Forbidden (The Seeker Saga, #2) (38 page)

“I’m
going
,” I insisted.

“Somebody has to look after her,” John said.  “Besides, you can’t run—not with your leg.  And we can’t afford to be held back.”

“Look,” I said, “I may be hurt, but I’m the only one who can actually
do
something.”  I touched the crystal hanging under my shirt to emphasize the point.  “I have to go.  I should be able to disarm the men from a distance.  And then you guys can make your move.”

“If you do what you did to the man who had Liz,” Rob said, “I can take them down.”

“And I can help,” Arthur said.  He looked at Rob, and suddenly they clasped hands.  “Together.”

“I may be limping, but I won’t be held back, either,” John grinned. 

“We’re
all
going,” Eve clarified in a way that left no room for argument.  “Kelly’s old enough to take care of herself.  She can hide if need be.  Besides, we’re stronger when we’re together.”

“I’m coming too,” the small girl said with fierce determination.  “My grandmother is there, and I won’t leave her alone!”

Eve smiled, and ruffled the girl’s hair.  “Alright.  We’ll all go.  Kelly… lead the way.”

Chapter Twenty – Fire and Flame

We devised a plan on the way there.  The girls would all burst in first, temporarily distracting the two men – who were obviously Chris and his father, although there was no point to presume anything before I saw them.  I would embrace the crystal at that time, and channel energy from the surroundings into their weapons as I’d done before with Liz’s kidnapper.  Rob, Arthur, and John would then charge the men, taking them down, while the girls freed the villagers.  With the townsfolk free, the numbers would be on our side, and the threat would be nullified.

The only flaw in the plan was that I was still very weak.  The numbness of my body hadn’t gone away, but the pain in my leg was becoming more noticeable.  I prayed I had enough strength to use the crystal once more.
I
had
to! But there was no way of knowing how successful I would be until it came time to do so.  If I failed to access it… it would be disastrous for all of us.

Of course, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. 

Kelly brought us to a far corner of the village.  There, a sprawling, flat building stood next to a ramshackle old barn.  “That’s the Town Hall,” Kelly whispered, pointing at the flat building.  “And that’s where they brought the villagers.”  She pointed to the barn.

“I doubt the men would have left the villagers alone,” John said.  “If their hostages are in the barn, that’s where they’ll be too.    Kelly, can we get closer without being seen?”

Kelly thought for a second, and then nodded.  “I’ll show you where I escaped.”

She led us back down one street, and then started to slink from building to building, creeping around to the backside of the barn.  We kept low, trying to avoid attention as best we could, though I doubted even a blind man could miss us if we were the only ones on the street.  Everybody was held inside the barn so neither of the two men would be patrolling the perimeter.  And if they were, well, finding them apart would just make things easier for us.  Nine against two.  The odds were in our favor, even if they had a gun.

It didn’t take long to reach the rear of the barn.  Vines covered this side of the exterior, and a portion of the roof had caved in long ago.  I could see the top of a tree peeking out through a hole in the roof. 

“Over here,” Kelly said, pointing to a rotting plank in the wall.  Carefully, she eased it away from the rest of the wall, and let us look in.

Right away, I saw the scene I had built up in my mind.  The barn was a flat, empty space.  The sun shone through the gap in the roof, revealing a dirt floor.  Cobwebs hung between the beams of the ceiling that still stood, but all that was secondary to what was right before my eyes. 

In the middle of the floor was a group of women kneeling on the ground.  I counted them quickly. 
Sixteen
.  Just like Kelly said.  They were arranged in a circle, and their hands were all bound behind their backs.  Some had bruises on their faces, black eyes, or swollen lips, or other discolorations. But, all held their backs straight and proud.  Intelligence and steely resolve was plain on their faces despite their predicament.

 My eyes went past them, and found the rest of the villagers.  I doubted if a more striking contrast to the women kneeling on the ground could be found.  All of the villagers—
every—single—one –
 had their eyes glued to the ground.  They were all quiet, and very still.  They were clustered beyond a shoulder-high fence, much like cattle.  Most of them were old enough to be grandfathers and grandmothers, while the others were Kelly’s age or younger.  Strangely, there was nobody in the middle demographic.  Nobody our age; nobody Arthur’s or John’s age.  Not as far as I could see.  Some of the older villagers held children in their arms, but nobody moved.  It was uncanny.

I didn’t get the chance to find the two men keeping everyone hostage before Kelly gently eased the plank back.  Without warning, the distinguishing blue light of the crystals flashed for half a second.  It disappeared as quickly as it had come. I looked at the other girls in surprise.  None of us had used our crystals.

“
The seekers?
” I mouthed silently.  Liz and Ashley nodded, while Madison shrugged uneasily.  Eve seemed to be concentrating on something else entirely. 

“Did anybody see the men?” John asked before I had a chance to follow up.

“No,” Arthur whispered.

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Alright.”  John exhaled, and ran a hand through his hair.  “There’s an entrance to the left.  We’ll go through there.  Kelly, you stay back for now.  Everybody else… we’ll do this according to plan.  Ready?”  Everyone nodded.  “Let’s go.”

Arthur and Rob pulled me up, and silently we surrounded the door.  Madison, Ashley, Eve, and Liz took the front.  The rest of us made a circle around them.

“Ready?” John mouthed.  “Three.  Two. 
One!
”

With a shriek the girls burst through the door.  The villagers all whipped their heads to look at us. None of them made a sound.  The women on the ground looked up.  Not one of them so much as squeaked.  Not in surprise, not in shock, not in relief.  But their eyes tightened when they saw us.  Almost as if… as if in warning.  Warning? 
Warning
!

Something was wrong.  Where were the two men?  The girls kept running, angling for the villagers.  Once the men appeared, I would embrace the crystal, and—

A gun blast rocked the air behind us.  Immediately, I reached for the crystal – and found nothing. The pull I usually felt from it, the embrace that allowed me to form the link was simply… gone.  The crystal was not inaccessible as it had been in the caves. It was just…
gone
.  Like it had never been there.  Panic gripped me.  I had
failed
!

Something struck me across the shoulders, and I flew from Rob’s and Arthur’s grasp.  My muscles couldn’t respond in time to shield me from the fall.  I hit the dirt face-first.  A ringing noise sounded in my ears.  Had I been hit in the back of my head?  With the effect of the willow leaf, it was… difficult to tell. 

I struggled to flip myself over.  My arms were splayed on the ground.  With great effort, I brought my left arm under me first, then the right.  With a heave, I pushed myself from the ground.  Specks of white danced in my vision.  I couldn’t… focus.  My hair stuck to my face.  I could taste dirt in my mouth.  With another gargantuan effort, I forced my torso to flip over.  But I used too much strength, and did not coordinate it well.  I fell pathetically to my side.  I could see the dirt, and the far wall of the barn, but those white specks blocked everything else.  Where did they come from?  They made up a good chunk of my vision, now.  Belatedly, I realized I couldn’t… hear anything.  Nothing except for the ringing in my ears.  What was happening around me?  Surely, something must be happening!  But I could not tell.  I was facing the wrong way to see the villagers, the wrong way to see my friends.  And I had used the last of my strength simply pushing myself over.

Suddenly, somebody held me by the shoulders.  I tried to resist, to fight the grip, but I might as well have been in a straightjacket.  I was being dragged back, my legs leaving tracks in the dirt.  The angle changed, and abruptly everyone came into view.  Rob, the girls, John, Arthur, all of them, were standing together in a tight line.  Just… standing.  Why weren’t they doing anything?  Then I noticed the man.  He stood off to one side, in dark aviator sunglasses, holding a gun.  It pointed at…
me
.  That was why the others were still. 

My throat constricted.  But it was not from the threat of the gun.  It was from my recognition of the man.  He was the man whose office I had broken into.  The one who bore into me with those scary eyes at the opening day’s assembly. 
Paul Rosenberg
.  I was expecting him to be here, of course, but seeing him in the flesh gave the experience a newfound urgency.  It was a nightmare come to life.

I stopped being dragged, and my back was propped up against a hard vertical surface.  The ringing in my ears was starting to fade. The sounds of the barnyard were beginning to replace it.  Those white spots still hung around in my vision, but they were getting smaller, too.  I saw a pair of legs move out in front of me, and tried to look up.  My neck didn’t want to respond.  Why was I so
weak
?  It could not simply be the effect of the willow leaf!  Something else had happened.  Was the blow I took really so devastating?  Lazily, my eyes rolled back to look at Paul.  He still stood there, barrel pointed at me, a smug smile beneath his mustache.  But if he was
there
, then who was it who dragged me…?

A face appeared before my eyes.  It took me a second to process it, to recognize who it belonged to.  The name formed on my tongue before the meaning became clear in my mind.  “…Chris?” I whimpered.  “What… are you doing here?” 

As if by magic, on those words my hearing returned.  The spots in my vision faded, and my strength was partially restored.  I could feel my arms again as if they were mine, and I could control my neck once more.  The effect of the willow leaf was still there. I was still numb. But I was no longer in a straightjacket.  Thinking was still fuzzy, though.

Chris was so close to me that his face blocked out everything else.  He moved back a little, and sat on his heels.  “Tracy Bachman,” he said slowly.  “Why, my father and I had thought you were dead.  When our associate did not return with you in tow, we had assumed the worse.  Of course, seeing you here in person now makes things so much sweeter.”  He smiled cruelly.

“What are you… talking about?”  The fuzziness in my mind was slowly fading.  I looked beyond Chris, and saw my friends.  All wore ghastly expressions on their faces.  Chris’s dad kept his gun cocked pointing right at me.  Rob was closest to him. Anger raged in his eyes.  But he was helpless to do anything.

“Revenge, of course,” Chris said sweetly.  “Revenge for what you did to me.  For the pain you caused me.  For your wretched betrayal!  For your pathetic ignorance!” He was yelling. Spittle flew in my face.  He stopped, visibly restrained himself… and started to chuckle.

“Chris, what… what happened to you?” I asked.  This was not the same person I had met my first week on Traven Island.

The chuckle became an outright laugh.  “
Power
,” he bayed.  “Power.  That is what I have now.  That is what I possess.  You had your chance, Tracy.  You could have shared it with me in all its glory.  But you made your choice.  You threw in your luck with that lot!”  He spared a livid glare at my friends.  “Pathetic!”

“What are you
talking about
?” I asked desperately.

“Oh?  You don’t know?”  Chris moved closer to me.  He brought his face right up to mine.  Beyond, I saw Rob tense.  He glanced uneasily – angrily – at Chris’s dad.  I could see the conflict on his face.  He couldn’t do anything to help, not without risking me, and it pained him.  Rob clenched and unclenched his fists, worked his jaw, but could do nothing else. 

Chris brought his mouth right to my ear.  “The crystals give great power,” he whispered sweetly, “and thanks to you, I have learned to harness that power.  Together with my father.  We do not
need
you anymore, Tracy.  We do not
need
your gifts.  Before, you would have been prized above all, but progress has been made.”  He exhaled onto me, and I cringed away. 

He leaned back, and casually pulled on a chain around his neck with his pinky.  The chain emerged from the neck of his shirt, and I recognized the device Liz had told me about on one end.  The red-ruby pendant.  The
voliar
.   “This,” Chris said, “is more precious to me than anything in the world.  When you used the crystal in the cave beneath Oliver Academy, all the power you used flowed into this.  Into here.”  He tapped the red ruby.  “The trick, of course, was getting it back out.  That is what I have been working on for the past months.  But
how
?  Is it not true that only females have the capacity to tap into the crystals’ power?” He started to laugh again.  “That is what you thought.  That is what all of you thought!” he screamed in my face.  “Try.  Try!  You have your crystal, don’t you?”  He searched me up and down with those beady eyes.  “There!” he exclaimed, and his hand shot for my neck.  This time, I did not give him the satisfaction of flinching.  He pulled out the leather strip I wore, and ripped the crystal from my neck in one motion.  Then, surprisingly, he placed it in my hand.  “Try,” he said again, folding my fingers onto the crystal.  “Use the crystal.  Use it to save your friends.  Use it against
me
.”