Burning Darkness (5 page)

She gripped his arm, her face a mask of concentration. Blood vessels stood out at her temples. With a breath, her eyes widened. “He’s out.”

“Let’s go.” He pulled her to her feet and they ran around the corner of the building. The motel backed up to woods. He pulled her close as they ran. Yeah, she’d been an enemy minutes ago. He’d deal with her later. Right now, though, he wasn’t going to let the homicidal maniac get her. No time to figure out why.

They reached the line of dense trees and ran into the shadows. Beyond that, who knew? But woods was better than homicidal maniac with skills. Except that maniac was probably going to follow them in.

Amy brushed Lucas’s hair, way overdue for a trim, back from his forehead. His eyes fluttered open, making her jerk in surprise.

He struggled to sit up, his gaze going to the clock: five in the morning. “How long have I been out? It might be too late.”

“Six hours.” Her stomach clenched. “Too late for what? What did you see? Eric called everyone, and they were fine.”

His blue-gray eyes were stark with a fear that was contagious. “They’re not going to be. None of us are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw all of us . . . dead. The ones who are out there”—he nodded toward the ceiling—“die out there. Run off the road. Shot.” His face was paler than she’d ever seen it. “Eric and some woman lying on the ground. I don’t know how, but they’re . . . they’re dead.”

Her throat tightened so much, she could hardly push out the words: “We’ll call them.”

They decided who would call whom, and reached everyone but Eric, urging them back to the tomb.

Lucas paced the large living area, shoving his hand through his hair. “Where did Eric say he was going?”

“He didn’t. Just that he needed to get out. We’ll keep trying him. Maybe he hooked up with someone and that’s why he’s not answering.”

Lucas nodded but didn’t look mollified by that possibility. After what they’d been through, no one was likely to ignore their phone. But there wasn’t supposed to be any danger now.

Amy had to tell him what she’d done before the others arrived. She watched him rub at the spot on his arm where she’d injected him, but he’d been too preoccupied to take conscious notice of it. Now he looked down at the quarter-sized bruise.

She walked closer, and his questioning gaze turned to her. “Lucas, you had the worst storm ever. You were bleeding from the nose and ears.” She showed him the bloody tissues in the garbage can, her hands shaking. “And you were out a lot longer than normal. I—”

His eyes hardened as she talked. “You gave me the antidote.”

“I had to. You were going to die.”

He looked at the bruise again, as though he couldn’t bear to look at her. She saw the fear in his eyes, the pain of betrayal. He would view it that way, because being able to see the future was worth dying for if it meant saving his people.

“I thought the danger was over,” she tried again, hating his silence.

“I had a storm.” His words were ice-covered. “You know what that means.”

“You were bleeding. I couldn’t let you die.”

When he looked at her at last, his eyes were shuttered. Worse than the way he’d looked at her after she sneaked away to get the antidote without telling him.

He walked toward the opening that led downstairs.

“Lucas.” She followed but remained in the doorway. “Yell at me. Tell me how angry you are.”

He paused midway down the stairs but didn’t even turn to face her. “I don’t feel anything right now, Amy.”

He kept going and eventually disappeared. She knew this is what would happen; she’d told herself losing his love was worth saving him. She slid down to the floor, realizing she hadn’t taken a breath in so long her chest was hurting. The harsh intake of air was followed by a sob. Hopefully, he wouldn’t lose his abilities. Maybe he would forgive her then. Love her again, no. If he could just forgive her, she could somehow go on without him. If she’d let him die, she would never have forgiven herself.

She let herself cry now. Soon, there would be no time for crying.

F
onda’s chest hurt like hell. Racing through the woods in near pitch-dark, her sworn enemy helping her, an unknown enemy somewhere behind them . . . she could hardly wrap her head around it.

Eric slowed, thank God, and tugged her closer.

She felt his finger press against her mouth, and in the watery moonlight saw him looking behind them. Her pounding heartbeat and harsh breathing obliterated any other sounds. She hadn’t felt that insane crushing feeling in her head after they’d run from the agent. Just before her head would have probably exploded, Eric ordered her to do that visual thing. It worked.

Their breathing quieted. There, in the far distance, the sound of footsteps. Walking, not running.

A vibrating noise came from the vicinity of Eric’s jeans. His cell phone. He jabbed the button to stop it. She started to say something, but he pressed his finger over her mouth again. Then they were off again, his fingers still clamped over hers, drawing her through the trees as though he had night vision.

Maybe he did.

Eventually he let go of her hand and slowed to a walk. The pursuing footsteps were farther away each time they stopped to listen.

Eric leaned close and whispered, “Maybe his injury is dragging him down. I cut him pretty good back at the motel.”

The air was chilled, and her face felt numb. The sun was only thinking about coming up, lightening the sky to a dull gray. They couldn’t hear anything that sounded like footsteps, only the sound of birds waking and road noise in the distance. He nodded toward that but said nothing. Every time she started to say something, he either put his finger over her mouth or made the cut sign across his throat.

They broke out of the woods as the sun started filling the sky with streaked pink light. It wasn’t the highway they saw, though, but what looked like a shantytown: rows of little buildings, if you could call them that, cobbled together, some two stories, some painted and some gray, weathered wood. Some of the booths had signs tacked onto the front of their open spaces, the letters too faded to read. Grass grew tall between the buildings, caressed by the breeze, and the huge parking area was all dirt and weeds. Once, the place must have been filled with sounds and activity, but now nobody cared about it.

Not liking the direction of her thoughts, she turned to something she liked even less. It was the first time she’d gotten a good look at Eric since they left the motel room. His shirt was still unbuttoned, showing a damp slice of his chest. His blond hair at his neckline was also damp, though if not for the twigs, it would have been as perfectly mussed as it was at the bar. Like flames, she’d thought then. She was sure her hair looked much worse. He walked into the jumble of buildings, his expression tense, as though he expected someone to jump out at him.

Standing in the opening between the buildings and the woods felt too vulnerable, so she walked toward shelter. The place smelled of moldering wood. Eric moved among the shadows and shafts of light that poured down between the slats, but glanced up occasionally, obviously checking for her. No, she hadn’t run off. Yet. Or maybe he was worried that she would sneak up on him, a shard of wood clutched in her hand. She glanced at herself, no real weapon, a third his size. Probably not. Even when he had been drugged, she couldn’t overpower him. Their glances held for a moment, giving her a tight feeling in her chest, and then he kept looking.

One grouping looked like it held concession stands, and an old sign, hanging crooked from only one hook, said,
SHANTY FLEA MARKET
and below that, PRETZELS. One stall had a pile of old trophies in the corner, another had a rusty BBQ grill that still smelled like smoked meat, but most were empty. Her stomach twisted when she saw a roach run across the grate.

She paused, listening and watching the woods. Cardinals sang their loping call and a breeze stirred the pines, but nothing sounded like a human—or whatever he was—coming after them. She made her way toward Eric, who was circling back.

He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. “Hey, it’s Eric. I saw that you tried to call me a few times . . .”

He listened, his eyebrows knitting together at what he was hearing. She caught the sound of a female voice that sounded frantic.

He leaned against one of the sturdier beams, pressing his fingers to his forehead as he listened. “I think I know why. Someone’s been after us.”

Fonda heard the “Us?” on the other end.

He looked at her, his mouth twisting into a smile. “Yeah, guess who I happened to run into? Fonda Raine . . . Yeah, that Fonda. Long story, but there’s some dude after us. And he’s got powers. I think that whatever he does with his hands, he can do with a psychic ability. He’s too old to be an Offspring, probably late forties. We ditched him for the time being, but we need to get out of here. We’re at some . . .”

“Shantytown flea market,” Fonda supplied, stepping closer so she could hear the other side of the conversation. He hadn’t told the woman that she’d tried to kill him. Interesting.

He repeated what she’d said, and added, “It’s just off a highway.” He gave them a general idea of where they’d started from. “Can you come out and get me? Once everyone’s together we can figure out our next move.”

Fonda heard the woman ask, “Lucas saw you and a woman dead. It must be Fonda. Is she joining up with us?”

Eric looked right at her, and she felt an odd twist in her chest. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. I’ll figure it out by the time you get here.” He disconnected, sliding down to the wooden floor, arms draped over his bent knees. He tilted his head, his gaze still on her. “What
am
I going to do with you?”

“
You
are not doing anything about me. I’ll be gone before they get here. What did she mean, Lucas saw me dead?”

“He gets storms of images, glimpses of the future. He probably saw us being attacked back at the motel.”

She stepped closer. “Why didn’t you just leave me behind? You could have—should have—left me to fend for myself.”

“Is that what you wanted me to do?”

“Yes.” She didn’t want to think about him saving her. “That’s what ruthless people do.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah.”

While they were on the run through the woods, they were united against an even deadlier enemy.

“Besides the fact that you had every reason to kill me.”

He laughed softly, shaking his head. “You know, I might have felt that way once.” The humor in his eyes, thin as it was, faded. “But as I said, I don’t want a war with you. You’re free to go.”

For some reason, that left an empty feeling inside her. She knelt down in front of him. “Why? You’re a cold-blooded killer.”

“Not when I needed to be.”

“With me?” Because she’d seen the rage in his eyes, when he had the knife at her throat, before it was replaced by resolve. She touched the cut and felt the sting, but it wasn’t bleeding. Resolve that he couldn’t do it. Fear at his failure to kill when it was necessary and justified.

She knew exactly how he’d felt. In those minutes before she returned to the room, she’d been battling that same thing. While straddling Eric’s limp body, she had lifted her hand, ready to bring the knife down . . . and she couldn’t do it. Nausea had risen in her throat, sweat popped out on her forehead and neck, and her hand froze in mid-motion.

He’d been watching her thrash herself. “I couldn’t use my pyrokinesis on that guy,” he said. “Now I know why. He’s got powers like us.”

“You told whoever you were talking to that he wasn’t an Offspring. You said something about that when I projected to you, too. What’s an Offspring?”

“You. Me. Do you know anything about your history? About why either your mom or your dad died when you were a baby?”

“I only know I inherited my paranormal ability from my mother.” Hadn’t Westerfield asked if she knew anything else? Insinuating that there
was
something else.

“Did Darkwell tell you how he knew your mother?”

She sat down, facing Eric. It felt intimate somehow, but she pushed that thought away. He knew things, things she needed to know. “Just that he’d read about her ability in some report. I wanted to see it, but he pretty much blew me off, promising he’d try to find it but never doing it.”

He held up his finger. “Lie number one. He recruited your mother and several others, including my mother, to join a program called BLUE EYES back in the eighties. He gave our parents something that boosted their abilities, and he used them to kill people. Only that substance made them go crazy. And that made the project one big fat liability, so it was shut down and covered up. How did your mother die?”

It was none of his business, that’s what she wanted to say. “She killed herself.”

“Lie two.” He held up a second finger, and his certainty shifted something inside her. “They killed her. Darkwell couldn’t afford to have anyone start questioning why the people in his program had become unstable.”

She could barely push out the words, “Darkwell killed her?” She hadn’t committed suicide? Hadn’t abandoned her?

“He denied it, and in that I think he was telling the truth. There were two men behind the program. We thought the other one was Sam Robbins, but he wasn’t”—he raised his eyebrow at her—“ruthless enough. So maybe someone behind Darkwell, a silent partner. Maybe the guy who’s after us now.”

She’d unconsciously moved closer to him, wanting to soak in his words about her mother. “That guy killed my mom?”

He shrugged. “It’s possible. We’re the offspring of the people in the program. We inherited the supercharged ability. And we inherited the possibility of going crazy, too, if we use our abilities too much.” He leaned back. “How did it feel, having someone gunning for you without even knowing why?”

“Awful.”

He nodded. “That’s how I felt, before I knew what I know now. Someone hunting me down because I’m a liability. How did it feel that he could get
inside
you? That it was so hard to fight, you thought you were going to die?”

She frowned. “The worst—one of the worst things I’ve ever felt.”

“Now you know how I felt when your boyfriend was screwing around in my friggin’ head, trying to make me do things I didn’t want to do.” His words were like a slap in the face.

She pushed to her feet and turned away. Eric was the enemy, not the victim. “What about this substance you mentioned?”

He stood, though she saw how tired he was. He reached up and held onto a loop of rope hanging from the ceiling beam, flexing his biceps in the process. “We just found out it was some kind of alien DNA. We inherited that, too.”

He liked the shock and revulsion on her expression; she could tell by his smug smile. “That’s plain freaky.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but it opens up possibilities. Who are our ancestors? What else can we do? Look at what that guy can do. He must be infected with the same stuff.”

She shot him a look. Was he making this up? No, he was excited about the alien DNA.

She looked at her hand. What she expected to see that she hadn’t already noticed, she didn’t know. As though just knowing would now reveal itself with webbing between her fingers or a green glow.

“Can we get it out of us?” she asked, feeling her skin itch.

“I doubt it. It’s pretty cool when you think about it.”

“No it’s not. It’s icky.” And scary.

He walked up some rickety stairs that led to a small deck with picnic benches. It had a corrugated tin roof but was open at the sides. She followed, seeing that he was using it as a lookout. He scanned the surrounding area, his eyes narrowed. She looked, too, as though she’d come up for the same reason.

“I don’t see him,” he said.

She sank down on a bench.

He stretched out on another bench. “I’m going to close my eyes for a few minutes, though I’ll keep checking the perimeter.” He slid a narrow-eyed gaze at her. “Being drugged doesn’t constitute a good night’s rest. What was that stuff you slipped me, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I asked a dealer for something to knock a person out. He gave me some pills, which I ground up and put in your drink.”

“Great.” He tucked his hands beneath his head and closed his eyes.

“I’m sure it was heavy-duty sleeping pills. That’s what I asked for. Nothing addictive like heroine.”

He wriggled on the bench, as though to make himself more comfortable. “That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. The thought of it being something like heroine yawned in the pit of her stomach. He could be tweaking right now, or craving more. Shaking. That stuff was wicked. Thankfully she only knew secondhand, seeing her dad and his friends suffer through it. The one thing her dad
had
done to protect her was threaten anyone who offered her dope in his rare sober moments. Not that she would have touched the stuff. “How are you checking the perimeter?”

“I can remote-view. Kind of like your astral projecting, only I can’t be seen. And I can’t touch objects . . . or people at the location.”

Heat flashed into her cheeks and she looked away. Was he viewing her now? Seeing her reaction? She stuffed it, hunkering down, burying her face against her knees. She hadn’t slept all night. On top of that, the adrenaline surge and exertion had drained her.