Bloom (19 page)

The cold desert wind whipped her hair in all directions. She grabbed a fistful of locks and stuffed them down into the collar of her jacket. The buggies bounced and slid over small dunes as they moved quickly across the desert. In the distance, Haven saw a bright pinpoint of red fire glowing amidst a sea of yellow and white city lights.

“There it is!” she said over the noise of the buggy.

Corva nodded.

A small walkie-talkie clipped to the dashboard crackled loudly.

Marius’s voice squawked at them. “You see it?”

Corva picked up the walkie-talkie and depressed the transmit button. “We see it.”

The buggy drifted to the side to avoid a large rock. Haven kept one hand firmly on a bar of the roll cage above her head and the other on a handle next to her seat. “Why don’t you guys use cell phones?” she asked over the noise of the buggy.

“Too easy to track,” said Corva. “They’ve found us before.”

“Who, Bernam?”

Corva hesitated. “And others.”

“Why didn’t Dormer come with us?” asked Haven.

“He’s still mad at Elena.”

“For not saving his brother?”

Corva nodded. “She knew that we only had one chance to get inside the medical center. After that, security would be so tight that going back in would be a suicide mission. We needed to wait in case Bernam found your brother before we could. Elena knew there was a hybrid out there somewhere, and she also knew that we couldn’t afford to let Bernam…well, to let Bernam do what he does to our kind.”

“But Marius took me by mistake.”

The buggy in front of them crested a large dune and its wheels left the ground. Marius whooped loudly from the first buggy as the vehicle slammed down and regained traction. The small figure in the passenger’s seat bounced violently from the impact.

“I know Elena just
loved
that,” said Corva. She drove safely over the side of the dune and accelerated to catch up to the other buggy.

“How are we going to get Noah back?” said Haven. “If security is so tight, how are we going to get inside?”

Corva shook her head. “I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

Ahead, the pinpoints of white and yellow light turned into street lamps and porch lights. The heart of the city of Bozeman, Montana, was still several miles away—a grid of bright lights in the middle of a wide expanse of moonlit desert. Outlying suburbs stretched away from the main hub to form a massive field of varied construction projects.

An unfinished road reached out from a new housing development and stopped at a lone street lamp. The steady, churning crunch of wheels on sand turned to a low-pitched drone as the buggies left the desert and drove onto pavement.

The housing development was laid out on a network of wide streets. The buggies passed several houses in different states of construction—from hollow skeletons with flapping insulation to unpainted shells with all of the doors and windows installed. More and more houses were placed closer and closer together until the buggies eventually drove past occupied homes. Dusty cars sat parked on dirty driveways next to unmowed lawns. Bikes rested on their sides in front of dark, open garages.

A large, two-story home sat on the corner of two intersecting streets. A police car had cut a black line of soil into the grass of the yard and flipped over. It lay upside-down, abandoned, the red and blue lights flashing across the yard onto the face of the large home.

Corva followed Marius closely as he took sharp corners and steadily approached the red fire.

“Keep eyes peeled,” he said over the walkie-talkie.

The dune buggies pulled to a slow stop in front of the first burning house. It had been a flat, one-story home with a tall wooden door which had blown outward during the fire. Huge chunks of roofing lay in smoldering piles in the yard. Haven sat mesmerized as brilliant red flames danced over the collapsed walls of the house. A few streets away, more fires lit the night sky.

“Where is everyone?” said Corva.

Haven finally looked away from the burning house. All of the houses that lined the street were dark and silent. “Maybe they left because of the fire,” she said.

Farther down the road, a fire truck had run into a concrete lamp post and sat empty, the front of the vehicle caved in from the impact. Behind it, two more police cars were parked with their doors open wide, the lights on top of their roofs flicking red, blue, red, blue.

Marius got out of his dune buggy and slowly approached the house. Elena stood up in her seat and leaned against the roll cage as she watched the flames.

“There’s no one here,” said Corva. “Marius, we should go.”

He looked at the red fire, studying it with a furrowed brow. “Yes,” he said. “This is not good.”

Haven got out of the buggy and stepped closer to the house, once more drawn in by the repulsive beauty of the flames.

“Let’s go, Haven!” said Corva.

“It’s the same color,” said Haven, talking to herself.

A supporting beam within the house popped loudly and the last remaining section of the roof collapsed. Half-burned, half-charred, the house looked exactly like her own home as it burned to the ground.

The red flames shone brightly in her falling tears.

“It’s the same color,” she whispered.

A distant scream tore through the night air.

“Over there,” said Elena. She pointed a bony finger at the glow of the next fire a few streets away.

“Haven, come on!” shouted Corva. “Marius!”

“Okay,” he said.

He turned from the house and walked over to Haven. As he reached for her, an electric streak of red energy shot through the air and hit the ground at his feet. Soil and burning grass erupted upward as if Marius had stepped on a landmine. The impact launched Haven into the air, spinning her away from Marius. She slammed into the ground and rolled to a stop in the yard, groaning.

Corva screamed, “Marius!” as Haven turned on her side. A smoking crater took up what used to be most of the front yard. Marius lay on the far side of the pit, face down and unmoving.

Elena got out of the buggy and hurried over to Haven. She knelt down and pulled her up by her shoulders.

“Come quickly,” she said.

Someone started whistling.

It was quiet at first—a melodic song that Haven found disturbingly peaceful—then became louder and was joined by another whistle playing harmony to the first.

The whistling stopped.

A pair of identical twins with spiky blond hair stepped out of the shadows next to the burning house, wild grins on their flame-lit faces.

Elena supported Haven as they hurried back to the buggies. Haven closed her eyes and tried to imagine the blue star in the vast nothingness that she had seen in the training room with Marius. In her mind, the light was a small spark that fluttered and died. She squeezed her eyes closed even harder and tried to force the light to appear—to grow into a powerful energy that she could harness and expel.

There was nothing.

She opened her eyes. On the other side of the pit, Corva hoisted Marius to his feet. He groaned in pain as he stared over at the twins menacingly.

They were young men, perhaps in their early twenties. One of them clapped his hands together and started rubbing them as if he were cold. He put them to his mouth and blew between his palms.

A beam of thin red light shot out from his hands and hit Corva in the shoulder. She yelled in pain as the impact spun her around and pushed her to the ground.

Marius bellowed and puffed out his chest. Orange spheres of light snapped out from each of his clenched fists and grew to the size of bowling balls. He slammed his fists together and the spheres merged and exploded toward the twins. They jumped apart as the ball of light tore between them and ripped off the back corner of the next house, sending splinters of wood and side paneling spinning into the air.

Elena leaned Haven against the side of the nearest dune buggy. Next to the crater, Marius knelt down to help Corva to her feet. She held one of her arms close to her body and a thick sheen of blood covered her shoulder.

There was movement in the shadows on the other side of the crater.

“Get inside,” said Elena, pushing Haven to climb into the dune buggy.

“Look!” said Haven after she sat in the passenger seat. She pointed over at the twins, who were back on their feet and standing side-by-side in front of the burning house. “Marius!” she shouted.

Marius looked up and saw the twins. With a single motion he scooped up Corva and carried her toward the dune buggies, his thick legs stomping heavily as he ran.

One of the twins—the Source—rested his hand on the other’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Red light covered his entire body and disappeared into the skin of the Conduit, his brother. The Conduit stood there without urgency and watched Marius run. His skin glowed with a shifting radiance that looked like sunlight reflecting into the surface of a red pond.

The Con held out one of his arms and opened his palm toward Marius, who had just made it back to the empty dune buggy and lowered Corva so she could stand up.

Red light formed around the Conduit’s hand and pooled over his palm. The energy seemed on the verge of releasing when a blue spear of light cut through his body and ripped him off his feet. He spun backward into the darkness behind the house and disappeared.

Elena lowered her arm and breathed out heavily. A thin layer of blue light shimmered across her skin.

“Lee!” shouted the remaining twin. His face twisted in rage and he raised his fists toward Elena. Red light sputtered weakly from his hands and he screamed in anger. He turned and ran behind the house.

“Time to go!” shouted Marius.

He hopped into the driver’s seat of his buggy and Corva lowered herself down next to him with a grimace. Marius cranked the wheel and sped out onto the road, back in the direction of The Dome.

Elena moved faster than Haven was expecting as she nimbly climbed into the second buggy and sat behind the wheel. She twisted the key in the ignition and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, the back tires squealing as the buggy tore down the street.

Haven turned back to look at the burning house. The twins stepped out of the shadows next to the flames, one of them leaning heavily against the other. They watched the dune buggies drive away and Haven was certain that they were smiling.

She turned to face forward just as all of the street lamps on both sides of the long street dimmed and went out.

Marius’s buggy on the road ahead turned into a dim silhouette in the moonlight.

“Oh no,” said Elena.

There came the sound of a chest-compressing
WHUMP
and the first buggy launched sideways into the air, spinning side over side until it slammed upside-down onto the grass just off the street.

Elena stomped down on the brake pedal and the buggy screeched to a halt in the middle of the road.

“Get out get out get out!” she said quickly, scrambling to get over her door.

Haven grabbed onto the roll cage and pulled herself up, then jumped out of the buggy as another deep, muted noise blasted the street. The air around her was sucked away, pulling the breath from her chest. A pressure blast smacked her body as if she were a swatted fly and she was thrown into the air.

She had a split-second to see her dune buggy drop from the sky and disappear behind a house before she slammed into the grass next to the road. She crawled onto her hands and knees as she fought to breathe—it felt like her chest was in a vise and a plastic bag covered her mouth. Hair clung to the sides of her face and her vision was blurred. Across the dark street, a silhouetted figure stepped away from a lamp post and walked toward her. Behind the silhouette, two other figures appeared, shorter than the first.

Haven felt something lurch inside her when she looked at the two figures in the background. The sensation that consumed her body as she trembled on the grass and struggled to breathe was something much more intense than anything she had experienced. The sensation was
complete
in every way—symmetrical gravitation that pulled every thread of her soul in one direction.

The tall figure stood next to her, looking down. Haven looked up blearily. She was unable to see a face in the silhouette, but could tell it was a man. He turned his head to one side, then the other, as if inspecting her like a lab specimen. He walked over to Elena, who lay on her back on a small embankment next to the road, bleeding from deep cuts all over her body.

The figure knelt down in the grass next to her.

Elena breathed raggedly and a small line of blood trickled out from the corner of her mouth. She looked up into the face of the figure with unblinking eyes, totally unafraid.

“Hello, Elena,” said the figure. The dark corners of his mouth raised in a grin. “And goodbye.”

20

C
olton waited in the shadows next to one of the houses on the long street. Shelly stood beside him, the sleeve of her jacket brushing his arm as she nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

Reece leaned against the house a few feet away, hands in his pockets, watching with a small smile on his face as Bernam and Alistair flipped over the first dune buggy. It twisted through the air and smashed down into the grass alongside the road.

Reece whistled appreciatively. “Those boys sure know how to get things done,” he said.

The second buggy launched into the air just as the old woman and a young girl jumped to the ground. Both of them were caught in Alistair’s blast and were sent flying. The girl hit the grass and rolled to a stop. The old woman landed on her back with a loud crack of broken bones. Shelly squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed Colton’s arm.

Bernam’s dark silhouette knelt down next to the old woman and he said something to her. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

Alistair appeared between two houses on the other side of the street and walked over to the first buggy. Within the overturned vehicle, a stocky man and a woman with white hair lay next to each other against the top of the roll cage.