The Diamond Bearers' Destiny

by Lorena Angell

  Crimson adds, “Or more likely, it was because they were all Unaltered humans. No power works on an Unaltered.”

  “Mine does,” Brand states. “I used it on the guards when Calli and I were taken. You know, right after I was poisoned. Calli said they were Unaltered.”

  “Brand’s power works on Diamond Bearers too,” I confirm.

  “How do you figure that?” Crimson asks.

  “Because he’s repeated with both me and Maetha.”

  Brand adds, “And Mary. Don’t forget her. That’s how we discovered Freedom was using Rolf to spy.”

  “He’s repeated with you too, Crimson.” I’m not sure if I need to point this out to her or not.

  “I know,” Crimson says, “but I’m not an Unaltered. I was originally a Healer.”

  “What?” A collective question comes simultaneously from our mouths.

  Crimson doesn’t elaborate on her past. She says, “Stay focused on the topic here. The military is using the vests on Unaltered soldiers to round up people with intense powers. Seers cannot foresee their arrival. Mind-Readers can’t enter their minds to detect danger. What Beth has been through will continue to happen to more people until we find a way to stop the government’s progress.”

  Beth says, “Well, anyway, after we were captured, Deus Ex arrived and had the one guard separate me and Anika from the rest. She said something about keeping us nearby in case she needed to use us as bait.”

  Crimson announces, “Everyone should have an Imperial topaz charged with running power on their person at all times to avoid capture.”

  Beth says, “In a perfect world, we would. I think it’s easier just to keep an eye out for the auras of Unaltereds. Did you ever figure out how to view them, Calli?”

  I tried to tell Beth that isn’t something I can just learn to do, but my mouth won’t move. My voice box won’t form sounds. I realize this bit of information is being blocked by Crimson. Instead, I say, “No, I never did.”

  “I’ll help you later on.” Beth turns her head and directs her next question to Crimson. “So are you a Diamond Bearer as well?”

  “I’m friends with Maetha.” Crimson turns her head to Brand and asks him, “Would you tell her everything I told you?”

  Brand nods his head and turns around in his seat to face Beth and says, “So that’s why we’re heading back to Colorado.”

  Beth’s eyebrows rise as she replies with a long drawn out “Oh.” Then she puts her hand to her head. “Don’t spin me around anymore.”

  I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Brand’s power. In the blink of an eye, he’s probably talked to Beth for over an hour.

  Still holding her head, Beth asks, “Do you have any water or food? Travis wasn’t too concerned with our stomachs or bladders.”

  I reach down for the bag of food Crimson bought and pull out a bottle of water and an apple.

  Brand turns and faces the front. He points to the right and says, “Crimson, turn in that alley.”

  “Hey,” I exclaim. “We’re really close to my house. Do you think I’d have time to grab something?”

  Brand answers, “Can you do it in two minutes?”

  “What is it?” Chris asks.

  “My great-grandmother’s journals. They’re in a box in the basement.”

  Brand responds, “You can, but it will be a little tricky trying to give Deus the slip after stopping.”

  Crimson speaks to me. “The information contained in those journals will be helpful in our mission.” She turns into my back driveway, as if she has been there a hundred times, and I jump out of the car. Chris follows close behind.

  I punch in the code to the house security system and open the door.

  “Wait,” Brand says as he runs toward me. “It’s taking too long. Let’s get this done right.”

  Chris rolls his eyes a little at Brand’s overconfidence, and the three of us enter the back porch. It is strange to be arriving to an empty house, knowing my parents are still in Maine. A fleeting thought fills my mind about the possibility of strangers being inside my home, waiting to attack, but the fact that Brand hasn’t repeated eases my fears.

  I follow Brand as he leads the way to the basement. The box is at the bottom of a pile of boxes. Clearly we have repeated a few times.

  “Grab it, Chris,” Brand orders with a flick of his finger.

  Chris quickly moves the other boxes off and picks up the heavy box underneath.

  “We have to go now!” Brand says on his way to the stairs. He takes them two at a time.

  Chris mutters some indiscernible words under his breath as he follows me up the stairs.

  Crimson has turned the car around for a faster exit, with the trunk hatch open. She waits for us to put the box inside and then shouts, “Get in!”

  Brand is already in the front seat. Chris and I pile into the backseat as Crimson drives away. My head is pressed up against Beth’s knees, and my rear is in the air in Chris’s face. It takes a second to reposition while being tossed around by the motion of the car. Between hitting potholes and turning sharp corners, I’m surprised I don’t get a concussion.

  “Left, then sharp right!” Brand orders.

  “Seatbelts, please,” Crimson states sweetly. I look up at her through my hair, which has fallen over my face. The sharp right throws my body into Chris’s arms, and he settles me in between Beth and him. I pull my seatbelt and latch it just in time to weather a sharp left.

  “Lights off!” Brand demands. Crimson quickly complies. Up ahead, a red sports car blows through the intersection, not seeing us coming from the side direction. Four police cars, in hot pursuit, chase after Deus with their lights flashing and sirens wailing. “Turn right and get us out of this city!”

  Crimson turns right, setting us on a course in the opposite direction from Deus.

  Beth asks, “Do you think they’ll catch her?”

  “Not a chance,” Brand states confidently. “I was in a car chase like that once. Repeaters have all the advantages.”

  Beth responds, “Well, do you think she will catch us?”

  “No, this gives us a gap she can’t close.”

  “Brand,” I ask, leaning forward toward the back of his seat, “why is she letting the cops chase her? I mean, couldn’t she have prevented that from happening?”

  “She’s only got thirty seconds to deal with. I imagine she avoided them at first, but at some point she would either have to allow more time to pass or she would simply lose her edge. The fact that the cops are so close behind her makes me think she’s not worried about them. In the end, she’ll throw them off by disappearing into thin air, or so it will seem. She’ll find a way to run from the car and avoid being detected.”

  “Oh.” I sit back in my seat with less understanding than before. “I still don’t completely understand the whole repeating power. Like, for instance, when we were in the Denver motel room, and you and Deus were in the repeating battle that I had to end with obsidian, why was I able to open the pocket watch?”

  Brand says, “I lose a fraction of a second every time I repeat. I’m pretty sure the same goes for Deus, but I’m not positive she loses the same amount of time as I do. So if I repeat the same two minutes over and over, the point I repeat back to is always moving forward on your normal timeline.”

  “Oh, like when Maetha and I watched you fight the gang at Cedar Hills Amusement Park?”

  “I guess. I always let stretches of time move forward once I’m satisfied with the outcome.”

  “How much time do you lose with each repeat?”

  “A tenth of a second.”

  “So in every second, you can repeat about ten times before you can’t undo it?”

  “I think the easier way to look at it would be to say I lose a tenth of a second that can’t be fixed every time I repeat.”

  “Do you lose the same tenth of a second if you repeat a full two minutes versus repeating ten seconds?”

  “Yep. Activating the r
epeating power causes a tenth-of-a-second loss.”

  “Have you ever run out of time?”

  “Yeah. It sucks.”

  “What happened?”

  “I ended up getting my nose broken. Luckily for me, the other guy just walked away afterward. That was when my power first surfaced. I figured out pretty quickly that I don’t have forever to get something right.”

  Chapter 8 - Casualties of War

  Crimson directs her words to all of us in the backseat. “You can access the box in the trunk by pulling the back of the seat down on either side. I suggest you get several pairs of eyes reading those journals while we have time on our hands. I plan on driving throughout the night. The individual reading lights above your heads should be enough to read by.”

  “Can’t we pull over and just open the trunk?” Chris asks.

  “We shouldn’t give Deus any opportunity to catch up with us,” Crimson replies. “I’m sorry, Beth, but you’ll have to wait till we’re in a safer position before we can get those cuffs off your ankles.”

  “No problem at all, Crimson,” Beth says.

  The three of us figure out the easiest way to get to the box in the back. The task isn’t easy, but we accomplish it with greater finesse and style than when we did piling in the car during the fast exit from my house.

  Soon we are reading the journals of Anamaria Radu, my mother’s great-grandmother, who lived from 1883 to 1981. Anamaria lived long enough to tell my mother some interesting stories that stuck with her. The journals were passed on to her when Anamaria died. My mother was nine years old then.

  Beth turns a page in the journal she’s holding. “Boy, it sure would have sucked to live before toilets were in-vented.”

  “Or toilet paper,” Brand adds.

  Crimson says, “It’s probably hard for you to imagine, Beth, but you need to realize there are still plenty of places in the world that don’t have running water and flushing toilets . . . or toilet paper.”

  “Eww.”

  I say, “Here’s something interesting. Anamaria was ten when she wrote this entry in 1893. She visited her dying grandmother, who told her about the ancient vampires and demons. Anamaria didn’t write what her grandmother said, just that the subject was brought up. Maybe her later entries will have more detail.”

  “Some of these pages are stuck together, or are illegible.” Brand struggles to separate two pages.

  “Be careful, Brand,” I say.

  “It’s no use. I’ve tried five times to separate these pages, but they always rip.”

  Crimson looks over at him. “Move on, Brand.”

  “Look for anything that refers to Demons and dangers of the dark, Brand,” I instruct him.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to discover a way to get rid of the Shadow Demons altogether?” Chris asks.

  “I’m not sure, but I do expect we’ll learn more about them in the process of sifting through these journals.”

  Chris says, “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be able to go out in the dark without a Pulse Emitter and feel safe.”

  “Well, even without Shadow Demons, there are still dangers in the dark,” I say.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Beth says, “Many people with powers are able to be out at night now, thanks to your discovery, Calli.”

  “Hopefully we’ll soon be able to make it possible for everyone to be safe outside. I don’t deserve all the credit here. I couldn’t have created those devices without Brand’s help.”

  Brand shoots a surprised look my way. Why is he surprised I would give him credit? He quickly brushes off the compliment. “Nah, the idea was all yours, Calli.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you to help me test the end-product.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that they were your brainchild, not mine.”

  Beth laughs. “You two are pathetic. Just accept the compliment that you’ve done something incredible and move on!”

  We continue to read for a few hours more and then one-by-one fall asleep to the mild rumbling of the tires on the road.

  * * *

  Once the sun rises, Crimson pulls off the freeway and stops at a gas station. She pulls up next to a truck that’s parked in front of the building. Without speaking, she unlocks the doors and gets out of the car. The driver of the truck rolls his window down and hands something to Crimson, who accepts the item. I can tell the man is a Hunter by his appearance and his scent. Crimson then opens Beth’s door and bends down and unlocks Beth’s cuffs with the key the Hunter has just given her. After she’s finished, she hands the cuffs and the key back to the man in the truck and he drives away.

  Crimson gets back in the car and says, “We’re in Des Moines. We’re going to go meet with Clara Winter.” Crimson lets me know that because of her connection to Maetha’s mind, she was able to have Maetha make the arrangements with the Hunter ahead of our arrival.

  I speak back to her mind. It must be nice to have access to Maetha’s long list of helpers. You probably have a longer list, I’d guess.

  The list of helpers is a shared list. The difference is, the helpers don’t know who I am.

  Oh.

  Crimson drives to one of the hotels along the main street and pulls into the parking lot. Clara stands next to her car, and beside her is a boy about the age of twelve.

  “Nate?” Beth nearly shouts once she sees him. “Why is he with Clara?”

  None of us speak, which I think is appropriate. Crimson should be the one to tactfully deliver this news.

  Crimson parks the car and turns to Beth. “Come with me. Clara has something to tell you.” She addresses the rest of us. “The rest of you are to wait in the car.”

  Chris, Brand, and I sit silently in the car while Beth’s life is destroyed behind the closed door. My super-hearing could allow me listen if I wanted to, but I don’t. My emotions are hard enough to keep under control.

  I sit in the back seat next to Chris. His arm is around me and he pulls me close to his body. I feel safe and comfortable in his arms, and I tell him so with my thoughts.

  He replies, I wish I didn’t have to go back to my father’s compound and could just stay by your side, but I can’t have that wish right now.

  After about a half hour, Crimson comes out and sits in the car with us. She says, “Beth wants to continue traveling with us. She’s a strong girl.”

  Brand asks, “How did she take the news?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  I ask, “Is her brother a Runner?”

  “No, he’s a regular boy. Clara found him hiding when she arrived at their parent’s house to pick up Beth. Beth had arranged for Clara to meet her there after she left Denver. Clara was the first to discover Beth’s parents, but it was too late to help them. She called the police and reported the crime. Nate escaped injury, but he was quite traumatized by the whole thing. The fact Beth was intercepted and seized on her way home, and that her parents were killed before we pulled her from Deus’s captivity means this is a ‘take no hostages’ mission. The same probably happened for Anika. Her family was most likely killed before she escaped from Deus Ex, not because of the escape. Good thing she is on her way to be with Jonas.”

  Chris tenses up. His thoughts reveal the reason: My father is acting on all the information I’ve given him over the years. He has names and addresses of people with powers because of me and my spying. I have to end this, Calli.

  Crimson speaks to both our minds. You’ll get your chance, Chris. I have no doubt. But don’t waste your energy on berating yourself. What’s done is done. You will have the opportunity to clear your conscience.

  Brand lets out a despondent sigh. “How do they get away with it? Why is this kind of thing happening in our country?”

  Crimson responds, saying, “People fear what they don’t understand. Cosmic powers are frightening to those who don’t have any, and this leads to governments taking a defensive stance.”

&nbs
p; Beth comes out and climbs in the car. She wipes her swollen eyes and clears her throat. “I need to care for my brother now, and the best way to do that is to ensure he has a future. Let’s finish this and tie up all the loose ends.”

  Crimson replies in a smooth, comforting voice that I recognize as a form of her healing power being delivered through her words. “Beth, you are a strong individual with the ability to compartmentalize your pain . . . for a little while. We will press forward and complete our mission one way or another and we’ll give you emotional support along the way. Brand will help you.” Crimson instructs us to rearrange our seating. Chris will be in the front passenger seat, which will allow Beth to sit next to Brand.

  Crimson says, “I gave Clara the order to take care of your brother. Your mother’s sister is handling the family’s affairs and will be in contact with Clara concerning final arrangements.”

  Beth nods. “Aunt Steph will handle everything the way my parents would have wanted. Let’s get back on the road, please.”

  I place my hand on Beth’s knee and infuse her with emotional support. “I’m so sorry this happened, Beth.”

  She thanks me for my positive energy and then lays her head on Brand’s shoulder. He pulls her close.

  Crimson backs out of the parking lot and enters traffic once again, heading toward the I-80 on-ramp.

  * * *

  We have nine or ten hours of driving time ahead of us before we reach Denver. Joking and having fun seems like it would be in bad taste and disrespectful to Beth. So I look over the journals in an effort to keep my mind calm and clear.

  Several hours into searching the journals, I find an entry in which Anamaria writes about her grandmother speaking of a Demon hunter who would travel around cleansing the shadows with a bag of rocks. The man was later hanged for being a sorcerer, but her grandmother told her the night air was more peaceful because of him.

  I know I need to get my hands on some obsidian. I speak to Crimson’s mind: Do you have any obsidian? I want to test something with the Shadows.