15
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
DARWIN LAY IN his room most of the morning, watching the sun cast its light through the window as it crawled across the floor. When the streak of warmth reached his feet, he stood and moved to look outside. The street below was busy, sounds of construction and people pulsing through the dirty glass, but he barely heard them and stumbled back to the bed.
He had lost her. The only girl who had returned his feelings, and he had pushed her as far away as he could, letting the world—a universe—come between them. It was for the best, wasn’t it? He couldn’t . . . wouldn’t stay here, and bringing her back with him would have been impossible, not with her mom and brother here. He knew what it was like being separated from family.
He shouldn’t have let her get so close to him. He shouldn’t have fallen so hard.
His shoulders dropped as he leaned against the wall for support, suddenly dizzy. If it was the right thing to do, then why the hell did it hurt so much? It felt as though his heart had been torn out of his chest and shredded, and he had no idea how to fix it . . . wasn’t sure he wanted to.
With that thought stuck in his head, he pulled the folded note from his back pocket and stared at it, his hands cupped to minimize the vibrations running though him. He put it back in his pocket and picked up his almost empty backpack before opening the door.
Mellisa sat in the hallway, her back resting against the opposite wall. How long had she been there? She looked at the backpack and then up to his face. “Planning on going somewhere?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Darwin strode past her, heading for the stairs. He could hear her coming to her feet and jogging to catch up to him.
“Where do you plan on going?”
“East.”
“East? Can you be any more specific? There is a lot of country to the east. Most of it, in fact.”
He didn’t return her smile.
“I’m going home.”
“That’s definitely east, and then some.”
They reached the top of the stairs and he forced his way in front of her, taking the steps two at a time all the way to the bottom.
“You are in a hurry,” she said.
He didn’t respond.
“Listen.” Mellisa grabbed his arm, pulling him to a stop just inside the door to the street. “This isn’t something you can do alone. You know that. Rebecca and her Qabal will slaughter you, or worse, capture you and get whatever information you may have. Most likely destroying your brain in the process.”
He pulled his arm away and continued walking out the door, not caring what the consequences were.
Mellisa called out to him. “We can help you. We can help each other. At least talk to Carlos before you take off.”
He kept on going without looking back. He knew he couldn’t do it alone. If he knew it, then why was he so hell-bent on getting out and leaving everyone behind? The answer was simple, really. Anytime he got close to someone, they were either killed or left him. Either way the result was the same. Even the level of guilt felt similar. He was better off alone. He’d done pretty well up to this point. Except that he’d never been alone. His step faltered. But dammit, she was right. He would be like a mouse fighting with a cat. A game. Rebecca might even play with him for a while before she killed him, but he doubted it.
Darwin sighed, stopping in the middle of the street. She was right, and they both knew it. He would just have to make sure he didn’t get too close to them. Hell, he already was, but that could be changed. He would make it change.
Carlos was in his office, the first place that Darwin looked. He knocked on the door and walked in.
“Mellisa thinks she may have figured out how you project your image and talk with us. She says it has something to do with the images you described to her. The Threads are too complex to follow, but the imagery may be easier. It looks like you also need to know where the person you want to talk to is, maybe even know what they are doing. We’re looking for some Threaders that See images. Apparently, it’s rare.”
Darwin fell into the chair in front of Carlos’s desk, ignoring what he had just said. “I need to go back.”
“Back?”
“To New Jersey. To the Qabal.”
Carlos leaned into his chair, rocking it on the two back legs, and watched Darwin.
“I need to get home, and as far as I can see, Rebecca is the only one who might know how. She saw the Threads when I came through. Maybe she’s got it all wrong. I don’t have the information she’s looking for. She does.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
Darwin drew in a breath and held it before releasing it slowly. “I don’t know. I do know I can’t stay here. I don’t belong here, and the Skends will come back. We both know that.”
“We can fight them. You could stay, if you wanted to.”
No, he couldn’t. He had gone down that path already. He got to his feet. “Are you willing to help me or not?”
“I know Teresa leaving hurt you, we’ve all been—”
“Yes or no, Carlos. That is all I need.”
Carlos leaned forward, rubbing the stubble on his face with his hands. “We started drawing up some plans to attack the Qabal. They’ve been fighting us for years. Maybe it’s time to bring the fight to them. I just don’t know if we’re ready.”
The door burst open and Mellisa rushed in, slightly out of breath. Carlos stood, and she looked at both of them, finally stopping at Darwin and looking directly into his eyes. She reached out to touch his arm. “Teresa is missing. The people she was traveling with were found dead this morning with Skend burns.”
Darwin stumbled back into a chair, searching Mellisa’s face for a sign that she was lying. He didn’t see any. Why would he?
“There are indications of a struggle, and no tracks leading away from the attack site. We think the Qabal have her.”
His body went numb, his brain racing. They had her. Rebecca had her. He slumped forward, resting his elbows on his knees. There wasn’t a choice anymore. He was going back to New Jersey whether Carlos helped him or not.
He felt an arm around his shoulder and tensed, pulling away and standing. “I’m going to get her. Will you help me or not?”
“It’ll take weeks to—”
“We don’t have weeks. Yes or no?” He picked his backpack up from the floor and turned toward the door. Mellisa stood in his way, her gaze fixed on Carlos. She gave an almost imperceptible nod, and he heard Carlos sigh.
“If you’re dead set on leaving, we can get you as close to the Source as we can. I don’t know how much help we’ll be; we need to leave Threaders behind to protect SafeHaven. And we can’t do this alone, either.”
Mellisa turned at a shout from the street. Wally was pulling a young man behind him and calling for Carlos.
“The Qabal were here,” he panted. “They holed in front of this guy and left almost right away. Tell them what you were told.”
It was obvious the guy was scared. He was shaking where he stood, and his voice vibrated when he spoke. “I . . . I’d just negotiated shipments of wheat from our farm, and they showed up. I’m not a Threader, I’m just a farmer. I didn’t know what—”
“What did they say?” Darwin interrupted.
“They said they have someone named Teresa, and if a guy by the name of Darwin doesn’t turn himself in, they’ll kill her. They said they’d be waiting where he first appeared.” The words tumbled from his mouth almost too fast to understand. “Can I go now?”
Wally nodded his head, and the man ran back down the street.
Darwin clenched his fists. He wasn’t about to have anyone else’s blood on his hands. Especially not Teresa’s.
“Do you believe them?” Carlos asked.
“That they’ll let her go if I turn myself in? No, but I don’t have a choice, do I? At least I have a chance to get her out if I’m closer to her. I need to get back to New Jersey.”
Carlos studied Darwin thoughtfully before responding. “That settles it then, doesn’t it? It’s normally five days to hole there, with rests. All our regular sites are being watched, so they’ll know if we use them, and we’ll be limited in what we can do. Five days isn’t much, but we’ve been planning for a long time. We’ll need to accelerate our plans. I think we can get a sizable force before we reach them. We just need to find a secure route so they don’t see us.”
“I need to get there faster. And they’ll know if I’m not on my way.”
“Yeah, they will. They seem to know almost everything else. Sit down, we need to hash this out.”
He dropped into the chair once again and listened. By the time they were done, the underlying shape of the plan had been made.
Basically, one of the new Threaders would head out with Wally and another tracker and take a well-known route to the Qabal. The Threader would be about Darwin’s age and shape. With the right clothes, he would be able to pass as Darwin from a distance. Carlos figured they would need six days to get everyone ready and get close, so Wally would have to delay a day somehow.
In the meantime, Carlos and Darwin and a few others would head north and pick up the main forces before moving east. They had a couple of strong holers and would pick up more from their allies in order to shave a day off of their travel, putting them in New Jersey just ahead of Wally. The timing would be tight.
Once they were close, they could use the cover of night and a few good Threaders to hide their approach and try to get Teresa out. As far as Carlos was concerned, the more Qabal that were destroyed, the better.
Darwin hated the extra delay for Wally; every delay put Teresa in more danger. But in the end, he agreed it would be easier to get in if the Qabal thought he was still a day away. They would be unprepared. That’s what they hoped for, anyway.
Wally and his partner left with the decoy Darwin that evening, holing to the plateau in the mountain where Darwin had been attacked on his way to SafeHaven. Neither Wally nor his partner could See images, so there would be no communication with them, and Darwin keenly felt the immediate lack of information. If their plan was discovered, Teresa would be dead long before they got close to her.
Darwin, Carlos, Mellisa, and a group of fifteen others left an hour later, their first hole to the north. When Darwin stepped from the hole, small shards of ice falling from him, he almost bumped into the sign.
Salem, Oregon, Population 161,000.
Darwin’s entire body went cold. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“Picking up people who will help us fight the Qabal, what else?”
Darwin searched Carlos’s face for any deceit but couldn’t find anything. He rubbed the fine white scar at his wrist. “Teresa and I were here, after Enton died. I don’t trust this place or the people.”
“Why not? We’ve traded with Nico for years. The potatoes they send us keep SafeHaven running in the winter, and the fruits and vegetables are canned every year. They are one of our major suppliers. They’ve always been nice enough, though maybe a bit cautious with outsiders at first.”
At the mention of Nico, Darwin went back to studying the Salem sign. He had heard the name before, and it had to do with Salem. Suddenly he had it. When the healer had threatened Rob, she’d mentioned Nico, and Rob didn’t like that at all. “Do you know of a Rob who works with Nico?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure. I’ve met him. A bit of an odd fellow. Bald spot with long, black, greasy hair. Likes to be alone. Seems to have some latent sensitivity to the Threads—he knows when a Threader is working—but that’s about all. Why?”
A shiver ran through him that had nothing to do with the temperature change. “That’s him. Rob captured Teresa and me as slaves, to work in their fields or something. Before they found out Teresa was a healer, I thought they had other plans for her . . . closer to prostitution. These aren’t good people.”
By this time, Mellisa had walked through the hole and joined them. “I never liked them,” she said. “Rob always creeped me out, and Nico seemed extremely selective about where we went.”
Carlos cleared his throat. “I don’t know about slaves, but they’ve got a lot of people working the fields. Most of what we do here is through traders, but every time we’ve made direct contact I didn’t see any signs of slavery. Poor people, yes, but there isn’t anything we can do about that. Are you sure we’re talking about the same guys here?”
“All I know is a guy named Rob wrapped trap wire around our wrists and legs. We were his prisoners, and he didn’t care if he hurt us. If it wasn’t for Dale, we’d still be there.”
Mellisa looked at Carlos at the mention of Dale. “It sounds like them.”
“How does a slimeball like Rob get in charge like that anyway?” asked Darwin.
“If he’s the guy I’m thinking of, he’s Nico’s brother or something like that.”
“Look,” Carlos said. “We don’t have a lot of time. If we did, I’d go look for other allies. But we can’t be picky. The enemy of our enemy is our friend. It’s an old line, but it’s true. We need them. We’ll have to deal with the mess later.” He grabbed Darwin by the shoulders. “The Qabal is our first priority. We need to keep that in mind.”
“The Qabal is yours. Teresa is mine.”
“Right now, they’re the same thing. Work with me on this one. We both need all the help we can get.”
“You don’t know what—”
“What it was like? No. But we need them. You have to keep your emotions in check on this one. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you better figure it out. We stay here tonight and walk in first thing in the morning. I need to know I can trust you, Darwin. That you won’t do anything stupid.”
Darwin pressed his lips together, biting back the retort rising from his gut, and nodded. He hated every part of what Rob had done to them, but he’d partner with the devil if it helped him get Teresa out of Rebecca’s clutches. He nodded.
“Good.” Carlos paused as if considering his next words. “Neither of us is going to be getting much sleep tonight. I can’t let you walk into the trap the Qabal have set without some preparation. Tonight you get a crash course on how to protect yourself, defensively and offensively.” He turned and walked to where tents were already being set up. “Come on, let’s eat before we get going.”
They started small, with Carlos creating the tiniest blue Thread Darwin had ever Seen.
“Protection or containment Threads are the easiest. If you can pick up these, then we can move forward. If you can’t, then we’ll have to figure out something else. This blue one is part of the testing we do to see if your skill set lies in this area. Some can’t do it, some can’t even See it, but it’s where we’ll start.”
“I can See it. I even created one once, though I don’t know how, and its color was different than this one. When you guys came to us at the border, I stopped Teresa from running out to see you. I was afraid it might be the Qabal.”
“Interesting. So we know you can do it. Differentiating the shades is important as well. It’s my job to show you how. It’s easier to think of it as a containment system, rather than protection. Protection implies an attack, and that can bring out involuntary reactions—like fear—that could hinder your ability and move the Thread color into the reds.”
“I’m confused. Bill said emotions were a pretty direct path to insanity, but the Dance Master said emotions were the key to using Threads, and Enton said to use intuition and emotions to train myself.”
“Enton said that? Not in my experience, or my teacher’s. Bill knew what he was talking about, he was one of our best.”
“But he was wrong about the images. He told me they were useless, but we know it’s needed for that communication stuff I did.”
Carlos sighed. “Maybe, but the only way I know how to teach you is the way I was taught, so we’ll have to go with that. Now, back to the Thread. Think of it as containment. If you want to stop leaves from blowing into your tent, the best thing would be a screen, so pull the Threads in and build a screen. The Threads will respond and start turning blue. If you want to stop a person, think of steel rods or prison bars. If you want to stop a fist, think of a shield or a wall. The shade of blue will be different for each one, and you need to know how a leaf would respond to hitting a net, or a fist a wall to get it right. Let’s start simple. This Thread,” he raised his hand, “wouldn’t stop anything. But if you believe it will, the Thread will still form. Think about stopping a grain of sand or a dandelion seed, deflect it off its course.”
It took Darwin over an hour to create his first blue Thread. It sat wavering in the palm of his hand, moving automatically to intercept the flakes of dirt and dead grass Carlos threw at it. It wasn’t quite the right shade, but it worked. At one point, Carlos had asked him if was sure he’d created a blue Thread once before. Apparently, it didn’t usually take as long to get to this point. The breakthrough came when Darwin let the images come. He was learning that he needed them.
From that point, the lessons continued at a blinding pace, and he kept up with Carlos easily. Two hours in, and he was stopping Carlos’s shoe thrown at full speed. He was getting the hang of it, but it still took him time. If something came too fast, he couldn’t build his Threads quickly enough.
Carlos repeated the process for the attack Threads. Even though Darwin picked them up quicker, he still had problems with how long it took him.
“I think we should take a small break,” Carlos said a few hours later.
“Not yet. I’m on a roll. I want to know more.”
“Well, I need a break. It took a while, but now you’re picking this stuff up like you already knew it. I’m exhausted, and it can’t be good for you to learn so fast.”
“Why not?”
“What? I don’t know. Are you getting any headaches yet?”
Darwin sat up straighter. He hadn’t been getting even the feeling of a headache coming on. In fact, he felt invigorated and alive, like he had when Bill had put him through his paces. “No, I’m fine. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”
Carlos sighed and stood, arching his back to stretch it out. “Okay. I’ll see if Mellisa can take over for a while. I need to be good for tomorrow. Wait here, I’ll go get her.” He wandered over to the fire still crackling by the tents.
Darwin held back a shiver and sat alone in the dark, though he knew it would never truly be dark for him again. Bill’s initial training, and the experience under the bridge, had woken him to the Threads like never before. Carlos’s training had only added to that, even in the few short hours they’d practiced together. The sun was down and the sky was black, but through it moved the Threads, each one showing him the world in a new way.
They showed Mellisa moving between the tents toward him. The Threads around her wove a pattern that spoke of strength and grace. With every step, they moved so her foot was placed perfectly on the uneven ground. Her balance remained as she stood briefly on an exposed root in the dark and continued toward where he sat. There was a beauty in it that Darwin hadn’t Seen with his eyes.
“It seems you’ve exhausted Carlos,” she said, her gravelly voice becoming part of the rhythm of the Threads.
“Yeah. It just . . . it just seems I can’t get enough. Is that bad?” he asked again.
“As long as you can handle it, no. It is tiring for your teachers, though. Come on, we’ll see how far we can get before I fall asleep in front of you. Now, enough chit chat and show me what you’ve learned.”
Mellisa looked impressed by what he showed her, blue Threads to protect himself, the same ones used to create the prisons he had been in. Unlike the one he’d thrown across the door at the rest stop, he knew how he’d created these. Red ones that reached for leaves and ripped holes in them or snapped twigs in half. One that created a hole in the ground over three inches deep.
“Nicely done, and the Threads were controlled. Now, I’m going to throw some Threads at you. They won’t do much, just feel like a sharp pinch or a hot spot. I want you to block them as they come.”
The night continued until Mellisa was exhausted as well. This time, Darwin was glad the session had come to an end. He’d fought off a headache during the last couple of tests, and his clothes stuck to his damp skin in the cold night air, chilling him to the core. After Mellisa had gone to Carlos’s tent, he stood by the fire with one of the sentries, letting the heat from the flames dry his clothes and bring some warmth back into his fingers.
Darwin woke to the sound of voices outside his tent. The sun had risen, burning away the frost from the morning, and warming the air in his tent. He rolled out of his sleeping bag and pulled on his clothes. They were cold, but dry. One thing he had learned when his family went camping was not to wear his clothes to sleep, unless he had to. By morning they would be damp with sweat and chill him right down to the bone.
He zipped open the door and joined the group around the fire pit. They poured him a hot cup of what everyone called coffee and continued talking. He listened with half an ear until the talk turned to the people they had come here to recruit.
Sometime this morning, someone from Nico’s group had walked into the camp, and they were now sitting with Carlos and Mellisa by the road, deep in conversation. Darwin was taking the last sip of his still hot coffee when they finished and Mellisa walked up.
“Okay, guys, let’s get the tents down and the site cleaned up. Time to move into town. Tonight we hole somewhere new and start over again.”
By the time he’d cleaned his mug, someone had already packed up his sleeping bag and taken down his tent. He helped put out the fire then moved with the group to the road, sucking in a deep breath to calm his jangling nerves, and followed them. It was time to face his demons, and he still wasn’t sure he could do it.
Carlos slowed down, dropping from the front of the group until he came beside Darwin. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“If it’s a problem, I can leave you here with someone. We’ll pick you back up before we hole to our new site.”
“I said it’s okay,” Darwin responded, immediately sorry for his tone. “I’m sorry. It isn’t going to be easy if we see Rob.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Rob doesn’t know I’m a Threader.” It was the first time he had consciously used the term to describe himself, and he felt pretentious. “I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t trust him and I don’t like him. I think the feeling is mutual. If he tries something, I want to have a bit of a card up my sleeve.”
“Okay, but if he’s part of the group joining us, he’ll see you training tonight.”
“I’ll deal with that if it happens.”
“If that’s the way you want it, I’ll tell the others.” Carlos picked up his pace again, stopping at every member of their group to say a few words, before rejoining Mellisa at the front.
Darwin felt the morning sun on his face as the group walked through Salem. In the time since they’d been here, the temperature had dropped, and the sun felt good. They had entered Salem from the south, though he had no idea how far from the river where he had been held prisoner. It didn’t really matter, but he searched for anything familiar anyway. As the houses crowded around them his skin started to crawl. He rubbed the scar on his wrist again, still feeling the wire cut in and nestle close to the bone.
They walked for another twenty minutes down a street named Lockhaven Drive, turning off at River Road until they came to the McNary Golf Club. A ramshackle gate had been placed across the entrance, and it opened as they got closer. It closed behind them with the clang of a prison cell and the tension in Darwin’s neck and shoulders doubled. He twitched at the sudden flashback to the Qabal headquarters, pushing the feeling aside before it could take over. He was heading back there, so he either had to get used to it, or get over it.
The parking lot had been turned into a ghetto. Shacks made from pieces of shattered drywall and scraps of wood or broken pieces of plastic scavenged from what was left of Salem vied for a spot on the rough asphalt. It looked like a recent rain had destroyed portions of the structures and tattered remains lay strewn near the curbs. The smell that rose around him was enough to make him gag. He fought the reflex and followed the group. As they walked down the street created by the encampment, people stopped talking and looked at their feet. The noises picked up again once they had passed. Somewhere behind them a child cried and was quickly shushed. It felt like they were walking in a bubble that kept the outside world at bay.
Darwin saw Mellisa stop and wait for him to catch up. The Threads circling her had lost some of their grace, creating a pocket of turmoil that followed her. They walked behind the group together, staring at the poverty around them.
“Is it always like this?” Darwin asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been inside the compound before. I’ve always dealt with the traders that came to SafeHaven. It was Carlos or Enton that came.” She paused. “I can see why.”
As they walked, Darwin’s opinion of both men dropped. There was no excuse for tolerating any of this.
They left the slum and were greeted by a small patch of lawn, still slightly green in the crisp winter air. A flagpole stood behind a low sign. Darwin didn’t recognize the flag, and it looked handstitched as it hung limply in the still air. Behind it lay the clubhouse, its windows intact and paint still vibrant. Combined with the lawn, it stood in harsh contrast to the parking lot and the people who struggled to live there.
A tall blond man strode out from the front doors and extended a hand to Carlos. Together they walked back inside. The rest of the group was led to the back of the building to wait on an outdoor patio. Beyond the small trimmed hedge around the patio he could see pieces of the golf course, the greens cut and flags still in the holes.
Carlos came back in half an hour with a smile on his face. “They’re willing to stick with the agreement they made with Enton. We won’t be getting as many Threaders as we wanted, but it’ll help. They can spare eleven, including two healers and a couple of good holers. It will be tougher for us to cover up our movements, but with some luck we’ll get one or two good at obscuring at our next stop. They said they’ll send provisions and people to help cart it all around as well.”
“Slaves?” Darwin blurted the word before he even realized. He took a quick look around, and thankfully they were alone, though he almost wished someone from Nico’s group had heard him. Carlos threw him a dirty look.
“They’ll be here right away, let’s get ready to hole.”
Carlos barely finished talking before a group walked around the corner. Darwin saw Dale first, and she gave him a quick second glance before Rob came into view.
Rob stopped in front of the group from SafeHaven, looking at each one in turn. He showed no sign of recognition when he looked at Darwin, skipping past him as quickly as he had the rest. Darwin began to wonder if he was forewarned, or if he really didn’t remember. Was what Rob did to him and Teresa so low on the scale that he simply didn’t care enough to recognize a face?
Dale obviously had, and she was ignoring him along with the rest of the SafeHaven team. Maybe she was just protecting herself. He couldn’t blame her.
Rob raised his voice. “All right, everyone. Pack up. We leave in one minute.” He turned his back on them and Carlos and strode back to his own crew. Darwin sidled up to Carlos.
“I don’t like that he has more people than we do.”
“I’ll take anyone we can get. They barely escaped Skends a while back. They want the Qabal gone as much as we do.”
“Yeah, so they can become the next Qabal.”
Carlos gave Darwin another dirty look and walked to where Rob stood. Darwin watched the men until two holes were made, and people started walking through.
Darwin exited the hole into an overgrown grass field and cleared the space for the next arrival. In the distance a rusted train stretched across the horizon. Between it and them sat a graveyard. The headstones were simple crosses—sticks tied together mostly, with a couple looking like they had been carved out of a bigger piece of wood. Darwin tore his gaze away from the rows of graves.
“Where are we now?” he asked.
Mellisa’s gravelly voice answered. “Marcyes Park, Forsyth, Montana. Does knowing make you feel better?”
He couldn’t pick up any spite in her voice, so he answered honestly. “A bit. It’s not really the specifics that matter, so much as the progress. We were in Oregon, now we’re in Montana. We’re closer to where we need to be.”
She gazed back into the holes as people came through, whispering almost too softly for him to hear. “I hope so.”
The rest of the crew came through and milled around the small park, trampling the grass flat. Darwin helped set up tents, keeping busy, but from the corner of his eye, he could see the Salem Threaders standing around while the people they brought along set up the tents. At one point, Rob wanted some food that wasn’t unpacked yet, and he lashed out, striking a young man to the ground. Rob took a quick look around to see if anyone was watching, and they locked stares for a brief moment. Darwin turned away before the anger rising in him boiled over and threatened the entire plan. He still needed them to help get Teresa. But that didn’t mean he would trust them.
Once the tents were set up, a woman approached from the town, winding a path through the graveyard and past the Salem Threaders directly to Carlos. They shook hands, and a smile broke the stern look on her face. They spoke for a few minutes before Rob barged in, and Darwin watched the mood change almost instantly.
“It looks like she knows Carlos and Rob.” Mellisa’s voice broke his concentration and he glanced at her.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
The woman walked a pace away and pointed at Rob. Carlos moved toward her.
“I’d love to be a fly on that wall,” said Darwin.
“You and me both.”
The woman stormed off and Carlos spun on Rob. They could hear Rob yelling, but couldn’t make out the words. Darwin saw Rob’s Threaders move toward the argument, and elbowed Mellisa. “This doesn’t look good.”
She turned without a word and gathered the SafeHaven group together. As one, they moved to back Carlos. Darwin held back. Any of the SafeHaven group were stronger than he was in battle, and if it all worked out, he still preferred Rob not knowing about him.
He jerked when a hand touched his shoulder, and spun around, ready to call on the Threads he’d only learned to use the previous night, before he recognized who it was. Dale stood beside one of the tents, carefully hidden from Rob’s line of sight. She glanced at the ongoing argument and beckoned Darwin toward her. He hesitated, remembering the incident in Salem. She’d given him and Teresa a chance then, and took another risk leaving behind the backpack. His mind made up, he followed her.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“You know I came from SafeHaven. Teresa and I managed to get back. We were only there one night before the Qabal took her.” Damn, he didn’t want to let that out. What was it about Dale that made him talk?
“They have the healer you were with? Why?” She paused for a moment, obviously changing her mind. “Never mind. You had to know if you came back to Salem you were taking a risk. Those damn Skends took three of us before we got away, and Rob blames you.”
“He didn’t even recognize me.”
“Not yet, but how long do you think it will take?”
“Who cares? We’re supposed to be united now, working as a team.”
“Rob cares, that’s who. He’s always been a mean son-of-a-bitch, and he’ll do anything to get revenge on somebody he thinks did him wrong.” Dale waved her hand to stop Darwin from interrupting. “Imagined or real, and those Skends were pretty damn real.”
“He wouldn’t dare do anything, not with so many people around.”
“You don’t know him. You won’t know anything is wrong until he has a knife to your throat.”
Darwin shrugged. “He won’t ever get that close.”
The arguing had stopped and Darwin stepped out from behind the tent. The Threaders had moved back to whatever they had been doing, and Rob stood where he had been. Carlos was following the stern lady’s path. Rob glanced at Darwin and he could see recognition flicker on Rob’s face. It was replaced with a look so evil that Darwin shivered. Rob pivoted and marched back to his group.
Darwin went back to helping set up camp before Mellisa interrupted him.
“Come on, time for class again.”
He followed her. “What was the argument about?”
“Sandra, the woman from the city, recognized Rob. Apparently she’s taken in a lot of travelers. Some of them made it out of Salem with stories. Some of them are buried here. It’s going to take a lot of work for Carlos to convince her to join if Rob and his crew are with us.”
They left the hastily set up camp and walked through the graveyard up to the rusted train. There must have been over a thousand gravesites. They climbed over the coupler where the cars met. Once on the other side, Darwin looked back. They were safely hidden from view.
“That’s a lot of dead people,” he said.
Mellisa looked at him with a serious expression on her face. “I’m surprised you haven’t seen more of them. This is a small one. War kills a lot of people, Darwin, and it’s never pretty.”
He changed the topic. “Do you think Carlos can do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get Sandra to help?”
“I don’t know.” They crossed a street in silence and stopped behind the first house they found. The temperature had continued to drop, but Mellisa didn’t seem to notice. It was her turn to change the subject. “Who were you talking to?”
It took him a minute to realize what she was referring to. “Oh. Dale. One of Rob’s people, in theory anyway. She healed Teresa and me after we’d been captured and helped us get away.”
“Do you trust her?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, surprised at his own words. “She told me Rob would kill me if he recognized who I was, and I think he just did. They were attacked by Skends, and he blames me.” He didn’t say he agreed.
“I wouldn’t trust any of them. We’ll have someone keep a lookout for you at all times. If he tries anything, if any of them try anything, we’ll know about it.”
“Thanks. I kind of want him to try, you know? I want him to feel how he made me and Teresa feel. I want him to know what it’s like to be helpless and scared and—” He stopped, shocked at the rush of heat that infused his body. And at the hatred that suddenly consumed him.
“I think he already does. It’s why he became what he is.”
He thought about it for a while, giving himself time to relax. “That’s not an excuse.”
“No, it never is. But if we remember, it stops us from becoming that.”
He looked back the way they had come, lost in thought. Was that what he was becoming? A vindictive person out for revenge? Someone who enjoyed taking advantage of people who couldn’t protect themselves? He shook his head. He would never become like Rob. He wouldn’t allow it. He turned back to Mellisa, suddenly glad for her words and her friendship. “Thank you.”
They entered a small house, the roof sagging and the walls cracked. She sat down cross-legged on the dusty linoleum of the kitchen, motioning for him to join her. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s start.”
The lesson went longer than Carlos’s had, and she monitored him at every step, correcting him when he made a mistake. After five hours she had him stop, tired and sweating in the cool afternoon. His speed had increased to the point where the Threads responded almost instantly.
“That’s good for now. If you can keep your head under pressure, I think you would be able to keep up with most of the crew we brought with us.” She stretched her legs out. “I don’t know how you learn so fast. I never could. It would take me weeks just to pick up a nuance you See without even trying, and all of my students were the same.”
Darwin shrugged. “I don’t know either. I usually let the images come, and it just all makes a kind of sense. It feels right when I do it right, and wrong when I don’t.”
“You are a freak of nature, my friend. And I mean that in a good way.”
He smiled, his face flushing red. “Thanks, I guess. And thanks for all of this.” He waved his hand back toward the park. “I don’t know what I would do without you and Carlos. It’s . . . it’s not usually how I work, you know? I don’t like being around people. They make me uncomfortable. Nervous. I’ve been alone a long time, except for my dad. This is all . . .” His voice trailed off.
Mellisa gave him a quick hug. “I don’t know if I’d be able to cope with what you’ve been through. Anything we can do to help, you know we will.”
“Yeah, I know.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew they were true. Despite his moods and the trouble he had brought to SafeHaven, he truly believed her. “Come on, I think I smell food cooking. Let’s head back, I’m starving.”
The scene at the camp was . . . interesting. Carlos had somehow managed to bring back the stern-looking woman, Sandra. He sat in a group of five, with Rob and Dale, Sandra and a short man. As soon as Carlos saw Mellisa, he beckoned her over.
She sighed. “No rest for the weary.”
“Or the wicked.” Darwin watched her walk over, feeling Rob’s stare bore into him. At some point things were going to come to a head. He found himself no longer looking forward to it.
The talk around the camp felt relaxed, and some of the Salem crew were actually mingling with the SafeHaven group. He hadn’t expected that. The Threaders were, for the most part, welcoming if a bit guarded. The Salem slaves—the thought made his stomach turn—kept mostly to themselves. The faint smell of brewing coffee hit him full force. He could tell this was real coffee, and he went to hunt it down.
If the people from Forsyth could supply ten or fifteen people, that would bring them up to around forty. That wasn’t even close to enough. Bill had told him there were hundreds of Qabal. How many of those were Threaders? Just the ones he saw during Rebecca’s ceremonies, or were there more? If they couldn’t add to their numbers in a big way, they would be heading into a war they wouldn’t be able to win. Even if the Qabal did have only the twenty or thirty he saw in the lab, it was the Skends that worried him. How many of those abominations had they made?
After seeing them in action, he was afraid to face even one. What if they had twenty, or thirty? Or more? Hundreds? Would he be able to stand up to them? Would any of them? Certainly not for long.
He tried to shake away the feeling of dread that had seeped into his bones and continued to follow the smell. If things went the way he was planning, he wouldn’t have to fight much. A small group should be able to sneak in and get out without being seen, if they were lucky. Especially if they did it while everyone was occupied on the front lines.
It all sounded so easy. Too easy.
He found the coffee steaming at the edge of a small fire near the Salem tents. There were other SafeHaven people there, no one he knew, but the smell drew him in anyway. He stepped past a couple. “Excuse me, could I get a coffee?”
A mug was pressed into his hands almost before the words were out of his mouth. He looked down at the woman who served him. She was old and weather-beaten. Deep lines creased her dark tanned face and her back hunched in a perpetual stoop.
“Thank you.”
She bobbed her head, never looking directly at his face. She held a bowl of sugar up to him. He hadn’t seen sugar since he’d been here.
“No, thanks. I take it black.” He paused. “What’s your name?”
The old lady just bobbed her head again. A younger man stepped up beside her. He, too, never raised his face to look at Darwin.
“Sorry, sir. Her name’s Missy, sir. She can’t talk, sir.”
Without thinking, Darwin asked why.
“She’s got no tongue, sir. They said she gossiped about the higher-ups when she was young, sir, so they cut out her tongue.” He said it with no emotion in his voice, as though afraid to express it. Or worse, as if it was just the way the world was, and there wasn’t any point in being upset.
“They what?” Darwin’s voice was the opposite. His body trembled, and he couldn’t hide the fury that burned through him. “They did what?”
“Sorry, sir,” the young man said, speaking louder. “They cut out her tongue for gossiping, sir. There was no harm done, she was treated, sir.”
Darwin felt a tug on his sleeve. One of the SafeHaven people tugged again. “Come on, we should go.”
Darwin spun around, noticing everyone else from SafeHaven had already left.
“Come on. Now is not the time. We need them.”
Darwin looked into the earnest face in front of him. Behind her eyes, he thought he could see the same anger he felt. But there was something else there as well. Sadness mixed with a fear that reached down into her soul. He handed his coffee back to the old woman.
“I’m sorry for what they did to you.”
As she turned back to the fire, the expression on her face was one of sadness. He walked away more upset than angry, passing the group of six at the central fire. He locked stares with Rob again, this time returning the malice.
Dark clouds moved in from the north, bringing with them an early night. Thunder rolled across the sky, long slow rumbles that seemed like they would never end. A cold dinner was quickly thrown together and eaten before the rain mixed with snow came. He hoped the storm would pass them by quickly and went into his tent.
Even though he watched the Threads around his tent, the same way he had when they were traveling back to San Diego, he barely got any sleep. Dreams of Rob plagued him in the scant few minutes he did get, waking him almost immediately. In one, Rob heated a knife over a small candle before roughly grabbing Darwin’s tongue, reaching back, and slicing it off in one savage stroke while Teresa laughed silently behind him.
He finally gave up on getting any more sleep and crawled out of his tent into the cold pre-dawn light, shivering in his clothes, and wandered over to the central fire where Carlos sat alone.
“You’re up early,” Carlos said.
“So are you.” He paused. “I couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams.”
“We’ll do everything we can to get her out. You know that.”
“Do I? You said yourself it wasn’t your primary goal.”
“Yeah . . . I’ve been thinking about that. I’m sorry. I let my anger, my hatred, toward the Qabal—what they did to Enton and SafeHaven—take over.” He pointed his chin at the Salem side of the camp. “Trading with Salem, keeping everything at arm’s length, made it easier to ignore what they were doing. All Enton and I wanted to do was feed our people, and we made choices I’m not proud of.
“Enton always said SafeHaven was about the people, the individuals that made the society. That’s what mattered. He was right. I wish we didn’t have Rob with us at all, I wish we could do this without him, but we just don’t have the time.” Carlos paused. “We have two days to get to the Qabal ahead of Wally. We’ll do whatever we can to get Teresa out. You have my word.”
Darwin sat silently staring into the flickering flames of the fire. He pulled himself upright, deciding to tell Carlos of his plans, to sneak in while the main battle was going on.
“I think a small group sneaking in while everyone else is fighting out front works.”
“That’s what I would have done,” Carlos said. “And I think it still works. A small crew can get in and get out quick. You’ve been inside that place. You have an idea where they may be holding her. With some luck, once we are inside their perimeter, maybe we can hole straight in.”
“I don’t know how to hole.”
“Well, that’s on your list for today. If you pick it up as quickly as you did defense and offense, you’ll be able to master it before dinner. You’ve covered in two days what we usually take half a year to teach. If we had the time, your control would be phenomenal.” Carlos stood and stretched. “Come on, let’s get the other fires started and wake everyone. We’ve got enough people we can hole twice this morning. I want to be in Erie, Pennsylvania today and New Jersey tomorrow.”
They both grabbed sticks from the central fire and began to light the smaller ones outside the tents, waking people as they went. Darwin did the SafeHaven ones and Carlos did Salem’s. It was better that way.
After breakfast with the new Forsyth recruits, extra holers went through first, creating the next link. Darwin stepped through into the Wisconsin Dells, took two more steps to the next hole, and came out onto the cold concrete path of Liberty Park. A frigid wind blew over Lake Erie, chilling any heat put out by the sun. He pulled his parka tighter around him and moved out of the way.
When everyone was through and the hole collapsed, the Skends attacked.