It turns out that Madeline’s staying at a hotel a couple of towns from Evansburg. We follow Uncle Cassius’s car down the expressway, so far away that at times, we’re not even sure that it’s his car. I spend the entire ride not taking my gaze off the taillights.
I don’t know the name of the town we pull off into, but I know it’s the right one because it’s got the Taco Bell on the corner and a motel a few buildings down the road.
“Here,” I tell Tommy. We pull into a spot by the drive-thru and watch.
Madeline gets out of Uncle Cassius’s car. She closes the door and rushes up the stairs to the second floor balcony of the motel. Kyle comes out and embraces her in a hug. She returns it, taking in his comfort.
“I think we should just go,” Tommy says. “Why does he want us to wait here for him, anyway?”
I realize I’ve been silent for the whole ride. “Maybe he’s finally going to tell me why he’s doing this crap. There’s still a lot I don’t know.”
I’m not looking forward to this, but I’ve got to take the opportunity.
Uncle Cassius pulls out of the motel once the door’s shut and Madeline’s inside. He heads over, stopping at the drive-thru and finally pulling into the spot next to us. He waves me over to his car, food in hand.
Yeah. It’s talk time. Real talk time.
“Wish me luck,” I say, leaving Tommy in his car.
“Luck,” he says.
I hate leaving Tommy. As soon as we stop again, I’m switching back to his car. I can’t deal with this trip without him.
“I’m not going to eat,” I tell Uncle Cassius as soon as I sit in the passenger seat of his car. Where Madeline sat just a few minutes before.
“Try,” Uncle Cassius says, pulling out of the spot. “You need it.”
We get on the expressway and he mows down on his food. I have to wait until he’s done to start asking the real questions. I look in the side mirror. Tommy’s right behind us, but past him, there’s nothing but darkness and scattered headlights. Dorian’s way back there.
“Why are you taking me home?” I ask. “Isn’t it too dangerous?”
“Not as dangerous as you staying around that boy. I have nothing against him, Allie. I really don’t. But I had to tell him the way it was. Nobody knows why the two of you merge like that, but you can’t go near each other anymore.”
I remember the conversation out in the living room, the one I couldn’t hear.
That’s what it was.
I fall back into my seat.
I should yell at him. Be angry.
But he’s not the one at fault for all of this.
It’s Madeline. And that goddess that ripped the old Outbreakers out of their bodies to begin with.
And does Uncle Cassius know about going bad? Maybe he is going bad. He did transform in the middle of Williams Town. But was it enough destruction to make that happen?
“Allie, none of this is anyone’s fault, not even Madeline’s. She’s just doing her best to stop an event that can kill thousands of people,” he says before I can ask.
“The thing Dorian calls the apocalypse,” I say. “Why do you believe her? Why did you just take her word? I have to know.”
Uncle Cassius stares straight ahead. “I didn’t just take her word, Allie. I demanded proof out of her. She let me communicate with the Deathwind.”
“What?” I ask. “As in, have a chat with it?”
“Not a chat,” he says, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “When the Deathwind communicates with you, it has to drill into you all over again. Only instead of turning you, you get visions. It showed me what would happen if it doesn’t turn people fast enough. You don’t want to know some of the things I saw, Allie. The destruction the Deathwind will cause if it unleashes its full power…”
He mutters the rest. I shift in my seat.
“Why didn’t I see this when it turned me?” I ask.
“It can only communicate with people who are already Outbreakers,” he says. “It can’t show you visions while you’re actually being turned. She’s been trying to get it to, though. But she would have let you and Dorian talk to it if you hadn’t run from us at the barn.”
“Madeline saw stuff when she was being turned. Why not us?”
“That’s because it was attaching itself to her,” Uncle Cassius says. He speaks with patience, like he’s prepared for this. “I had that question, too.”
“You could have told me this on the phone,” I say. Oh, god. What if Madeline’s right? Maybe I’ve made the wrong choice by helping to destroy Evansburg.
Uncle Cassius clicks on his turn signal and goes around a semi. “I didn’t want you to have to get involved with this, Allie. Or to see what I saw.”
He stares straight ahead. His eyes cloud over like he’s there all over again. For a second, it looks like he’s just walked out of the world’s bloodiest, most horrifying war.
I can’t speak. I don’t have an answer for that one. My anger melts…just a little.
Then he speaks again. “It’s much better to have a bunch of new Outbreakers than what’s coming if Madeline doesn’t finish this. Much better. Neither of us killed anyone back in Wisconsin. It was bad, of course, but nobody got seriously hurt. It’s the huge tornadoes that kill the most people.”
“I know that. I feel bad for everyone who’s going to end up like this.”
“I do, too.” He picks up his taco like he’s going to take a bite, then sets it back down on his lap. “I hate what I helped to do to that guy.”
He’s talking the prisoner that got turned the night I ran away.
Uncle Cassius looks away. He’s wallowing in as much guilt as I am.
“What are we going to do?” I blurt it out of nowhere.
“Allie, we’re going to have to learn to manage this as best we can. Madeline says that we’ll learn to control things better. It just takes some time.” He looks at me. “When we get home, I’ll work something out so you don’t have to worry about storms as much. I owe it to you. Don’t worry about it tonight.”
“And you’re going to help Madeline some more.” A cry rises in me, but I hold it down. I breathe out, pushing away the walls of panic that close in.
I don’t want to believe that I’ll be this way for as long as I live.
I just can’t. The thought’s too terrifying.
“I have to. You know that. It’s for the greater good.”