The Enlightened (18 page)

Pushing aside our emotions, we examine everything as thoroughly as humanly possible.

No break-in. No evidence of any kind.

How did the shooter do this?

We call it in. We use an ‘officer down’ code, which always gets the EMTs and the police to the scene faster.

“This will be the most important case of your career,” we tell the coroner on the phone in a shaking voice. “I want some answers, and I want them yesterday.”

I, Darren, disassociate.

So this is why Lucy had such a hard time solving my parents’ murder. She went about it the usual way, looking for a regular suspect. How could she fathom a crime where she was the killer? A crime Kyle committed with Lucy as the murder weapon?

She never stood a chance. And neither did my biological parents.

And then it hits me.

I saw my parents get shot. Margret was clearly caught off-guard, but Mark must’ve phased into the Quiet at the sound of the gunshot. That’s why he looked like he knew what was happening. He might’ve even Read Lucy’s mind and learned that she was being controlled by a Pusher. Of course, that knowledge wouldn’t have helped him. It was too late by then. Margret was already dead, and Lucy was aiming the gun at my dad and pulling the trigger. He tried to twist to the side to save himself, but even a Reader is not fast enough to avoid a bullet at close range.

My dad had to know that—which means that he had to know he was also about to die.

I think I’m too emotionally numb at this point to fully comprehend the horror of it. Either that, or something else is distracting me at the moment, an emotion that doesn’t leave room for grief.

An emotion that’s overtaking my mind like a hurricane.

Rage.

Kyle messed with Lucy’s mind. He raped her. Then he made her give up her baby. He had her kill my parents, and he made Lucy try to kill herself.

The fury that fills me is indescribable.

Kyle will die.

I will kill him.

I will
enjoy
killing him.

I never knew I was capable of wanting to kill someone so much. Even if he’d tried to kill me, I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt him this badly. I’d want to do
something
to
protect myself, sure, but it wouldn’t feel like this. Not even close.

For what Kyle did to my mom, I want to tear him into little pieces.

Even that day on the Brooklyn Bridge, the day I mistakenly thought Sam had killed Mira, my hate for that fucker wasn’t
this
strong. It was a momentary rage, and what I’m feeling now is qualitatively different. It’s something cold and calculating. Something dark. I feel it becoming a need, like the need to breathe or eat. This rage must be coming from a more savage part of my brain, a part I hadn’t realized I possess. But I don’t care where it’s coming from. All I care about is feeding it what it wants—a sacrifice of Kyle’s blood.

I need to get out of Mom’s head. I need to start planning my revenge.

First, though, I have a decision to make. What do I let Lucy remember? It’s clear she had genuine amnesia about killing my parents, as most people do when they’re Guided to do something so out of character. She may never remember the rape for similar reasons. But when it comes to her baby, Kyle fucked up. She’ll likely remember something, now or in the near future, without Kyle’s regular memory wipes.

On top of that, what should she think of her suicide attempt? She won’t remember it either, but she’s a detective. One look at their house, combined with the injury to her wrist, and she’ll put it all together. Then, for the rest of her life, she’ll think she went crazy. I don’t want her to live with that.

You will forget about your baby,
I instruct.
Forget him or her until I’m ready to tell you everything. You were cutting open a package, slipped, and cut your wrist. You will not question the stupidity of this explanation. Not until I’m ready to explain this too.

Will she buy it? I believe so. Bert believed worse bullshit after Hillary’s treatment.

I exit my mom’s head with just one thought, one soothing mantra.

Kyle will die.

Chapter 18

A
s I wait for Sara to arrive, I step out into the hallway and make another phone call.

“Bert, buddy. I’m going to be in your debt forever,” I say instead of hello.

“What’s up, dude?” Bert says. I hear worry in his voice. “You sound strange.”

I don’t blame Bert for thinking I don’t sound like myself, since I don’t feel like myself either.

“It’s my mom,” I say, trying to normalize my voice. “It’s Lucy. She’s in the hospital.”

“Oh my God, Darren. What happened?”

“It’s not a conversation for over the phone,” I say. “We’re at the Staten Island University Hospital.”

“Okay. My cab just got out of traffic on Belt Parkway. We’re still driving through Brooklyn. I can have him go to Staten Island.”

“Do it. Thanks, man.”

“See you soon,” my friend says and hangs up.

I’ve never needed my friends so much in my life—especially Mira—but they’re all stuck midair between New York and Miami. If Kyle learns that his attempt failed, he’ll come here to finish the job, or send someone else to do it. That means I need the help of someone who knows how to protect people.

Someone who works in security.

For a second, I consider calling Caleb and making a deal where I agree to fuck anyone my grandparents wish me to in exchange for Caleb helping me out. But seeing as Caleb’s under arrest in Miami, he couldn’t help me even if he wanted to. Maybe he knows other people in his line of work in New York?

No. Before I resort to something like that, I need to weigh all my options. As I think, I get the epiphany I should’ve had right away. I know someone who might be even better suited for this than Caleb.

I browse through the contacts on my phone, press call, and wait.

“Hello,” Thomas answers.

“Thomas. I’m so glad I reached you.”

“Darren? What a pleasant surprise.”

“Are you in town?” I ask. When we last spoke, he was planning on taking a vacation too.

“Got back two days ago,” he says. “Unlike you, I didn’t have a good reason to stay away.”

“In that case, I could really use your help. My mom is in the hospital and needs protection. It’s related to that matter we spoke about when we first met
...
”

 
“You mean that unfinished business with one of
us
?”

“Right.”

“Where are you?”

“Staten Island University Hospital,” I tell him.

“I’ll have a few Secret Service agents there shortly, and someone to Guide the operation, if you know what I mean.”

“I do.” I try not to sob with relief. “Thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Thomas says and hangs up.

Feeling more hopeful, I go back into the room to check on Lucy.

Disregarding the oxygen tube, the monitors, and all the other scary hospital equipment, she looks good. At this point, she has some of her color back in her cheeks, as much as her pale Asian complexion allows for, anyway. Her breathing is even smoother now. All her vitals on the monitors look good. She’s basically sleeping, and sleeping pretty peacefully at that.

I step outside the room again, phase in, catch a nurse, and Guide her to get me a sandwich from the cafeteria. I’m starved, but I don’t want to risk leaving Mom alone for even a few minutes.

In a weird way, I’m grateful to my Enlightened grandparents for asking Caleb to abduct me. It led to me meeting Mimir—the demigod-like being I spoke with during the Joining with the Enlightened. Thanks to that incident, my mom is alive. If Mimir hadn’t warned me, I’d probably still be figuring out how to deal with the Julia situation. Without the threat of something happening to Lucy, I never would’ve left the Enlightened compound so boldly. Worse, if they hadn’t kidnapped me at all, I’d be on the beach in Miami, oblivious to everything I now know. Lucy would be dead, and I’d never know it was Kyle who was responsible.

How
did
Mimir know Lucy was in trouble? He said he knew because
I
knew. But I didn’t know. Or did I? Did I have all the information necessary to suspect Kyle without realizing that I did?

As I think, things fall into place.

Like the fact that the Pusher is a Traditionalist—a fact everyone has mentioned, more than once. Whether part of the Orthodoxy conspiracy my grandparents mentioned or acting as a solo agent, everyone agrees that whoever was after me was likely a Traditionalist, because only a Traditionalist would see my parents’ union as a horrible crime against the old ways.

And what are Traditionalists like? According to what I was told, they are very
...
well, traditional
...
in their views.

And what is Kyle’s most defining quality? Why did we have so many arguments while I was growing up? Because he’s as traditional as can be.

This alone, however, doesn’t make Kyle guilty. Nothing in isolation does. I recall the strange phone call Kyle got while he was visiting me at the hospital the day I got shot in the head. After the call, he bailed on Lucy, whom he’d brought to see me.

Now it occurs to me that the call was probably from Jacob, who told Kyle about my heritage—the reason Jacob had the Russian mob make an attempt on my life that morning. After the call, on his way out, Kyle must’ve Pushed that nurse to try to kill me. Given how willing Kyle was to kill me once he learned the truth, I feel very lucky that my biological mom had Guided Lucy and Sara to go to Israel and pretend that Sara was artificially inseminated with me. I was so mad when I learned about that lie, but Sara pretending to be my biological mother probably saved my life. Thanks to that story, Kyle never suspected I might be anything but an ordinary kid. A kid he’d never tried Guiding, thanks to the taboo on touching children that Liz told me about.

As I think about it, I realize Kyle probably didn’t even know Margret was ever pregnant. In Lucy’s memories, he began to avoid Mark at some point, likely due to his relationship with Margret. Besides, Mark and Margret seemed to have hidden her pregnancy from most of the world, their OB-GYN being the unfortunate exception. It was that doctor’s records that must’ve given Jacob—Kyle’s Reader partner—that extra certainty that I was Mark’s son, though Jacob might well have tried to have me killed based solely on my resemblance to my dad. How stupid did Kyle feel, with a ‘hybrid abomination’ being under his nose this whole time? Since he’d seen me grow up, it probably never occurred to him to look for any kind of a resemblance to anyone.

Speaking of resemblance
...
Kyle also has the same facial features as most Guides. Facial features I also have. I never would’ve realized it without thinking of him in this context, but now, those subtle clues are obvious. This explains why, on some occasions, folks thought Kyle and I were blood relatives. Those people were misled, to a small degree, by these ethnic-like similarities between Guides.

Then a major realization hits me. The Russian mob. They’re the big clue once you know who the suspect is. Kyle has worked in Organized Crime for decades. That’s how he picked the scariest guys to use as his weapons. He has files on them. Taxpayers have
been financing Kyle’s private assassin research for years.

And finally, my parents’ unsolvable murder leads back to Kyle, or to someone who was similarly close to my parents. I should’ve realized this sooner. According to Hillary, her sister Margret was a very powerful Guide. If a regular Joe Schmoe had tried to kill her, she would’ve made him kill himself instead—or reversed any Push that person had received.

The only way to kill her was to catch her off-guard, so the killer had to be someone neither of my parents would perceive as a threat. Someone who was close to them. Someone they loved like family. That was the only way someone could’ve shot Margret in the back in her own house—which leaves Lucy and Kyle at the top of the suspects list. And as it turns out, they were both responsible in a weird way. Coward that he is, Kyle decided to use Lucy to do his dirty work. He Pushed her to kill Margret first because she was the more dangerous of the two; she could’ve reversed Kyle’s compulsion in Lucy’s mind, so Kyle had Lucy use the element of surprise.

If I can come up with this many clues just off the top of my head, I understand how the combined intelligence of the fourteen people who made up Mimir figured out that Kyle was the threat. From there, it must’ve been a small leap to conclude that Lucy was in trouble. Mimir knew Lucy was investigating Mira’s parents’ murder—the murder that was ordered by Jacob, Kyle’s ally. The murder Kyle manipulated the rest of his department into dismissing as mob-on-mob violence.

Mimir saw the danger the way
I
should have, but failed to.

As I chew the tasteless sandwich the nurse brought, I realize that if Lucy had died, I never would’ve forgiven myself for not figuring all this out sooner, for being the one who, thanks to his big mouth, put her in danger in the first place.

My phone rings.

“I’m downstairs,” Bert says.

“Meet me in Room 3 in Intensive Care,” I say. “Say you’re here to visit my mom.”

He arrives after I finish my food.

“How is she?” he asks right away. “What happened?”

“Let’s step out into the hallway,” I say, and as soon as we’re away from any prying ears, I tell him everything.

“Shit,” Bert says. “I’ve never liked that uncle of yours, but I’m still flabbergasted. To just up and try to kill you as soon as he learned you’re half-Reader, half-Guide? What about all the years he’s known you?”

“Well, we have one thing in common,” I say darkly. “When I get my hands around his neck, I’ll also forget about all the years we’ve known each other.”

“And this person, Thomas, he’s a Guide, like Hillary?” Bert looks uncomfortable with my newfound bloodlust.

“Yes, and about that.” I shift from one foot to another. “Let’s not tell him you know as much as you do. I trust him and all, but just in case, it’s best he doesn’t find out. For your sake.”