Prodigal (Maelstrom Chronicles) (21 page)

Adam reached the pod, and Claire yelled at him. “Don’t touch it, you bonehead!”

But he did. He placed his hands on a random spot on the gleaming wall and pushed.

A door slid open. Blackness roiled inside like the very first pod, but this time no naked humans stumbled out.

Shades streamed out of the vessel. Adam leaped backward, almost too late.

“Get out of there!” She whipped up her blaster arm and skidded to a stop so she could aim. She torched the shades nearest him as he stumbled.

He didn’t have the killer instinct. Didn’t use his blaster bands. He raised his hands to the shades, all right, but it wasn’t to shoot them.

She’d seen it before—shade shock. When confronted, panicked people tried to hold the entities off physically. It was a natural instinct, and it was going to get him killed.

“Ship, we have shade verification. Shades in the pod!” She charged forward. She’d never be fast enough. The shades slid easily across the snow, but it impeded Adam’s movement. “Shoot them, Adam, use the blaster!”

Behind her the Jeep roared across the bumpy ground. The thump and bash of its undercarriage was a distraction she couldn’t afford.

Adam fell into a deep drift of snow and she lost sight of him. The shades blocked her view, churning with excitement. Claire screamed her rage and started scorching the spot she’d last seen him even though she was running.

He could heal from burns. He couldn’t heal from the shade touch.

God, Adam. No
.

This couldn’t be happening.

“Get up!” She fired wildly. Her boots slipped on the icy ground. The beam hit the pod, from which shades continued to pour in an endless stream.

That same horrible noise rang through the air, but she didn’t stop to protect her ears. She screamed and couldn’t hear herself.

Adam struggled to his feet, surrounded by shades, miraculously alive. Around him, the shades had gone flat, as if deadened by his presence. How was he still standing?

And did she care?

Claire yelled again and tried to shoot her way to him. He tried to run, stumbled, and fell again.

Fucking hell! No manner of screaming she did was louder than the shriek of the silver pod.

The Jeep roared past her, shaking the ground, and cleared a small rise. It hurtled into the air and
foomped
into the snow with a huge spray of white. It jounced, too fast, across the landscape, skidding, swerving. Obadiah slammed on the brakes.

The Jeep spun into the shade pool. Obadiah’s mouth opened—presumably he was shouting—and he fumbled at his seat belt. A fucking seat belt? Claire fired at the shades around the Jeep, trying to give him a chance without blowing up their ride.

The awful noise from the pod grew. Pierced her head through and through. Her eyes watered.

But she was nearly there. Nearly there. Still firing.

The shades enveloped the front of the Jeep. Obadiah stood in the seat, tried to access the gun, but they oozed around him.

He fell off the Jeep, into the shades.

Claire blazed a path for herself through the shades and to the Jeep. She leaped, landed on the back, and grabbed the Shipborn rifle. All she had to do was pull the trigger. Her hands shook with cold and fear as the head-pounding shrill of the pod finally died away.

She fired in an arch, blasting shades like she was sweeping dirt. Humans could survive a shade touch for several seconds, but only if they could get clear. She sprayed aside shades and snow, demolishing the ground cover.

The laser fried it all.

Steam billowed. Shades keened and evaporated, their stench nauseating. They surged beneath the Jeep, trying to sneak up the sides. The rifle beam was so intense she could feel its heat on her cheeks.

Unlike Adam, Obadiah didn’t get back up. She caught a glimpse of his body, unmoving and still, before shades covered it again. Fuck.

She whirled—could see a spot on the opposite side of the horde where the shades had gone flat, but no Adam. The rifle didn’t rotate freely, and once the shades got behind her, she was in trouble.

She sizzled them off the hood, breaking the windshield into a thousand pieces. Swept left. Swept right. Still they poured from the silver pod. How many did it hold?

Her sensor continued to signal, and she was dimly aware of Ship recommending a retreat, over and over, advising her to save herself for Frances.

Frances.

She’d failed here—Obadiah was dead, Adam was probably dead, and she was about to be dead, too. She couldn’t fail her daughter or the people of Chanute.

Numb with cold, fury, and something that might have been grief, Claire focused on shooting her way out of her predicament. As long as the shades remained in a large clump, she could outrun them until reinforcements arrived.

First, though, she had to get free of them.

The Jeep was a hillock at the edge of the stinking pool of black. She pried the rifle off the tripod and scorched a clear trail toward the fencerow. But when she hurled herself off the Jeep into the smoking path, something inside her foot popped.

Hot agony lanced up her leg. She crumpled. Started rolling. Then crawling. She let go of the rifle and swept the blaster band in a circle like a lasso. She tried to scramble to her feet, but since one of them was kaput it didn’t work so great.

Her blaster band seared her arm as she maintained a continuous beam of protection, a shield of fire.

“Claire, you do not appear to have retreated,” Ship said. “Please retreat. Please. Help is coming. Please retreat.”

“I broke my fucking leg,” she snarled. “Tell Frannie her momma died killing monsters. God. Tell her I love—”

The dark, icy touch of a shade cut off anything else she’d been about to say.

…

She hurt way too much to be dead.

“Claire. Wake up. Please.” A warm hand patted her cheek. Arms held her. She wasn’t particularly cold, which was a shame. Cold would have numbed her fucking ankle.

Nope. Not dead.

She opened her eyes to see Adam’s green gaze staring down at her. He cradled her in his arms, a white ceiling above them. Smoke tickled her nostrils, as well as the lingering odor of shades. Blankets covered her and Adam both.

“What’s going on?” She tried to sit up, but wooziness rushed through her.

Adam caught her to his chest in a hug that almost hurt. “You’re alive.”

She bumped her cheek against his. The faint bristle of his whiskers abraded her reassuringly. “I gathered that. Stinks too much for this to be heaven.”

“Obadiah Gentry is dead,” he said gravely. “And the Jeep. It got shot and it won’t start.”

She pushed away so she could see his face. They were…on a couch. In somebody’s house. A fire crackled in the hearth. The air outside the blankets wasn’t frigid, but it wasn’t warm.

She examined Adam for wounds and bruises. Her head throbbed like a mother. “How are you alive? I saw you go down under the shades.”

“I think you broke your ankle. It’s crooked and weird.” Adam positioned her in the corner of the couch. Underneath the blankets, she realized her boots were missing. And her pants. And her coat. He gingerly propped her legs on cushions, and the jolt of discomfort in her ankle was only half-terrible. “I found a bottle with some aspirin in it, if you want to take them.”

“I asked you a question,” she reminded him. Her ankle could wait.

“It’s a good question,” he said after minute.

She adjusted herself into a more comfortable position. “Then give it a good answer.”

“You won’t like it.” He sagged at the end of the couch and rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s kind of fuzzy.”

She puffed out an exasperated breath. “What are you saying? More amnesia? That’s pretty convenient.”

He turned to stare at her. “I’m not trying to be convenient. I’m trying to figure out the truth. The shades were in that pod. I got touched. I felt it—I recognized it from Riverbend. Now the shades are gone.”

She thought about the last blank in his memories, from the night of the Shearer’s barn. “Did you get knocked out again?”

“Not exactly.” He fingered his scalp from front to back. “No sore spots, no blood. I’m physically drained, but not lightheaded.”

Was he hiding something or was he as confused as she felt? “How do you know the shades are gone? Did they crawl away?”

“Ship can’t sense them anywhere. They’re definitely gone, but the pod’s not.”

He was wearing an array. She touched her temple and located the sore spot where hers was missing. “I see you’re able to use a sensor array.”

“It wasn’t a problem.” He hefted a fireplace poker out of the iron rack. “Does this look like a normal poker to you?”

“What?” Confused by the abrupt topic change, she took the heavy item in her hands, weighed it, and handed it back. Soot rubbed on her skin from where he must have used it to stoke the fire. “Sure. Why?”

He nodded twice, set his fingers on either side of the poker, and bent it nearly double.

Claire straightened. “The hell?”

“Told you I was stronger than I should be.” He offered her the poker, but she waved it away. “There’s something going on with me, Claire, and it’s related to the shades—to me having been on the other side.”

She eyed him from head to toe, while considering his abilities. Various incidents drifted to the forefront of her mind—small observations, confirmations. He’d fallen beneath the shades, stood back up, fallen again. Stamina. The probability that he was fully enhanced—a Shipborn-style super soldier—made him more of an asset than she’d realized.

She felt too shitty to high five him, so she said, “It’s not shades. Sarah was just wrong about your enhancements being dormant. We can use this in our favor.”

He didn’t seem placated. “There’s no record of me having strength and stamina enhancements.”

“Says who?”

“Says Ship.” He sat down in the middle of the couch, near her knees. For a guy who’d just discovered he had superpowers, he didn’t seem pleased. She’d love to be enhanced to the point she could bend iron pokers in half. “My body was given standard enhancements so I could use Shipborn technology. I wasn’t like the angeli. They had to keep the Chosen One normal. Terran. There’s also no record of me sleepwalking.”

“Why did you ask Ship about sleepwalking?” It did seem odd that Ship wouldn’t possess information about Adam’s extensive enhancements. “Do you think you sleepwalked yourself to Sarah one night, and she souped you up?”

“I don’t know how much longer we have before they get here.” He indicated a ticking clock on the wall. “You know how I keep waking up fully dressed but totally out of it? Sleepwalking.”

“If you don’t remember it…”

He fingered a scrape on his knuckle. “I have nightmares about shades. Every damned night. Then I wake up and I’m a zombie. I feel like I do right now.” He grimaced. “It’s as if being around shades forces me into a fugue state. Entity-related PTSD? It’s possible some other things are happening, too.”

PTSD was no joke. That made sense. The rest didn’t. “Other things like what?”

Pain crossed his handsome face, etching lines in his cheeks she hadn’t noticed before. “I think I’m drawn to the shades. And this makes three times we know of, including the nexus jump, that I survived a shade touch when I shouldn’t have. How long were they all over me, Claire? Too long for me to have survived.”

“It was a battle,” she said, not wanting to hear anything else. “You lose track of time in a battle. It was probably mere seconds. Maybe your shade touches just…extend your cushion a little.”

“I get anxious around shades. Prickly. It’s hard to describe. I have a connection. It’s like they’re inside me.”

“Everyone gets anxious around shades.” She didn’t know many people who were the exact opposite of shades, but Adam would be on that list. He was so full of life, charm, and vitality—so very
not
evil—that the thought of him being connected to the shades was ridiculous.

Which was why she said, “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not inside you.”

He stared at her. “Take me seriously, Claire. Listen to me. Really listen.”

She shook her aching head. “It’s PTSD. Tracy said so. Sarah said so. And that arrogant SOB Dr. Sieders said so.”

“None of their opinions about my mental health explain how the shades disappeared today. Claire, I…”

He paused, looking uncertain. In the time she’d known him, he hadn’t been one to hesitate to say anything, even when it was absurd—like,
I’m crazy about you, Claire.

“What?” she asked, suddenly worried.

He stared at her, his green eyes intense. “I think the shades don’t affect me. I’m immune.”

“Oooookay.” The scientists said he’d been on the other side, and the only way to have survived that was a miracle. Like immunity. At the same time, if he was immune, that made him some kind of…something. “The scientists didn’t say you were immune.”

He swallowed. “I’m not only immune, but I think I made the shades go away.”

“Now you’re getting bizarre.” She could almost handle the idea that a human who’d gotten stuck in the other dimension might build up a couple of minutes of immunity to the shade touch. But a human who controlled shades? “I know you were conscious. I saw you stand. You must have gone into a berserker rage and killed them all. You have a blaster band and the rifle. Your training kicked into overdrive. It can happen, where you go on autopilot.”

She didn’t want to contemplate anything else. Jeep laser it was.

He shook his head. “It’s time we face facts. I was on the other side for two years, Claire. The scientists said I’d been transformed on a molecular level. I’m no longer human. I’m immune to shades and can possibly control them. Ship has agreed not to tell anyone yet, but we have to consider what this means.”

She nudged him with her knee. “Adam, no. You’re forgetting more important facts. Like how you constantly help people. Save people. Like how you wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly. Like how we both survived today, and it was clearly because of you.”

“Every night I dream I’m swimming in shades, and I’ve been sleepwalking. I know it,” he said, face drawn. “Where am I going? Am I helping the shades find victims?”