02 Seekers (3 page)

I tucked my hands in my pockets, annoyed he was being so pushy, and leaned against the cement building to wait. I watched the rain fall and tried to make sense of his mood and the strange sinking sensation that mood left in my stomach. As I waited, the door to my left opened, and I heard two voices I could have lived without hearing for the rest of my summer – or even the rest of my life. Alex hung out with them sometimes, but I made a point not to. Seeing them at school was bad enough.

“It’s not funny, Mark!” Jennifer said.

“Is so! Didn’t you see her fall?!” Mark chortled happily, stupidly.

An image of a larger girl, an underclassman from our school, flashed into my mind as he

replayed it in his rather small brain. In the memory she tripped over an uneven bit in the carpet and face-planted right in front of Mark. He thought it better than the action movie they had just left. At least, Jennifer was showing some humanity. I sunk back into the wall hoping they

wouldn’t notice me, afraid to get angry and do something I regretted. I should have known better.

Jennifer looked back at the girl – from her thoughts I knew the girl was her cousin – and caught sight of me. She stopped and tugged on Mark’s hand to make him do the same. He hadn’t

noticed me. He had been too busy trying to think of ways to get Jennifer to go get the car instead of him.

“Clare?”

Crap.

“Hey, guys,” I said, my eyes raking the rain for Daniel’s car.

Jennifer’s eyes were wide with surprise. “What are you doing?” …
skulking in the shadows like
that? It’s way creepy.

Hiding from you. “Daniel’s getting the car. He didn’t want me to get wet, I guess.”

“He’s here?” Mark asked cautiously, looking over his shoulder casually, but I sensed his

trepidation.

Daniel and Mark had argued over me once and didn’t talk anymore. Mark was bitter, thinking his friend had chosen a girl before friendship. What was it? Bros before hoes? It didn’t help Mark’s feelings that Mark was entirely aware that should they fight, Daniel would win hands down. It just made him feel bitter.

“Yes, he is,” I said.

More thought from the pair followed my answer.

What in the world does he see in her?

I guess she really is off limits now. I’d like to get with her just once, but chances are she’s into
freaky stuff.

My eyebrows lifted. I wasn’t the one imaging the things Mark was imaging about us. He

definitely had a problem…more than a few, from the looks of things. My blood pressure rose and my hands clenched in response as his thoughts pounded into my brain. Killing them both during a fit of irritation, in a crowded move theater, would only complicate things. I didn’t need a murder charge on top of the other worries I had riding on my shoulders. Taking deep breaths to calm my anger, I looked past the pair again, but the rain was too thick. Where was Daniel? Of all the times to be late!

“Do you have any plans for the summer?” Jennifer asked over an awkward beat of silence.

“I might be going to L.A to see my mom’s best friend,” I said, happy to have a distraction.

We were unsure if we could go with everyone after us. I was all for Daniel, Sam, and Alex

coming along, but Ellen didn’t want to put Naomi, her best friend and de-facto aunt to me, in a dangerous situation. I could see her point, but I really wanted Alex to see my birth city, and I really wanted Daniel to meet Naomi.

“That’s cool!” Jennifer replied in fake excitement. Her question had just been a cover so she could talk about her own plans, a trip to Alaska.

She rambled on about her plans, and I looked past her again. Really, where was he? Mark caught me looking and his lips curled up into a smirk. The scowl on my face was no longer contained; I glowered at them in hatred’s cousin, loathing. Finally, a car horn sounded from under the

covered area, and a beautiful black car beckoned me: my knight in shining Audi. Thank God.

“I hope you have fun on your trip,” I said, circling around them. “See ya.”

I sprinted to the car, not waiting for their replies. Their mean thoughts trailed after me, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to get away from them.

“Sorry,” Daniel apologized as soon as I was in the car. “I didn’t mean to leave you to them.”

“What were you doing?” I asked.

“Talking on the phone,” he said vaguely.

“Is this later?” I asked, referring back to his promise to talk about his method of finding out Marcus’s plans. His face said the phone call had been about something dangerous, the sort of dangerous things he had been keeping from me.

“No.” He turned up the radio to block me out and kept his hands firmly planted on the steering wheel to avoid my touch.

If I didn’t know any better I would have thought he was frightened about something and that he thought telling me would only make it worse.

I turned down Artie Shaw, his jazz a welcome distraction any other time. “Are we really going to play this game all night?” I asked.

“Which game? Life? I hear its hours of fun.”

“Until you lose,” I said. “I was thinking more like poker. There’s a thing in it where you pretend like you have one set of cards when you’re really holding another. They have a name for it even

– bluffing.”

“Really?” he asked, his mouth twitching.

“That’s what they call it on Celebrity Poker. Alex’s been watching it.”

“I see,” he said seriously.

“I’m sure you do.”

I crossed my arms and waited, full to the brim with determination to get to the bottom of his weirdness. He turned the radio back up in response, mutely refusing to answer my questions. I turned away and stared out the passenger window. He knew how I felt about him keeping things from me, so why the secrets? Was he contemplating doing something I wouldn’t like, or was he simply keeping secrets out of habit?

The blurred lights of the downtown faded into the tall mountains, which rose beyond the veil of rain as we made our way back home. The city life that was Asheville – such as it was – quickly fell behind us and the forest wrapped around us, closing us in. I watched as row after row of dark trees faded out of view of the glare of Daniel’s bright headlights.

Finally, he sighed and reached out to turn the radio down again. “Sorry,” he said. He ran a hand through his midnight hair, then brought the hand back to the steering wheel so he could tap on it impatiently.

“Yeah?” I asked. Sorry wasn’t what I was looking for.

“We need to talk about something,” he continued, “but not right now. I want this night to be ours. Please?”

“Promise you’ll tell me what’s going on,” I demanded.

“I promise. Now stop scowling before I do something desperate.”

“Desperate how?” I asked playfully.

“Something that involves total humiliation on my part,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like letting Beatrice get out her photo album,” he replied.

“There’s a whole album?” I asked.

He nodded, his face rueful at the admission.

“Interesting. I’ll have to remember that,” I said.

“Don’t think I don’t know where Ellen keeps your, ‘box of memories,’ I believe she calls it,” he said.

I imagined him seeing the picture of me naked in the bath, while I made a fort out of rubber-duckies and washcloths, and shuddered. There was no way I was ever going to let Ellen pull that out from blackmail hell.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, smiling at me.

“I think a truce is in order-” I began.

My words were cut off as the horizon in front of us lit up like a Christmas tree. Lightning flashed between the mountains, not once, but three times in a row. Even through the metal of the car, and the distance separating us, I could feel the aftershocks of the electricity. The rain increased its tempo on the hood of our car as the light faded back into dark. The inside of the car suddenly felt charged and alive; it was a feeling I associated with Margaret when she got angry. The car started to drift to the shoulder of the road as the thunder rippled out in furious sound. I pulled my eyes away from the storm to look at Daniel and saw that his eyes had turned as distant as the moon. I grabbed the steering wheel to prevent us from wrapping around one of the trees, which closed the road in. Our speed made the jerk very dangerous. The car fishtailed as I fought to right the car, but Daniel didn’t take his foot off the accelerator. From his body language, and his blank, faraway stare, I knew he was lost in the future. We swerved again as I fought to right the fishtail and his eyes cleared. He took control of the car with a funny jerk and his eyes narrowed.

Another surge of lightning lit up the rain that was sheeting like hammers against the earth.

“What is it?” I asked.

His foot slowed on the accelerator. “I just saw us in the forest.”

King’s Cross was surrounded by nothing but forest, so that wasn’t hard to imagine, and didn’t explain the worry on his face. His visions could sometimes be days into the future, but mostly he saw only minutes. In minutes, though, we wouldn’t be home. His foot let up on the accelerator even more as his eyes searched the road ahead and behind for signs of danger. We were at fifty now, inching toward forty. Another sizzle of lightning rippled out through the night, only this was much closer. With a loud BOOM! a street lamp exploded directly behind us.

“This is starting to feel rather mercenary,” I said around the lump in my throat as I turned back to watch the lamp fall to the road.

“Ya think?” Daniel growled as he searched for the person behind the attack.

A light appeared out of the rain. It was small and dim, barely able to combat the darkness of the rain. The light passed us in the opposite lane of traffic, and I saw a sleek motorcycle tearing up the road. I turned to watch its progress, amazed anyone would be riding in this rain and saw the light arch around on the wet pavement as the driver turned around. The motorcyclist honed in on our bumper, recovering from the turn quickly.

“He’s crazy!” I said.

“That’s one word you could use,” Daniel replied, his hands tightening on the steering wheel.

“Is it a Seeker?” I asked.

Daniel didn’t answer. Lighting danced in front of us on the road, and the motorcyclist swerved around to my side of the car, riding on the shoulder. Through my window I saw an Asian man with shoulder length hair and coal black eyes. I noticed that the rain drenched the road around him but left him inexplicably dry. As we connected eyes, he smiled. I shivered at the evil behind the smile, but it was Daniel who wasn’t in the mood for smiles. He jerked the car toward the motorcyclist without any warning. The man’s eyes widened at the jerk and his bike wobbled

dangerously on the wet pavement as he moved out of the way of the car. Not able to control the bike, he careened off the road, his tail lights disappearing into the dark forest.

While I was busy watching the man’s crash, Daniel was still in motion, sensing more than I had.

He moved across the space dividing us, ripping out his seat belt in the process. With his

momentum carrying him, he used his shoulder to ram my door. It tore out of the frame of the car easily with the hit. Daniel wrapped me safely in his arms, maneuvering midair so that I was on top of him on the door. With a hefty bump we hit the pavement, the door our only protection from a serious case of road rash. Sparks flew around us as we gouged out chunks of asphalt, traveling far because of the speed the car. After a lifetime of being aware of nothing beyond Daniel’s arms around me and the heat of sparks as they flew, our door stopped on the shoulder of the road. Dazed, I looked at the car we had so unceremoniously left.

A nightmare was in place of the car; more precisely, a Nightstalker was in the place of the car.

Its claws ripped into the space Daniel’s head had been only seconds ago with animal desire to kill. The creature finally realized its claws were grasping at air and growled in dissatisfaction. It turned slowly and inhaled deeply, trusting its noise to tell it what its limited eyesight couldn’t. It didn’t take long. Its red eyes brightened when it caught our scent. Its excited growl was deadly.

Daniel jumped off our door to intercept the Nightstalker, before it attacked us. Their meeting was Colossus taking his first steps on earth. They slammed into each other, the Nightstalker ripping and tearing at Daniel. Daniel was unbreakable as he wrestled with the Nightstalker, its size nothing compared to Daniel’s strength.

Against the broken metal of the door, and the now shattered glass of the passenger window, I stood, and started forward to try and help, feeling impossibly useless. I had managed to go super human once, but the strength of that night hadn’t happened again. As I stood, my necklace – the one I had learned was my father’s – pulsed with a steady glow of warmth, lighting with the worry I felt for Daniel. Before I could think of a way to help, to maybe use my necklace against the Nightstalker, Daniel and the Nightstalker – tearing and hitting each other with vengeful anger

– rolled off into the woods, oblivious of anything that wasn’t their fight.

A deluge of lighting danced around the pavement at their departure. I was pushed back toward Daniel’s car which, with another strike of lighting, caught on fire, hemming me in. I was trapped in an impossible electrical storm, unable to see a clear path to safety. How could I fight something that was everywhere? From the light of the dull fire, which was fighting to live around the rain, I saw the motorcyclist step out of the woods casually, as if his bike hadn’t just crashed. His coal-black eyes were trained on mine.

“Marcus made it sound so difficult. He went on and on about how the last team, his best Seekers, had failed. Those were his family, you know. His wife and daughter. Cassandra was not his first child, but she was invaluable to the organization…and Selene, well, she was what they had in mind when they coined the term ‘fear’.”

He took out a very large knife from the small of his back that would have made Crocodile

Dundee jealous. It reflected back the light of the car fire. It was creepy…and made me want to run away. But I had nowhere to go and even less inclination to let him scare me.