Binds (22 page)

Behind me, coming up the road with the smoothness of a slithering snake is another one of those contraptions, only this one is twice the first one’s size. The thing is so monstrous, it clips the buildings it passes with harsh scraping sounds and smashes the cars in its way, neither slowing it down in the least.

Cass starts taking sputtering shallow breaths and I realize that she is having a panic attack. Her mouth still hangs open, but it now looks to be more of a silent scream.

“Cass, calm down,” I tell her, gripping her forearm and trying to get her to look at me, and come back to me from the place of dread and fear that I know her mind has wandered away to.

A tear escapes out of the corner of her eye as she turns her face back towards mine. Her eyes lock with my own in an earnest expression that causes her brow to furrow. “I’m so sorry, Ophelia,” she says. Then she pulls her arm away from mine in one jerking motion and turns to flee into the crowd of people who are now scrambling to get out of the square.

I stay rooted to the spot for a good second of shocked disjointedness. Why did she just take off like that? Yes, this thing coming at us is scary as hell, but that’s no reason to leave me stranded like this. And, what is she going to do alone, anyway? I remember the look of terror in her eyes and my heart starts to soften for her. She was scared … and she’s so young. She probably wasn’t thinking … but, why the apology? I don’t have time to ponder this. I have to get out of here.

I take off in the direction that Cass told me Reece would be and I guess a number of the Skull people have the same idea, as a large group of them are running around me. I can hear the sound that the monstrous vehicle makes setting itself down on the ground, the mechanical hatch opening up and the sound of boots hitting the pavement as the soldiers start coming behind me. I run until my chest begins to catch on fire and then I push myself to continue, gasping for each breath I need to keep me on this pace. I beg my legs not to give up on me.

I’m about five blocks away from the scene and most of the Skull people have either been stopped behind me or have veered off onto side streets. I wanted to search the area for Reece, but I figured that there was a good chance that I might have led the soldiers straight to him if I were to risk it. I keep going, planning to turn at the next corner and head right down the street, hoping to come across a hiding place when I hear someone calling my name.

I halt so rapidly that my knees take a second to catch up with the rest of my body, causing me to almost keel over from a mixture of disorientation and breathlessness. Note to self: if I survive this night, work on my cardio.

Reece is hauling ass in my direction, he grabs hold of my hand as he comes by and attempts to pull me along with him.

“I knew that was you,” he says, tugging my arm so hard, it feels as if it might be pulled out of socket at any minute. “Come on, we can’t stop yet, they’re still coming.”

I call up just enough self-fortitude to take me a couple more blocks, but I’m straggling behind. Reece isn’t alone. I’m surprised to see the woman from the fountain is running with us. I turn my head back as I go, looking for Spencer. The way he was engrossed with her earlier, I expect him to be coming at our rear. There is no one there, but I can still hear the soldiers approaching, so I try and stretch out my stride a little more.

“Over here,” the woman calls. “There’s a gated courtyard to this apartment complex. If we can climb over, we should be safe.”

We follow her and come to a tall white fence with spikes attached around the top of it to keep birds from perching there. Great, much like the rest of this night, this is going to be fun … oh yeah.

“Here,” Reece says, turning to both of us and cupping his hands together over his knee. “I’ll give you a boost. You’ll have to give yourself enough height to clear those spikes, but it shouldn’t be too hard.”

He helps the woman over the fence first and then turns for me, but a couple of soldiers begin to fill the alleyway leading down to this courtyard. Before I can take his help or question him as to why both knees on his jeans look to be intact, contrary to Cass’s story, Reece pulls me to him with both arms on my shoulders.

“Ophelia, I have to tell you something before it’s too late,” he says with a certain gravity to his voice that warns me now is not the time for my questions. “I lied about following you for two years. I’ve been watching you for longer than that … a lot longer.”

“How long?” I ask, confusion wrinkling my forehead. I don’t understand where he is going with this confession.

“A long time, Phee. Almost our entire lives, but that’s not the point. The point is that I know what you can do. You’re capable of so much more than any Mage I have ever seen and that’s how I know that you can get yourself out of here. I’ve seen you do it before.”

“What? I don’t understand. What are you talking about … get myself out of here? How?”

“Think, Ophelia, think. Remember a time when you just appeared somewhere, but you don’t know how you got there? I know you remember.”

My mind goes directly to the place I think he wants it to. Once again, I’m in the garage sitting in a running car, tears streaming from my face and a friendly man, James, is peering down at me from the open door. His eyes fixed on me … his brilliant green eyes … the same green eyes that are gazing at me now, willing me to understand.

“It was you … but how?” I’m shocked and a bit worried.

Why didn’t he tell me this before? The soldiers are closing in on us, and there is no time for me to make any sense of this, but I have to know. How is this possible? I thought Reece was an unskilled Mage, how could he have kept up the appearance of my driver with his lack of power? It just doesn’t make sense with any of the rules he has taught me about our world.

“It doesn’t matter right now, what matters is that you get out of here. If we both end up in Oberon’s clutches again, I don’t think there would be an escape this time.” He runs his fingers over my cheek and cups my face in his hand. “Phee, listen to me. You have to try. I have no clue how you ended up in the car that day, but I know that you were in the main house one minute and in that car the next. I watched the garage surveillance footage after; it was like you appeared out of thin air. You have to try and get out of this now. Remember the way you worked the freeze and unfreeze Binds? Do the same thing. Picture yourself somewhere else, anywhere but here. I know you can do it.”

I nod my head in acquiescence. He’s right, if I can get out of here, there is still hope that I might be able to save him this time. I close my eyes and try to picture myself back at Spencer’s building. I see myself on the rooftop, sitting on the unused swing set. I don’t feel anything happening, so I start silently chanting it to myself, “Disappear, Spencer’s roof, disappear.”

I open my eyes and Reece’s are still looking into them. It didn’t work and the soldiers are here. One of them recognizes me because he yells over to the others, “This one comes in alive. We have orders. Keep the other one too and scan this building behind them, there might be more of them hiding.”

Before I have a chance to fight or scream, I am hit in the back by something that feels slightly more painful than a bee sting. I turn my head around, trying to get a good look at it, and the tranquilizer hits my blood stream. I go down. The last thought I have before the world fades to black is that Reece has no spark. I wonder why that it is.

I come to with my face pressed against a hard metal surface. It’s pitch dark, but feeling around, my hands run into bars in all directions confirming my suspicion, I’m in a cage. I wipe the drool from the side of my face as I slowly sit up and try to ascertain my surroundings. As my eyes adjust, I hear the rackety sound of the other cages next to mine. We’re moving, I can tell by the metallic squeaking as each of the cages rub against each other as we go.

I try to see if there is anyone enclosed in the crates at my sides but can’t make out any figures within.

“It’s just the two of us,” someone, a woman, says from my right. I narrow my eyes, trying to figure out how far away from her I am. It’s too dark to make out much detail, but it looks like she’s sitting up in the cage next to my own.

“Who are you?” I ask. “Are you the leader of the Skull people?”

“It’s the Sugar Skull Army, and yes, that’s me … or, as least I was. Don’t know how much of a leader I’ll be now. When the NWO takes you, you tend to stay gone, if you know what I mean.” She sounds depressingly reconciled with our fate.

“What happened to Reece?” I feel frantic. Why isn’t he here? I know I heard them say to take him alive too, so shouldn’t he be in one of these cages?

“I don’t know any Reece, but if you’re taking about that dude who was running with us, they beat the crap out of him and dragged him off somewhere. He was smart enough to use the gun that you had in your holster. After you fell, he reached down and grabbed it and took out two of them before they tranquilized him, beat his face in a couple of times and then kicked him once he was on the ground. The cowards.” She clears her throat and there is an audible exhalation of breath before she continues, “If you’d only used the weapon yourself, we might have gotten out of this mess alive. There were only a couple soldiers in the alleyway, you could have shot them and made it over the fence before any more came.”

She’s right. I’m such an idiot. In the face of danger, my first instinct was to run, not try and protect myself and look where it’s gotten me … look where it’s gotten all three of us. I lay my head back against the cage and close my eyes. What’s going to happen to us now? I can pretty much be sure that I am going to end up back with Donovan because of this, but what will they do with Reece and this woman? I’m responsible for all of it.

“It’s okay.” The woman’s voice is a beacon through the dark. “It seems to be the way of your people anyway.”

“My people?” Could she know what I am?

“Yeah, don’t sound so surprised,” she replies, matter-of-factly. “The information is out there on the net for anyone with minimal digging effort to find, although there is one domain that even I haven’t been able to hack into. I guess that one will remain unknown. I’m sure I won’t get the chance to crack into it now.”

I shake my head with a halfhearted snort. Yeah, Jinx would be happy to hear that his invention, the illegal net (whatever it is) isn’t being broken into by the commons. However, this particular common knew about Mages before I did, so there’s really nothing to be smug about.

“So, you’re telling me, you read something on the internet and took it as fact?” I ask, trying to sound as condescending as I can. Maybe she doesn’t know all there is to know. I have a strong nagging feeling in the back of my mind that tells me not to betray our people. They’ve remained hidden for this long, and seem to want to remain that way, even though I don’t exactly agree with them. Still, it’s my responsibility to lead her away from this line of thought.

“No, a friend … well, he used to be a friend, told me about you. He said you were Mages and he even tried to explain about your magic. I didn’t believe him at the time, though. I wish I would have, now it’s too late.”

“What happened to him?” I’m afraid to ask, although I’m pretty sure I already know.

“They took him. The last time I saw him was the night before the reaping. He told me the truth about himself and I turned him away. I thought he was making it up so he wouldn’t have to date me … can you believe it? He said your kind didn’t approve of mixing with ours and I thought he was putting me off with a stupid story. And then … he was gone and I knew he told the truth.” She lets out a long sigh that sounds like it might be trying to cover a shaky breath. “He wasn’t a criminal, he was just a teenager … we both were.”

“I know he wasn’t.” It’s the only reassurance I can give her through these bars. No, her friend really was just a kid, a kid caught up in something that no one could have ever predicted. “Listen, there was nothing you could have done differently. Even if you’d believed him, things would have ended up the same. He’d still be gone, and you’d still be left wondering what you could have done differently. You can’t blame yourself for it.”

“Oh, I don’t blame myself,” she states, her voice suddenly infused with strength. “I blame Chancellor Brand, the NWO, and every damn citizen who cheered and sat back doing nothing while people were rounded up and taken away. If people weren’t such sheep, none of this would have happened.” She breathes heavily, trying to calm herself down. After a couple of seconds, she seems to have regained her composure because she continues and I just listen, silently. It sounds like she has had all of this buried inside for a while. She talks with an enthusiasm that shows me just how much of a hand she has had in all of it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that she is either something of a chatterbox or slightly boastful, but if I was the leader of an army with the capability to take down trained soldiers and sophisticated weaponry like hers did tonight, I’d probably be boastful too.