Authors: Lynnie Purcell
“They’re hot, but the only person I trust is me,” Spider said.
I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.
“You are all welcome to come,” Reaper said appearing at the far end of the room. “The Saints accept everyone…we can’t really afford to discriminate.”
“We are choosing the cautious route,” I informed Reaper. “Not that we don’t trust you, it’s just my friends don’t trust my description of your organization. They’re the hands-on type.”
“I understand,” Reaper said. “How many are going back to L.A.? I need to inform my people, so they can pick us up.”
Daniel connected eyes with Jackson. Jackson nodded, silently agreeing to stay and look after the kids, until we got back. I knew Margaret would stay to keep an eye on the building they suspected Han and Beatrice were being held in.
“Four of us,” Daniel said.
Reaper pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number. “Sara…I picked up three more. Same place. One hour.” He hung up again.
“You’re certainly not as reckless as you used to be,” Daniel said.
“I’ve learned caution. Besides, I haven’t had you egging me on to do the all the dangerous stuff,” Reaper pointed out.
Daniel smiled. “True. If everything goes well, I will come back tomorrow to check in,” Daniel told Jackson and Margaret.
“Alright. Call if you need anything.” Jackson took Margaret’s hand, and, together, they left the apartment.
When we got to the same back alley Sara had dumped us off at, I saw a man had joined her. He looked very similar to her, down to his skin tone, facial structure, and eye color. As they stood next to each other, it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
“This is Shawn, Sara’s twin. He’s also a walker,” Reaper introduced the man.
“Howdy,” Alex said with a wave.
Shawn nodded politely at us, and his eyes returned to Reaper. “Preacher wanted me to pass along a message,” he said. “He said to tell you that our new friend has agreed to cooperate fully.”
Reaper nodded in understanding and held his hand out to Shawn. He gestured for us to do the same.
“Santa Monica, right?” Reaper asked me. “Same place?”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“You may touch me,” Sara told Daniel, giving him permission to take her hand.
Shawn repeated the moment with Alex and Spider, who was visibly more nervous about our means of traveling thousands of miles in a second. Then, in a flash, we were lost in the world of darkness.
Chapter 9
Sara and Shawn disappeared the moment they set us down in the dingy bathroom in Santa Monica.
Daniel undid the latch to our stall, and we met the others near the sinks. Reaper held on to Alex’s elbow as she fought against the dizzy spell. Spider stumbled, but he was far from allowing Reaper to help him walk. He would take the fall, before he let a stranger help him. Daniel’s eyes were curious as he stared at the dark bathroom.
“That was interesting,” Daniel said dryly, meaning our means of transportation.
“Everything is spinning!” Alex said holding her head.
“Stare at one spot. It helps me,” Reaper said.
Her face grew disgusted. “I’m not sure I want to stare at one spot in particular in here.”
“Yeah, we should probably get out of here, before someone decides they need to go,” I agreed.
Alex hooked her arm through mine for stability, as we left the men’s room, forcing Daniel to walk with Reaper. Daniel took her sudden seizure of my arm with good grace. He and Reaper struck up a conversation full of old jokes and inside meanings.
Alex had more on her mind than old jokes.
“What do I say to him?” she asked me, meaning Sam. “How do I start?”
“‘I love you’ and ‘I missed you,’ sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“What if it’s not good enough?” she asked.
“It will be,” I promised.
“So this is California, huh?” Spider asked, interrupting our conversation.
He looked around at the palm trees, ocean, and shopping area we had landed near. His hands twitched with the desire to merge in with the crowd and start picking pockets, but he resisted, unsure of the lay of the land. He knew better than to steal without having an escape plan in mind.
“One part of it,” I replied.
“If you had told me two months ago I would not only get out of New Orleans, but that I would go to two of the largest cities in the U.S., I would have thought you were crazy. I mean, you guys are weird, but I just traveled from New York to L.A. in a heartbeat. This is beyond crazy.”
“You knew what you were getting into,” I said.
“I don’t think I really did,” Spider disagreed. “Eli was never…”
He cut his words short, and I realized that it wasn’t just Alex who was bothered by Eli’s unexplained departure.
“What happened with Eli?” I asked, sensing Alex’s tension.
“We already told you pretty much everything. We were all going to head back home and check on our parents and Daniel’s, but Eli said he didn’t want to come. Serenity had offered him the chance to work with her. He took off with her and Mick…without even saying goodbye to the kids,” Alex answered.
“It’s about the crappiest abandonment I’ve ever experienced,” Spider said. “And I’ve had quite a few.”
I put an arm around his thin shoulders, drawing him close on my other side. “I promise never to abandon you.”
“As long as you don’t get kidnapped again,” he said.
Alex pointed a finger at him, her face angry. “Don’t even kid about that.”
Spider raised his hands in front of his chest in silent apology, and went back to eyeing the crowd.
“That was you?!” Reaper chortled from behind us, where he was talking with Daniel. “I knew Marcus had been forced to change buildings not long before he tried to kill me, because of a fire, but I had no idea it was you who had set it.”
“It was just a result of my escape,” Daniel said brushing off Reaper’s astonishment. “I hadn’t meant to set the place on fire…but one thing led to another...you know how it goes.”
“I don’t know if its skill or craziness, but your presence is always felt, isn’t it?” Reaper asked.
“If you think I’m bad, wait till you get to know Clare better. Chaos follows her,” Daniel said.
“I’ve been trying to get a restraining order for ages,” I agreed.
“I sort of guessed that when I saw her ride a Nightstalker out of a bunker then jump into the ocean without a second thought,” Reaper said lightly.
I winced, having downplayed that part of the story for Alex’s sake.
“You rode on a Nightstalker?” she asked carefully.
“It offered me the ride,” I assured her.
It was rational?
she asked me through our touch.
It could think beyond emotions?
Yeah. It was tired of killing. Just wanted out. It was as much a prisoner as I was.
They’ve learned to control the…
Bloodlust?
I asked.
Yeah.
From what I could tell, they had the ability to choose,
I said.
She thought about that and a bubble of hope wrapped around her mind. Another thought occurred to her.
I’m sorry for not finding you. I should have changed and tracked you down…I just couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself. I wanted to so bad, I wanted to help you…I feel like I let you down.
If you ever say that again, I’ll tell Margaret about that dream you had about Jackson.
She laughed and held her hands up in defeat. “Point taken,” she said out-loud.
“Here we are,” I said, waving a hand at Naomi’s house.
Alex lost her smile; her eyes were large as she looked at the cute, seaside cottage. Her face showed her fear and her pain. She was convinced she had lost everything when she had run away. She was also worried that Sam wouldn’t understand that she couldn’t stay. She was committed to her new life, and that meant forging her own path. I knew how she felt.
“Come on!” I urged her. I ran toward the front door with her hand in mine. She ran with me, her feet stumbling over unseen obstacles.
Ellen and Sam were in the kitchen eating a late breakfast when we entered. They jumped in surprise when I pushed the door open, but their eyes moved to Alex immediately. After a moment of shock, Ellen yelled happily and pulled Alex into her arms. She kissed Alex on the cheek and released her with tears brimming in her eyes.
“It’s good to see you,” Ellen said.
Sam stood and hugged Alex fiercely; then his anger, his fear, brought the acidic words he had harbored for two months to the tip of his tongue. He started ripping into every aspect of her running away with an awareness and skill of a seasoned lawyer. His words were not kind; he pulled no punches. I cringed at the things he said – a lot of it could be applied to me. Alex had a different reaction.
She started yelling back, seemingly unable to help the reaction. She punched a hole through all of his arguments, all of his attempts to make her feel bad for her choices. Her vocabulary was just as harsh, just as on-point as his. She was a formidable opponent.
As one, Daniel, Reaper, Spider and I made a beeline for the sliding glass door on the opposite side of the house. Ellen stayed in the kitchen to referee with a steady, calming acceptance that the argument was needed. She knew that things would be better once they had gotten their anger out.
“I didn’t realize your friend had so much bite,” Reaper said once we had gained the safety of the back patio. He looked over his shoulder at Alex, who was red-faced from screaming.
“Wait until she actually gets mad,” I told him.
“You call that not being mad?” he asked, looking over his shoulder to stare at the yelling pair.
I sat down on one of the chairs on Naomi’s patio. Daniel sat next to me and took my hand possessively. I shrugged at Reaper’s question. I felt odd about telling him what really happened when she got angry – the fact that she turned in to a Nightstalker was not something I shared lightly.
“Nah, she’s just not going to let him walk over her…They’ll work it out.”
The yelling reached out through the glass in an attempt to contradict me.
I looked out over the ocean and sank down into the familiar, comfortable chair. As I relaxed, I realized how precarious our situation still was. Marcus was still out there, the war was still raging, we still didn’t know why I could do the things I could do, or why Marcus was hunting for me. Nothing had changed, except now I was more aware of the underbelly of the war.
“Nothing’s really changed, has it?” I asked.
“A lot has changed,” Daniel replied.
“No, I mean…we’re going to be fighting for our lives until the day we die, aren’t we?” I asked.
“Most likely,” Daniel replied.
“Even then, I think we’ll still be forced to fight,” Reaper said darkly.
The realization had me feeling gloomy.
“Do you even really think what you’re trying to do is going to actually ‘do’ anything? You think you can bring down these organizations, which have been around for centuries? Your little school of outcasts versus Caesar himself…” I said.
“Rome fell in a day…” Reaper said. “All a good rebellion really needs is people willing to fight, a leader who knows what it takes to win that fight, and a lot of blind, stupid luck.”
“There’s a lot of hope involved as well,” Daniel pointed out.
“When there’s time for it,” Reaper said.
“Say you win this war, and everything you want comes true. What then? Are you going to rule the world, take their place?” I asked.
“Clare…” Daniel warned me.
I knew how rude I sounded, but I was in one of those moods I couldn’t help. I wanted to know if I was investing my energy in a dictator as bad as Marcus, or if it was okay to place hope in Reaper. Old friend of Daniel’s or not, I had to be certain. I had to know that I wasn’t fighting for something as bad as what I was trying to stop.
Reaper wasn’t upset, merely thoughtful.
“I honestly haven’t given it much thought. I don’t think I would like to rule anything. I just want to have a world where I’m not hunted like a criminal, my only crime having been born. I’ll leave the rest up to others to decide,” he said.
“Sounds dangerous,” I said. “And likely, will change nothing...the person willing to be a leader for the people might not have such lofty goals as you.”
Reaper didn’t have an answer to that.
“This conversation is kind of gloomy,” Spider said. “I think I’m going to go on a walk and enjoy the things us humans enjoy…like not thinking about world wars and evil dictators.”
“If you get picked up for pick-pocketing, I’m not bailing you out of jail…” I said.
“Doll, please!” He walked down the path separating the house from the sandy beach.
“Is he a good thief?” Reaper asked curiously.