The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (19 page)

Haven sniffed and rubbed her nose.
“Were my parents like me?”

“
You mean did they have
their own abilities?”

“
Yes.”

“
I don’t know.”

Haven closed her eyes as the sharp
pain of a migraine suddenly flared behind her eyes. It hit her much
faster than it ever had before, driving deep into her
skull.

“
What’s wrong?” asked
Elena.

“
Just a headache,” she
said with a groan. “I get them occasionally.” Haven rubbed her
temples to try and dull the pain.

“
Those will pass. They are
quite common for Sources before they fully adjust to their new
abilities.”

Haven opened her eyes as the pain
slowly faded. She thought about everything Elena had said. “I
thought everyone’s fire was supposed to be a different color. Every
Source, I mean.”

“
Their energy,
yes.”

“
But my fire is blue, like
yours.”

“
I noticed. Not
quite
the same, but
close enough.”

“
What does that
mean?”

Elena smiled. “I’m not sure. But I bet
we’re going to find out.”

24

T
he engines were already warming up when Colton stepped into
the plane, their high-pitched whine slowly building to a loud roar.
The twins were seated in the very back, their heads leaning in
opposite directions as they slept.

Alistair sat in the chair closest to
the door and nodded at Colton when he entered. He settled back into
his seat and closed his eyes. Shelly was halfway down the plane,
sitting in one of the oversized leather chairs that lined both
sides of the cabin. She smiled at Colton and motioned for him to
join her. He smiled back and walked down the aisle, then stopped
when he passed Reece, who was slouched down in his seat with his
face close to the window.

“
Hey,” said
Colton.

Reece shifted in his seat to twist
farther away from the aisle.

“
Come on, Reece.” Colton
didn’t like the tension between the two of them and he wanted to
clear the air so things could go back to the way they were before
they left New York.

“
Go sit with your
girlfriend,” said Reece without looking over.

“
Don’t be like this, man.
What’s going on with you?”

“
Pffff,” Reece
sneered.

“
Fine,” said Colton,
shaking his head. He walked down the aisle and sat next to Shelly,
sighing in frustration as the leather chair formed around his
back.

“
What’s wrong?” she
asked.

“
He’s being stupid, that’s
what’s wrong.”

Shelly looked at Reece, who had
propped one of his feet on the seat in front of him and still sat
staring out the window.

“
It’s a lot to get used
to,” she said. “Especially if he feels like he isn’t, you know, one
of
us
.”

“
Why doesn’t he just
leave, then? Bernam said he could stay, but why stick around if
he’s miserable?”

“
He’s your friend, Colton.
Maybe he wants to stay here with you.”

Colton sighed again. “He
should get over it.
I’m
doing just fine.”

“
Well,” said Shelly with a
smile, “you’re special, aren’t you?”

She leaned over and kissed him lightly
on the cheek.

Colton blushed.

The door to the cabin closed loudly,
sealing them inside. Bernam stepped from behind a partition at the
front of the plane and looked around.

“
Everyone here? Excellent.
We should be at our destination in a little less than an hour. If
you need to rest, I suggest you start now.” He paused when he saw
Alistair and the twins. “Ah, good. I see some of you beat me to it.
Very well, then.” He turned and went back through the
partition.

The jet engines whirred to full power
and the small plane rolled across the hot pavement next to the
black-windowed building.

Shelly rested her hand on Colton’s leg
as the plane picked up speed and the wheels lifted off the
ground.

“
You don’t like flying?”
asked Colton.

“
I love it, actually. Why
do you ask?”

Colton looked down at her hand on his
leg, then into her eyes. She looked back, her gaze steady and
inviting.

“
No reason,” he said. “Do
you want to tell me now, or later?”

“
Tell you
what?”

“
The thing you wouldn’t
tell me in the meeting. What did Bernam promise
everyone?”

“
Oh, that,” she said. She
pulled her hand off his leg and leaned back in her seat. “He said
he could turn all of us into hybrids.”

“
Hybrids,” repeated
Colton. “Those exist?”

“
One that we know about,
but he died a long time ago. There’s a rumor that Bernam has found
another one who is willing to help him figure out how to replicate
the ability.”

“
Why is it so hard to
replicate?”

“
Because someone born with
only one ability—either Source or Con—can’t hold the opposite
energy within their bodies for very long. A lot of people have
tried. If they get the foreign energy out in time, they only go
insane. If they hold on to it…well, let’s just say it isn’t
pretty.”

“
So Bernam thinks he can
turn everyone into hybrids,” said Colton.

“
Yeah,” said Shelly.
“Pretty rad, huh?”

“
But why? What’s the
point?”

Shelly laughed and her short auburn
hair bounced across her face. She tucked it back behind her ears
and turned in her seat to face Colton. “Look what we can do now,
with just one half of the equation. Imagine what it would be like
if we didn’t spend our lives searching for the missing key—that one
other person that holds the potential to unlock all of our power.
Most of us never find that person. We spend our whole lives
searching. I’m tired of waiting for it to happen on its
own.”

“
I don’t get why any
Source isn’t compatible with just any Conduit.”

“
I don’t get it either,
but that’s just the way it is. A Source can burn themselves up
trying to make it work, and they usually take the Con with them.
It’s called feedback, and it’s a nasty thing to watch.”

“
How do you know when
you’ve found the right person?” asked Colton.

Shelly shrugged.
“According to those that are lucky enough to find their
counterpart, they just
know
.”

Colton sat silently for a long time,
then said, “I thought we were going to be helping
people.”

“
We are! But just think
how much more we can do once we’re hybrids! It’s the first step in
the process.” She stuck her legs out and rested them across
Colton’s lap. “After that,” she said, “we can save all the people
you want, Mr. Boy Scout.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him
playfully. “You know, there’s a special term for a hybrid. If a
person has both abilities, they don’t call them a Source or a
Conduit any more. I always hated that term, ‘Conduit’. Bleh! Like a
piece of tubing or something.”

“
What do they call
them?”

“
A Nova. As in
super
nova. As in the
power of an exploding star.” Shelly spun in her seat and looked up
at the ceiling. Strands of her hair fell out from behind her ears
and bobbed over her face as she turned. “Shelly isn’t my real
name,” she said.

“
What?”

“
My full name is Michelle.
My parents named me after my Aunt.”

“
It’s very pretty,” said
Colton.

Sadness filled her eyes as she looked
at him.

“
Do you know what they did
when I told them about my ability?”

Colton shook his head.

“
They kicked me out. They
wouldn’t even let me take a suitcase. That’s the kind of ignorance
that being different reveals in people. Nothing about me had
changed. I was still their daughter—still the same little girl I
had always been. They were
scared
of me.”

She turned in her seat to look out the
window, lost in her own thoughts.

Colton wanted to say he was sorry but
thought she had probably heard it too many times before.

He looked over her shoulder and out
through the small, circular window. The sky gradated dark to light
as it dropped toward the horizon. The first colors of evening
streaked across the sky; deep orange mixed with faint purple. Soon
the sun would dip below the mountains and the temperature would
plummet.

The ground below was a brown desert
that stretched out in all directions. As the plane banked slightly
in the air, Colton saw the distant lights of a city. Small
pinpoints of white, yellow, and red shined like small stars in the
desert.

He thought of what Shelly had said
about becoming a hybrid. Colton didn’t know if he wanted more power
than he already had. After he found his mother, he wanted to take
her as far away from the people that hurt her as he could. He
didn’t care what happened after that. If Bernam was serious about
helping people who couldn’t help themselves, then maybe Colton
would stick around a little while longer. Shelly was enough of a
reason to stay, but he needed to get his mother to safety before he
started thinking about himself.

Colton remembered the daydreams he had
as a child—fantasies where he was a superhero with incredible
powers that saved children from burning buildings. He watched all
the cartoons and read all the comic books. He played with
stiff-armed action figures that wore brightly-colored costumes and
promised justice with their square jaws and obscene
muscles.

Is that what I am
now?
he wondered.
Is this what being a hero feels like?

Colton hadn’t saved anybody. He was no
hero. Maybe he could be, later, but right then he could not ignore
the foolish hope to bring his mother back home to his father, to
put her hand in his and say, “There. Everything’s all better. Now
we’re a family again.”

25

M
arius sat in front of Haven, squinting at her. They were in a
large rectangular room that extended away from the dome like a big
shoebox. The walls and floor were bare except for a few exercise
mats and a wooden rack bolted to the wall that held a few broken
broomsticks.

“
Hmm,” said Marius.
“Hmmmm.”

Haven’s shoulders dropped and she
raised her eyebrows. “Well?!”

“
I’m thinking,” he said.
He scratched at the black and grey stubble on his chin, then his
hand drifted up to the top of his head and he scratched his
closely-shaven scalp. “Hmmmmm. You know martial arts?”

“
No!” she said.

“
Hand-to-hand? Disarming
methods?

“
Nope.”

“
How to use
gun?”

“
Of course
not.”

“
Why ‘of course not’? In
Russia I knew by age of seven.”

“
We’re not in
Russia.”

He chuckled. “Yes, I know this. Maybe
we start with what you know, okay?” He looked at her, waiting.
“So…what do you know?”

“
About what?!”

He sighed, then stood. “Okay, we start
small. I teach you defense, yes? Come.” He motioned for Haven to
follow him as he stepped back from the door toward the center of
the room. He glanced up at the ceiling twenty feet above their
heads. “This will work,” he said.

“
Work for what?” asked
Haven. She stepped forward hesitantly, looking around as if she
expected an attacker to materialize out of thin air.

Marius had been adamant about training
her as much as possible before the group left for the medical
center early the next morning. Haven said that she would have been
useless if she tried to save her brother and Marius had immediately
insisted that she follow him to what he called the “exercise
room”.

“
Okay,” he said, holding
up his palms for her to stop walking. “Put hands up, like this.” He
pulled his right hand close to his face and held it a few inches in
front of his mouth, his palm open but his fingers firmly together
as if he was about to slap someone. He moved his left arm away from
him until his hand hovered about a foot in front of his face. Haven
thought that if Marius closed his fists it would look like he was
holding an invisible blowgun.

She imitated his motions as best she
could.

“
Good,” he said. “Now.” He
stepped toward her and brought his left hand down to her face in
slow motion. She stepped away and swatted his hand to the side.
“Okay, good,” he said. “Except opponent moves much faster in real
life, yes? You want to keep one arm close to your body, always, in
case they get near you with knife or something else. Always
push
away
from
your body, like this…”