Enduring Light (9 page)

Charlotte started their horse forward at a slow gait.

Calvin said, “All kidding aside, Charlotte cannot be expected to make us water.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because there is nowhere to pull energy from. You need all of your own energy saved. Besides, you know as well as I do the danger you are in from Blake.”

“Hey, I can—”

“Let me finish, love.” He stroked her arm.

“Fine.”

“We will need your energy if we meet trouble. We need you to save it in case of an emergency. We have to find this scroll.”

“I know, but I can still make water if we need it.”

“I am aware you are capable, but we cannot rely on it. We have to prepare.”

“He’s right.” I hated saying that.

“Prepare? Like refill our water skins?” she asked.

“And mentally get ready for it. A lot of it is mental. That desert is huge, and we do not know exactly where we are going,” Henry added.

Charlotte got her in-the-zone expression. “All right, I can do that.”

“Of course you can. It is your Guardians I worry about.” Calvin rubbed her shoulder.

Did he have to touch her constantly? Wasn’t it bad enough they were sharing a horse? I was about to come up with a reply when his laugh let me know he was joking.

Chapter Eleven

Kevin

Why did Samantha bring out the blubbering idiot in me? I couldn’t seem to go ten minutes without putting my foot in my mouth. Had I really called myself her boyfriend and then tried to cover it up with a joke?
 
I leaned back in my seat. Our plane would be landing in Fairbanks in less than an hour. The last time I’d been there, I’d been worrying about Charlotte’s transition back to Charleston. Life had been so much simpler then.

Samantha mumbled something before laying her head on my shoulder. I tried not to breathe any more than necessary. She may have been sleeping, but I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to have her close. Add to blubbering idiot that she brought out the hopelessly pathetic part of me too. I’d cared about a girl before, but not like with Samantha.

I closed my eyes, trying to savor the seemingly normal moment before I faced reality again. I still had no clue how to find the Onyx or how it was going to help us. I also had no idea what I was going to say to my father when I saw him.

“Hey, Brutus. It’s time to go.”

I opened my eyes to find Monty smiling at me—or maybe at the way I’d fallen asleep with Samantha leaning on me. I gently shifted Samantha to wake her up. She looked at me groggily, seeming confused for a moment, then she pulled her bag out from under the seat in front of her.

Talen was already a few people ahead of us in the line to get off the plane. Monty left room so Samantha and I could get into the aisle, and we waited for our turn to exit the plane. The airport was quiet. Monty said Dad was picking us up outside baggage claim. No one had checked bags, so we headed straight to the exit. I held open the door for Samantha and could tell she was really nervous. Determined to learn from my experiences, I didn’t ask her why.

“Kevin!” Dad called from across the median.

We crossed over to where he stood next to his Yukon. “Hey, Dad.” I gave him a small hug. “This is Samantha and Talen.”

Dad nodded at them. “Nice to meet you both.”

We cut the greetings short when we noticed an employee coming over to make us move.

I gestured for Samantha to take the front but she shook her head and slipped into the back between Monty and Talen. I shrugged and sat in the front seat.

“How was the trip?” Dad asked as though we had just been on a normal vacation or something.

I figured it would be a long trip, so I decided to get comfortable. I pulled my wallet and cell phone out of my back pocket and placed them in the center console. “Well, no one tried to kill us or anything.”

Dad shook his head. “Glad to know you haven’t changed too much.”

“Nope. I still have my wonderful sense of humor.”

“How’s Mom?” he asked.

“She’s okay. Worried, of course.”

He pulled away from the curb. “Is Charlotte with her?”

“No. Charlotte’s off gallivanting with older boys.”

Dad turned to stare at me with his mouth hanging open.

“Watch out, Stan!” Monty yelled.

Dad faced the front just in time to narrowly avoid slamming into another car.

Monty kicked my seat.
 
“Charlotte is perfectly safe. She has her Gerard and two other Guardians with her.”

“I know you all glorify Guardians, but how am I supposed to trust my little girl with men I’ve never met?”

“You’ve met Liam.” I waited for the jaw-dropping response I knew was coming. I was pretty sure no one had told him yet.

“Liam? Liam is a Guardian?”

“Yes,” Monty answered carefully. “We’re not sure how.”

“Too bad he’s not the Gerard,” Dad mumbled.

I smiled. I was pretty sure we all wished that. Calvin wasn’t a bad guy, but we didn’t know him. He seemed so traditional, so old. If Charlotte had to be with someone, I wanted it to be Liam. I’d have never told him that, though.

“Where are we at with the Onyx, Stan?” Monty asked.

“I think I’ve finally traced the Onyx’s last known location. It’s a long drive from here, and then an even longer hike.”

“Hike? Where the hell are we going?” I asked.

“Everything I’ve found points to the Onyx being buried in Lake Davis. It’s frozen year round.”

“So we’re going to retrieve some sort of powerful rock out of a frozen lake?”

“Yes.” Monty said it resolutely, as if it were a simple errand rather than a potentially deadly task.
 

“Too bad the Essence is not here. She would be good at this,” Talen said.

As if Charlotte didn’t have enough on her plate. “Charlotte is busy with her own job.”

“Do you think they have found the scroll yet?” Samantha asked.

Monty pulled out a worn map. “I don’t know.”

“What’s that a map of?” I twisted around in my seat so I could get a better look at the browning paper. It was actually several maps in one, made up of different pieces of land all connected by dots.

Monty tilted the map to give me a better look. “It shows all the known gates between the Pact Nations and the lost world. Once we retrieve the Onyx, we’ll have to return quickly.”

“I still don’t know what we’re supposed to do with the Onyx anyway.” Like everything else, I was only told the bare minimum.

“I don’t know.” Monty’s face was blank. He couldn’t be serious.

I turned to Dad. “Do you know?”

 
“No.”

“Then why are we bothering with this?”

He didn’t take his eyes from the road. “Because all signs point to it.”

“So we hopefully don’t die finding it, then we bring it back and… what?”

“That is why we need the scroll, Kevin. The scroll will tell us.” Samantha had a way of making everything seem simple even when it wasn’t.

“What happens if Charlotte can’t get the scroll? We think it’s at Ruth’s, but what if Blake got it first?” I fiddled with the radio. There had to be something better than the commercials currently playing.

“The same can be said for the Onyx. All we can do is try.” Monty didn’t make things sound nearly as simple.

“So what do we do? Just head out into the wilderness?”

“First, we need to get everyone some gear.”
 
Dad sped up to a pass a slow car.

“Careful, Stan,” Monty said. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

Dad replied, “Driving under the speed limit would attract more attention.”

I glanced out the window. “Where are we getting the gear?”

“There’s a shop I use.” Dad slowed back down to five over the speed limit. “The owner thinks I’m bringing in some new team members for my research.”

“Will they have clothing appropriate for me?” Samantha asked.

Dad smiled into the rearview mirror. “Of course. Women are routinely part of these projects.”

“Oh. That is nice to hear. Only the Resistance allows women to work in nontraditional sectors. Some nations are more open, but we are ages behind.”

“Emma was surprised by how things worked here when she first came over.” My dad had never talked about how he really met Mom. The story they always fed us was that they ran into each other on the street. The real story was that she ran into his backyard.

“Did you tell them I was your son? They’re not going to buy that we’re unrelated.” Charlotte looked a lot like our mom, but I was all Dad.

“No. If he figures it out, so be it.”

“He might think you’re a weirdo for naming me Brutus.”

“Brutus?”

“Yeah, that’s the great name on the fake Monty got me. So much better than Kevin, right?”

Dad laughed. “You can drop the name when we get back on the road. I don’t think any of the caribou are going to recognize your real name.”

The stop for gear took longer than expected. I was more than happy to grab whatever worked, but of course the shopping was much more involved than that. Not only did we need clothes, but also a back-up GPS, sleeping bags, tents, and other accessories. Hours later, Dad settled the bill, and we got back on the road heading north.

Monty took the front seat, which left me in the back with Samantha and Talen. At least Samantha was in the middle. I realized once we got going that I should have offered to take the least comfortable seat, but she didn’t seem to mind.

We rode in silence until Talen said, “It looks like a storm is coming.”

Dad glanced in the rear view mirror. “It wasn’t supposed to start yet, but you may be right.”

“I am.”

Dad chuckled. “Confident, huh?”

“I am an Arco. I know snowstorms.”

“An Arco? How did I not make that connection?” Dad sounded way more excited than I would have expected.

“Do you know of my kind?”

“Yes. I’ve met several.”

Talen sat forward in his seat with his eyes wide. “Here? There are Arcos here?”

“They fled Blake. They helped me find the approximate location of the Onyx.”

“Can you lead me to them? I had no idea any of my people were living in the lost world.”

“I think there are many, but most are afraid to come out of hiding.”

Talen sat back. “They are probably ashamed of what we did.”

“You did not have a choice,” Monty said quietly.

“You always have a choice.” Talen bowed his head. “You might not want me in your vehicle, but I was one of the Arcos guarding Emma.”

“I assumed that,” Dad said slowly, “but if you’re here you must have earned Charlotte’s trust.”

Talen smiled slightly. “Yes. The Essence can read a person’s true intentions.”

Dad caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Doesn’t that explain a lot, Kevin?”