Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (126 page)

“My wings hurt.” He frowned and shuddered. “Felt like someone was ripping my bones out through my back for, like, a solid hour. When it was over, I was all bloody and scared.”

“You knew you were Meta, but you didn’t know what your power would be?”

He shook his head, and the others made noises that suggested they hadn’t known, either.

“Did you know?” Sasha asked.

“I didn’t even know I was Meta,” I replied. I didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to give details of my hellish childhood to a bunch of strangers. But it also felt right. Like I could relate to them somehow, even though we were nothing alike. “I was born in a place called Paradise Ranch in Montana. It was run by a group of people who believed that Metas were demonic spawn, and that Satan was working through their powers.”

“The fuck?” Bethany said, as incredulous as I’d ever seen her.

“Unfortunately, Paradise Ranch wasn’t an anomaly. Other places like it did and probably do still exist.”

“You were born there?” Sasha asked. Her sparkly eyes went wide. “What did they do when you turned blue?”

Icicles stabbed me in the guts. My skin felt cold, tight. I pushed through the panic and dredged up the offending memories. “It didn’t happen all at once,” I replied. “I could hide it for a few days, until it spread to my hands and face. The morning I woke up and my eyes were glowing, I ran straight into my parents’ bedroom, sobbing, and I begged them to help me. My mother looked at me and started to cry. My father left the room. Neither one of them would touch me.”

“Did they turn you in?”

“Not at first. They kept me out of school for a few days. I couldn’t leave the house.” My skin tingled. “They tried giving me scalding-hot baths, then ice-cold baths, like it would leach the color out of my skin. They prayed over me. I was terrified, because all I knew of Metas was that they were demons, and I didn’t want to be a demon. Then I used my Flex power for the first time—stretched my wrist out six inches.”

My eyes burned with tears from old hurts.

“They called the town elders. My parents accused each other of being the cause of my”—I made air quotes—“possession. The elders promised to cast out my demon.”

Six horrified faces stared back at me, and I found the words were coming more easily. Now that the dam had cracked, the pressure was too great. Everything was coming out.

“I was taken to the church where everyone worshipped and then locked in a pitch-black cell in the basement. My parents threw me into hell, and they did it willingly. For two months, I was deprived of light, starved, beaten, tortured with water and sound and heat and light. The elders performed what I can only describe as rituals, where they chanted and flung things at me. Water, wine, blood, urine, I have no idea. I told them I wasn’t a demon, that I didn’t want my powers, that I was sorry.” I withheld some of the details of my torture from my audience. They didn’t need to know the most vile parts, the acts that still occasionally gave me nightmares. The things the elders did that—I realized many years later—had nothing to do with the exorcism attempts.

“My parents never came for me,” I said.

I glanced at Bethany, whose cheeks were streaked with tears, and damn it, I wanted to hug her. And I had no idea why. I wiped at my own eyes with the back of my hand, as torn up by the memories as I was calmed by them. Saying these things out loud took the monster from the closet and exposed him to the light of day.

He wasn’t so scary anymore.

“But you got away?” Sasha asked.

“I was only eight,” I said. “I couldn’t have gotten away if I’d tried. My last night there, the elders declared they’d failed to exorcise the demon from my body, so the only thing left to do was send us both to hell so the demon no longer walked the earth.”

Phantom flames licked my skin, and I closed my eyes. “They built a wooden platform in the yard behind the church. They stoked a bonfire beneath it, and they tied me to a post in the middle. I was terrified, so completely out of my mind that I let them do it. I remember the heat of the fire, the smell of burning wood. I remember looking out and seeing my parents, watching so calmly, like they’d already accepted I was dead.

“And then a woman in a blue uniform flew in and doused the flames before I was burned too badly.” Love for that woman and a long-ago act of bravery filled my heart nearly to bursting, and I remembered clearly why I did what I did today. “A Ranger Corps Squad found me and saved me before I was murdered.”

“Christ,” Rick said.

Christ wasn’t my savior that day. That distinction belonged to four Rangers—one of whom died during my rescue. The others died before the end of the War. Those brave souls brought me back to Los Angeles to recover at Rangers Headquarters. I had mixed memories of my early weeks among the Rangers. I suffered from severe PTSD. I was terrified of adults. I hadn’t realized until later that a Ranger named Delphi made the decision to put psychic shields around my worst memories of the torture. Those shields allowed me to trust, to make friends with the other kids at HQ, and to find a sense of normalcy among other Metas.

The day we lost our powers in Central Park, Delphi’s psychic shields broke. For days after, I was dealing not only with the loss of my powers, the loss of my friends, and the destruction of my entire life, but also an influx of memories I’d thought long gone. The government put me into a psychiatric treatment facility for four months before I was given to a foster family.

If the Rangers saved my life when I was eight, then Alfred and Joan Wimbley saved my life again when I was twelve. They were the most loving, patient, understanding parents a traumatized ex-Meta could have asked for, and I missed them every day. But I didn’t dare visit them. As long as no one realized our connection, they’d stay safely out of public scrutiny. I’d never put their lives in danger.

I briefly outlined these things for my audience. They needed to understand that not all mundane people were evil, and that the Rangers had been, at heart, doing the right thing. No matter what the government tried to do under the table, there had been a lot of true heroes in the Corps.

“After the War ended, it wasn’t easy still being blue,” I said. “But I learned to embrace my skin color. I can’t change it, so I can at least celebrate it. And the thing that unites us, you guys and me? We’re Metas, no matter what. We might be different, but we’re all different together.”

No one spoke for a long minute.

“Thank you,” Sasha said. “For telling us all of that. You didn’t have to.”

“I think I did, but you’re welcome.”

I got up to partake of their self-draining toilet, then used a bottle of water by the sink to wash my hands. I didn’t bother to look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I knew it well enough. I embraced the lightness inside me at having exorcised a demon from long ago in the simple telling of a story. I felt it all over.

The others were back to sleep when I returned to the living room. I curled up on my mattress, unsurprised to see a pillow and blanket had been left for me.

This time I slept.

•  •  •

The next day was definitely in the running to become Longest Day Ever by the time evening rolled around. Teresa called roughly every four hours with an update on Maddie’s condition, which ping-ponged all over the place. At ten o’clock she was “feverish and fighting an infection.” Around two she was “stable and her fever’s going down.”

We spent our time indoors, keeping a low profile just like Teresa said, and slowly losing our minds. Seven people, six of them teenagers, stuck in a small house with no fresh air and few forms of entertainment, led to a lot of fighting. And talking. We played poker for matchsticks, and I hustled Tate, Nicolas, and Sasha the first game. Afterward, I taught them all about tells, odds, and how to bluff.

Barry mostly kept to himself, reading a battered paperback that had probably been left behind by the house’s previous owners. He only became animated when the phone rang with an update. Bethany and Rick paired off quickly and spent a lot of time in the kitchen, out of sight. At one point they disappeared upstairs, and we listened to a lot of creaking and heavy breathing for a while.

At least she isn’t flirting with Ethan anymore, right?

When they came downstairs later, Bethany was beaming and Rick looked stunned. Poor guy.

Teresa’s next call didn’t come until nearly seven. Sasha, bored with poker, had taken a nap, and she bolted upright when the phone rang. “Yes?” she said.

We all stopped our activities and watched as her eyes widened. She grinned and said, “Maddie?”

Barry fled across the room as fast as a boy without superspeed could go, and he barely stopped himself from yanking the phone away from Sasha. “She’s talking?” he asked. Sasha slapped a hand over Barry’s mouth.

“You had us all scared, girlie,” she said. “They treating you good?” Nod. “Excellent.” Pause. “Yeah, hold on.” She handed the phone to Barry, who looked ready to burst into tears.

“Madeline?” he said after he fumbled the phone three times.

I sympathized with that sort of worry and fear. I’d been there. I’d gotten the phone call telling me someone I loved was out of danger. I’d also felt the grief that came with the opposite news.

“The infection’s gone,” Sasha reported to us while Barry spoke into the phone in hushed tones. “She’s alert and feeling better.”

A round of cheers went up, followed by some hugging and backslaps. I sat quietly, cheering on the inside, happy for them. Truly happy.

Barry and Maddie spoke for a few more minutes, and then he handed the phone over to Sasha. She wandered into the kitchen to finish the call. I’d almost made up my mind to teach the group to play seven-card stud when she came back into the living room. Her expression made everyone pause and stare.

“What?” Rick asked.

“They did what they promised and healed Maddie,” Sasha said. “So far, they’re keeping their word. I trust Trance.”

“Okay.”

“Trance invited me to visit the HQ. Not just to see Maddie, but to meet everyone and see the facilities. Their defenses, too.”

Rick stood up, hands flashing blue with firework power. “You’re going alone?”

“Yes.”

“Sash—”

“I’ve made the decision, Rick. Renee will stay here with you guys, and you’ll be in charge while I’m gone.” She waved her hands around. “Isn’t it better to let them protect us than keep living like this?”

“So we go from being on our own to being their prisoners?”

“We wouldn’t be prisoners. And what’s so great about being on our own? We’re hunted now, and we have no clue what to do next. This feels right.”

Rick scowled, but he didn’t argue further.

“Are you taking the car?” Nicolas asked.

“No, I’ll, uh”—she glanced at me—“get another one. I’ll be back tomorrow by noon, I promise.”

“Hey, can you do me a favor?” Bethany asked.

Sasha nodded. “Sure.”

“Tell Landon I’m sorry I’m not there, and that I love him.”

“I can do that.”

After Sasha left, the house settled into an oddly melancholy state, despite the good news about Maddie. We slapped together a dinner of peanut butter sandwiches with pretzels. I told a few stories of my adventures since January, leaving out the gory or depressing things, but even that got old. It wasn’t until later, when I wanted to know what time it was, that I realized no one else had a watch or cell phone.

We were well and truly cut off.

Bethany and Rick went upstairs, probably to have sex again, and the rest of us migrated to our respective sleeping places. I hoped Sasha brought good news with her tomorrow—like news that I was going home. The kids were pretty cool, and roughing it was an experience all its own, but I was bored out of my fucking skull.

Boredom I wasn’t prepared to alleviate with the fight that landed in our laps when—just as I was dozing off—Sledgehammer burst through the tenement’s front door.

Nineteen

Dark Tunnel Bluff

T
hanks to Tate’s choice to claim the area near the front door as his sleeping spot, Sledgehammer tripped over the blanket-wrapped boy and face-planted in the middle of his own small pile of wood shards and debris. The bottles of water on the stairs cracked and exploded. Balls of ice shot around the room like marbles, slamming into the plaster and wood molding. Nicolas shouted. Tate rolled out of the doorway as a blur burst inside and made invisible tracks upstairs.

Bethany was up there.

“Everyone outside!” I yelled. At least three of the four identified clones were here, and close quarters for a fight was a bad idea. We hadn’t seen her since the fight in Los Angeles, but the ice balls suggested the clone of Black Ice was out and about, and Jasper had already raced upstairs.

Glass shattered above us, followed by a heavy thud. Bethany screamed. A man, probably Rick, shouted for help.

Barry grew to about eight feet, the maximum he could manage indoors without stooping. With a snarl, he charged Sledgehammer and sent them both through the thin wall into the kitchen. More ice balls flew around. I ducked one that was on a collision course with my face. Three slammed into Tate’s shoulder with enough force to knock him down. Blood streamed from the wounds, and he stared at them, so stunned that I stumbled across the room to help him before he got killed.

Nicolas charged through the front door, carrying a blast of wind from his wings outside with him. A woman screamed, and I hoped it was Black Ice getting her ass hammered by a pissed-off teenager with wings. The building creaked and groaned. Rick stumbled down the stairs, blood leaking from the side of his face. He tripped halfway down.

“Where’s Bethany?” I asked as I gave Tate a shove toward the front door. We had to get our asses outdoors before our powers collapsed the house on top of us.

Rick shook his head—either he didn’t know or he didn’t understand the question. I caught him before he fell off the bottom step. He twisted hard and we hit the floor anyway. In time for a big wad of ice to crash into the banister where my head had been. He raised his right hand and threw a blue firework out into the front yard.

“Where’s Bethany?” I asked again. She was the only one I’d lost track of. They weren’t mine, but I was the oldest and the most experienced. I had to keep them safe and I couldn’t do that if I didn’t know where the hell they were.

“Outside,” Rick replied. The horror in his eyes told me enough about how she’d ended up outside—unwillingly.

“Front or back?”

“Back.”

“Come on.”

We got to our feet and stumbled through the destroyed kitchen. Barry and Sledgehammer weren’t there, but a huge hole next to the back door was better than a flashing neon arrow. The tall grass in the backyard was nearly flattened, and Barry lay near the steps in a pile of debris. He’d shrunk back to normal size and wasn’t moving. Sledgehammer’s back was to us, his massive body bent over something that he was pounding away at with his fists.

Rick snarled and sent three fireworks that hit between his shoulder blades. Sledgehammer hollered and cursed, and then Rick went flying sideways. The blur of color and snap of wind said Jasper even before the clone slowed enough for me to make him out.

I had no weapons. I had no plan. But I did have five kids who, despite my better judgment, I kind of liked and wanted to protect from these bastards of science trying to hurt them.

My Flex powers still worked somewhat in my left hand, and without really thinking about it I reached for Jasper. He was close enough for me to wrap my wrist around his neck twice and squeeze the fuck out of him. He jerked and tried to dislodge, but I held on like a fucking tick, fast and hard, and he dropped to his knees, his cheeks going bright red.

“You son of a bitch,” I said. The house rattled behind me, and more shouting came from out front.

“Let him go, Flex.”

The voice startled me. I hadn’t heard it since last month on the roof of our old HQ, and before that, it had been fifteen years. The clone of Hinder, Teresa’s father, stepped through the bent gate into the backyard. He stopped next to Sledgehammer, who was stunned from Rick’s shots.

Instead of complying, I yanked Jasper closer to me, reveling in Flex powers being useful in a fight for a change. I tried to take in my surroundings without actually breaking eye contact—a trick Teresa was really good at and I was still practicing. Rick and Barry were both down. Jasper was on his knees now, his face going purple. Somewhere in the house or out front, Tate and Nicolas were occupied with Black Ice.

“We aren’t here to kill you, Flex, or the two boys at your feet,” Hinder said. “Don’t force me to go against my orders.”

“Like the orders you assholes were following on the turnpike on Sunday?” I shot back.

“That was a message. This is the follow-through. Let him go.”

“I think I want to keep him.”

“You know I won’t allow that.”

Damn, he’d moved closer without my even realizing it. He was in the middle of the yard now, halfway between me and Sledgehammer. Hinder was strong, with a nearly invulnerable exterior and incredibly good reflexes. A hit from him would seriously hurt.

“Another step, and we see if purple is the only color your boy here can turn,” I said.

Hinder’s face went deadly furious, almost feral. “Make me count to three and I will ensure every person you care about dies slowly and painfully, preferably at the mercy of my bare hands.”

He wasn’t kidding, and that fact tore through me like a ripple of ice water. I hated letting the clones go, but we were outmatched tonight. The kids I’d spent the day with had incredible powers but no real training to use them in a fight, or as a group. We all had to live for them to get that training so they could kick serious ass next time.

We’d encounter the clones again, I had no doubt.

“I let him go and you guys leave,” I said. “No more hits, no more powers, you just leave.”

“We leave,” Hinder said.

I unwrapped my wrist from Jasper’s neck. He pitched forward with a raspy wheeze. Then Hinder—the deceiving bastard—was in my face. Rather, his fist was in my face and I was eating grass.

The world spun around a little. Voices helped me focus. Someone shook my shoulder and I blinked up at Nicolas. His nose was bleeding and he had a couple of bruises forming on his face and throat. “How’d we do?” I asked.

He shook his head, a little glassy-eyed, shock starting to set in. “Everyone’s right here except Bethany.”

I sat up and blinked at the shadowed yard. Tate was helping Rick and Barry. My heart seized when I remembered Sledgehammer pounding something I couldn’t see. I looked up, and sure enough a window on the second floor was busted out completely. I lurched to my feet and stumbled across the yard.

“Oh, shit.”

Bethany’s eyes were open, but I wasn’t immediately sure she was still alive. Her face was coated with blood from dozens of small cuts. She was on her back, but her left leg was twisted beneath her body. She wore only her underwear and bra, and every bit of exposed skin was bruised, broken, or about to bruise. The ribs on her left side didn’t look right. In my entire life, I’d never seen someone beaten so badly.

I dropped to my knees beside her, my throat tight, eyes stinging with tears for her pain. Her eyes rolled toward me, the only movement she seemed capable of making.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered.

“We have to get out of here,” Nicolas said. “Someone will have called the police by now.”

“Bethany needs a hospital.”

Her eyes widened with terror and she gave the smallest head shake.

“Honey, you need a doctor or you’re going to die,” I said.

“What about your doctor?” Tate asked.

“Unless someone here has as a cell phone I don’t know about, I can’t exactly call him for a consult.

“I’ll go,” Nicolas said. “I fly fast.”

“How close to HQ are we?”

“We’re in Philadelphia.”

Not super-close, but not horribly far away. “Okay, look, the rest of us will get into the car and start driving. We’ll stick to the New Jersey Turnpike and head toward the rest stop where I met with Sasha and Rick. Teresa will know the place.”

“Okay.”

I gave Nicolas a hard look. “How wounded are you? Are you sure—?”

“I can make it,” he said. “I promise.”

“Okay.”

Moving Bethany was horrific, even with supersized Barry’s help. She made the most awful noises while we got her into the car, finally passing out as she was settled in with blankets from the living room. Nicolas hit the sky right after. The other boys gathered the medical bag and a few other things they couldn’t bear to leave behind. Barry shrank down so he could sit on the floor in the backseat and keep an eye on Bethany. I drove with Rick and Tate squashed into the front seat with me.

We got out of the alley just as emergency sirens split the silence of the night. Either no one bothered to call in the noise right away or the police around here didn’t make Meta disturbances a priority. I didn’t know Philadelphia well, but Rick seemed to, and he helped me navigate my way east.

Lack of traffic—and it being the middle of the night—helped us get to the rest stop fast. It also meant we had to wait for help to arrive, and waiting wasn’t my strong suit. Barry had already given Bethany the few painkillers and antibiotics he’d found in the bag. She stared at the roof of the car, the occasional tear slipping down one cheek. He stayed close while the rest of us got out of the car. Rick moved around to open the door near her head, then perched there and started talking.

I walked away, unwilling to intrude on the trio. With my adrenaline wearing off, everything was starting to hurt. My hands shook and my stomach rolled with the need to vomit up whatever was left inside. My face ached from Hinder’s punch. I knew I should help the kids patch up their wounds—all of us were bleeding from somewhere—but I couldn’t stop shaking.

The clones found Bethany. They had come damn close to killing her—assuming she survived the next few hours. They knocked us around to prove a point, and then I let them go. I literally had Jasper by the throat, and I let him go. Hinder lied to me, the fuckwad, proving once again just how unlike the real Hinder this clone was.

Reinforcements arrived in two different Sports. Bethany, bless her, was a fighter, and she held on hard as things happened around her and to her. I didn’t have to ask Dr. Kinsey what he thought after he first examined Bethany—it was all over his face. He didn’t want her moved again, so we piled into different vehicles and hit the road. I told the story to Teresa through a developing haze of shock and pain, and soon we were waiting our turn to take a puddle-jumper over to the island.

Everything happened in a blur. My friends kept trying to talk to me, to comfort me, and all I saw was Bethany’s broken body in that stamped-down grass. I’d failed her.

We were in the infirmary waiting area, the kids getting guerilla doctoring from Sasha and Teresa while Kinsey and Jessica were busy with Bethany. Of the others, Tate had the worst wounds courtesy of the three ice balls that ripped into his shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, but I heard someone say he’d need stitches.

Time passed.

At some point I was hustled into Kinsey’s office with him and Teresa. His face was grim, his surgical scrubs stained red in too many places.

“How bad?” Teresa asked.

“I’m sorry,” Kinsey replied, his voice hollow. “Her injuries were catastrophic. She crashed twice. We were able to get her heart beating both times. She’s on a ventilator now, but our tests are not detecting any brain activity at all.”

I grabbed the edge of his desk as the world tilted slightly. “She’s a vegetable?”

The tactless question was on point, because he nodded. “She’s brain-dead. Our machines are the only things keeping her body alive at this point.”

“Goddammit,” Teresa said.

“There’s nothing we can do?” I asked. “You know scientists and specialists. Can’t they—?”

“I’m sorry, Renee,” Kinsey said. “I wish there was more to be done for her.”

Catastrophic injuries. Sledgehammer. Fuck.

“Where’s Thatcher?” Teresa asked.

I blinked at her. “Why?”

“Because Landon needs to know, and his father should tell him, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

“He’s with Landon the last I checked,” Kinsey replied.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t watch this. I hid in Dr. Kinsey’s office with the door mostly shut and listened. Listened to Teresa go down the hall and beckon Thatcher into the corridor. Heard muffled voices as she told him what was going on. A minute later, Landon’s cries of disbelief echoed down to my hiding place. I covered my face with my hands and cried.