Rise of the Mystics Page 22

  The man rushed under me as I flipped backward over his head. The eyes, I thought. I have to get to his eyes.

  Still in the air above him, I slashed my hands down like claws, fingers curled. My palms connected with his forehead as he started to throw himself up to meet me. But I was too fast. My fingers were already digging into his eyes.

  I shoved them deep, all the way to my third knuckles, screaming with rage.

  He went limp and fell face forward onto the porch, pulling me down because my fingers were lodged in his brain. I collapsed on top of his still body, breathing hard.

  With a soft whooshing sound, the flesh under me disintegrated, turned to a black fog, then was gone altogether. I fell to the porch floor.

  I scrambled to my hands and knees, gawking at the empty space he’d just occupied. Then jumped back, trying to make sense of it. I had vaporized Richard, the blond from DARPA. Which meant he couldn’t be from DARPA.

  So who was he? Vlad?

  My mind spun. Time seemed to stall. I don’t know how long I stood there in that daze, only that I eventually noticed how quiet it was.

  I turned toward the broken window. No sound from inside. Not a peep.

  “Steve?”

  Nothing. Had he seen what I’d seen?

  “Steve!” I cried, rushing to the door. I threw it open and faced an empty room. “Steve!” My voice echoed through the space. My chest was pounding and I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t have any instincts for this. For any of it! I was just a hollowed-out girl, knowing even less about who I was than when I’d made the glass float.

  Had that really happened?

  “You lost?”

  I whirled to the voice behind me. Clive stood at the bottom of the porch steps, grinning. The back door! He’d come around the cabin.

  “I see you got to know our friend. They didn’t tell me you knew his weakness. Funny how it all comes back to the eyes.”

  “Where’s Steve?”

  “I don’t know and don’t care. You, they need alive. Steve won’t last a day on his own. One way or the other, I’m taking you back.” He walked up the steps. “Now if you want to put up a fight, that’s fine, but I won’t just vanish like the Leedhan. You’ll have to kill me with your bare hands, and I don’t think you have it in you to kill a human.”

  I probably would have taken his head off, but what he said stopped me. Three steps back and I was inside the great room, thinking maybe I should run out the back the way he had—I was pretty sure I was much faster than most people. But what about Steve?

  “Steve?”

  Clive lunged and grabbed my left elbow in a vise grip. Pain shot up my arm and I slapped his face hard with my right hand, crying out. “Stop it!”

  Then he was on me, crushing me under his weight as I fell to my back. His hand was around my throat. “You’re coming with me!” he bit off. “Get that through that thick skull of yours!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Steve’s voice. From behind the man.

  He had a shotgun at Clive’s head.

  “You make one move and I pull this trigger.” He nudged the man’s skull with the barrel.

  “Easy . . .” The bulldog was gone from Clive.

  “Take your hands off her!”

  The man slowly released his grip on my throat. Sweat beaded his forehead. “Easy, now. Easy.”

  “Hands behind your head,” Steve snapped.

  Clive did so slowly, jaw clenching, and I scrambled out from under him.

  “Sit!” Steve motioned to the couch with the shotgun. “Now!”

  “Easy. You do realize what you’re doing. There’s no way—”

  “Shut up!” He walked around the couch, following Clive, who slowly sat. “What I realize is that someone’s playing games with people’s lives, mine included. So you’re going to tell me who’s pulling DARPA’s strings.”

  “You know who’s pulling the strings, you fool! You work for her! So do I.”

  “I’m talking about who’s pulling the director’s strings.” He pushed the barrel closer, only a few inches from the redhead’s face now. “I need a name and I need a reason. Talk!”

  I was seeing a new side to Steve and joined his anger, pulse racing.

  “Tell him!” I cried, stepping around the couch. “And don’t think he won’t hurt you, because if he doesn’t, I will.”

  Clive glanced between us. “I can’t do that.”

  “Oh, but you can,” Steve said. “If what you told us is true—and I admit, it could just as easily be true as a lie—this place will be swarming with agents the moment they realize you’ve failed. And you have. Tell me and I’ll let you go. Don’t and you get to feel just how fun this game of yours is.”

  He lowered the barrel and pressed it against the redhead’s thigh.

  “I start with your right leg.”

  “Easy, easy! I already told you what’s happening!”

  “The truth! Who’s behind this and why?”

  “The truth!” I echoed.

  Fear darkened Clive’s eyes. It was a good plan, I thought. A man could live without a leg, right? They’d taken way more than a leg from me and Steve.

  “Do it, Steve! If he doesn’t tell you, shoot his leg!”

  “Who’s behind this? Why? Tell me!”

  “Okay, okay! Just hold on. I can’t—”

  “Tell me!” Steve roared.

  “Tell him!” I screamed.

  “Karen Willis!” Clive said. “StetNox.”

  I didn’t know who Karen Willis was, but Steve seemed to. It was working!

  Filled with adrenaline, I stepped up to the man and shoved my face in his. “Why?” I snapped. “Why are they doing this to us? And who’s Vlad Smith?”

  I saw the red flash in his eyes as soon as I said the name, and I knew immediately that he’d betrayed himself. He was like the other one!

  For a single beat, we stared into each other’s eyes, mine blue, his red. Both stunned.

  And then he was moving like lightning, but I had the advantage because he was seated and off balance. Before he could get a foot off the cushions, I threw my body forward, straddling his belly with both knees, and I stabbed at his eyes with my fingers.

  All the way to the hilt, just like before.

  His body jerked and quivered as if my fingers were electric prongs, then disintegrated into a whoosh of black fog, leaving me alone on the couch.

  I knelt like that, two fingers extended with nothing but thin air under me.

  Steve still held the shotgun, shocked. “What?”

  I stood shakily, eyes on the couch, fearing Clive might reappear.

  The shotgun dropped to the floor beside me. “What . . . What was that?”

  “He called it Leedhan,” I said.

  “How did he just vanish like that? That . . . Was that Vlad?”

  “No. I don’t know.” I spun to the door. “But there’s another one in the van.”

  “There is no van outside. No vehicle at all. They can’t be from DARPA. Can they?”

  I looked at Steve. “If they’re not with DARPA, what were they doing here?”

  He shook his head, still looking at the couch. “I don’t know. But we’re gonna figure it out.”

  “How?”

  “Karen Willis.” He stooped and grabbed the shotgun. “I know where she lives. Karen Willis is going to tell us everything we need to know.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No. First I have to find out if the DC bombing was real. If not, getting to her will be easier. If the bombing did happen . . .” He stalled.

  “Then it’ll still be easy,” I said.

  “How?”

  “I’m fast.”

  “You’re just one girl.”

  “But I’m a very fast girl.”

  VLAD SMITH stood under the waning moon outside the cabin, arms crossed, pleased with himself. Honestly, it was hard not to be impressed. After so many years of careful planning, the execution could hard
ly have come off any better. Two of his Leedhan were dead, but attrition had always been part of the plan.

  The 49th had finally fallen into a dreamless sleep after hours of pacing and talk. So naïve, so powerful. So blind.

  He twisted his head and cracked his neck. Never had liked these bodies much. So dense. So much mush in the skull.

  The poison had worked precisely as he’d told them it would, not only wiping the 49th’s mind but also quenching her capacity to dream. The last thing he needed now was for her to receive the benefits of the old goat’s training in Other Earth. He didn’t know what was happening there, but that wasn’t his concern now.

  Earth was.

  Vlad squatted, plucked a twig from the ground, and bit the tip off. Spit it out. He stood and chewed on his neatly fashioned toothpick. Tomorrow would be an interesting day. It was time to go inside.

  Maybe he would sleep under her bed.

  He smiled at the thought.

  Poor wretch.

  21

  WHILE I SLEPT dreamlessly in the cabin on Earth, oblivious to Other Earth, I was finding myself in terrible misery in the desert with Talya.

  Talya, who’d become my tormentor more than my savior.

  During my quest for the first three seals, my dreaming between worlds had followed a linear pattern, which had supported me. Each time I fell asleep in one reality, I woke up in the other and was able to apply what I’d learned.

  But that progression was now gone. I was independent in each world. Part of me wondered if this too was part of a large conspiracy to blind me further. More, I wondered if Talya was actually a part of that conspiracy.

  Why would he turn me Horde, knowing full well how blind I was on Earth?

  In that reality, I was clueless about anything happening in Other Earth; clueless even that I was on a quest to find five seals; clueless that I had to find them before the Realm of Mystics was destroyed; clueless that I would have to find the Fourth Seal there, on Earth.

  Here in Other Earth I was once again dreaming of Earth, but those dreams only filled me with dread. I was utterly lost and destitute in both realities, suffocating in a blindness so deep that I would have gladly traded my eyesight for a release from that blindness.

  I assumed that being taken from Jacob would be painful, but I was only partially right. It proved to be devastating, and more so with each mile as the scabbing disease took more of my mind. The onset of the disease was worse than living with it. Much worse.

  The disease was repulsive. My revulsion of the putrid pus hidden in the cracks of my skin and the sickening odor of rotten eggs wafting from my flesh deepened with each passing minute.

  Without my consent, I had been cursed. The 49th was supposed to show everyone how treasured they were, not become nobody herself. I was supposed to walk on water, not bathe in the sewer. I was supposed to be gloriously mounted on a horse, leading the world into a new age of stunning beauty—the light of the world, not a wretched gray Scab!

  On that mount being led toward the Great Divide, I felt like a prisoner. The cage was my disease, which not even Jacob could love. I certainly couldn’t. Who could?

  That’s the way I saw it, and a part of me hated Talya for taking me away from Jacob. I knew I had to find the Fourth Seal, but did that mean I had to be subjected to such abuse?

  The whole of both worlds had become my enemy!

  You are your own enemy, dear daughter. You are tearing you down. Tell me, what is seeing beyond what you think should be?

  I heard the voice, but in my misery I forgot it almost immediately because I was sure I should be Albino, not Scab, and I was afraid to see beyond that.

  For the first few hours trudging north, I knew better than to demand any answers from Talya. He was the wise one, and bitter though I was, I had no choice but to trust him. I was the daughter of Elyon, and I tried to remind myself of what the first three seals had shown me about who he was and who I was. But I might as well have been reminding a brick wall.

  I finally broke my silence as the sun began to set. We were on the last stretch of rocky sand at the base of the mountains when I halted, glaring at Talya’s back as he continued onward, seemingly oblivious to me, his slave in tow.

  “I don’t like this!” I yelled.

  He kept going. Not even Judah, who was trotting up to the trees, paid me any mind.

  “Did you hear me?” The cracks on my cheeks and lips hurt when I opened my mouth to yell. I didn’t even have any of the morst paste the Horde used to ease the pain and stench of the disease.

  “I don’t like this one bit! My skin hurts, my body aches, and I smell like a cesspool!”

  “Oh, it’s much worse than that, 49th,” he said without turning. “The disease is also fogging your mind.”

  “You didn’t have to take Jacob from me!”

  “I needed him out of your way.”

  I stared at the back of his head, aghast. “That’s why you sent him? That’s absurd! You brought us together! The armies are gathering, I’m lost in the other world, this world is coming to an end, and all you can think about is teaching me some lesson?”

  “So you don’t like this part of your story, is that it?”

  “I need to get back! We’re not doing anything out here!”

  “We’re doing you, 49th. Your transformation is the story. You are the story.”

  I ignored his dismissal of my concerns and nudged my mount to draw closer, because Talya was pulling away. “Why would you make me Horde if the drowning heals us from the disease? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s cruel!”

  He still didn’t turn, so I screamed at him. “Do you even care how I’m feeling? Have some compassion!”

  “I have great compassion for you, but I don’t join your suffering. Perhaps you could practice metanoia, and do so in silence if you don’t mind.”

  I had no desire to change my cognitive perception of the world while I suffered. A sick joke.

  I stopped my horse again. “I’m not going to follow—”

  “Silence!” he thundered, twisting back in his saddle. He said it with such force that I could almost feel his words strike my chest. Even in that state, I couldn’t ignore his authority.

  But I could stew in misery as I reluctantly followed.

  We started up the mountain, but I hung back twenty paces, fuming.

  Somewhere along the way I thought about being born blind. Why had the man been born blind? the people in the story asked Yeshua. Was it his sin or the sins of those who came before his birth? Neither, but so that the Father’s glory could be revealed inside of him.1

  Yeshua had turned that story into a larger lesson that revealed why mankind was on earth, Talya said. We were all born blind to discover Elyon’s glory inside of us while in a world of darkness.

  But the truth of that teaching felt distant and quickly vanished. I only wanted to be healed of the scabbing disease.

  “And so you make your body your god,” Talya said ahead of me.

  That was the other thing I didn’t like: his knowing my thoughts. I didn’t bother reacting, at least visibly. Inside, my frustration only deepened.

  It softened that night as I watched him practice his metanoia. I was drawn to his singing, that one long, pure note he often sang into the dusk air. But even by showing his joy and starting the fire and going about his business as if nothing was wrong, Talya continued to reinforce my frustration with him.

  I barely had the good sense to keep my mouth shut, but I did, maybe thinking my silence would finally get him to ask if I was okay.

  He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He was undoubtedly trying to make a point. Elyon corrected those he loved, right? I was being chastised in that way and I hated it.

  “Correction,” Talya said, laying out his blanket. “Your earthen vessel Scab self hates it. Tomorrow we stop to check on two souls who are precious to me. Please try to at least pretend you’re sane.”

  I ignored his biting comment and rolled over. />
  It took me a long time to fall asleep in that painful condition. When I finally did, I dreamed, and in that dream I was in a cabin with Steve, learning about consciousness, rebuilding an identity, fighting for survival, a victim of the whole world, being blamed for something I had nothing to do with. I was lost, with no grasp of who I really was.

  My predicament in that world was so disturbing that when I woke, I forgot my situation in this world. Then I tried to get up and felt the terrible pain in my joints, and I looked at the disease on my skin and remembered.

  The sun was already blazing. I twisted my head, looking for Talya, but there was no sign of him. Smoke from a spent fire coiled slowly into the air. We’d camped on a wide sandy ledge on the east side of the Divide. That’s all I knew, because in protesting with silence, I’d refused to ask Talya where we were going.

  I scrambled to my feet, only distantly aware of my pain. His blanket, his pack, his horse . . . all gone.

  “Talya?”

  My voice echoed off the trees and cliffs. There was only one path leaving the camp, but he didn’t emerge from that way, or any other.

  I decided to wait, but after sitting in silence on a boulder for ten minutes I began to wonder if he really had left, intending for me to catch up. He’d spoken of stopping in to check on someone—maybe he’d left me behind because he didn’t want me around them. I was an embarrassment to him.

  Setting my jaw, I quickly stuffed my blanket into my saddlebag, mounted, and took the horse up the path.

  “Talya!”

  No one but me. So I urged my mare to a full run, not sure if I should be outraged or frightened.

  I’d ridden for ten minutes—calling out his name, pushing my mare faster, wondering if I’d made a mistake in leaving the camp—when I broke from the trees and saw the small camp. A canvas lean-to faced away from me. Smoke rose from a fire I couldn’t see.

  I pulled up, blinking. “Talya?”

  A head popped out from behind the canvas. A child with gray eyes. A small Horde girl staring at me with great excitement, as if holding a secret. “Mama!”

  She ducked back behind the lean-to, and a woman stepped out. A small woman with long braided locks, wearing a simple brown knee-length dress. She too was Horde. What were they doing here, beyond the Great Divide?