Covenant

by James Maxey

  Clint followed her, his mind in turmoil, though he kept his face blank and said nothing. Why hadn’t she told him about her plan to move the temple before now? And, more troubling… how did she know the rest of the team was on Mars?

  After Sarah reached the mainland, she flew low to avoid triggering defense radars that might have targeted her as a threat. She dropped her speed to around four hundred miles per hour, still a dangerous velocity when she was barely two hundred feet above the ground. Her path was mostly over rural areas, so she didn’t have to worry about avoiding tall buildings, and she was safely above the tree line. Her biggest worry at this height was colliding with birds and bugs. Her helmet had built in radar that scanned her flight path out several miles and highlighted any flying creatures bigger than a mosquito. Even with her flight suit, running into a bird at four hundred miles an hour carried a lot more of a punch than a dervish’s sword.

  Often when she flew, she reached a state of peace, her mind literally lost in the clouds. As night fell, she couldn’t stop thinking about all the things she should have said and done. She had no regrets about quitting, other than the constant regret that she’d ever joined the Covenant in the first place. Of course, this regret was founded in a deeper, darker, more long-lasting regret, that she’d ever been so foolish as to believe she could live a normal life. Was her mother right? Was her life with Carson based on a lie she was telling him, not to mention herself?

  As the waves of second guesses and might-have-beens became a cacophony inside her skull, she filled her lungs to capacity and screamed, then filled her lungs and screamed again, rage, frustration and pain tearing from her throat and torn away by the wind, the wordless, haunting cry of a wild and wounded animal.

  With her primal emotions released, her words returned and she shouted, “I didn’t want this!”

  She clenched her jaw tightly. Her throat burned, feeling raw. She’d covered two thousand miles since leaving. The sun was well below the horizon when the smattering of lights of her town came into view. In her dark uniform she was effectively invisible in the night sky, silent as a gliding owl. She slowed her speed to match the flow of cars along the interstate before veering off over the woods. Side streets passed beneath her until she reached a neighborhood of older ranch style homes surrounded by trees. Despite her stealth, dogs howled as she flew behind a row of houses, gliding over backyards in the darkness.

  Sarah spread her arms and lowered her legs to land in her own backyard.

  The lights were on in the living room and kitchen. Carson’s truck was in the driveway. She frowned. She hadn’t expected him to be home from work yet. She’d flown off without any of her civilian clothes. She’d planned to slip in through the back door unseen by neighbors. Worse, her car was in the driveway. She hadn’t moved it because she’d been certain she’d be back much earlier and would have been if her mother had let her use the space machine. If Carson had been home long, he had to be wondering where she was.

  She had no money on her, nor any credit cards. It wasn’t like she could go into a store in her hometown dressed as Skyrider to buy new clothes anyway.

  She took a deep breath. She could figure this out. Sneaking into the house while he was home was too risky. The house she’d shared with Carson could have fit comfortably into the ballroom of her childhood home. It was a three bedroom, two bathroom ranch built in the 70s, 1500 square feet, almost too much room for a childless couple. Not that they’d planned to be childless. Carson had wanted to have children, she’d wanted to have children, and then… and then she’d gotten cold feet. What if her children inherited superpowers?

  Carson didn’t know about her powers. He had no clue she’d once been world famous as the Thrill, and, at the time they met, she didn’t even feel like she was keeping a secret from him. Sarah Knowbokov was dead. She was Sarah Buchanan, and some days felt like she’d been Sarah Buchanan all her life. (The fact that her old name was Sarah and her new name was Sarah had made the transitions between lives a bit easier, in retrospect. She’d purchased her new identity when she’s still had her old powers, using them to manipulate a hacker who made a good living from identity theft to get her new papers. When he’d given her papers saying her new name was Sarah Buchanan, she’d been angry that he’d wasted her time. But as she looked over the papers, she saw that the real Sarah Buchanan was a decent match for her age and height. The real Sarah Buchanan had been a homeless teenager who’d gotten involved with an underworld boyfriend and learned a little too much for her safety. Homeless Sarah had no close relatives, just a couple of cousins living in California. She’d been legally missing for six years when Sarah stepped into her life.)

  Sarah hid behind a large tree at the edge of her yard and took off her helmet. She took her personal cell phone from the pouch on her belt. Carson had called her and texted her. She hadn’t heard it or felt it while she was plowing through the air. She’d been in such a hurry to get away from her mother she’d forgotten to patch the phone into her helmet display.

  She dialed him back.

  “Sarah?” he answered. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Getting groceries,” she said. “I thought I’d stop in and pick up a few things.”

  “Who drove you? Your car’s still in the driveway.”

  “No one drove me. I walked.”

  “It’s 20 degrees outside!”

  “They have these new things called coats,” said Sarah, trying to sound playful. “They also have these things called credit cards, and, stupid me, I forgot my purse. Since I see from your text that you’re home, could you pop down to the store and get me?”

  “Why didn’t you answer my calls? Why didn’t you reply to my texts?”

  “My phone was on silent and I didn’t feel it vibrating in my coat pocket. I wasn’t expecting you to be home already, so I didn’t look at my messages until I was at the store.”

  He didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds. Then, “Okay. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  She put her helmet back on because, he was right, it was freaking cold. From the yard, she listened as he left the house. The second she heard his motor start, her feet were off the ground and she zipped to the backdoor, her key already in hand. She undressed in midair as she flew into the bedroom. She tossed her helmet onto the top shelf in the closet and jammed it behind some boxes, then finished peeling off her flight suit, cursing at how many buckles the damn thing had. She jammed everything into the bottom of the laundry hamper. Carson did laundry, like, three times a year, max.

  She grabbed jeans and a sweater, and took a pair of boots and held them in her teeth as she flew down the hall pulling on her pants. She spit out the boots at the front closet and pulled on her sweater, then jammed her feet into the boots. She flung open the closet door and grabbed coat, gloves, and a scarf. She was out the back door maybe sixty seconds after she’d first entered the house, then, WHOOSH, up she shot into the sky. She couldn’t fly at top speed since her civilian clothes couldn’t take the stress, but she did have the advantage of being able to fly in a straight line to the store while Carson had to make a couple of left turns at stop signs. She arrived at the store in two minutes, frowning at how brightly lit the entire parking lot was. She prayed that no one was looking up, since her scarf was bright white. She landed behind the store near the dumpster then walked quickly around to the front. Her short flight had one nice side effect: She was legitimately freezing. Her cheeks felt red and stiff. She certainly looked as if she’d walked two miles to the store on a winter evening.

  She waited next to row of Christmas trees for sale and watched for Carson. The second he pulled into the parking lot, she jogged toward his truck, and pulled open the passenger door before he even had the vehicle in park.

  “Let’s get home!” she said.

  “I thought you needed something from the store!”

  “It’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow,” she said. “I’m freezing. Let’s just get back to th
e house so I can get some hot chocolate inside me, stat.”

  He looked at her, at first studying her face as if he was trying to figure out if she was joking. Then his brow narrowed and she realized he was looking at her coat.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I… I thought I saw that coat in the closet when I grabbed my coat.”

  “Well, obviously you didn’t,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “I guess I didn’t,” he said.

  “What are you doing home so early?” she said.

  “Jimbo was off last Friday, so he volunteered to stay late to make up his hours.”

  “I wish you’d called me,” she said.

  “I did call you!”

  “Right,” she said. “Wish I hadn’t left my phone on silent, then.”

  “What the hell possessed you to do this?” he asked.

  “Come to the store?” she asked.

  “In the dark, in the cold.”

  She shrugged. “I needed some fresh air.”

  “Just needed to get out of the house, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  “You spend a lot of time out of the house,” he said, sullenly.

  She frowned. “So?”

  “Nothing,” he said, and put the truck into gear. They didn’t say another word to each other on the drive home. She resented his silence, but not as much as she resented her own. What could she say to him? Tell him more lies? Tell him the truth? Carson wasn’t an idiot. He had to have noticed just how much time she was away since joining the Covenant. She wanted to tell him that it was over. That she would no longer vanish on short notice for hours or even days at a time with little more than a quick voice mail and thin excuses. Being Sarah Buchanan Lee was going to be her full time occupation from now on.

  They pulled into the driveway. Carson didn’t open his car door. He stared straight ahead at the house. She waited for him to make the first move. He didn’t.

  “We just going to sit here?” she finally asked.

  “No,” he said. He swallowed hard. “I’m not coming inside.”

  “What? Why?”

  He didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead at the house. Finally, he whispered, “Because I know what’s going on.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Truth

  Sarah’s heart raced. What did he know? Did he know everything? If he knew… would that be wonderful, or terrible?

  The silence between them extended a long time. She opened her mouth to speak.

  He cut her off. “There’s really nothing you need to say.” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded weary. “I… look. I know I…” He closed his mouth and took a deep breath through his nose. Softly, he said, “I could have done things differently. This isn’t… this isn’t all your fault.”

  “What… is it you think is your fault?” she asked.

  Now his jaw clenched. “But it’s not my fucking fault,” he growled. “I mean, what? Just because we can’t have kids, it’s over? You’re seeing another man?”

  “What?” she was both relieved and mortified, and the word came out half as a laugh. “Another man? What are you—”

  “Please don’t,” he said. “I can barely, just barely, take being cheated on. But I can’t take being treated like an idiot. Christ, Sarah… sometimes… the excuses you make… it’s like you think I’ll believe anything you say.”

  “You… you shouldn’t,” she said. She leaned her head against the door window. It was cold as ice. “I… I’m not always honest with you.”

  “So who is it?” he said.

  “It’s nobody,” she said. “There is no other man.”

  “Of course you say this immediately after telling me you’re not always honest with me.”

  “I’m honest about everything that matters,” she said. “I swear to you, I’ve never been unfaithful.”

  “Then what could you possibly be hiding from me?” he said. “I mean… those bruises you sometimes get. You said you were taking a judo class. You’re not in any of the classes here.”

  “You’re checking up on me?”

  “Sarah, Bob Mills is the only guy in town who teaches judo. I ran into him and asked how you were doing. But it turns out he’d never had you in a class.”

  “Ah,” she said. Which, in retrospect, was something she should have checked up on before using that particular lie. “Yeah. I wasn’t really taking a class.”

  “Then why the bruises? Why the lies about where you are?”

  “I don’t know which bothers me more,” she said. “That you think I’m having an affair, or that you think I’m having an affair with someone who beats me.”

  “Don’t turn this around on me,” he said. “I’m not the one who’s lying about how he spends half his life.”

  “It’s nowhere near half,” she said.

  “Fine. 40 percent. Ten! What does the number matter? You’re doing something behind my back, something you’d rather lie about than be straight about. What could possibly… is it drugs?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Look, if it is drugs, there are programs—”

  “How the hell could it be drugs?” she asked. “I mean, you’re a deputy. You probably know every drug dealer in the county. You don’t think it would get back to you if I were buying drugs?”

  “Drugs weren’t my first instinct,” he said, sounding defensive.

  “No, your first instinct was that I was a slut,” she grumbled.

  “What the fuck is your damage?” he exploded, banging his fist on the dashboard. “How the hell can you be angry at me?”

  “Please don’t shout at me,” she said.

  “Please tell me the goddamned truth,” he screamed.

  She swallowed hard, a lump in her throat. She was on the verge of tears.

  “God damn,” he sighed. “This is how this ends? You crying, me driving away angry, never knowing what secret you had that was so goddamned terrible you couldn’t talk about it with me?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I don’t want you to drive away. I… I want to tell you. I’ve wanted to tell you a long time. Since I met you. I… I came close, right before we were married. But… Carson, I love you. I love you more than anything else in the world. I can’t lose you. I can’t.”

  “You won’t,” he said. “You won’t, if you just tell me the truth. I can handle anything. I swear… an affair, drugs… if you… if you’ve murdered someone.”

  She burst out in sobbing laughter. “Great. So now it’s murder.”

  “Is it… is it murder?”

  “Not too many,” she said.

  He looked pale.

  “That was a joke,” she said. “You used to get my jokes.”

  “I used to get a lot of things about you,” he said. “Thought I did, at least.” He squeezed the steering wheel again. “It’s got to be something pretty terrible. I mean… what wouldn’t you tell me? You tell me… tell me everything.”

  “Oh, Carson,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. “I… I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “I… I have to show you,” she whispered.

  “Show me what?”

  “My… my secret,” she said. “If I don’t show it… you’ll never believe me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Show me.”

  “Follow me,” she said, opening the door.

  “Where are we going?” he asked when she didn’t head straight for the front door.

  “The backyard,” she said. “It’s dark there.”

  “Great,” he sighed, closing the truck door. “You’re a vampire.”

  Hmm. Maybe she could convince him of... She shook her head. No. No more lies. Time for truth. She said, “Come on,” and headed for the darkest corner of the yard, in the shadow of the trees.

  “This where you’ve got the bodies buried?” he asked, following her. She could tell he was trying to make a joke. Tell also, a little bit, that he wasn’t.

/>   “I haven’t killed—” she stopped. “I started to say I haven’t killed anyone. But, honestly, I have.”

  “Oh my god,” he said, stopping a few feet away from her. Then he grinned. “Okay, sorry. I know you’re not some kind of crazy serial killer, so please stop joking.”

  “I’m not joking,” she said. “And I’m not crazy, and I’m not really a murderer. I’ve only ever killed to defend myself or others. A dozen people, maybe. Two dozen, tops.”

  His grin slowly faded. “You… you’re serious.”

  She crossed her arms. “I… I used to have a job. Like yours. Protecting people. Sometimes, things turned violent. We fought a lot of people who thought nothing at all about killing other people. We had to meet force with force, to protect the innocent.”

  “So, wait a minute,” he said. “Are you… were you, like, in the military? Some sort of secret forces? Is that what you couldn’t tell me?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean… not the military. The team I was part of… we didn’t really have a name. And we weren’t working for any government. But recently, the, uh, the team, a team, got back together. Now we do work with the government. We’re called, um, the Covenant.”

  “The Covenant.”

  “I, look, I didn’t like the name. Servant suggested it and my mother liked it and I didn’t care enough to fight it because I thought I was going to quit in less than a week.”

  “Servant,” said Carson, in a flat voice. “The super guy. With the white suit. That Servant.”

  “That’s the guy.”

  “And… you work with him?”

  “Carson,” she said. “Look at my feet.”

  He looked down. He stared for nearly a minute. His eyes slowly rose the length of her body, stopping for several seconds just below her face. Finally, he summoned the courage to look her in the eyes. “You… you’re feet… aren’t touching the ground.”

  She nodded.

  “You… you can… you can fly.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you…”

  “Been able to fly?”

  “Yes.”