Crystal Fire

by Jordan Dane

  His uncle smiled and let go. “With an undertaking like this, it’s natural to have doubts. But you must have faith in the human spirit, Gabriel. These children could surprise you.” He forced a halfhearted smile. “They have you, and Kendra, Lucas and Rafael will do their part. You’ll have your army when you need it. Now get some rest. Tomorrow will, most assuredly, be brighter.”

  Uncle Reginald had said what he’d come to say. Gabe had no doubt that the man sensed the troubles between him and Lucas and wanted to reassure him. As he watched his uncle go, he wanted to believe the man was right.

  “Have I told you how much I like having you here, Gabriel? You and your new friends have brought life and purpose to this old house...and me. Besides, how else would I have learned about the carnal exploits of swine?” Without turning around, his uncle called out to him as he got to the door, as if he’d read his thoughts.

  I love you too. Gabe shot him a message without opening his mouth.

  His uncle raised his hand and waved goodbye. He’d gotten his message, loud and clear. They both had.

  Haven Hill Treatment Facility

  Ward 8

  Caila paced the floor of her cell, wringing her hands until her fingers ached. Randy Newman singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” looped in her head to punish her. The maddening sweet lyrics about friendship with its upbeat rhythm tortured and mocked her with how wrong it felt. She was no one’s friend.

  Dr. Fiona hadn’t brought Zack yet, and the longer it took, the more she believed the woman had lied to her. If she had, there wasn’t anything Caila could do about it. She went to the far corner of her room and sank to the floor, rocking and waiting, until she heard rolling wheels in the distance. From the sounds of it, the gurney would come by her room.

  Zack.

  Caila leaped to her feet and ran for the door as Randy Newman mercifully stopped singing. Being too short, she had to jump to catch a glimpse out the wire-mesh window of her cell. When she saw Dr. Fiona with two orderlies wheeling something down the hall outside her door, she knew they had Zack. Caila backed away from the doorway and cringed in the corner. She couldn’t breathe and sickening bile rose hot from her belly.

  Would Zack blame her for what happened to him? How could he not, when she blamed herself? She heard the card key swipe the lock and the click and buzzer of her door as it opened.

  When they rolled Zack in, Caila gasped and collapsed to her knees. Her eyes filled with tears. “What...? No, please...No.”

  She repeated those words over and over as she stared at a large glass jar that held a human brain.

  “Zack didn’t have much to offer, I’m afraid. For the sake of science, I kept the best part of him,” the doctor said. “Oliver is quite another story.”

  Caila rocked with her arms wrapped around her. She couldn’t take her eyes off the jar that held Zack’s brain. The doctor’s words from earlier replayed through her head.

  “We’d been tracking you,” she’d told her. “Sugarcoat it all you want, honey. You wiped out his free will and got yourself a white knight in the process.”

  My fault, Zack. I’m so sorry. She couldn’t stop thinking it until the doctor tortured her more.

  “Oliver is a fine male specimen. Truthfully, he’s pleasing on a woman’s eye, but to a scientist like me, what’s inside his skull can be more fascinating. If he outlives his purpose, he’ll earn a spot next to Zack.” Dr. Fiona stroked the glass where Zack’s brain floated in cloudy liquid. “What happens to Oliver will be up to you.”

  “He could...already be dead.” Caila’s throat wedged tight and her eyes burned. She didn’t want to cry in front of this terrible woman, but she couldn’t stop.

  “That’s true, but you don’t know that, do you?” The woman didn’t try to hide her disdain. The games were over.

  “In case you missed it, you don’t have an option,” the doctor said. “You may not care what happens to you, but you got Oliver into this. Shouldn’t you do everything you can to keep him breathing?”

  Caila had been tricked. The cruelty of this woman had stunned her, but that was the very reason she had to do as she said. She couldn’t help Zack anymore. All she had left was Oliver.

  “Whatever you want, just don’t kill Oliver.”

  Stewart Estate

  Hours later—after midnight

  Raphael Santana paced the grassy hillside behind the Stewart Estate—dressed only in jeans and boots—too restless to kneel by the grave he visited every night. A cool mountain breeze swept through his dark hair. It should have chilled the bare skin of his chest, but the fire in his belly kept him stoked with heat.

  He still felt the remnants of having Kendra in his mind, and she must’ve stirred up his memories of Benny, the family he never got to keep. A growing emptiness filled him until he couldn’t get the kid from his head—and he didn’t want to.

  When his boot struck a rock, he picked it up and tossed it in his hands as he stared into the gloom. His heart searched this world and beyond for the spirit of a small boy who had left an ache in his soul, a gaping wound no one else could ever fill. With the moon hording its light—nothing but a razor slash across a pitch-black sky—the dark became a part of him. After living in the tunnels beneath the streets of downtown L.A., Rafe craved the hush of shadows.

  For him there was darkness even in daylight now.

  “Haunt me, Benny. Torture me. I deserve it.”

  He flung the rock into the dark and heard it hit trees. The move made his side hurt where he’d been shot, the same fight where Benny had been killed.

  “You should be the one standing here, not me.”

  Rafe collapsed to his knees at the grave. He winced when he hit the ground and clutched his side. The others had left trinkets for Benny—a worn teddy bear, flowers and a toy that spun in the wind. Every time he came to the grave, he had to face what had happened to Benny. He wanted to remember the kid smiling and funny, but that would let him off a hook he deserved.

  “I miss you, little man.”

  He ran his fingers over the name etched on the headstone—Benny Santana. He had given Benny his own last name and had it carved into stone forever. The kid didn’t deserve to be buried with the family name he got stuck with, so Rafe claimed Benny as the little brother he wished he had.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Tears cooled his cheeks. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  He glared over his shoulder and stared up at the mansion that had become his new home by default after the Believers had destroyed the tunnels. Kendra Walker and the others, like him, had come to live here. It would only be a matter of time before Kendra would ask if she could start her garden. That would mean she wanted to stay. Kendra was an Indigo healer. Tending her plants kept her more connected to the voices in her head. She heard them best through her garden. She needed that garden and her voices, but she could do without him, especially the way he was now.

  This place wasn’t home. Not to him. It looked more like a fancy castle, built on the peak of a mountain. He’d grown up on the streets of L.A., carrying everything he owned on his back.

  “I don’t fit,” he whispered. “Not here. Not anywhere.”

  Rafe got to his feet and took off his black leather “forever” bracelet—the one that used to mean something—and left it on Benny’s headstone. He stared down at the grave marker and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. They’d buried Benny in the ground, but Rafe didn’t feel him here. He could think of only one place that the kid’s spirit might linger—the place where he died—the only real home that either of them had known.

  If he had a shot at “seeing” Benny again, he had to risk going back to L.A.—and stealing Rayne’s Harley.

  Downtown L.A.

  4:30 a.m.

  In the early morning hours, Rafe sped down the interstates on Rayne’s
Harley with his body pummeled by the wind and his blood fueled with a rush of adrenaline. He’d hot-wired her ride, stolen cash from Kendra, ripped off a bottle of liquor from Gabriel’s uncle and when he didn’t take a helmet, he wondered if he didn’t have a death wish. All he had on were the clothes on his back—jeans, boots, a T-shirt and a worn jacket.

  Everything he had done felt like a one-way trip. He hadn’t given any thought to what he’d do next. He kicked the bike into high gear with the wind lashing his hair. Speed. He couldn’t get enough.

  When he got to one of the tunnel entrances—the location where the Believers had staged their attack—he downshifted and hit the throttle to rev the Harley. If the bastards had staked the place out to see if anyone would come back, he had made an unmistakable announcement of his return.

  Rafe killed the engine and hid the bike in the bushes, near a thick stand of trees. He headed into the darkness of the tunnels, cracking the seal on the bottle of liquor and downing a long pull. It burned his throat, only the start of the abuse he deserved. He felt the alcohol burn into his body and kindle a fire in his chest. His old man only drank the cheap stuff. He had no idea what he’d ripped off from the estate. Probably some fancy shit. As long as it got the job done, the kind didn’t matter.

  Drunk or sober, he knew the danger of returning to the very place where the church freaks had hunted them and destroyed everything. He didn’t care. If they came after him again and wanted a fight, he’d give them one, but as he wandered into the tunnels alone, he felt numb. He didn’t recognize the place. The Believers had come in afterward and burned everything. Kendra’s garden—the beautiful oasis she had created that had fed and healed them—had been uprooted, doused with gasoline and torched.

  Their home had been wiped out as if they’d never existed.

  He sucked down more liquor and wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve as he stumbled over the old railroad track that led to the Cyclops, the old locomotive that had been abandoned in the tunnels. The metal beast loomed in the darkness as he rounded a corner, half-buried in old brick rubble caused by the explosion that had killed Benny. Its bared teeth of steel hovered over the rail and its blinded eye—a broken headlight—still breathed a fierce life into the old engine that was covered in dust and debris.

  Benny loved the steel beast. Rafe stood in front of the dead train and looked up at its busted eye as he drank—remembering one of the last times he saw the boy.

  “Yo, Benny. It’s me. I got something for ya.”

  “For me?” A little head had popped out from the engine compartment. “What is it?”

  “I got you something to bring you luck. Your own piece of magic.”

  Not nearly drunk enough to forget, Rafe shut his eyes tight and willed the kid to come to him. Little man had played on every inch of the old rusted train. His fingerprints were still on every gauge and lever, the only mark of Benny left behind. Rafe couldn’t settle for that.

  “No one’s ever gotten me anything before,” the kid had said in a shaky voice. With little fingers, he stroked the leather bracelet with Kendra’s infinity charm on it.

  Rafe pictured Benny sitting on the train’s step with that crooked grin on his face and his eyes welling with tears. The kid had broken his heart that day, but he didn’t know how much worse he could feel until he held Benny’s dead body in his arms days later. Rafe stared at the spot he’d tied the bracelet to the kid’s wrist, and his eyes burned with tears.

  “Screw infinity!” he yelled to no one. “What happened...t-to forever, Kendra?”

  He didn’t feel Benny, not as he sensed the dead. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t worth sticking around for. When he took another gulp, he felt dizzy and sick. Nothing killed the hurt. He grabbed the bottle and smashed it against the train. A shard of glass cut his cheek, but he didn’t care.

  He’d come to the tunnels—a place where he could be closer to Benny—but that place didn’t exist anymore. Rafe stumbled back the way he’d come, not knowing where he would go. He only knew it wasn’t here.

  When he hit the night air, he wanted to puke. Bile churned in his stomach, mixed with the burn of alcohol. He wouldn’t outrun his booze slug to the brain. Heading for the Harley, he half decided to sleep it off, but when an arm grabbed his neck from behind, he couldn’t breathe. He kicked and fought to break free, but every move forced a crushing weight against his chest. His stomach felt on fire. The bullet wound had ripped open.

  Rafe couldn’t see faces in the dark. Men grappled with his arms and legs until he couldn’t move. He sucked air into his lungs in fitful gasps. When he saw stars, his body gave out.

  “Boss man said you’d be the weak link, kid.”

  Rafael felt the sharp sting of a needle stab his neck. It spread a burn under his skin and his arms went limp.

  “Guess he got that right.”

  The gruff voice was the last thing Rafe heard before he drifted into a deeper darkness than he’d ever seen. Only one thing gave him comfort.

  He felt Benny with him.

  8

  Stewart Estate

  Morning

  Kendra woke the next morning with two sets of blue eyes staring down at her. The blond Effin brothers had blank expressions, as if they were vying for the top contenders in a staring contest. She wouldn’t have been startled if the identical faces had been her only wake-up call.

  Inside her head they talked at once—and not quietly.

  Wake up. We can’t find Rafael.

  He’s gone. His bed is...

  One tugged at her arm. The other got louder.

  Yeah, he never slept in it.

  We gotta find him.

  “He could be...with Benny.”

  Kendra said the words aloud to calm the boys. She didn’t want them to panic the others before she checked it out. The twins had grown closer to Rafe. They’d been Benny’s best friends, even though they never spoke a word to him. Benny had done all the talking.

  “I’m sure he’s okay. Where else would he go? We’re in the middle of nowhere. Let me get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  The twins nodded, looking like out-of-sync bobble-head dolls, and left her alone to change. She had a big fancy room, but some of the kids slept in her bed and on the floor. They’d been used to that in the tunnels, but bad dreams and the strangeness of a new peculiar place had drawn them together. She folded back the bedcovers, careful not to wake Bethany and Sarah. After she got a fresh change of clothes from a dresser, she stepped over Little G and Domino to get to the bathroom.

  Rafael. Where are you?

  She stared at her face in the bathroom mirror and sent out a message to him. When he didn’t answer her, she closed her eyes to focus and extend her reach. She let her mind and instincts search for him, but when she came up empty, it frightened her. The last time she’d lost Rafael like this, she thought he was dead.

  The twins are in a panic. They’re scared. Hell, I’m scared. Please...talk to me.

  When she didn’t hear or feel him, she rushed to change. Something was wrong. Really wrong.

  An hour later

  “He’s not at Benny’s grave. I checked.” Kendra rushed in from the courtyard with her face flushed. “I can’t feel him anywhere.”

  Gabriel had a roomful of eyes on him. They’d gathered in the great room near the cold hearth. Their voices filled his head with questions and their darkest thoughts for Rafael. They looked to him for answers now and he had none. He stared across the room at the colossal circus billboards that adorned the walls, a faded display of the former life he’d lived with his mother, Kathryn, when they were fugitives hiding out with a traveling circus. The act they’d perfected—Hellboy and the Third Eye—Letters from the Dead—seemed like a lifetime ago. His mother had made him feel safe, even when they weren’t. He wished he had a fracti
on of her ability now.

  “The liquor cabinet is open and it appears that a bottle is missing.” Uncle Reginald broke the mind chatter when he entered the room. “Perhaps he’s sleeping it off...somewhere on the grounds.”

  Gabriel prayed his uncle was right when he turned toward Kendra.

  “If he was unconscious, would you feel him?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t in the tunnels, after he got shot.” She wrung her hands and her voice shook. “He could be...hurt.”

  “What about you, Lucas?” Gabe asked. “You have any visions about him?”

  “No, sorry.” He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “I didn’t sketch anything new last night. Maybe that’s good news,” he told them. “I know you’re all worried, but try to stay positive. If he’s passed out from finishing that bottle, the worst that could happen to him is he’ll find a new religion on his knees, praying for redemption at a porcelain altar. We’ll have to search the grounds to be sure.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” Rayne walked into the room, a little out of breath. She must’ve heard enough. “My Harley’s missing. He didn’t take my keys, so he had to hot-wire it. Where would he go?”

  The hive chatter filled the room again, even though Gabriel knew that Rayne couldn’t hear it. Kendra shut it down when she chose to speak aloud, for Rayne’s benefit.

  “I think I know where he’d go,” she said. “He went looking...for Benny.”

  Kendra didn’t have to explain to Gabe what that meant. Rafael had a special link to the dead as he did. After his mother died four years ago, Gabe wanted his sixth sense to mean something. He wanted his mother to haunt him. He needed to feel her soul and to know that, if she still existed in some reality, he’d see her again. When that didn’t happen, he’d spent hours walking the roadside where she’d died. If Rafe had felt the same, there was only one place he’d go.

  “They could be watching those tunnels,” he said. “Didn’t he know that?”

  “I don’t think he cared,” Kendra said.