ARC: Cracked (18 page)

We don’t leave, instead we stay perfectly still as she watches his small form disappear, his silhouette outlined by the bouncing beam of his flashlight.

After all that terror, it’s a pretty anticlimactic encounter, but I can’t say I mind. Jo collapses against the wall and takes a couple of deep breaths. I do the same. We start off again, but we haven’t gone far when we hear voices echo in the tunnel behind us. Hez and Chi. We keep moving and it’s not long before Chi catches up with us.

“Where have you been?” Jo hisses.

“Supplies.”

“There were supplies at the door.”

“Other supplies,” he says mysteriously.

“That’s just great–”

Oh, for pity’s sake. “Shhh! You can fight as much as you want once I’m somewhere safe.” They both quiet down and we move on.

Our path becomes even more complicated as we go and we have to watch for turns – there are a lot of them. I swear, I think we looped around the mountain twice. The ground starts to slant upwards towards the surface, which means it’s warmer, and my legs start to burn with exertion. The earbud begins to crackle back to life, but there are no voices.

At least, not at first.

“Meda…” a voice entices, sing-song and smooth. I stumble and Chi grabs my arm to steady me. I look up and his expression is grim. I turn to where Jo has stopped. Her back is rigid and her hands are fisted. She turns to face us. Her eyes shine.

“Meda, come baaaack,” the voice rolls. “We have the school. We will peel your friends apart and only you can save them…” There’s screaming in the background. Chi’s hand on my arm shakes; Jo covers her mouth, stricken.

“Or maybe you don’t care, but are you alone? Maybe your friends care–” More screaming. Tears roll down Jo’s cheeks and she shakes uncontrollably. Chi brushes past me and puts his arm around Jo. She collapses against him for a half-second, but then jerks away as if burned. With a frustrated scream, she rips out her earbud and stomps on it furiously.

Chi is stone. His jaw is granite, his eyes are coals, his spine rigid marble. His movements are shattered-shale sharp as he pulls the bud from his ear and slips it in his pocket. I do the same. We follow Jo.

Twice we stop when we think we hear noise behind us, but when nothing attacks, we continue. Finally we reach another vault-type door marked with a sloppy, barely recognizable cross. Chi turns the door’s wheel while Jo holds her flashlight so he can see. I sweep mine from side to side in the tunnel behind us, watching for any followers. I hear the door open with a rusty squeal and turn around to follow them into sewers.

The sewer is perfectly round, like a giant brick-walled pipe. More pipes jut into ours, raining down slime to collect in the two-foot-deep pool of cloudy brown sludge that sits in the bottom. Chunks float in the sludge and cling to the wall at the water line. More chunks are crusted to the wall at the high-water mark – right where I want to put my hand to keep my balance. And it smells. Oh, God, does it smell. I gag and stick my nose in my shirt.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lied to me. The sewer is emphatically not somewhere you want to live, let alone eat pizza in. I feel like I have a fairly high gross tolerance, but this is way out of my league. We troop along the pipe, doing our best to stay out of the ick.

We round the first bend when we hear a screech behind us. A familiar rusty-hinge screech.

Someone followed us into the tunnel.

A shared look flies among us and we break into a run, heedlessly splashing through the soupy mess. Our eyes are peeled for crosses and, when we see the first, we turn sharply, then the second. I’m glad for the turns now, they will make us harder to track.

Somehow the footsteps persist.

We turn at one more cross-marked corner but it’s a dead end. The only tunnels leading out are too small for us to fit, even if we could kick our way through the disintegrating metal grates. Chi points up. There’s a manhole cover above, marked with a cross. I look for the ladder.

The only problem is, there isn’t one. We’re trapped.

TWELVE

Chi presses himself against the wall (gross) at the corner, both of his swords in his hands. I’m tucked behind Jo, as far away from the entrance as possible. We click off our flashlights and I miss my vision – without it, I swear my nose gets more sensitive and the heinous smell is even worse. We wait, crouching in the dark. The instant our pursuer comes around the corner, Jo and I are going to blind him with our flashlights while Chi attacks.

We don’t have to wait long. The bouncing beam of a flashlight lights up our little tunnel accompanied by a fast-moving splash of feet in sludge. Only one set of feet that I can count and I smile. One we can handle. The light gets brighter and I can see Chi’s outline. He’s smiling too, that violent, vicious smile I love. He must count one set of feet, too.

Our pursuer breaks around the corner. We flash our lights and Chi leaps – then drops his weapons and windmills, trying to stop. He can’t and slams into the form that is way too small to be a demon, and they both hit the side of the tunnel with a grunt, but fortunately, don’t fall into the sludge. Chi pushes himself off to reveal Uri, the professional tag-along.

Less terrifying than annoying, but I still have to stop myself from killing him. Seems only fair: he scared ten years off my life, so I should take ten years off him. He’s so annoying someone’s bound to kill him before he hits twenty-two, so killing him now would make us even. In fact, he might even be thirteen, so that would put him a year up. What can I say? I am the soul of generosity.

But I can’t, so I just snarl at him. Jo reads him the riot act and Chi welcomes him like a long-lost brother.

There’s rope in our supply pack so Chi boosts Uri through the manhole. He ties a rope somewhere above and we climb out. After the sewer, the crisp evening air of the mountains smells especially sweet. No matter the season, it makes me think of apples.

It’s twilight now and we’re on a quiet side street in what I guess must be downtown Sylva. I can just make out a white building with a dome, complete with statuary on top. Definitely a downtown-like building. The chant of crickets and the distant drone of cars are the only sounds, and we try to keep it that way by not speaking and moving stealthily. There’s an entire demon army a few miles away and there’s no telling whether they left someone to stake out the town. They know the Templars have tunnels – they managed to block one off.

Chi and Jo must have previously taken the thirty seconds necessary to memorize the tiny town’s layout because they don’t hesitate in leading us to the Iron Snake.

The Iron Snake is a small dive in a brick-and-green strip mall, complete with neon signage and, of course, a cardboard “Bikers Welcome” sign leaning crookedly in the window. Fortunately, it claims to be both bar and grill, so we’re allowed in, despite being minors. We still get looks as we stroll into the dark interior, but maybe it’s not our age so much as the accompanying stench that draws all the attention. It’s not exactly a family place, though the patrons are having burgers with their beers. The food actually looks pretty good and it occurs to me we missed dinner. I hope Chi and Jo have a plan for that – I get cranky when I haven’t eaten. You wouldn’t like to see me cranky. “Hangry,” Mom called it – although when she called me that I was too hangry to appreciate her cleverness.

We make a casual beeline for the bathrooms, earning a suspicious glare from the bartender. Chi and Uri fetch the motorcycle keys while Jo and I hit the ladies’ room to clean off the sewer slime. I stick my entire foot, shoe and all, in the sink and turn the tap on, then do the other. We regroup in the hall, Chi waving the keys triumphantly, and we take the emergency exit out of the back.

Behind the bar are six bikes covered in an army-green tarp. The genius who left the keys didn’t label them so we try them in all the locks before we find two that fit. Only two because there isn’t a tricycle for Jo and I don’t know how to drive a motorcycle. As I’ve said, pavement is a worthy foe and I don’t plan on taking her on. I climb on behind Chi, cringing at the smell emanating from the back of his jacket, then pause as I hear a roaring in the distance. I look up to see Jo and Chi grinning and I realize what the noise is.

Motorcycles, lots of them, in the distance. Reinforcements are reaching the school. Chi and Uri kick the cycles to life and we get the hell out of dodge.

Once again I find myself thoughtful on a motorcycle ride away from a human–demon bloodbath. I sense a habit forming and resolve to nip it in the bud before it gets any further.

The demons want me – badly. That demon licked my blood at the insane asylum and it shocked him. Something about my blood must have told him I am half-Templar, or otherwise different. The question is: Why does that make them want me? More importantly, how do I make them un-want me?

The Sarge told us to go to a Templar base located in rural Wisconsin, but I’m not sure that’s the best plan. Eventually they’ll figure out I’m not a Beacon and the questions will roll in – questions I don’t want to answer. In Wisconsin they might even have their own way of determining my Beacon-ness, or rather lack thereof. Chi said the other American chapters don’t have Beacon Maps, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything. Besides, wouldn’t the demons assume that’s what we would do? Go to another Templar stronghold?

I don’t particularly want to become a sitting duck for either of my two enemy armies. Instead, I revert to my earlier plan – find out as much about my past as possible and go from there. Probably into permanent hiding. The first step is clear, however: find Luke Bergeron.

Two butt-vibrating hours later we pull off at a Wal-Mart. Uri’s the cleanest so we send him in for clothes. I’m hoping everything I’ve seen him wear until now has been a secret joke on his part. I’m pleasantly surprised when he returns with a replica of what I’ve been wearing – jeans and a T-shirt, this time black with a cartoon dinosaur saying “Nom, nom”. When I see the pink T-shirt Uri picked out for Jo, I wonder if Uri has a death wish. Jo’s eyes promise violence if I say anything, so I manage to swallow my laughs and don’t say a word. I don’t need to say anything though, because really, a shirt like that speaks for itself. I make an imaginary camera with my fingers and snap a picture to treasure always. She sticks her tongue out at me. I snap a picture of that too and, to my surprise, I think I see her smother a smile as she rolls her eyes.

Our next stop is a roadside cafe to eat and plan. We slide into a vinyl booth as far away from the few other patrons as possible. Since the restaurant is roughly the size of a shoebox, that’s just outside of touching distance. Fortunately the nearest couple are in a heated debate concerning each other’s lineage and don’t care about a pack of high-school students. The way they’re going at it, we might get lucky and get dinner
and
a show.

We order off laminated menus to a waitress who chants our order in some kind of hash-house dialect. Once she leaves, we are quiet. The lack of sleep last night, the adrenaline dump, the two hours of numbing vibrations have taken their toll. But there’s something else to it – in their cases, if not mine. Pinched mouths, pale faces. Glazed eyes watching private screenings of horrific replays. Jo looks away. Chi casually wipes his face. Uri puts his head down on the table and Chi puts his arm around him. Suddenly I’m glad they came with me, even Uri, because it means I know they’re alive.

The food comes, they pray and I wait. Then I eat but they mostly just poke, as if their waffles are mysterious washed-up sea creatures.

We’re somewhere in Tennessee, en route to Wisconsin, and I need to turn this ship around. The only problem is: How do I convince my escort? I could leave them behind, but there’s safety in numbers and I have no idea how to find Luke. I decide to improvise.

“So… what’s the plan?” I ask, invading their tortured silence.

“What do you mean?” Chi asks, poking his waffle. “We’re heading to Wisconsin.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” I don’t want to jump in with an alternative plan – I’d rather they do it. It’s usually a good idea to let other people think my plan is their plan. I have enough brilliant ones that I don’t mind missing out on the credit.

“I don’t think so,” Jo says, thoughtful. This surprises me. Up until now Jo has been the plan-follower.

“What do you think we should do?” An honest question.

Jo sets her jaw and meets everyone’s eyes. “I think we need to find out more about Meda’s mom.”

Apparently my plan
is
someone else’s plan. We’re all looking at Jo with surprise. I mean, I like it, but I’m not sure what her motivations are – certainly not to keep my status as a half-demon secret.

“Think about it,” she says, setting down her fork and leaning forward. “The demons want Meda, possibly because she is a Beacon.” Even with all the evidence, she doubts my saintliness, clever girl. “They want her so bad they attacked our entire home base, which they’ve never done before. If we take her to another one, they’ll just attack them too.”

“But, this time we would be ready for them.” Chi thumps the table with his fist.

“So what?” says Jo, killing Chi’s moment. “We still have a big battle, lots of people die – then what? We move again and they fight us again?” Jo shakes her head. “The only thing that makes sense is to help her figure out what Beacon thing she’s supposed to do and help her do it. It’s the only way to keep everyone safe,” her eyes hit mine, “including Meda.”

There’s a moment of silence as they all examine me for impending greatness. I wish I’d had a chance to comb my hair.

“So what does that have to do with her past?” Uri asks.

“Don’t you think it’s an awful big coincidence that Meda is a Templar and a Beacon? I’ve never heard of someone who was both. And why didn’t her mom ever tell her she was a Templar? Why did Mary fake her own death? It doesn’t make sense.” She shrugs. “It gives us a place to start in any case.” She turns towards me, asking wryly, “Unless you happen to have some great Nobel Peace Prize-worthy plans that you’d like to share with us?”