Hunting Lila (17 page)

‘Come on!’ He pulled me out onto the back veranda.

I flew forward onto the wooden planks, whacking my elbow on the door frame and letting out a cry. Key went tumbling over me, head first down the steps onto the lawn. And then a man was on top of him, smacking his fist into his face.

I jerked onto my knees and hauled myself up, spinning around to see whether anyone else was coming up behind him. My legs were bent as though I was on a starting block but I didn’t know which way to run or what to do. Key was curled up in a ball, yelling out with each blow. I unfroze and directed my gaze at a watering can, the first thing I saw. It lifted up and I hurled it with all the force I could muster at the man on top of Key. Then I looked for something else. A wooden table at the far end of the veranda was the only other object that I thought I could lift. I stared at it hard and it flew up straight away, hovered for a split second and then rocketed towards the men on the grass.

Just before it made contact, the man rolled aside, off Key. The shock made me lose my grip and the table skidded dangerously in mid-air, coming to a rest millimetres from Alex’s face. It hung there like a feather while we both watched. Time seemed to have frozen alongside the table. I looked at Alex, feeling adrenaline pump into my limbs. He was staring at the table in disbelief, then his eyes slowly tracked over to me and I saw the cog turn and the realisation sink in.

The table smashed to the ground at his side. He didn’t flinch, he was already on his feet, and the look on his face was one I’d never seen before. I almost toppled backwards from the force of it. The anger was barely contained. Alex took a step towards me and I cowered back against the door frame. I’d never before felt fear like it. I’d take Demos over this.

I closed my eyes, waiting for him to reach me. I heard Alex swear and my eyes snapped open. Key had grabbed him by the leg and was hanging off him, being dragged along behind.

‘Run, Lila!’ Key was yelling, through a mouthful of blood.

Alex was trying to shake him off; I could see him about to take aim with the other leg and before I knew what I was doing I had launched myself off the top step. I collided with Alex hard, bringing him to the ground, landing with a crunch on top of him. I hadn’t a hope of holding him down but I clung to him tightly, holding his arms and leaning all my weight onto his chest.

‘Stop, stop, please stop,’ I was begging him. ‘Please don’t hurt him. Please stop. He’s trying to help me.’

Alex stopped pushing against me. I released my grip and sat up. I was straddling him. Key had rolled onto his hands and knees and was trying to stand.

Alex sat up and I scrambled off him, backing away fast. He drew himself up to standing, his body taut. I moved to Key’s side, helping him to stand. He spat a bloody wodge of saliva into the grass and leaned heavily on me, panting. I could see Alex’s hands clenching into fists but he stayed pacing the grass a few metres away from us, shooting glances between me and Key.

‘Alex,’ I tried to speak but it came out in a hoarse whisper, ‘Alex, this is Key. He came to tell me that they’re coming to the house.’

‘Who’s coming?’ Alex stopped pacing, his eyes flashing onto me like two lightning strikes.

‘Demos.’ Key lifted his head to spit the word.

Alex stepped towards him and Key leaned back, making me stumble.

‘What? How do you know this?’ His tone was fierce, quick.

‘They’re on their way. You need to get her out of here. They want her.’ Key coughed. ‘To exchange.’ He hacked more bloody spit out of his lungs.

For one second Alex stood staring at Key, then he shifted his head and I felt his eyes burning into me again. I looked back defiantly, my heart rate rising. Then I felt his hand grab me by the elbow and he was dragging me across the lawn.

Key tumbled to his knees as I lost my grip on him. I dug my bare feet into the ground and yanked my arm free from Alex’s grip.

Alex turned around, his face blazing.

‘Where are you taking me?’ I was shouting.

He reached his hand to take hold of me again but I dodged it.

‘Come on,’ he said. It was an order.

I stood firm. ‘I’m not leaving him. He came to help me. They have his son.’

I saw Alex waver. He glanced over at the back door and then at Key. I could see the tension in his jaw, the tendons standing up in his neck.

‘Come on then, quick, into the garage, the car.’ He moved towards Key and put an arm around his shoulders, hauling him to standing.

‘Come on, move!’ Alex shouted and I ran.

I flicked on the garage light and held the door open as Alex half carried Key through. He leaned him against the car. ‘Stay here.’

I ran to Key’s side to prop him up while Alex ducked through into the hallway. He was back in a second with the car keys, beeping open the doors. He took Key from me and half pushed him onto the back seat.

‘Get in!’ he yelled.

From outside we heard the sudden noise of screaming engines, of cars, or trucks. It was loud, tearing apart the still night. All three of us lifted our heads. They screeched to a stop out the front of the house.

Alex dived into the driver’s seat and threw open the passenger door. He leaned over and grabbed my wrist, pulling me into the car. I slammed the door shut as the garage opened up.

The thrust of the acceleration as Alex hit his foot to the floor and reversed out threw me against the dash. I heard Key roll off the back seat and a heavy thump as he crashed onto the floor.

I scrabbled for the seat belt as we spun out of the drive onto the road, ripping down the kerb to get around the two cars abandoned on the pavement. Two men were already on the front lawn, one on the veranda, with his hand on the front door. The drivers of both cars were revving the engines and when they saw us fly past them I caught their looks of surprise.

‘Seat belt!’ Alex reached over and grabbed it from my hand, ramming it home, then spinning the car through one eighty degrees. The men on the lawn were running back to the cars but the one by the door, standing under the white security light, was motionless. It was him. I knew it.

Demos stared right back at me, a smile on his face. My mother’s killer was smiling at me. My mind went blank. And the world turned to white noise. A searing pain rocketed through my eye and ground against the inside of my skull like a blunt blade. I doubled over, clutching my head, trying to make it stop, the seatbelt cutting into my neck.

‘It’ll stop in a minute.’ Alex’s voice was cold.

The pain intensified. Then suddenly it did stop.

It took a few minutes before I could sit up straight again, pressing my hand to my head above my right eye, trying to mute the ache that remained.

‘What was that?’ I croaked.

‘A little weapon against them.’

Them. He meant me, and I shrank back against the door, my eyes on the buttons, wondering what the other one did.

‘It’s given us a head start.’

‘How?’

‘It emits a frequency that interferes with the pattern of their brainwaves. It’ll have . . . incapacitated them, like it did you.’ He was checking his rear-view mirror every second or so, but he hadn’t looked at me once. ‘They’re not following. It worked.’

Fear flooded back into me. ‘A head start to where? Where are we going?’ Was he taking us to the base?

He didn’t answer, his face as impenetrable as moulded granite. I flinched further back against the door and looked out of the window to see if we were headed north but from the road signs I could see flashing past we were on the interstate heading south. Which meant we were headed away from the base. Where were we going?

The only noise was the churning of the gears as Alex’s foot stamped down on the pedals. He was driving at least double the speed of any other car on the road, weaving rhythmically in and out of the lanes. I looked at his face, set in an expression of absolute concentration, and wondered how I could still feel such an addiction to being close to him, could still feel my heart lurch at the sight of him when his hatred towards me was so strong I could almost feel it coming off him in waves.

Alex dug around in his back pocket, then threw his phone into my lap instead, along with his wallet. ‘There’s a SIM card in the wallet, take it out and exchange it for the one in the phone.’

I fumbled with the back of the phone, eventually managing to slide the cover off. I prised out the SIM in there and Alex snatched it out of my hand, cracked open his window and threw it out. His wallet was stuffed with notes, there was at least five hundred dollars, my fingers were shaking as I tried to find the SIM amongst them. When I found it I pushed it into place in the phone and snapped the cover back on. Alex took it straight out of my hand and the wallet from my lap and shoved them back into his pocket.

Suddenly Key spoke up from the floor of the car, his voice a croak. ‘Let me out.’

Alex ignored him, so I turned round in my seat and told him, ‘It’s OK, we’re heading south. They’re not following us.’

‘Let me out.’ He was trying to sit up, rubbing his head. He was a mess. ‘I need to get back. I need to follow them.’ He looked over at Alex, put his hand on the back of his seat. Alex glared at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘Please, I can help you. Let me out. I can track them for you, warn you if they are getting close.’

I looked over at Alex, waiting to see what he would say.

‘How will you track them?’ he asked, his eyes back on the road.

Key sighed, then looking straight at Alex in the mirror said, ‘I can project. I’m not one of Demos’s group,’ he added quickly. ‘I just want my son back before your Unit catches up with them.’

Alex’s lips pressed together. I watched his jaw clench tight. Finally he spoke. ‘Who’s your son?’

‘Nate, his name is Nathaniel Johnson.’ His voice broke apart on the name.

‘You said your name was Key, not Johnson,’ Alex shot back.

‘My real name’s Johnson. Anthony Johnson. Key’s a nickname since I was a kid.’

‘I’ve never heard of you or your son. Why should I believe you?’

I heard Key sigh again. ‘They took my boy because he’s special. Like me. Like her.’ He pointed at me, and Alex flinched. Key carried on, his voice rising. ‘I want my boy back. He’s not one of them. He’s just a kid. He’s sixteen. He doesn’t have anything to do with whatever it is you think they’ve done.’

Alex stared at him for several seconds in the mirror, then looked back at the road. ‘What do you know about anything they’ve done?’

‘Nothing. Nothing, I swear to you. I never came near them before three weeks ago when they took Nate. I followed Lila to the bar and saw one of them outside so I came to the house to warn her. That’s all. I don’t know anything more.’ Bloody foam was bubbling at the corner of his mouth and I stared at it.

Alex snapped his head round to look at Key. ‘Why were you following Lila?’ I wished he would look at the road. He was topping one fifty on the speedometer. My hands were gripping the edges of the seat.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘He wanted my help.’ I spoke up. ‘He thought I might be able to get some information from Jack or you.’

Alex ignored me but his eyes skipped back to the road ahead.

‘Look,’ Key said. ‘Why don’t we help each other? If you let me out now I can go back, catch up with them and warn you if they’re getting close. I can tell you where they’re going, what they’re planning, what their next move is. You need someone who can get close to them.’

‘That relies on you being able to communicate with me. How will you be able to? What, are you telepathic too?’ Scorn dripped off his words.

Key’s eyes narrowed, ‘You really don’t know much about us, do you?’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘I can get back to my body instantly, well almost instantly, a matter of seconds. Don’t matter where I am, could be another continent, only takes me to think about it and I’m there, back, right in my body. So you give me your phone number and you got instantaneous updates. I’m better than CNN.’

I couldn’t even imagine what he was talking about. I really wanted to ask what happened to his body when he was out floating about, but was too scared to interrupt the conversation.

Alex swerved into the fast lane, stepping on the gas some more. ‘Why? What’s in it for you?’

‘You help me get my son back. You and the Unit stop Demos but you find a way of keeping the Unit away from my son.’

‘You could go now – project from here. That way I know right where you are,’ Alex said.

‘You think I trust you?’ Key shot back. ‘No offence. But you’re one of them.’

Alex frowned, looking like he was weighing the pros against the cons. After a few more seconds he gave Key a cellphone number. I heard Key repeating it over and over, memorising it.

‘You got it?’ Alex asked.

‘Yeah, I got it. And you? I do this, you going to keep your promise to help me get my son back?’

The silence rolled around the car. Then Alex nodded, just once, his eyes not leaving the road. He pulled across to the hard shoulder and slowed to a stop. Cars whizzed past in the inside lane.

Key seemed to relax slightly, he wiped the spit at the side of his mouth and moved to the door, as though he was about to open it and dive right out. Then he looked back at Alex and nodded in my direction. ‘You need to get her as far away as you can. As in, international-sized distances.’

Alex looked round at him now, turning to face him. ‘Why?’ he asked, suddenly wary.

Key shook his head, grimacing through his busted lip. ‘Suki will be able to trace her. Now she’s seen Lila, read her mind, it’ll be easy enough, given time. Or my son could trace her. If they can make him.’

‘He can do that? Trace others?’ Alex took the words out of my mouth.

‘Yes. Others like him. From what I can tell, Suki has to read someone’s mind before she can find them. Nate can just see others.’

‘How?’ It was me asking this time.

‘It’s hard to explain.’ He didn’t look like he was about to elaborate, as he glanced out of the window, chewing his lip, and bouncing on the seat. His body language screamed that he wanted to get out.