Hive

by Rachel Starr Thomson

“What do you think he needs most?”

  “I guess he was right,” Shelley answered, wiping her nose on her sleeve and sniffling. “He needs more security, a routine . . . a normal family life.”

  “Who was right?” April interrupted. “The man who was just here?”

  “Yes,” Shelley answered, sniffling again. “He’s some kinda child shrink. He wants to take Nick to a children’s home in Lincoln.”

  “You don’t want to send him,” April said. Flat statement. No question.

  Shelley looked up, surprised. “It’s best for him . . . I want to do what’s best for N—”

  “But you’re his mother, and that man scares you.”

  Shelley was silent. This time, her eyes met April’s. The expression there shook April more than she had expected it to.

  She wondered if her own mother had ever looked like that, and April had been too hurt-blind to see it. The look was love. Harried, exhausted, resourceless love. But real all the same.

  “Yeah,” Shelley said. “Yeah, he does.”

  April formed her words slowly. “I can’t tell you why, but you’re right to be scared. That man . . . going with him wouldn’t be better for Nick.”

  Shelley burst into tears. “But he was right! This place isn’t good for Nick. We ain’t good for Nick. His dad is always drinking and slapping him around. He said—that man—he said they were going to come and arrest us and take Nick away if we wouldn’t do the right thing. He said—”

  “I’ll take him,” April said.

  Somewhere in the last moment she had moved across the room, and now her arms were around Shelley. The woman’s tears turned into sobs, and she shook in April’s hold. “It’s bad for him,” she kept saying. “We’re bad for him. But I don’t wanna send him away.”

  April just held her for a long time and let her cry. The tears were good. Finally she said, “He can come with me. I’ll take him.”

  This time Shelley really seemed to hear her. She pulled back and wiped away her tears. April kept going. “I don’t live far away. We’re in a good home . . . there are a few of us. You can meet us all. We’ll take care of him. We’ll keep him safe. I promise.”

  Shelley’s face was red and ragged from crying, but she nodded.

  “And we’ll keep that man away from him,” April finished. “Promise. No one is going to come after you.”

  Shelley stood, pushing April away a little, and disappeared into the kitchen. She reappeared a few minutes later slightly less bedraggled, and offered April a glass of water.

  “No, thank you,” April said.

  “You ain’t like other people,” Shelley said flatly. “Neither was he—that man. But you’re different again.”

  April nodded. “It’s true. Do I scare you?”

  “No.” Shelley eyed her up and down, as though trying to figure out exactly what she was. “You’re from God.”

  April smiled, a small smile. “It’s true. We are. I am.”

  Shelley nodded. This time the gesture was final. “Then Nick will be fine with you. He likes you, anyway . . . I know you pick him up sometimes when he runs off and take him for lunch. I should say thanks for that.”

  “It’s my privilege,” April said.

  “You know about Nick, don’t you? The kind of kid he is and the kind of life he’s had?”

  “Yes,” April told her. “I was that kind of kid. I had this kind of life.” She hesitated. “He’s not the only one who can get out, you know. You too—we can help you.”

  Shelley waved her hand and smiled warily. “You’re helping just by getting that kid out of our hair.”

  The words sounded a little uncaring. But April knew what she meant.

  * * *

  When April arrived home, Nick was sitting at the dining room table ploughing his way through a mountain of golden fish and chips. With a sea of tartar sauce on the side, and a Coke. In a frosted glass.

  Mary shot April a look as she came in the door, and April just laughed.

  “See?” she asked, nudging Nick in the shoulder. “I told you she would feed you.”

  Nick looked up at her and raised his Coke like a beer stein. “Thanks,” he said.

  “So when does this get explained?” Mary asked, clearly wanting the eleven-year-old in on the discussion. Best if they were all on the same page from the start.

  “Well,” April said, “he needed lunch. And it turns out, he could use a quiet place to live. I talked to his mum just now. She said he can stay with us.”

  The look on Mary’s face clearly said, There is more to this story, and I want to hear it. But out loud she just responded, “Ah. Well, there’s plenty of room. He can have his pick upstairs.”

  “There’s a room that looks out over the slope,” April told him. “You can see all the way down to the harbour.”

  “Is that how you always knew when I was biking or running down there?” Nick asked.

  “Very clever. No. I sit on the roof. But that room is how I get out.”

  “Gracious, don’t give him ideas!” Mary burst out. “It’s bad enough trying to make sure you don’t fall and break your neck.”

  “That has never even almost ever happened,” April rejoined.

  Nick was eyeing them both suspiciously, as though he wasn’t sure what to make of the happy back-and-forth between them. The Coke, however, held him off from becoming too suspicious. April stuck her head in the fridge and reached for one for herself.

  Mary cut her off by edging her small frame into the door and relocating the Coke seconds before April could reach it. She glared. “No.”

  “But I’m recovering . . .” April managed weakly.

  “Emphasis on the ‘ing.’ You can drink that poison again when you’re able to handle it.”

  April pointed at Nick. “How come he gets poison?”

  Mary smiled, and the love in her eyes made them crinkle deeply. She wasn’t an old woman by any means—just into her early fifties, and fit and young for her age—but in love she was old, and in grief, and in other things that deepened a life and made it more than its years. “Because he’s charming,” she said.

  Nick didn’t laugh. He was still looking at April and Mary like they had grown a third head between them. But there was something in his eyes, somewhere between fear and discovery, that April knew would grow into a laugh given time.

  She intended to give it lots of time.

  “Enjoy your poison,” she told Nick, passing out of the kitchen. “I’ll be back to tell you what your mom said.”

  On her way up the stairs, April felt a wave of exhaustion blast into her, and she faltered. Mary was right, of course—she wasn’t well yet. It took some time to recover from being dehydrated and starved and hit over the head and nearly killed.

  She turned left at the top of the stairs and eased into her room, dropping onto her bed with a heavy sigh. A sketchbook sat on the bedside table. She gave herself a minute to pull up some energy and then reached for the book and flipped it open.

  The sketchbook opened automatically to the page she wanted, and Nick’s face looked up at her, sketched in charcoal with so much detail that April had sometimes been tempted to talk to it in an attempt to change the sad, resentful expression in its lines.

  The sketch wasn’t original. She had drawn the first one on the wall of the cave where she was starving to death, accompanied by a woman who had died several hundred years before and who had confirmed April’s belief that Nick was something special, something to be rescued, and something particularly connected to her. His face was just one of many sketches that had come to her there, some known to her and some not, telling stories and forthtelling prophecy all over the walls of the cave. She had done the work in mud, clay, and rock. She had known herself to be not the original artist: like stone or a paintbrush in her own hand, she was an instrument in the hand of the Spirit, and it was the Spirit who imaged through her.

  It was not common that the Spirit would work so clearly, so pointedly. So N
ick’s prominence in the cave art gave her to know that he was important. His too-serious eyes had looked down on her all while she lay dying, and now those same eyes were sitting at the dining room table, peering through a frosted glass at a tall Coke and watching Mary warily, with fear and with hope. And April did not feel ready, or equipped, or like she knew at all what she was doing. She had faced off with another power at the house: she had challenged the demons that were coming for Nick. She had exposed herself and revealed her care for the boy. She knew that would lead to something, too—that it was enormously unlikely the dark powers would just back off.

  So now she was at war, and she didn’t know what to do next.

  That was why she had come upstairs. She needed a moment to collect her thoughts and tap into the power that was still painting, still storytelling, all through her life and the lives of the Oneness.

  With the sketches still open in her lap, she closed her eyes and breathed, “Come and help me.”

  And she knew she was heard.

  Chapter 3

  That evening Tyler went to the cell house. No one called or put out a flare, but he knew he was wanted. They all did. When he arrived, even Diane was there—excusing her presence by saying she’d come to check on April, but there for the same reason they all were: to meet Nick and to strengthen each other. Richard came home from work and led them all in prayer, which was a kind of cracking the heavens Tyler could never have prepared himself for, and absolutely nothing like the “Now I lay me down to sleep” sort of recitation most people thought of when they heard the word. When the Oneness prayed, they pulled back curtains and charged into the reality that was Spirit. After the fact, Tyler had no idea what they had prayed “about.” That wasn’t really how prayer worked. It was a ride, not a meeting.

  He got back to the cottage around nine. Chris met him at the door.

  “I’m going to Lincoln tomorrow,” Chris announced. “You want to come?”

  Tyler eyed his friend suspiciously. His whole body was still tingling with the rush of prayer, and everything in him felt like it was standing at attention. Chris’s words, in contrast to how innocuous they sounded, were portentous.

  “Why?” Tyler asked.

  Chris shrugged. “I want to get a few things for the boats.”

  “And?”

  Chris’s brown eyes sparkled. “You may have to wait until Richard says go. I don’t.”

  Tyler shook his head. “You can’t just wade into a fight with demons, Chris. You know that. You can’t even fight them.”

  “I don’t intend to fight. Just to learn.”

  Tyler pushed past his friend and threw his coat on the kitchen table. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish.”

  “I have no plans,” Chris said. “I just want to show up and see what the universe does.”

  “The universe?”

  “It’s a big place, they tell me. Unpredictable. Full of angels and demons and people like you.”

  Tyler sat down and leaned his head in his hands, scrubbing his face. “This is a bad idea, Chris.”

  Chris sat down across the table and stared until Tyler was forced to look up and meet his gaze.

  “Why did you join the Oneness?” he asked.

  The question caught Tyler off guard. “It . . . I just had to. It was meant to be.”

  “And I have to go into Lincoln tomorrow. You’re not the only one fate has in its grip.”

  “It’s not exactly fate.”

  “I’m not exactly into philosophy. Tyler, something in that city has attacked and hurt people I love. That something is still out there, still growing, and still plotting. I can’t just sit here and let things be. If nothing else, I need to know more about what’s going on.”

  Tyler thought it over. “Fine.”

  “So are you coming?”

  He hesitated another second or two. “Yes.”

  Chris smiled grimly. “Good.”

  “That kid is at the cell house,” Tyler said. In the confrontation with Chris’s plans, he had almost forgotten.

  His friend looked surprised. “What?”

  “April went and got him,” Tyler said.

  “What, like kidnapped him? You can’t just . . .”

  “She talked to his mother. It looks like he’s going to be living at the cell house for a while.”

  Chris stood. “Interesting. I’m glad.”

  “Me too. Chris . . .” Tyler hesitated, but decided to charge on. It wasn’t like Chris wasn’t already deeper into the Oneness’s business than most people would ever get. “She said she encountered a demon at Nick’s house. Some man who was there trying to convince his mother to send Nick away with him. To a children’s home in Lincoln.”

  Something flared in Chris’s eyes. “Oh yeah? Does she know the name of the place?”

  Tyler shook his head. “She stood off the demon and then talked the mother into sending Nick to the cell house instead. Said it wasn’t too hard—the woman was scared, even though she didn’t know why.”

  Chris punched his palm. “Plan to be out most of the day tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve just added a few more places to our list to visit.”

  He didn’t have to say. They’d be looking up children’s homes. It wasn’t much to go on, but Chris was so punchy, he’d track any sign of demons into their own dens. Tyler hadn’t been long around the Oneness and their multidimensional kind of life, but even he knew Chris’s determination to get involved, to find the hive and force some kind of confrontation, was lunacy.

  But it wasn’t lunacy he could oppose. He knew why Chris did it. Chris lived, breathed, moved to protect and care for those he loved. Chief among those were his mother, Tyler, and Reese. Their involvement with the Oneness put them all at risk, all the time, and Chris knew it. So he wasn’t going to rest while an obvious, aggressive, centralized threat was out there, undealt with. Chris was an army all his own, determined to stamp out dissidents before they could start something that would take his whole country down in flames.

  So. They would go in the morning.

  “How are you planning to find them?” Tyler asked. “Them” was intentionally broad. Demons, people under the influence of, children’s homes. Whatever.

  “We’ve got a few leads,” Chris said. “We’ll follow them. You should go to bed. Get a good night’s sleep.”

  “Is Reese coming with us?”

  Chris shot him a look. “Of course not.”

  “She can handle herself pretty good,” Tyler said defensively.

  “She’ll have to. But not yet. And I’m not taking her back there unless I have to.”

  Tyler felt a shot of fear go down his back. “There” could only mean one place, and he didn’t want to go.

  The warehouse.

  * * *

  When morning broke over the bay, the light coming over the cliffs from the east and spreading itself out across the water, it broke in golden perfection. The air was warm, summer beautiful, and the cliffs were sandy yellow in its glow. The water was deep blue; the pines and scrub on the mountainsides green with life lush and growing. Tyler stood on the front step of the cottage and just breathed it all in, thankful.

  Behind him, Chris was starting the truck. It wasn’t yet six-thirty in the morning, but he wanted to be on the road as soon as possible. They would grab breakfast on the way. The city was a good hour’s drive inland, and Chris wanted to get the jump on—well, whatever they were going to find.

  Tyler stayed outside, gazing over the water, as Chris revved the engine in the carport. The cottage behind him was a little shabby at first glance, but that was only age and the effects of salt and wind. Chris had always kept it up, and in reality it was tight and neatly managed, a sturdy little bulwark against anything that could come up to challenge it, be it wind or high weather or death or change.

  They certainly had weathered plenty of the latter. All things considered, it seemed appropriate that Tyler had chosen to keep living here after he Joine
d. The cell house was open to him always, and they would have loved for him to come—and part of him wanted to, wanted to bask in the connection of Oneness all the time. But his life had been with Chris a long time. And as Chris had not abandoned him, Tyler saw no real reason to leave.

  Chris drove the truck out of the carport and honked the horn. Tyler pulled his eyes away from the bay. Time to go.

  They pulled into Lincoln less than an hour later; traffic between the city and the fishing village was light, and they’d gotten on the road before the onslaught of work-related traffic could hit. Chris had a city map on the front seat between them, along with a giant telephone book that serviced most of the county.

  But the first stop, they didn’t need to look up an address. Tyler was surprised, but he said nothing.

  The Lincoln cell. David’s old home base.

  Tyler felt the familiar pull of Oneness as they pulled onto the quiet, slightly rundown block where the house was located. The beat of hearts in tune with his, the sense of immense comfort, belonging, supercharged strength as the talents and gifts of many came together in one. The cell here was far bigger than the one in the village; at any given time there might be close to twenty people living in the house. An old triplex had been converted for the purpose. Tyler had no idea what people in the neighbourhood thought about the cell. Maybe they figured it was a student home. Or a cult.

  This cell was also far more active than the one in the village. Reese had become Joined here and had done her apprenticeship in spiritual warfare in this place: based in the city, the cell was regularly exposed to far more demonic activity than hit the quiet little bay town where Mary and Richard had held their post for so many years. Reese was a fighter, an experienced undercover warrior in a battle zone most people didn’t know existed.

  But the cell lay at the heart of the war in another, more frightening way as well. Their leader of many years, David, had turned against the Oneness—and somehow, they hadn’t known. He had joined forces with the enemy, nearly destroyed Reese, almost undone the work of the Oneness throughout the city and further. He had fathered a hive. April’s paintings had exposed him.