The Taking (34 page)

His mouth twisted into a snarl. “This isn’t about legal or not legal.” He lifted his bandaged hand. “You have no idea how special you are, and I’m not about to let you get away again.”

I’d been so focused on my dad that I’d nearly forgotten all about Simon.

“I don’t think you have much choice,” Simon stated. His voice was subdued when he spoke.
“That,”
he said, nodding at the poorly wrapped Ace bandage. “That’s nothing.” He clutched his knife in his fingers, clenching and unclenching his fist.

Agent Truman’s eyes narrowed as they fell on the knife, but he didn’t even flinch. “You wouldn’t. Not with Kyra’s old man here.” He lifted his gun then, holding it to the back of my father’s head, and my heart nearly exploded.

Simon’s eyes slipped to my dad and then to me. I could see the surrender in his eyes even before his chin dropped and he lifted his hands in the air. And then, as if all the will had been drained from him like a deflated balloon, he opened his fingers and let the knife slip to the ground.

But Agent Truman didn’t back down as easily. He shoved the nose of the gun hard against the back of my dad’s neck. There was something in the agent’s expression, the wild look in his eyes and the firm set of his jaw, that made him look determined. He settled his gaze on me. “The easier you make this, the less likely dear old daddy won’t end up at in the bottom of that pit over there.”

“Let him go.” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the gun. I couldn’t let him do what he was threatening. I couldn’t go with him, and there was no way in hell I was letting him hurt my dad. “Drop the gun,” I warned, trying to sound reasonable. “I mean it.” I concentrated, my hands curling into fists so tight my fingertips ached. A throbbing started in the back of my head.

I thought about the way I’d felt when I was at that gas station, when I wanted—when I
needed
—those pain relievers for Tyler so he wouldn’t die from fever.

And now what I needed was for Agent Truman
not
to kill my dad.

I blinked slow and hard. I forced all my attention on the gun, on the barrel.

I clenched and unclenched my fingers, balled and unballed my fists. “No!” I screamed. “Let! Him!
Goooo!
”

When the gun jerked from his grasp, it flew end over end so fast that I could barely track it. It was that fast. A blur.

But I did see it, and so did everyone else, watching as it hurtled like a rocket toward the crater.

We never heard it hit the bottom.

For a moment I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I’d done it. I’d actually moved something with my mind . . . on purpose. And this time there were witnesses.

Simon didn’t take as long to react, and he turned to me in an instant, his copper eyes finding me as he demanded, “You
. . . you
did this.” It wasn’t a question because, of course, he’d seen the truth with his own two eyes.

He looked stunned, and maybe a little pissed that I hadn’t told him everything I was capable of, when we heard Tyler. He exhaled, releasing a gut-wrenching gurgle.

And like that, I was no longer concerned with Simon or Agent Truman or even my dad. I dropped besides Tyler as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
This was it,
I thought, even as I was silently screaming
not yet . . . not yet . . . not yet!

“Tyler,” I whispered, leaning as close to him as I could get so no one else could hear us. My windpipe felt crushed, and it was hard to swallow. My eyes ached.

He was burning up again, but I guess none of that mattered anymore. It would soon be over. He’d be at peace. “I’m here. I’m staying right here.” I reached for his hand, no longer worried about hurting him, and his eyelids fluttered open.

He tried to focus, but his sightless eyes made it impossible, and his gaze darted wildly about, making him look lost and confused. I finally gave myself permission to cry, because there was nothing left to do. I’d taken him to the wrong place.

Maybe,
I thought desperately.
Maybe if we all tried . . . maybe there is still time.

I petitioned Agent Truman, who was just standing there, gaping at his empty hand. “Please. If we can just get him up to that hill. If you help me, I promise I’ll go with you.” I pointed to the place where the fireflies had been just a few short minutes ago.

But the rocky peak was dark now. The fireflies were gone.

Beside me, Tyler sputtered, and I turned to see blood spewing from his mouth and trickling from his nose now too. When he gasped, he choked on it, and then choked some more.

He really was drowning, and soon it would be over.

“What the—”

I didn’t know what Agent Truman was trying to say, but Tyler’s hand suddenly went weaker in mine, his fingers going limp as his gasps grew frail and reedy.

“Kyra.” My dad said my name, but it barely registered. How could I care? How could anything else matter when Tyler was dying? When I was losing him?

And then a cloud of light passed over the top of me.

I wanted to ignore it, but it was far too radiant to be overlooked. Still holding Tyler’s hand, because I wasn’t ready to say good-bye, I glanced skyward; and when I did, my chest tingled and I felt light-headed.

They were amazing this close-up. The fireflies. They were so close I could single out individual clusters of the tiny, glowing insects. It wasn’t like before when they’d appeared to be one enormous knot. Rather, they were like a collection of several groups that had all come together. Like tribes working in unison.

And they were positively breathtaking.

Dropping Tyler’s hand at last, I stood up as I watched while this swarm—this giant, undulating cloud—began to break apart. Beyond me, at the crater, something was happening, and there was light pulsing up from below, from deep down inside Devil’s Hole.

Whatever was down there was alive. And it was coming closer. It was bright and fast, and loud, and it sounded vaguely like the fireflies above us—like the millions of wings that beat. Only louder. Angrier.

And when they were finally there and we could see them at last, we knew what they were. They were fireflies too. But there were so many more of them as they emerged from Devil’s Hole. So many it was impossible to see anything
but
them. They were everywhere. All around us. Eating up all the space until there was no room, no air, no
nothing
left at all.

I would have run, but I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t move or breathe without touching wings and legs and antennae. I could feel them crawling and fluttering and bumping into me, tangling in each and every strand of my hair, creeping beneath every layer of clothing, crawling up my nose, and nesting in my ears.

I slapped and scratched and flung them away from me, knowing it was useless because there would only be more to take their places but totally unwilling to accept their infestation all the same.

The flash, when it came, was nothing like the first time, when I’d felt it throughout my entire body. When I’d tingled and been weightless and felt tugged by whatever force had been pulling me from the ground.

This flash was the same, but different.

It was blinding, exactly the way it had been before, the night I’d disappeared from Chuckanut Drive while my father had watched helplessly. Blinding to the point that I couldn’t see, or sense, anything for several long minutes. I tumbled to the ground, entirely disoriented. I couldn’t tell up from down or left from right.

I opened my mouth to call for help, but no sound came out. I was speechless, sightless, helpless.

And then, like before, on that fateful night on Chuckanut Drive, there was nothing. . . .

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

SEVENTEEN DAYS. THAT’S HOW MUCH TIME HAD
passed since I woke up beneath the scorching sun near the mouth of Devil’s Hole.

Just me and Simon.

We’d stayed there for nearly an hour—maybe less, maybe more. It was hard to know for sure. Time felt irrelevant after everything we’d been through. We’d searched for the others—Tyler, my dad, even Agent Truman—but they were nowhere. I tried long after Simon had given up on them, convinced they were gone. Convinced they weren’t coming back anytime soon.

I’d shouted for them until I was hoarse and scrambled up the rocky hills to get a better view of the deserty landscape. I skinned my knees and cut my palms, but there was no one there who could be infected by my recklessness.

I even crawled to the edge of Devil’s Hole and screamed their names into the void.

The only evidence that they’d ever been there at all was Agent Truman’s sedan, still parked behind our car, and his badge, which had been lying on the ground right where he’d once stood.

Even the fireflies had vanished.

“It’s not healthy, you know? Drawing bugs all day long.” I jerked my head up to find Natty grinning at me. She sat down, sliding a small plate of fruit in front of me. “Here, eat. It won’t do you any good to starve.”

Natty was sweet like that, the only kind-of friend I’d made since we’d arrived here at the Silent Creek camp, where Simon and his band of Returned had taken up refuge after the NSA had discovered their location.

Simon had tried to talk to me over and over again after that morning when we’d driven all the way from Devil’s Hole. I knew he thought I was avoiding him, and maybe I was, but it wasn’t about Simon, not really.

I just couldn’t bear to face him, to be reminded of what I’d done to Tyler, and to my dad as well. If I hadn’t been so selfish, if I had just been able to let Tyler go peacefully—the way he should have—my dad would still be here.

Not . . .
vanished
. Maybe forever.

And Simon was just another reminder of what an idiot I’d been.

It hadn’t been all that hard to avoid him, though. Simon’s group—Jett and Willow included—kept to themselves for the most part. It was like the two camps were rival high schools, coming together only for important meetings but staying segregated whenever possible. When they did sleep, they slept in different quarters; and when they ate, they made sure it was in different shifts.

But I wasn’t tethered by whatever pecking orders had already been established. I was like the new girl at school, able to choose for myself. And once we’d arrived at Silent Creek and I’d met a few of the Returned here, I’d immediately gravitated toward their way of life. They lived peacefully in this place, no guns or satellite trackers. They tended to their vegetable gardens and raised chickens and washed their clothes in the stream near the edge of camp.

Like the Returned from Simon’s camp, these Returned were young, so it was strange to see the way they worked so efficiently, delegating chores and responsibilities, and voting whenever an issue arose. There was a leader of the Silver Creek camp, but not the way Simon was. Thom was more of a chairman than he was a strategist or final decision maker.

But being in a new place, with new people, didn’t make it any easier to forget those I’d left behind.

If, or rather
when
, from what I’d gathered, Simon and his Returned moved on, I wasn’t sure what I’d do—stay here in the mountains of central Oregon with Natty and Thom and the other Silver Creekers or move on with Simon and Jett and Willow, and the rest of their Returned.

Natty would be hardest to leave if I did go. Mostly she stayed quiet and didn’t ask a lot of questions, just made sure I ate every day or so and kept me company. Even when I didn’t feel like talking.

I glanced down at the doodles on the edge of the page—the fireflies—and flipped my journal closed. I smiled weakly at her while she slid in silently beside me, not asking more than I could give.

The fireflies.
They still took up too much space in my thoughts, still made me shudder, even seventeen days later.

I’d never get rid of the sensation of a million legs climbing over every square inch of me.

It shouldn’t have happened that way. Simon told me so. None of it. The way the fireflies had engulfed us. Or the fact that they—whoever they were—had taken my father and Agent Truman along with Tyler.

Simon didn’t have to tell me the rest, I had Jett’s statistics to rely on for that. The Returned were usually young, in their teens.

It didn’t bode well for my dad.

But honestly, at the seventeen-day mark, it didn’t bode well for any of them.

Still, I refused to give up hope. Not yet. I was desperate to know if any of them—if Tyler or my dad, at least—had survived.

Both camps had their own information networks in place, yet so far neither one of them had heard so much as a peep about anyone,
anywhere
, being newly returned. And that lack of news was . . . well, it was killing me.

“I wasn’t drawing. I was . . .” It didn’t matter. Natty didn’t need to hear that I was trying to write it all down so I could find a way to make some sense of it, because it would never make sense, even if it
was
on paper.

“You’re crying again,” Natty said quietly, and I blinked, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.

I was past being embarrassed over my outbursts, which were happening more and more frequently as I tried to cling to hope. “Sorry,” I offered halfheartedly.

She shrugged and picked up a slice of apple from my plate.

“Kyra!” It was Jett who’d come bursting into the dining room of the old mountain church house the Silent Creekers had taken over. “Kyra, come quick!” His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were overly bright. “There’s something you should see.”

I jumped up and reached for the hand Jett held out to me. We ran across the small courtyard to the temporary communications room Jett had set up using some of the equipment he’d brought with him.

Like everything else, the communications equipment for both camps was kept separate, and Jett had a no-share policy about his stuff. I was clearly an exception to that rule.

“Someone reported a Returned?” I asked, knowing I sounded desperate and not caring in the least. I wanted it to be true so bad.