Until the Beginning (21 page)

DAD AND I ARE USHERED INTO THE TROPHY
room. The guard instructs us to sit down at a table in one corner. He moves a chair so that he has a direct view of us and sits down, setting his gun across his knees.

I speak in a low voice, but it doesn’t matter. The guard isn’t paying attention. “What’s going on?” I ask.

“Miles came to us and told us he had turned off the electric fences. He got your friend Tallie to drive somewhere nearby so that she could ferry people from the ranch to Roswell. All of the kids and some of the parents went with her, and the rest of the clan is waiting in the woods for a sign from us.”

“A sign for what?” I ask.

“For attack. We came here to rescue Badger. We were ready to try negotiation or flat-out escape. But if it takes an armed attack
to save him, our people are ready and waiting. Once Badger’s safe, our only goal is to flee this place with the least casualties possible.”

I nod, one strategy after another forming in my mind. Dad catches my eye. “He’s a good one, Juneau.”

“Who?” I ask, confused by the abrupt change of subject.

“Miles. That boy shows signs of being a true leader,” he says. “Might not know anything about nature. Or fighting”—Dad smiles at a memory, probably something ridiculous Miles did on the way here—“but he’s got a good heart. And he cares about you—enough to come here and stand by your side. That says a lot.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I say, grateful for his opinion. For his approval.

Dad watches me with a look of sadness and resignation. Like he knows things aren’t ever going to be the same. “Dad?” I ask.

“Yes, Junebug.”

“Whit told me that our ability to Read the Yara comes from the Amrit—that it widens our brains’ sensory receptors.”

Dad nods. “Your mother and I discovered that during the drug’s testing phase.”

“So it has nothing to do with our closeness to the Yara and Gaia?” I ask, trying to hide the note of pain in my voice.

“Is that what Whit said?” my father asks.

“He said that the Yara and Gaia are only metaphors, but by encouraging our faith in them, he made the clan stronger. He also told me that my Conjuring is just a result of having a stronger batch of Amrit than everyone else.”

“Do you think that’s true?” my father asks.

My face melts, and a tear runs down my cheek. I wipe it angrily away. “I don’t know what to think anymore. You and the elders lied to us. We were brainwashed.” Dad raises a finger, but I cut him off. “And don’t tell me that you did it for the good of the clan. I understand that, but it still doesn’t make it right. Nothing will make up for the fact that I grew up in a world of lies.”

My father nods sadly. “I know. But as for what you’re going to believe from now on, that’s up to you. You can believe like Whit does . . . that the Yara, Gaia, Reading, your Conjuring . . . that it all comes down to science. Or you can choose to believe that there is more to it than meets the eye.”

“What do you believe?” I challenge.

“I believe that Amrit returns us to a state we were meant to be in. A state that humankind was in at the beginning of time. Communing with nature, living long, disease-free lives. It is only over the ages, and with our misuse of the earth that our brains’ sensory receptors have narrowed and we lost communion with the Yara. And humankind has suffered the consequences through disease and premature aging. There were men in the Old Testament who were recorded as living for several hundreds of years.”

Dad rubs his hand over his head as he considers what to say. “I think that the notion of Gaia had disappeared, but we recovered it. Science doesn’t get in the way of that. Science and belief go hand in hand as far as I’m concerned. But it doesn’t matter what I think,” he concludes. “You have to decide for yourself.”

I shake my head and, unable to hide my anger, I cast around
for another subject to discuss. “Saying we get out of here alive, where has the clan decided to go?”

Dad looks down at the floor.

“What?” I ask.

He looks back up at me. “There have been several discussions. Some of the young considered splitting away from the clan. But the general consensus is that if you lead, the clan will follow you.”

I shake my head. “That’s not going to happen.”

Dad nods. He understands. “What do you want to do?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“I have,” he says. “If you decide that you’re done with the clan, I will leave them. With you. We can go off on our own somewhere and start a new life.”

“But, Dad—” I start. He holds a hand up to stop me.

“But if you don’t want to have anything to do with any of us, I will understand. It might be time for you to go off on your own. To discover who you are without us. What your purpose is on earth. If you decide to do that, then I will stay with the clan and go where they decide to go.” He reaches toward me and grasps my hand in his.

“It’s up to you, Juneau. You don’t owe the clan anything. You don’t owe me anything.” He sighs. “You alone are in control of your future.”

I put my arms around my dad, and we sit like that for a very long time, holding on to each other without speaking—because words aren’t necessary for what we are telling each other.

I PUSH OPEN THE DOOR TO THE TROPHY ROOM
and see Juneau and her father in a corner with the guard sitting across from them, looking annoyed. I pick up a chair and gesture toward them. “May I?” I ask him. Not knowing what to expect any longer, he just rolls his eyes and nods.

I set the chair down next to Juneau. She raises her head from her father’s shoulder. “You left the mountain. You came,” she says. From her neutral expression, I can’t tell if she considers that a good or bad thing.

“Well, I would have felt pretty useless sitting around by myself in the woods,” I reply, unable to repress a grin. And although the tension is thick enough to cut with a knife, Juneau gets her quirky half smile and leans forward to give me a hug. And let me tell you, that hug fills every inch of void inside of me left by the
conversation with my dad. I don’t want to detach. But Walter is sitting there, so I squeeze her hard and then lean back.

“So you met my clan?” Juneau asks.

I nod, smiling. “I like Kenai. I can see why you guys are so close.”

“And Nome?”

I feel my face flush, and glance, embarrassed, at her dad. “Let me guess,” Juneau says, with a huge smile. “She hit on you.”

Now I’m blushing again. I nod, and look around the room to deflect attention from myself. Walter bursts out laughing. “She didn’t actually hit on me,” I scramble to explain. “She was just . . . complimenting me, I suppose . . .”

But before I can continue my feeble explanation, the sound of a gunshot comes from somewhere inside the house. The door at the end of the library flies open, and Avery steps in, gun in hands. He marches the length of the room, and out into the entryway, shouting to our guard, “Come back me up!”

“But, sir, what about the hostages?”

“I don’t give a flip about them, come back me up!” He yells the same thing to the guards in the office, and storms out onto the porch, gun raised.

Walter is on his feet in a second. “I’m going up to Holly. As soon as the coast is clear, I’ll get her and Badger out of here.” He disappears into the hallway, and Juneau and I are left alone.

“We should go,” she says, taking my hand.

“Just wait,” I say, “this is important.” And digging in my back pocket, I pull out two objects. The first is her opal necklace. “I’ve
been keeping this for you since Salt Lake City. Didn’t think you needed it, but I wasn’t sure you wanted me to throw it away.”

Juneau turns the stone over in her hands, its colors glowing in the low light of the room. Without a word, she pockets it, and looks at me expectantly.

“And this is from Tallie,” I say and hand her the note.

“Dad said you had her come pick up the children and others.” She pauses and watches me, appraising. “Good move.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Although I would have preferred you’d said, ‘Good move, you extraordinary man. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.’”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Juneau says with a hint of a smile. “I’m not very effusive, am I?”

“‘Effusive’ isn’t the first word that comes to mind when I think of you,” I admit. “Which is fine. Effusiveness is totally overrated. I tend to dig the more restrained chicks myself.”

Juneau’s smile widens.
I’m glad to give her a light moment before she reads Tallie’s note
, I think. Reading my mind, she tears her gaze from me, unfolds the note, and takes in the words that I saw back at the clan’s encampment.

Juneau. I read the bones one last time before setting out to pick up your people. The battle that I saw coming? It’s a physical one. And it will be bloody: Some will die. I’m sorry to tell you that, but once again, I saw that the outcome
rests on you. Remember the concept Beauregard gave you: invoke. When it’s all over you will have some decisions to make. Know that my house is open to you. My goddesses and I will welcome you, sister in the Sight.

Juneau’s jaw clenches as she reads. She does her grow-up-a-decade-in-seconds trick, as all of the problems of the world settle onto her shoulders. I can almost see her sink in her chair as it weighs her down.

She sticks the note in her back pocket with the opal.

I raise an eyebrow. “So?”

“A bloody battle. With deaths.”

“And what about the last part?” I ask.

“It’s nice to know I have an option,” she says carefully.

“You have all the options in the world,” I say, and can’t wait any longer. I take her in my arms and kiss her. Now that I’ve met her family and her clan, all the separate brushstrokes of Juneau’s life are meeting up and taking form. I see the whole picture. And it’s a picture that I love. That I want to be a part of.

Juneau takes my face in her hands and kisses me fiercely, like she knows it might be the last time. Land mines explode through my body as the same powerful energy ricochets between the two of us. I don’t want to stop kissing her. I want to stay here, connected to Juneau, generating enough power to light up a city as my lips press her face, her mouth, her neck. But finally she pulls
back from me. Taking my hand, she says, “I’m sorry I left you.”

“Don’t even start,” I say. “No explanation needed. I totally get it.”

“But I abandoned you,” she says with regret.

“You were trying to protect me.” She nods, acknowledging. “Just don’t do it again,” I say. “I don’t need protecting.”

Juneau presses her lips together.

“What?” I ask.

“You don’t have to be a part of this, Miles. Tallie says it will be bloody.”

“Are you kidding me?” I say, and catch her up in a my arms. “I’m with you in this,” I whisper into her ear, the fuzz of her hair tickling my face. “In everything. Besides, as you might have noticed, you can’t stop me. You can only slow me down.”

Juneau gives me a wistful smile and grabs my hand. “Let’s go then,” she says.

We step outside onto the porch and a second later Whit and the doctor crowd out behind us. Everyone is frozen in place, watching the guards who had gone out to patrol the woods and are now heading back toward the house at full speed.

Behind them, Juneau’s people are coming, chasing Avery’s army out of the forest. The battle has begun.

MY PEOPLE BEGIN THE BATTLE BY FIGHTING CLEAN—SHOOTING TO
debilitate. Aiming for limbs. And they are fast enough to avoid the shots of the guards, using trees, bushes, anything they can to shield themselves while they wait for the best possible shot. They have been preparing for a fight against armed brigands for decades. They know what they’re doing.

I can tell by their formation—their spread across the yard—what they’re trying to do: clear an escape route for my dad and Holly to get Badger out. After that, they too will leave.

If they can
, I think, and my heart lurches as, in the glare of the yard’s spotlights, I see bullets fly and one of my people fall. It is Sterling. She presses her hand to her leg and crawls behind one of the boulders used in the ranch’s landscaping. I breathe a sigh of relief. She’s not dead. Yet.

But that one shot changes everything. The time has come—it is a true fight, as Tallie warned. Her words to me weren’t just an empty warning. They were a call to action. She was given a message for me, from her own version of the Yara. Or maybe, since all things are indeed connected, from the Yara itself. “Don’t Read, don’t Conjure,” she said. “Invoke.”

As the battle rages before me, I feel like time has stopped. I force my mind to clear and immerse myself in the question Tallie’s prophecy posed for me.
Invoke what?

What do you believe in?
asks a voice inside. I think of my experience in the last eight weeks. The crumbling of my entire belief system, and my rebuilding of it, stone by solid stone. “Doubt everything,” Tallie had told me. “What you decide to keep, you’ll be able to be sure of. And what you decide to ditch, you’ll replace with what your instincts tell you is true.”

My instincts told me that I had a direct link to the Yara—one that is stronger than I ever imagined. That doesn’t necessitate the use of totems . . . props. The Yara—the force that flows through all things—flows directly in and out of me.

My father urged me to consider what I believed. To make my own choice about the nature of Gaia and the Yara. And I realize that I already have.

I know—from the depths of my being—that Gaia is made up of more than atoms. Gaia is more than mere science. Gaia—the superorganism—is a living, sentient being that uses its children—those who are one with the Yara—to protect her. Gaia empowers us for a reason and rewards us by preserving us—keeping us safe
from disease. From typical human aging.

Whit thought that Amrit would work on anyone—even those who are not Gaia’s children. But I watch Avery drop to one knee and begin shooting at the marble stags atop his fountain, and know that Whit was wrong. Gaia knows who will serve her and who won’t.

I look up to where the moon glows through the storm clouds and discover that a truth has been born in my mind. Is on the tip of my tongue. Our relationship with Gaia is symbiotic. She uses us to protect her, and in turn she protects us. It is the power of Gaia that I am meant to invoke.

And with that realization, I throw my head back and stretch my arms wide, like I do when I Read the wind. And with everything I am, I call the mother. The source. The vessel for everything that exists. I call her to come to the aid of her people. To protect herself and her own. And, when I open my eyes, she has responded.

The rain intensifies, and torrential winds make it difficult for the fighters to stand their ground. It looks like a monsoon has descended on this patch of the New Mexico desert.

My people know how to deal with the elements. We’ve lived our lives outdoors. I watch as they use rocks and trees as hunting blinds and the weather as camouflage as they move from position to position. Meanwhile, Avery’s army falls apart, scrambling for shelter while shooting haphazardly in all directions.

And then—barely visible through the streaking rain—dark shapes begin to emerge from the forest, slowly separating from
the trees. Animals! Gaia has sent the animals. And they are heading directly toward us.

The rain is whipping down, animals are chasing guards out of the woods, and all hell is breaking loose. I make out the forms of large cats, wolves, and even a bear. But the only action that can be clearly seen is within the circular areas lit up by the floodlights stationed around the lawn.

Avery and four guards crouch behind the fountain, guns raised, trying to get a bead on the animals without shooting their own men.

A shot rings out from Avery and his group, and I see a tiger drop to the ground, snarling and injured. “They’re killing the animals!” I yell.

Miles has been standing beside me this whole time, but I was so concentrated on my task that I forgot he was there until he takes a step in front of me. He seems to be calculating something as he peers out at the scene, and then I see him narrow his eyes. Suddenly, one of the floodlights explodes, plunging the area around it into pitch dark. My mouth drops open. “Miles!” I exclaim. “Did you do that? Did you Conjure?”

Miles turns his head and gives me this look . . . one I’ve never seen. It must be what my dad was referring to when he said Miles had the makings of a leader. This is strong Miles. Proud Miles. Miles who is in his element. And I am overwhelmed by a fierce pride. He is with me, this self-assured man who cares for me.
Maybe even loves me
, I think. Because I’m beginning to realize that’s what I feel for him.

He sees my emotion and, taking my hand, pulls me next to him. “It’s a conversation for another time,” he says and points to one side of the yard. “You take those, and I’ll get the rest.” In under a minute, we have disabled all of the floodlights and submerged the scene into darkness.

“I hope your people can see in the dark,” Miles says.

“Oh, trust me . . . they can,” I respond, as a familiar whistle comes from behind us. Through the open door I see my dad running down the stairs with Holly, who is carrying a wide-eyed Badger. The white-uniformed housekeeper is with them, leading them down the stairs and then right into the trophy room.

“You go with them,” Miles says, and rockets out into the dark, keeping against the front of the house, well out of the line of fire.

“Be safe!” I call.

“Always!” I hear him yell.

I leave the porch and run in after my father, following them through the animal-head room, into the hallway, and through a door into the parking garage. “We’ll take the Hummer,” the housekeeper yells. “They leave the keys in the ignition.” She weaves her way past the other cars toward a monstrous vehicle. She opens the back door for Holly, who climbs in and begins attaching a seat belt around Badger. The housekeeper jumps into the passenger seat, and my father climbs in behind the wheel.

From outside, yells and screams, both human and animal, split the night air. My father turns to me. “Juneau. Come with us.”

I shake my head. “I’m staying here. The fight is just beginning.
But you have to follow the plan: Evacuate Badger and his mother.”

My father steps down to put his arms around me. He hugs me firmly and says in my ear, “I just want you to be safe.”

I lean back and look him in the eyes. “I’ll be safe. I promise.”

He gets back into the car, strapping himself in and starting the motor. Rolling the window down, he asks, “You’ll come meet us in Roswell?”

I nod automatically and then, looking down, shake my head. “No, Dad. I won’t be coming.”

He nods sadly. “Don’t forget that I love you, Junebug,” he says.

“I won’t forget. Love you, too, Dad.”

Putting the car into reverse, he backs up slowly into the gravel drive. In the backseat, Holly pushes Badger’s little head down, and leans over out of sight. The housemaid points the way out to my dad, he flicks the lights on, and with a roar tears around the circle, scattering Avery and his guards as he shoots by them and up the driveway. Their escape is so sudden that no one reacts for a few seconds, and by the time shots are fired in their direction, they are too far away to be hit. Wheels screech as the Hummer knocks down the security gate, and continues on, taking a turn onto the main road and disappearing behind the trees.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see three shapes slip into the far end of the garage, and I dive for cover behind one of the remaining cars. I pull the scalpel from my back pocket and push up the blade. I’ve never stabbed anyone before, but after what I’ve seen tonight, I’m ready to take out a whole army with just this one tiny
blade. My heart beats like mad as I wait for a sound.

A voice pipes up, echoing hollowly through the vast room. “It’s us, silly!”

I rise and peer out over the top of the car, to see Nome walking toward me with Kenai beside her and Miles on her other side.

“We come in peace, oh wielder of deadly medical tool,” jokes Kenai, and lances something large toward me. I drop the scalpel and catch the crossbow in the same hand. “And here’s your knife,” Nome says, holding up my bowie in its sheath.

I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. Shaking my head in disbelief at seeing my three favorite people together, I gesture with my head toward the chaos outside. “Ready to fight some brigands?”