He wanted me to find a way to fix the situation.
More noises from Tarah's direction, a whimper, scuffling.
“Tarah, stay down,” I hissed over my shoulder at her. Hardheaded woman. Even drugged, she would have to try to be independent.
I looked back at Gary. He stared blankly ahead, his eyes different now. Flatter somehow, dull.
I checked his pulse at his neck and swore. No heartbeat, at least not that I could find.
“Can you get him out of here?” I asked the others. Maybe there was still time. There had to be.
“Yeah,” one replied. Mike, or Matt, the Raiders High sophomore who'd volunteered to create the cloaking effect for the prison break teams.
“How fast can you make that cloaking effect work?” I asked him.
Understanding lit up his face. “As fast as we need it.”
“Then get it ready while I grab Tarah and we'll all go together.” I didn't wait for his reply before running back to Tarah.
Or at least where I'd left her.
She was gone.
I opened my mouth to call out her name then saw the drag marks in the dirt.
Instinct made me hit the deck just before a bullet exploded the tree trunk where my head had been a second ago.
The orb formed in my hand then flew out and knocked the two soldiers off their feet without my ever making a decision to use my abilities. I didn't check to see if they were alive. I just ran back to the remaining outcasts. “They've got her.” Saying the words made it real and drove home the panic.
My worst nightmare had just come true. They’d taken her, and because nobody could tell who was using special skills here tonight, they would assume she was an outcast too. They would throw her into the internment camp with everyone else, drug her till she was a zombie, then leave her to freeze to death.
“Gary's dead, man,” Mike said, his voice flat, maybe in shock.
His words jarred me back to life. I cursed under my breath. “Take him to a hospital anyway. They might be able to bring him back.” Twigs snapped, signaling the soldiers were trying to close in on our location. “Do it now, get yourselves out of here.”
“What about y—”
“Don't worry about me.”
They looked at each other, then looked back at me. “We can’t just duck and run like cowards. Gary would have—”
“He'll get what he really wanted. We're still going to the camp tonight. Drop him off at the ER, then meet me at Bergfeld Park by the slides in an hour. Gary's right. We have to fix this. But we can’t do that if we’re captured too.”
They looked doubtful. Doubting me? Wondering if it was another trap?
Bushes rustled behind us. The soldiers had slipped around us while we were talking, tightening their circle. It was now or never.
“Trust me!” I hissed.
I waited precious seconds till they nodded. Then I took off, whipping the wind so the smoke choked the soldiers long enough for all of us to gain some distance as we ran in different directions.
I took a wide circular route, heading for the side of the woods opposite the highway first to hopefully throw the soldiers off my trail, then cutting back into my own backyard.
But even after I made it inside the house, I wasn't home free yet.
“Hayden?” Dad called out from his study.
Silently cursing, I debated ignoring him. I was covered in dirt, Gary's blood all over my hands and jeans. The stench of smoke poured off me. And no way could I even hope to act like everything was normal tonight.
They've got Tarah, my mind whispered.
I promised her she'd never end up in the internment camps. Promised her I'd come back for her in the woods.
“Where have you been?” Dad said, standing in the study doorway. He took one look at me and his voice dropped an octave, becoming an order. “Come talk to me.”
He didn't wait for me to follow him into the study as he turned and headed for the mini bar opposite the blazing fireplace.
“Dad…" Where did I begin? "I saw an internment camp today.”
He scowled. “Why would you go looking for one of those? Jesus, Hayden, you could have been shot!”
“One man was. I saw it. The guards shot him in the back while he was trying to escape the camp. I saw a baby overdose on tranquilizers there too. They're treating them like animals. You've got to put a stop to—”
“There's no stopping this train, Hayden. It's what the public wants. It's what the government wants.”
“You mean it's what you want.”
He didn't answer, didn't even have the decency to look away or pretend to be ashamed as he took a slow sip of his scotch. “So, you want to tell me what else you've been up to tonight?”
“A bunch of Clann outcasts and I just got into a fight with some soldiers in the woods out back.”
Dad slammed his glass down onto his desk, splashing scotch all over the once perfect oak. “You've been hanging out with outcasts? How many times have I told you to stay away from those types, to fit in with the right crowd? You could ruin everything we’ve worked so hard to build here!” He shoved a hand through his hair.
“What we’re building here is a pile of dead bodies!” I held out my red stained hands as evidence. “Those soldiers shot a kid in the woods tonight. With real bullets, not tranquilizers. He died, Dad, right in my hands. Just because of some abilities he was born with.”
His mouth twisted. “That is a tragedy. It really is. But I’m sure it never would have happened if he'd just come quietly.” He turned to face the fireplace. “Why can't they see that the government's just trying to—”
“Trying to what? Exterminate them?”
His face darkened. “No, of course not! We've got the best scientists available working round the clock, trying to find ways to suppress their abilities.”
“Why do they have to be suppressed? And how do you know they even can be?”
“Of course they have to be suppressed. They're dangerous genetical defects!”
“Am I a dangerous defect, Dad? Are you afraid of me too?” The words came out quietly, unplanned. Necessary. A secret kept far too long. “Because I'm starting to think I'm one of them.”
I threw a ball of fire at the fireplace. The flames became a bonfire barely contained behind the heavily carved oak mantel.
“Jesus, Hayden, you're going to set the house on fire!” Dad reached out towards the fireplace. And the fire went out, snuffed as completely as if it had never been there at all.
I couldn't speak, could barely breathe. Could hardly think at all.
I'd assumed, if I were a Clann outcast, that it must have been through Mom's side of the family. Maybe she'd turned her back on her abilities, or maybe her ancestors further back had been the ones who had left the Clann and left us all in the dark in the process.
I'd never once considered the possibility that my ultra conservative father could be the one to have passed on these abilities. Much less that he had some abilities of his own.
Long seconds passed, maybe minutes, and still I couldn't think of a single thing to say. All this time, all these months since Damon’s death, I'd hidden what I was, what I could do. And Dad had known all along.
He sighed. “Yes, I already knew about your abilities. Your mother and I have always known, ever since before your birth. How could you not have them? You’re a Shepherd, and Shepherds are one of the founding Clann families. Founding family descendants are all but guaranteed to have powers.”
I had to fight to get the words out past the tightness in my chest. "Who kicked us out?"
"We weren't kicked out," Dad sneered. "I left. I did what was right for this entire family. I tried to take us away from that unnatural world, tried to give us a decent, normal life. And what did you and your brother do? You nearly screwed it all up!"
So that explained where the memory had come from of him telling me not to talk about the Clann. I must have heard him discussing it with Mom.
/> “The Clann and its descendants are evil, Hayden. They're like a poisonous vine that strangles everything within their reach. They've been using their spells and their money and power to wheedle into government positions of control to help keep the Clann a secret from the world. My brother, your Uncle Jim, tried to change them from the inside. He had all these foolishly naive ideas that he would reveal the truth about the Clann to the world, and the world would accept the descendants and maybe even revere them as demi gods. And what did the Clann do? They killed him for it."
Dad knocked back half his drink. "But I got my revenge. I had to wait years for a chance, but that Simon Phillips and his loose cannon boys finally gave me the perfect opening. Before, the Clann was much too powerful to take head on. But now the Clann has fallen. It's only a matter of time before every single descendant and outcast has been accounted for. And once we have the cure perfected, the treatments will begin, and everything will be safe again."
He actually smiled at me, as if I should feel comforted now.
All I felt was sick.
Now I understood why Dad never let Damon and me spend any time alone with my cousin Dylan or Uncle Jim. He must have worried that they would tell us all about the Clann that our father had cast our family out of, and then shown us what we could do with our growing abilities.
I also understood now why we never went to Uncle Jim's funeral, and why Dad would never talk about his brother's death. Because then he would have had to tell us about the Clann and its role in Uncle Jim's death.
Then I realized...if Dad had only told us the truth years ago, Damon and I never would have been practicing magic with others in the woods the night of Damon's death. And he would probably still be alive right now. “You should have told us the truth."
"I was trying to protect you, to keep you safe from that world."
"Yeah, well, that plan sure backfired, didn't it?"
He turned to me with a stony expression. "What are you talking about?"
"Damon would still be alive if you'd just told us who and what we are."
"Don't you try and lay the blame for his death on me. I was trying to save you two idiots! How was I supposed to know you'd go out into those woods and blow yourselves up!"
He would never see the part he'd played in Damon's death. But surely he could be made to see how wrong he was now about the outcasts. "Dad, listen to me. You might not want your Clann abilities. But you can't go around trying to strip the abilities from the others. It's their choice to make, not yours."
His jaw hardened. "Don't you tell me what I can and can't do. I'm trying to save this country, this entire world, from the evil that the Clann's lines keep spitting out into it. Those Phillips boys are a prime example!"
"No, they're proof of what happens when you try to keep people in the dark. Educate the outcasts, but let them decide for themselves whether to keep their abilities or let them fade away."
"It's a curse, Hayden. A curse that they've got to be saved from!"
"You have no right!" Somehow we were inches away from each other, all but screaming into each other's faces. I didn't even know how or when I'd crossed the room over to him.
Breathing fast, I looked down and realized I'd grabbed fistfuls of his shirt. I forced my hands to drop down to my sides again as I took a step back.
"I'm doing this for you!" he cried out. "Can't you see that? This world's not safe with those abilities loose on it. They have to be destroyed."
I didn't want to do it, but I also made myself look my father in the eye again. And in his eyes I no longer saw the man I had once yearned to grow up to be like. All I saw was a man who was filled with fear and self loathing. "Just because you hate yourself doesn't mean every other descendant or outcast does. Some of them even manage to like who and what they are. You think you’re curing them. But all you’re doing is killing them.”
His eyes turned desperate and pleading, an expression I'd never seen on my father's face before. "Hayden, please. Just give us more time. We'll fix this, all of it. We'll fix you too."
I turned and headed for the foyer, unable to stand looking at or listening to him anymore.
"Hayden, wait! You can't leave! You don't know what's out there, why it's so important for us to become normal! There are enemies of the Clann that prey upon the power within us. But if we get rid of that power, we'll finally be truly safe!"
I continued on across the foyer and up the stairs.
"Hayden!" Dad shouted from the doorway of his study.
But I was done listening to him. I'd spent my whole life trusting him, believing in him, trying my hardest to make him proud of me, to earn his approval and love. To earn his forgiveness for Damon's death.
I was an idiot.
I went to my room, grabbed a duffel bag from my closet. I wouldn't be taking much, just some extra clothes, my MP3 player and laptop and their chargers.
I was leaving everything else behind. Maybe Mom could turn my room into another shrine like they had with Damon's. A shrine to help excuse my father’s bigotry and torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents all over this country.
I froze, staggering under the weight of the knowledge that I was the son of the new Hitler.
Footsteps in the hall paused at my doorway. Thinking it was Dad come up to stop me, I spun around, raising a hand, the energy orb already forming.
The door eased open, and Mom poked her head in. I fisted my hand to contain the orb just in time.
Like Dad, she wasn't surprised by the evidence of my abilities. “I take it your talk with your father didn't go too well. Did he tell you about the Clann and your uncle?”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “Our own people are dying out there because of him. And he thinks he's actually helping them.”
She sighed, her teeth worrying her lower lip. I hadn't seen her do that in years. “So you're leaving.”
I nodded and went back to packing.
“To find others from the Clann? Because you won’t be able to. They’re either in hiding or in prison. None of them will risk revealing themselves now. Not to us.”
“Gee, I wonder why?” Instantly I felt a pain of guilt for the sarcasm. None of this was her fault, at least not directly.
“When will you be back?”
Never, I almost said. But when I looked at her, I noticed her eyes shown with tears. My throat choked up. “I don't know, Mom. Maybe I’ll get a chance to come see you when this whole situation blows over.”
Unless I got arrested. Then I’d probably never see her again for sure. Something told me internment camps didn’t allow their prisoners to have visitors and Dad wouldn’t be too quick to save me after that little father/son chat we’d just had.
I zipped the now bulging duffel bag shut and slung its canvas mesh strap over my shoulder. All packed up, time to go. At the doorway, I cleared my throat to get rid of the knot in it and tried to think of what Damon would say if he were me right now.
As usual, I had nothing.
She reached out for me, pulling me into a fierce hug I didn't even know her thin arms were capable of. “Promise me you'll take care of yourself,” she whispered, leaning back to search my face.
I nodded, unable to speak as my throat tightened up again.
“Here.” She pressed something stiff and sharp-edged into my hand. A credit card wrapped in paper with writing on it. “The card's in my catering business’s name, not mine. He never sees the bills, and it's got a $10,000 limit on it.”
Whoa. What was she doing with a card with that kind of limit?
It was a nice gesture, but I still wouldn’t be able to use it. If Dad decided to track me down someday, the first thing he’d do was look for a credit card trail, including from her cards. “Mom, I can't—”
“Take it. You'll need it.” It was both an order and a plea. “And that's the address of your Grandma Letty.”
“Dad's mother?”
She nodded, her face solemn as tears slid down he
r cheeks. “She's a descendant, and she'd love to help you any way she can. She'll get you out of the country. Promise me you'll go to her. She'll let me know you're safe.”
How could any grandma help like that, even one still active in the Clann? I couldn't even remember the last time we’d seen her.
“Promise, Hayden!” She gripped my shoulders.
“Okay. I promise.” A lie, but if it made her feel better...
She hugged me again.
I wished I didn’t have to make my mother cry, or could at least take the time to make this goodbye easier on her somehow. But Tarah, and all those descendants and outcasts at the camp, needed me. And Mike and his friend were probably waiting for me at the park by now too. I had to hurry.
As gently as I could, I eased her away from me. “I'm sorry, Ma. But I've—”
“I know, I know.” She wiped her cheeks with both hands, her lips turned up in an embarrassed smile. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I headed for the stairs. But at the top of them, I had to stop and look back. “Why do you stay with him?”
She shook her head, smiling sadly. “Oh, son. Your father doesn't want to be a bad man. He's just trying to save the world, in his own way.”
And instead, he was wrecking it all to Hell and back.
I turned, walked down the stairs, and left my home for the last time.
CHAPTER 7
I made a quick stop at a home improvement store for three flashlights, batteries, and bolt cutters. My first and last planned purchase on Mom's card. Then I headed for the park.
The trees were sparsely positioned at Bergfeld Park, letting in enough moonlight on the grounds to let me see that the park was empty.
Only Mike and his friend, who introduced himself as John, waited under the slide as we'd agreed.
“Gary didn’t make it,” Mike said, keeping his voice low.
While I hadn’t known Gary, I had respected his intentions. He had been willing to risk his life to save others, even if it had probably been for the glory more than anything else. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Mike nodded. John scuffed the toe of his sneakers in the dirt for a few seconds in silence.