The Quest (19 page)

“So you’ll be kissing for three hours straight, then?” Alia asked teasingly.

Scott just laughed, saying, “We’ll breathe through our noses.”

Alia laughed too. “Addy used to be just like that!”

“Really?!” said Scott.

I gave my sister a warning look. “Alia…”

But Alia’s next words to Scott were telepathic, and whatever it was that she said, Scott laughed loudly at it.

Just then, Heather and Candace barged in, saying in unison, “Sorry we’re late!”

“It’s alright,” I said, “we’re almost done here. But could you girls kindly take my annoying little sister out of this kitchen and tickle her until serving time or until she passes out, whichever comes first?”

“Always happy to oblige,” Candace said with an evil grin.

Alia tried to make a run for it but I telekinetically lifted her off of the floor and dropped her into Heather’s arms.

“Don’t worry, Alia,” said Heather. “I promise we won’t kill you as long as you tell us what you did to annoy your brother so much.”

Once Scott and I were the only ones left in the kitchen, Scott chuckled and said, “You know, Adrian, even living in the same house for all this time, I can never quite place your sister.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, she’s got guts enough to be named Honorary Guardian Knight, the youngest ever, right? She teaches her own combat classes. But then she hates guns and can’t even go to school…”

I raised my eyebrows. “And she still sleeps in my bed?”

“That too,” said Scott. “And the fact that she’s often silent for hours on end, and then suddenly acts like a regular kid sometimes, like just now.”

I shrugged. “Alia’s just weird. You get used to it after a while.”

After dinner and cleanup, Terry and I taught one last joint CQC class before lights-out.

Before we broke up for the night, Terry reminded the crowd of who was on duty after Scott and Rachael. Second shift was Walter and Daniel, followed by Felicity alone. Scott would wake the boys in his room at around 1am, and they would knock on Felicity’s door at four o’clock.

Alia, Max and I were the only ones regularly exempt from night-watch duty, Alia and Max due to their ages, and I because I had pulled rank and refused. Terry probably felt that I should be setting a better example, but she couldn’t order me because her original argument for keeping us in Walnut Lane was based on how risk-free it was.

Though I refused to admit it to Terry, over the last few days, I had come to think that I had overreacted on the early-evacuation issue. The Angels at the outpost across town wouldn’t dare attack our settlement without reinforcements, and reinforcements wouldn’t arrive anytime soon.

The two largest Guardian breakaway factions had settled their differences several weeks ago. Though they were still no match for the Angels, the reunited Guardians were nevertheless putting up a very good resistance employing guerrilla-warfare tactics, and the Angel forces were mostly focused on them. If the Angels were planning to strike Walnut at all, it wouldn’t happen for a while.

In fact, I now suspected that the only reason Mrs. Harding had even chartered the early bus was so that the adults could concentrate on the task of moving out without having to bother with their kids. At the pace the Walnut Guardians were handling their affairs, it looked like we would be here for another two weeks, maybe more. But I had to agree with Terry that there was no better mission for our trainees than one in which we were pretty much guaranteed our safety.

“Addy! Addy, wake up! Addy!”

Groaning, I opened my eyes halfway in the darkened bedroom and looked up at my sister, who was leaning over me on our bed and shaking my shoulders.

“What’s the matter, Alia?” I asked quietly. “Did you have another bad dream?”

I could hear Max and James’s quiet breathing, and I didn’t want to wake them. Dawn was still at least an hour away, but there was just enough light to see Alia’s anxious face.

“Something’s wrong,”
she whispered into my head.

I was about to ask what she meant, but then there was a high-pitched scream from downstairs. Felicity!

“James, wake up!” I shouted.

James sprang up into a sitting position, and Max opened his eyes too.

“What is it?” asked James, instantly on high alert.

“Trouble,” I replied. I telekinetically flipped the light switch. Nothing happened. “Big trouble.”

I had left my pistol in the basement shooting range, but James had better sense and quickly grabbed his off the top of his dresser.

“Give it to me,” I shouted, telekinetically snatching the pistol out of his hands.

Flipping off the safety, I fired two loud rounds into the wall to make sure everyone was awake. I had heard no gunfire from downstairs, and suspected that our attackers were relying solely on psionic powers and silent weapons.

“Let’s go!” I said to James, turning to the door. Alia and Max tried to follow, but I stopped them. “Stay here, both of you.”

“I’m coming too!” said Alia, and Max looked at me defiantly.

“No you’re not!”

“We can fight!” insisted Max. “We’ve trained for this!”

I heard the sound of footsteps rushing past our door. The rest of our trainees were already on the move.

“You’re not ready, Max!” I said, and then turned to my sister. “And you’re a healer for crying out loud! Stay here!”

Alia glared at me. “I’m a Knight too, Addy! Stop treating me like a little baby!”

That was rich coming from a kid who was still afraid to sleep by herself, but there was no time to argue the point. I shoved Alia down onto the floor, saying, “You stay here or I’ll shoot you myself!”

Then I quickly turned to Max and said, “That goes double for you. Lock the door behind us.”

I tossed the pistol back to James. “James, with me!”

As soon as we were out of the room, I caught a whiff of the unmistakable stench of tear gas in the air.

“What is that smell?” asked James, visibly nauseous.

“You’ll find out,” I replied. “Follow me.”

Without lights, the hallway was even darker than our bedroom, but I could see that Scott’s room door was wide open. The three boys in that room had already gone down. I could hear panicked footsteps above us, and guessed that some of the girls might still be on the third floor, though Terry would no doubt already be in the fray. I was furious at Alia and Max for slowing us down.

The gas got thicker as we approached the stairs, forcing us to squint and cough as tears welled in our eyes.

“Damn it, Adrian!” James cried in a panicked voice. “I can’t see!”

“Neither can I!” I replied, coughing uncontrollably. “Come on!”

There was nothing for it. We had to get down there and find out what was going on. Tugging on James’s hand, I pulled him down the stairs with me. The smell of the gas was unbearable here, and I kept my eyes closed tightly, groping along the stairs with my free hand.

I didn’t know if James could help me at all in his condition, or even if I would be able to do much. But I had to get down there, and it was easier to do this with James than alone.

Having spent eight months blind, finding my way in the dark was second nature to me, and I had little trouble leading James down to the dojo with my eyes shut. Once we were there, however, I had no choice but to ignore the stinging pain and force my eyes open. The nearly pitch-black room was filled with thick smoke, and I couldn’t see more than a yard or two around me. I heard gunshots and shouts, and then a fireball flew past my head.

Suddenly James screamed. I turned but couldn’t see him.

In the dark, in the smoke and tear gas, everything had turned to chaos. Even in my panic, I noticed two psionic destroyer powers, one of them a pyroid, the other a frighteningly powerful telekinetic. They were close enough to sense inside Rachael’s hiding bubble, and I suspected that both were in this room. And there could be others.

There was another shout, and then, a few seconds later, the sound of a car engine, followed by silence.

I found my way to a window and telekinetically blasted it out. Sticking my head through, I couldn’t see any cars on the street, but I noticed that the other houses of Walnut Lane were all quiet. Lights were coming on in the nearest ones, their occupants probably having heard the commotion. They all still had electricity, which meant that our house was the only one under attack. What was going on?

“Adrian!” a girl’s voice shouted.

Pulling my head back through the window, I turned to the voice. “Candace!”

“They took her!” Candace screamed through violent coughs, her eyes and nose running horribly. “They took her! They took her!”

“What are you talking about?!”

“Terry! Terry!” Candace cried hysterically. “Oh, God, they took her!”

They took Terry?!

Candace grabbed my shoulders. “Terry! She tried to stop them! I – I think she’s dead!”

“Where’s Terry?”

“Outside!”

Pushing Candace aside, I sprinted through the smoke to the front door, which was open. Stepping out onto the porch, I saw Terry’s body lying facedown on the driveway, unmoving. I wiped my eyes as I rushed to her side.

I carefully turned Terry over onto her back, and she opened her eyes a little. She tried to say something, but then suddenly coughed up a lot of blood. There was a hole in her lower gut, and her shirt was drenched in blood. I pressed my palm against the wound to stop the bleeding. Terry’s body went limp, her eyes closed, and I couldn’t even tell if she was still breathing.

“Somebody help!” I called out. “Alia! Get down here!”

I heard Scott shout out my name from behind.

“Get over here!” I hollered. “Terry’s hurt!”

Terry’s blood on my hands was draining not only my psionic power but some of my physical strength too. Scott sprinted up to us, and I said to him, “Scott, put your hands here. Keep pressure on the wound. Press down hard!”

Scott took over for me. Candace had followed Scott out, and I turned to her, saying frantically, “Go get Alia, Candace. I left her in my room.”

Candace didn’t move.

“Candace!” I shouted. “Go get Alia! Go now!”

Her voice shaking, Candace said hoarsely, “They took her, Adrian.”

I looked back at our house, my eyes slowly moving up to my bedroom window on the second floor.

Bits of shattered glass were still stuck to the frame.

Chapter 9: Team Leader

There were no healers in Walnut Lane, but Candace returned quickly with Patrick’s foster father, Dr. Land, who was a surgeon. By now, several Walnut Guardians from other houses had gathered on our lawn, and a few had gone inside to open up the rest of the windows, clear the gas, and help the wounded. Terry was put on a stretcher to be taken to Dr. Land’s house where she would be treated.

I was about to follow, but Dr. Land stopped me, saying, “Go see to the rest of your family, Adrian. Make sure they’re alright, and bring any others who need help to me.”

“But–”

“There’s nothing you can do for Terry,” Dr. Land said firmly. “Go and see to the rest of them.”

“She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” I pleaded.

“I can’t say,” Dr. Land replied grimly. “Now go on.”

I watched them carry Terry’s stretcher down the sidewalk for a few seconds before turning to Scott and Candace.

“I’m so sorry, Adrian,” Candace said between sobs. “I wanted to help Terry but she pushed me back and…”

“It’s alright,” I said, forcing myself to remain calm. “Terry will be fine, and we’ll find Alia too. Come on, back in the house.”

If only to subdue my mounting panic, I had to keep myself busy. The dojo still reeked of CS gas, but most of it had cleared.

James had acquired a nasty purple bruise on his forehead, but he was alive and in the process of regaining consciousness. “You were right, Adrian,” he groaned, gingerly touching the bruise. “It’s not fun getting into trouble.”

“It’s just a knock on the head,” I said reassuringly. “You’ll be alright.”

But others weren’t as lucky.

Having come into close contact with the Angel pyroid, Rachael had suffered second-degree burns on her face and neck, and much of her hair was burned off. Her skin was red and swollen, and I feared she would have permanent scars.

Walter had a broken arm. In the thick smoke, he had crashed into a non-psionic Seraph carrying a heavy hunting crossbow, tussled with him and successfully disarmed him before being thrown to the floor. Fortunately for Walter, the Seraph scampered after he lost his weapon.

Heather had a hole through her right foot: She had accidentally shot herself before she even made it out of her room. That was probably for the better. Much worse might have happened to her had she actually joined the battle.

And two were dead.

The first I learned of was Felicity, who had multiple knife wounds to her stomach and chest, her nightclothes a ghastly, bloody mess. Felicity probably died in seconds.

The other casualty was Max, who we found lying face up on the floor of the bedroom where I had left him. He had a hole through the center of his neck, the result of a focused telekinetic blast. He was killed trying to protect Alia.

Scott and Daniel helped me put both bodies in the basement, where it was coldest.

And slowly, we came to understand what had happened.

There were only four attackers. Three, including the pyroid, had entered through the front door, probably by quietly picking the lock. It had been on Felicity’s watch, and when she screamed, one of them had stabbed her to death. As smoke from their grenades filled the first floor and we rushed down to meet the battle, the fourth Angel – the powerful telekinetic that I had sensed – had entered through my bedroom window. Their target had, from the start, been Alia.

Healers were exceptionally rare, and child psionics even rarer. Cindy had told me long ago that because Alia was already a powerful healer at such a young age, chances were she might become the world’s greatest someday. Like Cindy herself, Alia had always been a coveted prize for any psionic faction. The Seraphim at the outpost across town knew that the Walnut Guardians would be long gone before the Angels could mount a full-scale attack, so they decided to steal our greatest asset before we could get away.