They were going to need a new vehicle. And the black SUV, despite a dented passenger door, looked like it would be more than adequate. It was just a shame it wasn’t a different color. The Surfer would have liked that.
The Reverend nodded once to his partner, saying, “I’ll handle it. Be ready if this man decides he won’t allow for amicable conversation. But”—the Reverend looked at the enormous man outside the driver’s window— “I don’t think we’ll have any problem here.”
The Surfer shrugged, as if the decision meant nothing to him. Then he pushed open the door and began to step out.
“Easy, damn it! Easy. Hands away from your body. That’s it,” the man with the gun said. When the Surfer was fully out of the car, the man leaned down and peered into the cabin. “You, too, old man.” He waved the gun toward Lance. “And bring that son-of-bitch with you. Now, damn it!”
The Reverend did not turn around when he spoke to the boy, but as he opened the door and began to get out, he said, “Stay where you are, Lance. Don’t make this worse with a futile attempt to escape. This will be over soon.” Then, right before he closed the door: “You can see your mother again, you know that, right? We can show you how.”
The look on the boy’s face told the Reverend all he needed to know. He’d baited the hook, and the boy had bitten. The mother was proving to be useful, even after her death.
He slammed the door closed and stood straight, holding his hands in the air innocently.
“Over here,” the man with gun said. “And bring the fucking boy, like I asked.”
The man holding the gun had to be at least six nine, maybe six ten, and was built like he swallowed football linemen for breakfast before he went to the gym. He wore mesh athletic shorts and a long-sleeved t-shirt that looked painted on as it strained against all his mountainous muscles. His sneakers looked like they could safely evacuate small dogs in the event of a hurricane. There was a large bandage above the man’s left temple, spotted with blood seeping through, and the Reverend wondered if the man had run into a door frame, forgetting to duck.
The Reverend could not dispute the fact that the man was a giant, capable of great feats of physical strength and dominance.
But he had a tiny brain. One which the Reverend had already begun to probe inside of without the man ever knowing. Getting inside the head of somebody like Lance was harder, required more effort to get around the defenses. Lance’s mind was close in strength to what this man before him was in physical strength. Getting inside the head of the man with the gun was as easy for the Reverend as walking through an open door.
“The boy is very tired,” the Reverend said, walking around the rear of the Honda and moving to stand next to the Surfer, who was now leaning casually against the side of the vehicle, his arms crossed, looking bored. “I think he’ll stay where he is. He needs to rest.”
The giant with the gun looked incredulous, clearly unfamiliar with somebody disobeying his requests. He was an enforcer, that much was certain. “The hell did you just say?” He took two steps forward and aimed the gun directly at the Reverend’s forehead. Then he reversed his grip, holding the pistol by the barrel and thumping the butt of the weapon against his catcher’s mitt of a palm. “Get the boy out now, or I will break your nose. Then, as you’re choking on blood, you can tell me how tired he is.”
The Surfer slid over, just the tiniest bit closer to the Reverend. The man with the gun didn’t even notice, clearly not intimated by either of them. His muscles made him arrogant, and his brain didn’t allow him to see this.
The Reverend sighed. He had to hurry this up. Sugar Beach might be small, but eventually somebody would notice this accident. Police would be called. Trouble would be made.
“Magnus, you don’t need to be doing this. Whatever this boy has done, it’s not worth you getting involved with us right now, okay? Have you ever heard the phrase ‘forgive and forget?’”
The giant—the man’s whose name was Magnus—opened his mouth to say something that was most likely going to contain expletives and more threats of broken bones, but then stopped, his brain slowly firing synapses and realizing what had just happened.
His wall of a forehead crinkled in confusion, and he stuttered, “How do you know my name?”
“I know a lot about you, Magnus,” the Reverend said.
Because he did.
In the few moments it had taken Magnus to walk forward and threaten the Reverend with the butt of his gun, the Reverend had explored every crevice of the man’s mind—something else that was much harder to do with Lance. He’d barely been able to penetrate the surface with the boy, which was both incredibly frustrating and also wonderfully exciting.
Such power he has.
But Magnus’s mind was like an open book.
The Reverend was able to search until he found why exactly Magnus had decided to stop them, why he was so interested in Lance. Turns out, in typical fashion, the boy had helped a young woman escape from this man’s employers, which they felt was an expensive loss of property, one which they clearly meant to gain reparations for. Preferably by recovering their asset, but they’d also accept making sure the individual responsible for their loss was informed he’d made a grievous error. If he happened to divulge the whereabouts of their lost property in the process of such reparations, that would be an added bonus.
There’s always a girl, the Reverend thought. How predictable.
But on top of all that, as it turned out, Magnus was the reason this girl had been able to get away in the first place. The Reverend explored one of the man’s recent memories: Magnus and this girl—a young, pretty blond thing—pressed close together against the wall of a garage, kissing passionately. The same black Expedition that had driven into the road, blocking their path, was parked in the garage, engine still warm as the girl reached down and began massaging between Magnus’s legs. And then, as the giant was slipping deeper into his oblivion of sexual stupor, the girl moved quickly, deftly swooping down and grabbing a small portable fire extinguisher that had been sitting in the corner. She’d gripped it in both hands and swung up and across with all her might, and there was a wet thud as it connected with Magnus’s head. The man dropped limply to the ground with a slurred grunt, and then the girl was running. Out the garage door and into the night.
Magnus seemed to consider the Reverend’s statement for a moment (“I know a lot about you, Magnus”) and then his eyes shifted and his features hardened again. “You don’t know shit ’bout me, old man. Now get him out of the fucking car before I make you. This is your last chance. It’s not you I want. It’s him.”
The Surfer shifted again, closing the gap between himself and the Reverend a tiny bit more.
“The boy is coming with us,” the Reverend said.
Magnus stepped forward, raised the butt of the pistol in the air, pulling back for a swing.
“The boy is coming with us,” the Reverend said again, only this time, he was in. He’d found the controls and had hooked himself up. He pumped the thoughts into Magnus’s consciousness with ease, like pumping gasoline into a car. He flooded Magnus’s mind’s tank with instructions, interspersing them with memories of things the man had thought nobody else would ever know. The things he made some of the other girls—some of the other assets—do, threatening them aimlessly, their fear driving them to perform what he’d requested. The Reverend pushed deeper and—
A noise. Behind him. The boy.
His mental grip on Magnus hadn’t slipped much, but it’d been enough for the man to snap somewhat out of the fugue state he’d fallen into at the Reverend’s doing, enough for his anger to surface, his humiliation and feeling of violation to push through the barrier the Reverend had started to construct. His eyes lit with rage. He reached out with one hand and wrapped it around the Reverend’s throat, slamming the man back against the Element’s side, the car rocking with the impact. The Reverend looked to the Surfer out of the corner of his eye, waiting for this partner
to spring into action.
But what he saw was the Surfer standing still, facing the opposite direction and looking across the Element’s roof, his eyes tracking something.
The Reverend feared he knew what it was, but he had more pressing issues at the moment. He closed his eyes as Magnus squeezed his windpipe, and jumped back in, focusing.
Then he found what he was looking for—an old rugby injury, many years ago before Magnus had ever come to work for his current employers. Something with the left knee. Something that had never quite healed correctly. The Reverend took this thought and cast his eyes to the Surfer, hissing out a strangled, “Knee!”
The Surfer moved at once, reaching out and touching the tip of his index finger to Magnus’s knee.
And Magnus’s grip on the Reverend’s throat was all at once gone as he screamed in agony and crumpled to the ground, writhing on the asphalt.
The Reverend spun around and checked inside the Honda, knowing what he’d see.
The boy was gone.
“He, like, totally ran that way,” the Surfer said, pointing toward the beach. On the ground behind them, Magnus was still screaming and rolling and … was he crying? But the Reverend ignored him for a moment, feeling something else in the air, something other than the boy. There were others. Many of them. And they were … calling for him?
The Reverend turned and looked at Magnus. He could have made it easier on the man, but Magnus had made him angry. The Reverend said to the Surfer, “End him. And then let’s go.”
When it was over, the two of them walked across the street and over the dunes, leaving the wrecked cars and Magnus’s body in the road. It was sloppy, but the Reverend pressed on.
He could feel it. It’s going to end tonight, he thought.
Tonight.
30
Lance Brody ran.
The Reverend’s words about being able to see Lance’s mother again had knocked Lance back, but only for a moment. Lance was no fool. The Revered had still been playing games, using Lance and his mother’s relationship as a basis for deceit and manipulation. He’d even told Lance as much just moments earlier (“Your own emotional connection to your mother impaired your judgment of the situation”), before the black Ford Excursion had stopped their path and the enormous man with the gun had ushered the Reverend and the Surfer out of the car and given Lance the only chance he’d get.
And Lance had taken it.
He knew it posed a risk—as most of Lance’s decisions did—because he remembered the image of the lifeless Jerry the janitor lying in the alley. He’d appeared completely unharmed, yet…
The Surfer had powers Lance did not understand. More than he’d thought in the beginning. He was extremely dangerous. Yet Lance picked up on an odd sort of chain of command between his two assailants. The Surfer, despite his power, seemed only to take orders from the Reverend—unwilling to act completely on his own.
And now Lance was running. He’d waited until it seemed like the three men outside the Honda had been too preoccupied with their situation to notice him—hoping the Reverend truly believed that his promise about Lance’s mother would be enough to get Lance to stay put—and then he’d bolted from the car and run straight across the street and over the curb and through the ugly mix of grass and sand and over the dunes and onto the beach.
Toward them.
As Lance had sat in the back of the car, contemplating his options, he’d noticed the flicker of orange and yellow glow in the sky up ahead. The bonfire. The kids on the beach. Closer than it should be, he thought. But then he remembered his first night in Sugar Beach, the way the fire had seemed closer then, too. The way he’d felt all at once compelled to head straight toward it.
He felt that now. An urging, a pull. He didn’t know why, but he needed to get there, at all cost.
So he ran. Not knowing how much time he had. Not knowing if the Reverend and Surfer would chase him, not knowing how fast they were—the Surfer, in particular.
Not knowing if the police would come.
Not knowing if they would see his side of things.
Not knowing if they would believe him.
Which made him think of Marcus Johnston. Which made him think of Diana. Hopefully well on her way to Ocean City, and then on to the help she deserved.
Diana. Lance was hit with the realization that if he’d not chosen to help the girl, he might not have gotten away from the Reverend and the Surfer. The people from the house with the cameras had clearly been looking for Diana, and Lance—whether by speculation or by information given from informants, spies, around town who might have been more than willing to say they’d seen Lance talking to the girls. The woman at the bus station had been one of them, Lance knew that for certain now. Which was a good place to put a spy if you suspected somebody was trying to get out of town. He remembered the way her eyes had lingered, the image of her talking rapidly on the phone outside the station’s lobby as the Honda had driven by. She’d been calling it in. Telling them what to look for. And they’d found him.
And they’d freed him.
Lance had been convinced that the multiple suicides, Loraine Linklatter and the Boundary House, and the girls with their coolers had not been related. And on the surface, they were not. But in Lance’s world, through his actions, they’d managed to weave together and set off a chain of events that had brought him here. He’d saved one girl—hopefully an action that would save the others—and now hopefully it’d allowed him to save himself.
The Universe had a plan. Lance just wished it’d let him in on it every now and then.
His lungs began to burn and his nostrils flared against the harsh salty air. His feet grew heavy in the sand, his backpack bouncing up and down with each steady step. He dared not stop to look over his shoulder, afraid of seeing the Surfer, impossibly close and reaching out for him.
And then Lance did stop.
The bonfire was suddenly right before him, just a few yards away.
The spirits of Sugar Beach’s five young suicide victims stood in a straight line, like a wall of soldiers waiting for the attack.
They looked at him, all of them, and there was something different in their faces, their eyes. Where before, there had seemed to be an emptiness, a sense of being lost—which, Lance had to figure, they very well might have been—there now seemed to be a sense of understanding. Their features were set in determined purpose. They looked … prepared. Ready to accomplish their task.
“Behind us,” the girl with the red hair said, and then her eyes looked past him and locked onto something else. Lance turned slowly in the sand and looked up the beach. Saw the two unmistakable silhouettes moving toward him. Slowly. Patiently. The moonlight seemed not to reflect from them, but simply be absorbed by them, their images black as a starless night sky.
Until they were closer, and the Reverend and Surfer’s features were brought into existence by the glow of the bonfire.
Lance looked back to the redheaded girl and she nodded once. Lance did not argue, did not question. He moved quickly through the sand and around the wall of ghosts and stood a few feet behind them, just past one of the large pieces of driftwood, the heat of the fire burning at his back. Wood cracking and popping as the flames fed.
The Surfer stopped first, maybe fifteen feet from the kids. The Reverend noticed and abruptly stopped as well, looking to his partner for an explanation. The Surfer turned his head and spoke softly, impossible for Lance to hear as the waves crashed and the wind carried the sound away. The Reverend’s eyes glanced back to Lance, then seemed to search the space around him. The Surfer said something else and the Reverend nodded and stood straight, speaking loudly. “Your friends can’t help you, Lance. They aren’t of this world.”
Lance did not attempt to dispute this.
But he noticed that despite the Reverend’s words, the man was not coming any closer.
Lance replayed the last few moments in his head, the way the Surfer had stopped first, the way the R
everend’s eyes had searched the sand and landed on nothing but Lance. He can’t see them, Lance thought. The Surfer can, but he can’t.
It was useful information to have—a stronger idea of what each of these two was capable of. But Lance couldn’t help but feel that, depending on how the next few minutes went, it might never matter.
“My partner is stronger than them, Lance. Truly.” Then, “You’ve only seen a sample of what he can do. I’ve only seen a sample, myself.”
But they weren’t moving. Both stood still in the sand, their faces bathed in orange. The Surfer’s eyes were dancing along the line of spirits, calculating, as if trying to form an attack, weighing the odds.
And that was when it happened. The redheaded girl, who was on the end of the line to Lance’s right, reached her left hand out and grabbed the hand of the boy next to her, the one in the sweatshirt and jeans.
And Lance would swear the sky darkened.
The boy reached his hand out and grabbed the hand of the boy to his left, the one with the backward baseball cap.
And Lance would swear the noise from the water grew quieter.
“Lance,” the Reverend said, his voice growing with anger … or was it fear? “Don’t make me send him to get you. It will not end well. We can make this easy. We can work together. Don’t you want to see the others? Don’t you want to be with your same kind?”
The second boy reached his hand and clasped the hand of the boy to his left.
And Lance would swear the flames behind him roared and stretched and doubled in size.
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 19