The Children and the Blood (12 page)

With a gasp, her eyes flew open and she flinched back, her elbow hitting his stomach hard. He choked, struggling not to make too much noise.

She twisted around. “I’m so sorry!” she cried softly. “I didn’t mean–”

He motioned for her to stop apologizing. “It’s fine,” he wheezed. He swallowed, trying not to let his voice belie the words. “You okay?”

She hesitated, and then nodded, lying transparently. He waited.

“Daddy,” she said as though the single word was all she could bear to explain.

He squeezed her shoulder as memory supplied the rest. Three figures running down the stairs. One falling. He was fuzzy on the details, but knew in essence what she must’ve seen.

“They were horrible,” she whispered, her gaze haunted.

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly.

Her eyes met his, and after a moment, she nodded, as though his statement somehow made it more concrete. Tears slid down her cheeks, and his grip on her shoulder tightened. Minutes passed as the furniture swayed and the tires stuttered across potholes in the road.

“Why’d you ask me if those men glowed?” she asked.

He paused, reluctant to appear potentially insane. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But why?”

“How’d you heal me, Lily?” he asked, pretending to change the subject.

Annoyance crossed her face. “Why’d you ask me?” she persisted.

He sighed. “One of them just looked funny to me. It was probably a trick of the light.”

She fidgeted nervously. “They seemed weird to me too,” she admitted. “I just… I thought there was something wrong with me.”

“You saw it too?” he asked, uncertain whether to feel elated or concerned.

“Not exactly…”

“What?”

“They just… when I’d look at them… they all
felt
weird. Same as anybody else, except different. Like… grayer or something.” She cut off, frustration with her inability to explain clear on her face. “They were all like that, except the one in charge. He just felt like… nothing.”

“You only felt this around the other guys?” Cole asked slowly.

Lily nodded, and then glanced back with a worried expression. “And then you…”

“What about me?”

“It’s not there. The feeling. It’s not even nothing like the leader guy. With you, something’s missing.”

Fearfully, her eyes rose to meet his. “Why is it missing?”

He blinked, confused beyond words. “I-I don’t know.”

Brow furrowing, she nodded and looked away.

Cole stared at the back of her tousled head, feeling like things had officially moved so far off the reservation, he wasn’t certain how to even begin processing them anymore.

“How’d you fix my shoulder, Lily?”

Not turning around, she shrugged.

“Had you ever done anything like that before?”

She shook her head. “Made me feel funny, though.”

“How?”

Biting her lip, she turned back. “Quivery. Like, if I don’t really try to stop them, there’s all these tiny rabbits running around crazy inside.” She paused, her face tightening with concentration. “But if I think about putting them in little cages, it starts getting better.”

She glanced up at him. “Do you think they came from whatever’s missing, you know, in you?”

Cole hesitated. Forget the reservation. Earth would be hard to pinpoint right now.

“I’m not sure,” he answered.

Apprehensively, she returned to watching the gap in the tarp.

“Am I crazy?” she asked softly.

He closed his eyes.

“Cole?”

“Only if I am too.”

She looked back, confused.

“You glow when I look at you,” he confessed. “Like there’s diamonds sparkling in your skin. And the guy you said felt like nothing glowed too. But…” he paused, thinking back. “But not the same way. The glow didn’t seem the same around him as it does you.” He grimaced as her eyebrows climbed. “I don’t know how to explain; I haven’t seen anything like this before.”

She stared at him. “I’m
glowing
?”

He shrugged a shoulder awkwardly. “A bit. At least to me. But I think it’s
only
to me. The cops didn’t seem to notice it on the other guy, and–” He cut off, censoring himself on the subject of Vaughn. “And neither has anybody else. But just like you healing me, I saw that guy do some pretty impossible stuff, so…”

Cole glanced to her again. “But you’d never done anything like that before,” he said, half-questioning. “And you never saw anybody do something like it either?”

She shook her head. He sighed.

“So we’re both crazy,” Lily offered, a ghost of a smile pulling at her lips.

He paused, taken back by the attempt at a joke. “Yeah,” he replied, grinning in return. “Guess so.”

The tentative humor in her eyes lingered for a moment, and then faded as she looked back at the gap beneath the tarp.

“I wish Ashley was here,” she whispered.

He didn’t know what to say.

A bump shuddered through the truck, and then the furniture shifted as the vehicle headed along a small incline. Cole glanced up. The tops of hotel buildings sped past, and highway signs for food and gas flew by faster than he could read. With careless force, the truck rocked to a stop and then turned, leaving the off-ramp behind.

Stores and fast food restaurants zipped by, and when they reached a stoplight, he ducked lower, wary of neighboring cars. As the light switched to green, the driver whipped the truck around a corner and then came to an abrupt halt next to a gas station pump.

The music cut off sharply as the engine died, and then the door squeaked open. Still whistling the last song on the radio, the driver strolled around the front of the truck.

Cole held his breath and clenched Lily’s shoulder to keep her still. He needn’t have bothered; the little girl was paralyzed, her eyes locked on the space between the truck and the thin tarp covering them.

The man’s flannel-covered chest came into view. With a thunk, the fuel door flipped open, and a moment later, a nozzle clattered into place. A voice over the loudspeaker instructed the driver at pump seven to pay inside when he was finished, and the man muttered sarcastically in reply.

Moments passed. Still whistling, the man yanked out the nozzle, and then swore when gas splattered his boots. Shoving the nozzle back into the pump, he strode toward the station to pay.

Rising carefully, Cole scanned the area beyond the truck. “Come on,” he whispered to Lily, seeing no one. Pushing back the tarp, he swung his legs over the tailgate and then dropped to the ground. Turning, he reached for Lily.

“What in the world are you
doing
?”

The cry made him freeze. One hand suspended in startlement over her quilted purse, an elderly woman gaped at them from behind her plastic-rimmed glasses. “Don’t you know that’s dangerous? What are you thinking, putting a child back there?”

Drawn by the shouting, the truck’s owner emerged from the station while others turned toward the commotion.

Quickly, Cole grabbed Lily under her arms and hefted her to the ground.

“What the hell?” the man yelled, racing toward them. “Get away from my stuff!”

Lily’s hand crushed in his fist, Cole ran.

The old woman shrieked for someone to call the police. For a hundred yards, the driver’s footsteps pounded after them, and then the man seemed to realize he was leaving the truck with his stuff. Cars flew past as the two of them tore down the sidewalk and then dashed into a strip mall parking lot. Mothers with strollers stared as he and Lily raced by, while a group of frat boys shouted encouragement for them to keep going.

Dodging around a gaggle of teenage girls outside a shoe store, Cole glanced over his shoulder. They’d run a few blocks, and no one had bothered to follow. Contrary to the old woman’s demands, the cops apparently hadn’t been called either.

Running a hand over his hair, he slowed and scanned their surroundings as he tried to catch his breath. Across the street, a bank clock briefly flashed the time before switching to a vague approximation of the temperature. Though the clock confirmed his suspicion that it was before noon, not a single sign on the road gave the name of the city, or even the state.

He needed to think. More than that, he needed to figure out where they were. In his gratitude at escaping the forest, he hadn’t paid attention to the direction the truck traveled, and as a result, they could be anywhere.

Cole grimaced, needs and necessities running around in his mind. His head was pounding from a lack of real sleep, and his stomach was grouchily reminding him of the absence of meals since lunch yesterday. A newspaper could probably help identify where they were, but until they found one, he really had to do something about the food situation.

Rubbing his neck, he gave Lily a tired smile and started walking. The shoe store backed up against yet another strip mall, and as he circled around the edge of the building, a restaurant came into view. A local dining spot with a shingled roof and faded siding, the place didn’t seem popular. The parking lot was nearly empty.

“You hungry?” he asked Lily.

She nodded, still watching the street behind them.

Echoing the motion, he checked around again and then headed for the restaurant.

A greasy smell hung in the air outside the door, and when they entered, the odor increased. Gray sunlight filtered through the blinds and sapped the color from the country décor crowding every spare inch of the walls. A television hung behind the breakfast bar near the entrance, and farther inside, empty booths and tables filled the remaining space.

From her post by the cash register, a waitress looked up as they entered, examining and dismissing them with a single glance before returning to her gossip magazine. Following the directions to find his own seat, printed on the handwritten sign taped to the door, Cole ignored her and headed for a spot with a decent view of the roads.

At a faintly sticky table, Cole pulled out his wallet and flipped it open, quickly counting the cash inside. Though still damp from the river, the bills would be sufficient to at least grant them a meal.

He looked up to see Lily eyeing him nervously. “It’s okay,” he told her, and then jerked his chin at the menus pinned between the ketchup and mustard bottles. “What do you want?”

Lily was still examining the menu when the waitress sauntered up with two glasses of water and set them down without a word. Wondering briefly how she kept her job, Cole skimmed the menu and then ordered a cheeseburger.

“You?” the waitress asked Lily.

“Blueberry pancakes, please.”

The woman walked away.

“She hates this place,” Lily murmured.

“Probably,” Cole agreed. He hesitated and then continued, feeling vaguely crazy for asking. “She look okay though? Not… weird or anything?”

Lily shrugged. “Like nothing, I guess.” She paused. “Like that one guy.”

He could hear the wary question in her tone. “She doesn’t look like him to me,” he said.

Cole glanced back at the waitress, his brow furrowing. It didn’t make sense, but he hoped the fact she didn’t look like the glowing men or whatever Lily saw was a good thing. “You want to stay?”

“I’m pretty hungry,” Lily admitted, seeming torn.

He nodded. “Me too.”

Lifting his glass, he took a sip and then steadily began draining the water, thirst hitting him in full force. In moments, the liquid was gone. He set the glass back on the table, and saw Lily finishing her drink as well.

She gave him a small smile, looking slightly less pale as she put the cup down. Her gaze drifted to the condiments, and when she spotted the crayons tucked beside the menus, her eyes went wide.

He looked back to the street, working to form anything resembling a plan. Obviously, they needed somewhere to hide. Somewhere away from the cops until he could figure out the glowing men, his adoptive parents, and the little girl doodling flowers on her paper placemat. He had some cash, though it wouldn’t get them far, and he knew using the family credit card wouldn’t be a good idea. Not if he wanted to stay off Robert and Melissa’s radar.

Travis.

His thoughts slowed, examining the idea from every angle while trying to determine if the epiphany was brilliance or suicide. Travis was an amateur anarchist in paradise, merrily damning the man from the comfort of his trust fund. His disregard for anything smacking of authority or propriety was a large part of why Cole liked him, and he’d jump at the chance to be involved in something that looked like a conspiracy of ludicrous proportions. Glowing kids? People with superpowers? Cole shook his head. Even with all that stripped away, the other details were more than juicy enough to interest the guy. Knowing Travis, he’d probably just ask for blogging rights when this was finally over, relishing the chance to broadcast the conspiracy to the world.

But Robert, Melissa, and Vaughn had all been ridiculously convincing imposters and, again with the movies, he knew how that plot line usually ran. Everyone would be in on it, and after he trusted Travis, the aliens or the secret government agency or whatever would arrive to brainwash Cole too.

He grimaced. Life wasn’t a movie, and Hollywood was a poor guide to reality. He couldn’t keep running with a little kid, hoping he was the only one who could see her glow and that the men who killed Vaughn didn’t have any friends. They needed help, and Travis was the best – and only – option.

Exhaling, he watched the traffic, trying to think of the next move. Once he knew where they were, he could call Travis and have him come pick them up. Or a bus might be an option. And as for the risk of involving the guy, Lily apparently saw all the bad people who didn’t glow and thought Cole looked weird besides. If they were careful, maybe she could tell if Travis was one of the conspirators too.

Cole struggled not to roll his eyes at himself. Crazy or not, he was certainly starting to sound that way.

He glanced to Lily, and then froze at the sight of tears sliding down her cheeks.

“Lily?”

She set down the crayon, though her other hand lingered over the flowers she had drawn. Gritting her teeth, she closed her eyes, fighting the tears.