02 Seekers (16 page)

them to think about? The difficulty of our task, and the thought that it was pointless, that Daniel was dead and everything was shattered, crept back into my brain. The slow, dark thoughts of my night as a gargoyle over the city returned in triplicate, and I felt that the only way I would see Daniel again was through a stroke of luck or divine intervention.

I was counting on neither.

Chapter 9

“We need to pick a food place with a bathroom,” Alex said, interrupting my personal darkness.

“I’ve been holding it all day.”

“I call dibs,” I said.

“You can’t call dibs on a bathroom,” she said.

“If there’s only one, I can,” I said.

“I call dibs on first watch tonight, then,” she said, pushing me into a Subway.

“Oh, look, more than one stall,” I replied.

I held the main door to the bathroom open for her and the young kid at the counter scowled at us.

She started grumbling to herself at my words. She was still grumbling when we met up at the sink.

“Oh, come on. It’s not that big of deal,” I told her.

“I know…I switched grumbles. I’m going to try and call Beatrice,” she said.

“Okay.”

“What’ll ya have?” the boy asked, squinty eyed and suspicious.

From our ragged appearance, he thought we were going to steal all his money and leave him duct taped in the corner. I ordered for the both of us in as nice of a voice as I could manage under the circumstances and paid. As he made our sandwiches, Alex worked on the clerk. She turned up the charm and, by end of ten minutes, was chatting with him as if they were old friends. I knew by the end of fifteen he would have let us move in with him had she asked.

Alex smirked happily as he let her use to store phone to call Beatrice. I didn’t need the

headshake, or the pursed lips, to tell me there was no answer. I had gotten as much from the lack of conversation she had while on the phone. We walked out into the twilight feeling worse than when we had walked in.

“I tried to call Ellen and see if she’s seen them. I promised I’d check in with them, anyways,”

Alex said around big bites of food as walked back outside, headed back to the same building we had spent last night on.

“And?” I asked.

“I would have told you if I talked to her,” she replied.

“Right,” I said.

My stomach sank to my knees. It was weird we couldn’t contact anyone. People didn’t just fall off the map. Unless they had their deaths faked…or had their deaths not faked.

I waited for her to say something about our situation, or her fears, but she remained silent the whole way ‘home’. I helped her up to the top of the building again, duplicating last night’s awkward climb up. Once up, she didn’t even try and argue with me about who would stay up

and who would get the couch. She threw her feet over the edge of the sofa, finished her

sandwich, and let the dimming light fade into darkness. She stared up at the sky, where the stars were barely visible over the lights of the city, for a long time. I could see the flash of light from her eyes searching the sky. I perched on the ledge again, the sword across my knees.

“You know, I don’t even really know what Marcus does,” she told me. “I mean, I get he collects Watchers and sells them, but…I guess, I don’t get the war that’s going on. It doesn’t make any sense why Lorian and Darian are fighting...what’s the point?”

“When does war ever make sense?” I asked.

“And why is Marcus spending so much time trying to hunt you down?”

“Well, Alex, that’s why we’re down here,” I said dryly.

“I know, I know…Here’s another question: why would someone fake our deaths?”

“I don’t know.”

“What could be the benefit?” she asked.

“To make everyone else think we’re dead?” I asked.

“Exactly. But who?”

“It could be a lot of people, Alex,” I said. “There are a lot of people who would like to see me dead…or have me thrown off balance, to make me easier to find.”

“It’s rough being you, huh?”

I blinked away the lights from a passing car and readjusted the sword on my lap thoughtfully. I didn’t get the strange events of the past two days, either. Things were flying at us too fast, and this day, a day wasted in vain, had served in no other capacity but to dash my hopes of finding out information.

Why hadn’t we arranged a safe place to meet up if things went wrong? How could Daniel have not seen this coming? Had the fire been a sign to Daniel or to us? Was he dead, and the fire an extension of his failed attempt to infiltrate the nest down here? He had made his mission down here sound so easy, like a walk on the beach or breakfast in bed. Had his ego been the death of him?

Alex creaked on the couch as she readjusted her weight, and I could sense her thinking about home and not being able to contact anyone. I knew we both were hoping for the same thing: that whatever was responsible for the hotel fire hadn’t been to our homes first.

Morning dawned muggy and slow; a coal fire slowly kicked to life. It was a beautiful dawn full of dazzling color but, on the horizon, I sensed a storm. I was eager for it to reach us, hoping it would help cool things down.

“Morning,” Alex said, waking up all at once as the light touched her face. I grunted at her, my throat too tight from a night of silent worry to speak. She didn’t seem to mind. “Are we going to go back to listening today?” she asked.

“I guess,” I said.

“What’s the matter?” she asked as I let the stairs down to the road.

She could tell from my tight back and worried face I was getting depressed. Her gift was too strong for her to ignore my obvious sadness. “This is going to take a while,” I admitted.

“You didn’t think it would be easy, did you?” she asked.

“No.” One of my shoulders rose involuntarily. “But it’s going to take a stroke of outrageous luck to find anything out,” I slung the sword over my shoulder as I stepped onto the cement, “and I don’t believe in luck.”

“Do you think we should go to a shelter?” Alex asked. She obviously didn’t want to lose what slim hope she had, so she focused on the positive. “They have free meals there.”

“What if someone reports us or something?” I asked.

“You think someone would?” she asked.

“I dunno. I’ve never lived on the streets before.”

“Well, I think we should think about it. We need to save as much money as possible in case of an emergency or something. Eating out every day is going to erase our money supply pretty

quickly.”

“Eating out!” I scoffed.

“You know what I mean,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. “And we need showers. Bad.”

“Okay…Oh!” Everything spun, the street, Alex’s face, and my equilibrium tilted off balance. I stumbled to keep my feet and put a hand out to brace myself against the sound. The spinning only lasted for a second, but, when it was through, my head was full of sounds again.

“Clare?” Alex said. She touched me on the arm. Her words, though soft, were a scream in my ears.

“Shh!” I pleaded.

She kept her hand on me and, for the first time, I felt a connection through our touch. It was like what happened when I touched Daniel, only less intense. Her thoughts of worry and concern

reached out to brush me in a whisper. The external sounds increased, and I blocked out the connection I felt to Alex in reflex. I heard something then, above the cars, the people, the banging, the whirling, and the overwhelming pain. It was the sound of angry voices raised in violence and a thinner voice yelping in pain. My brain visualized a scenario to go with those sounds. A group of five loomed over a boy. They were taking turns kicking and punching him.

He curled up to protect himself from the blows, even as he slowly became bloodied and bruised at their violent ministrations. There was something familiar about the scene I was witnessing, something that struck to the core of my soul.

I was running to those sounds before I was aware of what my body was doing, the curious sense of déjà vu circling my brain. Alex ran after me out of instinct, unsure of why I was running, but aware I had a good reason from the expression on my face. Again, she lagged behind, her shoes slowing her down. I made a sharp turn into an alley, following the sounds, and saw what my mind had imagined. They were actually there!

The clothing of the five figures, and their demeanor, were one of thugs. They were regular humans; just bad, regular humans. My blood boiled with anger as one man kicked the small,

crumpled figure in the gut, and the boy whimpered in pain.

“Hey!” I yelled at them without thinking.

They stopped kicking the boy, but only so they could direct their attention at me. Their thoughts let me know they would have no trouble letting me join the bloody figure on the asphalt. The thought of a witness didn’t scare them; it was just another person to take care of.

The leader of their posse turned around and sized me up with a strange nod of his head. His dark eyes switched to a lustful evil. I took the bag with the sword off my back at the look. I gripped it tightly at the sex fueled thoughts he shoved into my brain.

“Hola, bonita. You shouldn’t wander down dark alleys. There might be bad men in one of them,”

he said in an attempt at being suave.

His voice was thick with an accent that matched his dark skin. Tattoos on his arms and the names circling through their minds clued me into the fact they belonged to a gang – a very bad,

dangerous gang. I knew that every single one of the five had guns tucked somewhere in their clothes. I looked past him to the boy they were beating and felt a jolt of recognition. The small figure on the wrong end of their wrath had clear green eyes, a dirty face, and the lean form of someone who could run fast and steal well. It was my friend from a different alley.

“Yeah, that’s real scary and everything,” I said, “but you’re not the scariest thing I’ve seen this week, and I’m really not in the mood.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked. He came closer, malicious, intimidating, a true bully in every sense of the word. I had trouble not laughing at him. He was just so insignificant compared to the evil I knew was in the world.

Alex finally caught up. She took in the scene with a glance. “Clare….”

Her voice was a curious mixture of warning and fear. The tone suggested she wasn’t afraid for me, but for them. We both knew what happened when I got angry. The boy tried to gain his feet behind the hulking figures, so he could run away.

The leader noticed the movement. “I didn’t say you could stand,” he said.

One of his flunkies kicked the boy’s legs out and the boy hit the ground with a thump. The man laughed as the boy fell and more blood formed on the boy’s face from the fall. That did it.

Trembling, I handed the sword to Alex, not wanting to tempt myself, and ignored her wordless warning.

“You should really be more careful who you mess with,” I told the gang leader.

He bit his lower lip, smiling slightly, and put his hand on his pants, to keep them from falling down as he stepped closer. “Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it, puta?”

I took my own step closer and smiled down at him. “This.”

I threw a right hook straight into his nose, putting the whole weight of my body behind the blow.

He hit the ground with a hard thump, his eyes crossing from the hit. His henchmen’s reactions were typical and mentally stunted. They rushed me, counting on fear and their large size to cowl my reaction. It didn’t work.

I ducked under the first punch the largest guy in the pack threw then elbowed him in the throat.

He collapsed, too, gasping for air. I kicked the next guy in the gut and spun around for the other two. One was trying to get his gun out of his ridiculously baggy pants, the fabric hanging him up.

The other had fled down the street, obviously allergic to bleeding. I ran to the guy with the gun to stop him from getting the gun, but it wasn’t necessary. He grunted and his eyes glazed, just as he freed the gun. He tipped forward and hit the asphalt hard, something breaking with his

collision with the pavement.

The boy I had rescued dropped the pipe he had hit the man with and went back to holding his bleeding nose. His eyes widened as he recognized me then they shifted to something behind me in alarm. I spun and saw the leader had groggily climbed to his feet again. He started toward Alex, his thoughts on causing pain, not caring who the target was. It was the wrong thing to do.

As Alex backed up, I grabbed him by the back of his white shirt and threw him to the ground.

The next couple of seconds were a haze of white anger. The moments were blurred and choppy as my brain worked to protect me from the burning emotion. I never did remember the actual attack. The only thing I could remember was Alex’s voice urging me to stop.

“Clare! You’re going to kill him! Stop! Stop!”

The fog lifted. My fist was red from his blood, and the beating I was giving his face. It hovered over the unconscious man’s nose while I thought over her words. I gasped when I caught sight of his face and realized I had lost control. I fell back and away from the man, disgusted with myself. What would have happened if her warning hadn’t been there? The disgust I felt at myself wasn’t the only emotion I faced. Why was it so appealing to finish the job?

Alex’s eyes flashed dangerously against the morning sun when I found her eyes. Mine asked hers for an answer to the conflicting feelings. She had no reply.

“Do you feel better now?” she demanded angrily.

“No…” I was terrified, sick to my stomach, and definitely not feeling better. “Are you okay?” I asked the boy.

He nodded and stepped over the grunting men. The leader was silent, his rough breathing the only clue that let me know he wasn’t dead. I found my feet, remembering the gang member who had run off. He might be getting more of his gang friends to finish us. I didn’t want to find out.

“Come on!” I grabbed the boy’s and Alex’s arm and ran.

“Clare Freddie Michaels!” Alex hissed at me as we turned down another street, my hands