Dangerous Games (13 page)

S
oph's party, as you'll recall, was supposed to be the seven of us plus Draz and a few of his mates. You'd assume that that meant maybe fifteen people in all, possibly twenty? When I went in Soph's front door – which was wide open – there must have been twenty people jammed in the front hallway. There were people upstairs and downstairs, in the kitchen, in the lounge room. There were probably people in the bedrooms too, although I didn't go and have a look. There was beer. There was cigarette smoke. There was shouting. The stereo was turned up so loud it sounded like it was about to go nuclear. Car horns were honking in the street and people were going nuts all over Soph's parents' pristine cream carpet.

I found Soph looking stunned in the middle of her rumpus room, surrounded by my friends.

‘What the hell happened?' I asked.

‘One of Draz's friends sent a group text to his mates, and it snowballed. This is a disaster! What am I going to do?'

‘Well, we've got to get them to leave,' I said.

‘How?' Soph asked.

People I'd never seen before were dancing and shouting and stumbling past, waving drinks at each other. Splash! Crash! Tinkle! The party had taken on a life of its own and was rampaging through the house.

‘We could call the police,' Mina said.

‘I don't want the police here,' Soph said. ‘What if they tell my parents?'

‘Soph,' I said, ‘I think your parents are going to work out something's been going on here.'

Two guys staggered past, each with a girl perched on his shoulders. The guys were laughing and the girls were laughing until one of them smacked into the light-fitting. Then both girls started screaming.

‘Okay,' I said, ‘this is what we're going to do. You're going to find Draz and make him guard the door so no more people can get in. And we're going to turn the power off. If there's no music and no lights, maybe they'll all just give up and go home.'

‘You reckon?' asked Soph, watching a guy pretend to be a bull while another guy pretended to be a toreador. The guy who was pretending to be a bull ran himself straight into a cupboard door and practically knocked himself out. His friends roared with laughter.

‘Who cares where they go, as long as it's not here,' I said.

We went looking for Draz and found him skating on the patio with his buddies.

‘I need you,' Soph said, and yanked Draz right off his board. ‘Bring your friends.'

The friends hooted and catcalled, but they all followed Soph obediently enough.

‘You,' Soph said, ‘are the door bitch.'

Draz's friends thought this was hilarious.

‘I want you to stand guard here and stop any more people from coming in.'

‘Come on,' Draz said. ‘Things were just starting to get good.'

‘Are you out of your mind?' Soph yelled. ‘Did you see what they were doing in there?'

‘Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on,' Draz said. ‘No-one else gets in.'

A carload of people were coming up the drive with eager expressions on their faces.

‘Starting with them,' Soph ordered.

Draz went forward to meet them and we heard him explaining that it was a private party and they couldn't come in. The people didn't believe him at first, then they realised he meant it, then they got abusive, and then they left.

We shut the front door and ran to the fuse box. With just a few quick switches the house was plunged into darkness. I'd expected silence too, but not so. Everybody groaned, and then laughed, and there was some screaming, and then things started getting even rowdier.

‘It doesn't sound like they're leaving,' Soph said.

‘No, it doesn't,' I said.

We hurried into the kids' area downstairs and Soph tried to make herself heard. ‘This party is over!' she bellowed. ‘It's time for you all to go home!'

But no-one was listening.

‘Get out of my house!' she yelled.

It had absolutely no effect.

‘Get out!!' she screamed, and started pushing the nearest group of people towards the stairs. But they just started laughing and pushing back, and people got jostled and a few people fell over in the dark and suddenly the party mood turned ugly and there were cries of panic and fights started breaking out and people were getting jostled and trampled and even more things were getting broken –

And as the aggression level in the room rose I felt my own powers starting to surge in response and I realised that the only person now who could prevent things from getting completely out of hand was me. So I planted my feet and opened the little door inside my head that released the forces of destruction – and even though it was only a little door I felt the destructive energy gush out of me like water from a water cannon and it was so intense I half-expected to see all those gate-crashers go flying. But my powers had their own ideas about how to deal with unexpected guests, and an alarm began to blast WARK WARK WARK and it was just about the loudest thing WARK WARK WARK I've ever heard and people were jamming their fingers in their ears and WARK WARK WARK running for the doors because it was so WARK WARK WARK painful to listen to you couldn't actually stay in the room and WARK WARK WARK some of them ran out the back onto the patio but most of them WARK WARK WARK went running for the exits and as the alarm went on and on and on all the unauthorised party guests went streaming out
like rats abandoning a WARK WARK WARK sinking ship.

‘Can't you turn that off?' Mina screamed at Soph.

‘I don't know how!' Soph screamed back.

‘It's the smoke detector!' I screamed at her. ‘You have to hit the switch!'

So Soph ran for a broom and went and jabbed the smoke detector with it and at last the terrible noise stopped.

We all stood there, our ears ringing (it felt like they were bleeding) in the sudden silence.

‘I guess we can switch the power on again now,' Soph said.

She went to the fuse box and flicked the switches.

The lights came back on, and we looked around in horror. The carpet was trashed. There was rubbish everywhere. The furniture had been moved, lamps had been knocked over, different-coloured liquids were spattered everywhere. There were muddy footprints on the walls. CDs and DVDs were scattered across the floor. We would shortly discover someone had been sick on Soph's parents' bedroom floor. And we had one and a half hours to clean the place up.

‘It's not possible,' Soph said, clutching her head. ‘I'm doomed.'

‘It'll be fine,' Celeste said. ‘We'll all pitch in.'

‘Especially if you get Draz and his doofus mates to help,' I said.

Soph and I went to the front door to tell Draz and the guys that they could come back in now. ‘If you think you're getting out of the cleaning up that easily –' she
said, throwing open the door, but then she stopped, silent.

A group of scary-looking guys were standing on the driveway and Draz had gone out to talk to them. Draz's mates were cowering on the doorstep, offering no support at all.

‘The party's over, mate,' Draz was saying. ‘Everyone's gone home.'

‘Let us in and we'll get the party started again,' one of the guys said. He had the sort of facial hair you usually see on bikies and he had a mad glint in his eye. I didn't like the look of him at all. I wondered if I was going to have to call on the forces of destruction again and I felt an adrenalin surge run through my body.

‘Sorry, but you can't come in,' Draz said, sounding firm but not aggressive.

The guy and his four scary mates eyeballed him. ‘You're going to stop me, are you?'

‘I'm going to try,' Draz said.

And he calmly took his watch off and put it in his pocket, never taking his eye off the guy for a minute.

Why's he doing that?
I wondered, and then I thought:
maybe he knows martial arts?
It seemed extremely unlikely. But Draz wouldn't be standing his ground like that unless he knew he could handle himself, would he?

He gave his hands a little shake to loosen his wrists and then he just stood there, poised, waiting, and I wondered if Draz was actually going to take on the five extremely scary-looking guys.

But then one of them said, ‘Come on, there's nothing happening here. Let's go.'

And then they were all grunting and mumbling and complaining that this place was boring, and the guy with the goatee gave Draz one more evil glare, and then all five of them bowled back down the drive, and after a minute or two we heard them go screeching away, yelling obscene things.

Relief washed through me. I wasn't going to have to smack them down with lightning bolts after all.

‘That was amazing!' Soph said, and ran and threw herself onto Draz. ‘Why didn't you tell me you could fight?'

‘I can't,' Draz said.

‘What?' Soph shrieked, horrified. ‘So why did you take them on?'

‘Miro reckons most guys like that are gutless. If you bluff them into thinking you know what you're doing, they probably won't fight you.'

‘What if they had a
knife
?' Soph said. ‘What if they had a
gun
? People get killed that way all the time!'

‘I had to protect you, babe,' Draz said.

And in that moment I finally saw the point of Draz. Not because he was a tough guy. Not because he'd stood up to a bunch of thugs. To me, that was just further proof he was an idiot. It was because for the first time I'd seen him look at Soph with real tenderness, and I realised how much he cared about her. Draz had a heart after all – and it belonged to Soph.

T
here were no more unexpected visitors after that. Soph locked the front door and we knuckled down to the task of cleaning the house. We opened up the windows and switched on all the extractor fans and we went through the whole house with plastic bags and picked up all the rubbish and vacuumed the floors and wiped the spilled drinks off the surfaces. We swept up all the empty cups and cigarette butts on the patio. We sponged up the sick from Soph's parents' bedroom floor. Draz's mates went AWOL fairly early in the process, but Draz hung around and pitched in.

Soph's parents had promised to be back at eleven, so at 10.55 me and Draz snuck out the door, since neither of us was supposed to be there.

‘Are you right to get home?' Draz asked. ‘I can walk with you if you want.'

I wasn't sure why he was suddenly being civilised towards me, but I guess there was a first time for everything.

‘I'll be fine,' I said. ‘If anyone gives me a hard time I'll just pretend I know martial arts.'

Draz gave me a little grin, then jerked his chin at me in his characteristic fashion, hopped on his skateboard and bowled off.

I started to walk, hugging the shadows in case Soph's parents should drive by and see me and report back to my mum. I really really hoped she was still at the hospital, otherwise I was dead.

There was no sign of Mum's car when I got to my house. Jason was still up playing computer games when I got in. ‘She back yet?' I whispered.

‘Nope,' Jason boomed.

‘Good,' I said. ‘I'm going to bed. Don't stay up too late.'

‘You snuck out!' Jason said. His eyes were red-rimmed. ‘You can't tell me what to do!'

‘Whatever.'

I went into my room and shut the door and pulled off my party shoes. It was after eleven and I was exhausted, partly because I always felt kind of drained after using my powers, and partly because it was surprisingly hard work cleaning a house when you're on a deadline. There were some kinds of activity – playing sport for instance – which seemed to tap into my powers so that I had boundless energy and could keep going and going without getting tired. Cleaning, unfortunately, did not seem to be one of them.

I pulled my party top over my head – and then suddenly my bracelet began to seethe around on my wrist and my neck prickled and then a voice came through, loud and clear and acidic with fear.
Melissa! Help me!

It was Finn.

An image flashed into my mind – a garage, a house, a quiet street – and there was something about the place that looked oddly familiar, like when you're watching a show on TV and you suddenly see a street you know. But I didn't have time to think about how I knew the place. All I could think about was the fact that Finn had got himself into trouble – real trouble – and now he wanted me to come and help rescue him.

I was tempted to ignore him. I really was. He'd left me in the lurch in that stupid office – I was tempted to let him find out how it feels. Not very nice, huh, tough guy? But I couldn't just abandon him to his fate. I had come perilously close to being neutralised by the forces of order and I knew what it felt like to be in that crushing, deadening grip, to feel yourself slipping into that silent darkness. Finn was trouble, and I was almost sure he'd brought this on himself. But there was no way I could ignore a summons like that, even if I'd wanted to. It'd be like trying to ignore the fact that your hair was on fire. He'd called me, so in spite of everything, I had to go.

I put on comfy shoes and a warm jumper and my puffy coat and considered whether I should try and make a Melissa-shaped lump in my bed in case Mum came home and checked on me. But really, what was the point? No-one was going to fall for that. So I decided to just abandon myself to fate and climb out the window.

I ran out onto my street and let my powers guide me towards Finn. The summons had set my powers alight and I ran and ran as my lungs unfurled and the blood started to pump and my legs slipped into a rhythm and the distance began to unfold beneath my running feet.
The powers of destruction flowed through me and lifted me until there was no me left at all, I was just a ribbon of fire running through the streets in the cold darkness of the winter night, ready to strike.

It wasn't until I got close to my goal that my earlier misgivings began to return. The streets were starting to look familiar. Hadn't I been here before? I was getting close now, very close. I turned down a quiet street filled with Californian bungalows, and at last I realised where I was.
A station wagon in the driveway. The mother taking her little girl to her ballet lesson.
I felt a horrible ripple of apprehension run through me. It couldn't be the same agent of order, could it?

It was.

As I got closer I spotted two figures in the garage next to the house, harshly illuminated by a single hanging bulb. The car was missing and I could see the garage was filled with tools and boxes of stuff and bikes and canoes. There was Finn, and there was the young mum, wearing a comfy cardy and ugg boots, standing there facing each other, like they'd been interrupted in the middle of a very intense conversation.

This was not quite what I'd been expecting, and I hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do.

‘Hey Mel,' Finn said, without turning his head. He sounded easy and relaxed and not in imminent peril at all. ‘This is Alice.'

I saw Alice look quickly and assessingly in my direction before flicking her eyes back to Finn.

‘What's going on?' I asked.

‘Well,' Finn said, smiling a not very nice smile, ‘she's
trying to neutralise me and I'm trying to neutralise her, and up until a minute ago we were pretty evenly matched. But now that you're here it looks like the game's up.'

Finn's summons had sounded urgent – desperate. I'd thought he was about to be neutralised. But the Finn I saw now wasn't even slightly desperate. He was cool as a cucumber.

And I realised he'd just been
pretending
to be frightened in order to get me here. He must have known he wouldn't get me here any other way.

And now that I was here, what did he think I was going to do? Did he really think I'd help him take down an agent of order? My powers were buzzing in my head like a swarm of angry bees, making it difficult to think straight. But no, I reminded myself. This wasn't what I was about. This wasn't the sort of thing I ever wanted to do. I didn't want to start attacking the other side in their homes. I'd made it quite clear I wanted no part of that.

But my powers had other ideas. Once they got started, the forces of destruction had a kind of momentum of their own and now that I was here, with my powers blazing and Finn standing beside me emitting destructive energy like a radioactive space monster, it was much harder to hold onto all the things I thought and believed when my powers
weren't
active, like for instance it was
wrong
to hunt down people in cold blood.

I stood there, struggling, trying to keep my powers down, and I saw Finn turn to look at me, expectant and annoyed – and as soon as his attention wavered, Alice bolted.

‘You're useless!' Finn shouted at me, as he started chasing Alice up the street.

Ugg boots are not good for running in and before Alice had got a hundred metres, Finn had pounced on her and brought her to the ground like a cheetah tackling an antelope.

‘Stop it!' I shouted.

Finn turned towards me, his face distorted by the destructive force surging through him, and as I saw the naked violence in his face I wondered how I'd ever thought he was beautiful. ‘You're a destroyer,' he said, as he gripped Alice's neck and pressed her to the ground. ‘You don't get to choose. Now help me.'

Alice looked up at me with a face filled with pain and terror. ‘You don't have to do this,' she said. ‘If you let me go, I can help you.'

‘She's the enemy,' Finn said. ‘Let's finish her.'

‘Help me how?' I asked.

‘Any way you like,' she said.

‘Can you take me off the database?'

‘Yes, if that's what you want.'

‘You're wasting time,' hissed Finn. ‘She can't make your file disappear. Their backups are too good.'

‘All I have to do is file a report that I've neutralised you,' Alice said. ‘Your file will be deactivated and you'll be free.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘Do it.'

Finn stared at me. ‘If you think I'm letting her go, you're crazy. She's the enemy, Melissa.'

But there was one more thing I wanted to find out from Alice. ‘I'm already on your database – I've been on
it for months. If you knew where to find me, why didn't you come after me?'

‘I don't make those sorts of decisions. I couldn't say for sure. But we were probably hoping you'd lead us to the Citadel.'

‘What's the Citadel?' I asked.

‘It's your headquarters,' said a voice. ‘Are you saying you've never heard of it? Apparently it's well worth a visit.'

I turned to see a man walking towards us with a big, lean, hungry-looking Doberman on a leash. The dog was straining on his collar as if he was dying to jump up and tear my throat out. The man wrapped the leash an extra time around his fist to keep the dog in check.

‘Now this,' he said, ‘is an interesting situation. There's two of you and there's two of us. Now what do we do?'

‘Look,' I said, ‘we can all just walk away. There's no harm done. My colleague and I' – where had I come up with an expression like that? – ‘can just leave here now and we can all pretend we never saw each other, okay?'

‘Forget that,' Finn spat. ‘I'm taking her out.'

‘No!' I shouted.

But it was too late. The dog-walker let go of the leash as he lunged at Finn, and the dog hurled itself directly at my head. It was lean and springy and made entirely of teeth and muscle and every fibre of its doggy being was dedicated to ripping me to pieces. I kicked and punched and fought it with all my might as I struggled to keep those jaws from closing around my arm or my throat or my head. Somehow I managed to get free of it, and I started to run, with the dog slavering and snarling and
snapping at my heels. And then suddenly I found myself staring into the headlights of an oncoming car and the driver was honking on the horn and I swerved right and the dog swerved left and the car screeched to a stop and the driver leapt out and grabbed the dog's trailing leash and slammed the car door shut on the leash so the dog was trapped. It hurled itself to the end of its leash, barking like it was going out of its mind, but the leash held firm. I was safe.

‘Are you okay?'

I was still replaying that astonishing rescue in my head – the speed, the fearlessness, the snapping jaws, the quick reflexes.

‘Melissa, are you okay?'

It was Ben. Ben was there. Ben had come to my rescue.

‘I'm fine,' I said.

‘Then come on,' he said, and started to run.

In the headlights I could see three figures: Finn, Alice, the Dogwalker. The two agents of order had Finn pinned and he was slowly sagging to the ground.

‘Let him go!' Ben called.

They turned to look at him with wide, dazzled, otherworldly eyes. Ben reached for my hand. ‘I said, let him go,' he said.

I took his hand and I felt the air crackle as our powers leapt up. The air around us seemed to sizzle and quiver as his powers merged with mine like two fire fronts and blazed up into a huge conflagration. The two agents stared back at us and I could feel the force of their will as it pushed back against ours. Order:
chaos. Two opposing forces, equally matched, pushing and resisting.

‘We don't have any argument with you,' I said. ‘Just let him go. He'll be out of this town tomorrow.'

They had no reason to trust or believe us. With Finn we had the advantage over them. Without Finn we were equally matched. We were two implacable foes caught up in a struggle that was as old as the world. The white circle were ruthless and unyielding and unforgiving. They'd never back down and they'd never give up. Or at least, that was the version I'd been sold by Finn. This strategy wouldn't work – it couldn't work – they would never surrender and we were going to have to fight our way out of this. My powers rushed up and swirled around my head, but just as I was about to disappear inside the rush of it all I heard Alice say, ‘All right,' and take her hand from Finn.

The Dogwalker did the same and the two of them took a step back. Finn collapsed and lay gasping on the ground.

Ben let go of my hand and the dizzying spiral of our combined powers began to sink back to manageable levels.

‘If you try that again,' Alice told Finn, ‘we will neutralise you.'

Finn spat and groaned and didn't say anything.

‘What did you do with my dog?' asked the Dogwalker.

Ben turned and pointed to the car where the furious dog was still half-throttling itself as it lunged in our direction.