The Supernormal Legacy_Book 2_Root

by LeeAnn McLennan

  Contents

  The Supernormal Legacy:

  Copyright © 2018 by LeeAnn McLennan

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Special Thanks

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: Daughter of Magic by Karen Eisenbrey

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing:Corporate High School by Benjamin Gorman

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: Shadow Girl by Kate Ristau

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: The Staff of Fire and Bone by Mikko Azul

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: Going Green by Heather S. Ransom

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: SuperGuy by Kurt Clopton

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: Wrestling Demons by Jason Brick

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: The Sum of Our Gods by Benjamin Gorman

  Also Available from Not a Pipe Publishing: The Digital Storm by Benjamin Gorman

  The Supernormal Legacy:

  Book 11

  Root

  by

  LeeAnn McLennan

  Copyright © 2018 by LeeAnn McLennan

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by

  Not a Pipe Publishing, Independence, Oregon.

  www.NotAPipePublishing.com

  Kindle Edition

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948120-16-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To all of the lovely, wonderful folks

  who bought and enjoyed Dormant. Each and every one of you make me smile with joy!

  To my husband, Andy McLennan,

  for answering questions like

  “So, do you think a mind reader can read a cat’s mind?” with a straight face.

  I couldn’t do this without you, old bear.

  Chapter 1

  I jerked awake, fully alert, jumping out of bed and calling flames to my hands before I was completely aware of my surroundings. Crouching down, I searched for the menace that had interrupted my sleep.

  I was all alone in my bedroom, except for my cat Boo Radley glaring at me from atop a bookshelf. Peaceful, early Saturday morning light filtered through the window shades, utterly failing to highlight any danger. I slowly came out of my defensive posture but kept my hands alight with fire.

  Something was wrong. My head felt jittery as if I’d had too much Red Bull, even though, like all supernormals, I now avoided energy drinks. We risked becoming too hyped up and losing control over our abilities. The last time I’d had an energy drink was two months ago on Christmas Eve when I’d set fire to the Christmas tree after downing two in quick succession. Luckily, my intense training with Uncle Dan paid off when I quickly called on my ability to extinguish fires. Only a few branches of the tree were actually charred. Dad merely sighed and turned the burned part of the tree to the wall. He also threw out any caffeinated drinks – except coffee. I’d probably have to burn down the house before he gave up his morning cup of coffee.

  Boo growled softly, his tail lashing while his amber eyes fixated on the flames covering my hands. I stayed still, listening and smelling for danger since I didn’t see anything hostile in the room. Nothing pinged, unless the smell of Dad’s Saturday morning waffles disguised a threat. I could hear him clattering around in the kitchen downstairs, but the noises sounded like standard weekend kitchen racket..

  I let the flames in my hands die out and drew a deep breath, my heart still racing. Despite all the signs of a calm morning, I was still convinced something was wrong. I sat down on my bed, trying to think, but a murmuring voice distracted me. I twisted around, searching for the source of the voice.

  Boo crept out from his hiding spot and jumped on the bed, nudging my hand with his nose. I rubbed his head absently. A glance at the clock made me wince – I’d only gotten three hours of sleep. There’d been an unusual amount of supernormal beast activity in Portland over the past two weeks. Typically, only a few monsters a month invaded the area, but there’d been at least seven hunts in the past fourteen days. Beast hunting used to be exciting, but now it was becoming an unattractive chore, especially since I had to balance it with high school. Rolling my shoulders, sore from using my sword so frequently, I hoped for a slow hunting weekend.

  The murmuring voice swelled in volume, and I realized the soft, insistent noise in my head was what had awakened me so abruptly. Closing my eyes, I focused, trying to make out any words in the garbled sounds. Boo meowed in protest when I jerked, my hand accidently pulling his fur. I barely noticed his leap from the bed because I was too busy gasping as flashes of images, like little Instagrams, fragments of ripped up photos, joined the whispering voice in a quick onslaught on my senses.

  I clenched my fist on my pillow when the words and images synchronized into a brief, coherent burst before dissipating altogether. All that remained was the afterimage of a blond woman, dressed in a prison jumpsuit, sitting down directly in my line of sight, leaning forward intently and saying, “Emma, we must go soon. They won’t wait much longer before acting.” Her cold, calculating expression left me with a feeling of restless uneasiness, making me want to shove her away, get her out of my head.

  The smell of smoke broke into my jumbled thoughts. My pillow had caught fire under my hand. I sighed as I reached out and pulled the flames back into my hand. Not good – setting something on fire without realizing it – I’d trained hard over the past six months to govern my abilities, energy drinks notwithstanding.

  “Olivia!” Dad banged on my bedroom door. “Are you okay? I smell smoke.”

  “Yeah.” I stuffed the ruined pillow in the trash can and walked over to open my door. Boo ran past me into the hall, disappearing down the stairs – either scared or hungry. “Sorry, I had a…” I stopped short of saying the word vision. “...bad dream.”

  Calling what I’d seen a dream made more sense than explaining that I’d seen a vision. Supernormals didn’t see visions. It just didn’t happen. We could develop a varied range of abilities, but, for some reason, psychic powers weren’t one of them. The truth was, if a supernormal did see visions, it was a sign of insanity. I thrust away that awful thought. Anyway, I already had my supernormal significant ability of fire and ice on top of my basic package powers of super speed, smell, sight, strength, and hearing. No one ever got an additional significant ability after the first one manifested.

  Dad frowned, looking concerned. “Must have been some nightmare.” He glanced at the pillow stinking up my trash can. “Do you need to talk about it with me or your mom’s family?”

  Mom’s family, the Brighthalls, were the supernormal side of my gene pool. I’d only just reconnected with them after seven
years of rejecting my heritage after Mom died while trying to stop a supernormal terrorist group. It had been almost six months since I’d re-upped my supernormal club membership – months full of discovering more about my own supernormal abilities, reacquainting myself with Mom’s family, and learning how to handle massive betrayal by my cousin Emma. As hard as it had been for me to come back to my supernormal life at age fourteen after years of playing at being normal, it had been so much harder to find out Emma, once my closest friend, was a member of the supervillain group called Mountain of Ash – the supernormals responsible for my mom’s death. I knew I would never forget confronting Emma as she attempted to blow up the Hawthorne Bridge, tried to kill Uncle Alex, and murdered my cousin Hugh.

  My eye caught the date on my Yoga Cats calendar.

  March 1st. Emma’s birthday.

  My subconscious sure picked a crazy way to remind me. Nice job, mind. Why it decided to think of her in prison instead of a happy memory was incomprehensible to me.

  “Olivia?” Dad prompted me.

  “Oh, no, I’m good.” Emma’s birthday triggered a weird image of her life as it was now – yeah, that was it.

  Despite my assurances that I’d imagined it, I couldn’t forget the image of the woman. Her face disturbed me, but I couldn’t figure out why because there was nothing alarming about it. The woman’s prison-pale skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair combined to create a face that was attractive but forgettable. She could have been any of the moms who volunteered at my high school. But, there was something off about her appearance, as if the bland face was a mask that didn’t fit quite right.

  This sense of disquiet followed me through a delicious breakfast of waffles with whipped cream and bananas.

  It stayed with me as I dressed and then sprinted through misty March weather to the warehouse where the Brighthalls trained for their supernormal duties as protectors. Supernormals had as many job opportunities as normals, just with a different slant. Instead of normal police officers hunting normal criminals, my family was a sort of supernormal police force who hunted both beasts and bad supernormals.

  The plain gray exterior of the warehouse was as uninteresting as the rest of the buildings surrounding it in Portland’s eastside industrial district. No one would ever guess that inside the large doors resided Portland’s supernormal training facility, run by my mother’s siblings, Aunt Kate, Uncle Dan, and Uncle Alex, collectively referred to by my cousins as “the ‘rents.”

  We were down a ‘rent right now – Uncle Alex was attending a two-week silent meditation retreat. His significant ability was empathic healing, and he occasionally needed time away from people to regain his balance. It was an impressive ability, giving him the power to heal people by briefly absorbing their ailment before his body healed at a super-fast rate. I often felt it was too bad he couldn’t use his ability to heal mental illness – perhaps he could have stopped Emma from going all dark side.

  Zoe and Kevin were already sparring in the boxing ring when I arrived. Uncle Dan nodded at me and pointed at the treadmill. He didn’t say much these days; discovering that his daughter joined Mountain of Ash shook his world, sending him into a dark funk for days. When he came out of it, he was all about training and not much else. These days he built our training sessions as if he was preparing for battle, driving us to train harder and harder. Aunt Kate intervened when she felt he’d crossed the line into crazy town, like the time Uncle Dan wanted to drop us off in Death Valley with no supplies and make us live out there for three days. I’d never seen Aunt Kate so mad. Not only was Death Valley dangerous because of its weather, it was also a safe haven for various supernormal beasts. Uncle Dan lightened up for a week or so after that, but he was starting to ramp up the intensity again. I’d noticed him looking up locations in Antarctica last week.

  Uncle Dan’s meek, normal wife, Aunt Susannah, had overcome her awe of the supernormal world and left him, returning to her family in Chicago. She said she wanted to mourn her daughter’s disgrace alone. I felt sorry for Aunt Susannah; because she was a normal, she couldn’t even visit Emma in Ley Prison.

  On my way to the treadmill, I saw Aunt Kate bent over her ubiquitous iPad in the classroom area. Taller than my mother had been, she kept her dark brown hair cut short and her face unlined. The light caught new glints of grey threading along her temples, evidence of the strain she’d been in for the past several months.

  I hesitated. Should I tell Aunt Kate about the bizarre vision, dream, or whatever I’d seen that morning? I imagined the conversation; Hey, Aunt Kate, I saw a woman’s face in my head this morning. It kind of weirded me out. No, I don’t know who she is.

  I didn’t see that conversation going anywhere good.

  “Olivia?” Aunt Kate looked at me curiously. “Do you need something?” She sat back in her chair, running her hands over her face. When she lowered her hands, I saw she had dark circles under her eyes.

  I didn’t want to worry her with something that was probably inconsequential. “No, I’m good.” I gave her a weak smile. The vision thingy was nothing, just me being tired and overstimulated by all the hunting and training.

  “Okay.” She bent back over the iPad, frowning at whatever was on the screen.

  I continued to the treadmill, setting the program to a mountain run equal to climbing Mount Hood. Stepping onto the treadmill put me in the line of sight of the large tank that used to be full of water. It was gone now, more evidence of Hugh’s death. One of Hugh’s last training challenges was to learn to hold his breath underwater for extended periods. The tank was where he practiced daily. Uncle Dan emptied it one night and never spoke about it again, but the hollow tank was a daily reminder of my cousin. Like I needed one.

  I was just finding my stride when Aunt Kate shouted, “Kids, get over here. Harold called. We’ve got another hunt.” She waved us over while talking rapidly into a headset.

  I jumped off the treadmill and darted over to the classroom area, catching the towel Zoe tossed me. I mopped sweat off my face while Aunt Kate pulled up a map on one of the large monitors. Her fingers moved swiftly on the keyboard as she entered an address. Kevin wandered over, keeping his arms crossed and his expression blank, as it had been since his brother died.

  “Harold found two of his friends dead outside this empty building on Highway 30,” Aunt Kate informed us, referring to a local homeless man who knew about supernormals. “He thinks whatever killed them is inside the building. He says it looks like a supernormal beast kill. One of his friends’ bodies was stripped to the bone, and the other friend is mangled but still intact.” Aunt Kate frowned. “He’s been tracking monsters again, even though I told him not to.” She shook her head. “Anyway, no time to waste. You’re going to have to run it. Driving would be too slow.”

  Zoe tossed me my sword and jacket while Kevin grabbed his sword. I strapped on the sword with hasty movements, worrying about Harold’s safety. I’d run into him a few times since meeting him last fall, usually when he was helping Uncle Alex heal the homeless folks around town.

  “Come on, Olivia,” Zoe snapped. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 2

  By the time Zoe, Kevin, and I were a block away from the warehouse, we were running faster than most normal eyes could see. Even so, we all went into Glamour mode, which Kevin called supernormal stealth mode. Normals couldn’t quite focus on us as we moved around them.

  I loved running fast, letting go of the restraints we usually followed to appear normal. Twisting and dodging around cyclists, people, and cars while they looked past me, unaware as I ran past, somehow made me feel connected to the city around me.

  Zoe steered us away from the routes leading across the bridges frequented by cyclists and pedestrians, opting to take us over the I-405 Fremont Bridge. I knew her well enough to know that she figured the highway traffic would be moving so quickly we’d be even harder to spot. When we got to the west side of the Willamette River, we leapt off the freeway, landing on the ground a c
ouple of hundred feet below.

  We veered away from the roads, running through empty parking lots. The slap of my sword in its scabbard against my back was reassuring. Aunt Kate’s worry for Harold infected me, making me fear for his safety. More than usual.

  “This way.” Zoe pointed after a brief glance at the directions on her phone. She led us down a long roadway.

  When I’d rejoined the Brighthall family last fall, we’d rotated hunting leadership between Zoe’s brother Lange, Kevin’s brother Hugh, Zoe, and Emma. Now Lange was interning at the supernormal beast habitat in Death Valley, Hugh was dead at the hands of Emma, and Emma was in Ley Prison for murder, so Zoe was always the hunt leader. I kept hoping Uncle Dan would decide I was ready to lead, but he said I didn’t have enough experience. If we continued hunting almost every day, however, I’d soon have plenty of experience.

  No one talked about why Kevin didn’t lead the hunts. Since his brother’s death, Kevin was too reckless and too grim to be a good leader. He took chances, putting himself in danger without even considering the consequences.

  Buildings, some occupied and some abandoned, flashed past us. We headed away from Highway 30 towards a long, dilapidated office next to an old grain elevator tucked under the overhanging edge of Forest Park. Parts of the walls were ivy-covered and a couple of trucks rusted in the parking lot.

  I scanned the lot for Harold, worried he’d ignored Aunt Kate and gone inside to find whatever killed his friends.

  “Harold,” Zoe hissed, obviously as concerned as I was.

  “Here.” A human-sized shadow detached from the larger shadow cast by the crumbling eighteen-wheeler. “About time.”

  “It takes time to run from the warehouse, even for us,” Zoe answered, her tone apologetic. Harold was one of the few normals she respected.

  Harold looked grim, his hair disheveled and his jacket torn. He was normally so tidy – especially for man without a steady home. I’d only ever seen him calm and collected while helping “his folks,” as he called Portland’s homeless. Even at our first encounter, when I’d stopped a thief from stealing his money, Harold was the embodiment of a gentleman. As one of the few normals who knew about supernormals, Harold only asked that we use our abilities to keep supernormal beasts away from the vulnerable homeless population.