Quake (10 page)

“You know it,” Faith said, cracking her neck back and forth and feeling the side where a titanium dart had pierced her second pulse. She thought of the gun she'd taken from Clara and realized Clara would probably have another one with a chamber full of titanium bullets. Her invincibility was in serious question. But weapons were something that could be disengaged from the person holding them, which was a small bright spot.

“Job one in this thing is getting their weapons if they have any,” Faith said. “We need to hit them hard with all we've got right from the start.”

“We got company?” Clooger asked as he and Carl both stepped closer and sensed trouble.

“Wade and Clara are coming in hot,” Faith said. “I'd say we've got twenty seconds, tops.”

“Where's Jade?” the brothers asked over the top of each other.

“She's hiding in the woods, that way,” Faith said, pointing off to her left where Jade had flown. “I used my severe voice and I told her to stay hidden. She will.”

Clooger nodded tersely. “Game on.”

Carl flexed his incredible arms, cracking his knuckles against one another, and nodded. “Let's give these two some fight.”

“Fire on all cylinders,” Dylan said. “You can't kill them but you can knock them around. And aim for any weapons either of them might be holding. That's the biggest thing you can do for us. If they're carrying weapons at all, they're loaded with the one thing that can hurt Faith.”

“Roger that,” Clooger said. He understood the threat facing Faith.

Carl and Clooger headed for the highest part of the lodge, a circular room not unlike a guard tower at a prison. Carl called it the bird's nest, and it was filled with weaponry collected over the years. Carl was a sharpshooter, a sniper of deer and elk, and he was possibly the most important player in the fight about to take place. He could even the playing field with the right shot. He was the one person who could disarm Clara or Wade with a perfectly placed bullet.

“Let's do this,” Dylan said, nodding to Faith as he touched her once more on the arm.

“I love you, too,” she said, her voice trembling at the memory of being alone with him in the safe house, their arms around each other, such a brief moment outside time. Would she still linger on such things if the world ever calmed down and they could lie together in peace whenever they wanted? She didn't know. She didn't think she'd ever get the chance to answer the question.

Dylan and Faith flew apart, taking up stations on either side of the lodge as a chunk of earth the size of a double-wide trailer lifted out of the ground in front of Clara and Wade.

“Okay, now I'm worried,” Faith said as she looked in every direction searching for what she would be able to pick up and use as weapons: two snowplows, a lot of rocks and boulders, some small outbuildings, trees if she could get them out of the ground. Not as much as she'd hoped for.

“Incoming!” Dylan said as he started hurling boulders at the approaching chunk of earth.

Faith did the same, picking up a snowplow and the tangled mess of wires and pylons left behind from Jade's tirade. The sky exploded with falling debris as Dylan went airborne, heading dead-on for the enemy.

Faith wanted more than anything to get out into the fray, but it was too risky until she was sure neither Wade nor Clara Quinn had a titanium-shooting weapon. She moved with lightning speed around the back of the lodge and flew like a low-flying rocket until she reached the other side. Then she drifted slowly up to the level of the roof and observed.

Faith could see the bird's nest on the farthest corner of the building, where Carl and Clooger were hunkered down low enough so Clara and Wade couldn't see them. Carl was training a rifle with a gigantic scope in Clara's direction. Dylan was in the middle of an air battle, throwing everything he could wrap his mind around.

“This isn't much of a welcome party,” Clara said. She and Wade were right over the top of the lodge now, about thirty feet overhead. “I thought you'd be happy to see us.”

“Come on. You must have been expecting our arrival,” Wade added. “Even I don't think you're stupid enough to give away your position without having some surprises for us.”

A rock the size of a baseball hit Wade in the back of the head and he lurched forward. When his eyes came back up, all pretense of humor was gone. He glared at Dylan with the face of a young man who came to kill.

“Hitting me from behind,” Wade said. “I thought you had more character than that, Dylan. Actually, I take that back. You're a low-life drifter, just like your mom was.”

But it hadn't been Dylan who'd sent the rock flying. Faith peered into the woods behind Wade and saw Jade standing there.

Faith shook her head, her hands pumping into fists. She wanted to get into the fight in the worst way, but she could see that Clara was packing two silver Lugers this time, not one. One was strapped to her leg; the other was in her hand. Faith touched her side, where the titanium bullet had pierced her second pulse, and remembered what it had felt like.

“Come on, Carl,” Faith whispered pleadingly. “Fire before she gets moving.”

She looked to where Clooger and Carl were hiding and saw the gun fire two times in succession. When she looked back at Clara, the gun that had been in her hand had been blown free.

“Time to move,” Faith said. Her blood pressure shot up and she left her hiding place in the flash of an instant, cutting the space between herself and Clara in half before Clara could turn in Faith's direction. Clara reached for the second gun just as Faith slammed into her, sending them both end over end toward the ground. They hit and the second gun burst out of its holster. As they rolled and tumbled, Clooger picked up the two guns with his mind, moved them through the air, and hid them out of sight in the bird's nest. It all happened incredibly fast—a few seconds at most.

“What do we have here?” Wade said, staring at the bird's nest with a prowling, catlike smile on his face A chunk of metal from a snowplow that had been ripped apart slammed into Wade's head and he reeled back. But this was Wade Quinn. He was a second pulse; he could take it. The only thing that could end Wade Quinn was a barrage of things that grew out of the earth. Dylan uprooted a fir tree, which took a lot out of him because the root systems were so tangled and difficult to rip out of the ground. He threw the tree like an arrow, bringing it down on Wade as he approached the duck blind, bullets flying.

Wade slammed into the ground, but seconds later the tree burst into the air, blowing a hole into the side of the lodge.

Faith had Clara momentarily pinned to a tree with her hand around Clara's neck. Two deep scars ran from Clara's forehead all the way down her left cheek and beyond her chin.

“See what you did to me?” Clara said as her voice shook with a weird laughter. Faith had stolen Clara's astounding beauty, driving two long gashes into her face that would always leave scars.

“My pleasure,” Faith said. She saw a flit of movement behind her in the trees and knew Jade was close by, hiding in the trees.
Dammit, Jade. Run!
she thought.

Clara flew into the sky overhead, dragging Faith along when she wouldn't let go.

“You know how I hate all these trees,” Clara said. “But I hate you even more.”

Clara punched her knee upward and simultaneously brought an elbow across the side of Faith's head. Faith careened head over heels in the air and Clara kept pushing with her mind, making Faith gain more speed until she reached the roof of the lodge and hit back-first. The roof caved in and Faith found herself lying on the floor of the lodge staring up into a shaft of light.

She was up in a flash, back into the sky. But in that few seconds the tide had turned against her. Clara and Wade were hovering in front of the bird's nest, staring at easy prey as bullets bounced off their chests and faces.

“Why do they always think bullets are going to do anything?” Clara asked.

“You'd think they'd learn,” Wade agreed.

“Leave them alone!” Faith screamed.

Dylan was uprooting two trees, putting everything he had into it, as Faith picked up everything that wasn't nailed down and sent it all in a maelstrom up into the air, dropping it all on top of Wade and Clara.

They stayed under the pile of rubble for no more than a few seconds, then burst free and shook like two dogs jumping out of a bathtub.

Dylan had the trees uprooted and moved fast toward the milieu as Wade turned calmly toward the duck blind. Faith couldn't see his face, but she was sure he was smiling.

“Don't do it, Wade! You can take me!” Faith screamed.

Wade didn't turn, but Clara did. She stared at Faith for a long beat.

“Payback time.”

Wade's hand flitted ever so slightly, and Carl rose out of the blind. He kept firing, growling under all that muscle and gritting his white teeth. The gun he was holding was suddenly ripped from his hands. It turned in his direction in midair.

“Wade, no!” Clooger tried to fly directly into Wade, but Wade set the gun to firing before Clooger could cut the distance between them. A barrage of bullets sprayed the air back and forth, tearing through Carl and Clooger. Their chests burst with blood as they shook in the air.

When the firing stopped, both men fell to the ground and the two brothers stared at each other, surprised beyond words that death had finally cornered them.

Faith was in a total state of shock as Dylan turned the trees roots-first and pounded them down on top of Wade and Clara. He held them under fresh, live roots, twisting the trees in a circle and boring them into the earth.

“Faith, you need to help me!” Dylan said. “I can't hold them both down by myself.” Faith shook her head and put the power of her mind to work on the task at hand: snuff the life out of the monster that had just gunned down Carl and Clooger in cold blood.

She watched as the trees swirled, tangling around Clara and Wade, their heads rolling around in dirt as they spun and spun under the weight of one of the few things that could destroy them both. Faith looked across at Dylan and reached in his direction without thinking. The intensity of what was happening all around her fell into the background as she felt the force of her feelings for him. Faith felt an immense power building inside her, not from the hate she felt for these two demons, but from what she shared with Dylan. She felt the mountain moving underneath her, a quake of activity.

Did I make that happen?

She looked up at the ragged peak and thought she saw pieces of rock breaking free.

Wade let fly his own powers and the trees that were piled on top of him stopped, rising slowly and then slamming back down in front of him. Faith shook her head and refocused. They were at a standstill when Wade spoke.

“Let us go and we won't kill the girl,” Wade said.

Jade had come running out of the forest, and now she was kneeling over Carl and Clooger, sobbing and trying to hold back the flow of blood from both men.

“I'm sorry,” Jade kept saying. And in their dying breaths, both Carl and Clooger kept repeating the same words:
Run, run, run!

“Let them go,” Faith said, but Dylan kept pushing. “Please, Dylan. Let them go! We can't let them kill Jade, too.”

Dylan let up just enough to give Wade and Clara the chance they needed. With incredible speed the trees were blown away and the two of them were gone, like a flash of lightning, off and away from the lodge. At the same moment they picked up everything but the lodge itself, filling the sky with a tornado of objects big and small that trailed behind them for a hundred yards.

When the dust cleared, it wasn't just Wade and Clara who were gone.

Jade was gone, too.

They'd kept their promise not to kill her, but that didn't mean they couldn't take her as a bargaining chip.

Faith and Dylan knelt down next to Clooger and Carl. Both men were barely holding on to their last breaths. Carl lifted his massive arm and grabbed Dylan's shirt, pulling him close. He spoke in a garbled whisper.

“You gotta get her back, D. Don't fail me on this one.”

“If it's the last thing we do,” Dylan said as he looked at all the bullet marks in Carl's shirt. There was no plugging all the holes that were pumping blood into the dirt. “We'll get her back.”

Clooger was smiling as he gazed up at Faith. He wasn't aware that Jade was gone, and it was better that way.

“Carl's wrong,” Clooger said, coughing up a crimson stain of blood. “War doesn't have to go on forever. You can end this thing, Faith. You can do it.”

Faith nodded as she cried and held Clooger's head in her hands. She didn't know if she believed him, but she knew she was going to try. Both men died at the same time, in what would later be remembered as the Timberline Massacre. But they didn't die before looking at each other one last time.

“You did good, brother,” Clooger said. “You raised her right.”

“You too, Cloog. You're a hell of a fighter.”

They drifted into the great unknown, leaving Dylan and Faith to figure out what to do next all by themselves.

“I felt the earth move,” Dylan said as he looked at Faith, confused and heartbroken. “Could they be that powerful? Could they move something that big?”

“I don't think it was them,” Faith said through her tears. “I think it was us.”

A deep silence covered the grounds of the lodge and the clouds rolled in as Faith and Dylan fell into each other's arms, exhausted and emotionally destroyed.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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