by Sophia Sharp
Eve swung her short hair. “After everything we’ve been through, you get scared over a bug?” She didn’t wait for Ashley to respond before leaving.
“It just freaked me out,” Ashley defended weakly.
I returned to the other room, where Madison was sitting on the couch, watching TV. The bathroom was taken, and I could hear the shower running. Based on Rob’s absence, I presumed he was the one in there. I sat beside the blonde girl, and coughed when a cloud of dust came from the cushion.
“This place is kind of a shithole, huh?” Madison asked.
I cocked an eyebrow. I’ve never heard her swear before. But then again, if anything warranted the name, this motel did. “Yeah, totally,” I agreed. “What are you watching?”
“Some documentary on the prison system in the US,” she said, tossing me the remote. “I went through all the channels. This was the only thing on. You can check.”
“I trust you,” I answered, putting the remote down between us. For some reason, the back of it felt like it was layered in oil. Grossed out, I wiped my hand on the couch.
Abruptly, the door swung open, and Liz burst into the room. “We’re going to get some clothes,” she announced to everyone in a sing-song voice. “John came up with the idea.” She said that in a way that made it sound as if he made the sun rise in the morning. “What’s everyone’s size?”
Everybody told her theirs. Obviously, Madison was the smallest, but aside from that there wasn’t much variance between us. Besides, it wasn’t like we were getting fitted for dresses. Liz took note of it all in her head, nodded, and then ran out giddy as a kipper.
I frowned as I looked after her. It was really fascinating, in a way, to see her act like this. I hoped she’d get her brains around her again before we reached Harvard.
Chapter Twelve – A Midnight Rescue
A little while later, Rob came out of the shower. I only noticed him in my peripherals, and when I looked over, my jaw fell to the floor. He had only a towel wrapped around his waist. His entire body was glistening with a fresh layer of post-shower condensation. Every single one of his muscle fibers was visible. There was not an ounce of fat on him. He was all lean and hard, from his slender abs to his perfectly-shaped chest, his wide shoulders and strong arms. He was strong, powerful, and dominant as hell. He could control the allegiance of thousands of Twilight fan girls with that body alone. I felt a flare of disappointment as he pulled a shirt over his head. He ran a hand through his hair, sat down, and looked my way.
“Hey,” he said simply.
All the blood rushed from my head. I was dumbstruck. Madison, who was pretty engrossed with the show, jumped when she heard him. She looked over, and saw him for the first time.
“Wow! You look like an entirely new person,” she said. It was true. Rob looked fresh, better, invigorated. He still had the bruising on his forehead, and the black eye besides, but he looked reenergized after the shower. The stubble on his face was gone; he was clean-shaven again.
Suddenly I became very self-conscious about my own appearance. I hadn’t showered since hauling the litter through the woods. The grime and dirt now felt caked on. Before, we were all in the same boat, so it hadn’t been that big an issue. But, now that we were in the relative safety of the motel, my current state became all the more alarming. Especially with Rob there, looking like that.
I jumped from the couch and made a beeline for the shower. Madison and Rob both exchanged a look of bewilderment, but it barely registered for me.
By the time I got out, feeling sufficiently fresh and at least somewhat worthy of Rob’s presence, I found, to my disappointment, that he had fallen asleep. Liz and John hadn’t returned yet. It had been more than an hour since they left. Eve was sleeping in the other room, beside Ashley, and Madison was in the other shower. There was nothing left to do, really, aside from lying down and closing my eyes.
I was tired after an entire day of driving. I was also a little upset that I hadn’t had the chance to speak to the girls in private about letting Rob and John in on things yet. But I knew we had time before we got to Harvard, so it didn’t weigh too heavily on my mind.
I lay down on the vacant bed and tried to find a comfortable position on the lumpy mattress. Absently I wondered what was taking Liz so long to get back. But I was already getting sleepy. Liz went to get… something. From the store? Maybe. For clothes? I was too drowsy to be sure.
Just as I was about to fall asleep, a muted scream pierced the night.
My eyes went wide. Had I imagined it? Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, my mind played tricks on me. The scream came again—more urgent this time. I threw off the covers and rushed to the window. I saw our blue truck parked haphazardly across three spots. The engine was still running, and the doors were open, but nobody was inside.
The scream came once more. It was from outside, and it sounded like… Liz. Urgency fueled me. I threw open the door and ran to the balcony to look down.
I found somebody – John! – down on his side. He was conscious, but his face was contorted with pain. Liz was nowhere near him. The scream came again. My eye darted in that direction. I saw a plain van, far away. A man dressed in white was shoving somebody into the front seat. I caught the tail end of yellow hair. Liz!
Immediately, I opened my mind to the crystal. I felt the power surge through me, and then… it disappeared. What the hell? I tried again, drawing on the crystal, and once more it evaded me. Panic gripped me. The crystal had done this before, when I was trying to study it in my room, but never in a time of need!
Footsteps came behind me, and I twirled to see Rob running out the door. The rest of the girls were behind him. “What—” he started to say, but cut off as he saw the scene beneath us.
“Liz is in there!” I pointed. The white van’s engine revved to life.
“Tracy, use the cry—!” Eve started, but the sentence died in her throat as the oath kicked in. Rob could hear. She began coughing violently. She doubled over, clutching at her throat. Rob went to help, but she pushed him away. He looked uncertainly from me to the others. None of us could do anything to help her. The fit passed quickly, however. Eve straightened, shooting a daring look at everyone.
“Can’t,” I said tightly, frustrated that I couldn’t explain and terrified that the van would disappear before I had a chance to use the crystal.
Rob took the exchange in without understanding. But he knew that Liz was in the van. “The truck!” he said. “We have to follow them!”
He came down the stairs two at a time. I followed right after him. The pale yellow light from across the street flickered in the background. The van had already taken off. I could see its rear lights in the distance. They were quickly fading into the night.
Rob ran to John first. He was on the ground, clutching his leg. He looked desperately at us.
“What happened?” Rob demanded.
“The bastard stabbed me!” John exclaimed.
“What?” I cried, falling to my knees beside him. “Where? How badly are you hurt?”
“He stabbed me in the thigh as he passed and grabbed Liz,” John said through gritted teeth. “It’s alright. He didn’t hit any major arteries. I won’t bleed to death. Hurts like a bitch, though.”
The other girls had all gathered around us. Eve looked determined, Ashley looked scared, and Madison… well, surprisingly, Madison looked almost as determined as Eve. “What do we do?” Ashley wondered.
“We have to go after Liz,” I said. It was beyond time to take charge. “Can anyone drive?”
“I’ve done it before,” Rob said.
“Alright. Get in the truck.” Rob nodded, and ran to start the engine. “You guys stay here with John,” I said. “Give him the help he needs.”
“I’m alright,” he interjected. “Liz. She’s the one in danger.”
“We need to call the cops!” Ashley exclaimed.
“And then what?” Eve rounded on her. “We’ll be found out! They’ll
know we’re runaways from school when they do a background check. Besides, there’s no way in hell they’ll get here fast enough.”
“I’m coming with you,” Madison said. There was fierce determination in her eyes. “I won’t let them hurt Liz.”
After a second’s pause, I nodded. If I couldn’t use my crystal, at least Madison could… What? It’s not like any of the other girls had the power to manipulate the connections like me. Damn it! If I couldn’t use the crystal, there’d be no saving Liz. It was all on me. All my responsibility.
“Alright. Eve, Ashley, help John up. Get him to the room. Call an ambulance if you need to.”
“No ambulance,” he said firmly. “I just need to get the wound wrapped up.”
“Alright,” I said. “Well, you guys do that.” Just as I was about to turn, Rob honked the horn.
“Come on!” he yelled. “They’re getting away!” I looked in the distance. I could barely see the rear lights of the van anymore. I sprinted to the truck, Madison right behind me. I prayed we were fast enough.
Rob slammed his foot on the gas as soon as we jumped in and the truck jerked forward. My head whipped against the head restraint. The truck skidded onto the road and raced forward. The headlights barely gave enough light to see.
The road was empty. In fact, everything around here was empty. The sides of the road were lined by vacant lots and flat fields.
Rob gripped the wheel so hard I could see the tendons flex in his hand. His knuckles were white. He was leaning forward intently, struggling to see better in the dark. Our headlights barely illuminated the next fifty feet. At the speed we were going, it’d be easy to crash into something without seeing it.
Thankfully, the lights of the van ahead started to get brighter and brighter. We were gaining on them.
As Rob drove, I kept trying to link to the crystal. I clutched it in my hand, pressing it into my skin. But, for whatever reason, the link would—not—come. I ground my teeth in frustration.
“Tracy, what’s wrong?” Madison whispered, softly enough so Rob couldn’t hear.
“I can’t link to the crystal,” I hissed. “I don’t know why.”
“Oh,” Madison said. “Here, try mine.”
“Yours? I thought we could only use our own!”
“No. That makes it easier, sometimes, because you get used to it. But the crystals need time to recharge. They can’t go all the time. You’ve used yours a lot the last few days. I haven’t touched mine.”
“What the hell? I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Madison shrugged. “You never asked.”
I had to admit she was right. I grabbed the crystal from her, and opened my mind to it. The link slipped into place easily. The blue light burst forth from my hand, freezing everything temporarily in place. I felt the links in my mind, the connections that existed between everything around me. But, there was also a… stress… that had not been there before. A strain on my mind. It was like pulling to lift too much weight.
Madison was right. It was harder to use someone else’s crystal. The connections were there, and I could feel them, but the power that ran through me felt like it was too much. My mind felt like a balloon on the point of bursting. But I pushed through it, and felt out the connections in my mind. I knew the shape of the truck, the presence of Rob and Madison beside me, and… just the edge of the van ahead of us. We were still too far away for me to do anything.
I released the crystal, and a searing pain erupted in my temples. “Ah!” I groaned, swaying in my seat. Madison grabbed my shoulders.
“Careful,” she warned. “If you pull too hard on mine, the after-sickness will come again. The threat’s always there when using a new crystal.”
“I’ll try,” I told her unsteadily. It took a moment for me to regain my bearings. “Rob, we need to get closer,” I urged.
“You have a plan?” he asked.
“Sort of.” I had Madison’s crystal, but I didn’t know what I could do with it. Liz was in the other vehicle. I couldn’t do anything drastic for fear of hurting her.
Rob nodded, unquestioning, and stepped on the gas. The old truck lurched forward once more. The engine started vibrating violently under the strain. I gripped the bottom of my seat to avoid being thrown about on the uneven road. But we were getting closer. We were gaining on the van.
A few seconds later, the engine started to sputter. On and off. On and off. It felt like we were driving over a series of speed bumps.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
Rob glanced down at the dashboard. “Damn,” he cursed. “The gas is gone!”
I exhaled. It was now or never. Even though I could see the van in the distance, I still didn’t think we were close enough. But this was my only chance.
I tightened my grip on the crystal and opened my mind to it. Power surged through my arm, up into my body, to my mind, nearly overwhelming me. The blue light erupted from the crystal once again. I could see everything around us clearly; the darkness was no more. But I didn’t need to see to know my surroundings. The road was flat, as was the land all around it.
I reached out through the connections, stretched until I could just feel the tip of the other van. I strained, pulling more power from the crystal. Heat started to build up behind my temples.
In a flash, the van revealed itself to me, like an object surfacing from underwater. I closed my eyes and concentrated. I could feel the energy contained within the vehicle, the momentum given to it by its speed. I could sense the frame of the van, the entire makeup of the engine, and – most importantly – I could sense both Liz and her kidnapper inside.
I knew the makeup of the vehicle, but I cursed that I didn’t know enough about cars to do anything with it. Every part of the engine was clear in my mind, but I had no idea how it all fit together; no idea if shifting one thing would lead to it stalling or to a violent explosion. I couldn’t do anything dramatic, not with Liz still in the car.
An idea struck me. The tires! Once, back home, a tire of the car in front of us exploded on the road. The driver lost control, the car spun around and around, but eventually came to a stop. Luckily there was no other traffic to collide with. More importantly, I distinctly remembered the car not rolling over, not threatening the life of the driver. If I could increase the pressure in the tires of the van, it could make them explode. As long as there were no obstacles on the road, no oncoming traffic, nothing on the sides, it was as good an option as I would get. The van would come to a grinding halt, and we could get Liz.
It was risky, yes, but it was the only chance I had. As long as the van didn’t roll over Liz would be fine—in theory. There was the threat of it backfiring, of course, but if I were in Liz’s position I’d want somebody to do the exact same thing for me.
That made my decision. I felt through the connections in my mind, jumped through all of them until I was focused on the tiny atoms of gas inside the tires. They were jolting around wildly, their energy contributing to the pressure that kept the tires inflated. I couldn’t take that energy away, but I could add to it. I strained, focusing on increasing the speed with which the atoms danced. The pressure behind my eyelids flared uncontrollably. Pain erupted in my head, but it was pain in somebody else’s body. My entire focus, my whole presence, was on the air in those tires.
I strained, throwing more and more energy at the tires. But catching those atoms enough to increase their energy was… difficult. Much harder than manipulating the formation of rock as I had in the caves, or making the ground swell up in the forest. I assumed it was because I was using Madison’s crystal.
I kept going, though, adding more and more pressure to the tires. I added more, straining as much as I could, as much as I dared. There was no sure way to know if it’d be enough until I released the crystal. But if I miscalculated, I did not think I’d get a second chance. I put more and more there, drawing energy from the crystal and sending it into the tires. More. More. More!
And… there.
I released the crystal. The light retracted into my palm. Four bursting noises like fireworks tore through the night. Reality sped back up, and the van in front of us started to skid. The driver lost control, swerving left and right wildly before finally coming to a jarring stop.
“Did you see that?” Rob exclaimed. Madison squeezed my hand knowingly. Our own car continued to lurch, and suddenly the engine gave out. Rob cursed, hit the brake, and we came to a lunging stop. Our headlights were off, but the moon in the night sky gave enough light to see.
The van was about twenty feet away. Its backlights were still on, but it was no longer moving. We started to get out of the truck. Suddenly, the van door slammed open. A man in a white lab coat jumped out. My heart froze. He had a gun in one hand. In the other, he held Liz by the scruff of her neck.
“Whoever you are, don’t come any closer!” he warned, waving the gun in front of Liz’s face. Liz’s hair was in disarray, and I could see a glistening trail of tears running down her cheeks.
I was most surprised to see the kidnapper. Aside from the gun, he did not look at all threatening. His hair was a bit wild, maybe, but he had an extremely skinny build. He reminded me of a lab tech. He did not look at all like the attacker from Traven Island, or like the two bulky men in black from my room. But he had Liz, and that made it just as bad.
“Let her go,” Rob demanded in his deepest voice.
The man barked a laugh. But it was tinged with uncertainty. “Do you see this?” he asked, waving the gun in the air. “Stay back, and your friend might still live!”
I felt Rob tense beside me. “Wait,” I hissed.
“I can take him,” Rob said. “If I’m fast enough…”
“Just wait!” I whispered. “Don’t you see he has a gun? I think I can make him drop it.”
“What? How?”
I ignored the question. All I needed was Liz to look at me. I needed her assurance. She had to know it was me. Tension filled the air. It felt like an old Western faceoff. Suddenly, Liz looked up. Her eyes shone in the night. She may have been distraught before, but she was alert now. When she saw me, her eyes widened. After a split-second, she gave the nod. That was all I needed.
