Authors: Adrian Howell
“Were you sleeping in my bed again?” I asked, wondering if she had heard me cry out in my sleep.
“No,”
she replied, nodding toward a bed on the other side of the room where a small shape stirred quietly.
“With Marion.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost morning, I think.”
Resting my head back on my pillow, I closed my eyes again for a moment. I heard the Historian’s voice in my head echoing slightly as he said,
“Your oath is to continue hunting Catherine Divine until either you or she is dead. I never said that you have to personally end her life, but you will not stray from your path until the deed is done one way or another. That is the only way you will protect everyone else who is dear to you. You have my word, young Adrian.”
“I must be going insane,” I muttered to myself, opening my eyes and getting out of bed. “I need some air.”
Alia followed me out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The light from the living room was pouring into the hallway through the open door, and Ed Regis called my name as we passed, but I ignored him. Alia followed me out onto the front porch, shivering in the chill.
The clouds had cleared but the stars were growing dimmer in the pale violet sky. I faintly saw my breath as I exhaled. Alia was hugging herself to keep warm. I hardly felt the cold. My whole existence seemed numbed out, almost like being drained.
It had been much clearer than his short message to me at Wood-claw, but had the Historian really been dreamweaving to me? How far was his range? Could it have all just been in my head? But even if it had, what would the Historian really do if I broke my promise?
And more importantly, did I even want to?
As a master controller, the existence of Catherine Divine stood against everything I believed in. Everything except what I had to do to stop her.
Why had the Historian asked for my vow? He knew I was weak. He knew I was unbalanced. Was it despite who I was, or because of it, that he had set me on this path? He knew then, as I had finally discovered, that this was the one road I could neither take nor avoid.
“I’m not quitting,” I whispered.
Alia looked up at me in surprise.
“But you said–”
“I know what I said, Alia! And I can’t kill Catherine Divine. But I can’t quit, either.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t.”
“Then you’re not going to stop?”
“No, Alia, I’m not,” I said resolutely. But then my voice faltered as I added, “I just don’t know how I’m going to go on.”
Gazing into my eyes, Alia suggested gently,
“How about with the truth?”
“Truth?” I asked, bewildered.
Alia nodded solemnly.
“You hate calling Cat your sister, Addy, but inside, you know that she is.”
Of course I knew. That was the problem. “Please don’t call her that,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t do this if I see her that way.”
“It doesn’t matter how you see her,”
argued Alia.
“She’s still your sister. You can’t escape that.”
“She’s Queen Divine, Alia!” I said forcefully. “She’s not my sister!”
“Yes she is, Adrian!”
Alia shot back furiously.
“You know she is!”
I didn’t know what to say.
Alia took my hand as she said soothingly,
“Just admit to yourself what you’re doing, Addy. She’s not Queen Divine to you. She’s not Catherine Divine. She’s not even Catherine Howell. She’s Cat. She’s your sister. You love her as much as I love you. You can try all you want, but you can’t escape the truth. Stop trying to fool yourself. It never works anyway.”
“You really have grown, haven’t you?” I said in wonder as I once again saw Cindy Gifford standing before me.
Alia smiled.
“Just try it, Addy.”
“I am trying to kill my sister,” I whispered, looking up at the last stars in the dawn sky. And then, more loudly, “I am trying to find and kill Cat.”
“Say it again, Addy.”
I did. “I am trying to kill Cat.”
“Again.”
I said it again and again, over and over, louder and louder. And as I did, I felt as if the poison I had been force-feeding myself ever since I left the Historian’s mountain was finally beginning to leave my blood. There was no release from the guilt of my vow. But Alia was right: I did breathe just a little easier. It was the most horrible truth that I could ever say. But at least it was the truth.
I heard Terry ask from behind me, “Does that mean this mission isn’t over yet?”
I turned around and saw her standing at the door with Ed Regis.
“It’s not over,” I confirmed. “We’re still going after Div… I mean, we’re still going after Cat. I promised the Historian and I promised myself that I would never stop hunting my sister. And I won’t. As long as we’re both alive, this doesn’t end.”
“And can you kill her?” asked Ed Regis. “Or at least stand by and let one of us do it?”
I glanced at Alia. She gave me a little nod and whispered into my head,
“Truth, Addy.”
“No, Ed Regis,” I replied. “I can’t kill her. And I can’t let you or Terry or anyone else do it either.”
Ed Regis frowned. “Then you’re hoping that our mission will fail.”
“No,” I said again, “I am not. I will do anything and everything I can to find and kill Cat.”
“That sounds very much like a paradox.”
I gave him a wry smile. “Try living it.”
If Ed Regis found my position paradoxical, I could only agree. But just because I didn’t have it in me to do something didn’t excuse me from doing it. My first sister still had to die, and I owed it to her to end her life myself. Cat was once my master, but she was always my family, and you never turn your back on family. Failure would be just as much a betrayal as success, and I couldn’t allow either.
Terry gave me a grim look, asking, “Then what happens if, by some unhappy miracle, we actually do find her?”
“How are we supposed to kill her, Adrian?” added Ed Regis. “Over your dead body?”
“If it comes to that,” I said evenly. “But one thing at a time. We still have to find her.”
Chapter 15: The Tipping Point
Alia went upstairs to check on Marion. She wanted to be there when the poor kid woke.
Back in the comparative warmth of the living room, I asked Terry and Ed Regis, “So, what do we do now?”
“We might as well just leave Raider where he is,” said Terry. “Someone will find the body sooner or later anyway, and I’d rather get back on the road before the hiding bubble around the van fades completely. Who knows how many days we’ll get before Randal Divine discovers that we’re not being taken to the Royal Gate.”
“But where are we going to go?” I asked.
“We could try returning to Lumina,” said Terry.
“That would be dangerous,” warned Ed Regis. “Even if we could somehow get to our assigned safe house, the Seraphim will double their patrols and S&Ds after yesterday’s attack. There’s also a good chance that the information from Raider’s mapping mission, however incomplete, will be used against the Resistance before long.”
“That’s assuming Raider had been giving periodic updates to Randal Divine,” said Terry, “which, admittedly, is possible.”
“We should consider the worst-case scenario and warn the Resistance quickly,” said Ed Regis, “but from outside of Lumina. We can’t risk capture ourselves.”
“To the Council, then?” suggested Terry. “If we could get to the nearest Guardian settlement, we could probably contact the Council from there.”
“That might be best,” agreed Ed Regis.
Personally, I didn’t fancy the idea of taking Marion with us to a Guardian settlement. Her mother was still a converted Angel, and I couldn’t imagine the Guardians not using Marion against her if they found out. Still, I kept my opinion to myself. As always, the mission specifics were best left to the experts.
“Adrian,” Terry said suddenly, “what do you think we should do?”
I looked at her in surprise. “What are you asking me for? You’ve always steered this boat.”
“True,” said Terry. “Just not in the right direction.”
“Tiffy – I mean Terry,” I said uncomfortably, “you’re the leader.”
“Then as the leader,” Terry said with a touch of exasperation in her voice, “I’m asking you for your opinion, Adrian.”
“I don’t know,” I said stupidly. “Personally, I’d rather return to Wood-claw than go to some random Guardian settlement. At least at Wood-claw they’d trust us and we can trust them too.”
“You may have a point,” said Ed Regis. “If we just show up unannounced at a Guardian settlement, it could take some time to earn their trust. Besides, Wood-claw isn’t that much farther than the nearest outpost that we know of.”
“I suppose there’s some sense to that,” agreed Terry. “That way Harding could contact the Resistance directly. And she might even remember her promise to fund our mission.”
Nobody would say it out loud, but I think we all just wanted a break, a chance to regain a little sanity.
“Let’s get going,” said Ed Regis. “We need to warn the Resistance before Randal Divine realizes that Raider has been compromised.”
As Terry and Ed Regis quickly searched the house for things we might be able to use on the road, I went upstairs to find Alia and have her wake Marion.
When I entered the room, Alia was sitting on the edge of Marion’s bed, blankly staring off into space. I wasn’t sure if she was focused enough to hear my words, so I said nothing for a while. Eventually, Alia turned her head and looked at me.
“Willow’s baby,”
she said in a monotone.
“Do you think it was a girl or a boy?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Willow thought it was a boy. She’s probably right.”
Alia looked out the window.
“All those people died so quickly.”
“Don’t do this to yourself, Alia,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “This is a war. It’s nobody’s fault.”
Alia didn’t reply, her eyes fixed on the dawn sky.
“Come on,” I said gently. “Give yourself a break. Just this once.”
Alia took a minute more to breathe. Then she looked up at me again, saying quietly,
“I just wish people would stop hurting each other.”
“One way or another, it’ll be over soon,” I assured her. “Wake Marion up and put her in the van.”
“What should I tell her happened to her father?”
“What have you told her so far?”
“Just that he was having an argument with you and Terry,”
said Alia.
“And that everything was going to be okay in the end.”
“Good,” I said, nodding. “Then tell her that Raider returned to Lumina by himself.”
“I don’t like lying.”
I shrugged. “Tell her the truth if you want. Just wake her up and get her ready. We’ve got a long road ahead.”
Ed Regis and Terry came up with next to nothing in their search: no money, no weapons and no spare gasoline.
Not surprisingly, the refrigerator was empty, but there were some cans and pickle jars in the pantry, and we took those to the van. In the bedrooms, we found some spare clothes. It was mostly summer stuff, but at least it was clean. Terry didn’t want to show Marion the blood on her shirt.
We filed quietly into Raider’s van. Ed Regis took the driver’s seat while the rest of us hid in the back behind the tinted windows. Marion, looking a bit dazed, remained silent, sticking close to Alia in the back seat as Ed Regis pulled the van back onto the empty country road.
For most of that day, we rode in silence.
Alia said nothing more about the fall of the command center, so no one else brought it up either. I was sure that she still felt responsible for the deaths of those Resistance Knights, including Willow’s unborn child, but there was nothing more I could say to comfort her. If we were still alive when the war ended, we would have plenty of time to mourn.
Marion also talked very little. When she did, she spoke in whispers, and mostly to Alia. To keep his cover intact, Raider had lied as convincingly to Marion as he had to the Guardians. Marion never suspected that her father had been an Angel Seraph. Outwardly, she seemed to accept our claim that Raider had returned to the Resistance alone, leaving her in our care until things cooled down. Marion had heard her father screaming in the basement, so no doubt she suspected foul play, but either afraid or simply unwilling, she didn’t question our story.
We had come from Wood-claw by air, but we were returning by road, which would take considerably longer. Once in Wood-claw’s city, we would have to wait for pickup by Scott and company. I wondered how long we really had before Randal Divine discovered that Raider had failed to deliver us. How much time did we have before the hunt for Adrian Howell resumed?
Ed Regis figured that we had just enough cash, taken from Raider’s wallet, to get us back to Wood-claw. He kept Raider’s pistol, which had a full clip and was our only weapon aside from Terry’s and my psionics.
But Raider’s van, with its cracked rear windshield, was a dead giveaway. At the first small town we came to, with Terry’s help, Ed Regis acquired something less conspicuous: a dusty four-door dark brown SUV that, though I won’t bother with the details, was guaranteed not to be reported stolen for at least a week.
No longer concealed by Raider’s hiding bubble, Terry, Alia and I went back to using metal draining to hide our psionic presence as best we could.
“This draining really is a pain in the neck,” admitted Terry when she realized that she had to stay in the car as Ed Regis did our food shopping for us.
Terry and I took turns driving when we were in the countryside, and Ed Regis took the wheel whenever we passed through anywhere populated. But whether by luck or by the order of Randal Divine, we met no obstacles on the road.
It was a race against the clock and we didn’t stop for the night. By midnight, we were already on the last, long stretch to Wood-claw’s city. Terry was at the wheel, and I was sitting next to her and keeping her company as Ed Regis, Alia and Marion slept in the back.