02 Seekers (6 page)

information. I nodded and followed him back to the living room. I sat on the sofa, my arms crossed and my feet ready to move in case I sensed another lie. He perched on the edge on the coffee table, so he was facing me. He looked down at his strong hands for a long moment,

collecting his thoughts. “Marcus trusts no one, a byproduct of his youth, but he’s always

practical. In cities all across the world he has nests, which are a collection of Seekers. It’s where he does his recruiting and training for that city, and it’s where he holds other Watchers to sell them on the black market. In New Orleans his old recruiter met an unexpected end through….an encounter. Stupidity on his part; he messed with the wrong group of people. Marcus is in need of a replacement.”

“And you’re going to be the replacement?” I asked.

“No, of course not. Marcus picks out replacements personally. He would know me in an instant.

The man that Serenity thinks they are going to choose is relatively new, but brutal, a perfect candidate to lead the Seekers down there.” He paused thoughtfully. “The thing about the men Marcus chooses is that they are, to a fault, paranoid. They spend a lot of time right at first securing their power in the nests, getting rid of old hands – allies are always needed. Serenity suggested that I let myself be recruited, then worm my way up to the new leader’s ear.”

“That’s…” I thought about it, “extremely dangerous, doomed to fail, and rationally, will never work.”

“You think I shouldn’t go?” he asked. His eyes sparkled with determination to go despite my answer.

“I think you should take me along.”

He was surprised. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You can’t act like it’s okay for you to go into danger, and not me. You’re going, despite the danger. So am I,” I said.

“Just because I’m thinking about doing something dangerous, doesn’t mean you need to stick your neck out, too,” he said.

“I can take care of myself. Besides, the last place they would expect me to be is in a city where a nest is. They would never think I’d go walking into the lion’s den,” I said.

“Because that would be amazingly foolish…” His eyes lit up as a way to get me to stay occurred to him. “What about Ellen? Are you just going to leave her?”

I hesitated. What about Ellen? “Ellen and I will talk. She’ll let me go if I explain my reasoning.

She trusts me.” It came out harsher than I’d intended.

“But can you leave her? Can you leave everything you know to hunt Marcus? I don’t know how long it will take…I don’t know if it will even work. We might be talking weeks, and we might be talking years. Can you stand to be away for that long? Can you give up so much? High school…

college…normalcy…gone,” he said.

“I have to do what I know is right. The only way to really protect her is to get rid of the threat.

Plus, if you are right about this life, I know I will be faced with that choice eventually anyways.

My years will be longer than hers that go beyond normal. And I know that I won’t be away from you for that long. I simply won’t.”

He smiled, then something occurred to him. His face fell and he stood. He backed away from me and what I was suggesting. “No…No…You’re not coming. I won’t be there to watch out for

you. What if something happens?” he asked.

“What were you planning on doing with me?” I asked tartly. “Stuff me into a box until you

return? Not going to happen. Besides, I get the feeling a new leader for one of these nests means a lot of violence. I can help protect people. I may not be super human yet, but I can I help carry on your mission of saving people.”

“Especially if Margaret and I go with you,” Jackson said walking into the room. He had been eavesdropping on us, not as ‘gone’ as I had thought.

Daniel threw up his hands in exasperation. I think he had been counting on Jackson to keep me here, my figurative ‘box’ until Daniel returned. “I can’t take the whole world with me!” Daniel said.

“You’re over thinking it, Danny,” Jackson replied.

“Am I? These people are trained to track Watchers. They are trained to find people like Clare, like Margaret, like you. They would find you.”

“We’ve managed to not get caught before,” Jackson said indifferently, plopping down on the sofa next to me. “And this place doesn’t seem to be that safe anymore. Not after tonight…. Tell you what, I’ll duel you for it. If I win Margaret and I, along with Ms. Stubborn of course, can come along without any complaints on your part. If you win, we all stay here and hate you from afar.”

“I can live with that compromise,” Daniel said eagerly. “Rules?”

“No use of talents. Man to man. Weapon?”

“Sword,” Daniel said with a grin.

They both stood and sized the other up with a professional eye.

“Clare, can you referee?” Jackson asked not looking away from Daniel as he spoke.

The headache was back now that I wasn’t angry anymore, but this was my chance to be a part of Daniel’s next adventure. I was willing to do whatever it took to go with him…in a way that meant me not having to find my own way to New Orleans. I pushed away the pain of the

headache and focused on what we were doing.

“I don’t really follow what we are doing,” I admitted.

“Daniel and I are going to fence. The winner takes all,” Jackson said.

“What are the rules? I’ve never done it,” I said.

Daniel looked at me in mock shock. “You mean Ellen didn’t put you in that class, too?”

“No, we never got around to fencing,” I admitted.

“The way we play it is that the first person to get five strikes on the torso is the winner,” Jackson explained. “Has to be the torso.”

“Okay.”

Daniel disappeared upstairs, so eager to make us all stay in King’s Cross that he took the stairs three at a time. When he came back, he was carrying two fencing foils with a smirk on his

handsome face. He thought he couldn’t lose. I hoped, for the first time since meeting him, that he lost spectacularly.

Chapter 4

They took their weapons – Jackson with a wicked flourish of sound – and faced each other in the living room. They bowed formally, smiles tugging at the corners of their mouths despite the serious nature of what was riding on this contest. They started circling around the open area, looking professional and deadly. Both held their swords low as they eyed each other. Daniel made the first lunge. It was fast, but Jackson fended him off with a swift block and an even faster counter attack. Daniel blocked, made a feint, and swiped at Jackson’s head in one fluid motion, but Jackson managed to block that, too. And on it went. I watched as they danced around each other in fascinated wonder. There was a grace about what they were doing, a sense of history, skill, and sportsmanship. I was impressed with Daniel all over again.

Daniel scored the first point. I started to clap automatically, but stopped when I remembered I wanted him to loose. Jackson smirked mysteriously as they backed up and got back into the

starting position again. In the next instant I knew why. In a flurry of aggressive movement he spun Daniel’s sword out of his hand and caught him square in the chest. Daniel was surprised for a brief moment, then his eyes narrowed dangerously. He went over and picked his sword up from next to the large fireplace. They started moving again, more intense, fevered, and I had to back into the kitchen to watch. Jackson managed to score three more points on Daniel in quick

succession, his smirk turning into a wide grin. Daniel’s expression switched to chagrin, as if he thought he had been conned into doing something he didn’t want to do. He managed to score one more point on Jackson, before Jackson’s final point.

“Yes!” I yelled as the foil hit Daniel in the chest, right over his heart. “Ha!” I grabbed my head at the pounding and had to lean against the wall for support. I kept grinning, though. This would be the beginning of the pact I had made with myself. This would be the end of running.

Daniel eyed Jackson suspiciously. “You’ve been practicing with Han?”

“I’ve been learning constructive things, while you and Ms. Stubborn have been off doing…

heaven knows what.”

“Damn.”

Daniel set his foil on the table and came over to me. He was trying hard not to smile. “I have conditions,” Daniel said to me.

He always had conditions.

“What?” I demanded.

“If I tell you do something you don’t like, you do it, no questions. There will always be a good reason. And you don’t go wandering off on your own. Ever. No stunts…no stubbornness…” He

paused, obviously trying to think of more things to list.

“Okay,” I said with a shrug.

He glared at me and my tone, not trusting how easily I agreed.

“That’s just common sense, and I can’t argue anymore tonight.” I reached out and touched his face, bridging the distance the fight, and the secrets he’d been keeping from me, had caused. “Do you have an aspirin?”

“What’s this?!” Beatrice walked into the living room, following the sounds of fighting. “Put the sofa back right this instant! And is that a sword on my antique table? The table I got from France during the Revolution?” Daniel and Jackson stared at Beatrice like school boys caught smoking cigarettes. “Clean it up!” she barked. Her hands were on her hips, and her face was angry. Tigers would have been terrified of her expression.

They started moving instantly at her command, their faces sheepish, knowing better than to argue. Somewhere between righting furniture and avoiding Beatrice’s stern gaze, Daniel found me an aspirin. I took it gratefully.

When the living room no longer resembled a war zone, Daniel came back over. “I have a

question.”

“Yes. ‘Perfect Strangers,’ was the second best song Deep Purple recorded,” I answered from my place next to Beatrice.

He chuckled and shook his head, obviously wanting to disagree. He asked instead, “How did you know what Serenity said to me?”

I avoided both Beatrice’s and Daniel’s eyes, embarrassed to get caught eavesdropping. It was not my most favorite habit in the world. “I heard you,” I admitted.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes. Really. I didn’t listen on purpose, but it was sort of the loudest thing around so…”

“What is it?” Beatrice asked when she caught sight of Daniel’s face.

“She’s starting to develop hearing abilities…and the ability to convert languages,” Daniel replied.

“That’s ridiculous!” I protested with a laugh.

The only thing I could do with any certainty was read minds, and I hardly thought of that as a gift. More like the greatest annoyance in the history of the world.

“We were at the lake when we had most of our discussion, and we were speaking in French,”

Daniel said.

“No, you weren’t!” I scoffed.

“We most definitely were,” he said firmly.

“A person can’t just understand another language instantly!” I retorted, crossing my arms for emphasis.

“See?” he said to Beatrice. She nodded as if he had just proved that two plus two equaled four.

“I was speaking German just then,” he told me.

“Interesting. It appears that her mental abilities of recognition and interpreting are developing at a linear rate, while her physical abilities are tied into her anger.”

“Couldn’t you argue that her physical abilities are mental, if it’s tied into her anger?” Han asked.

He had waited until the cleanup was finished, and it was safe to be around Beatrice, before joining us.

“Yes, one could argue such,” Beatrice agreed. “How, then, are her abilities developing?”

They started discussing how to classify my abilities, and what it meant, and how I could do some things but not others. They kept returning to what they had learned about my blood. I tried to focus on their science talk, but the aspirin hadn’t kicked in yet, and their words simply made my head hurt worse. Daniel noticed my exhaustion first. He took my hand and pulled me over to the recently righted couch. I put my feet in his lap and rested my head on the cushiony pillow. He rubbed my feet as I mentally went over the events of the night, feeling conflicted and slightly overwhelmed. We sat in silence for a long time, everyone eventually finding their way out of the room.

When we were alone Daniel said, “You’re really coming to New Orleans.”

“Yes. I am,” I replied.

“I can’t shake this feeling that everything is about change,” he said.

“Change isn’t necessarily bad,” I said, closing my eyes.

“Humph,” he replied. He kept up his slow rub on my feet, making me feel even sleepier and

warm. “But I can’t see which way the change is coming from,” he said very quietly.

“Daniel…” I sighed with my eyes still closed, “let’s worry about it tomorrow….”

“It is tomorrow,” he said.

“You know what I mean…” I mumbled. I was already drifting off. As I fell asleep, I heard him start to hum a sad, old, melody. Between one melodic note and the next, I shifted into a more peaceful sleep than the one I had woken from.

I woke up to talking. I blinked to clear away the sleep and the strange dreams of foreign places.

Daniel was in the same spot as last night looking as if he hadn’t moved an inch. He played with my toes as if, during the night, he had decided to adopt them. He smiled when he saw me wake, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything.

“She’s up! Alex, she’s awake!” Right. That was what had woken me up. I tilted my head back and saw Ellen and Alex at the long table eating a banquet of breakfast food. Ellen ran over and put her arms around me. “I was so worried. When I came by last night you were asleep, and I didn’t get to talk to you, but you looked so pale...”

“I’m fine, Mom. Just a bit banged up.”

“Just a bit banged up!” she repeated. “Getting a bruise is getting banged up! Not getting

stitches!”

“You came by last night?” I asked to divert.

“Yeah. I forced Margaret, when they finally got a hold of me, but they thought it was better for me to go back home. I brought your pajamas, because Daniel said your clothes were soaked…

which reminds me! Change of clothes!” She pulled out a set of clothes, her cute face happy at remembering.