Capture (15 page)

“
What we’re
building
here is a pile of dead bodies!” I held out my red stained hands as evidence. “Those soldiers shot a kid in the woods tonight. With real bullets, not tranquilizers. He died, Dad, right in my hands. Just because of some abilities he was born with.”

His mouth twisted.
“That is a tragedy. It really is. But I’m sure it never would have happened if he'd just come quietly.” He turned to face the fireplace. “Why can't they see that the government's just trying to—”

“
Trying to what? Exterminate them?”

His face darkened.
“No, of course not! We've got the best scientists available working round the clock, trying to find ways to suppress their abilities.”

“
Why do they have to be suppressed? And how do you know they even can be?”

“
Of course they have to be suppressed. They're dangerous genetical defects!”

“
Am I a dangerous defect, Dad? Are you afraid of me too?” The words came out quietly, unplanned. Necessary. A secret kept far too long. “Because I'm starting to think I'm one of them.”

I threw a ball of fire at the fireplace.
The flames became a bonfire barely contained behind the heavily carved oak mantel.

“
Jesus, Hayden, you're going to set the house on fire!” Dad reached out towards the fireplace. And the fire went out, snuffed as completely as if it had never been there at all.

I couldn't speak, could barely breathe.
Could hardly think at all.

I'd assumed, if I were a Clann outcast, that it must have been through Mom's side of the family. Maybe she'd turned her back on her abilities, or maybe her ancestors further back had been the ones who had left the Clann and left us all in the dark in the process.

I'd never once considered the possibility that my ultra conservative father could be the one to have passed on these abilities. Much less that he had some abilities of his own.

Long seconds passed, maybe minutes, and still I couldn't think of a single thing to say.
All this time, all these months since Damon’s death, I'd hidden what I was, what I could do. And Dad had known all along.

He sighed.
“Yes, I already knew about your abilities. Your mother and I have always known, ever since before your birth. How could you not have them? You’re a Shepherd, and Shepherds are one of the founding Clann families. Founding family descendants are all but guaranteed to have powers.”

I had to fight to get the words out past the tightness in my chest. "Who kicked us out?"

"We weren't kicked out," Dad sneered. "I left. I did what was right for this entire family. I tried to take us away from that unnatural world, tried to give us a decent, normal life. And what did you and your brother do? You nearly screwed it all up!"

So that
explained where the memory had come from of him telling me not to talk about the Clann. I must have heard him discussing it with Mom.

“
The Clann and its descendants are evil, Hayden. They're like a poisonous vine that strangles everything within their reach. They've been using their spells and their money and power to wheedle into government positions of control to help keep the Clann a secret from the world. My brother, your Uncle Jim, tried to change them from the inside. He had all these foolishly naive ideas that he would reveal the truth about the Clann to the world, and the world would accept the descendants and maybe even revere them as demi gods. And what did the Clann do? They killed him for it."

Dad knocked back half his drink. "But I got my revenge. I had to wait years for a chance, but that Simon Phillips and his loose cannon boys
finally gave me the perfect opening. Before, the Clann was much too powerful to take head on. But now the Clann has fallen. It's only a matter of time before every single descendant and outcast has been accounted for. And once we have the cure perfected, the treatments will begin, and everything will be safe again."

He actually smiled at me, as if I should feel comforted now.

All I felt was sick.

Now I understood why Dad never let Damon and me spend any time alone with my cousin Dylan or Uncle Jim. He must have worried that they would tell us all about the Clann that our father had cast our family out of, and then shown us what we could do with our growing abilities.

I also understood now why we never went to Uncle Jim's funeral, and why Dad would never talk about his brother's death. Because then he would have had to tell us about the Clann and its role in Uncle Jim's death.

Then I realized...if Dad had only told us the truth years ago, Damon and I never would have been practicing magic with others in the woods the night of Damon's death. And he would probably still be alive right now.
“You should have told us the truth."

"I was trying to protect you, to keep you safe from that world."

"Yeah, well, that plan sure backfired, didn't it?"

He turned to me with a stony expression. "What are you talking about?"

"Damon would still be alive if you'd just told us who and what we are."

"Don't you try and lay the blame for his death on me. I was trying to save you two idiots! How was I supposed to know you'd go out into those woods and blow yourselves up!"

He would never see the part he'd played in Damon's death. But surely he could be made to see how wrong he was now about the outcasts. "Dad, listen to me. You might not want your Clann abilities. But you can't go around trying to strip the abilities from the others. It's their choice to make, not yours."

His jaw hardened. "Don't you tell me what I can and can't do. I'm trying to save this country, this entire world, from the evil that the Clann's lines keep spitting out into it. Those Phillips boys are a prime example!"

"No, they're proof of what happens when you try to keep people in the dark. Educate the outcasts, but let them decide for themselves whether to keep their abilities or let them fade away."

"It's a curse, Hayden. A curse that they've got to be saved from!"

"You have no right!" Somehow we were inches away from each other, all but screaming into each other's faces. I didn't even know how or when I'd crossed the room over to him.

Breathing fast, I looked down and realized I'd grabbed fistfuls of his shirt. I forced my hands to drop down to my sides again as I took a step back.

"I'm doing this for you!" he cried out. "Can't you see that? This world's not safe with those abilities loose on it. They have to be destroyed."

I didn't want to do it, but I also made myself look my father in the eye again. And in his eyes I no longer saw the man I had once yearned to grow up to be like. All I saw was a man who was filled with fear and self loathing. "Just because you hate yourself doesn't mean every other descendant or outcast does. Some of them even manage to like who and what they are.
You think you’re curing them. But all you’re doing is killing them.”

His eyes turned desperate and pleading, an expression I'd never seen on my father's face before. "Hayden, please. Just give us more time. We'll fix this, all of it. We'll fix you too."

I turned and headed for the foyer, unable to stand looking at or listening to him anymore.

"Hayden, wait! You can't leave! You don't know what's out there, why it's so important for us to become normal! There are enemies of the Clann that prey upon the power within us. But if we get rid of that power, we'll finally be truly safe!"

I continued on across the foyer and up the stairs.

"Hayden!" Dad shouted from the doorway of
his study.

But I was done listening to him. I'd spent my whole life trusting him, believing in him, trying my hardest to make him proud of me, to earn his approval and love. To earn his forgiveness for Damon's death.

I was an idiot.

I
went to my room, grabbed a duffel bag from my closet. I wouldn't be taking much, just some extra clothes, my MP3 player and laptop and their chargers.

I was leaving everything else behind
. Maybe Mom could turn my room into another shrine like they had with Damon's. A shrine to help excuse my father’s bigotry and torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents all over this country.

I froze, staggering under the
weight of the knowledge that I was the son of the new Hitler.

Footsteps in the hall
paused at my doorway. Thinking it was Dad come up to stop me, I spun around, raising a hand, the energy orb already forming.

The door eased open, and Mom poked her head in.
I fisted my hand to contain the orb just in time.

Like Dad, she wasn't surprised by the evidence of my abilities.
“I take it your talk with your father didn't go too well. Did he tell you about the Clann and your uncle?”

I
nodded and took a deep breath. “Our own people are dying out there because of him. And he thinks he's actually helping them.”

She sighed, her teeth worrying her lower lip.
I hadn't seen her do that in years. “So you're leaving.”

I nodded and went back to packing.

“To find others from the Clann? Because you won’t be able to. They’re either in hiding or in prison. None of them will risk revealing themselves now. Not to us.”

“Gee, I wonder why?”
Instantly I felt a pain of guilt for the sarcasm. None of this was her fault, at least not directly.

“
When will you be back?”

Never
, I almost said. But when I looked at her, I noticed her eyes shown with tears. My throat choked up. “I don't know, Mom. Maybe I’ll get a chance to come see you when this whole situation blows over.”

Unless I got arrested.
Then I’d probably never see her again for sure. Something told me internment camps didn’t allow their prisoners to have visitors and Dad wouldn’t be too quick to save me after that little father/son chat we’d just had.

I zipped the
now bulging duffel bag shut and slung its canvas mesh strap over my shoulder. All packed up, time to go. At the doorway, I cleared my throat to get rid of the knot in it and tried to think of what Damon would say if he were me right now.

As usual, I had nothing.

She reached out for me, pulling me into a fierce hug I didn't even know her thin arms were capable of. “Promise me you'll take care of yourself,” she whispered, leaning back to search my face.

I nodded, unable to speak
as my throat tightened up again.

“
Here.” She pressed something stiff and sharp-edged into my hand. A credit card wrapped in paper with writing on it. “The card's in my catering business’s name, not mine. He never sees the bills, and it's got a $10,000 limit on it.”

Whoa.
What was she doing with a card with that kind of limit?

It was a nice gesture, but I still wouldn’t be able to use it. If Dad decided to track me down someday, the first thing he’d do was look for a credit card trail, including from her cards.
“Mom, I can't—”

“
Take it. You'll need it.” It was both an order and a plea. “And that's the address of your Grandma Letty.”

“
Dad's mother?”

She nodded, her face solemn as tears
slid down her cheeks. “She's a descendant, and she'd love to help you any way she can. She'll get you out of the country. Promise me you'll go to her. She'll let me know you're safe.”

How could any grandma help like that
, even one still active in the Clann? I couldn't even remember the last time we’d seen her.

“
Promise, Hayden!” She gripped my shoulders.

“
Okay. I promise.” A lie, but if it made her feel better...

She hugged me again.

I wished I didn’t have to make my mother cry, or could at least take the time to make this goodbye easier on her somehow. But Tarah, and all those descendants and outcasts at the camp, needed me. And Mike and his friend were probably waiting for me at the park by now too. I had to hurry.

As gently as I could, I eased her away from me.
“I'm sorry, Ma. But I've—”

“
I know, I know.” She wiped her cheeks with both hands, her lips turned up in an embarrassed smile. “I love you.”

“
I love you too.”

I headed for the stairs. But at the top of them, I had to stop and look back.
“Why do you stay with him?”

She shook her head, smiling sadly.
“Oh, son. Your father doesn't want to be a bad man. He's just trying to save the world, in his own way.”

And instead, he was wrecking it
all to Hell and back.

I turned, walked down the stairs, and left my home for the last time.

C
HAPTER 7

I
made a quick stop at a home improvement store for three flashlights, batteries, and bolt cutters. My first and last planned purchase on Mom's card. Then I headed for the park.

The trees were sparsely positioned at
Bergfeld Park, letting in enough moonlight on the grounds to let me see that the park was empty.

Only
Mike and his friend, who introduced himself as John, waited under the slide as we'd agreed.

“
Gary didn’t make it,” Mike said, keeping his voice low.

While I hadn’t known
Gary, I had respected his intentions. He had been willing to risk his life to save others, even if it had probably been for the glory more than anything else. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Mike nodded.
John scuffed the toe of his sneakers in the dirt for a few seconds in silence.

Feeling like they were waiting for me to say something motivational, I muttered,
“Let’s make sure he didn’t die for nothing.”

Mike and John nodded quickly, and then we started laying out a new plan.

“We'll ride separately to the camp.” I didn’t bother to make another sketch in the dirt. We’d all seen the last one in the woods. And with just the three of us, getting to the camp’s perimeter was going to be a lot simpler now. “We'll need the vehicles to transport prisoners out of there. There’s a dirt road with deep ditches on either side of it to the camp’s south where we can park out of sight. Then we'll circle around on foot and enter the compound together on the east side near the prisoners’ building. Mike, you’re going to have to make sure we’re completely invisible as soon as we start approaching the camp on foot. Think you can keep it up for about an hour or so?”

“
No problem. But we’re going to have to be real quiet. I can only hide our appearances, not sounds.”

“
Good to know,” I said. “Once we get through the gate with bolt cutters, we’ll have to find a way to get past the guards at the prisoner building’s door.”

“
I could throw a rock or something to distract them,” John offered.

I nodded.
“Yeah, that could work. Nothing too major, just enough to get them both to move a few steps away while we duck inside. Once we’re in, we’ll have to start detoxing people. I’ve never tried to heal anyone, though. Have you?” I looked at them.

They both nodded.

“
My mom was a healer,” Mike said. “I picked up a few things from her that we’ve been practicing with. But we should probably detox the known healers first so we’ll have some help. I don’t know how much energy we’ll have to work with. Healing saps it out of you quick.”

“
Okay.” I paused, debated, then made the decision to go ahead and say it. “I guess Gary’s proof that I wasn't exaggerating earlier about the live ammo. Tonight, what we're planning here, is going to be as dangerous as it gets. But if you can use non-lethal stuff on the guards, do it.”

“
Gary—” Mike began.

“
I know what he said,” I replied. “But you saw what happened to him. He used lethal force, and all it did was make them determined to kill us.”

“
Okay,” Mike said after a few seconds. “We’ll try not to kill anyone. Or get anyone killed. If we can.”

John nodded as well.

“Right,” I said. “Then let's get out of here.”

I led the way to the internment camp in my truck, with Mike and John riding together in Mike’s little black Saturn.
As I drove, I tried not to think about the “leading” part of what I was doing. Every time I did, my hands started shaking on the steering wheel.

What was I doing?

I wasn’t Damon. Just because I was a Shepherd didn’t mean I was born knowing the first thing about leading others, no matter what my parents claimed. And Damon had never just led. He’d inspired. He’d made people want to do amazing things and believe that they could.

And
now here I was trying to follow in his footsteps. But I had no clue how a prison break should be done. We probably had way too few people to even consider trying this. We were going up against anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five armed guards, with flashlights and bold cutters as our only physical tools and zero protective armor.

This was crazy.

Tarah would be proud. Maybe Damon would be too.

I just hoped I didn't wind up getting anyone else killed tonight until the
more experienced Clann people at the camp could take over.

We cut our headlights as we turned off the main road onto the same side road Tarah and I had used only hours earlier.
Mike parked behind me while I shucked off my bulky coat so I would be able to move around easier. My hoodie would have to be enough to keep me warm for awhile.

Then we gathered in the ditch.

“Everyone ready?” I whispered.

They nodded.

We crossed the field that separated our road from the side of the camp, circling wide along the way then cutting back to the east side. We had to move slowly, using the moonlight to help us avoid cactus, rocks and prickly mesquite trees until we reached the east fence between two guards.

The night was too still, amplifying every little crunch of rock and dirt our footsteps made.
I was worried Mike’s visual cloaking spell might not be as good as he’d claimed back in the relative safety of the park. Especially when we were so close to the guards that I could make out their eye color beneath the stadium lights flooding the entire camp. With all the prisoners apparently locked up for the night, there was nothing to distract the soldiers from any noise or movement they might pick up. But Gary was as good as promised. The guards never even looked our way.

It took about ten minutes for me to carefully, slowly cut the chain link with the bolt cutters so they wouldn’t make noise.
We probably could have used a spell for this too, if any of us had known how to use magic to cut through metal. Which we didn’t.

Finally, the opening in the fence was big enough for us to slip through.
Before we did, John chucked a small rock past the guard on the left, which made both guards look in opposite directions away from us. We used that fifteen second distraction to slip through the fence then creep across the twenty open yards to the nearest building where we hoped the prisoners were being kept.

John tossed a second rock he’d stowed in his pocket.

“
What was that?” one of the door guards muttered.

“
Dunno, but I heard it too,” the other guard said, looking around. They took a couple of steps away from the door, splitting up to look around the sides of the building.

I ran across the rocky, hard packed dirt to the door, grateful my
shoes had quiet, flexible soles. As I reached for the doorknob, I held my breath. I had no clue how to pick a lock. Thankfully the guards seemed to have put all their faith in the drugs and their guns to keep the prisoners contained inside, because the door was unlocked. We slipped inside then spread out.

The long metal building’s curved roof and walls had no windows and only the one door we’d entered through, so we could safely turn on the flashlights for the first time.
The small beams cut through the pitch black to reveal how the building was filled with row after row of cots, each one holding a comatose patient covered in a single thin blanket. We shone the lights on the prisoners’ faces in order to find some of the healers who had volunteered their skills in the woods tonight before being caught by the soldiers.

While Mike and John started detoxing a few
of those healers, I searched cot after cot. But so far Tarah was nowhere in sight.

Was I wrong about the soldiers assuming she was a
witch? Had they taken her somewhere else instead?

Muttering a curse, I found Mike and John as they worked separately on detoxing adult healers.

“Is it working?” I whispered to Mike.

“
Yeah, but it takes awhile,” Mike said, even as the man whose wrist he held started to wake up.

“
Have you seen Tarah anywhere?”

Mike shook his head.

When I asked John, he gave the same answer.

While Mike moved on to detox another healer to add to our ranks, I filled in the still drowsy man on what was going on.
The longer I talked, the more alert the man became. After a minute or two, he scrubbed his hands over his face, dragged himself to his feet, then lumbered over to join the detoxing efforts.

I told everyone not to detox the younger kids.
The drugs would keep them in their beds, quiet and safely out of the way, while we took care of the rest of the grownup prisoners and eventually the guards. Some of the parents didn't like it, but at least they seemed to understand.

As we neared the farthest end of the building, I spotted the mother, still holding her dead baby even in her sleep, a crowd of healers forming around her cot.
One of them reached down for her wrist.

“
No, don't. She shouldn't have to see…” I couldn't say the rest.

Thankfully they understood.
A woman who looked like she could be the mother's sister reached out, tears on her cheeks winking from the indirect flashlight beams, and gently eased the baby from the mother's arms. She wrapped the body in a sheet stolen from an empty bed, then tucked the bundle back into the mother's arms.

I could hear faint crying in the crowd, someone sniffling, men clearing their throats.
But I couldn't look away from that tiny bundle.

“
Hayden,” Mike whispered at my shoulder. “We found Tarah.”

The only words that could move me at that moment.

“Is she okay?” My gaze snapped to his face. I was half afraid of what expression I might find there.

He nodded, a tired half smile twisting his face.

I followed him to the back of the building.

She looked like an angel in her sleep, her ponytail loose so her
thick dark hair made a tangled cloud against her cheeks. Mike picked up her limp wrist, and my gut knotted. I'd never wished for a special ability more than I did in that moment as I had to wait for someone else to fix her. I should be the one who was healing her. I’d promised to protect her and failed.

Her eyelids fluttered open.
Mike was closer to her head, but somehow she looked right at me instead.

My breath caught in my lungs.
“Hello, Sleeping Beauty.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.

Mike moved on to the next prisoner.

Tarah
struggled to sit up. I slid an arm around her shoulders and helped her, then ended up hugging her in relief, burying my face and a shaking hand in her hair. “Told you I’d come back for you.”

“
What took you so long?” she whispered in my ear.

“
Oh, you know how bad traffic on the interstate gets,” I joked. “That and facing down my father about being an outcast.”

She leaned back to search my face with wide eyes.
“You, or him?”

“
Both, actually.”

Her eyebrows shot up.
“And how’d it go?”

I scowled.
“Not great. Turns out he’s a total hypocrite. The jackass actually thinks he’s helping everyone by trying to find a way to permanently suppress our magic and make us ‘normal’ again. And remind me to tell you about the Clann sometime later.”

“Okay.”
She shook her head. “That sucks about his lying to you all this time.” She sighed. “Well, at least I’m not the only one around here with delusional parents. Speaking of…did you find my dad yet?”

“
Not yet, but we’re not done either.”

“
Hayden!” John hissed from three cots over. “This guy’s not drugged, but he’s not waking up. What do we do?”

“
Is it my dad?” Tarah asked me, her eyes wide with a combination of hope and fear.

Tarah

I tried to stand up too fast and nearly fell back on the cot again as the blood rushed from my head. The drugs they dished out around here were some seriously potent stuff. Hayden helped steady me, then tucked one of my hands through the bend of his elbow so I could hold onto him for balance.

A thin blonde woman overheard us and stumbled over, wobbly from either just waking up or maybe too much healing tonight.
“I’m a healer. Let me check him.” I didn’t recognize her. She must not have been part of the Tyler outcasts’ community.

I tried to move faster, but the numbness in my feet had turned into a pins and needles sensation, making every step excruciating as the blood flow returned to my lower limbs.
By the time Hayden and I got to the man’s cot and could tell that it was definitely my dad, the woman had already knelt on the floor beside him and pressed both her hands on his temples.

After a minute of frowning with her eyes closed, she said,
“He’s got a bad concussion.”