Hunted (26 page)

CHAPTER 40

“Caitlyn.”
I smell lemon and tobacco.
“Caitlyn, wake
up, honey. I have something you need to hear.”
Dad. I open my eyes to see him smiling down at me, his body glowing with light. He rubs his cheek against mine and I feel the rough bristles that used to make me laugh.

I smile, though I’m so weary my bones ache.

“You are not to blame for Daniel being kidnapped, or
for my death. You couldn’t have stopped the Authority, not
then. And I was doing what every good father does. I was
trying to make the world a better place for you to grow up
in.”

He pulls my chin up, makes me look at him.
“Ilene
had her eye on you and Daniel both—but Daniel was flattered, and he was more malleable, so she chose him. It’s
not your fault.”

A lightness moves through me.
“Thank you,”
I whisper.

“You know I speak the truth. I love you, pumpkin. I’ll
always be watching out for you.”
He looks over his shoulder, as if listening to something 338

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I can’t hear. He turns back to me and touches my cheek with his roughened hand.
“It’s time for you to go back now—so
listen carefully. You saved a lot of lives today. I’m very
proud of you. I want you to always remember that.”

“Caitlyn!”
It’s Mom’s voice, scared, almost panicked.

Dad looks down past me, then back at me again, his eyes glistening.
“You have to go now.”

“But I have so much I want to say to you! So much I
want to ask and find out.”

“We’ll talk another time, I promise. But you’re worrying your mother.”
He clears his throat.
“Tell her I love her.

I love you both.”

I put my arms around his neck and kiss his stubbly cheek.
“I love you, too.”

“I know you do, sweetheart. Now go.”
He gently pushes me. The light sucks me down faster and faster, until I thump back into my body. Into the pain.

I gasp for air and groan, open my heavy eyelids.

Mom is leaning over me, her pale face weary, her bloodshot eyes terrified. “Oh Caitlyn!” she sobs, gripping my hand. Voices filter through the room but I can’t make sense of them.

. . . “unexplained aging”. . . “deaths and riots” . . .

Mom shuts off her radio and then there’s silence.

“Dad says he loves you,” I gasp out.

Mom’s eyes well up, and a tear slides down her cheek.

She squeezes my hand tighter, cramping it.
“Don’t you ever
scare me like that again. I need you here. The world needs
you too much for you to use yourself up like that.”
I grin lopsidedly at her.
“Okay, Mom. I’ll try not to.”
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Her mind-voice is the sweetest music I ever heard and it’s moving through my heart. I feel a total connectedness and love, and I don’t know how I got through all that time without it.

Mom strokes my forehead with her cool hand.
“My
love never went away. You just couldn’t hear it.”
Her touch pulls me the rest of the way back.

I’m exhausted from the battle and it’s still hard to breathe; it’s like having a gravestone on my chest. But I struggle not to let them see, to keep them from worrying too much. “We stopped him!” I croak, straining to see Alex and Rachel.

“
You
stopped him.” Alex’s voice is firm. “All we did was support you.”

He lets go of my hand and I see that my dad’s copper ring is cracked and red with my blood. It slides off and falls to the floor. Alex picks it up and, on one of his fingers, I notice a deep imprint the shape of my ring; his skin looks bubbly and pink.

“Alex, your hand!” I say.

He looks down. “All that copper you were wearing—

your ring, the bracelets, the necklace—they burned so hot, they were glowing like the sun.”

He cares about me so much he didn’t let go, even though it must have hurt like hell. Gratitude and guilt fill me. “Alex, that must have hurt!”

I glance at my hand. There’s a hole burned into my finger the shape of the ring—pulpy flesh carved away down to white bone, the skin around it seared black. My wrist looks as bad and I know my neck must, too, all from the copper 340

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that protected me even as it burned. It doesn’t hurt, although I know it should. I swallow, look away.

Mom hands me three pain pills. “Swallow,” she says.

She gently draws the bracelets off me, trying not to hurt me, then the necklace, too. Then she takes a handkerchief out of her purse, soaks it at the water cooler, and lays it on my finger and wrist. Everyone is quiet—too quiet.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “What’s everybody so glum about?”

“Besides the fact that you almost killed yourself?”
Mom snaps, her fear and love fierce around me.

I’d missed our connection so much. Hot tears spill down my cheeks.

I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. It’s only the pain digging at my flesh that keeps me from laughing with relief. I actually did it! I stopped Daniel and the Authority.

At least for now.

I’m so weary, I feel myself drift.

Voices filter through my mind, and then suddenly I hear Ilene’s—sharp and cold.
“You stupid worthless in-competent failure! You were like my son! I gave you everything—and still you managed to mess this up.”

“You took me from my family!”
Daniel yells.
“You tortured me!”

“I trained you. Do you think you’d be half so powerful as you are if it weren’t for me, you ungrateful sniveling
twit? All I asked was that you bring your sister into the fold.

And you couldn’t even do that!”

“You’ll never get her,”
Daniel says.
“She’s stronger
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than you are. Stronger than any of us. Her soul’s pure—un-like yours or mine.”

“I can’t believe I wasted years on you! You are not
worthy of my sight. I forbid you to take the serum until you
redeem yourself. Let’s see how well you do without having
your powers enhanced, especially once the pain of with-drawal sets in.”

“Ilene, don’t do this,”
Daniel pleads.

“It’s better than you deserve,”
she snaps.
“Now be
gone.”

Their voices waver, and then Daniel disappears.

Daniel, oh, Daniel.
I want to cry again, but I am too tired and empty.

My mind aches and there’s a fluttering sound in my ears.

Ilene appears before me, her eyes large and innocent, her mouth curved in a gentle smile. Love exudes from her like a perfume.

I look at the others, but I know no one else sees her.

I want to push her away and yell at her for the way she treated Daniel, but my mind feels fogged by her love.

She smiles wider, her eyes so intense I can’t look away.

Her steady gaze reminds me of the way my dad used to look at me, like I was the only one who mattered.

I know it isn’t real. But I can’t look away, can’t stop the sudden longing for her acceptance and approval.

Ilene’s eyes deepen to draw me in.
“You impress me,
Caitlyn. You’re more powerful than any of us thought. You
stopped Daniel, at least for now, even after all my training.

But you can make it right. Help us make the world a place
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where all Paras can live freely. As a token of our goodwill,
we’ve destroyed the video that small-minded principal
made.”

“Thank you. . . .”
I can’t seem to connect my thoughts.

If I could just clear my head . . .

“You know your father wanted you to be just as free
as the Normals. That was his vision.”
She reaches into her pocket and draws out a glowing vial and a syringe.
“But
you’re not powerful enough to do it on your own. If you
want to save Paras and Normals—if you really care about
other people as you say you do—then I can help you do
that.”

The vial pulses in her hand like liquid starlight. It sings to me, a low humming like my dad humming me to sleep.

But it’s not my dad. It doesn’t sound like him.

I blink, shrinking back.
“Is that what made Daniel so
strong?”
It must be the serum they were talking about.

Ilene strokes the vial with her fingertip.
“It enhances
Paranormal power. We developed it ourselves.”
Her voice coats me like honey, sweet and thick, filling my mind.

“Join us and you’ll be part of something much bigger
than yourself. You’ll be part of the new era. We have power
beyond anything your father ever dreamed of. We have people in every government around the world, in every organization that matters. There’s no end to what we can do.”
Dad dreamed of a world where we could live freely—

but he also taught me that
all
life is precious, Normal or Paranormal, and that we’re all in this together. Not like the world Ilene and Daniel envision.

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Cheryl Rainfield

Ilene’s eyes are almost glowing, like the vial is melting into her. I tear my gaze away and draw on my own energy.

I realize now that Ilene is an empath whose gift is enhanced by glamour. I don’t know why I never realized that before. I saw, through Daniel, what she was capable of. I stare at her and suddenly I feel it—just the faint push to not question her, and to want her love. She’s fine-tuned her technique, but she’s not powerful. Not like Daniel and me.

When I look back, her smile is dimmer, her lips red slashes. And beneath the kindness in her eyes is a coldness deeper than the Arctic ocean, trying to pull me under.

I think about how desperate Daniel was, about those coiling strands that grew with his emotion, and about Ilene’s coldness inside him.

“Your drug increases the user’s power,”
I send, pointing to the glowing vial.
“But it also harnesses them to you,
doesn’t it? It gives the Authority some kind of control over
the Paras who take it.”

Ilene blinks, a shutter snapping shut behind her eyes, and I know I’m right.

“I don’t want it,”
I say firmly.
“Not now, not ever. I
don’t need your kind of power.”

“Oh, but you will, dear. You will,”
Ilene says, and then she’s gone.

I shiver, staring at the place where she’d been, then rub my arms to warm myself. I know I made the right decision, but I’ll have to train myself and get ready for when they come back. Because they
will
come back; I’m sure of it.

And when they do, I’ll fight them just as hard as I did today.

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As long as I’m here—with all the people who helped me—

they’ll have fierce opponents.

I look at the faces around me—Mom, Alex, and Rachel—and feel the love and worry pouring off them.

“You didn’t tell me what’s wrong,” I remind them.

“Daniel’s gone,” Mom says. “I felt him leave. Like he teleported out of here.”

A Para with the ability to control people, charged up on some drug, and who can disappear at will—it’s scary. But the Normals who warped his mind and soul—they’re even more frightening. “At least everyone’s all right. That’s the most important thing.”

Alex rubs his hand against the carpet and Rachel looks away.

“Everyone
is
all right?” I say.

“Honey, you were out for a while, and—”

“Mr. Arnold is dead,” Alex says.
“I know you want the
truth.”
“Ten students and two teachers are in comas. Four had sudden bleeding and were taken to the hospital. People aged before our eyes—though after your ring burned bright, people began to look normal again. But who knows what the strain did to them. And that’s just what happened here, in our school.”

“And the news . . .” Rachel hesitates.

“Tell me,” I say, my voice flat. I know some of it already.

“Troopers started gunning each other down—which I guess isn’t a loss. But bystanders—just regular people—

got caught in the crossfire all over the city and even farther 345

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away. A lot of people are injured . . . or dead. And that started the riots.” Rachel looks down at the carpet.

“Riots?” I close my eyes.
Not again. I can’t live
through it again.
Regular people trying to kill us, not just troopers. Mom and me hiding in our car, living on hand-outs and in fear, not daring to stay in one place for even a few days.

“Someone told reporters that a Para in this school started it all,” Mom says, expressionless; I know she’s figured out that Daniel’s the one who leaked that to the troopers and the press.

I can hear the helicopters now, their blades beating the air.

I feel numb inside.

No one should have died. And now there are riots again. I should have just given myself up—

“We all might be dead if you had,”
Mom sends.
“Don’t
you even go there, Caitlyn. You did the right thing. Daniel
had to be stopped.”

I feel the pain in her mind-voice, and the great truth.

I’m so grateful she sees him for who he is now.

“Emily—do you know how Emily is?” Rachel asks anxiously.

I reach for Emily’s thought-patterns. She’s tired, like everyone else, exhausted even, but her energy’s starting to come back. Energy and worry. “She’s okay,” I rasp out.