Clearly they were in trouble, but why?
Lorrie had intimated it was Tyler’s fault somehow. But what in the world? He hadn’t done anything but talk to Rick Brodie in the middle of the night, and that only because the man was obviously in pain and had woken him up with his groaning.
Anyway, talking to someone wasn’t a sin. This was a free country.
Though maybe not, he had to concede, a free community.
When Jacob finally entered, looking larger than normal, carefully groomed, and horribly stern, Chris looked as though he could hardly stop himself from jumping up and punching the man in the face.
But Tyler shrank. Jacob’s marked charisma, his powers of leadership and inspiration, were all turned against him now, and he felt like something lower than a rat and more despised than the mat at the door of a mudroom. He was stricken by the awful feeling of having betrayed someone.
But what in the world had he done?
Jacob stood for a few minutes, glowering down, during which neither of the boys rose. Chris sullenly met the man’s gaze; Tyler shrunk away from it.
Finally he sat and laid his hands on the table. “You should count yourselves lucky I didn’t throw you out,” Jacob opened the conversation.
“I think in this country people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and are usually charged with a crime. Would you care to tell us why we are out of favour?” Chris tossed the answer in Jacob’s face, and the man went dark.
Anger.
Tyler had found himself comparing this man to Richard now and again, but he had never seen an expression like that on Richard’s face.
“Maybe you don’t know,” Jacob said. “Though I will hold you guilty by association. If I’d had to pick one of you to finger as trouble, it would have been you. You,” he nodded at Tyler, “I had hopes for.”
Tyler squeaked out something in response. Jacob’s anger only burned harder.
“Where were you at midnight last night?” he demanded.
“Probably in Rick Brodie’s room,” Tyler said. “The driver. I heard him groaning and went to check on him.”
Why did he feel like he was confessing a sin?
The admission didn’t appear to do anything to alleviate Jacob’s wrath. “Where else?” he asked.
“In my room.”
“Where else?”
Tyler’s mouth opened, but for the life of him he didn’t know what was supposed to come out of it. Jacob stood and began to pace. “I have done everything I can do to separate this community from the world and keep them safe. We block media, we’re careful about who we allow in here. You’ve seen the results: ours is a happy, peaceful, innocent family.”
“Don’t tell me he was meeting with a girl,” Chris mumbled.
The revelation was instant. “Oh,” Tyler blurted before he could stop himself, “Miranda . . .”
“Glad you remember,” Jacob said. He was seething. The anger was real.
Tyler felt himself, deep down, beginning to tremble. He’d felt sick since being called in here, and Jacob’s anger was blinding, like getting hit with unexpected punch after punch, but this was confusion, and he was starting to sense that the trouble was deeper than he’d realized.
“We did right by you,” Jacob said through clenched teeth. “We took you in and helped you and nursed you back to health faster than any hospital could have. We even made a police report, and you can guess how much we love involving the law in anything.”
He shot Chris a look. “Not because we’re doing anything illegal. Because the world does not understand our ways, and they are of the world.”
“I think they might consider holding three people against their will illegal,” Chris said. His own anger was starting to rise, to show up in his eyes with frightening clarity—not now the annoyance and resentment at being treated like children and intimidated, but the anger of witnessing a friend threatened and wrongfully accused.
“You weren’t here against your wills.”
“We were drugged, and denied real access to a phone—I don’t know what you did, but I’m sure the problem with getting through wasn’t with the other end—and never asked whether we wanted to leave or given an offer of transportation.”
The man’s expression grew slightly sullen. “We’re not under obligation to offer you anything.”
“And you call yourselves Oneness,” Chris spat. “You’re no more Oneness than I am. Less, maybe. They would have helped, not imprisoned. What about that man upstairs? Has he even been awake enough to tell you what he wants, or how to contact his family, other than last night?”
“Chris,” Tyler whispered.
Chris ignored him. “And what about your own people? Are they all here because they want to be? You’re threatening us and acting like Tyler molested someone, and if I know him all he did was trip over the kid in the hallway.”
“We have chosen to be—”
“I’m not done!” Chris roared. He was standing now, chest to chest with Jacob, and Tyler had never realized how big his friend was, or how truly intimidating, even with his arm in a cast. “You do a bunch of good things and you want to point to them and tell us to overlook all the bad things, all the signals that something is really wrong around here, but you know what? That kind of good thing is just a lie. And I don’t ignore signals.”
“Chris,” Tyler pressed. Chris still ignored him.
“So we are leaving,” Chris said, “before you can get a chance to spew your venom about what you think Tyler was doing last night. I don’t even want to hear it, do you understand me? I have no tolerance for lies, and I can see in your face that you have nothing else to say. Now show me the way out of here, and either offer me a ride or I will walk.”
“You’re fifty miles from civilization.”
“I don’t care.”
Man to man, they stood and faced each other down. And Tyler’s mouth went dry.
Behind Jacob, someone had moved into the door frame.
The Wizard.
Chapter 8
Chris went ballistic when he saw him. Something distracted him from the stare-down with Jacob, and he looked just enough to the man’s left to see the college kid standing in the doorway. Chris shouted and flew at him, broken arm and all. And what happened Tyler couldn’t actually see, but Chris went sprawling and landed at the kid’s feet.
Dead, Tyler thought for one terrifying second.
No, just unconscious.
He rebuked his own panic and stupidity.
And slowness, because he was also unconscious before he could think anything else, and when he woke up he was looking into the Wizard’s demonic eyes.
He had no idea where he was.
Nor did he seem to have much control over his mouth.
“You’re the hitchhiker,” he garbled.
“And you’re Oneness,” the Wizard said.
“What’s your name?”
The Wizard smiled. “Which one of us?”
Tyler grimaced. “Never mind.”
His brain was struggling to interpret his surroundings. Walls and dark and it seemed like everything was rocking, and there was noise . . .
“Where are we?”
“In the back of a truck, actually.”
“Why?”
“We’re going where you wanted to go. To find the hive.”
“Where’s Chris?” The mention of the hive brought a lot of things rushing back, and Tyler struggled to sit up. He realized he was lying on a hard surface, his limbs heavier than they’d ever been, his face flat against the floor and turned toward the Wizard.
Who was sitting.
“Oh, he’s here. We don’t want him to miss anything.”
“Like what?”
“Like when we kill you.” The Wizard smiled as though this was a pleasant announcement.
Oh.
“Which is scheduled to happen . . .”
“Soon, soon.”
Tyler tried to move but couldn’t. He didn’t
think he was bound, although his sense of his own body was so vague and oppressed that he couldn’t be sure. He was essentially paralyzed, whether by drugs or by something more spiritual he didn’t know.
But he wanted to know. He wanted to know so many things.
It was fairly clear to him that he wasn’t going to make it out of this one. If the others were here, if they could stand united, if he had more experience in the Spirit—sword-wielding, even praying—maybe he would stand a chance. But he was alone, he couldn’t move, and he had absolutely no idea what to do. To his surprise he felt little emotion about this—maybe it was the drugs. No fear really, or sorrow. But he did want to know.
He wanted all this to make sense.
“You’re possessed,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Who am I talking to, anyway?”
“Doesn’t matter. Even we’re not really sure.”
“Right.” He struggled to put his thoughts together. “You were with a Oneness cell. Why . . .”
The Wizard laughed. “They are hardly Oneness.”
“But they are. Jacob is. I felt it. I was trying to tell Chris. I wondered all that time, but I finally knew for sure . . .”
He was babbling and he knew it, but he didn’t really care. Saying it all out loud meant he could think about it, could process it.
The Wizard laughed again. “Yes, Jacob is. And he is convinced he is the only real manifestation of Oneness in the world today. But his community is no cell. Surely you felt that. Jacob does not bring others into the Oneness. He brings others under his own control.”
“But why?”
The Wizard’s eyes were dancing. “If he brought people into the Spirit, he could not control them. He would lose them. He does not want to lose anyone.”
“But why were you there?”
“Because Jacob has gone blind in his fear and his need to dominate. He invites us in. He only knows that we are power, and power is what he thinks the Spirit is. So he believes we are of God.”
Tyler closed his eyes.
“Are you lying to me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Don’t you usually lie?”
“Yes. But not when the truth is enough to bring despair.”
Despair.
He was supposed to feel despair.
He didn’t.
His eyes still closed, keeping the Wizard out, Tyler tried to pray again. He still felt detached, curious. He wanted to know if it would work. If, this separated from everyone and everything, he was just as fully connected as ever.
He found, to his surprise, that he was.
How he entered into it this time he really didn’t know, but as he reached out with his spirit he knew he was stepping into something wider, deeper, higher than himself. Something flowing and throbbing like blood, like a heartbeat; something full of life and stronger than the power—powers—gloating at him in this truck. The something whispered deep inside his soul, “All shall be well.” And he believed it.
But at the same time, tapping into the Spirit broke his emotional numbness. Feeling swept into him, almost choked him: sorrow, immense and deep, sorrow for Jacob and for his community, sorrow at their fear and their blindness, sorrow at how much they had traded for how little.
The sorrow was wise and ancient, and when Tyler opened his eyes again he felt older, more mature, more capable.
And fear had come into the Wizard’s eyes.
He almost laughed. Did it really take so little to shake them? Were the demons really so weak after all?
They were still probably going to kill him, but the fear in this kid’s eyes and the peace filling Tyler’s whole being told the real story.
He heard sirens.
“No,” the Wizard said.
The fear was stronger.
The sirens grew louder, and the truck rocked; the driver was braking. They lurched into a slow-down and gravel crunched under the tires. The Wizard was on his feet, looking wildly around for some way to hide his prisoners and himself, but there was nothing.
And Tyler laughed. Someone had called the police after all.
Chapter 9
The dead policemen made the news. Diane called and told Mary to turn it on, but as there was no television in the house, they ended up going to her place instead. The news was playing the report every fifteen minutes, so they caught it again.
Mary and Richard and Reese watched in silence; April had been left home with Nick. They didn’t want him to see.
Mary looked sick as she turned away from the news report. All that showed on the camera was the highway, cordoned off, and a small swarm of emergency vehicles. But the reporter’s face was as ashen as Mary’s.
They were giving details as they got them. No names yet.
Reading between the lines, Mary guessed they hadn’t been able to identify the bodies by sight.
The camera flashed a picture of the crumpled, overturned police car. It looked like it had been totalled by a cement truck.
The men had not died in the car.
There had been two of them, and the deaths were so horrific, so bloody and violent, that Richard switched the report off halfway through as yet another ream of details began to come out, horrifying but still, they guessed, being played down.
When it came to decency, even the media had limits.
They were all standing, crowded around the TV on Diane’s kitchen counter. No one sat. No one moved.
The word “demon” didn’t have to be spoken.
“Call the twins,” Reese finally said. “Make sure they’ve heard.” Then almost as an afterthought, “I’ll do it.”
“Where is my son?” Diane asked, hollow.
“He’s still all right,” Richard said. “We would know if something had happened to Tyler . . .”
“But Tyler isn’t Chris.”
“But they’re together. I’m sure they’re together.”
Reese left.
When she stepped into the cell house, the phone was ringing. She wondered briefly where April was, but crossed the floor and answered the phone without bothering to find out.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end was timid. A girl’s voice, young.
Terrified.
“Hello, there . . . there’s been a death.”
Reese put out her hand to steady herself on the counter. “I know,” she said. “We saw it on the news.”
“On the news? How? Nobody knows yet . . . I just called the police, and . . .”
“Wait, stop,” Reese said. “It’s okay. It’s going to be all right. Who is this?”
The girl didn’t answer the question. “How can it be on the—”
Reese stopped her. “Wait, it’s okay. I think we’re talking about different deaths. Can you tell me who you are? Why you’re calling me?”
The girl was silent for a heartbeat. Then, “Chris gave me your number.” Her voice got fainter. “Is this Reese?”
“Yes,” Reese answered, her heart suddenly pounding. She couldn’t stay on her feet—she slid down to the floor, wrapping the phone cord around her arm like she was afraid it would fly away. “Is Chris with you?” she asked, forcing her voice to stay steady.
“No, he’s gone . . . they took them both away.” The girl sounded like she wanted to cry. “I’m not supposed to know anything, but I can’t help it. I just saw, and then . . .”
And then she was crying, and Reese’s knuckles were going white around the phone. Her eyes cast around the kitchen. Where was April? Why weren’t Richard and Mary back yet? She didn’t know if she could handle this alone.
“Please,” she said far, far more calmly and soothingly than she would have thought possible, “tell me who this is. I want to help you. I’ll come help you. Just tell me.”
“M-Miranda,” the girl got out.
“Where are you, Miranda?”
“At home.”
“Where do you live?”
“I don’t know. In the count
ry.”
Reese closed her eyes. “What’s your address, honey?”
“I don’t know.”
She opened her eyes again. Was the girl really ignorant of her own address, or just too scared to remember it?
“Do you know what road you live on?”
“Just our road. I don’t think it has a name.”
Reese decided to change tacks. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know! After they left, Jacob was so angry, and, and, we were just taking care of him . . . I don’t know why he died.”
“Jacob died?”
“No, the man who was here with Chris and Tyler. Rick Brodie.”
Reese let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. That was information they could find a way to use.
“Miranda, what’s your full name?” she asked. “And Jacob’s?”
“I’m Miranda Hopkins. Jacob is . . . I don’t know. I’ve never heard his last name. He leads our community.”
“Did you say you called the police?” Reese asked, quietly.
“Yes. I was scared. They weren’t going to call. Jacob said it wasn’t a good idea to let the world in. They were just going to bury him. But I’m scared.”
“Why did Chris give you this number?”
“He said if I was ever scared, to call you. He said you would help me.”
“I will,” Reese promised. She didn’t know, but she would. There had to be a way to trace this call—Richard would have the connections to do it.
“Are you calling from home?” she asked.
“Y-es.”
“Miranda, listen, I’m going to come find you,” Reese said. “Do you have someone you can trust? Anyone?”
“My mother.”
The answer surprised Reese but made her glad. “Okay. Stick by her and wait for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be—maybe a couple of days. But I’ll come as soon as I can.”
She knew from the girl’s voice that she needed her.
And she wasn’t going to let Chris down for the world.
“I have to go,” Miranda said. Her voice sounded more frightened again, and Reese thought she could make out faint background noise—nothing discernible.
“It’s okay. You did the right thing by calling. I’m coming to help you.”
Hive Page 14
