Bloom (23 page)

“Colton,” she said quietly, her eyes glowing brighter with soft white light.

“Mom?”

He walked farther into the room and the door closed behind him. She scooted to the edge of the bed, her feet dangling a foot off the floor, and patted the mattress next to her.

Colton walked over and sat, never once taking his eyes from her. Despite the changes, she was the same woman he remembered seeing for the last time nine years ago. He reached up to touch her cheek but she leaned away.

“No,” she said.

“Mom, what happened?” asked Colton, his eyes searching her face. “Why did you leave?”

“Oh, Colton,” she said, looking away.

“I missed you.
Dad
missed you!” Colton felt anger building within him—the desire to unload years of blame on the woman who was supposed to have loved him and raised him for his
entire
childhood and not just a small portion of it. “You don’t know what he’s like now—how he treated me after you left—how he treated
himself
…”

Tears formed in her eyes and floated into the air as tiny bubbles. They broke apart and dissolved like powder in water.

“I
had
to leave,” she said. “They would have killed all of us.”

“Who?”

She sighed. “Colton, can’t we talk about something else? I want to know about you—about your life.”

“No, Mom, we can’t! Who did this to you?”

“I did it to myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nine years ago, a man named Bernam came to our house and asked me to join him and his group. He was trying to get as many of our kind together as he could. I told him I wanted to live a normal life and that I didn’t want to be involved with anything other than you and your father. Bernam said there was a huge battle coming and that he needed all the soldiers he could get. That was the word that made up my mind.
Soldiers
. He meant to start a war. When I tried to force him to leave, he said he would kill everyone in my family unless I agreed to join him.”

“Dad thinks you left because you fell in love with someone else.”

“I knew he would think so,” she said, shaking her head, “but it isn’t true. I love your father, and I love you. I left so both of you could be safe.”

“It ruined his life,” said Colton. “
And
mine.”

“What should I have done, let them kill all of us?”

Colton stood and turned away from her. “No, just—I don’t know.” He looked around the small room and read the titles of some of the books piled high against the wall. “So you went with Bernam.”

“For a time. He only wanted to use me—and the rest of the men and women he had threatened into joining him—to help him wipe out his enemies. He was the bad guy. At that time, I had only just started to learn the true potential of my own ability after ignoring it for so long. He helped me to become stronger. But, in the end, I wasn’t strong enough to defeat him.”

Colton felt the warmth in his body draining quickly. He turned and looked at his mother. The soft light glowing from her skin shimmered and grew brighter.

“What happened?” asked Colton.

“I joined with a few others to try and take him down. I was the strongest Conduit, so one of the others offered me their ability in addition to my own. This was before most of us knew that two abilities were not compatible in one person. They are separate entities that cannot mix.”

“So you took your friend’s power.”

She shook her head. “Only a Void can take away, as well as help another to do it. But Cons can give their power to another, even if they were born without a power of their own.”

Colton thought of Reece.

“My friend
gave
me his ability,” she continued, “and I went to confront Bernam. I was already starting to feel it going wrong inside me, but I mistook it for new power.” She reached out and touched a pipe that ran down along the wall from the ceiling. The light emanating from her body grew brighter. “Bernam nearly killed me.”

“Why didn’t he?” asked Colton.

“Because he thought it would be more fun to watch me suffer. He didn’t know why I was in so much pain, but he could tell that something was very wrong. He thought it was something he had done to me on his own. I was helpless. By the time Bernam left and one of my friends arrived and told me how to get rid of my extra ability, it was too late. From that point on, I had no control over my power. I can’t turn it off, Colton. That is why I came here instead of going back home to you and your father. Dormer built this room for me,” she said. “Electricity runs through those pipes constantly. The only thing I have been able to do successfully is to give off excess energy in the form of light.”

She held up one of her hands and the light surrounding it intensified.

“But that’s not all,” she said quietly. “My mind isn’t the same. There are moments when I think I’m back home in Pittsburgh. I’ll see myself standing in your bedroom, looking down at you while you sleep. Then, suddenly, I am back in this room, screaming because I can’t do anything else. It gets worse every day.” She shook her head. “Soon there will be nothing left of me.”

Colton sat down next to her. “Come home with me, Mom,” he said. “I can make a room like this for you. You don’t have to stay here anymore.” A tear rolled down his cheek.

“My darling boy,” she said, smiling. “I’m afraid it’s too late. I’m so
tired
, Colton. I’ve only held on this long because I hoped against hope that I would be able to see you again. And here you are. Look how strong you are.”

“I’m not strong at all,” said Colton. He didn’t want to tell her his life was slowly fading.

“You
can
do something to help me,” she said, sitting up straight. “Dormer told me that Bernam took away your ability.”

Colton nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t fight,” she said.

She reached for him and pulled him close, hugging him fiercely. Colton closed his eyes as the light on her skin grew painfully bright.

“I love you, Colton,” she whispered.

Like an explosion in a vacuum, energy flared within his chest and quickly disappeared. He felt it disperse throughout his body and settle in his bones as a light vibration.

The light in the room blinked out and his mother collapsed onto the bed.

“Mom!” he shouted. Colton lifted her up and held her in his arms.

The door burst open and Dormer stood silhouetted by the green light beyond. “What happened?!”

“I don’t know!” said Colton. “Help her!”

Dormer hurried to the bed and Colton leaned his mother slowly into Dormer’s arms. Her skin no longer glowed with soft white light. Dormer rested his palm on her forehead, then checked her pulse.

“No,” he said quietly.

“How do I give it back?” demanded Colton.

“What?”

“She gave me her ability! How do I give it back?”

“I—I don’t know how to explain it,” said Dormer. “It’s something you learn on your own.”

“There has to be a way,” said Colton. “She said someone told her how to get rid of it!”

Dormer shook his head, stunned into silence.

“I just got her back,” said Colton. He reached out and pulled her back to him, cradling her body gently.

Dormer stood and walked slowly from the room, one hand covering his mouth.

Colton rested his palm against his mother’s cheek and tried to force the power she had given him back into her body. He clenched his teeth and imagined the energy flowing from his hand and onto her skin. He felt it moving within him, tracing along his bones like crawling snakes, but he could not command it to leave.

He brushed a loose strand of white hair from her face and kissed her forehead. One of his tears fell onto her cheek and followed a shallow wrinkle.

“I just got you back,” he whispered.

Colton closed his eyes and wept.

24

H
aven stood in the center of the training room and closed her eyes.

Her target was a crater the size of a dinner plate in the concrete wall at the other end of the long room. She pictured it in her mind and held it there, suspended in space. Slowly, the image of the blue ball of energy grew in the darkness. The plate faded as the ball of swirling plasma consumed it and continued to increase in size.

With great effort, Haven imagined herself reaching into the core of the ball, past the molten outer layers that parted around her arms as she moved closer to the smooth, spherical center. She rested her palms against the cool surface of the core and commanded the energy to flow into her body.

It swirled over her arms and around her shoulders, sinking into her skin and gathering along her spine. The energy nested there, moving up and down her body like water shifting in a moving container.

Haven opened her eyes and saw blue light.

Through the ropes of brilliant energy that crossed her vision, the crater in the far wall looked like a psychedelic spiderweb. She held both of her arms straight out in front of her, palms open toward the wall, and
pushed
.

A huge bubble of blue plasma swelled out from her palms and exploded with a fat
BLIP
. The room was temporarily illuminated as if by a high-powered camera flash. The bubble sent small glops of molten energy spinning into the air all around her. Most of it dissipated before it hit the floor but some of the pieces burned small, smoking holes into the concrete by her feet.

What good am I if I can’t control my ability?
she thought.
How can I save Noah? I’m useless.

Haven grit her teeth in anger and closed her eyes again.

“You’re trying too hard,” someone said behind her.

She opened her eyes and turned quickly. It was the boy they had brought back from the fight in Bozeman. His eyes were red and puffy—he’d been crying.

“How would you know, anyway?” asked Haven.

“I know it’s easier for me when I don’t try to force it.”

Haven tried hard to find something in his eyes to make her stay angry. She turned away, forcing the sympathy that suddenly rose within her back down into the dark part of her soul—the empty place where she tried to hide all of the thoughts and emotions that she believed would slow her down on the way to saving her little brother.

Regardless of what the others wanted to do, she needed to
act
. No matter how dangerous it would be, Haven knew she had to go after Noah.

“I
have
to try hard,” she said with irritation. “Otherwise I’m just a…” She paused, realizing that she had just identified something that had been bothering her since the moment she arrived at The Dome.

“Otherwise you’re just a kid playing a game for grown-ups,” said the boy.

She eyed him warily, unwilling to concede that he was right.

“Well, we’re not kids anymore,” he continued.

She shook her head. “You can say that all you want, but that doesn’t make it true. I was in high school a few weeks ago, living a normal life. I was
happy
.”

“And now you’re here,” said Colton.

He walked toward her slowly, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his dirty jeans. With each step, Haven felt a small tingle at the base of her spine—a much less powerful version of the sensation that she had felt while lying in the grass in Bozeman, but it carried with it the same feeling of connection that she experienced before.

“There’s no going back to the way things used to be,” he said. “Wherever you came from—school, work, wherever—this is
it
now.” He gestured to the room around them. “We have to fight back,” he said, more to himself than to Haven. “We have to fight back before they take everything away.”

“Corva told me about your mother,” said Haven, adopting a softer tone. “I’m very sorry.”

He stepped closer and stopped a few feet away, staring at the crater in the wall at the other end of the room.

“She gave me her ability,” he said. “It doesn’t feel the way it did before. It’s shifting inside of me, like it’s trying to find a comfortable place to settle down. Dormer says it will get better in a couple of weeks and I’ll be back to normal.” He laughed sharply, without humor. “‘Normal’,” he said. “Whatever that means.” He turned to her. “I’m Colton.”

Her hesitation faded more quickly than she wanted. “Haven,” she said.

“Look,” said Colton. “I know you don’t trust me, but there’s something you need to know. On the way to Bozeman—”

“Where your friends killed Elena,” interrupted Haven quickly.

“They’re not my friends! Well, Reece
was
my friend, but I just don’t know anymore. I don’t know
what
to think. Bernam lied to me and everyone else. He—” Colton stopped and took a quick breath. “I made a mistake. I believed in someone I shouldn’t have, and now more people are dead. I’m trying to tell you that on the way to Bozeman, I overheard Bernam and Alistair talking about a little boy they were holding at the medical center. Alistair asked Bernam what he wanted to do with the boy now that they had the machine working properly, and Bernam gave this little smile and waved his hand in the air as if he were swatting an annoying little bug. Alistair had this grin on his face like…like he had been given permission to do something terrible.”

“Noah,” Haven whispered. She looked at Colton. “What machine?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I never saw it. But Bernam talked a lot about becoming a hybrid, so my guess is that he figured out how to do it.”

Haven studied him carefully. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“I need you to believe me when I say that I’m not like Bernam and the others. I didn’t hurt your brother. I wasn’t there when they took him.” Colton sighed. “My mother left my father and I because Bernam threatened to kill us if she didn’t join up with him. He tore my family apart. And now my mother is dead.”

“So you want revenge. You want to kill Bernam.”

His eyes flashed with anger. “I want to burn his world to the ground, like he did mine.”