Wild Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Morphing it up, for sure,” Milo said.

  Dana nodded as Rochelle managed to rouse herself long enough to whisk both needles out of their skin and even pull off the tourniquets before carelessly tossing it all onto the glass tabletop. She then leaned back into the couch cushions and shut her eyes.

  It was one of the most disturbing things I’d ever seen. Those two women—just fine moments ago—their eyes now heavy lidded and bodies now limp.

  “Just say no to drugs,” Cal offered.

  But there was nothing funny about this.

  Milo interjected, “We could go inside there now. Try to get into the closet while Ro and Ashley are…indisposed.”

  “No.” Dana’s response was fast and adamant. “They’re not completely unconscious. And even if they were, there’s no guarantee that one of them won’t suddenly joker. Nobody’s going into that house right now.”

  Milo’s frustration was painfully evident. “So we’re just going to leave Jilly in there with two ticking time bombs.”

  Garrett was the color of sour milk. I was feeling pretty freaked out myself. This was a lot to just walk into.

  “We don’t know for sure that Jilly is in there,” Dana reminded Milo. “We’re not going to put anyone else in danger for a maybe that leans heavily toward maybe-not. It’s safer to wait ’til Rochelle leaves.”

  “We might be running out of time,” Milo countered.

  “We’ll go in there tonight,” Dana insisted. She turned to the rest of us, after deciding that since the Rochelle and Ashley Show now consisted of them lying on the couch like skinny, blond, beached whales, she no longer needed to keep watching. “Guys. Miles is right about not wasting time. We don’t need to sit around and do nothing this afternoon. In fact”—she looked at me—“we’ll use these next coupla hours to talk to Morgan.”

  I laughed. Really? Just like that? Snap our fingers and talk to Morgan—who didn’t want to be found.

  Dana continued without skipping a beat. “Clearly Cal and Sky couldn’t get the job done. But I will. I should’ve been there in the first place. Mind-controlled that stupid John Morningstar into taking us to see Morgan.”

  “John Morningstar,” Garrett scoffed. “Sounds like a porn name.”

  Dana ignored him. “Sky,” she said instead. “You met Morningstar. That means you can home in on him now.”

  And that was how we were going to find Morgan even though she didn’t want to be found. I looked at Cal, who shrugged. “It’s true. We can track him.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “You,” he said.

  And once again, everyone was looking at me.

  It was always weird to perform under pressure, like doing a circus trick for an audience. I attempted to focus and search for the little flicker of awareness that was John Morningstar. He was out there, somewhere, and I should’ve been able to feel him…but I got nothing. I shook my head. “I don’t know—”

  “You can do it,” Dana insisted.

  I looked over at Milo, who was gazing back at me. His eyes were warm, for once. He surprised me by leaning across the couch and holding out his hand.

  I didn’t take it right away, and he smiled ruefully. “I know I’m just a normie, but maybe I can help.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” I said again.

  “I know.” He motioned for me to take his hand, so I did and our connection—warm, familiar, wonderful—clicked on. Lord, I’d missed this.

  I have, too, he told me.

  But I could feel the mental walls he’d put up—larger and sturdier than his usual barriers—and I got a strong sense that he was bracing himself. As if part of him expected me to take some kind of weird telepathic run at those walls, to get over them and see what was on the other side—to see exactly what Milo was hiding.

  I wouldn’t, I thought at him and of course he also picked up my hurt that he would think I would just go rifling through his mental underwear drawer, uninvited.

  It’s not you, it’s me, he told me, adding quickly, FOR me, I mean. He knew I didn’t understand, so he tried again with, I’m trying to protect you, Sky. You don’t need my chaos right now. You need to focus.

  I realized as I gazed back at him that I could construct my own walls—boundaries—to keep him from my chaos, too. It wasn’t all that hard to do, although don’t ask me how I did it. I just…wanted it to happen, so it did.

  I felt Milo’s sigh of frustration, even as I successfully hid my own burst of grief. As our relationship progressed, I’d thought we’d move closer, but this was a solid step apart.

  Just for now, Milo promised, and I wanted to believe him, so I left all my doubts on the non-Milo side of my own sturdy mental wall. But believe me, they were there, stewing around plenty.

  Focus, Milo told me. Can you feel John Morningstar? Can you home in on him?

  Sure enough, with Milo’s help, I realized that I could feel Morningstar. It wasn’t a huge pull—not the same insistent feeling when I’d led us to Alabama to rescue Sasha. But that college boy we’d met up at the CoffeeBoy in Palm River was definitely present. I could feel him in the back of my brain, like little pieces of pixie dust floating around like cosmic breadcrumbs. If I followed them, we’d find John Morningstar.

  “Okay,” I said aloud. “Yeah, I got this.”

  Milo squeezed my hand before letting go.

  “Heh. Heh-heh.” Garrett’s obnoxious little snicker sliced through the air. “Superhero girls.”

  Dana cut the super-douche off with a “Yeah, yeah. The superhero girls need to go on a mission now. You get to stay here and monitor the two crazies. Call Cal’s phone if there’s any change. Any change. As in, if they move at all.”

  As far as assignments went, it was kind of lame. And Garrett knew it. But he nodded begrudgingly. “Fine,” he said. “Calvin, you sure your parents aren’t coming home?”

  “Mom’s on a business trip in Atlanta,” Cal reported, “and Dad’s got a project deadline. If he shows up, it’ll be to grab a clean shirt and head back to the office. Just turn off the TV and tell him that I ran out to get pizza.”

  Dana clapped her hands. “Bathroom up, gang. We might be in the car awhile.”

  Cal rolled off to do just that, as Milo and I both scrambled to our feet.

  “Although, let’s just hope Morningstar didn’t take a trip to Alabama,” Dana continued. “I’d really like to stay at least semi-local here.”

  Out of habit, I reached for Milo’s hand, and this time he only took a half a heartbeat to brace himself and reinforce his walls before he intertwined his fingers with mine.

  Ready? he asked.

  Let’s do this.

  And, for that moment, despite the mental walls we’d both erected, I almost felt as if I had my boyfriend back again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Guys?” Milo’s voice was low but urgent. “Sky. Heads up.”

  The dogs had come out of nowhere, their growls ominous as they peered out of tunnels, from behind trash piles, and around the corners of abandoned midway booths. I’d been leading the way, but I now stopped and counted six sets of ferocious eyes locked on us. Dana was right behind me, with Calvin rolling beside her. Milo had our backs, trailing a few steps behind. But we now all froze.

  “Whoa, they’re pit bulls,” Calvin said. “Big ones. Five of ’em.”

  “Six,” I corrected him.

  “Don’t look directly at them,” Dana said in a calm, almost too-quiet voice. “They’ll read that as aggressive.”

  Currently, I was reading their growling as aggressive, oh and also? Pit bulls. They didn’t need to growl—their simple existence here was enough to intimidate the crap out of me.

  The four of us were on foot—or in chair in Cal’s case—with the car at least a quarter of a mile away in the empty and overgrown parking lot of this
abandoned amusement park called Adventure City.

  The park was a sad, forgotten skeleton of what had once been home to an elaborate thrill-ride and water-play area. Looping slides, towering roller coasters, fun houses, and other garishly painted buildings jutted up toward the sky, creating castle-like silhouettes against the overcast horizon.

  But my G-T homing skills had led us here, and we’d gone through a hole in the fence not far from the entrance arch. There, we’d passed a huge stone clown holding a sign that swung drunkenly on large, rusted chains, the lettering promising us that this place was AWWWWWESOME! Underneath were admission prices, the numbers crossed out repeatedly, the rates decreasing again and again until, eventually, it had been almost entirely free to pay Adventure City a visit.

  Apparently, whoever had run this awwwwwesome place had been hurting pretty bad when it finally closed a few years ago.

  Of course, packs of bloodthirsty canines running freely in the park probably hadn’t helped business. Call me crazy.

  There’d been no “Beware of Dogs” signs anywhere—at least not that I’d seen. That, along with that hole in the fence, hinted strongly that these dogs were feral and not part of anyone’s security setup. Except they seemed oddly well-groomed—plus this pack was definitely all pit bulls. Surely some mixed breeding would’ve occurred by now if they’d been left completely on their own.

  The other weird thing was that Dana’s heightened G-T senses hadn’t warned us about the dogs before this current face-to-furry-face (times six).

  In fact, ever since Cal had attempted to high-five the stone clown as he’d rolled past, Dana had been grumbling about how she could feel absolutely zero signs of life in here. So why were we here anyway?

  I was carrying my biggest plastic water blaster, and I held it now at the ready. I had enough water to hit one dog—and maybe slow it down at best. But against six? We were in trouble. I scanned the area because my homing abilities were still pulling at me—and telling me that wherever John Morningstar was, he was close.

  “I’m good with dogs,” Calvin said now, as we stood there in the middle of what used to be the park’s midway, in an aisle between decaying booths of games of skill and chance where for five dollars you could win a toy animal stuffed with sawdust that would fall apart within minutes of bringing it home. “You know, I used to have a pit bull.”

  That news surprised me, but I didn’t move to look at him, afraid my doing so would bring those dogs charging toward us. So far, since we’d frozen, they’d kept their distance. “You did?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Lucy. She, um, died in the accident.”

  The accident, back when Cal was nine, when the gas line deteriorated and exploded, basically razing his house while he was home alone. Or at least I’d thought he’d been home alone. But apparently he’d had a pit bull named Lucy.

  “Pit bulls are misunderstood,” Dana said, at the same time that Cal said, “Pit bulls are vilified—if they’re trained right, they’re extremely sweet.”

  Dana added, “Miles, why don’t you adios yourself while we deal with this.”

  “I’m not leaving Sky,” Milo said, his voice tight.

  I was confused. “Wait, what?”

  “His stepfather had a Doberman,” Dana explained. “Big dogs are kinda Milo’s kryptonite.”

  If I’d had the time, I would’ve been irked. This was another of Milo’s secrets—something that I didn’t know but Dana apparently did.

  “I’m seriously good with dogs,” Calvin volunteered. “Why don’t you guys just all back slowly away, while I—”

  Dana cut him off. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

  One of the pit bulls stepped slowly out from behind a cotton-candy stand, its rippling muscles spread taut beneath its short, tan-colored hair. If not for the insistent growl, I might have mistaken the animal for a horse; it was that big.

  “Hey, girl,” Cal said. “Who’s a good doggy?”

  At the sound of Cal’s voice, the dog leaned its head down, bared its teeth, and growled louder.

  This was bad. This was worse than bad.

  In my head, I ran through our options, the first one being run. My G-T skills included superhuman speed. I had no doubt that, push come to shove, I could outrun this pack of dogs. But my friends sure as hell couldn’t.

  And Dana was already on top of option two, which was to get out of range of those powerful jaws and teeth. “Milo, Sky,” she ordered, “get up on top of the Whac-A-Mole booth.”

  It was the sturdier-looking of the game booths that were on either side of us.

  “Come on, Sky.”

  I turned to see Milo waiting to boost me up. He’d interlocked his fingers so I could step into them, which I did, hooking my blaster over my shoulder as I climbed the rotting wood and scrambled up to the booth’s crumbling roof.

  “Careful,” I warned as my foot went through the shingles. I was able to scrunch my way over to make room for him, but I could feel the entire structure groaning under the weight as Milo joined me up there. Again, I scanned the area—I could see a bit farther from the added height, but John Morningstar wasn’t lurking anywhere nearby. I did, however, see a seventh dog, even larger and lighter colored than the others, hanging back a bit. The dog seemed to look at me, but then slunk back farther into the shadows.

  “There are seven of ’em,” I announced. “Maybe even more that we can’t see.”

  Meanwhile, on the ground, the six smaller giant dogs were slowly moving closer to Cal and Dana.

  “Cal,” Dana said, her eyes on the advancing pack, “I’m gonna lift you up onto the roof of that horse-race booth, ’kay?”

  The rotting booth for a game where up to ten customers could use industrial-strength water guns to hit a little target and push their “horses” forward in a competitive race was directly across the midway from Milo and me. From this height, I could see the roof.

  “It’s not gonna hold the weight of his chair,” I warned Dana.

  “Dana, you get up there,” Cal said evenly. “I’m telling you, I’m good with dogs—”

  “I don’t think anyone is six dogs good,” Dana countered.

  “Seven,” I said.

  “Go,” Cal said.

  “Sorry, I’m not leaving you,” Dana told Cal, sounding anything but sorry. But then she turned to speak directly to the dog that was the closest. “I don’t want to hurt you, Roverette, but I will if I have to. So just…run along home and take your friends with you.”

  I could tell from the way Dana was squinting that she was attempting to mind-control the pack leader, but the dog’s stance only got more aggressive.

  “Oh, shit,” Dana said, and I knew she was out of ideas as the dog sprang toward her and Calvin, barking wildly.

  All hell broke loose as the other dogs followed her lead.

  Everything happened fast after that.

  Dana was yelling, but I couldn’t hear a word of it, because the barking and snarling was so loud.

  I did the only thing I could do—I fired my blaster and propelled the water toward the pack leader. But if the equivalent of a small bucket of water in the face slowed the dog down, I didn’t see it. And now, of course, I was unarmed.

  Cal, meanwhile, had zoomed in front of Dana as if intending to use himself and his wheelchair as a human shield. Dana in turn used her G-T TK to fling his chair up and into the air, where it landed several feet back, away from the approaching pack.

  Then the lead dog flew back through the air, yelping in surprise. But Dana set the animal down with as much care as she’d given Calvin, and it immediately charged forward again.

  “Damn it, I don’t want to hurt you!” she was shouting at the dog.

  Cal also immediately gunned it back toward Dana. “Get up on the freaking roof!” he was shouting, and Dana finally did just that, clambering
up onto the horse-race booth, which creaked and groaned beneath her.

  But she was true to her promise and didn’t leave Calvin behind. She lifted him up with her telekinesis, and instead of setting him down, she held him there, hovering in midair, a good ten feet above the snapping and snarling dogs.

  “Now what?” Calvin shouted what we were all thinking.

  “I can outrun them,” I shouted. “I’ll get them to follow me and lead them away from you—”

  “No.” Milo said it at the same time as Dana, but he added, “If you trip and fall, they’ll tear you to pieces. You have no idea what a single dog can do—let alone six of them.”

  But I could tell from the look in Milo’s eyes that he did know—that he’d witnessed it, firsthand. God.

  Dana, meanwhile, was getting a workout. She put Calvin down about a hundred yards away, and his landing was bumpier than usual. The dogs raced toward him, and she picked him back up just in time and brought him flying back toward us.

  “She can’t keep that up forever,” Milo said, and I nodded, looking around for a way to help. I needed water. A lot of water.

  I reached out with my mind, seeking it, feeling for it. I sensed a lot of it nearby, but something was holding it back, keeping it from me.

  On the ground, the remains of the puddle I’d left by firing my blaster at the pack leader shimmered and lifted up into the air—like droplets in zero gravity. But there was even less of it now—most had already evaporated, leaving me with maybe a half a cup. Yay?

  “Skylar, WTF?” Dana shouted, and I realized that the booth she was on top of was shaking—because all ten of the water guns attached to the front counter were straining at the ends of their hoses! Water! From those hoses! Of course!

  But I couldn’t get the triggers to move to release the water—unlike my water guns, they must’ve been locked—and Dana was using all of her power to keep Calvin hovering away from the dog pack. I realized I’d have to go down there and do it by hand.

  “Milo!” I shouted, and even though he was still carefully not touching me, I grabbed his arm. And there it was again—Milo’s giant emotional wall. But I had no time to be mad or frustrated or sad. I just boxed up everything I was feeling as I stuck to business and telepathically told him my plan, even as I shouted to Dana, “Put Cal down again as far away as you can!”