“We do just fine,” Taylor said. “Besides, if you cut Silas loose, how would he afford those butt-ugly tattoos?”
Brian chuckled. “Come on, now. Don’t put that boy’s ‘artwork’ on me. Making me think I oughta fire him for his own good.”
“So, you had at least one smart idea this morning,” Taylor replied with an easy smile.
Taylor had first noticed Silas’s latest tattoo a few days earlier, when he made a show of sitting at their kitchen table, easing off the bandage and applying some salve to the raw, pink flesh of his forearm. The tattoo depicted a coiled serpent bursting forth from within a circle, its dripping fangs bared; as if in response to the snake’s emergence, a scythe swung down for the reptile’s throat. Taylor had eyed the tattoo skeptically. She imagined Silas walking around the fields, lopping the heads off of garter snakes for fun.
“You like it?” He’d caught her looking and immediately perked up.
“Not really,” she said, and left the kitchen, but not before she caught the disappointed look on his face.
The farmhands showed up while Taylor was washing the dishes. There was Silas, of course, along with Brent and Teddy. Brent was around her father’s age, plump, with a bushy brown beard. He was a distant cousin of hers, on her mom’s side, although they weren’t very close. He’d been helping out on the farm since before Taylor was born; Brent and her father had an easy camaraderie, even if her dad sometimes called Brent “shiftless” behind his back. Teddy, on the other hand, was a guy who’d gone to community college with Silas, muscular, quiet and sweet, a hard worker, basically Silas’s complete opposite. Silas had gotten Teddy the gig on the Cook farm and Taylor always suspected it was because Silas knew he could pawn off some of his own work onto good-natured Teddy’s broad shoulders.
That afternoon, Silas insisted on working without a shirt, even though the hay surely made his skin itchy. Taylor watched from the porch as he and the others hauled bales back to the barn. Once he worked up a good sweat, his ropey muscles caked with dirt and golden flecks of hay, Silas sauntered over to the porch for a drink of water. Taylor cringed.
“You hurt my feelings the other day,” he said to her.
“How’s that?” she replied with a sigh.
Silas held up the arm with the snake tattoo. “Making fun of my tattoo. This one’s important to me, y’know?”
“What is it? Some death metal band?”
“Naw, nothing like that—”
“Look, it’s fine as far as tattoos go, all right?” Taylor said, hoping to end the conversation. “Just not my thing.”
Silas leaned against the porch bannister. “You like a clean-cut type, that it? Like them boys you go to school with?”
Taylor’s skin crawled, but she looked back at him steadily. In the past, she would have endured Silas’s gross come-ons in silence. But now, even though she was keeping her power secret, the telekinesis made her feel safer. Bolder.
“Maybe you could get one of those Chinese characters next.”
Silas perked up. “Oh yeah? You like those?”
“Yeah, maybe we could get an English-to-Chinese dictionary and see if they’ve got a symbol for ‘creep.’”
Silas forced a laugh, then made a point of giving Taylor a once-over. “Come on, now. I ain’t no creep. Nothing wrong with having an appreciation for the finer things in life.”
Before Taylor could respond, they both heard shouts from the field.
“Help! Silas! Help!”
That was Teddy screaming. Taylor was off the porch in a flash, sprinting towards the field, Silas close on her heels.
The tractor had blown a tire and rolled over. Taylor’s dad was either thrown or jumped clear. Either way, he lay a few yards away, not moving, facedown in the dirt. To make matters worse, Teddy had been too close to the baler when the tractor pitched and gotten his sleeve tangled in the machine. The baler could pull you in and strip your skin right off if you weren’t careful, especially when it wasn’t upright. Bloody welts were already forming on Teddy’s arm where he struggled against the baler; Brent had his arms wrapped around Teddy’s waist, doing all he could to keep him from getting shredded.
“Son of a bitch!” Silas yelled as he joined Brent in trying to free Teddy. “Turn that thing off!” he shouted at Taylor.
Without even thinking about it, Taylor used her telekinesis to throw the power lever on the baler. The machine wheezed to a stop. The three farmhands fell in a heap as Teddy’s arm came free, Teddy crying tears of relief.
Luckily, in the chaos, the farmhands hadn’t noticed Taylor use her Legacy. She rushed to her dad’s side, fell to her knees beside him and rolled him over, her telekinesis helping with his weight. Taylor saw a gash on her dad’s forehead from where he’d landed on a rock. There was a lot of blood—one side of her dad’s face was caked in copper-tinged mud. Worse than just a few stitches. Taylor thought she could see a bit of bone peeking out through all the grime and gore.
A strange calm settled over her. She knew what to do.
Taylor pressed a hand to her dad’s forehead, felt warm energy flow through her and into him and watched as his wound miraculously closed. Seconds later, his eyes fluttered open and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hell, what happened?” he asked blearily.
Taylor felt eyes upon her. She turned slowly, saw the three farmhands all standing there and staring at her. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape. They’d seen what she did.
“You’re . . . you’re one of them!” Silas exclaimed.
“Hold on, I can explain,” Taylor replied, her mind searching for a convincing lie.
Silas took off, running as fast as he could back towards the house. Taylor and the others watched, puzzled, as he sprinted to his truck and took off up the dirt road.
“That’ll be trouble,” her father said, sitting up. He touched the front of his shirt—nearly soaked through with blood—and shook his head in disbelief.
“Don’t see what got into him. I didn’t see nothing to be scared of,” Brent said, her cousin turning to look meaningfully at Teddy. “You see anything, Ted?”
Teddy continued to stare at Taylor, his mouth open. Brent elbowed him.
“Yeah, uh, I mean, no,” Teddy said. “Didn’t see nothing.”
“Double wages for today,” her dad said to Teddy as he slowly climbed to his feet. “For the trouble.”
Taylor stayed quiet through it all, her eyes on the dusty trail left by Silas’s quick exit. She should’ve been amazed by what she’d done—healing a massive gash with just a touch!—except there was already a heavy seed of anxiety growing in her stomach. The way Silas had looked at her, not leering anymore but repulsed . . .
Well, the secret’s out now, she thought, surprised to feel some small glimmer of relief. Whatever happens next, at least there’s no more hiding.
Taylor snapped her attention to Teddy when he stepped forward and sheepishly held out his bloody arm. “Maybe I could also not see you doing your magic for me, Taylor?” He smiled shakily. “Please?”
For a week, Taylor and her dad waited for the other shoe to drop. Silas stopped showing up for work and wouldn’t return phone calls. Taylor kept waiting for a battalion of soldiers to come and take her into custody, but after another week went by as if nothing had happened, she began to get hopeful.
“Maybe he didn’t tell anyone,” she told her dad over breakfast, although the words rang hollow.
Her dad’s brow furrowed. He pushed his food around his plate, his appetite diminished since the accident.
“It ain’t so much the telling that worries me,” her dad said after a moment. “It’s who he tells.”
A few days later, Teddy showed up at the farm. He’d been picking up Silas’s shifts since he disappeared, but it was Sunday, the day the Cooks didn’t have help. Brian met him on the porch and Taylor eavesdropped at the door.
“I went out in Sioux Falls last night,” Teddy explained. “Saw Silas. He was with
a strange bunch of fellas, Mr. Cook. He saw me, came over, started asking about Taylor.”
“Government types?” her dad asked.
“Nuh-uh,” Teddy replied. “Y’know them Bible-thumping sort that go door-to-door sometimes, all intense and in your business? These guys looked like them but . . . meaner. Gave me the heebie-jeebies, so I got outta there quick. Then, this morning, I seen some of them same guys driving around town. Figured it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t come out here and warn you.”
After Teddy left, Mr. Cook got his shotgun out of storage. He sat out on the porch with the weapon across his lap and waited.
“Who do you think they are?” Taylor asked.
Her dad grimaced. “Don’t know.” He paused and she could tell he was debating how much to tell her. He touched the spot on his forehead where there should have been a scar from his fall off the tractor. “When all this first happened with you, I did some research into . . . you know, how things are now. There’s some people out there, crazy people, with nasty ideas about kids with your gifts.”
Taylor’s hands shook. “Maybe we should call somebody. The police, at least.”
“They’ll take you away.” He looked over his shoulder. “You want that, Tay?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want that. But she didn’t want her father to get hurt either.
“This is our family’s land,” her dad concluded resolutely. “Ain’t nobody pushing me around on our land.”
They came at nightfall.
Taylor’s dad hustled her inside when the first set of headlights came into view. She didn’t go far—she was the one with the Legacies, after all—her dad had only his shotgun and a single box of ammo. Taylor peeked out from behind the screen door, watching the vehicles come.
They made a show of driving up, coming in abreast of each other like they were in formation, riding roughshod over the fields. There were a couple of RVs, some pickup trucks, a handful of motorcycles and a big van like cops would use to haul prisoners. Spray-painted on the sides and hoods of some of the vehicles was that same snake-and-scythe symbol that Silas had tattooed on his forearm.
Her father stood on the porch with his gun ready as the men got out of their cars and formed a perimeter. Taylor assumed they were mostly men, anyway—she couldn’t see their faces. Many of them wore gasmasks. Some of them opted simply for bandannas covering their mouths and noses like outlaws. Taylor didn’t know what to make of the metallic headgear some of them sported. Looked almost like tinfoil hats. Taylor scanned the crowd but couldn’t pick out Silas from their number. There were about thirty of them.
“You people are trespassing!” her father yelled. He made an effort to keep his voice steady, but Taylor could tell he was scared.
The men were armed. Pistols and machine guns and assault rifles. Her dad’s shotgun was loaded with buckshot.
A man came forward from the crowd. He wore a black bandanna, a coal-colored duster and no silly headgear. His curly hair was salt-and-pepper. He held his hands up as if to keep things calm.
“Mr. Cook, isn’t it? Brian Cook? Can I call you Brian?”
Her dad pumped his shotgun in response.
“Now now, Brian, don’t go doing anything rash. We didn’t come all the way out here to hurt you. On the contrary! We came to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Why, from that thing living in your house,” the man answered.
Taylor thought about the clips she’d seen of the Garde fighting during the invasion. They used their telekinesis to rip the weapons right out of the hands of their enemies. She could do that if she focused.
Except there were an awful lot of guns out there.
She looked down at herself and gasped. There was a red dot on her chest. Someone sighting her through the screen. She ducked behind the door frame, heart pounding.
“They always told us in Sunday school that the devils lived down below, but we know now that’s not the case, don’t we, Brian?” the man was saying. “They came from the stars. Descended just like Lucifer did. Seeded the world with their sin. Now that corruption’s growing, manifesting in ways that defy the laws of nature. Satan, he wants you to see those powers as miracles. He wants you to worship these supposed guardian angels. But I know my Bible, I remember the words of Corinthians—”
“Jesus,” Taylor’s dad said. “Don’t you ever shut up?”
The preacher sighed. “We’re here to Harvest the sin, Mr. Cook. Your daughter, she didn’t choose to have that filth possess her, and my heart goes out. It’s a shameful and ugly business. But we got to do what God commands and Harvest these false prophets before they get a chance to grow. You go ahead and stand aside now, so we can do God’s will.”
While the man spoke, Taylor’s dad half turned and hissed in her direction. “Taylor, you run out the back now.”
“No, Dad.”
“I love you, now you run—!”
Taylor’s dad aimed his shotgun at the preacher.
He fired. And, at the same time, a dozen other guns fired back. Pop-pop-pop. Their peaceful farm, now a war zone.
And then, a moment later, the night sky filled with fire.
CHAPTER TEN
KOPANO OKEKE
ZUMA ROCK, NIGERIA
“DOES FATHER KNOW ABOUT THIS?”
Kopano’s mom stared at him. “What do you think?”
She drove a car borrowed from one of her church friends, Kopano buckled in beside her. He could not remember the last time that he saw his mother drive. She hunched over the wheel, the color drained from her knuckles. She kept checking the rearview mirror, worried they were being followed.
It was Akuziem, his mother, whose cool hand had pressed over Kopano’s mouth and awoken him in the middle of the night.
She had already packed a bag for him.
She led him past the living room, tiptoeing in a way Kopano found overly dramatic. His father was passed out in the armchair, a half-empty bottle of ogogoro in one hand, his cell phone clutched in the other. Finally done making apologies for their lost delivery, Udo had drunken himself into a stupor. When Kopano stopped to stare at his father, Akuziem grabbed his arm and yanked him down the hall.
“Say good-bye to your brothers,” his mother whispered.
Kopano looked at her with alarm. “Are we in trouble, Mama?”
“I am sorting it out,” she whispered back, then waved him forward impatiently. “We must be quick.”
Kopano crept into the narrow bedroom that his little brothers shared. Obi stretched out on his back and snored relentlessly, while little Dubem huddled close to the wall with a pillow pushed over his head. Kopano kissed Obi on the forehead, the boy not even stirring. He couldn’t reach Dubem’s face, nestled as it was in his pillows, so he settled for squeezing his youngest brother’s little arm. Dubem rolled over immediately, tired eyes trying to focus.
“Kopano? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Kopano replied too quickly, his smile forced. “Just saying good night.”
Dubem eyed him skeptically. He soon noticed the canvas pack slung over Kopano’s shoulder. “Is this it? Are you going to America?”
Kopano sensed his mother’s shadow watching from the doorway. Only then did it dawn on Kopano that spiriting him away to the Human Garde Academy was exactly his mother’s plan. He had waited months for this day, but he never expected it to come so abruptly. He had imagined a going-away party with all their neighbors invited along with his friends from school, and then a tearful parting with his family at the airport. When would he see his parents again? His brothers? Would they be all right without him? Kopano wiped the back of his hand across his eyes.
“Yes,” he told Dubem. “Don’t tell Father until morning. He’ll be mad.”
“I will keep your secret,” Dubem said, then sat up to hug him. “Good luck to you, brother. Write me letters.”
The streets of Lagos were far less crowded after midnight, the bumper-to-bumper traffic
and daredevil drivers of the daylight hours gone, although the cavernous potholes that needed careful navigation while the sun was up were even more dangerous now. Kopano found the deserted roads ominous. There were so few other cars that he wondered what sort of sinister people were hidden behind each set of passing headlights. In his mind, he concocted stories for them—criminals and vigilantes and fugitives like him. Was the boy who’d tried to gut him driving around out there, looking for vengeance?
“Father’s gotten us in trouble, hasn’t he?” Kopano said to break the silence.
“Not just Father, hmm?” his mother replied, then adjusted the rearview mirror. “Or did he force you to go along with his stupid scheme? You, with your powers . . .”
Kopano crossed his arms. “I thought . . . we needed the money. I didn’t expect what happened to happen.”
She tossed her head, dismissing Kopano’s words. “Too late now, my son. You and your father angered some very bad people. Powerful people. And all your father can think to do is drink and cry on the phone and beg mercy. So, you and I will fix this. We know people more powerful than these so-called big men.”
“Who? Who do we know?”
“The United Nations,” his mother replied firmly. “Your friend John Smith.”
Kopano stared at her like she’d gone mad. “They will take me to the Academy in America, Mama, not the rest of you.”
“I know that. I also read the articles that say the families of your kind will be protected. So, you will go to America, and your new keepers will take the rest of us somewhere safe.”
Kopano pretended not to notice the way his mother said “your kind,” as if he was no longer Okeke, no longer Nigerian, no longer human.
It was more than a ten-hour drive north on the A22 to Zuma Rock, where the Loralite stone had grown and the United Nations had set up a headquarters. Kopano offered to take a turn behind the wheel, but his mother refused. She relaxed some once they left Lagos behind. They both did.
Kopano dozed off and awoke to the sound of hoofbeats. It was morning. A group of boys rode their horses on the side of the highway, racing their car, whooping and slapping riding crops against the flanks of their skinny mounts. Akuziem honked her horn in irritation and stepped on the gas until the jockeys fell behind them. They were in a rural part of the country that Kopano had never seen before. He had never even been out of Lagos. Once again, the reality of his situation dawned on him.