The Tower (25 page)

I reluctantly took the pistol from Terry, and she showed me how it worked. I learned how to load the clip, and how to unload it when I needed to. Terry showed me where the safety switch was, and also how to remove the chambered bullet. Once I had the basics down, Terry set up a target sheet for me in one of the lanes, sliding it down the rail about five yards.

Then, using her standard philosophy toward teaching, Terry said, “Okay, fire away.”

I did, and the first four bullets missed the paper completely. Only when I realized that I was supposed to line up both target reticules on the front and end of the barrel did I finally hit the paper, though I emptied the entire clip without ever hitting the person painted on it. I was actually kind of happy about that.

Terry shook her head, saying, “You did that on purpose.”

“I did not,” I replied, loading my spare clip. This time, I did deliberately miss, hoping Terry would let me off the hook if I showed her how terrible I was at this.

After six shots, Terry yelled exasperatedly, “That target is five yards away! What is the matter with you?”

“I’ll tell you what the matter is!” I replied angrily. “I don’t want to learn how to kill. I’m not Ralph!”

Terry shook her head again and let out a loud huff. “You know, Adrian, I wasn’t going to say this, but I doubt very much my grandfather ever tried to kill you.”

“What?!” I cried angrily. “He shot at me with a crossbow, Terry!”

Terry shrugged. “He just wanted to drain your power. He wasn’t aiming to kill. Besides, Alia was there to heal you.”

“He tried to suffocate me!”

“It would have only knocked you out,” said Terry, unimpressed.

“I can’t believe you’re taking his side!” I said furiously.

“I am not taking his side!” Terry shot back. “You know perfectly well I hate the bastard! But he does whatever is necessary to accomplish his mission, and you have to admit, there is a certain logic to that.”

I stared at her incredulously, and Terry said in a quieter tone, “Listen, Adrian, I won’t pretend to understand your aversion to self-preservation, and in the end it’s up to you whether or not you ever shoot a gun at a live target. But my grandfather is right about one thing: This is a war. So if you’re going to be a Guardian, you’re going to need to be ready to kill.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I’ll ever make a very good Guardian, Terry.”

“You told me at the party that you’d die for family,” said Terry.

“So?”

“Would you kill for family too?”

I looked away, answering cautiously, “I don’t know, Terry. Maybe...”

“What would you have done if the Angels had attacked us the other night?”

“I don’t know,” I said again, but looking down at the pistol in my hand, I thought to myself,
Not this.

“What is so wrong about what I’m trying to teach you, Adrian?!” Terry asked in a frustrated tone. “They try to kill us
all the time.
Even you know that by now.”

I heaved a heavy sigh and said slowly, “
I know you hate the Angels, Terry, and I understand why. I lost my parents too, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see my first sister again. But have you ever considered that the Angels are victims themselves?”

Terry’s jaw dropped. “Victims?!”

“They’re converted, right? They do what they do because they have no choice. Because they’ve been brainwashed by their queen.”

Terry poked me painfully in the chest. “Okay, let’s get something straight here! Not all of the Angels are converted. Many join because they want to, and they choose to attack us for their own personal gain. You may not believe in choices, Adrian, but I promise you they made theirs. And even the ones that are converted, well, you can pity them all you like, but you can’t reason with someone who is trying to kill you. You can’t spare them, Adrian. War doesn’t work like that.”

I remembered what Cindy had once told me about conversion. True, not all of the Angels were converted. And many of the converted ones stayed with their faction even after their conversions wore off. Perhaps Terry had a point, but I wasn’t about to kill a man just because he was an Angel. Or for any reason, for that matter. I had seen my share of death and I wanted nothing more to do with it.

“I know you’re trying to help me, Terry,” I said, “but I just can’t do it. I won’t.”

Terry gave me a sly look and said, “Maybe your aim would improve if you pretended that that target was my grandfather.”

Suddenly, I heard a raspy voice from the far lane say, “Why pretend when you can have the real thing, lad?”

I stepped out from between my lane’s soundproofed walls and saw the gangly, fidgeting form of Ralph Henderson standing there. His beady, sunken eyes, partly hidden under his unkempt, curly white hair, were gazing at me in what appeared to be mild amusement.

I hadn’t seen old Ralph since our bus ride to New Haven, and I almost reflexively pointed my pistol at him. Instead, I carefully flipped the safety back on and held the gun loosely at my side.

Terry stepped out of our booth too, and Ralph gave us a nasty grin, saying, “Somebody stole my car.”

“You were listening to us just now,” said Terry, bristling.

Ralph replied coolly, “Believe me, Teresa, I take no pleasure in listening to some silly little argument between two brats like you, but I overheard enough to know you’re soft on the boy.”

Ralph strode up to me, saying, “Not willing to kill, eh? Whatever happened to the fire in your eyes when you tried to cut my throat?”

“That was a mistake,” I answered quietly. “And I haven’t killed anyone yet, Ralph. Not even you.”

Ralph snorted loudly. “Ha! Haven’t killed anyone? How many people died to save you and that healer, eh? How many?! You think you’re some kind of saint?” Ralph brought his face close to mine and continued in a slow, growling voice, “You’re a destroyer, lad. You got the same blood on your hands as me, and you’re no less a killer. If you’re going to fight for the Guardians, you’d better start getting used to it.”

I glared up at his wrinkled, leathery face. Ralph smirked, knowing he had touched a nerve.

Roughly pushing me aside, Ralph left the shooting range. Looking down, I discovered that my hands were shaking so badly that I might have accidentally shot myself in the foot had my pistol not been set to safety.

“He’s got a point, you know,” Terry said quietly at my side.

I threw her an angry look.

Terry shrugged. “If you like, we can go back to the dojo and I’ll teach you how to break a man’s neck with your bare hands.”

Flipping my pistol’s safety off, I rapidly emptied the rest of my clip into the target. One of the bullets actually hit the painted man on it, piercing his left shoulder.

“That’s a start,” said Terry, grinning. “Next time, try holding the gun with both hands.”

Chapter 8: Past, Present and Personal

As the new school year started, I got to watch Terry skip off to school every morning, where she had friends and an almost normal life. I didn’t resent her, but I was bitterly envious. Cindy was a great home tutor, but I just wanted a few friends my own age. That wasn’t going to happen as long as I lived with “the Heart of New Haven,” but Cindy knew better than to try suggesting again that I live with someone else. Given the choice, I was where I wanted to be, but that didn’t stop me from wanting the best of both worlds. Alia, whose mouth-speaking was still quite horrid, didn’t mind not going to school in the least. This was, at least in my opinion, due to the fact that she didn’t know what she was missing. Though she had long since completely overcome her fear of strangers, Alia showed little desire to go out and make new friends. She was perfectly content to continue living in her little world of Cindy, Terry and me. But unlike my sister, I did know what I was missing, and I missed it a lot.

Terry usually made time after school on Mondays and Thursdays, as well as on weekends to continue my CQC training. We also started adding half-hour pistol training sessions after each of my CQC lessons. Just like in the dojo, there were occasionally a few Guardians to be found practicing in the shooting range. Most of them were using pistols or rifles, but I sometimes saw a pyroid or telekinetic practicing his flame-throwing or blasting at the targets. Once, I even saw a spark who could throw thunderbolts from her hands. But the shooting range was never really crowded, and to my great relief, I never saw Ralph there again. Terry told me that he had shipped off on yet another mission. I didn’t ask where.

With practice, I eventually did start hitting the paper targets more regularly, occasionally landing an entirely accidental bull’s-eye. However, even though holding a pistol was far less taxing on my physical strength than doing CQC with Terry, I still wasn’t sure which I disliked more. The gun never felt right in my hands. It was heavy and awkward, not only because the steel drained my strength, but because I knew firsthand what these things could do, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, not even Ralph. Not even the berserker who had killed my parents.

Nevertheless, even on the days that I didn’t have Terry’s sessions, I spent some time lifting weights in the dojo and practicing my pistol work in the shooting range. Nobody was telling me to do this, but I assumed it was part of the “terms of my service” to the Guardians. Terry had asked me what I would have done if the Angels had attacked us that night in the countryside. I still couldn’t entertain the idea of killing, even in self-defense, but Terry was right when she said that the better I was at fighting, the more likely I could take down an opponent without killing him. Unlike many psionics, I had only one power. I had no idea when or if I would gain another. I couldn’t help being a destroyer, so on my own terms, I wanted to be the best destroyer I could be. Just in case.

At the moment, however, my pistol aim was barely good enough to hit a close, stationary target, to say nothing of targeting specific body parts for a non-lethal takedown. I was actually a much better shot without the gun. My telekinetic blasts focused through my right index finger always hit the targets dead center. However, as Terry logically pointed out, a semi-automatic pistol could fire ten rounds in the time it took for me to prepare a single focused telekinetic blast. Bullets also had a far greater range. My finger shots were only potentially lethal at fifteen yards or less. I remembered how Terry had once claimed that the problem with new psionics is that they think their powers make them superhuman. True enough, my telekinesis allowed me to do things no one could recreate with current technology, but in terms of combat capabilities, I had to admit that conventional weapons were superior to most destroyer powers.

Cindy was still tutoring me during the mornings, now in eighth-grade material, but not at the impossible pace we had been going during my mad rush to finish seventh grade. I found enough spare time in the afternoons to lounge about in the penthouse or occasionally get Terry to accompany Alia and me out to the park. At Cindy’s suggestion, I started to take things easier in the dojo as well, rarely doing more than an hour of training on the days I went down alone.

There were two consequences to my slower lifestyle.

The first was that my sister ended up getting a lot more mouth-speaking practice from me. I still wasn’t actively teaching her, figuring that one Terry in the house was enough for Alia, but I had a lot more free time to spend with her playing board games and such. Still pretty much friendless in New Haven, it wasn’t like I had anything better to be doing anyway.

But a nonexistent social life wasn’t my worst problem at the moment.

If the absence of dreams was any indication of how deeply a person sleeps, then the second and more serious consequence of taking things slower was that I became a lighter sleeper and thus more prone to having nightmares. For the first two weeks after arriving in New Haven, I had been so constantly plagued by nightmares that I had seriously considered stowing my pride and asking Mr. Koontz for help. The frequency of these nightmares had gradually declined, and I had thought that I was basically over and done with them by late July. However, it turned out that the main reason my nights had been relatively calm for the remainder of the summer was that, due to Terry’s training sessions, I was simply too tired at night to dream. Often, the whole night would pass in a single blink.

Not so anymore.

My nightmares these days weren’t quite as graphic as they had been before, but I still frequently found myself springing up in bed at night, heart racing and panting heavily. Waking up screaming was almost as bad as waking up levitating. Whenever I did either, the noise I made would invariably wake Alia, and she would end up sitting by the window with me for however long it took until one of us yawned. I would have felt sorrier for my sister had it not been for her continued insistence on sharing a room with me. (Not that there was an open room left in the penthouse that she could move to anymore, but if she really wanted, we could have cleared away the library or the game room.) But Alia never once complained about the lack of sleep I was causing her, and her continued nighttime telepathic murmuring always made going to sleep (or back to sleep) just a little easier for me. She couldn’t stop me from having bad nights, though, and those bad nights usually bled right into the next mornings, where I felt awkward and irritable at the breakfast table.