too scared to make too much noise, too sharp a sound. The last thing I wanted was for her to be shocked into doing something by reflex.

  “You, Nathan Charters,” she said around that half-smile, “are what we call a target of opportunity. It’s my lucky day.”

  She didn’t move.

  So I didn’t move.

  “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  She chuckled. “I bet you can figure it out. I’m told you’re a pretty smart little monster.”

  The things I knew blazed through my head in a fuzzy collage of impressions. A vague picture formed, outlined by a certainty that I blurted out.

  “Brenhurst. You’re with Brenhurst.”

  Her smile stretched to three-quarters. The hole at the end of the gun never budged from the spot on my chest.

  “I wouldn’t say that. But the same guy signs our paychecks. Good guess.”

  I felt like the air in the room pushed on me from all sides. My peripheral vision blurred out; all I could see was the woman and the gun.

  “So you were…you were just, what, waiting for me?”

  “God, you teenagers think you’re just the center of the universe, don’t you?” She shook her head. The hole at the end of the gun didn’t move. “You’re a bonus. Make sense?”

  All of a sudden, it did. She and the mystery man that wasn’t here worked for PrenticeCambrian, the mega-corporation that owned Tyndale Labs.

  Tyndale Labs was where Lester Brenhurst said he worked when he tried to get his hands on me and Byron Teslowski last year. Supposedly Tyndale Labs had been researching exceptionally physically talented young people to help make better prosthetic devices, but Byron smelled a rat, and so did my mother when Brenhurst set his sights on me.

  When Brenhurst bullshitting my mother didn’t work, and when Jason and I (with Lina’s help) made sure Byron got away, Brenhurst came after us, up here in Kirby Lake. No longer trying to act like everything was on the up-and-up, Brenhurst brought a couple of bruisers with horns growing out of their bodies to help collect us all.

  No one had counted on my crazy, augmented dad showing up at the big confrontation at my grandmother’s secluded cabin. Hell, I hadn’t even known my father was alive, let alone that he’d been made into a nutty animal-man by some experiments back in the Sixties—experiments apparently headed up by the very same Lester Brenhurst.

  When the police made the scene, my dad was gone again, and Byron was bleeding out. One of Brenhurst’s monsters had been killed when my dad ripped his guts out. The other had been killed by Brenhurst by some kind of weird poison that was supposed, and failed, to also hurt my dad.

  Brenhurst himself had some nice deep cuts on his face courtesy of yours truly. Last time I saw him in court, he was using makeup to cover the scars.

  Now Byron was at the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies, safe under the wing of William Karl Donner, the most powerful metahuman out there. Me and mine w
ere safe in the public eye, or so I thought, at the center of the legal tangle that grew out of the whole mess. And my dad was…

  “You were looking for my dad,” I said to her.

  “Oh, we found him.” I imagined the worst, and it must have shown on my face. She added, “My partner’s on his tail while you and I are having our little visit. Don’t worry. Nothing’s happened to you dear old dad.”

  I pretty much heard the “yet” as if she’d said it out loud.

  The whole world funneled down to the woman and her gun. You could have smashed cymbals behind my head or set off a stink bomb, and I wouldn’t have noticed. If you’ve ever gone through that fake hyper-alert phase of being drunk, it was like that, only not fake. And, like, fifty times more intense.

  “What are you going to do with us?”

  She shook her head slightly. “Let’s focus on you. Like I said, you’re a target of opportunity, the long-odds reason I stuck around while my partner chases down your daddy. So I’m going to run down a couple of options for you, and you tell me what you think. Okay?”

  When she said to focus on me, I read it as writing off my father as dead.

  And it was easy to interpret “a couple of options” as none at all.

  Yet again, it struck me how much of my life was determined by the decisions and motives of other people.

  It hit me, for the millionth time, that most of those people didn’t give a shit about me.

  At best.

  At worst, they wanted me in the ground.

  Somebody told me once that fear and anger are pretty much different degrees of the same emotion. I could feel the needle moving into the red.

  I had my voice back.

  “Okay.”

  “Option number one: I put handcuffs on you, we go out to my car, and I turn you over to my employers.”

  “What happens then?”

  She head-shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  The gun didn’t waver. How could she hold it so still for so long? Was she augmented in some way, like Brenhurst’s assassins and my father?

  “What’s the other one?”

  “I shoot you, take you out to my car, and I turn you over to my employers.”