Claimed: Faction 3: The Isa Fae Collection

by Heather Hambel Curley

  Her face paled considerably, her lower lip quivering. In an instant, her face crumpled and several tears trickled down her cheeks. “Wren. God, Wren, they’re all gone.”

  “Huh?”

  “The people. They’re all gone.”

  I stared at her. There was something in her posture that made me think she was telling the truth. This wasn’t some kind of cry for attention., she was trembling. “Soleil—“

  “I can’t feel anyone. I only feel three souls here, in the entire town, and that’s me, you, and Domino. This place is abandoned.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense, but that’s the reality. We need to go. Now.”

  I looked at the safe again and sighed, exhaling the air from my lungs until my chest ached. We were going to be in so much trouble. I could hear it now: go pick your switch, Wren. You pick it, cut it, and bring it to me. Fuck. I was too old for this shit; this wasn’t supposed to keep happening. But, I knew it would this time. This was my job.

  And I’d failed.

  I dragged my fingers through my hair again, nervously tugging on the strands until it hurt. It was time to go. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”

  She followed me out of the store and, as the door fell shut behind us, she hesitated on the front stoop. “Do you hear that?”

  I stopped walking. There was nothing, not even sounds coming from Domino.

  The horse and wagon were gone.

  “Who the fuck took my—“ As I spoke, the air seemed to hang still for a split second. It then felt like it was vibrating around me, the atoms and smells and flavors around my body merging and connecting with my body. I felt it before I heard it.

  Air with the force of a runaway train slammed against my body, throwing me backwards against the front door of Renner’s shop. After a beat, I heard a whoosh; the air around us was alive. It was followed by a rumble; a shudder that felt like it was going to rip the building off its foundation.

  The blast was so strong, I couldn’t move. I was pinned against the building.

  And I heard my sister screaming.

  Five

  Energy slammed against my chest, a force so strong that it felt like it was enough to break my sternum and collarbones. Dust and dirt billowed up into the air, flying around us in all directions. Grit pelted my flesh; it burned my eyes. This felt like the end, all over again; a different end this time. Maybe we were already dead, just doomed to repeat death over and over again.

  This wasn’t wind; this was some kind of shockwave that hurt. My body felt like it was on fire. I tried to suck in a breath of air but I choked and sputtered on the inhalation; it was like the air around me was poison. But how? My brain stumbled over all the panic and puzzlement. I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t see or move. My ears could only take in the roar of the air rushing around us and the pitiful scream of Soleil.

  We were going to die. If I didn’t do something—now—whatever this force was would kill us.

  I forced myself to focus; to rein my brain in and figure out something. Bending my wrist into the most uncomfortable angle I could, I focused all of my energy to my hand. It burned; as the feeling grew, I flicked my eyes to my opposite arm. My power, my energy, cut through the shockwave around me and bit into my arm like an electrical shock.

  It was enough, though: my arm moved up to my face. I strained my fingers upward and clawed at my face until I caught the leather strap of my goggles. It was like working against a magnet, forcing my body to move when everything against me was pinning me still. I fought against it, I tore against the feeling until I yanked the goggles down.

  My eyes immediately watered. Pain shot through my corneas and I blinked, trying to fight my way through the dust and dirt seared into the tender flesh of my eyeballs. It didn’t matter; I couldn’t see anything anyway. I was pinned against the door; the billowing road dust pelted us from every direction. Where was Soleil? Where was Domino; at this rate, I couldn’t even tell if there was anything left in the world beyond the two feet I could adequately see.

  An explosion ripped through Distant’s main street. My body flew to one side, the inertia stopped only as I smacked into a support pillar, and the winds picked up again. This time, afternoon sun was blotted out, almost to the point of darkness. The entire building shifted.

  I heard Soleil shriek; I blindly reached out, my arm whipping through the air like a windsock. My hand brushed against silky hair—I dug my fingers in.

  She screamed louder.

  “Do something!” I screamed, I used every particle of oxygen in my body to shoot the words through the dust and wind. She was a fool, a child. If I had her powers, I’d have saved us by now; I’d have given us a chance.

  The support beam shifted against my body. Or maybe my body was being pulled in another direction; I couldn’t tell. I circled my arm around the wooden pillar and held on, trying to make every fiber of my being cling to the structure. There had to be something. There had to be a way to get inside, to get out of this shockwave. This poison wind. Whatever it was; my brain still couldn’t get around it.

  I stretched my fingers around the pillar and focused on the area I thought was taken up by Soleil’s body. I curled them inward: nothing. Stretching out further, I jammed my finger against the wooden beam to the point it bit into my flesh. My fingers crooked inward—

  —and this time, she slammed into me, her body nearly knocking me away from the pillar. Her arms were jerking around and she grabbed onto me, digging her face against my stomach. I was yelling at her, screaming into the wind for her to do something, to use some kind of power to stop the window or open the ground up around us to suck us into safety. She couldn’t hear me, she didn’t hear me—or she was too terrified to move.

  We were fucked. Tears welled up in my eyes, trickling against the inside of my goggles. We’d lived through the Division, we lived through starvation and forced reclusiveness, only to die in a rotted town. I wrenched my hand away from Soleil and wrapped it around the pillar, focusing my power on my arms, as if it would lock them in place. Maybe it would. I braced myself and waited…waited for whatever end to come.

  And then the wind stopped.

  My body slumped down against the pillar; I felt all the energy leave me. I stared up at the cloud clotted sky, the planks of the roof overhang peeled back from the structure. My legs were like jelly. It was debatable if I was going to be able to stand on them, but I was more curious if I was actually still alive and able to stand.

  I let my head drift to the side, lolling slowly towards my shoulder. Soleil had rolled onto her back, her hands pressed to her temples and was sobbing. It made her elbows fan out like bird wings—like she was ready to take flight from all this in one wet, weepy, burst.

  Typical.

  “What the fuck was that?” The words rattled in my throat. I felt like my nostrils and mouth were caked with dust; if I coughed, it would probably come out in a puff.

  “It’s why the town is empty, they knew it was coming.” She struggled into a sitting position and ran her nose across the back of her arm. “A shockwave?”

  “Someone set off a bomb? I find that hard to believe.”

  “I read about it in school, back before the Division. And…that’s how it started. Remember?” She leaned down and offered me her hand.

  I ignore it, standing on my own. I was a little wobbly but, it seemed, no worse for the wear. “I’d rather forget.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t. People who forget are doomed to repeat the past. The Fall of Man started when they flung nuclear bombs at each other. It hit the east, remember—“

  “Fine, Soleil, I remember; I remember the death and the carnage and the blood running in the streets. People obliterated and nothing left but the scorch marks where their shadows were. Then the sickness.” I abruptly stopped talking, my teeth clamped down on the inside of my cheek. “Radiation. Shit, Soleil, if it was a bomb and if there’s radiation…then, this is it. We are
n’t going anywhere.”

  The panic tightening across my chest loosened a bit, flipping right over to rage. This was my father’s doing. He’d sent us here—and today, of all the days on a calendar he could have picked, it was the day Distant was nearly wiped off the earth. He’d sent us here to die.

  My sister’s eyes fluttered closed and she held her hands out in front of her, palms up. Her lips parted and pressed together as if she was mumbling something, or at least mouthing words. I didn’t hear anything but, after a beat, her brow relaxed and her face turned serene. “No radiation…not yet anyway. I can feel it in the trees.”

  Whatever. I turned away and walked away from Renner’s. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Wait!” Christ, she’d been screaming wait at me since we were kids. “We lost Domino; how are we going to get back?”

  “You talk to trees, Soleil. Figure it out.” The horse was gone. We hadn’t lost her; she knew what coming and she’d run—of the three souls in Distant, she’d been the smartest. God, if only there’d been some kind of warning.

  But there had been. I slammed my hand against a car, the hood up and the engine covered in dust, as I passed, then kicked the rear tire for good measure. They’d all been warned—that’s why they were gone. Vaughn knew. It was all there: the dishes still on the table, food neatly plated. The radio had been on and they were listening….and then they knew. They knew the bomb was coming and they left.

  “God damn it.” I buried my face against my hands and leaned against the car, resting my weight against the rear door. “They all knew. And if they knew, sure as hell Pa knew.”

  “No.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I spun away from the car and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Don’t you think it’s a bit convenient that Pa sent us here—today—in time for a bomb to hit?”

  She stared at me, her lips pursed in a thin line. “He didn’t know.”

  “Soleil, why—“ I stopped talking and shoved her backwards. This was the eternal fight; she defended everything Pa did and somehow, managed to get the blame placed on me. “Forget it. Just forget it. We have to get back to camp.”

  I stormed off down the sidewalk, checking behind me for oncoming traffic out of pathetic habit, and saw my sister’s figure. She was still standing beside the broken down car. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Why didn’t Mom stop him?”

  I stopped walking and stared at her. “What? Mom?”

  “She has second sight, so she had to have seen this. She should have stopped him.” She sank down onto the ground, pressing her face to her inner arms and slowly rocking back and forth. “Why did they want us to die?”

  I groaned. There wasn’t time for this; of all the times for her to want a beautiful family moment. I grabbed her wrists and yanked her up. “We have to go, Soleil. It happened and it’s over. Maybe Mom saw it; maybe she didn’t. Her second sight has been worthless lately and you know that.”

  “That doesn’t explain anything.”

  “Well, I don’t have time to think about it. We have to get out of here,” I looked around the main street, “before they realize they missed.”

  She lunged forward and pulled on my arm. “Wait. The car—can you fix it?”

  “It depends on what’s wrong. I can’t make a miracle happen if it’s a piece of shit. Someone left it here for a reason and, honestly, if you were fleeing a city about to be bombed, wouldn’t you want to try and take a car?”

  “I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, remember that when this doesn’t work.” The driver’s side door was locked—someone had been nifty thrifty before they left—so I walked into the street and grabbed a brick.

  Soleil’s widened. “What are you doing?”

  “Working fast.” I threw the brick against the window. It shattered, the glass shards raining into the interior of the car. Maybe I hadn’t thought that out so well. Too late now.

  Ducking into the car, I flipped down the visor—no keys—and swept my hand underneath the seat. Nothing. Great, so much for saving time. “They took their keys with them.”

  “You can still turn it on, right?”

  I pressed my fingertips to my temple, briefly shutting my eyes. My head was pounding like someone was tightening a voice around me. “Maybe. If it’s old enough, yeah, but most cars made right before the Division had all kinds of locking mechanisms and alarms.”

  When I opened my eyes, Soleil was glaring at me. She had one had on her hip, the other out like she’d just motioned dramatically at me. “Can’t you at least try?”

  I hated her. Even in the middle of a disaster, nothing could flame my rage quite like my sister. I didn’t bother to respond, since that could leave the door open too wide for more questions, and sank down on my knees, gingerly crawling into the well in front of the driver’s seat.

  The car was a manual shift—I could tell by the clutch—so it was likely old enough to not having all the modern age locks and security devices. I yanked on the plastic cover on the steering wheel column. It loosened; I pulled again, this time, using one hand to aim my power against the panel.

  It snapped free.

  Bundles of wires sagged down from the column. I flipped through them, tugging down the three main sections I’d need to work through. One went to the right side of the car, probably lights and indicators, and the other went to the left. It was probably for the windshield wipers. That left one clump of wires. They led up the center of the steering column: straight to the battery, the starter, and the ignition.

  Jackpot.

  “Great, so, as long as I don’t electrocute myself, we’re totally set.” I groaned. I wasn’t entirely sure which wire was which. After stripping down around an inch or so of the insulation away, I looked at the three wires. The red was most likely the battery. The other two I wasn’t so sure: brown was probably the ignition and yellow was probably the starter, but as Vaughn taught me, that wasn’t always a hard and fast rule.

  There wasn’t a plethora of other options, though. Guess work would have to do.

  I twisted the battery wire together and then, holding it by the insulation, I coaxed the wire I assumed was the ignition upward with my power. My head throbbed from the intensity of my concentration. With a circular motion of my index finger, I used the energy to twist the two wires together.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dash lights blink on.

  Soleil squealed, clapping her hands together. “You did it!”

  “I did part of it.” I held the combined wires with one hand, and reached my opposite palm to the last remaining wire. “I have to spark it.”

  “What?”

  “The starter. It doesn’t just turn on at this point; you have to spark it.” I cocked my head towards the driver’s seat. “Get that glass out of here.”

  “I don’t have a broom.”

  I shut my eyes, gritting my teeth together for almost a solid minute. “Do you just stand there and think up ways to piss me off? With your power, Soleil, honestly. be useful for once.”

  “I’m not like you, Wren.” She spit the words out like they were sour. “I can’t just move things around with my mind.”

  She was right. She could do everything else, but psychokinesis was my realm. My gift.

  I resisted the urge to snort. Gift, right. While my little sister could conjure up a field of daisies and poppies with happy, skipping rabbits, I could move things with my mind. I could also seduce men and hot wire cars, but that wasn’t a gift. That was a hard won talent.

  Setting the wire down, I deflected energy to the driver’s seat. The shards and chunks of glass hovered in the air for a moment, then flung themselves out of the car and harmlessly to the ground.

  I flicked my hand back to the wire and, urging it up, tapped it against the twisted bundle.

  Nothing.

  I tapped it again. This time, the car roared to life. I scrambled up into the driver’s seat and revved the engine. We weren’t losing this now. The en
gine wasn’t exactly purring—a high pitched squeal meant a belt or two was loose, but it ran.

  “Will it get us home?” Soleil was already walking to the passenger’s side door. “Where did you learn how to do that.”

  I leaned over to unlocked the door for her. “I don’t know. And Vaughn.”

  “You learned this from a farm hand?”

  “He taught me a lot of stuff.” I dropped my hand to my thigh, unhooking a screwdriver from my leather bag. Jamming it into the metal ignition switch, I pulled the handle back until I heard something inside snap. Perfect—now we had a working steering wheel. “He was incredible.”

  “He never would have married you.”

  I jammed the screwdriver back into my bag. “Thank you for that, Soleil. That’s a lovely boost of confidence for me.”

  I mentally tried to turn her off. It was a skill I’d learned as soon as she started talking instead of cooing and babbling. She could talk for days, probably, and the only way to keep my sanity growing up was to tune her out. Ignoring whatever she had to say, I tapped my finger against the dashboard gages. “There’s not a lot of gas in it, but that’s expected. It might not get us all the way home…it’ll be close.”

  She was silent as I coaxed the car forward, bunny hopping from first gear and into second, and calmly folded her hands on her lap. She was silent and that was good. That’s what I wanted.

  The route we’d taken on the wagon wasn’t accessible by car, so I’d have to take the long way around. It had been a long time since I’d taken the highways that spider-webbed out from Distant. Lack of gasoline aside, we’d have to walk part of the way to the lodge anyway, since Pa insisted it be tucked further back than anyone would want to walk.

  Or, at least, so he said.

  My irritated thoughts of my father were interrupted by Soleil’s soft voice. “We could find a gas station.”