I shrug. “Yeah.”
Frowning, she says, “Well, clearly it went all right, but you really can get in trouble for driving around without a permit. I’d be happy to take you down to the MVD so you can take the written test if you need me to.”
“Mom!” Noah complains. Ketchup grimaces.
I ignore them both. “Thanks. I might take you up on that since no one else seems willing to help me out.” Turning my back on both guys, I get to why I’m here. “I need to ask you something else, though, not about driving.”
Setting down the dishtowel she’s holding, she nods. “I thought you might. Why don’t we sit down in the living room? The little ones are all outside in the backyard, so we should have a few moments of quiet to talk.” She pauses and considers Ketchup and Noah. “Actually, why don’t you two go check on them. Ketchup, Amelia has been missing you lately. I’m sure she’d appreciate you pushing her on the swing.”
Watching Ketchup’s cheeks flush makes me forget I’m annoyed with him for a moment. Amelia is in love with my boyfriend, but she’s five—almost six—and freaking adorable, so I don’t mind too much. Noah’s mom and I hold back a laugh as both guys shuffle off to the backyard. Serves them right.
“Now,” Noah’s mom says, “I’m guessing you came here wanting to know where we stand.”
“That’s one of the questions I need answered,” I say honestly.
Considering the fact that this won’t be a simple discussion, she nods. “Van, we left the main body of the Eroi for a reason. Leaving completely isn’t something you can do easily, but when they tried to recruit Kennedy to train as a Richiamos scout, at age seven, we couldn’t stay any longer. My husband and I were both born to this life, and met during reconnaissance training. What we were trained to do was just part of our existence at first, but as we got older and saw more we didn’t understand, the questions began. Then we had our own children and had to face the idea of putting them through everything we’d dealt with, it wasn’t as easy to simply accept what we’d been told all our lives.”
“So you, what? Applied for a transfer or something?”
She smiles a sad kind of smile. “Basically. We petitioned to become Watchers and were assigned to your family. We didn’t discuss our reasons with anyone, and hoped we could just fade away into a more normal life. Noah remembers living at the compound and some of the training he received there, but the rest of our children were either toddlers or born here, and only have a vague idea about our former lives.”
“But what happens when the Eroi come looking for them, for more soldiers?” I ask.
Her body goes taut, and it’s the first time I realize how well defined the muscles of her arms are. She doesn’t have to answer for me to guess that fighting is nothing new to her, but she responds anyway. “We won’t allow them to take our children. Kennedy and Noah were already on their radar and expected to contribute to the assignment. We couldn’t exclude them without attracting attention. Noah, unfortunately, has always been very…talented. He didn’t like what we were doing, but he made it his personal cause to convince our handler and those above him that you were safe and should be left alone. Any influence he gained for his skills, he used to protect you.”
Looking away, I stare at my scuffed up shoes. I don’t doubt what she’s saying. Much of my trust in Noah has been restored, but the sting of his lies and betrayal hasn’t dulled enough for it not to affect me.
“I hope you know you can count on us for help if you need anything,” she says. “We have safeguards in place to protect the younger children, if need be.”
Surprised by her offer, I turn to face her. “Why?”
Noah’s mom purses her lips for a moment before answering. “This may not make sense, given that you were raised with very little family and community, but growing up Eroi was like growing up in a bubble. There was no other option than to buy in and fall in line. We didn’t know anything else.” She frowns, picking her words carefully.
“It wasn’t until my husband and I were allowed to leave the community for field ops and training that we began to realize there was another way to live. The more we saw, the more we both began to wonder if our way was the right one,” she says. “Hunting down Richiamos made sense in a theoretical setting. Watching a child be ripped from their parents and basically brainwashed…that was something else entirely. Living the life of an Eroi felt wrong after a while. Protecting you and your siblings has never felt anything but right.”
It’s a lot to take in, and I don’t rush myself to process and respond. Noah’s mom waits patiently. When I take a deep breath and exhale slowly, she watches me. “Parts of the Godling training does feel right. It resonates with me, and it…helps. Being at the compound, though, it felt wrong, like you said. What David wanted from me wasn’t right, but how do I balance that with how much the training has helped me and how much I enjoy doing it?”
Leaning back into the couch cushion, she nods slowly. “Training conditions your body and mind. It prepares you, hones your skills, and builds strength and endurance. It pushes you to excel. Training, on its own, doesn’t dictate what you do with what you learn. You can learn the skills necessary to be a soulless assassin for a cruel man who places no value on human life. Or, you can take those same skills and put them to use protecting a group of frightened children and teens who’ve been pulled out of their bubble and forced to face questions they didn’t even know they had. Turning your back on David doesn’t have to mean turning your back on everything he taught you. If Noah had done that, he wouldn’t have been able to protect you as well as he has.”
“What do you mean?” I ask slowly.
She smiled. “The first three years of Noah’s Jeet Kune Do training were conducted at the Eroi compound. As young as he was when we left, it was his choice to continue. What started as a program meant to turn him into a soldier became a path for protecting others. You, specifically.”
“But, we didn’t even meet until middle school, and only at a distance even then. We’d never actually spoken. He was five when you guys moved here. How much could he have really understood at that age? Maybe he just liked kicking and hitting stuff,” I argue.
Chuckling, she shrugs. “I don’t blame you for doubting me but, sometime, ask Noah yourself. He was forced to hide a lot of himself from you before. Things are different now, and he’ll answer you honestly if you ask.”
Not sure what he could possibly say that would convince me a five-year-old held some kind of deep understanding of good and evil and made such a profound choice with full understanding, I shake my head. I have more important things to talk about than the cognitive maturity of kindergarteners.
“There’s something else I need to ask you about.”
Her eyebrows rise expectantly. “I’ll answer if I can.”
“What do you know about the mark?” I ask.
For a moment, she doesn’t seem to know what I’m talking about, then her mouth falls down into a frown. “The mark that’s supposed to identify the Gift? I never really put much stock in that. It was more fairytale than anything else. Why do you ask?”
Tugging a crumpled piece of paper out of my jeans pocket, I hand it to her. I don’t need to see it to know every word as her gaze passes over them. I have them all memorized.
The rogue Godling, Vanessa Roth, poses the greatest problem. Not only do she and her siblings show the mark, reconnaissance has shown that her skills are rapidly improving.
She reads it a second time. Then frowns. When she turns to me, she seems confused. “They think the mark is your hair? It’s the only thing you and your siblings have in common, but that seems so…mundane.”
Shrugging, I say, “That’s kind of what I thought, too, but one of the Godlings, she said something similar, and mentioned how there was something special about mine, but she couldn’t figure out what it was until she met and Zander. Then, she said our hair was connected to our power, or something, and mine is more…advanced or, uh…�
� My voice trails off as I listen to how ridiculous I sound.
Noah’s mom is nodding, though. “It seems too obvious for the mark to be your hair, but that makes a lot of sense.”
“It does?”
She nods, an excited smile making the slight wrinkles at the corners of her mouth stand out a little more. “Whatever makes Godlings, Godlings, it’s genetic. The mark would be a manifestation of that, but why white hair? How would color correlate to power?”
“It’s not a color,” I say. When Noah’s mom cocks her head to the side in question, I explain what I mean. “Our hair has no color and is incapable of holding color. Trust me, I’ve tried dying it. It’s like how albinos don’t have those cells that make pigment. We don’t either, but just in our hair, which is weird, and totally stumped the geneticists who’ve studied us.”
“Okay,” she says slowly, “maybe the lack of color doesn’t have anything to with the power, per se, but simply serves as a marker for something else. Something else you lack? Or something that replaced what you lack?”
I consider that for a moment. It’s an interesting concept. Our genes have been studied like crazy. Some university probably has their students looking at our blood, and whatever else they collected from us, analyzing it until their eyeballs want to fall out, looking for something they will most likely never find. Whatever makes our hair white doesn’t mesh with science. Neither does our power.
“We have way more power than anyone else,” I say. “Like a freaky amount of power. We’re super behind on learning how to use it, but all three of us accessed our power early, have full blown gifts, and can do things no other Godling can. Me more than even my brothers. So, I can buy that our excess of power somehow shorted out our hair color or whatever, but why would we all have the mark if only one person is supposed to be the Gift?”
Noah’s mom frowns. “If I remember correctly, the mark wasn’t supposed to identify the Gift, but the lineage the Gift would be born into. Members of the family were meant to undergo trials to prove who the Gift truly was. What those trials were…” She sighs. “I’m sorry, Van, it’s been so long, and I never actually believed in any of that, I’m having trouble remembering. There might be…”
Standing abruptly, she walks back into the kitchen and returns with her cell phone, already tapping at the screen to pull up a number. She doesn’t bother to explain who she’s calling, pacing as she waits for whoever it is to answer. Her mouth splits into an easy grin when the call is finally picked up. “Hi, Memaw. How are you doing today?”
She nods several times as she listens, responding a few minutes later to say she’s glad she was feeling better. “Yes,” she says, “I did have another reason for calling. I have a quick question for you. One of the kids is interested in the story behind the Mark of the Gift, and I can’t remember what the trials were supposed to be. Do you remember?”
I sit forward in anticipation when she seems to get a “yes” for an answer, but end up waiting through several, “ohs,” “uh huhs,” “sures,” and “how interestings,” before I think the call might be on the verge of wrapping up. Noah’s mom sounds so pleased as she listens, but when she ends the call and turns to face me, disappointment pulls at her features.
“I’m sorry, Van, but I’m not sure how helpful this is going to be.” She sits down next to me and sets her phone aside. “Like I said, it was always more fairytale than fact. I’m really surprised someone high up in the organization would be taking the story this seriously, but…” She shrugs.
“I’d still like to know,” I tell her. I’ve heard more than one ridiculously unrealistic story in the last several months that turned out to be way more truth than I was prepared for, so I’m not going to count anything out at this point.
Noah’s mom nods. “Of course.” She settles in, like she really is preparing to tell a fable to one of her kids. “The three trials were: to converse with the source of life without speaking, to see the truth of all power and guide it toward goodness, and to share inner light with those worthy of harnessing its potential.” Grimacing at the end of the list, she holds up her hands.
My shoulders fall. “That sounds like one of Gollum’s riddles.”
“I know,” she says with a sigh, “I’m sorry.”
Dropping my head against the back of the couch, I can’t hold in my disappointment. “How could grown adults be putting stock in something so childish? The source of life? What does that even mean? The truth of all power? Inner light?”
“Maybe it is a riddle of some kind?” she offers with little enthusiasm.
Sulking, I don’t bother responding. I have put up with a lot on insanely nonsensical stuff over the course of my life. Super healing, fine. Hulk-like strength, sure. Not being human, okay. Feeding on pain and suffering, why not? Prove you’re some kind of prophesied savior by acting out an idiotic riddle on sharing and being kind to everyone…no. Just, no. There is no way the Eroi intend to turn me into a saint or power whisperer or motivational speaker. That’s nuts. Absolutely ridiculous.
“Well, thanks for trying, I guess.”
Noah’s mom frowns. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more helpful, but I can look into it a little more. Maybe I’ll find something less Dora the Explorer.”
“Thanks.” Sighing, I drag myself back up to sitting. “I guess I better go find Ketchup and start arguing about who gets to drive home.”
She chuckles. “How about you let the legal driver take the wheel so no one gets a ticket, and Monday I’ll take you to get your permit, okay?”
Even though I know it’s for the best, I still pout. “Fine.”
Chapter Thirteen: A Difficult Puzzle
(Oscar)
“He’s going to be a Godling, isn’t he?” Emily asks, more statement than true question. “His hair, it’s just like yours. What Van said about the mark…”
My mind feels unusually still as my son sleeps on my chest. “Yes,” I whisper, “at least, I’m almost sure of it. Not entirely. Difficult to be entirely sure of anything these days.”
Emily nods, then brushes at Joshua’s fuzzy hair as she lies next to me. “Can you see his hunger at all?”
Shaking my head, I close my eyes and focus on the feel of my son’s breaths pulsing against my chest. “He’s too young. Two years, maybe three. Maybe less, depending on his strength. Van was very young. Very strong. But now that we’re together, more children isn’t as much of a concern.”
“More children?” Emily asks, her voice sounding different than before, for some reason.
“My parents, neither were Godlings. Not my lying grandmother, either. One kid was dangerous. In case I was a Godling. They planned to have Zander before I was old enough to exhibit hunger. Van…I think she was planned as well, but I’m not sure. I’m almost sure. Not necessary, though. I’m glad they had her. Growing up would have been much harder if they hadn’t.”
Emily comes up on one elbow, the movement opening my eyes so I can watch her. I like seeing her. Not the frown she’s wearing. Why is she frowning?
“You just said a lot,” she says. “Can I ask you about some of it?”
“Ask anything. I hold nothing back from you. Ever.”
Her sweet smile makes my thoughts focus even more. “I know.” She kisses my forehead softly. “Why is having only one child dangerous? I remember before you left you tried to tell me how Godlings get sick if they’re alone, but it didn’t make a lot of sense at the time.”
“Sick, yes,” I say, “but not sick. They die. It’s not something that passes. We have to get rid of the energy we consume. It poisons us, I think. Except for when we’re with our own kind. That stops the poison. An antidote?”
“How do you get rid of it, the power?”
Shrugging, I freeze after the movement, worried it might disturb Joshua, but he’s still sleeping. “Being near another Godling diffuses the negative impact, sharing the damage somehow, I think. No one is sure, but it works,” I tell her. “To get rid of the actual power
…. Fighting. Mostly. Hunting, for Zander, anyway. Exercise. Pushing yourself to the limit. Dancing, for Van. Anything to burn it off.”
Switching from stroking our son’s wispy hair, Emily’s fingers begin running through mine. All the stray thoughts still refusing to fall into line come to her call. The missing pieces feel very small as her skin moves against mine. A humming noise whispers through the room, and it takes me several long seconds to realize I am the one making it.
“I’m not sure I understand why you guys have to consume pain, but doing so hurts you if you don’t get rid of it fast enough. What’s the point?” Emily asks.
“The point.” Her fingers swirl through my hair. It’s becoming difficult to think, but not like before. “The point. Who knows? I’ve tried asking. Nobody. Not David, Isolde, Godling, Eroi, Grandma, nobody. They pretend to know. They lie, instead. Nobody knows.”
Huffing, Emily seems upset by my answer. “But, there has to be a point to all of this, right? You gain power from all the pain you consume, and then waste it? That makes no sense.”
“Only you make sense,” I say, a smile slipping onto my mouth in a way that almost feels foreign to me. But it’s Emily. She’s right. Everything is right when she’s with me.
She chuckles softly. “I think there’s a point to the hunger-born power. I think that’s what the Gift has to figure out, and when that happens, I think it will finally make people understand and stop fighting.”
“Let Van worry about it.” Reaching across my body, I touch her cheek, hesitating before leaning up to kiss her. She sighs when I do. Happy.
Her fingers running through my hair move to my chest, absently circling. “We can’t just leave it to Van. She needs help.”
“I know.”
“What do you think the Gift is, or will do?”
I consider her question, taking advantage of my mind being calm enough to process such a thought so completely. “I think the Gift will answer Van’s question of what she is. Demon or Angel. Killer or Savior. It will open her up and pour out what’s inside. Not literally, I hope. No, that wouldn’t be good. She has visions of the future. Maybe something like that? Show everyone what will happen to us if we keep fighting?” I shrug. It sounds too unrealistic. Like many other ideas I’ve had over the years.
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