Binds (11 page)

“No one knows for sure, but I will show you what we do know,” Spencer replies. His eyes are on mine now and I let them rest there. There’s vulnerability about him at the moment, a deep hurt locked away in his heart. No wonder he can be so sullen and severe at times, he carries these misdoings on his back as if they were done by his command.

He pulls his stare from me and takes one last look toward the playground. I wish I had Spencer’s ability to read minds with a touch so that I may know his. The pain on his face speaks of an injured soul, a soul that I’m starting to wish to understand. I want to believe the sentiments I’m seeing in him are coming from an honest place, but I just can’t allow myself to be there with him yet. After this morning, I don’t know if I’ll ever be. With a shake of his head, he tugs his stare back to the road, starts the car, and we are off.

“What happened to the rest of them?” I nod my head at an empty diner as we pass by. “If not everyone was taken, where did all of the people without children go?”

“Some of them left, got their shit together and got out of the country. Some of them are still here—they won’t be coming out while a strange car is cruising around. Now that their trust and their spirits have been broken, they manage to scavenge a life together in hiding. Most have joined the resistance, many of them; even many from this very town live in my building. There are pockets of resistance all over the country. We’ve done a good job of reorganizing our people, educating them on how to remain undetected by the New World Order, or NOW, and training them to defend themselves. We try to use every member’s abilities, no matter what they are, as a tool to fight this war against the Brands. It’s been slow going, but we revel in all of our victories.” He turns his head and scans me as one side of his mouth turns up into a conniving smile. “I’m hoping we will be having a lot more of those soon.”

I know what he is implying by that statement and I dismiss it as soon as it falls from his lips. He may feel that what he does is warranted, but I’m still not convinced. I sure as hell am not about to join in with his merry band of murderers. No matter the cause of the situation, it seems that there is an infinite number of recourses one may choose to take that don’t result in violence or loss of life. Spencer’s quest is an understandable one, but what does he hope to gain by it, vengeance or reparation? The way he’s going about it now, it seems like he would be willing to do whatever it takes, honor be damned. I can’t see myself bending to that ideology. Ever.

He drives back in the direction of the city. With new eyes, I watch the people we pass and those who speed by us. All of them content to go about their lives, unknowing of the injustice that is occurring to an entire population of people right under their noses. I wonder if any of them would care if the same light being shone on me brightened their minds as well. Would they demand the wrongs be made right? Or would they go back to their TVs and cell phones, weekend trips and business meetings, and let justice fall on someone else’s shoulders. I have a feeling that I know the answer to that. Most people don’t seem to be too overly concerned by rainclouds if they don’t threaten to dampen their own doorsteps. They won’t allow themselves to care if it isn’t directly affecting them and their day-to-day lives.

We are still near the outskirts of the city, about ten minutes before we reach the suburbs, when he exits the freeway. We are now on a highway that runs through a nature preserve. The forest surrounding us is thick with foliage that has been growing for hundreds of years. After about ten minutes of driving on the winding road, Spencer turns off onto a muddy trail just wide enough to allow passage for the PT Cruiser. I can hear the sounds of branches scratching the hood as he speeds along, bumping and jarring us as we go.

“Do you see the need for the clunker now?” Spencer asks, as we take a sharp turn and emerge from the forest, stopping abruptly. “Along with the damage sustained in the explosion earlier, this road can really be hell on a paint job.”

I hold my tongue because the casual mention of the explosion and subsequent deaths of those construction workers reminds me again that even though Spencer may have a tiny, cold-blooded heart somewhere within his chest, it’s a murderous one. I’m willing to see the rest of what he is bringing me to see, but I can’t forget the kind of man he is. Not for a second.

Spencer is already opening his door and stepping out of the car, so I remove my seatbelt and follow. We are on a great precipice with a view that must have at one time been outstanding at sunrise. Today, there is an enormous structure blocking the picturesque background of hills with rolling acres of pine. The building reminds me of a cross between a factory straight out of a Dickens novel and a prison. A towering fence with barbed wire encircling the top runs the entire length of the building, and a faint hum in the air signifies that the enclosure would fry any creature wandering along that accidentally rubbed against it. At the far side of the building, there are five massive smoke stacks that are billowing out thick, sooty clouds.

This doesn’t look like a place where children live. There are no telltale signs of them to be found. No playground, no bright colored paint, no toys strewn about. In fact, the way that the fence hugs the perimeter of the building, there is no space for such things anyway.

“This is a reformatory?” It’s not at all what I had pictured. I thought it would be more like a military school or anything where children could actually exist. What I am looking at now, it’s not a place where children come to live; it’s a place where they come to…

“Yes. It’s one of many,” Spencer says. “More pop up every month. For, as much as they are fools for allowing pregnancy to happen, Mages are still bearing children every day. Many of them try to birth their babies at home with the care of other Mage midwives, but the children are always found out by the NWO, and they are always taken eventually. The heartbreak of our people is eternal.”

A chill has taken hold of my body that is not caused by the cold wind blowing around the overlook where we stand. A conviction sweeps through my thoughts, and I remember Spencer saying yesterday that Donovan and Oberon have stolen my power. I wonder if any of it was used to perform these atrocities. I feel the stirrings of a panic attack, but if I am responsible for any of this, I can’t feel it.

“So you see,” Spencer breaks into my thoughts. I’d been so busy condemning myself that I had forgotten he was standing next to me. “It’s imperative that these people are stopped by any means necessary.” He sounds like he is trying to convince me of it, but I don’t need any convincing. Just watching the smoke wafting out of this imposing structure and speculating about what may be happening inside is enough to persuade me that he is right. The ones responsible for it need to be stopped, but still, murder…

“The explosion earlier,” I whisper. “They were constructing another one of these places. Weren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Those men … do you think they knew? Could they have known what they were building and still agree to it?” I can’t believe they would. People
are
inherently good, sometimes selfish, sometimes closed off from each other, but good nonetheless. None of the men that Spencer eliminated from the earth knew what they were doing. I won’t believe that such evil exist; I can’t believe it.

“It doesn’t matter if they knew or not,” Spencer replies with a tone of voice that will accept no other opinion. “They were building it. We are at war. Sacrifices must sometimes be made so that others may live.”

His voice waivers a little at the end of the last statement and I get the feeling that he is trying to convince himself of this now, not just me. I don’t agree with it or accept it, but I know that I’ll have to live with it, for now. Until another option comes along, I’m stuck with this man. I take comfort in knowing that Reece and Cass are stuck with me, although thoughts of what part they played in today’s massacre are still churning through my mind.

“I don’t understand, though,” I counter. “Why not attack this place instead? If there are children here, why not save them instead of putting your efforts into these preemptive strikes?”

“We can’t get close enough to any reformatory to attack it. That’s why I had to bring you all the way up here to show it to you. There are warding Binds completely surrounding every one of them. At the beginning of all of this, we gathered as many Mages as would volunteer to come and tried to storm a reformatory to take our children back. As soon as the wards were crossed, the Mages who touched them were frozen in place, just as I froze you earlier today. Guards came swarming out of the building, outnumbering us and shot every one of our immobile people. The rest fled. Although we continue attempting to remove the Binds and gain access to the reformatories, we haven’t been successful. Until we gain access, there aren’t enough of us left to sacrifice by trying again … yet.”

The ‘yet’ is another portentous one. I feel it tied to me the same way I feel this whole day for what it truly is: one big sales pitch from Spencer Donnelly, traveling salesman extraordinaire. He believes in his cause, I get that, but I also get that he would do anything and stomp over anyone to further it. That mentality is how Chancellor Brand came into power in the first place. It was easy to get on board at that time. If this day has done anything, it’s strengthened my resolve to not make the same mistakes this time around.

“Come on,” Spencer says, grasping my elbow with a whisper soft touch to direct me back to the car. The feel of his fingertips makes my spine quiver and sensing the unease that rippled through my body, he releases me. “Let’s get back before rush hour traffic sets in. I was going to take you to pick up some clothes, but with the way we look from our earlier scuffle, I don’t think it would be wise to go into any stores right now. The NWO are always out in triple force after an attack and they were already doubled and on the hunt for you to begin with.”

We climb in the car and head off for the city. Just as we’re passing through the suburbs a thought pops into my mind.

“If all of the parents were killed and the children gathered into the reformatories to never be seen or heard from again, how did word get out of what happened?” I yawn as I ask. This day has been another one that has taken every last bit of energy from me. I wonder how many more of these days I have ahead.

“Simple,” Spencer answers with an air of arrogance, “some of them who were adept at illusion Binds got out by making the guards think that they were already dead. Well, that’s how I got out, anyway. Unfortunately, my wife and daughter weren’t so lucky.”

The ride home is a silent one. Spencer, ever the man of mystery, completely closes up after his shocking announcement. The cab of the car is so thick with tension that even Willie isn’t able to penetrate it.

Looking back now, it makes sense—the cold way that Spencer treated me on our first meeting and the way he seems to be disgusted by me at times. I must be a horrible reminder of everything he has lost. I just wonder what it is he saw when he took that look into my life. Are there hidden secrets of my time with the Brands that I am not conscious of? Even though I know it will probably hurt him all over again to reveal it, this is something I need to know, but I let it go, for now. Visiting those sites probably opened the wounds up for him again, and I’m not so callous as to rub salt in them right now.

We enter downtown shortly after the lampposts begin to highlight the sun’s last golden rays as they battle the onslaught of night. As Spencer pulls the car into the parking garage and sidles into a spot, I simultaneously yawn and my stomach complains from not having anything to eat since my cereal at breakfast. As much as I wish that we would have stopped so I could have gotten something of my own to wear, getting something to eat, throwing on Cass’s Hello Kitties, and snuggling up in bed sounds like heaven to me right now.

Zombielike, I remove my seatbelt and slide out of the car. It’s dark in the garage and I don’t remember which direction the elevator is in, so I look around to reorient myself, but find myself not needing to. Spencer has already come around the car and is guiding me away by the small of my back.

As much as I dislike this man, most of the time, the soft pressure of his touch as we walk is nice. So nice, in fact, that I am finding myself unwittingly leaning into it more and more. As the elevator doors close, confining us together for the trip upstairs, my exhaustion takes over and I can’t help leaning my head against his arm to rest it for a moment.

“Whoa, Sleeping Beauty,” Spencer says as he pulls his hand away and props against the opposite wall from me. “You looked like you didn’t know where we were going, so I was just making sure you got to the elevator all right. No need to throw yourself at me for it … unless you really want to. If that is the case though, I can wait for a bedroom. No need to get down in the elevator.” He raises his eyebrows at me invitingly.