Struck (26 page)

The wind rushed at me, seemingly from everywhere, as though it couldn’t decide which direction to blow. I could barely see through the hair whipping my cheeks
.

There was music, a hammer blow baseline, a driving, chaotic symphony of electronic sound. But the music disappeared when thunder rumbled in the sky. It was the sound of hunger, deep and ravenous. Overhead, thunderclouds roiled and bunched, like the fists of an army of angry gods, ready to pummel the world. Those clouds were so close; I could almost reach up and touch them
.

The Tower. Again. Always. Standing on the roof of the Tower, surrounded on all sides by bodies, grinding and shaking and throwing their arms in the air to the thunder music
.

A piece of paper sailed through the night and slapped against me. I grabbed it before it could blow away and held it up to read
.

BEGINNING OF THE END PARTY

APRIL 17

AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD

HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME

Thunder cracked, jarring my bones. The air was electric, and my blood sang in harmony with its vibration. My skin danced, like every cell was in the process of trading places. It burned, but at the same time I had never felt so alive, like the storm was inside me
.

Maroon light pulsed on and off in the blue-black clouds, and my singing blood began to cry out, calling for the lightning. Lightning as red as the scars that branched over my skin. I felt my arms lifting. Reaching. I let the wind take the flyer as I turned my chin up to face the clouds
.

“Mia.”

Through the veil of hair covering my eyes, I saw Jeremy cutting through the crush of bodies, coming toward me
.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said, and even though his voice was low I heard him just fine. “You’re the missing element. You’re what he’s been waiting for.”

“Who?” I asked
.

“Him.” Jeremy’s eyes focused on something behind me.

Some
one.

I turned and found myself inches from a pair of milky white eyes
.

“Hurry up please it’s time.”

“No!” I whirled back to Jeremy. “Show me something else! I don’t want the Tower.”

Lightning split the sky above us. I saw it reflected in Jeremy’s
tortured
eyes, and the thunder that followed shook my bones so hard I thought they might shatter
.

“Hurry up please it’s time.”
The voice whispered in my ear
.

I grabbed Jeremy’s face and pulled it within an inch of mine. “I won’t leave here until you show me a different future. Show me what I chose!”

“I don’t know how,” he said miserably. “This is all there is.”

“No. The Lovers. I chose the Lovers. I choose you.”

I crushed my mouth to his in a violent kiss, a demand
.

Show me something else. Show me something else. Show me something else.

Then we were falling. Jeremy and I were falling from the Tower, rushing toward the ground, faster and faster, plummeting into one of the chasms, so deep, so unfathomably deep, and then
—

The wind rushed at me, seemingly from all sides, as though it couldn’t decide which direction to blow. I could barely see through the hair whipping my cheeks
.

It began again. And ended. And began
.

And ended
.

And
—

My eyes flashed open to find a dark shape looming over me in a lightless room. I drew breath to scream.

“You’re awake! Mia, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you like that. I wasn’t thinking.”

Jeremy. The dark shape was Jeremy, and we were no longer in the Waste, and I didn’t need to scream.

I exhaled hard and sat up, maybe a little too fast, because my head began to spin. I felt like my brain was being sucked down into a whirlpool. I pressed the heels of my
hands to my eyes. “What happened? Why is it so dark in here?”

“The fire went out.”

I looked toward the fireplace. A single candle still burned on the mantel, but the roaring fire Jeremy built had gone cold. Not even the embers glowed.

“You were out for hours,” Jeremy said. “I kept trying to wake you up, but I couldn’t get to you. Mia, I’m so sorry. I’ve trapped people in visions before, but never for so long, and never without meaning to.”

“It’s not your fault,” I told him, remembering my refusal to leave the vision until I got the future I wanted. But I never did. It was the same loop, again and again.

The Tower and the storm. The Tower and the storm.

The Tower and the storm … and Prophet.

There is no storm!

I climbed dizzily to my feet. Jeremy looked furious with himself that he couldn’t help me up. His hands clenched at his sides, useless.

“Where are you going?”

I stumbled through the dark toward the door and threw it open. The air hit my skin and my weather sense began to thrum with new intensity, making my skin vibrate like I was some kind of human tuning fork.

The storm … it was back, and it was so close.

But the sky was still clear.

As I stood there a breeze picked up, and the pins and needles stabbing my skin multiplied. A piece of red paper fluttered along the sidewalk. I raced down the steps and grabbed it before it could blow away.

“Mia?”

Startled, my hands jerked and tore the flyer nearly in half. I handed it to Jeremy and watched the color disappear from his face and his jaw tighten as he read.

“
Hurry up please it’s time
,” I said under my breath. “Time for what?”

“It’s a line from a poem,” Jeremy said. “
The Waste Land
. T. S. Eliot.”

And then I understood.

I raised my eyes to Jeremy’s. “We have to get out of L.A.”

32

I SHOOK THE
flyer at Jeremy. “Beginning of the End at the Top of the World. That’s the Tower, isn’t it?”

Jeremy dug a hand through his hair. “It could be.”

“It has to be! That T. S. Eliot line is a password to get into the Rove, and whoever made this flyer is just giving it away to everyone. The Rove doesn’t advertise. Exclusivity is part of the allure.” I tapped the words with my finger, thinking. “Katrina said some rich guy bought the Tower and offered to host the Rove. And on Schiz’s blog, he wrote something about how Prophet was buying property in the Waste. It has to be him! The twins … the Apostles … they said if the rovers didn’t repent, they’d be the first to die. Prophet,” I said, my throat tightening. “He planned this whole thing, the Rove in the Tower. The flyers.”

I realized I was babbling, but I couldn’t slow to compose myself. I had to say it to see how it sounded. So far it sounded crazy … but possible. More than possible.

“It’s going to start in the Tower,” I said. “Maybe Prophet has the whole place wired with explosives or something. The whole freaking city! Who knows what these fanatics are capable of! Or maybe …” I chewed my lip, not wanting to admit what I was considering. I took a breath and
let it out. “Katrina told me there’s something about the Waste, an energy, like the Spark, only bigger. It was uncovered during the earthquake, and now it’s exposed.”

“I felt it,” Jeremy said. “It’s strongest at the Tower.”

I nodded. “Like that place is some kind of … I don’t know, like an energy nexus. If there’s another storm coming, that energy could draw even more lightning than last time. There could be another earthquake, a
worse
earthquake, and the rovers would be the first to go. They’re the only people in the city who’ve openly defied Prophet, and a lot of them have the Spark. Prophet’s opposition would be instantly eliminated.”

Jeremy closed his eyes, as though it was too painful to keep them open. “So what do you want to do?”

“Do?” I threw my hands up. “There’s nothing we
can
do. It’s too late.” I shook my head, feeling ashamed that I was giving up, but I didn’t see any other choice. “I’m getting my family out of L.A.,” I told him.

“What about the roads?” Jeremy asked so quietly I could barely hear him.

Jeremy’s words echoed in my brain.

I screwed up. I shouldn’t have waited so long. Now it’s too late
.

I stared at him. “That’s what you wanted to ask me, if I would leave the city … with you.”

Jeremy nodded, eyes on the ground. “I didn’t think you’d say yes, but—”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, let’s get out of this city. Together. We’ll find a way.”

Jeremy raised his eyes to mine. His hands were once again clenched at his sides, so I knew what he wanted to
do with them, that he wanted to touch me. I remembered the heat of his lips on mine, and I wished I could let him.

But we had run out of time for things like that.

We left my car behind and took Jeremy’s bike, weaving in and out of traffic like we were on an obstacle course. I kept my eyes closed most of the way and clung to Jeremy’s back so tightly I was surprised he didn’t end up with a few cracked ribs.

Even though we were able to avoid being stopped by the gridlock on the roads, it was past eleven by the time we reached my house.

My heart was pounding against my rib cage as we ran to the door. What if Mom or Parker refused to come with us? How could I make them understand?

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

I knew as soon as I set foot in the house that it was empty. I didn’t have to check to see if Mom’s car was in the garage. I didn’t have to call out for her and Parker, or rush from room to room trying to find them. I did those things anyway, but sometimes you just know when you’ve been left behind, even before you find a note telling you why.

Parker left his note in an envelope on his dresser, addressed to me. I opened the envelope with shaking fingers and pulled out a piece of notebook paper, jagged along the side where it’d been torn out.

Mia,

I know you’re going to be angry with me. I know you won’t understand why I’m doing this. I wish you did. I’ve joined the Seekers, and undergone their bonding ritual, so there’s no going back now, and that’s okay with me. It was the right thing to do. Please don’t come looking for me unless you intend to join our cause. I love you and Mom. I’m sorry things have to be this way. If we win, I’ll see you when this is over.

Parker

I crumpled the note into a ball and hurled it against the mirror above Parker’s dresser. I wanted to scream.

“They’re gone,” I said when I returned to where Jeremy waited in the living room. “Parker joined the Seekers. My mom …” I thought of how Mom had been that morning, the way she said,
Goodbye, Mia
, with such finality.

I knew exactly where she had gone.

Jeremy took a step toward me and stopped. Two more strides and he could have reached out and touched me, and I really, really wanted him to touch me right then. I wanted the comfort of his warmth. I wanted it more than anything.

But he stayed where he was.

“I have to go get my mom and bring her home,” I told him.

“You know where she is?” he said, and I nodded.

“She went to the White Tent.”

I headed for the door, but Jeremy didn’t move. “Come on,” I told him. “It’s almost midnight. We have to go now.”

“Mia … what if your mom doesn’t want to leave?”

I held up my hands. I didn’t have an answer. “Are you coming or not?”

He ran a hand over his mouth, looking at the floor. “I’ll go with you, but …” He looked me up and down. “We’ll have to change clothes first.”

Jeremy had brought his leather satchel inside so it wouldn’t be stolen by the Displaced. He went to Parker’s room to change. Apparently he’d packed some necessities in case I agreed to leave town with him, and his white jeans were among them.

I had always avoided wearing white, even before the Followers made it my least favorite absence of color. I worried that the red of the lightning scars might show through pale-colored clothes. Mom had a pair of white jeans that fit me well enough, and I found a thick white turtleneck in the bottom of one of her drawers, something she hadn’t worn in years, since the last time she went skiing. With no white gloves available, I had no choice but to stick with my usual black.

When I was dressed, I knocked on Parker’s closed bedroom door. There was no response, so I opened it.

“Jeremy, are you—oh—”

Jeremy’s back was to me, and he was naked to the waist. My eyes roamed up his body, over his long, lean back. Then he pulled on a long-sleeved white shirt, and buttoned it.

He turned to me. His eyes scanned me up and down, and mine did the same to him.

“Good thing you bought those white jeans,” I said.

He nodded. I thought he might ask why I didn’t take off my black gloves, but if he had questions, he kept them to himself.

33

BONFIRES BLAZED AT
intervals along the beach, firelight turning the walls of the White Tent an eerie pumpkin color. Hundreds of figures in white streamed like a river of milk over the sand toward it.

“We get in and out without drawing attention to ourselves, okay?” Jeremy said in a voice only I could hear. “If we find your mom, it’s important that you don’t make a scene.”

“
When
,” I said. “Not
if
. I know she’s here.”

He stopped walking and faced me. “I’m serious, Mia. We have to be careful.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You act like you’ve been here before.”

“I’ve heard things, that’s all.”

We stepped from asphalt onto sand. My feet sank to the ankles. Followers kicked off their shoes and went barefoot, and the filthy, almost feral-seeming citizens of Tentville swooped in like buzzards, snatched up the shoes, and scurried away with them.

Despite how uneasy I was surrounded by so many hundreds of Followers, I felt safer among them than I would have if I’d been wearing my normal clothes. Beach dwellers
flanked the river of Followers, shouting curses at them, throwing fistfuls of sand in their faces.