Rebels Rising (Dark Rebels, #1) (10 page)

What she did know was that the house reeked of THEM.

They went down the hallway, merging into the shadows. Her father was in the garage, one hand held up in a signal she knew as ‘stop.’ She halted, nearly running into the back of her mother’s legs. There was a smell coming from her parents, a scent that meant fear and that made her afraid. If her parents were afraid, it meant that something bad had happened, because they were not afraid too often.

It was her fault, and she knew it. She had wanted to go to school like everyone else, and her parents had agreed that she needed to seem like everyone else. So off she had gone, in her little pink jeans and blue shirt, carrying her book bag on her slim shoulders. It had been fine for a long time, until that new girl had shown up—Janine.

Janine, with her weird smile and her habit of hiding in closets and doing things like making books spin on the floor or using her hands to make a light show up in the dark of the closet. “You can do it too,” she had told Krista. “Come on, you know you can.”

“It’s bad!” She had shaken all over with fear. Janine’s red hair had crinkled tighter to her head, moving like it was alive, and, in a way, it was. Krista knew that, even though she did not want to know it. Janine was her forever best friend, and her mom and dad were always so polite and nice. They smelled like everyone else in the world, just like food and the chemicals from their deodorant and shampoos and soaps.

If Janine was different, then was she bad too? Krista’s parents had warned her over and over again about the Others, those who would come for them all in the night, or even in broad daylight, to take them away to the place known only as DarkLab. What if what Janine was doing made the Others find them?

“You can’t do that, Janine! They will come to get you!”

“Who is going to get me? There is no such thing as the boogeyman, you know. If there was, he would be here in the closet right now.” Janine’s fingers had whipped out and begun to tickle her ribs, and Krista had laughed.

“My parents say not to do it.”

“They don’t want you to do it because they can’t do it, just like mine can’t do it.” Janine’s eyes glowed in the light springing from her own palms. “I don’t care what they say, this is mine—not theirs.”

Why? Why had she done it? Simple childish wants, of course, but she was too young to know what that meant either. All she knew was that she had done it. She had taken her and Janine away, out of the closet and to the other place—the one where she could make anything happen.

That had been earlier today, and now THEY were here, looking for her and her parents. The garage door was closed, but she sensed that something was crouched outside, just beyond it, waiting for it to open so it could grab them, and she made a small distressed sound in her throat.

A small scream, barely audible, rose from the distance, and her heartbeat accelerated. Janine! They had found her! Krista grabbed her mother’s hand and held it tightly, communicating her pain to her mother, who patted her head but said nothing.

They were trapped; that was obvious. How to get out? There was only one way, and her parents gave each other grim looks. “Take her and go,” Krista’s father said softly, and planted a kiss on his wife’s cheek. His arm hand rested on the top of Krista’s head, his heat burrowing down into her scalp. “Save our child, Lily.”

“I love you,” Lily said breathlessly.

The roof of the garage ripped off, spun away into the night. Krista stared as her father spun in the air, rising higher and higher. Wind blew across her face, her hair—in the cute little ponytails she and Janine had given each other earlier that day—whipped madly across her face. The heavy swatch of hair tickled her cheeks, irritating her eyes, and she closed them for a moment, but not before she saw her father flying away, his massive wings spread out across the dark sky, visible in the lights of the helicopter flying low and near, its engines nearly silent.

Lily grabbed her under her arms and swung her into the car. Krista screamed, “Daddy!” But the word was lost in the roaring of the wind and the beating of the chopper blades. The garage door did not open. They went right through it and over the man standing in the driveway. He tumbled to one side, his black hair falling across his pallid face and his huge hulking body landing with a squishy splat.

“They got Janine!” Krista screamed.

“I know. I know honey. I knew she was a Natural, I sensed it, but I had no idea she was Awake. She’s too young to be so Awake. Her parents...oh they have killed them already, so there is no use in trying to help, and even if we did, they would only kill us too.”

“I want Janine!” Krista screamed, drawing her knees into her chest as she stared out the windows of the car. “I want Daddy!”

“I need you to be quiet, honey,” Lily said in a distracted voice. “Honey, I need your help. We have to get out of here.”

“Daddy!” Krista howled.

She was confused and saddened and torn apart by her own guilt. She had done it, it was all her fault for doing the bad thing, the thing she was never supposed to do because if she did, someone would find her, find her family.

Her father appeared, his wings torn and bleeding. He hovered over the car and Lily cried out, her face growing paler. The dashboard lights illuminated the curve of her cheek, the soft roundness of her bottom lip, and Krista felt that same ache she always felt when they ran away, that ache that told her that one day running would no longer be an option.

His hands came down, and he clung to the roof of the car as it spun out of control, heading for a tall tree that sat at the end of the avenue. “Pay attention, Lily!”

“Daddy, get in the car!” Krista screamed. “Please, Daddy! Get in the car!”

Lily cried out again and righted the wheel. The light from the helicopter blazed up, blinding her, and she cried out in despair. “Stay calm.”

“Daddy! Get in the car!” Terror clogged Krista’s throat, and her eyes were swollen with tears. “You are going to fall!”

“He can fly, sweetie,” Lily said from the front seat. “Be quiet. I need you to hush. If you make too much noise, I can’t drive, do you understand?”

She understood. She had let Janine talk her into doing the bad thing, and now they were running away from THEM, those nameless, faceless people who had been after them since way before Krista had even been born.

“I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t, and they both knew it. The helicopter dipped and whirled. Krista could read the words on the side: Police, Fugitive Unit. Were they fugitives? Did that mean they were some of the bad guys, or did it mean that the police were?

Her father slid into the car, his wings scraping against the door, and blood welled up. His wings could not be hidden; they were always there. That was why he always wore long shirts and stayed in his room when Janine came over. It was why Mommy did all the shopping and Daddy only went out at night, when it was safe for him to fly. If anyone saw Daddy’s wings they would tell someone, and then THEY would come, the dark people, and take them all away to that place—that place where everyone was hurt all the time.

“I did the bad thing.” Her words held all the sadness in her forlorn seven-year-old heart.

“Well, now you know why you can’t do it, don’t you punkin?” Her Daddy grinned at her from over the seat. Even in the dark he was handsome—long blonde hair that hung over his face in long curls, big white teeth and a nose that wiggled when he ate.

“Yes, Daddy. Are you mad at me?”

”NO. It had to happen sooner or later. Nobody could expect you not to try your wings.”

“I don’t have wings! You got wings!”

He laughed, and his wings, folded tightly so that he could sit in the seat, rustled against the vinyl. “I do, don’t I?”

“You do.”

“Because I’m a dragonfly.”

“Uh-uh!” She laughed, the old game tickling her and taking her mind away from the fear for a moment, “You’re an...”

The gunfire was loud. Bullets rattled off the metal of the car, steam hissed up from the punctured radiator, and one tire ws shredded, the bare rim sending sparks up from the asphalt. “Dammit! They knew we were on a lonely stretch of road!” Lily pounded the wheel with both hands. “You have to take her and go! Leave me here!”

“I am not leaving you, not ever again.”

The car spun and slid. Lily fought the wheel. “Go!”

“No!”

The car hit the shoulder and stopped, the engine racing and then dying with a metallic wheeze. More bullets rained off the metal. A smoking hole appeared in the seat next to Krista. She screamed and kicked her feet out, her hands jerking up to cover her face.

Before anyone could stop her, she yanked her door open. Lily screamed at her and her father’s hands reached for her, but she dodged them. She made it to the grass outside the car and stared up at the hovering helicopter, its exposed belly and wings reminding her of a bug she had seen earlier that year, in the summer, as it flew past her half-sleeping face and into the sun.

“I hate you!” Her voice was small and lost in the rushing gales coming from the blades, but the hate she felt was not small, not small at all. It came boiling out of her, a sick black cloud swarming with what looked like bees. “I want you to die!”

The helicopter exploded. Flames and chunks of metal rained down. One piece caught her on her forehead, blazing across her flesh, and she fell to the ground. A man’s body fell to the earth, leaving crisped scorch marks in the grass. More flames came up. The grass smelled like oatmeal on fire, and she retched.

Arms wrapped around her middle and she gasped, kicking and fighting, pure panic overriding everything else.

“It’s Daddy,” a voice said. “Stop fighting.”

She did. She went limp. Tears blinded her as Lily got out of the car and ran toward her, the look on her face one of pure horror.

“Mommy, don’t hate me!”

“I don’t hate you, I could never hate you.” Her mother’s neck smelled like cotton and flowers and lies. She did not hate her, maybe, but she was scared...scared of Krista. Shame and guilt ate into her. She had made her own mother afraid of her.

“We have to get out of here right now. Take her, take her and I will follow you.” Lily said.

“I am not leaving you.”

Her parents stared each other down over her head. Krista was trapped between their bodies, and she wanted to stay right there, forever, wrapped in their heat and smells and the safety that those things seemed to promise.

A bright light flashed from overhead, and Lily was yanked away from her. A scream tore out of her mouth, and Krista felt the tugging as her father did his best to hang on, but that beam, that powerful white beam was too strong. It dragged her mother up and way and into the small plane that floated overhead.

“Have mercy on us, they got it working,” her father breathed, and then he flew—flew across the ground at lightning speed, Krista still clinging to his neck with her skinny little arms and her cries lost in the muscles of his chest...

She snapped awake with a cry. Her head ached, and her mouth was dry. Tawny, Connor, and Blake all stood over her, their faces expressionless. “What did you do to me?” she croaked out.

“We didn’t do anything to you,” Tawny said.

“My parents...where are they?”

“At the lab. “Connor said.

“The one at Luke?”

“No, that is just one of the labs. One of the Machines. They have four; there were five until we destroyed the one we were just at.”

“You destroyed it?”

A grin tugged at Connor’s lips. “Don’t look so surprised.”

“How?”

“That is a long story.”

Krista sat up and her head throbbed. The memories that had come back had not been free; her skull thudded like someone had hit it with a tire iron. She closed her eyes, but a wave of dizziness hit and she threw up, unable to stop the tide of sickness coming from her belly.

“Janine really was my best friend.”

“Yeah, a long time ago, before they turned her. She’s a Seeker now, and she is becoming one of the best in the trade. She has helped capture dozens of Naturals, including Noite.”

Noite. More guilt hit her. She had caused too many people to die, or to be captured by DARK, and why? What was it about her that was so special? What was it that DARK wanted from her?

“We have to get my parents, and we have to get Noite. I am not going to let you tell me no anymore. I am going back to Luke and I am going to get Noite back. You can go with me or not, I don’t care. I am going to burn that damn place to the ground and free all the people they are holding in there.”

“How are you planning on doing that?” Tawny asked.

Krista grinned at her, “If the three of you can tear down a lab, I know I can do it too, especially if you help me.

“So what do you say?”

J
anine stood in front of a desk, her face stiff. She knew better than to let anything she felt show, and she had to concentrate to keep her sentient hair from crawling up into a tight knot at the base of her neck and betraying her. If the Director knew she was afraid, he would...

Well, thinking about what he would do might just cause him to do that very thing. He stood at the window overlooking Luke College, his hands neatly folded behind his back. She could see the pink rim of his nail bed, the clean white curve of his fingernails against the blue serge of his suit.

“Do you remember when we found you, Janine?”

Did she ever. “Yes. Yes, Sir, I remember very well.”

“You were hiding then, weren’t you. The people around you would have been terrified of your Powers. Can you imagine what might have become of you if we had not shown up to bring you here, a safe place for you?

“Maybe the circus would have enjoyed having you around, or perhaps the tabloids that specialize in that kind of sensationalism would have been able to raise a few bucks for you. Maybe they would have just put you in a cage and let others look at you like an animal in the zoo.”

Janine did not let her thoughts bloom past the carefully constructed wall in her mind. Instead she concentrated on that wall, solid brick with heavy mortar between, behind the bricks and mortar, steel, blank and strong, behind that a trap door, and under that a deep moat filled with monsters. Somewhere below that her thoughts lay, and she knew them, but she would never let anyone else know them.