The Guardians (MORE Trilogy) (20 page)

“Ava?”

She exhaled on a sob. “Caleb? Where are you? Are you okay?”
 

“I’m fine.” He spoke in a low voice, and she wondered if he was trying to hide his conversation from someone as well. “Are you? Are you safe? I heard you were with Tiernan.”

Ava hesitated, unsure if she should confirm that and guilt-ridden that she would wonder. “I’m fine. Caleb, what’s happening? Why are you running? The Council says you’re helping the Rogues.”

“The Council.” He almost spat the words, then took a deep breath. “There’s more going on here than you know, Ava. You have to trust me on this. The Council has kept us down for too long—”

“What are you talking about?” Ava leaned out to peer around the corner of the building. She didn’t have much time. “Caleb, we found a girl—Emma. She says she knows you. She says she did something to your mind.”

“My mind is fine.”

“Are you going to the Colony? Are you leading the Rogues there?”

“Ava, listen to me.” Caleb seemed to be fighting frustration, and not very successfully. “This isn’t about the Council and the Guardians, or even the Rogues. It’s about the Race. All of us. Look, just . . . get away from Tiernan and go home. Whatever you do, stay away from the Colony. And don’t trust the Council.”

“I can’t—”

“Someone’s coming,” Caleb whispered urgently. “I have to go. I love you.”

“Caleb?” But he was gone. She stared down at the phone. “I love you, too.”

It took a while for her to realize it was the first time he’d said it. Sadly, it failed to reassure her.

“Well?”
 

Caleb knew Bartok was standing there, but his voice made him jump slightly anyway. Caleb was jumping a lot lately.

“I told her to stay away.”

“And?”

“She’ll come anyway. She’s stubborn that way.” Caleb couldn’t keep a small smile of pride off his face.
 

“And the girl?”

Caleb shrugged. “Emma’s with them. Tiernan, too.”

“We’ll deal with Tiernan.” Sloan crossed the hotel room and poured himself a drink from the minibar. “We make our move once they reach the Colony. You know our orders.”

Caleb nodded curtly. “And you swear Ava won’t be hurt?”

He chuckled. “Nobody wants to hurt your little girlfriend, Caleb. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”

“How will they know where to go?”

Bartok took a sip of his drink, the ice tinkling as he eyed him over the rim of the glass. “Well, you’ll need to leave a trail, of course. But don’t make it too obvious. Wouldn’t want to make Tiernan suspicious.”

Caleb turned away, staring sightlessly out the window. “And then?”

Bartok sighed, obviously bored with the conversation they’d had several times already. “Then we get Emma . . . and Ava. And when this is all over and things are settled, the two of you can go wherever . . . and do whatever.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Do your part, Caleb, and everything will be the way it should be. The Council’s time is over. It’s our time now.”

Something teased at Caleb’s memory. Something that made him feel as if what the man was saying wasn’t exactly right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. When Bartok slapped a hand on his shoulder with an encouraging smile, Caleb smiled back.

He was just nervous . . . worried about what was coming. But it would all be over soon, and he and Ava could be together without Protectors watching their every move. The Council would no longer be looking over their shoulders, and they could live in peace.

Yeah. That was what he was fighting for.
 

Chapter 9

“Are we there yet?” Emma asked from the backseat, sticking out her tongue when Tiernan glared at her through the rearview mirror. “Just trying to lighten the mood,” she said. “You seem so tense.”

“I’m not tense,” he replied. “I’m concentrating.” The window was cracked open next to him, and he scented the air periodically.
 

They’d slept in shifts through the day and driven through the night, picking up Caleb’s trail outside Red Lake and following it east. It felt good to rely on his own abilities for a change, and he felt pride that he no longer needed the sensor. The trail was weak—several times Tiernan feared he’d lost it—but then he’d catch a whiff, or find a sign in the damp ground, and knew he was on the right track.

Ava worried him, though. Since they’d left the motel, she’d been noticeably silent—unusual for her—not even taking the opportunity to mock Tiernan when he’d popped in an eighties boy band CD and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the beat. He’d risked a car rental company this time, procuring a black SUV with one of his fake IDs.
 

Ava had eyed him curiously. “Couldn’t we have done that before?” she’d asked. “Or does car theft give you a rush?”

“As much as possible, I try to be inconspicuous.”
 

Ava had snorted at that, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. And with each mile they’d driven, she had seemed to withdraw into herself. No curious questions or stubborn bargaining. Her unseeing eyes had stayed fixed on the horizon as she’d chewed on a ragged hangnail.

Yeah. He was worried.

Andreas had been concerned as well. He’d made it clear to Tiernan that he was to bring all of them—Caleb, Emma, and Ava—to him personally. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Do not talk to the rest of the Council. At least not until Andreas had had a chance to speak to Caleb personally.

“This matter must be handled delicately,” he’d told Tiernan. “Once we’ve established Foster’s motivations, his true loyalties, then we can move forward. We need to find Borré, and if Foster has information on his whereabouts, I need to know.”

Andreas hadn’t said anything more about the girl they’d rescued from the Rogue lair other than her gifts could prove useful in the future.
 

Tiernan wasn’t an idiot. Andreas Petrov was a politician, so whatever he did was motivated by one thing—protecting himself and his position on the Council. Whatever he wanted with Borré—with Caleb and Ava and Emma—was planned solely with that goal in mind.
 

He suspected Andreas had his eyes on Madeleine’s chair at the Council table.

“What can they do?” Ava’s voice broke though the cheesy ballad on the CD player, pulling Tiernan out of his own thoughts.
 

“Who?”

“You’re a million miles away,” she said.

Tiernan shrugged. “Concentrating,” he said again. “Who are you talking about?”

She twisted on the seat, turning to lean her cheek against the headrest. “The Council. They must be very powerful. I mean, more powerful than your garden-variety member of the Race.”

“Not really.” Tiernan downshifted and turned onto a gravel road. “They all have gifts, of course. Naomi is able to communicate with animals. Kaeden can shift, like Caleb. But they’re politicians, so it’s their abilities with people that really come into play.”

“What do you mean?”

“We all have an ability to read people to a certain extent.” He glanced at her, and she nodded, confirming she knew that already. “But Andreas is particularly gifted at that. He can see motivations behind actions. I swear sometimes it seems like he’s almost psychic. Madeleine can do that, too, to a lesser extent, and her compulsion ability is unique. She can actually help someone see someone else’s point of view.”

“I imagine that comes in handy.”

“Yeah.” He scratched at the stubble on his cheek. “So in the end, our government is not that different from yours. From the
humans’
,” he said, correcting himself before she could say anything. “Based on manipulation and appealing to the masses.”

“Kind of a cynic, aren’t you?”

“I prefer ‘realist.’ ”

Emma draped herself over the back of the seat, her chin propped on the leather. “So why do you work for them, then? They sound kind of corrupt, if you ask me.”

Tiernan shot a glare over his shoulder. “They’re what we’ve got. And they’ve kept us at peace for centuries . . . millennia.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s right.” Emma raised her chin a bit as she met his gaze through the rearview mirror.

“Better be careful talking like that.”
 

Emma scoffed. “Or what? Are they going to come get me?” When Tiernan didn’t respond, she leaned a little bit closer, as if waiting and watching for his reaction. “At least the humans have free speech.”

“She’s right,” Ava said and nodded at Emma. “The Council seems like kind of a dictatorship, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you!” The music on the stereo reached its crescendo, and he slapped at the power button angrily, the resulting silence growing thick and heavy. “The Council is the Law,” he said in a calmer voice. “It
is
the Race. They preserve our way of life. And I am sworn to follow their directives.” Tiernan glanced at Ava and then at Emma—who had sat back and was avoiding his gaze. “My mission is to find Caleb Foster. You’re both here right now because I think you can help in that mission.

“I’ve already bent the rules by swearing to keep the location of the Colony a secret,” he said in a gruff voice. “Don’t ask me to betray the Council any further.”

No one said a word.
 

Tiernan turned a corner and came to a stop before a washed-out bridge. He got out of the car and the others followed suit. He crouched down and examined the gravel and the dirt and brush along the side of the road. He stood, dusted off his hands, and pointed toward the bridge. “The trail leads that way.”

They walked to the bridge and peered over the edge of the broken wood at the crashing river below.

“Now what?” Ava asked.
 

Tiernan stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest, staring across the expanse for a long moment. Then he started across the bridge.

“Tiernan?” Ava gaped as he quickened his pace, almost at a run when he hit the wooden bridge. “Tiernan!”

With a shimmer, he was gone.

“What happened?” Emma asked, watching in awe.

Ava laughed when she realized the answer. “It’s a cloak,” she said. “Might have been nice for him to mention it so we didn’t think he was jumping to his death, but that’s Tiernan.”

The man in question chose that moment to poke his head back through the cloak. His head and shoulders appeared solid and healthy, although the rest of him wavered as if he was underwater.

“You coming?” he asked with a smirk. “I think it’s probably best if we continue on foot. The trail is stronger over here. I don’t think it’s far.”
 

He disappeared again, and Ava and Emma walked toward the bridge, Emma hesitating for a moment before she extended her arm through the cloak. Her hand wavered, and she drew it back with a gasp.

“You’ve never seen one?” Ava asked.
 

Emma shrugged. “Not from this side. The Rogues used me sometimes to help strengthen cloaks with hallucinations.”

“Really? Like what?”

Emma examined the cloak again, apparently trying to see through it to the other side. “Like this, sometimes. Other things, too—a brick wall, muddy bog, field of thistle bushes—anything to dissuade people from going farther.”