Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (119 page)

“How the hell do you know?” I asked.

“Because I know her, and now she knows you guys are telling the truth.”

“She needed to get blasted in the gut to know that?”

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “It worked. But she has a condition, and I think I agree with it. Call it personal insurance.”

“Insurance against what?” Teresa asked.

“A double-cross.”

“What is it?”

“Ethan’s collar stays on.”

Ethan groaned and dropped his head to rest against his knees. The fact that Teresa didn’t immediately say no told me she was going to agree, even if she didn’t want to.

“I’ll agree to it as long as Bethany understands one thing very clearly,” Teresa said.

Bethany rolled over to glare at us. “What?”

“I have no intention of double-crossing either of you. We need to work together, without threats between us. So if that collar goes off again for any reason whatsoever, I’ll take it out on Landon.”

Bethany’s eyebrows arched high. Ethan raised his head to stare at Teresa. I even gave her an openmouthed gape. Teresa didn’t threaten lightly, and I’d never heard her say something like that to another person—especially after just demanding “no threats” from Bethany. She was deadly serious, too. Not that I was going to call her on the odd behavior in front of the others. I’d just piss her off even more.

The only person in the room who actually looked relieved by her threat was Landon—maybe because he knew it would keep Bethany’s behavior in line.

I hoped.

“Deal,” Landon said.

“Good, then,” Teresa said. “How long before you’re ready to leave?”

“An hour? I need to talk to the council members first.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“I’m not sure. That we won’t be back for a while, but that their food supply isn’t going to stop.” He gave Teresa a pointed look. “Since that’s part of our deal and all.”

“It is.”

“I’ll bring your car up from the park when I come back.”

“Thank you.”

He left without a backward glance at Bethany. She turned to face the wall again.

“I brought clean clothes if anyone wants to change,” Teresa said, gesturing at the duffel on the floor near the door.

Even though the promise of a shower was only a few hours away, I didn’t relish the idea of a long drive in my mud-smeared clothes. I grabbed the duffel and went outside for privacy. I trekked far enough into the woods to feel secluded, then stripped.

I’d never been a particularly modest person until I got burned. Seeing those awful, purplish scars all over my body was like looking at a funhouse mirror image of myself and hating what I saw. The self-consciousness wasn’t as bad around some of my closest friends—hell, Ethan caught me in my underwear a month ago and I barely batted an eye—but I didn’t want anyone else to see the weakness imprinted all over my body. And I definitely didn’t want Thatcher to see it.

I slipped into a pair of clean jeans and a black T-shirt. The shirt was short-sleeved, though, and showed off the burn scars on my right arm that made the whole thing useless to my Flex powers. Powers that had always seemed pretty useless to begin with.

My dirty clothes went into the bottom of the duffel, beneath two sets of men’s clothes, in case Ethan or Thatcher felt like a costume change. Instead of going back right away, I sat on a fallen tree trunk and closed my eyes. The songs of several birds fluted through the air, each call as unique as the creature it belonged to—the rusty gate call of a grackle, the high notes of a sparrow, the four-note whistle of a chickadee.

The music was beautiful, and I allowed it to lull me for a few minutes.

Or longer, because the song was rudely interrupted by “Renee!” being shouted by Thatcher. His deep voice bounced off the trees and brush.

I stood and met him at the edge of the woods. I guess I’d spaced out a bit, because Landon was back, as was our Sport.

“I was starting to worry,” Thatcher said. “You were gone for a long time.”

“Just listening to the birds,” I said in a rare feat of honesty. “I don’t get to hear them much anymore, living in the city.”

He smiled. “We’re almost ready to go.”

“Thank God.” I was more than ready to leave this small, oppressive town behind and get back to a place that didn’t remind me of my childhood every time I turned around.

As we walked back toward the shack and the cars, I looked down the road to the platform. “Think they’ll be upset if I burn that thing down before I leave?” I asked.

Thatcher followed my gaze. “I think they will.”

“Damn.”

“Something tells me it would be therapeutic for you, though.”

“Intensely.”

“When we get back to your HQ, I’ll build you one that you can tear to pieces.”

I tried to get a look at his face, to see if he was serious or not—and I just couldn’t tell.

Teresa came out of the shack, frowning. Not good.

“What?” I asked.

“I just agreed that we’d still wear blindfolds on the trip out of town,” she said. “Landon insists on protecting the town’s location until I’ve gotten them a legal supply chain.”

“How are you supposed to do that without the location?”

She shook her head. “We’ll figure it out. And the blindfolds are only for an hour or so.”

“Joy.”

The Sport was made to comfortably seat five—two in front, three on the bench seat in back. Six of us were going. Fortunately, Bethany made it easy on us. Still ticked about the orb blast, she kept up a stream of whining that would put any spoiled ten-year-old to shame, and we finally stuffed her into the rear compartment with a blanket and pillow so she could sleep. Landon was driving, and we sort of deferred shotgun to Teresa. I ended up sandwiched between Ethan and Thatcher in the backseat, and the twisty-turny back roads leading out of town had me knocking into one or the other on a pretty regular basis.

After what felt like half a day, the route straightened out and our speed picked up. Landon said we could take off our blindfolds, and I blinked at the gray, dusky world. The clouds promised rain. We were on an interstate of some sort, and after a moment we passed a road sign that clued me right in—I-76 east, the PA turnpike, heading away from the Pittsburgh area.

“When can I call HQ and let them know we’re on our way?” Teresa asked after a few miles of silence.

“When we’re closer,” Landon replied.

We tried making casual conversation, but no one seemed to know what to talk about. I amused myself by watching the landscape as we passed rest stops, small towns, suburbs, and a lot of farmland. I’d never been in Pennsylvania before, and the countryside was actually kind of pretty. Green and hilly, devoid of the scars of the War that most cities still carried, even fifteen years later.

I glanced at the clock on the dash. After one p.m. I tried to do the math in my head and figured we had another hour or so of driving before we hit New Jersey. The Sport had just rolled past the exit for Lebanon Road when Landon handed Teresa a cell phone.

“Call now,” he said.

Teresa took the phone and plugged in a number.

And that’s when the world literally turned upside down.

Thirteen

Burn Card

E
veryone except Bethany was wearing a seat belt when the Sport went into an unexpected barrel roll across two lanes of traffic, flipped over the guardrail, and then slid down the side of an embankment into a field—all things I processed after the fact. During the fact, I had both hands braced on the ceiling so I didn’t slide out of my lap belt. I was probably one of the people screaming. I know Bethany yelled a lot between landings.

The Sport came to a jolting halt, still upside down. For a split second, there was total silence. I didn’t hear a damned thing, not even my own heartbeat.

Then the world exploded in noise. People talking, tires squealing, metal thudding, something else hissing. I was keenly aware of soreness between my shoulder blades, but couldn’t tell if it was whiplash or if someone had hit me.

“What the hell?” Ethan asked. “Anyone hurt?”

“Fuck, yes!” Bethany whined from the back. “Shit.”

“We’re okay up here,” Teresa said. She tried to angle back to see us, her face half hidden by a curtain of purple-streaked hair. “You guys?”

“Okay,” Thatcher said, just as I said, “Peachy.”

“Did something hit us?” Ethan asked. “Landon?”

“I’m not sure,” Landon replied in a shaky voice. “It was like we hit a ramp or something, only nothing was in the road.”

“We need to get out of the car,” Teresa said. “Right now.”

Ethan undid his seat belt first, then landed on the ceiling in an awkward pile. He shoved at the door while I unbuckled and executed a much more graceful landing, thanks to my flexible limbs. After Teresa righted herself, she blasted through the frame of the passenger door with a couple of orbs. In less than a minute, everyone except Bethany was out of the Sport. That’s when I took note of our path.

A few cars had stopped along the turnpike above, and several people were watching us, at least two on their phones. I rubbed at my sore neck while I turned in a circle, positive we weren’t alone. Teresa was doing the same, ignoring a cut on her forehead that was oozing blood down the center of her face toward her nose.

Landon and Thatcher went around to the back of the Sport. Together they got it open and pulled Bethany out into the grass.

“Let’s go to their HQ, he says,” Bethany whined. “It’s a good idea, he says. My big fat toe, it’s a good idea!”

Why couldn’t she have broken her jaw or something?

“Can you walk?” Landon asked.

“Yes, I can fucking walk, you jerk. Where do you want to walk to, exactly?”

“Do you guys feel—” Ethan started to ask.

Landon cried out as he was flung through the air, only to be caught by a big, well-muscled man in all black, standing a good twenty feet away.

The Recombinant clone referred to by us as Sledgehammer held Landon by the front of his shirt. The whirlwind that followed Landon’s sudden flight across the field came to a halt next to Sledgehammer—the Jasper clone.

Teresa raised both hands into the air, each one glowing with an orb. Ethan pulled the wind in around him. I stood beside them, wishing I had my damned gun. I’d been pretty useless in the first fight with the clones, and I didn’t see myself faring much better today.

Thatcher prepared to charge. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back with a terse, “Don’t.” Sledgehammer could snap his neck without thinking.

“Well, well, well,” Jasper said. He wore a patch over his left eye like a wannabe pirate. “We meet again. Some of us.”

“If you wanted to talk, you could have called,” Ethan snapped.

“And spoil the surprise?”

I didn’t see the heat blast as much as felt it charge past me, a concentration of hot air unlike anything I’d ever felt. Jasper moved just in time for Bethany’s shot to soar past him and hit a small tree that instantly burst into flames. Sledgehammer spun and threw Landon like a human shot put, sending Landon right into the burning tree. He hit with a scream and a thud.

Teresa fired her orbs. Both caught Sledgehammer in the knees, and he toppled over. Then Teresa went sailing sideways into the grass—Jasper, the speedy little bastard. Ethan caught him with a wind wall, which got Jasper to slow down to normal speed long enough for Thatcher to tackle him.

Useless in the actual fight, I yanked a blanket out of the back of the Sport, then raced toward Landon. The smell of burning wood filled the air. Smoke made my eyes sting. Landon had rolled away from the tree and was slapping feebly at a spot of fire on his pants leg. I draped the blanket over him and smothered the last of the flames. His face was streaked with ash, both cheeks red but not quite blistered. I moved the blanket to take stock of his injuries, aware of the fire nearby.

The sounds of fighting continued behind me, but my senses zeroed in on the scorched fabric on his left arm and the red, weeping flesh beneath. The arm was badly burned from wrist to elbow, but nothing else that I could see from the front. Tears streamed from his eyes, and he was gasping for air—not good.

“Gonna roll you over a little,” I said. “I need to see your back.”

Landon nodded, and in that moment, he didn’t seem eighteen. He didn’t look older than twelve, and my heart broke a little bit for him. He was just a kid, and he was suffering and scared.

And he was about to suffer a little bit more. I slid my arm beneath his shoulders and lifted. Stretched my neck out enough to get a look at his back. The shirt was burned in several places, the skin blistered all over. Worse, though, was the piece of tree protruding from between two ribs on the left side. Cold fingers crept up my spine. The wound wasn’t bleeding heavily, but God only knew the damage it had done internally.

“Landon!”

Thatcher skidded to an ungraceful stop next to us, then dropped to his knees hard enough that I heard one crack. He had a red mark on his temple and another under his right eye. I looked past him. Teresa, Ethan, and Bethany were together by the Sport, all three a little frazzled and grass-stained. The clones were nowhere in sight.

“Did we lose again?” I asked.

If a thumbs-up could be sarcastic, Ethan managed it.

“How bad is it?” Thatcher asked.

“He has a piece of shrapnel in his back,” I replied.

“Hurts to breathe,” Landon said on a wheeze. “Want to cough.”

“Don’t cough,” Thatcher said. He cupped Landon’s jaw in the palm of his hand, his face a study of fierce determination. “You might have a punctured lung, so don’t cough. Try not to move.”

Landon blinked his understanding.

“He needs a hospital.”

“If he goes to a hospital, they’ll arrest him,” Bethany said. The others had gathered around. She looked battered and tired, but she was on her feet.

“If he doesn’t go, he’ll die,” Thatcher snarled.

“No hospital,” Landon said. “Please. Dad.”

Thatcher wilted. “I can’t let you die.”

Ethan crouched next to me. “I can try flying him back to HQ.”

“Can you fly that far with another person?” Teresa asked.

“I haven’t tried this kind of distance before, so I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”

“What about the wood in his back?” I asked. “What if it shifts during flight?”

“Take it out,” Bethany said. “I’ll cauterize the wound so he doesn’t bleed to death.”

Landon groaned, probably having the same mental image I did of her searing his flesh with her powers.

“I don’t know—” Thatcher said.

Landon grabbed at his leg with one hand. “Please. Let her. We’ll fly.”

Something in the finality of his decision snapped the rest of my world back into sharp focus. I saw the burning tree, smelled the burning wood, saw the burnt skin. Tendrils of dread curled around my spine and into my stomach, pulling everything tight. I scrambled away from it all, my eyes blurring with tears. Everything around me was on fire, and I had to get away, get free of it before it consumed me.

Before I was burned alive, too.

“Renee?”

A warm hand touched my bare arm, jolting me back to awareness. Teresa’s concerned, blood-streaked face filled my vision. I was sitting down, my back to the side of the Sport, an empty, rolling field in front of me. I didn’t recall moving this far, or sitting down, or really much of anything in the last couple of minutes. God, I really needed to get this . . . whatever it was, under control.

“You with me?” Teresa asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. I didn’t convince myself, either. “Fuck, I hate fire.”

“I know. Ethan and Landon are gone.”

“Already?”

Teresa blinked, but didn’t say anything. Guess I was out of it for longer than I’d thought. “I’m sure the police will be here any moment to find out what happened. Right now we’re going with ‘unknown Metas’ as the enemy.”

I snorted. “I can see it now. Six Metas handed their asses by two, film at eleven.”

“Bastards had the element of surprise.”

“We still lost. Again.”

“We’ll beat them eventually.”

“I’m glad you believe that.”

Her determination cracked briefly. “I have to.”

I pulled her into a hug, grateful to have her here and not asking questions. Maybe I’d tell her about the fire and the compound one day, but not here. Not now. “How are we going to get home? The one person who could have flipped the Sport back over is airborne and out of range.”

“Working on it.”

Goodie.

•  •  •

Turns out that the Pennsylvania State Police don’t like Metas very much, and they were more than eager to help us get on our way. In less than an hour, we’d secured a rental car and were back on the turnpike, heading east. Teresa looked kind of pale after our latest encounter with the clones, and Thatcher hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car in a decade and a half, so I was driving. Bethany stayed blessedly silent in the backseat with Thatcher.

We hadn’t found any decent clues about the direction the clones had gone, or how they’d been traveling. Jasper was thin and wiry, and even at super-speeds, I couldn’t imagine him carrying Sledgehammer around. It was like trying to imagine a ten-year-old hefting a two-hundred-pound football player. The police promised to tow the Sport; we’d collect it later.

Teresa managed to find one working phone in the wreck and she called ahead to let HQ know we were alive, but that Ethan was coming in with an injured Meta. She kept the conversation brief and professional—my guess was she was talking to Marco. We made the drive home in a haze of silent wariness, everyone on the lookout for another sneak attack.

I don’t know how I kept us on the road. Halfway home, the enormity of what happened on the roadside hit me. My hands didn’t shake, but I felt the tremors deep in my bones. If the entire quartet of clones had been there they could have easily killed us all. We were trapped in that vehicle for nearly a full minute—more than enough time to blow it up or crush it into tiny bits. Instead, they waited for us to get out, and then they tried to kill Landon.

Why him?

I didn’t dare broach the question with Bethany in the car. The last thing we needed was for her to freak out in an enclosed space. Once we were back on the island, I’d ask Teresa her thoughts. Most likely, the frown lines on her forehead were because she was already pondering the question—she’s smart like that.

The only thing I knew for sure was that the Overseer was going to find out very soon that the kids were with us—if he or she didn’t know already. Maybe Uncle, too, if they weren’t the same person.

Bethany eyeballed the puddle-jumper with disgust before she climbed on board. Gage and Sebastian were waiting near the helipad when we landed back on Governors Island, and questions started flying before most of us had both feet on the ground.

“Are you all right?” “Is anyone else injured?” “What happened out there?” “Is that blood?” I kind of lost track of which one was asking what.

Teresa made a time-out gesture with her hands, which shut them both up pretty effectively. “I want all Alpha leaders in the conference room in thirty minutes for a briefing,” she said. “If Dr. Kinsey can’t be there, I want him on video feed, since this involves the clones.”

“Done,” Sebastian said.

She turned to face Thatcher, who kept looking at the HQ building like he wanted to storm it—and he probably did. Landon was inside, condition unknown. “I need you at that meeting.”

“As long as Landon is stable, I’ll attend,” Thatcher said stonily.

“Good enough.”

“Can we go see him now?” Bethany said in a familiar whiny tone. Several new bruises had darkened on her face and arms during the trip home. She’d taken a pretty good banging when the Sport tumbled over.

“Yes, Renee can take you to the infirmary. You need to get looked over, anyway.”

Bethany grimaced, but didn’t argue (for once).

I groaned inwardly, even though getting volunteered as tour guide shouldn’t have surprised me. I was Thatcher’s official babysitter, after all.

“What about you?” Gage asked, pointing to the bandage at Teresa’s hairline.

“It’s a cut, it’s fine.”

I didn’t wait around to see if the cut turned into a larger argument. I headed toward the HQ entrance, not bothering to check to see if Bethany and Thatcher were following me. We got a few speculative looks as we marched down the main corridor, mostly from the youngest Metas in residence. Everyone knew about Thatcher by now, but Bethany was new and therefore interesting.

The infirmary waiting room was mostly empty. Only Ethan and Aaron were there, pacing in one corner of the room. The two exam cubicle curtains were open, their areas empty, which meant all of the doctoring was happening in the rear rooms, hidden behind a large swinging door. Conversation stopped abruptly when we walked in, and I couldn’t even appreciate the awesomeness of the glare Aaron shot at Bethany because she bolted for the door at the rear.

“Hold on a second,” Ethan said. He got in her way before she could burst into the back and interrupt something important.

She pulled her right hand back like she was going to hit him, but Thatcher snagged her wrist. “How’s Landon?” Thatcher asked.

“He’s being operated on,” Ethan replied. “Dr. Kinsey said the wood shard nicked his lung, so he has to repair that before he can property treat the burns.”