by Jordan Dane
I just found you. Don’t...leave me, please. I can’t do this on my own anymore.
Kendra prayed he heard her. If he died, she wouldn’t even know his name.
Chapter 6
Downtown L.A.
Hours Later
Pain gripped Lucas long before he opened his eyes. It slithered from his throbbing head down his back, inflicting damage wherever it went. Even his fingertips hurt. He felt the heat of a fever behind his eyes and through his chest. When he finally cracked his eyelids open, shadows spiraled like smoke in front of him. The blur, dotted with pinpoints of light, triggered his memory of being on that garage rooftop when he gazed at the stars before everything turned black.
He felt sick and fought the urge to puke by taking deep breaths. When his mind cleared enough to question what had happened, he looked for answers in the room where he lay. A flicker of light made shadows move on a wall across from him. It took him a while to realize the faint glow came from a burning candle.
Thick and muggy, an odor hung heavy in the air and made it hard to breathe at first, until he got used to it. He couldn’t tell where it came from, but as he breathed it in, it calmed him. When he looked down, his arm had a bandage of gauze loosely tied. He saw the edge of a wet poultice under it. Green stuff that looked like crushed plants.
He felt the strong presence of a healer, although he’d never met one.
When his vision cleared enough for him to see farther, he looked up and got lost in what he saw over his head. A faded mural of an old railroad station stretched across a high wall. It had passengers dressed in turn-of-the-century clothing, and the wall painting had been done over red bricks that had chipped off through the years. The damage made an odd pattern, sparking his mind to look for animal shapes in the missing pieces like he did when he saw clouds drift across a summer sky.
It reminded him of the elaborate street graffiti painted on the tunnel walls at the old Griffith Park Zoo, only the vast mural looked like something found in a museum.
Beautiful, isn’t it? Like you.
The girl’s voice whispered from inside his ear.
I thought you weren’t...going to make it.
Slowly Lucas turned to look for her. He squinted into the candlelight and found her in the shadows, sitting on a wooden crate. She pulsed in a cobalt-blue aura and looked as serene as the deep blue of the ocean. He recognized the curve of her lips, the soft pink of her skin, and the odd mix of defiance and vulnerability in her dark eyes. He’d seen her before in the crystal fragments of his mind, but because she’d been his first, they shared an intimacy of mind that connected them deeper than anything Lucas had ever felt. It was as if he had always known her.
Fighting his pain, he cleared his parched throat. He could have sent her a message without using his voice, but speaking aloud made her real and not just a distant voice in his head.
“You’re...the one,” he said. “The girl...in m-my head, aren’t you?”
She came with water for him to drink and knelt by him with a fragile smile. When he saw her eyes filling with tears, he had his answer. Even though it hurt to move, Lucas reached for her hand.
Don’t cry, he told her. I’m here.
* * *
Lucas Darby. He’d told her his name and she shared hers. In that instant, a faint melody played in Kendra’s head, sweet white noise that calmed her. She wondered if he heard the music, too. She saw the pain in his eyes that he tried to cover with a smile. Touching him, talking and hearing his real voice as she looked into his pale gray eyes had made their bond stronger, something she hadn’t known would be possible.
“I can’t be certain, of course...” she began. “I’m pretty sure you have a concussion, but I’ll take care of you.”
I’m sorry you got hurt.
Having him with her, Kendra used her voice to speak to him in private, mostly. Thoughts slipped from her to him that she really should have controlled better, but she couldn’t help it. She was excited to be with someone like him, someone more powerful than she was.
“You’re the healer.” He didn’t ask. He knew.
“Yes.” She smiled. “I’m learning.”
“Good. Being here with you, it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It’s gonna take practice...for both of us.” Lucas smiled. “The drugs they gave me at the hospital, they screwed me up. I got lost. They made me feel like I drowned. I don’t feel as strong as you.”
“Oh, but you are,” she answered in a rush. When she laid a hand on his bare chest, she yanked it back as if she’d touched a flame. “I...I c-can feel it. The way we connected. That was you.”
Lucas sighed and winced in obvious pain. She gave him water, a little at a time. When his eyes became heavy, she knew he needed to sleep, but she could tell he had questions.
“Will you show me...what you do?” he asked. “Be my...teacher?”
Kendra reached for his hand and laced her fingers in his. The minute she touched his skin with hers, she felt a surge of energy up her arm and through her body. That had come from him, too, not her.
“Do you feel that?” she asked him. When he only shook his head, Kendra squeezed his fingers and said, “You will. Your body is weak now, but you have no idea what you’re capable of.”
“All my life, teachers and doctors acted like what I am is...wrong. Like I’m defective and it’s my fault,” he told her. “But hearing you inside me, it feels like I can finally breathe on my own. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“That’s just it. Here, you don’t have to explain anything. You belong...with us, Lucas.”
A smile tugged at his lips for only a second before he shut his eyes. She knew the comfort of being with her kind, and he would, too, when he got better. Connecting to the hive mind for the first time had been a powerful and profound spiritual awakening that had given her life purpose. Kendra made it her mission to share that experience and nurture the lives of those like her. She found it hard to define the intimacy of the act, even to another of her kind. That connection had to be felt by each Indigo soul.
From the first moment she linked to Lucas’s essence and experienced the breadth of his life force, she knew he was different. She’d never felt anything like him before. Kendra had been right to risk everything for him.
He was their future.
She blew out the candle and let him be. When his breathing changed and she knew he was asleep, she rested her head on his chest and shut her eyes, listening to the gentle pulse of his heart.
Kendra didn’t let go of his hand. She needed the connection more than he did.
Burbank
The Next Day
“Where the hell have you been? I expected you to nab the kid yesterday.”
When O’Dell saw his man Boelens for the first time since he’d assigned him the Darby kid, the guy looked rough. Even on a good day, Boelens had a lizard stare. He never blinked. Ever. Now with his disheveled hair, wrinkled clothes and a crazed glare, the man looked like a Stars Gone Wild booking photo.
“I don’t know what happened.” Boelens had gotten back his blink—and an annoying twitch to his lips. “You got anything to eat? I’m starving.”
“Eat on your own time,” O’Dell said, but Boelens ignored him.
When the man had the audacity to rummage through O’Dell’s personal desk drawer, he flexed his snake tattoos and punched Boelens in the arm. The man yelped and blinked like a freak.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
Before he got an answer, Boelens raced to the small fridge O’Dell had in his office to keep his power-drink supplies and other stuff. When he flung open the refrigerator door, he found O’Dell’s private stash of Chinese takeout. Foam containers were marked by date and stacked from top to bottom in chron order.
O’Dell had an unhealthy obsession with Chinese food. He knew it and didn’t care, so when Boelens targeted his General Tso’s, O’Dell had to draw the line. He wrestled Boelens away from the fridge and shoved
him into a wall, jamming his elbow against the man’s throat.
“Talk to me. Tell me what happened,” O’Dell demanded. “Don’t make me ask twice.”
At the sudden show of violence, Boelens cried like a girl. He even drooled. The guy was a total wreck. Eventually he told O’Dell about what happened at an abandoned garage in West Hollywood.
“Where are your men, the ones you took with you?”
“Don’t know. They ran. Haven’t seen ’em.” Boelens turned blue.
“And the MS-13 crew? They were supposed to track the other sister. What happened to them?”
“Don’t know that, either. I left messages.”
“Hell, why didn’t you say so, man? You left messages. Problem solved.” O’Dell leaned his body into the guy and limbered up his snake. “Would you recognize the girl who got in your way, if you saw her again?”
“Yeah. Definitely.” The man’s eyes bugged out like a pug on meth.
“Did she do this to you?”
“Do what?”
O’Dell rolled his eyes and shoved his elbow tighter against the man’s windpipe.
“I don’t know wh-what happened. I...s-swear,” Boelens blubbered. “She had...m-more kids with her. A mind-freak militia.”
Boelens had crossed the line into pathetic. O’Dell backed off a little and let the man breathe. He’d gotten everything out of him. The guy was clearly under the influence of something. If those kids had the power to scuttle a man’s brain as bad as Boelens had it, they could be like the Darby kid. Maybe his employer would appreciate his initiative to round up more kids than he was assigned.
The fact that this girl had amassed her own misfit menagerie made him wonder how she connected with them. Maybe this freak could lead him to more of her kind. O’Dell made up his mind. His reputation within the organization would be on the line if he didn’t corral the Darby kid soon. He’d pull everyone in and focus his whole operation on Darby. How long could it take to round up one scrawny fifteen-year-old kid? And for good measure, he’d clean out this new girl and her nest of head cases.
“When you get your head on straight, I want you looking through our database for the face of that girl...and any other kid you saw with her. We’ll take on our own assignment. I can’t have those little cockroaches getting in my way.”
When his man nodded, O’Dell let Boelens go, after he turned a fine shade of sapphire. He expected the man to do the rational thing and take his bruised ego home until he sobered up before he came back to hit the computers, but that was not what he did. Boelens went straight for O’Dell’s fridge and dropped to his knees. He ripped open containers and stuffed handfuls of food into his mouth, paying no attention to the dates written on the cartons.
“Ah, man. At least respect the chron.” He threw up his hands and shook his head.
Boelens had lost his mind—and O’Dell had lost his lunch.
Griffith Park
Midnight
At the stroke of midnight, Gabe pulled his sweatshirt hood over his head and grabbed his knapsack, filled with his art supplies and his sketchbook. He left the safety zone of the maintenance shed to head into the night. In the dark, he hiked his way to the tallest hill in Griffith Park—a familiar path—to gaze over the golden lights of the city.
After Rayne left, Gabe couldn’t shake her from his mind. Her eyes haunted him with an accusing stare. She had every right to resent his refusal to help her search for Lucas. He hadn’t told her why he couldn’t risk it, but he had begun to believe that no justification made a good enough excuse. If her brother’s life was on the line, Gabe didn’t want to be the guy who sat back and did nothing.
“What’s up, boy?”
He felt Hellboy with him before his ghost dog made an appearance. When the dog did, Gabe almost lost it. Plain as day, Hellboy hunkered near him, taking care of his personal grooming.
“Dogs lick their junk even after they die? Good to know.” He shook his head. “I know guys who’d never leave their room if they could do that.”
Despite Hellboy’s practical and persistent hygiene efforts, Gabe had grown accustomed to the presence of his phantom dog and craved being around him—especially after he discovered by a fluke what they could do together.
After he’d crossed paths with Rayne and had a dream about her brother, his usual tether to Death and Hellboy had hit a new level of intensity. That was why he’d come. Rayne might have triggered his need to help her, but tonight he’d been drawn to high ground with a greater urgency than ever before. He had to come. He was restless and his skin felt zapped by a strange surge of energy. Even Hellboy looked more alert. Sniffing the air with ears up, the dog paced the ground, listening for sounds carried on the wind that swept through Griffith Park.
“You feel it, too, don’t you, big guy?”
The dog stared into the blackness and crept closer to Gabe. In protective mode, Hellboy growled as if he saw something. Part-wolf and all loner, his ghost dog gave off a brutal kinetic energy. Gabe felt the punch of it down his spine. Something was very different tonight, but that wouldn’t stop him.
“Let’s do this.”
With the dog staying tight to his side, Gabe put his knapsack on the ground and gazed up at the stars. He slowed his breathing until the beat of his heart throbbed soft and steady in his ears. Under the vast inky-black umbrella of the night sky, he felt the first wave of assault on his shoulders and his belly. It almost doubled him over in pain. His muscles went taut as a slow-brewing rage swallowed him whole. Flashes of his past stoked the fires of his anger. His father’s cruel voice became an undercurrent to his darkest memories when he hid under the covers as a kid, hearing his parents argue late at night when they thought he couldn’t hear them.
They only argued over one thing—him.
He hated his father for what happened. That hatred sparked a fire in him, but as his rage spread, it always came back to him. That was when his anger kicked into high gear. When the blame came full circle, he felt it in every muscle of his body. He was stoked and ready for what would come next.
Hellboy yelped and circled at his feet with a contagious excitement. Gabe didn’t have to open his eyes to know the dog sensed his mind probe. The first time had been by an accident triggered by Hellboy, but since then, each incident allowed him to push the envelope on his newfound ability.
When Gabe felt every molecule in his body break apart and drift—as weightless as the gray, velvet ash swept by the wind off a cold fire pit—he welcomed the unsettling experience and let it happen. When he couldn’t contain his rage any longer, he let it blast out in a million pieces. Within seconds, he felt his awareness shift to a trusted and familiar place where he felt whole and calm again.
He saw through Hellboy’s eyes after his mind entered the essence of the animal’s spirit.
When his two legs felt as if they’d turned into four—and the earth rose up to meet him—Gabe let go of his humanity and imagined Hellboy’s animal instincts to be his own. An addictive rush of adrenaline swept through him, and with that feeling, his sense of hearing and smell heightened to an acute awareness, but the feeling carried a message of danger that hit him hard.
Hellboy had understood that, and now he did, too. Something felt different.
Channeling through his dog, he forced his consciousness to reach out beyond where he stood—beyond Hellboy. Pushing his limits, Gabe tested his abilities, feeling stronger and more whole every time he did. In an instant, the dog linked to other creatures of the night like a catalyst, making Gabe’s stomach lurch as if he rode a fast-moving roller coaster barreling down a dark track. His arms turned to wings and he felt his body soar across the night sky when he spotted movement below with the nocturnal eyes of a predator.
Still anchored through Hellboy, he catapulted to a great horned owl and felt the essence and power of swift, silent death as the bird stalked a creature in the brush. He sensed the rush of the hunt as the gray ghost swooped low in the dark and extended its tal
ons to snatch its prey off the ground. He felt the tug and weight of the weasel as it struggled to pull free of the claws that tore open its back.
“Oh, sweet Jesus. This is unreal.”
Tingles surged through his body and Gabe felt the chill of the blue fire off Hellboy. It whipped through his hair like gusts from a preternatural wind, and his breath turned to vapor from the cold. Connected to everything at once through his dog’s spirit, he gorged on the rush of his consciousness hurling from one creature to another. He didn’t feel like a messed-up loser on the run. What he experienced through Hellboy and Death made him special.
But when he focused his mind on finding Lucas and using Death and other animals to search, unexpected flashes replaced the owl’s hunt in his mind—disturbing imagery that interfered with everything. The whole thing felt wrong. Tonight something sinister lurked in the darkness of his extrasensory world and ambushed him. A head-splitting ache behind his eyes sent a jolt through him.
“Ah,” he gasped.
When Gabe collapsed to his knees, Hellboy yapped and licked his fingers, not leaving his side. Gabe winced and grabbed his head with both hands as stabs of bright light blinded him. Even the wind carried punishment. Every gust shot needles across his skin that he felt under his sweatshirt and down his back.
He had no idea where his mind had taken him and felt powerless to control what he saw. He only knew it was important—something he needed to witness and feel. This time it hadn’t been a dream. He wasn’t asleep. He had one foot on either side, straddling the precipice between the living and the dead. The owl and its prey were gone, replaced by another face that came into focus with crystal clarity. A girl he’d never seen before. Strange, disruptive visions had happened before, but nothing like this. Gabe had to move. Now!
