The Gathering

by K. E. Ganshert

  “Fighting? I haven’t been fighting. We’ve been too busy running.”

  His brow furrows back at me. My obvious confusion seems to have punctured his steam.

  “Somebody recognized us on the bus. By the time we got to Fort Wayne, an FBI agent was waiting. Jillian had to blow something up to cause a diversion and—”

  He holds up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you talking about?”

  “A woman recognized me and Luka. She called the police. Jillian blew up a car. Luka knocked out the FBI agent, stole his gun, and we hightailed it out of there.” Judging by the way Cap’s standing there blinking at me, it’s a safe bet we’re not on the same page. “What fighting are you talking about?”

  “Did you say Jillian blew up a car?”

  “Yes. As a diversion. Now we’re in the back of a Walmart semitrailer, headed who knows where.” And I’m sure at any minute, the entire event will hit the news. I’m equally sure my face and Luka’s face will be everywhere. The only silver lining? Jillian and Link should be fine. The woman never glanced twice at them.

  “You really haven’t been fighting?”

  “No. Jillian threw a shield, but that was it.”

  Cap rubs his chin.

  “Why did you think I was fighting?”

  “We reached headquarters a little while ago. As soon as we arrived, the leader asked if we knew anything about a recent altercation. Word of it reached him here in Newport.”

  “What kind of altercation?”

  “A Fighter took out twenty enemy soldiers at one time.”

  My eyes go wide. When I took out that many at once, it required Gabe’s life. If a Fighter was able to do that completely on his or her own, then he or she must be incredibly powerful. “Do you know where the fight took place?”

  “Somewhere in Iowa.”

  “Do you think the Fighter is trying to get to Newport? Do we know if it’s a man or a woman? Are there any other clues?”

  A shadow rolls across Cap’s face.

  “I mean, if this person took out twenty at once—”

  “Forget about the Fighter.”

  “But Cap—”

  “The journals, Tess. That’s your mission. Get to the Rivards in New Orleans and learn as much as you can about the prophecy.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that? Luka and I are going to be everywhere on the news and …” I take a deep breath.

  “And what?”

  “Luka’s cloak isn’t working.”

  “What?”

  “Something showed up on the bus. It came at me. Jillian had to throw a shield. It was like Luka couldn’t. I don’t get it, Cap. What does this mean? Why would Luka’s cloak fail?”

  He mutters a curse under his breath and massages the bridge of his nose. “We suspected there might be ramifications.”

  “Ramifications. You mean … you’re saying …” My thoughts scramble to make sense of Cap’s words. “You think Luka lost his gifting?”

  “I don’t know.” Cap frowns. “But if he can’t cloak you, then we’re in trouble. The quicker you get to the Rivards, the better.”

  *

  I open my eyes to a sea of green.

  Luka is staring at me. “What did Cap say?”

  I pull the ear buds from my ears.

  Link sits on a crate of pasta, his iPad out and on while Jillian bends over his shoulder. Both are looking at me, too.

  I sit up a little straighter. “They reached headquarters.”

  Jillian lets out a loud breath.

  “I guess there are rumors circulating about a really powerful Fighter on the move somewhere in Iowa. Cap thought it was me.”

  “Did you tell him what happened?” Jillian asks.

  I nod.

  “You told him everything?” Luka’s question is soaked with meaning.

  I nod again.

  “What did he say?”

  I sever eye contact. I’ve always been a lousy liar, and right now I’m positive Cap’s speculation would destroy him. “Maybe it was just a fluke.”

  Luka leans against the side of the trailer and kneads his forehead.

  “Whoa!”

  Jillian and I turn our attention to Link.

  He gapes at his iPad. “We just bumped Non and Sticks to numbers five and six on FBI’s Most Wanted list.”

  I scramble over to his side. “Five and six?”

  Link found a live newsfeed. It’s playing security camera footage. I watch as the four of us board the bus. Luka steals the agent’s gun. A different angle of Jillian blowing up a car. Our faces appear on the screen, along with our real names and the names we used to purchase our bus tickets. Our fake identities are shot. And Link and Jillian are definitely not in the clear.

  The camera pans to a female news anchor. “Teresa Eckhart, you will remember, escaped the Edward Brooks Facility this past January with the assistance of Luka Williams. Both are wanted for the murder of Dr. Charles Roth.”

  “Murder?” The word bursts out of my mouth. “His death was ruled a suicide. They can’t just change it like that.”

  Surely the public will notice the blaring inconsistency.

  “Apparently they can.” Link clicks out of the newsfeed and opens up the FBI’s website. He clicks on the Most Wanted list. Sure enough, the four of us are there, with me taking the lead. I am officially the nation’s most wanted criminal. With a quarter of a million bounty on my head.

  *

  Four hours as a stowaway with no end in sight has me regretting my second water bottle. According to Link and the compass on his iPad, we’re veering more west than south, which means we need to get off this truck as soon as possible. Preferably before my bladder explodes.

  Just when I think it might, a box of Lay’s Potato Chips slides toward my legs. The truck is finally slowing down. Brakes squeak. A gear shifts. Luka holds up his flashlight. Jillian lifts her head off Link’s shoulder and looks around with disoriented eyes.

  Everything in the back of the trailer slides left as the semi turns, accelerates a bit, then slows again, this time to a full stop. The engine goes quiet. Luka shuts off the flashlight. All I can see are three pairs of round white eyes blinking in the dark.

  A door opens and closes.

  We scramble to the very front of the trailer, as far away from the back hatch as possible and crouch out of sight behind the bananas. Seconds tick into a minute, then two, then three. The trailer remains closed.

  My fingers dig into the wooden crate. If we wait too long, we’ll miss our opportunity. I imagine being stuck back here for another five hours. My bladder won’t make it. As if reading my mind, Luka motions for us to follow him.

  When we reach the back, he presses his ear to the metal. We could be anywhere. Another gas station. A busy truck stop. Inside a Walmart warehouse. The only way to find out is to open the door. Luka inches it open the tiniest crack.

  Jillian peeks outside. “All I can see is cement.”

  The engine roars to life.

  I grab Luka’s arm.

  He opens the door wider. I don’t give myself time to second guess. I hop out into the night and duck behind a row of bushes. Link, Jillian, and Luka jump out behind me. And the semi drives away.

  Crickets chirp in the bushes. The air smells like sulfur. It reminds me of the year we lived in Pennsylvania, two miles north of a paper mill. Pete called the town Fartsville, even though its real name was Pinkerton or Tinkerton or something like that. I lift my head over the shrubs. We landed in a deserted rest stop. There’s not another vehicle in sight.

  “The Eye of Sauron,” Link whispers.

  I look at him. “What?”

  He points.

  I follow its trajectory up and to the left—toward a security camera that swivels slowly back and forth on the corner of the building—and duck further behind the bushes. We wait until the camera points as far away as possible, then sprint around to the back of the building. There’s an open field. And roughly a hundred yards p
ast that, a stretch of dense trees.

  We make a run for it.

  Beneath a star-freckled sky, with my backpack jostling back and forth on my back, I sprint for the trees. I don’t stop until I’m safely beneath the canopy. Once I am, I rest my hands on my knees and work on catching my breath, my bladder temporarily forgotten.

  Luka sets his backpack against a tree. A shaft of moonlight filters through the leaves above and slashes across his face. He looks absolutely perfect. And absolutely tortured.

  “Somebody run at Tess.”

  I stand up straight. “What?”

  He comes to my side, his attention focused on Link and Jillian. “Somebody run at Tess.”

  Judging by the way they exchange an uncertain look, the two of them are just as confused by the bizarre command as I am. Neither of them move.

  “Somebody run at her!”

  A flock of sleeping birds take flight overhead.

  My confusion flies with them. I know what this is about. Luka wants to see if he can throw a shield. He’s been waiting to do this ever since his cloak failed back there on that bus.

  Jillian and Link remain in place. I don’t blame them. I’ve seen Luka’s shields. Getting hit by one can’t be very pleasant.

  He grits his teeth. “Please.”

  It’s Jillian who turns sympathetic. She shrugs off her backpack, backs up several paces, screws up her face in the way people do when they’re bracing for pain, and begins to run.

  “Faster!” Luka shouts.

  Her run turns into a sprint, and although she’s headed straight for me, I’m not looking at her. I’m too consumed with the boy beside me. His posture is fierce. His face, terrifyingly gorgeous as Jillian closes in. She grows in the periphery of my vision. Any millisecond Luka will throw a shield and the same burst of light that came in the stairwell of Shady Wood will slam into her.

  Only nothing happens.

  I squeeze my eyes tight.

  Luka snags my waist and pulls me out of danger just as Jillian rushes past. He holds me against him for a second, his shoulders rising and falling with quick breaths. When he lets me go, he turns up his palms and stares at his fingers like they hold no power at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Help

  We hike through the night, stopping every couple of miles to take a short rest and drink from the water bottles we stuffed in our backpacks. According to Link’s iPad, we are in eastern Missouri, heading toward a town called Greeley. It has railroad tracks that run along the Mississippi River, all the way north to Minneapolis, and all the way south to New Orleans. Looks like I’ll get to scratch train-hopping off my bucket list.

  Luka leads the way. He hasn’t said anything since his experiment with Jillian, and I don’t know how to pull him free from the dark hole he’s fallen into. Honestly? I’m afraid to say anything. I’m afraid if I do, he’ll see that deep down, his pain is my relief. Panic has stalked the edges of my mind ever since Cap told me about transurgence. But if Luka lost his powers as my Keeper, then transurgence loses its power, too. The boy I love is safe—a fact that brings a huge sense of release. For Luka? Not so much. Which is why I tuck the emotion away and focus on the path in front of me.

  I’ve always loved hiking. I spent hours exploring the redwoods outside my home in Thornsdale. However, hiking fifteen miles straight with exhaustion dragging at every muscle is an entirely different beast. The best distraction is conversation, and since Luka’s not talking and Link has turned into a walking-zombie-of-a-caboose, I’m left with Jillian. I can’t stop thinking about the weapon tucked inside the waist of her jeans.

  “How do you know so much about guns?” I ask her.

  “My dad was in the CIA.”

  “The CIA?” I grab the branch Luka holds for me so it won’t fly back and whack me in the face.

  “He was a sniper.”

  My laugh comes before I can stop it. “You’re serious?”

  “As a heart attack.” She takes the branch from me and hands it back to Link.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “It’s not something that comes up in casual conversation.”

  “Wow.” I shake my head. “The CIA.”

  “If he saw that I was on the Most Wanted list, he’d be rolling in his grave.”

  His grave. The two words chase all my amusement away. Jillian’s dad is no longer living. “What happened to him?”

  “He was killed on the job.”

  I step over a jutting root, my mind wandering to my own father. I try not to think about him too much. Currently, he’s locked in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. A crime I committed, actually. A truth that haunts me. Since I can’t do anything to change the situation at the moment, I usually try to push the whole thing away. A mind can only stretch in so many directions before it starts going insane. Still, my father is alive, which means I have hope that I’ll be with him again. For Jillian, that hope is gone. “I’m sorry.”

  She moves through a shaft of moonlight, a sad smile on her face. “He taught me all about guns. I’m pretty sure it gave my mom ulcers.”

  “Sounds like our moms would be good friends.”

  “Maybe they will be someday.”

  I smile at the thought. It’s a nice one. “Yeah.”

  Twigs snap under our feet. I snag a berry off the branch of a tall bush, my stomach growling. Too bad my hiking skills don’t extend to berry deciphering. Having no idea if it’s safe to eat or not, I let it drop to the ground. “So how’d you end up at the hub?”

  “I started experiencing symptoms after my dad died. My mom thought my grief was manifesting itself in bizarre ways, so she brought me to Dr. Carlyle. When I explained my symptoms, he asked to speak with me in private, then he told me what was happening.”

  “And you just believed him?”

  “I didn’t have a reason not to. My dad always believed in good and evil. Jillian, he’d say. There are other forces at play in this world. Forces we can’t see. He saw too much darkness with his own eyes to be convinced otherwise, no matter what the government or science had to say about it.”

  Our moms might be similar. Our dads, on the other hand? Not so much. “So you ran away?”

  “He said I was in danger. He told me about the hub. And I left. I haven’t seen my family in two years, but I dream about them almost every night.”

  There’s a pang in my chest. A deep ache that rears its head at night, when I’m laying in bed by myself. I’m not the only one missing my family. It must be worse for Jillian. She had to leave her mom in the midst of grieving her dad.

  “I keep wondering what they must be thinking, seeing my face on the Most Wanted list.” Jillian picks up a stick off the ground and hacks at some weeds. “One thing’s for certain. When all of this is over, I’ll have a lifetime of crazy stories to tell them.”

  We share a smile. Not many people would believe the stories we have to tell.

  *

  As birds begin to chirp and a soft blush paints the eastern horizon, we reach the outskirts of Greeley. I expect a small, sleepy river town. Maybe a jogger or a dog-walker out before work. I definitely don’t expect the sound of men’s voices.

  All four of us stop abruptly, then duck behind some shrubs. I peek through the leaves. Two police cruisers idle inside a CVS parking lot. A huddle of five men stand nearby. Four of them wear standard police uniform. The fifth wears a navy blue windbreaker that triggers a cold feeling in my gut. When he turns around, a gasp tumbles out of my mouth.

  Luka pulls me down, completely out of sight.

  My breathing turns jagged. The fifth man is the FBI agent Luka knocked out on the bus. How is he here? How could he have possibly tracked us from Fort Wayne, Indiana to the obscure town of Greeley, Missouri? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s utterly impossible.

  Unless …

  My attention wanders to Jillian. She volunteered so quickly when Cap said I needed a team. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to call
the police, not with the emergency phone in Link’s backpack and the bathroom breaks we took during our fifteen-mile hike. If our most recent conversation is proof of anything, it’s how little I actually know her.

  I shake my head. No. The exhaustion is talking. I can trust Jillian. She blew up a car to save us. She has a gun tucked into the waistband of her pants, which means she could have taken us hostage if she’d wanted to turn us in. She’s number four on the Most Wanted list, for crying out loud. And more important than any of that, she’s my friend.

  You thought Clive was your ally …

  I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing the dark thought away.

  Two car doors open, one after the other.

  I squint through the buds of green and watch in horror as a large German shepherd hops out of the back seat. A second—even larger than the first—hops out of the other cruiser. The two dogs sit at attention, their ears perked while every last drop of warmth drains from my face.

  The FBI agent pulls a clear plastic bag from the front pocket of his windbreaker. I squint harder, trying to bring whatever’s inside into focus. It looks like the same fabric from the Greyhound bus seats. I can hear the dogs’ eager sniff-sniff-sniffs—like a salt shaker being rattled back and forth—all the way from where I’m laying. The agent closes the bag and slides it back into his pocket.

  The dogs lift their heads.

  My heart slams into my throat.

  I scoot back, away on all fours. The two animals snap their heads in our direction. Luka pulls me up to standing and we take off, crashing through the woods, leaping over rocks and roots. Tree branches and leaves swipe and cut at our hands and faces.

  I can hear them behind us. Barking. Running. Closing in. I can practically feel their sharp teeth sinking into my flesh. I can see their jaws locking around Luka’s jugular. Panic hurls me forward. I run faster. Faster. And then suddenly, my foot catches. An explosion of pain sears up my ankle. I slam against the ground with a loud oomph that knocks out all my wind, and I skid forward, shards of rock and bits of dirt tearing my skin.

  Luka pulls me up and somehow, we’re tumbling down a steep ravine. We slide to a halt. He drags me back beneath a small cleft and tucks me against his side so I’m pressed between him and a wall of earth.