The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (10 page)

“
Hey, what’s wrong with
her?” someone said from a nearby table.

Haven tried to run, but her legs
wouldn’t move. She tried to call for help but her voice caught in
her throat.

She looked down in horror as a bright
blue ball of light formed around her right hand.

Not
here
, she thought.
Not now
.

Another sphere of light grew from the
palm of her other hand until it completely encompassed her wrist
and fingers. It looked as if she had stuck her hands into two large
balls of blue light. Haven tried to run again, then realized that
her feet weren’t touching the ground. She floated into the air and
hovered next to a table, still rising toward the
ceiling.

The students in the cafeteria screamed
and backed away. Several of them held up food trays for
protection.

The blue light from Haven’s hands
turned to flames and spread to cover her entire body, like fire
crawling over gasoline-soaked wood. She felt a tingling sensation
on each of her shoulder blades and looked behind her as two huge
wings of blue energy unfolded from her back. The tips of the wings
touched the ceiling and burned black holes into its smooth
surface.

In the shiny plastic reflection on the
bottom of the food trays that were being held up for protection,
Haven saw a blue angel hovering above the tables of the cafeteria.
Her hair floated around her head as if she were submerged in calm
water.

Her vision filled with light and she
reached up to feel the energy pulsing from her eyes. The flames
covering her body cracked like lightning and whipped back and forth
violently—a thousand dancing snakes made of blue fire.

Haven’s back arched and she screamed.
A flat circle of blue energy shot out from the middle of her body.
Nearby students dove to the ground as the ring expanded and passed
overhead. It shattered every window in the room and burned into the
walls, leaving behind a black strip that ran completely around the
inside walls of the cafeteria.

By that point the students no longer
cared to see what happened next. They pushed each other out of the
way in a mad scramble to leave the cafeteria.

The blue energy faded from Haven’s
vision. Darkness clouded her sight and she felt weak. Her body
dropped from the air and fell to the hard ground. She looked up at
the ceiling until the world around her faded to black.

14

C
olton sat with Reece in the back of a dark SUV and fidgeted
nervously with the window controls.

“
I still don’t get why
they won’t let us roll the windows down,” he said.

“
Who cares?” said Reece.
He settled into his plush leather seat and leaned it as far back as
it would go, then folded his arms behind his head and kicked off
his shoes. “Stop worrying. I trust the man completely.”

Alistair was with the driver in the
front of the SUV behind a partition of black glass that separated
the cab from the rest of the vehicle. Colton hadn’t been introduced
to the driver; he and Reece were ushered into the SUV as soon as
they walked out of the abandoned building.

He had no clue where they were at that
moment, and Alistair hadn’t spoken to them in over an hour. Colton
flicked the window switch and sank back into his seat.

The rear section of the SUV had been
made up to look more like a limousine than an off-road vehicle. A
bench lined the very back and two swiveling leather recliners took
up the remaining space. There were two LCD screens mounted into the
paneling, one on each side of the driver’s glass partition, but
neither Colton nor Reece had been able to figure out how to turn
them on.

Reece fell asleep shortly after that,
leaving Colton to wonder if he had made the right choice in leaving
everything behind. He owned a dresser full of clothes and a few
odds and ends, but nothing that he felt genuinely distressed about
walking away from. He would have liked to tell his boss he was
going away, but figured that he might be back in only a day or two
if Alistair’s little adventure turned out to be a bust.

An hour later, the SUV slowed to a
stop. Colton reached over and punched Reece in the shoulder until
he woke up. The front passenger door opened, then closed. Footsteps
crunched on loose gravel toward the back of the SUV, then one of
the side doors opened and blinding morning sunlight poured into the
vehicle.

Alistair smiled at them. “We’re
here.”

Colton got out of the car with shaky
legs. He stretched to loosen his muscles and cracked his back. They
had parked in the middle of a huge empty lot that was paved with
black concrete and painted with bright yellow lines.

Reece hopped down out of
the SUV and whistled. “Is that
yours
?” he asked.

Colton turned around and shielded his
eyes from the sun. A small two-engine jet was waiting a hundred
feet away. Heat fog drifted out from its still-running engines,
distorting the grassy field behind it that stretched away into the
distance. The runway was in the middle of nowhere, from what Colton
could tell. There were no buildings nor any other signs of
civilization.

“
Not mine,” said Alistair.
“A little too flashy for my taste. But the owner would very much
like to meet you, Mr. Ross, and he doesn’t like to be kept
waiting.” He gestured them toward the plane.

“
Listen,” said Colton as
they walked across the pavement. “I’m gonna need some clothes, or
something, and a shower. And sleep, eventually.”

“
Understandable,” said
Alistair, nodding sincerely. “Very soon, Mr. Ross. I promise. First
you must meet the man behind the money which severed your chains
and set you free.”

Colton looked at him
hesitantly.

Alistair smiled. “A little dramatic, I
know. Forgive me. Old habits, you know.” He gestured up the stairs
that led into the plane. “Please.”

Reece hurried past and disappeared
into the plane. Colton followed after him.

“
Wow,” said
Reece.

If the inside of the SUV was a limo,
then the inside of the jet was a palace. White leather lined all of
the walls, seats, inlays, and cup holders. White pinpoints of
lights traced the aisle to the back of the plane, where they
climbed up onto the back wall and were fashioned into a complex
geometric pattern.

There was only one seat per row on
either side of the aisle, and they were so luxuriant that they put
the impressive chairs in the SUV to shame. A small black table with
a sleek LCD screen set into its surface was bolted to the floor
next to each chair.

Only one seat on the entire plane was
occupied. Halfway down, a clean-cut man sat staring at them. Colton
thought he was around fifty years old, but as Alistair ushered him
closer, he saw that the man could not have been much more than
thirty-five at the oldest. Colton couldn’t tell where he was from;
the man’s face seemed to contain elements from three or four
different ethnicities, depending on how the light was hitting
him.

“
Please, have a seat,”
said the man. His voice also belied his origins; it flowed easily
with the fused inflections of many different languages. The chair
in front of him was already turned around to face backward, so
Colton sat down.

Reece sat in the chair across the
aisle.

The door closed and the engines whined
powerfully as the jet coasted across the pavement.

“
You must be thirsty,”
said the man, turning to Reece. “Alistair, something to drink for
Mr. Ross’s friend.”

“
Thank you,” said Reece.
“This is a great plane you have here.”

The man smiled. Alistair returned
promptly and handed Reece a clear glass with clear liquid within.
Ice cubes clinked against the glass as Reece raised it
up.

“
Cheers,” he said, and
drank. “Hey, that’s pretty good. What is it? I’m not sure
I—I—”

His eyes rolled back into his head and
his body slumped down. Alistair took the drink from Reece’s hand
before he could drop it and eased him into the chair. He pulled the
seat belt across Reece’s lap and snapped it into the buckle on the
other side, then spun the chair around to face away from Colton and
the other man.

“
Hey!” said Colton,
standing up.

“
It’s alright, Mr. Ross,”
said the man in the chair. “He is simply resting. He will wake up
in several hours, feeling much better than he was before. I
promise.”

Colton looked down the plane toward
the door. The ground outside was already moving too quickly for him
to jump. He would also have to leave Reece behind, and that wasn’t
going to happen.

The man in the chair cleared his
throat. “I need to speak with you about some things that are best
not discussed with…well, with those who might not fully
understand.”

“
You friend
does
talk an awful lot,”
said Alistair.

“
Thank you, Alistair,”
said the man in the chair.

Alistair smiled and nodded at Colton,
then walked to the front of the plane and closed a partition behind
him.

“
My name is Bernam,” said
the man. “Alistair and the driver—even the pilot—work for
me.”

“
Where are we going?”
asked Colton. He slowly sat down in his chair but did not fully
relax.

Bernam smiled to show a row of perfect
white teeth, just like Alistair’s. “Montana, as my associate told
you earlier.”

“
Why?”

The nose of the plane rose in the air
and Colton leaned back into his seat to keep from falling forward.
He looked outside through one of the round windows lining the cabin
and watched the ground drop away quickly.

“
We are persecuted for our
abilities, Colton, just like everyone else who is branded as
‘different’ by conventional society.”

Colton looked at him. “So you have it,
too?”

Bernam pressed a black button set into
the panel next to his seat. “Charles, no need to panic.”

He released the button and a moment
later the voice of the pilot spoke from speakers embedded in every
headrest of each chair in the plane: “Yes, sir.”

Bernam placed his palm against a strip
of lights running along the wall next to his seat. Colton looked
around, but nothing happened. Bernam smiled.

A low hum built throughout the cabin,
seeming to come from every surface in the plane. All of the lights
dimmed and almost blinked out. The plane’s jet engines whined and
struggled to operate. The cabin shook as the plane dropped a few
feet in the air.

Bernam removed his hand from the wall
and all of the lights instantly brightened. The engines powered up
to full capacity and the plane leveled itself and continued on its
way as if nothing had ever happened.

“
What…” said Colton,
staring dumbfounded. “I can’t do anything like that.”

Bernam chuckled. “Not yet, no. But we
are the same, Colton. Our ‘gift’—for lack of a better word—is what
makes us special, what sets us apart from the rest of the world.
Would you like something to eat?”

“
What?” Colton was thrown
off by the sudden change in subject.

“
Are you
hungry?”

“
No. I mean yes, but I’m
fine.”

“
Very well. I’ll keep
going then, shall I?”

Colton nodded.

“
You are a Conduit. A
channeler, as I am. You take the energy around you and harness it
to your whim, focusing it onto a target of your
choosing.”

“
Like the
apple.”

“
I’m sorry?”

“
Nothing. It’s not
important.”

“
You can store this energy
inside of you without unleashing it, but not for long. With
training, the strongest of us can contain it for half a minute at
the most.”

Colton didn’t want to tell Bernam that
he could hold on to the energy from an apple for half an hour, if
not longer.

“
What happens if you don’t
release it?”

“
It has to go
somewhere
,” said Bernam.
“It’s like lightning in that sense, you see. If the energy is not
redistributed in time, it will take the easiest way out—through
your nervous system, internal organs, and anything else blocking
its way to freedom.”

Colton swallowed hard.

“
But don’t worry about
that,” said Bernam. “That’s what the training is for. Your limits
will be tested and you will know exactly how much you can handle at
one time.”

Colton nodded. “So, are you some kind
of a leader?”

Bernam laughed. “Not at all. I am a
businessman with a vested interest in your future. Yours and
everyone who is like you.”

“
How many are there? Like
us, I mean,” said Colton.

“
Not nearly enough. And
with the constant fighting it’s a wonder there are any left at
all.”