The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (8 page)

“Guy’s name is Eric Finn.” I looked at them both in turn. “Ring any bells?”

“No,” said Mel.

Jason shook his head. “So, you gonna turn him in, or what?”

“Heh. Yeah. No.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“That, right there, is why I needed to talk to you guys,” I said. “Lina made me promise not to do anything about it.”

Jason barked again. “What?”

“It’s part of…” I realized these two didn’t know Lina was in therapy after the shit I’d dragged her through at the cabin last year. “It’s…personal. Stuff she’s trying to work through.”

“Well,” Mel said, “okay, then.” He looked at me and crossed his arms across his chest.

“It’s not right,” I said. “Fucker shouldn’t get away with it.”

“Fuckin’ A,” Jason said.

“But,” Mel said, “Lina wants you to let it go. Right?”

“Yeah.” I looked at my hands. My fingers were curled and stiff. “But…it’s not fair. And it’s kinda driving me crazy.”

“But,” Mel repeated, “Lina wants you to let it go, Nathan. Life sucks. What can you do?”

“Fuck that,” Jason said. He looked at me. “Hey. What would you do, if you could?”

His question broke down a door to a little room in my head I’d been keeping locked down. I stood up and paced a square of carpet. The words came spitting out.

“Fuck with him. Scare the shit out of him. Make him know it wasn’t over. Make him know he wasn’t dealing with a teenaged girl. That he had…he had me watching him.”

The frustrated anger built in me, moving fine-grained sandpaper over the surface of my brain and down the nerve endings in my skin. I imagined Eric Finn’s face—a face I had never seen, a face that was a vague amalgam of fear and cowardice—in tears in front of me while he cowered on the ground. “Make him sorry.” I blinked and looked at Jason. “That’s what I’d do.”

Jason nodded. “Sounds like a good start.”

“Sounds nothing at all like letting it
go
,” Mel said. “Fuck’s sake, Nathan. Lina’d kill you. Shit, your mother would kill you. And the cops. And what about the legal shit?”

Jason gave Mel a look. “Screw that.” He looked at me. “M.Y.O.J., right, dude? Make that part of the deal.”

“What deal?”

“When you face him. Make that part of the deal: that if he talks about it to anyone—anyone—you’ll, I don’t know, fuck him up.”

Mel threw his arms into the air. “Blackmail? Seriously, what is
wrong
with you two?” He stepped in front of me and stopped my pacing. “Nate. This is a bad idea. You know it.”

Of the two of them, Mel had been my friend the longest, ever since he first moved into the neighborhood in the summer of sixth grade and struck up a conversation at the bus stop. He had always been the steady one, the comparatively calm one. I think he recognized that his role was to provide a foil to Jason’s flailing bravado, and he embraced that. He was sure playing it to the hilt right now.

“Mel,” I said, “I can do something about this. I can make a difference. I can make that fucker feel something about what he did to Lina.

“Maybe,” this thought had not occurred to me until just then, “even keep him from trying to rape someone else.”

“Yep,” Jason chimed.

“I can
do
something, Mel. For once.”

Mel frowned. His lips twisted. “For once?”

His body language broadcast “gotcha,” like he’d made some big psychological victory, like I’d see reason and let it go, let the world keep spinning, let Eric Finn keep going through life as a guy who thought he could get away with nearly raping my girlfriend.

Fuck that.

“Yes, Mel. For once.” I felt my upper lip tremble. For a lot of people, I know that’s a signal they’re about to cry. On me, it means I want to bare my teeth. It means I want to leap.

I forced myself to look away from my best friend. My eyes found Jason.

“Can’t let it stand, man,” he said.

I took a breath and exhaled explosively. Right then, for a moment, that’s when I felt like crying. I didn’t.

“Yeah.” I looked at Mel. I wanted to see understanding in his face. “I don’t think I can.”

All I got was disappointment.

“Guess you’ll tell me all about it when it’s over.”

He turned away and made a fuss over picking another record to play.

Marc Teslowski – Three

Marc stowed his carry-on bag and sat down in his window seat. The curving wall of the airliner cabin was cool where he leaned against it, raising gooseflesh on his bare arm. The sensation made Marc’s lips split in a steely grin.

He was going to Missoula.

When he got there, he’d pound on the doors of the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies until they let him in and let him see his son.

Nobody liked it. Baldwin threatened to no longer represent Marc and Jeri, which was an empty threat, since far as Marc could see, the lawyer had so far done for them exactly jack shit.

Jeri was as close to pissed off as he’d seen in years. He would have thought she would have gone along with whatever Marc wanted, especially if that meant even a tiny chance it might get Byron to come home. Faced with the possibility, it was almost like she didn’t want Byron to be back under Marc’s roof.

Maybe she didn’t. She’d never approved of Marc’s parenting philosophy; he knew that. Tough. He was the father. He was the husband. His authority had to be final, and besides, if she’d had her way, Byron would never have been challenged, never have been pushed to accomplish everything he’d done.

Her unspoken, suspected betrayal only served to strengthen Marc’s resolve. He would go to Missoula, and he would come back with his son if he had to drag Byron out by his ear and punch William Donner in the throat on the way out.

Yeah.

Marc straightened in his seat and watched people file onto the airliner. A few people back was the second strangest-looking guy Marc had ever laid eyes on. He was probably six and a half feet tall, but gawky and skinny as all hell. He had tiny little ears, like they’d stopped growing when he was a kid or something, underneath a sloppy, spiky shock of feathery black hair.

The guy’s nose was enormous, narrow and hooked at the end like a beak. His lips were thin and pale. His eyes were black and wide, and he kept them pointed at the ground as much as possible.

The first-most strangest-looking guy Marc had ever seen was Nathan Charters.

Marc’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.

Right.

The Sovereign freak sat down next to him.

Marc didn’t bother to hide his revulsion. He recoiled and shoved himself as close as he could to the inner wall of the cabin. He stared out the little window.

Mother
fuck
. It was like the whole world was trying to get his goat. Put a fucking Sovereign on the same plane. Put him in the seat next to Marc.

It couldn’t get any worse.

“Oh my god.” The guy’s voice was a grating, piping screech. “You’re Marc Teslowski.”

All right, then. It could get worse.

Marc kept his eyes on the tarmac below and said nothing.

“You are. You’re Marc Teslowski.”

This could go on for hours. Marc had to put an end to it.

“I’m not interested in talking to you,” he growled.

The gawky freak squawked a laugh. “Well, we’re traveling companions, Marc Teslowski.” Marc felt him shifting in the next seat. “Might as well be companionable, right?”

Marc kept his tongue. How many hours was this flight?

“My name’s Eddie. Eddie Schwippe.” Some of his vowels came out choked, like his tongue was hitting the roof of his mouth at the wrong time as he talked. Maybe his fucking tongue was deformed thanks to whatever kind of freak he was.

“And you are the infamous father who wants the Sovereigns to give back one of their own.” His chirping wasn’t so strange Marc couldn’t hear the subtle teasing in his tone. “Well. One of our own, I guess I should say.”

The plane started to move into position on the runway. Marc watched the pavement flow past, the swift flash of lines and letters coming and going in the small square of the world he could see.

Eddie Schwippe clucked. “I bet you’re not too happy right now, eh, Marc? Mister Teslowski? Right?”

Marc gave up and turned to face him. Eddie blinked and smiled. His eyes, Marc realized, were entirely black, all pupil. It was disturbing.

“I told you. I’m not interested in talking. All right?”

Schwippe shrugged, and knobby shoulders rolled under his baggy dress shirt. “Got it! ‘Course, that doesn’t mean I won’t be talking to you. It’s too long a flight to just sit here and space out, right? Besides, I forgot my book.”

Schwippe held out his right hand. The fingers were long, the knuckles like walnuts. His fingernails were so black and glossy you’d think they were painted, but Marc guessed they probably weren’t.

“So as I was saying,” Schwippe said, just slightly more seriously, “my name’s Eddie. Pleased to meet you.”

Marc turned away from him and locked his focus on the back of the seat directly ahead. He still couldn’t help peripherally seeing Schwippe pull his hand back, slowly.

“Really?” Schwippe clicked his tongue. “And to think I went to the trouble of filing my nails. They weren’t always like that, you know. I mean, I was always a little…awkward-looking, if you want to put it kindly…but after Declaration Day…”

His sigh carried the hint of a whistle.

“I just…blossomed. I’m going to see if the Institute can help me figure it all out.”

The insistent, winking enthusiasm returned to his voice. “Why are you going to Missoula, Marc, Mister Teslowski, I wonder? Hmm?”

Marc said nothing. Schwippe left him alone while the stewardess ran through the pre-flight safety demonstration and the airliner took off. Maybe the freak finally took the hint.

Marc watched the plane turn over the Pacific Ocean before angling east and north while the earth dropped farther and farther away.

He was going. He would be there. Today.

He was doing something, something real. Nobody liked it, and it was putting him into some serious debt, and it would eat every hour of vacation and sick time he had left, but he couldn’t let any of that matter. He was taking action. Taking responsibility.

Finally.

“I love flying, too,” Schwippe quipped.

Marc hadn’t realized he’d been smiling. He tamped it out.

“So, seriously,” Schwippe went on. Marc realized his break from the freak’s fun-time poking was over. “I’m sincerely curious. Why are you going to Missoula, Mister Teslowski?”

Why not? Nothing and no one could stop him now. He might as well tell the Sovereign beanpole. Call it practice when he had to talk to a whole freaking compound of them.

“I bet you can guess.” He glanced at Schwippe.

Schwippe’s alien black eyes popped. He jumped in his seat a little, a show of being startled. “Well, I’ll be! I get an audience, after all?”

Marc scowled at him. “You’re a sarcastic little shit, aren’t you.”

Schwippe looked down at his long torso and at his legs, which were bent sharply to fit in the space between seats. “Little, I’m not. The rest…well, a guy’s got to find a way to get by.”

Marc snorted at this. “By being an asshole.”

Without an ounce of venom, Schwippe said, “Hey, look how well it’s worked for you, right?”

Marc turned in his seat to face him. “What the hell do you know about me?”

“Seriously?” Schwippe looked all the long way down his nose at Marc. His eyes narrowed and he smiled wide. “And I quote: ‘Why don’t we have all those freaks rounded up and locked away?’"

For the millionth time, Marc wished he’d never agreed to do that goddamn TV show, and not because of what he’d said. “Good for you. You watch TV.”

Schwippe’s Uncle Remus impression suffered from his croaking, high-pitched delivery. “Just like a reg’lar ol’ human bean! ‘Magine dat, Misser Marc, sir!”

Marc got the message. He thought it was bullshit. “Except you’re not. Your boss made sure we all know that.”

Schwippe blinked. He sat back and tilted his head back on the seat. “Wow.” He shook his head. “I don’t get how you do that.”

“What.”

“How you can turn it off and on like that. Be so selective.”

“What,” Marc repeated, harsher.

“Your bigotry.” Schwippe’s voice was casual, but most of the humor was replaced by a bewildered tone that was somehow just as insulting to Marc. “You know you don’t make any sense, right? Does it just not matter to you?”

Marc pushed the words out with as much disgust as he could muster. “You don’t get to tell me what to do or how to think, freak.”

Schwippe’s head tilted. “Wha’?”

Marc leaned forward. “That’s your whole thing, right? Set the terms, show up and tell the rest of the whole damn world how we’re supposed to treat you, how we’re supposed to act.” He forced himself to keep his voice low, conscious of the tight quarters and the dozens of people in the seats around them. “To hell with you, Sovereign.”

“Hold the phone, there, buddy.” Schwippe seemed to roll his eyes, but it was hard to tell where those glossy black balls were pointed. “I’m just a skinny dude from West LA with a next-to-worthless metahuman bag of tricks and a cheap tailor. I can’t make you do anything, Marc, and you’re even more delusional than I thought if you think I can.”

“Delusional!”

Schwippe took a breath, glanced around and seemed to find the same restraint Marc had a moment before, and huffed through his narrow nostrils. “Listen, man: your son is a Sovereign.”

Marc leaned quickly back against the window. “Bullshit.”

Schwippe’s laugh held disbelief. “How can you say that?”

“Just because they took him doesn’t mean he’s one of you. There’s no proof of that. Just their word.”

Schwippe’s shiny black eyes fixed on Marc. He tilted his head to the left and tapped a long, knobby finger against his lip.

“I’ll give you that one,” he said. “Technically. But…why would they lie?”

“To give them a reason to hold my son captive for the last eleven months.” Marc relaxed slightly. “Of course.”

“But…” Schwippe kept looking at him. “But…why? Why your kid? What for?”