The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (3 page)

A few low voices in the audience seemed to agree.

“I mean, do we give that kind of respect to the Ayatollah? To Qaddafi? To Idi Amin?” For a second I thought Teslowski was going to spit on the stage. He swallowed, sneering.

“He’s a punk.”

Azarrio didn’t let it go. “So, you really do want to fight him.”

Teslowski’s fingers pressed the vinyl of his chair. “Jesus! Why don’t we all want to fight him? Why don’t we have all those freaks rounded up and locked away before they do something worse than Philadelphia, or whatever else they’ve got up their sleeves?”

Outright cheers in the crowd at that. Who would have thought Marc Teslowski would be a voice of inspiration, even if it was for a bunch of idiots?

“Hell,” Marc said, “there’s gotta be a few hundred of them at that camp of theirs. Once I get my kid back, why don’t we just firebomb the place? Let ‘em burn.”

“Now, Mister Teslowski,” Azarrio said, “I know the tabloids, talk radio, blame the flooding in Pennsylvania on a Sovereign with elemental powers, but do you really believe that? People controlling the weather?”

Teslowski looked at Azarrio for a beat, then he looked right at me. He spoke slowly.

“They’re…not…
people.”

I admit it. Even though I’m not a Sovereign and really didn’t like being lumped in with them, the fucker got to me. I forgot we were in the studio. I forgot we were on television. I forgot about the cameras.

It was just me and this prick.

I was still more or less in my chair, but my ass was off the seat. I leaned forward, knees bent, balanced on the balls of my feet. My arms were out; my fingers curved. I could cross the stage and be on him with one easy leap.

I pulled my lips back, revealing unusually long canines.

I did something I’d only recently learned how to do on demand.

I growled.

I heard the ripple of gasps and exclamations from the audience as they freaked out. My sensorium—the combined input of my hearing and sense of smell—told me the big guys in black T-shirts were emerging from the wings, ready to step in if they needed to. If they did…well, dealing with me would be a lot harder than handling the usual paternity-case dads and jilted lovers.

Marc Teslowski looked about as ready to go as I was. The fact that the guy was so full of frustration he was willing to physically attack a sixteen-year-old kid on national television pulled me out of my own semi-bestial state.

After all, much as I didn’t want to, I could relate.

I flopped back in my chair and shot the audience a nice, friendly, goofy-kid grin; no teeth. Gee whiz, guys, I’m just joshin’!

The security bruisers faded back offstage.

Azarrio’s chuckle was a lot less hearty than last time. “That was a pretty convincing display, Nate.” His hard eyes were just for me. “You’ve reminded us: while the reasons may be in dispute, you are not an ordinary teenager. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

I shrugged.

“Do you feel human, Nathan?”

My mother snapped, “That’s a ridiculous question. Do you feel Hispanic?”

Azarrio didn’t hesitate. “One hundred percent.” He didn’t look away from me. “Let me be clear. I’m not judging. I sincerely want to know how you, personally, feel.”

The cameras were close. I felt a sweat bloom and cascade down my spine.

“I…I don’t know what that means.”

I found out later we were in the shot together, and he looked a little bullying, until I said that.

“To be human?”

“Yeah.”

I really, really wanted that moment to be over. Thankfully, I picked up a little buzz from the little thing in Azarrio’s ear. He turned, straightened up, and faced a different camera.

“That may be the question we all have to answer, for ourselves, before this story is over,” he intoned. “We’ll be right back.”

We were at commercial.

My mother leaned close to me. “What was that?”

My shirt was sticking to the chair. I leaned forward gingerly. “What?”

“The growling.” She lowered her voice. “Provoking Teslowski. This isn’t going to help in court. Jesus Christ, Nathan.…”

Apparently her voice carried farther than she expected. Marc Teslowski said, “Your snotty son doesn’t scare me, woman.”

She sat up, stiff. “What did you say to me?”

Teslowski gave me a dismissive nod. “The kid. He’s a punk. He’s what you raised. Your fault.”

Jeri Teslowski, just over her husband’s shoulder, looked pitifully apologetic.

My mother was good in a fight, I’ll give her that. She didn’t miss a beat.

“My son is still at home,” she said. “Where’s your boy, Marc?”

It was a pretty great shot. Even if it was barely true.

From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Two

I left the television studio feeling okay, all things considered. Since my mother barely spoke to me from when we left the studio lot until we were well down the 405 freeway, I could tell she had a different view.

Just inside Long Beach, she said, “I don’t know if that did us any good or made things worse.”

I took my third Tiger Milk bar out of the glove compartment. “I thought we did okay.” I unwrapped it. “I mean, I never want to do that again, but at least Byron’s dad ended up looking like a crazy man, all told.”

“Marc Teslowski would have done that regardless,” my mother said. “We could have done without your theatrics, though.”

“He…pushed me.” I tore off a mouthful of the bar and chewed it down. Fuel. “You heard what he said.”

She nodded. “That was uncalled for. But…really, Nathan. Growling? When did you start that?”

I smiled and chewed, remembering Lina and me making out a few days before. We still hadn’t gone all the way, but we pretty much did everything else. She was playing with me, and she surprised me by using her fingernails. The growl came when I did.

We laughed about it, and I’d practiced it—without the extra…stimuli—a few times since then.

I told my mother the G-rated, abridged version, of course.

“Tried it out a few days ago. It just sort of…came to me.”

“You can see why it’s better not to mess around like that, I trust.”

“I was just giving him what he deserved.” I didn’t bother mentioning that I was only half-aware of what I was doing at the time. “I thought…I thought it was funny.”

My mother sighed quickly. “No. It really wasn’t.” She focused on changing lanes of a couple of seconds. “Listen to me. They would like nothing more than to show that you, and so, even more so, your father, are somehow less than human. Capable of violence.” She glanced at me. “Give them any rope at all, they’ll make a noose. You get it?”

Little speeches like that from my mother made me feel cornered. I stared out the window and focused on the last bite of my bar.

“Nathan?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“What is it.”

I swallowed. “Nothing.”

“Try again.”

There was a time when her firm but sympathetic tone would have been enough to get me to spill it all. Since the battle of Kirby Lake, I was far less interested in sharing anything with the woman who had kept so much from me my whole life.

On the other hand, I knew my grudge hurt her. Sometimes I felt like she deserved a little hurt.

“Look, Mom. I’m tired of worrying how to act, trying to figure out how this side or that will take my every move. I’m…I’m not human, I’m not Sovereign; I can’t just pick one or the other or something in between to make things all pretty for the lawyers, or the reporters, or whoever. They just need to deal with me.”

“You’re sixteen years old,” she said. “You don’t even know who ‘me’ is yet.”

“That’s my freakin’ point!”

We didn’t say anything as a couple of off-ramps slipped by.

“Nathan, sometimes I don’t think you understand just how—"

“Oh, come on, Mom! I get it! I know how important it is! I know what’s at stake! Jesus Christ! Maybe I’d be better off if I just disappeared! ‘Brave men run in my family,’ right, Mom?”

I shook my head. The seatbelt felt like a clamp across my chest. The inside of the car was way too small.

“What a load of shit.”

“Nathan…”

I remembered bawling like a baby in front of Lina when I read the stupid note my father had given Spencer Croy to deliver to me, a few days after the one and only time I’d seen Andrew Charters in my entire life.

“Do you know where he got that little bit of wisdom, by the way?”

A kid knows their own mother. Add my hypersenses, which make her scent and body language as clear as a road map, and my mother didn’t have a chance in hell of masking her emotions from me. I barked a bitter laugh.

“You do,” I said. “You did.”

She kept her eyes on the road and nodded, frowning.

“Yeah? Tell me.”

“Nathan.”

“
Paleface
,” I said. “A freakin’ Bob Hope movie. Right?”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“A joke,” I said. “The best that crazy fucker could manage was some joke from some movie he probably doesn’t even remember seeing.”

She stared at the road. “I think he remembers.”

I had a pretty much permanent mad-on where my mother was concerned, but just then, I felt like a heel. Her husband was out there somewhere, half-crazy three-quarters of the time and full-crazy the rest, and she’d lived with that for a decade and a half. Sometimes I forgot it had to be a drag for her.

Huntington Beach came and went as we drove down the road.

Finally my mother said, “Are you still getting the dreams?”

“Not really. Lina, though…”

“That’s…” Her sigh sounded exhausted. “That’s terrible. Tell her I’m sorry.”

Sure. Hey, Lina, hon, my mom says sorry about all the leftover stress and stuff from that time you had a gun shoved in your face and watched your boyfriend’s dad tear a guy’s guts out with his toenails.

“Yeah, I will.”

“Is she seeing anyone?”

My face got hot. “What? Besides me?”

My mother chuckled. “No, Nathan. Someone to help with the nightmares. A therapist, or something.”

“Oh. Right.” I took a deep breath and listened to my heart slowing down for a second or two. “No…she’s been painting. A lot.”

We were getting close to our off-ramp.

“Speaking of Lina,” I said. “Can you just drop me off at Carson’s, and she’ll take me home later? I told her I’d come by after the show.”

She tensed immediately. “You spend a lot of time at Carson Meunetti’s.”

“He’s a good guy.”

“I know. I like him. But…”

“Mom, I’ll be home later. It’s Friday. There’s practice, and a bunch of people will be there. Like every Friday.”

She nodded. “I get it. I was just hoping, after this big thing we just did, maybe you and I could…celebrate. Go out to dinner.”

I hated my mother in sheepish-guilty mode almost as much as I hated the reasons for her guilt. It was totally the opposite of the mother I’d known up until a year ago. I didn’t always like that I’d traded my old mom for the truth.

In fact, I resented the hell out of it. It just made me want to get away from her that much faster.

“I thought there wasn’t much to celebrate, remember?”

She laughed, a concession. “Well, we got through it, didn’t we?”

I sighed. I just wanted to be out of the car, away from her, and with Lina.

“Can we do it tomorrow?”

She sighed. “Fine. You’re not going to be any fun with your mother when you want to be with your friends, anyway. I guess I’ll settle for calling Denver Colorado and telling him all about it.”

“Thanks.” Denver wasn’t among my favorite people; he’d helped keep my father’s secrets for years. But he and my mother went back a long way. “I bet he’ll want a blow-by-blow.”

We passed the Abbeque Valley exits and headed south to San Clemente. I kept my face against the passenger-side window the rest of the way.

From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Three

My mother dropped me off in front of Carson’s house. I found myself waving automatically as the car drove away, then jerked my hand down, feeling like a stupid kid.

Carson’s house was two stories stacked on top of a three-car garage that took up the entire ground level. I glanced up at the balcony, but no one was watching me. I felt even stupider for thinking anyone would give a shit if I waved goodbye to my mother.

I’ve mentioned that my hearing is better than…well, anyone’s, probably, with the exception of my father’s. I could hear Car’s stereo blasting through the walls and closed windows despite the sound-deadening foam he’d set up on the walls of the living room. Lots of fuzzy guitars, a grinding bass…I didn’t recognize it.

I walked to the front door and turned the knob. It was locked, which kind of surprised me. Why bother locking it when Carson and Lina, at least, judging by the cars in the long driveway, were home?

I don’t think I’d ever come around when the door was locked. Feeling a little resentful that I had to do it at all, which was another stupid thing given that I didn’t actually live there, I knocked.

Like they’d hear me, with the music so loud.

I pounded, then I pounded harder, then I put the strength of my deceptively lean muscles behind the knock. The door rattled in the frame.

Then I remembered the grungy little garden gnome in a planter next to the door. I tipped it over, grabbed the hidden key, and unlocked the door. I replaced the key with a quick glance at the street to make sure no neighbors had seen the deep dark secret hiding place.

I opened the door and flinched. The music was loud. Very, very loud. It hurt. It made my sternum ache. It made me a little nauseous. I couldn’t get a deep-enough breath in.

“Hey!”

No good. Fingers in both ears, I made my way to the living room, cringing with every step.

Lina and Carson were seated on the floor in front of the wall unit that held the stereo and TV, their backs to me. Lina had one of Car’s graph-lined composition books in her hand.

Carson leaned forward and turned the stereo down by about half until it was just unbearable, not agonizing. He shrugged and said to Lina, “No vocals laid down yet,” in that voice people use when they want to be heard above the buzz of a crowded party. “But you get the idea!”