by Lee French
Several quiet seconds later, Lily asked, “Who’s Stephen?”
“He’s a vampire.” That sounded all kinds of wrong, so he quickly added, “Not a real vampire. I mean, he doesn’t much like sunlight, drinks blood now instead of eating, is mighty strong, heals real fast, and can fly, maybe can do a few other things. But it’s not like there’s a lot of them out there and he was infected or turned or whatever, he’s like us. There’s a guy that’s basically a werewolf, too.”
“And Hannah?”
“She can make a shield with her mind, sort of like what you can do, only with blue stuff that I think is pure energy.”
“How many people are on that list?”
“Thirty-five. At least seven have been nabbed by guys like those two suits, we think. No idea who they are or who they’re working for. Why they want us, though, that seems pretty clear.”
Lily’s eyes flicked up to her rear-view mirror, giving her a view of her son. He cheerfully scribbled with crayons all over a coloring book from the box of toys and snacks next to his seat. “They can’t do that to Sebastian. I won’t let them.”
In that moment, hearing her steely determination, he wanted to reach over and put a hand on her leg. Wary of her husband’s ghost, he didn’t do it. “Neither will I. Ain’t right for nobody, doubly so for a little kid, triply so on account I like this particular one.”
“Thank you for playing with him like that. His uncle tries, but he’s got daughters. He’s kind of restrained.”
“No problem. I remember needing that sorta thing when I was little. Was that the guy I saw at the garden place? His uncle, I mean.”
“My big brother, yeah. He lives next door with his wife and three daughters.”
“That musta been the lady I met when I went to your house first.”
“Auntie Allie and Kaitlin,” Sebastian supplied, proving he’d been listening.
“And we just left them all behind.” Lily sighed again. “My parents, too. They’ve been really great about Sebastian, and his father. I feel like crap for just leaving like that.”
“The alternative was waiting around to see how long it took them to send more goons with bigger guns.” Bobby shut his mouth and watched the world go by, trying not to think too hard about how the dragons went out of his control, or what actually happened to his consciousness. Until then, he’d thought they were under his control unless he let them loose.
Now he knew they had enough autonomy to shut him out. One small point stuck out to keep him feeling sane: they had to all go into a rage for it to happen. He knew, somehow, that they’d still obey him so long as the majority of the swarm had no driving need to do anything in particular. Now that he thought about it, they couldn’t force him into the swarm, either. He’d burst into it every time either because he wanted to, or to save his life.
With those moderately cheering thoughts, he settled back and let the radio blank his mind. The landscape shifted from one kind of farm to another, with towns planted here and there. At some point, that gave way to hills and trees, then mountains. They passed a sign announcing a turn for Lake Tahoe.
“Mama, I wanna stop.”
“Okay, little man, we’ll go for the next rest stop, but I don’t know how long it’ll be.” She flashed Bobby a pleading look.
He nodded and turned enough to see the boy. “You know what, buddy, I got a cousin just about your age, and he likes dinosaurs. D’you like dinosaurs?”
“Rawr!” Sebastian made claws with both his hands.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Where Sebastian couldn’t see, he popped one dragon off his thumb. It flew back to entertain the boy. “This here is a dragon, which is a lot like a dinosaur. You gotta be careful, though, because it’s only a little bitty one. A big one, you could smack it all you wanted, and nothing would happen, but this one, it’s real easy to hurt ‘cause it’s so small.”
Sebastian watched it fly around him with delight, then land on his pudgy little hand and flex its tiny wings for him. “Baby dinosaur!” The dragon played for and with Sebastian, keeping him distracted. When the novelty started to wear off, he sent a second and a third in as reinforcements. They kept the boy from needing to stop for another hour. By then, Bobby wanted to stop, too, and so did Lily.
Bobby needed the roughhousing at least as much as Sebastian did, and the little boy’s shrieks of laughter and joy buoyed his own spirits. After a dinner of bananas, granola bars, and more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Bobby drove. They had to stop one more time before Sebastian fell asleep in his chair and Bobby focused on getting them there in one piece. When he noticed himself nodding off, he pulled off the road and let himself sleep. Lily barely woke when he shut off the engine.
He woke up when his phone rang. Grabbing it, he rolled out of the car as fast as he could to let Lily and Sebastian sleep. While he intended to say ‘hello’, it came out as “Ungha?”
“Where are you?” Hannah’s voice struck his foggy brain as urgent and concerned.
Rubbing his eyes with a thumb and finger, he yawned and collected his wits. “Um, just past the border into Utah from Nevada, on…” He’d seen so many signs with so many numbers, he had to think about it. “I-80, I think. The one that goes through Reno.”
“Really? How fast do you think you can get back to Reno?”
“What’n heckbiscuits for?” He finally opened his eyes and saw the bare hint of orangey-pink in the east, and knew he couldn’t have had more than four or five hours of sleep.
“Ai went to get her pickup in Reno. She got there about ten minutes ago, just as two suits were hauling Anita into a black SUV, probably unconscious. She tried to intervene, but they got away and are now on 80, headed straight towards you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn, we coulda stopped there last night.”
Hannah sighed. “But you didn’t, so move on. Can you go back and maybe ambush the SUV or something? Ai is following them, but can’t really do anything to stop the car while she’s running at that speed. She can, apparently, talk on the phone, but that’s about all she can spare concentration for.”
“Just a sec.” Bobby pulled in a deep breath and rubbed his face. This meant he had to leave Lily and Sebastian, because he couldn’t put the boy into that kind of situation. It burned to let them go. If Ai needed his help, though, then that had to come first. “Yeah, okay. Can somebody there do some math and get me an idea where to stop and wait? I go about 100 miles per hour.”
“I’ll check. Hang on.”
While he waited, Bobby peered back into the car. In the dim light, he saw Lily rubbing her eyes and Sebastian stretching his little arms out. He opened the door and ducked his head in. “I gotta go help another one of us, so you’ll have to go on from here without me.”
“Are they okay?”
“We’ll see. Hey, buddy, you sleep okay?”
The boy made some inarticulate noises, then strained against his seat, trying to get out. His struggles prompted Lily to get out of the car and unbuckle him. “Mama, I gotta potty.”
“Bobby,” Hannah said into his ear, “best guess is to make for Elko and intercept them there.”
At the same time, Lily looked around. “There’s no bathroom here, can you hold it?”
“Got it,” Bobby told Hannah, then he snapped the phone shut. She’d call Ai and set that up, because none of them had anybody else’s numbers. Stuffing the phone away, he paced around the car to Sebastian. “I’ll take him off the side of the road here.”
Lily grimaced in distaste. “There could be a rest area just up the road.”
Sebastian hesitated, then he took Bobby’s and walked with him down the shoulder. For miles around in all directions, he saw nothing but flat, boring desert. He would have preferred a corn field or some bushes to screen them. They had to take what they could get, and the sun hadn’t really lit up the sky yet, so Bobby just turned his back on Lily and the car. He took heart that the boy followed along with him t
his time, not refusing in favor of his mother.
“Using a bathroom is better, of course,” he told the boy as they paced back to the car. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” He crouched down to talk to Sebastian at his eye level. “I gotta go help somebody else, so it’s just you and your momma for the next while. Remember that all this driving is about getting away from bad guys who want to do bad things to her. It ain’t fun to go this far without stopping much, but when you get to where you’re going, you’ll have time to run around like crazy, okay?”
Sebastian nodded, then threw his arms around Bobby’s neck, almost knocking him off balance. “Okay. Be careful.”
Bobby squeezed him tightly, sorry to have to leave them both. “I surely will.” He let go and gave the boy a solemn nod. “I’ll see you again soon.” Standing up, he tousled the boy’s hair and turned to find Lily right beside him. “Um, yeah, so.” Should he hug her, too? Shake her hand? He’d punch a guy in the arm.
She solved the problem for him by stepping in and wrapping her arms around him. “Thank you for everything. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without you.” Only a few inches shorter than him, her cheek rested on his shoulder.
Her body warmed him, and a powerful urge to kiss her bubbled up. He pushed it aside, knowing they both needed to get going. In opposite directions. “Just doing my part. Keep it no more’n five over the limit, and remember not to use a credit or debit card. You got cash for gas?” Reaching back, he opened the door for Sebastian.
“A little, probably not enough.” Her eyes watched his mouth. Or he might have imagined that.
He put his arm around her shoulders and walked her to the driver’s side door. Digging into his coat pocket, Bobby produced the money his momma gave him way back in Atlanta. “Here, take this. Should see you there.”
She flipped through the bills. “Bobby, this is two hundred dollars, I don’t need this much.”
Dang, Momma gave him two hundred dollars? Why in heckbiscuits did she have that much lying around? Was she expecting him to break out and need cash to run for it? “It’s fine.” He waved it off and opened the door for her. “I been alright with nothing so far.” He pulled out his list and the written directions for how to get to the base site and handed them over. “Don’t need these no more, so you take ‘em.”
For a long moment, she stood there, looking at him. A light breeze lifted her hair, and the floating wisps glowed in the early morning sunshine. He had trouble catching his breath and caught himself leaning in. They still had no time for that. Before his mouth could say anything stupid, he stepped back and hurried around to buckle Sebastian in. “Take good care of your Momma, and be good, buddy.”
The boy gave him a high five. Bobby shut the door and watched Lily signal, speed up, get back on the highway, and drive off. If he stood there, this road ran so straight and flat he’d probably be able to see her for a long time. Wondering if he’d made the right choice with Lily, he turned away and burst into the swarm. They had to reach Elko before that SUV did.
Two hours later, he stopped in Elko and wandered from dumpster to dumpster. Nothing he found came close to the meals Lily set him up with, despite the fact he found half a roast beef sandwich. Woman had a way with peanut butter. Something about her made simple, plain food taste better and go down easier.
Hannah hadn’t called, and the SUV didn’t show up, so he burst into the swarm again and looked for a good place to set up an ambush along the road. Traffic ran light on the highway this morning. He dropped down to the southwest of the city, where the westbound lanes separated from the eastbound with a berm between. As he settled, he noticed the dragons nudging about food.
To keep them quiet, he re-formed and sat on the side of the road. He pulled a banana out of his pocket and ate that. It made him think of Lily again. When she’d handed him that banana yesterday, he noticed the softness of her skin. Something about her flipped all his switches. Having her there made it easy to forget about the two dead—
Nope, now he thought about the men he killed. The dragons, which were him, but not, took control when some of them got seriously hurt. His hands still ached from it, and driving yesterday had been rough because of it. He pushed through that to get things done, but they still hurt. The part where they ate the broken dragon still bothered him, too.
Here he sat, waiting for more men to come and be killed by him. Was he actually planning to kill them? It seemed more like he intended to hurt them in a way they could recover from. That explained why he chose a spot this far from the nearest city, so they’d have to wait a while before any actual help would arrive when they called. Realistically, though, he came out here to kill them, and should admit it to himself. These men were doing something wrong, whether they knew it or not, and he had to stop them, one way or another.
Where did they even get this many guys in suits? Goons R Us? For that matter, who was ‘they’? Some part of the government, certainly. Kurt said it was military, but that happened a long time ago. It could be anybody now. If the FBI actually knew about all of this, would they try to stop it? What about the President or Congress?
He hopped to his feet and paced, thoughts swirling around in circles. Too many questions to think about popped in his head, but at least they took his mind off the fact he killed people and planned to do it again. What if he took one of these guys prisoner and questioned him? He and Ai and the one from Reno could hold him down and demand answers. If either suit knew anything, they could probably force him to cough it up.
What was he willing to do to get that information? Thinking back to movies he’d seen that showed or hinted at things that could be done to a person, he scratched the back of his neck. They always had assorted sizes and shapes of small blades, plus scary-looking things with purposes he could only guess at. Would just smacking him around be enough? What if they had tasers?
His phone ringing provided a welcome interruption. “Yeah?”
“Ai just passed exit 261. Are you in Elko yet?”
“I’m west of it, waiting by the side of the road. A bit past exit 271. Ten miles means about ten minutes, yeah? I’ll be ready.” Snapping the phone shut, he peered down the road. No way would he see something ten miles off here, not with the way the road followed around the hills. He popped one dragon off and sent it up to keep an eye out.
One car whipped past him, then another and another. The dragon got his attention, and he saw a black SUV coming up the road with a cloud of dirt kicked up along the side of the road in its wake. The dirt had to be Ai. He dipped his hands in his trenchcoat pockets and pulled out two handfuls of broken glass he’d gathered in Elko, then tossed it all onto the road. In case that didn’t work, he blew out into the swarm so he could follow it.
The car sped over the glass and none of the tires blew out. His next tactic had the dragons diving under the vehicle. They grabbed the undercarriage and wriggled around, looking for parts to eat or break or poke holes into. Half the swarm got its fill of metal, and one clump of dragons punched a hole into the gas tank. The liquid splashed out, leaving a line on the road and spraying over at least a quarter of the little critters.
The vehicle sputtered and died, then coasted off to the side of the road. It rolled to a stop on the shoulder, and Bobby let the dragons keep wriggling through the innards, eating what they wanted. With this snack, they’d staved off hunger for a while.
He heard a car door open. One foot in a dress shoe, connected to a leg wearing suit pants, stepped out of the passenger side and crunched on the loose gravel. Rushing air kicked dirt up into a cloud and a male voice grunted in surprised pain. Bobby called the dragons out, sending them streaming out of the exhaust pipe, the front grille, and the undercarriage. Part of the swarm immediately surrounded a man in a suit.
If he did nothing, the dragons would boil into a rage and murder all four of these men. He panicked, grasping to keep them from pushing him away. Their tug-of-war took time, and the suits spent it zapping and smashing dragons.
Though he felt no pain like this, he suspected re-forming would beat the heckbiscuits out of him.
Bobby felt like he only had two choices. Either he let them keep going and the dragons all got smashed, or he re-formed and kept control and hoped Ai could handle this. He did want to live, thank you very much—he wanted to at least live long enough to find out what he could have with Lily, if anything. Living to watch Sebastian grow up would be kind of nice, too.
He re-formed kneeling on the ground beside the car, bruised, battered, and beaten. Everything hurt, from head to toe, and his left arm ended at his wrist. The suit with the net dropped it to the ground and stomped on the struggling bunch of them before letting them go to rejoin Bobby. Several struggled to fly, hopping along the ground with wings too damaged for proper flight.
Blood trickled down from his nose, and the nearest suit slammed the baseball bat into his head. It hit with a crack, the dragons too scared of being crushed to fly apart again. Lying on the ground, unable to get up but still conscious, Bobby heard tasers sparking all around. He saw Ai crumple nearby, twitching.
“And Dazai,” another agent sneered.
Something else hit him in the back of the head and everything went black.
Chapter 16
“You’re quite a troublemaker, Mitchell. Where have you been sending everyone? Where are Hannah and Alice?”
Feeling like crap all over, Bobby tried to move his hands without success. Something held them down, and it hurt too much to struggle against it. He opened his eyes and cringed away from the too bright light in his face. “Go to Hell.” He wanted to go swarm, even though they probably all needed time to recover as much as he did. Nothing happened. He figured the suits had pushed him past the point where he could do it.
“I heard Georgia boys were polite. I guess that’s just another stereotype.”
Something touched his side, then explosive pain rocked his body hard enough to make him scream. The crackle of electricity registered after the fact. He lay there, gulping air and now realizing his feet had been tied down, too. In the back of his mind, a tickle told him he had one dragon loose, on dragon watching this being done to him and gripped with enough angry terror to fill a bucket.
