The Quest (29 page)

“Who Alia giggles with is her business,” I replied icily. “But you stay away from my sister. And everybody else, too.”

“It would be very hard to make friends if I did that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What the hell do you want to make friends with us for?”

“If we’re going to survive a trip to the Historian’s mountain, we’re going to have to be a team,” Ed Regis pointed out logically. “I don’t like it either, but it’s not a matter of liking. On a mission, you do whatever you have to do to succeed.”

“Oh, you’re going to fit right in with us,” I said with a huff.

Ed Regis sighed. “After what we did to you, Adrian, I would never expect you to like or trust me in the least. But do you regret sparing my life?”

I shook my head. “Alia spared your life, not me. And you’re right, Ed Regis. I neither like nor trust you. Not in the least.”

We both worked silently for a while longer, and I eventually asked in a slightly more civil tone, “So how did you become a Wolf anyway? I mean, you almost seem like a decent person when you’re not beating up little girls.”

Ed Regis kept his eyes on his work as he explained, “I was in training for Special Ops when I was approached by a bunch of black suits who promised me the opportunity to make ‘an important contribution to society’ as they put it. They wouldn’t give me any details. Hell, they wouldn’t even take off their damn sunglasses, and I actually wondered if all the nonsense I had heard about aliens landing on Earth might just be true. Anyway, they said I’d have to become a ghost, but that if I survived my tour, I’d be set up for life.”

I gave Ed Regis a wry smile. “And you just jumped right in?”

“I was young and reckless,” he replied. “I had no family and very few friends outside the military. It seemed like the right thing to do. When I discovered what my new assignment was, I did have certain reservations, but being a Wolf isn’t your average police work. You can’t just hand in your resignation, you know.”

“I always thought you hated psionics,” I said quietly. “You said we weren’t even human.”

“Just words, Adrian,” said Ed Regis, shaking his head. “It was my job to hunt down psionics and to take information from the ones we captured. You were a child and I decided to present myself to you in an animalistic way so that you would be more afraid of me. You’ve grown since then, and I’m sure a professional soldier like yourself can understand that.”

Having finished reassembling my pistol, I slapped the clip back in, saying sourly, “What makes you think I’m a professional, Ed Regis?”

Ed Regis looked thoughtfully at me for a moment. Then he replied, “A true professional puts the mission first. When you met me down in that basement, you didn’t even hit me once. I don’t know many people who would have had that kind of restraint under the same circumstances. Honestly, I’m not sure even I would have.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You expected me to hurt you?”

Ed Regis shrugged. “I would have understood.”

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t consider breaking your nose,” I said, “but I guess I’ve lost my opportunity now.”

“If it would make you feel any better, you’re still welcome to. I promise I won’t resist.”

I laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It truly irked me that, in a few short days, Ed Regis and his Wolves had become borderline friends with many of my team. This was way beyond unfair. Ed Regis had apologized, making me feel guilty for my refusal to forgive him. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him for what he had done to my sister, but Alia herself no longer seemed to mind his company in the least, so I had little choice but to stow my mixed up emotions and accept the former Wolf as one of our own. Ed Regis was a Guardian now. A temporary one, but a Guardian nevertheless, brought into our faction by a combination of fortune and misfortune, no different from myself. It was better to think of it that way. As Ed Regis had said, we had a long and dangerous road ahead of us, and it wouldn’t do if we couldn’t get along. Besides, it had been my bright idea to recruit the man.

Apparently pleased that he finally got me to stop frowning, Ed Regis pressed his advantage, saying, “So you tell me something now, Adrian. What’s with the new look?”

“It hides this,” I replied, telekinetically lifting my hair to reveal my jagged right ear.

“Ouch,” remarked Ed Regis. “Looks like you’ve been put through the paces.”

“The Slayers said that too.”

“And what happened to your eyes?”

I was about to tell him, but then I checked myself. I had already been too careless showing him my lopsided head, which hadn’t been marked in the Wolves’ database yet. I decided that it would be safer not to go into details about my blindness, so I replied simply, “Mistakes have consequences, Ed Regis. I’m sure a man with only eight toes can understand that.”

Ed Regis nodded and chuckled. “I’ve made many mistakes.”

I tapped my upper left arm. “So have I.”

Ed Regis asked seriously, “Do you think you can find it in you to survive my company, at least for the duration of our joint assignment?”

“I’m not about to forget what you are, Major,” I replied. Then I forced a smile and added, “But as I told you when we met, I’ve survived worse than you.”

Ed Regis was faster than me at field-stripping weapons, and we finished the work before Terry returned to the house. Though she refused to show it much, Terry was clearly pleased with Ed Regis’s news. So was I, of course. I agreed with Terry: we had waited much too long already.

Later that evening, when I managed to get a moment alone with Alia, I said as casually as I could, “So you call him Ed now, do you?”

Alia just shrugged.

Knowing how hard it was for my sister to trust people, I didn’t want to discourage her from making new friends, but I felt that this was going a bit too far.

“Don’t play with him, Alia,” I said warningly. “You know what he does for a living.”

“You brought him here,”
Alia reminded me.

“That’s not the point!” I said. “That man is very dangerous.”

Alia shrugged again.
“He’s just like you, Addy.”

I glared at her. It was one thing to accept Ed Regis into our ranks, but I wasn’t going to be compared to him by anybody. “I am nothing like Ed Regis!” I said through clenched teeth.

Alia didn’t reply. She just stared blankly back at me until I got too uncomfortable and turned away.

The next day, our last supper in the Refugee House was a comparatively quiet affair. Merlin joined us, but not Mrs. Harding, who was busy elsewhere. We sat together, Wolves and all, and Scott led the toast, wishing us a safe journey. Considering where we were going and the nature of our company, it would have been unrealistic for him to wish us a pleasant one.

With Scott as unit commander, Rachael, Candace, Heather, Daniel and Walter would stay here a few more days, at which time the last transport out of Walnut Lane would take them to the mountain camp. There they would officially be absorbed into the breakaway faction under Mrs. Harding, who seemed grateful for the reinforcements. I hoped that, in time, the other Walnut Guardians would accept them too.

Alia was late coming down to the dining room because she had been writing two long letters. The first, which she showed to no one, not even me, was addressed to Patrick. Knowing how close they had been, even Candace and Heather kept their teasing to a bare minimum. The second letter was addressed to baby Laila, in care of Patrick until Laila was old enough to read it. Alia knew that the chances of Laila ever being reunited with her parents were next to nil. She asked me to proofread this letter, which I did, correcting a few spelling mistakes but keeping the message unchanged. As for what my sister wanted to say to the baby, that is between her and Laila, and I will not share it here. Alia handed both envelopes to Scott. “I’ll make sure Patrick gets them,” Scott promised her.

For my part, I had only one painful goodbye to make, which I delayed till the morning of our departure.

“Keep training with Scott,” I said to Candace as the first cold rays of sunlight splashed across our front lawn where two dark vans were waiting to take us to an airport. “Remember, like Terry keeps saying, your skills are only as good as you keep them.”

Candace smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Adrian. I’ll be okay. We all will. You just take care of yourself. And take care of your sister, too.”

“Always,” I replied. Then, stumbling over my words a bit, I said, “I’m really sorry that you had to kill Steven.”

“It’s okay,” said Candace. “I mean, it was horrible, and I’m still getting used to the idea that I killed a person, but this is the kind of thing you were training us for, after all.”

I shook my head. “I never did want you to come on that raid, you know.”

“I know that,” said Candace, laughing embarrassedly. “I knew I wasn’t ready to fight. I’m not exactly your star student.”

I smiled. “That’s true, but that’s not why.”

Candace looked at me for a moment, and then asked uncertainly, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

I was, albeit clumsily. “You once told me that I’d be in for a long wait, Candace. The truth is, waiting was never one of my strong points.”

Ignoring the giggles and catcalls from the crowd, we let our lips touch for a moment, and then a few moments more.

Breaking apart from her, I said quickly, “I’ll be back.”

Candace grinned. “You better!”

And we were off.

Merlin was driving the van carrying all the Guardians, leaving Ed Regis and the other five Wolves in the second van.

As we pulled out of Walnut Lane, Terry nudged my shoulder and asked, “Don’t you ever go for someone your own age?” Then she added nastily, “Or height?”

I ignored her, but then she asked more seriously, “Do you really think you’re going to see her again?”

I shrugged as I gazed through the windshield at the Wolves’ van. “Stranger things have happened.”

Terry snickered. “You’re still a dreamer.”

Terry, James, Merlin, Alia and I, along with Ed Regis and his five Wolves, made us a party of eleven to the Historian’s mountain. I sincerely hoped that all of us would make it safely there and back, but that was probably just the dreamer in me.

As our vans left the small town where we had lived and trained for eight months, I couldn’t help thinking about the quirks of fate that had finally brought us to our attempt at making contact with the great Historian and asking for his aid in the Guardians’ last stand against the Angels.

We had trained the lost children hoping to build us a private army, but things rarely turn out as planned. Two had died defending our home. While several of our trainees had made progress enough to storm a small Angel outpost, Terry and I agreed that only one was potentially up to the task we had been preparing them for. And even James wasn’t nearly as ready as we wanted him to be.

But training the refugees had paid off in other ways. Taking down the Angel outpost saved Terry’s life and kept Alia from being turned into an Angel. We found the allies we needed for our journey, thus sparing our charges, and even acquired the money that would buy us the Historian’s favor. All in all, I had to conclude that training the children had been the right course.

But for Max and Felicity to not have died in vain, we would have to somehow succeed in our mission. And that wasn’t just getting to the Historian, but all the way to Randal Divine. All the way to a world without master controllers.

This would be Terry’s third trip to the Historian’s mountain, but never had the approach been as heavily guarded by the Angels as it was now. I hoped that Terry could still find a safe (or at least non-lethal) path for us. But before she could do any guiding, Ed Regis would have to get us halfway around the world, which would be a difficult and dangerous journey in itself. I had never even crossed a border legally, and we weren’t applying for passports for this journey.

What dangers would we face over the next few weeks? Were James and Alia really up to this? Was I? My primary motive behind this journey was still entirely personal, selfish even, but I considered it to be worth whatever risks we encountered. If anybody could help me find Cindy, or at least tell me what happened to her, it was the Historian.

By now, you might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned the names of any of Ed Regis’s Wolves. I was first introduced to the five soldiers back at the Angel outpost, and I did learn all of their names.

It’s just that none of them lived long enough to really matter.

Chapter 13: The Mountains

I peered out of my small oval window on the left side of our dirty little twin-engine passenger plane. The desolate mountains far below had jagged peaks that looked like monstrous claws, and I didn’t like how the engine on the right wing kept sputtering loudly as if it was getting ready to give its rusty propeller a permanent holiday.

Sitting in the pilot’s seat in front of me, Ed Regis calmly flew our ancient, poorly maintained aircraft, with Terry on his right as copilot. Behind Terry sat Alia, who had been silently gazing out of her window at the sputtering engine for most of the last two hours. James and Merlin, sitting behind us, had been equally quiet, and I suspected we were all feeling the same tension about this flight.

Through Alia’s window, I could see the second plane flying in close formation. Piloted by Ed Regis’s second-in-command, it was carrying the Wolves and much of our supplies. The Wolves’ plane looked just as likely to fall apart as ours did, and the only comfort I had was in the knowledge that if we landed safely, we would finally be on our very last step of this journey, just a few days hike from the Historian’s mountain.

We had been traveling for two weeks now without major incident, by road, rail, sea and air. We had crossed seven international borders, but not once at an actual border checkpoint. Ed Regis certainly knew how to unofficially navigate the world.

That isn’t to say it had all been easy. We once had to wade through a leech-infested swamp to evade border patrols. On another occasion, Ed Regis bribed a shipping company to slip us through customs, and we were stuffed into coffin-size boxes for nearly thirty hours. Still, as uncomfortable as our journey sometimes was, we were making definite progress.